Manufactured Love Stories

So, if you’ve played far enough into FL, you learn that the Bazaar hungers for love stories, the Masters’ main goal is to feed them these stories, but they have to be genuine, or else they’re worthless (The Bazaar has no need of manufactured love stories).

So, what exactly qualifies as a manufactured story? IIRC, for example, that Jack came about as a result of an attempt to induce a love story, so the Bazaar rejected it, but at the same time, I’m kind of curious as to how far you can push the limit before a love story goes from genuine to induced.

Ok, I only really thought of this because I thought of this scenario; where a chemist or something develops a love potion, and sells it to someone, only to find out that said someone is going to give it to someone the chemist is in love with, and as a result, goes through a series of actions trying to prevent the love potion from reaching its destination.

So, while the someone and the lover’s story would be manufactured, I think, would the chemist’s story at large (including his attempts to prevent the consequences of his actions) also be a love story, and would it be “manufactured”?

The chemist’s story would indeed be genuine. I believe a manufactured love story is when people deliberately act out a story, without their feelings being genuine. From what I’ve seen in The Silver Tree, the love story between the Princess and the Sculptor is a manufactured love story, with the intent of selling Karakorum to the bazaar. Considering the princess is now the gracious widow, one can expect that went poorly.

That’s the thousand dollar question, isn’t it? Are “manufactured love stories” manufactured stories of love, or stories of manufactured love?

I think they are both. “Manufactured stories of love” are like the poems, novels and plays you can write at Court: they may be well liked by the Empress and her courtiers, but won’t interest the Bazaar in the least. “stories of manufactured love” would be more like the Princess/Sculptor story cited by Urthdigger: true stories about fake loves, and they aren’t liked by the Bazaar either. You want to appease the Bazaar, you need a true story about a true love ^^