"The City Council member shrieks, “STAY TUNED!”, its finger or finger-like appendage pointed accusingly at him. Then it explodes in a tinkling shower of purple sparkles, fine gravel, and the smell of Windex. Cold energy surges through Carlos before he can even raise his shield, and he has just enough time to think, I can’t believe I got hit by a death curse on my first day"
— Warden Carlos Ramirez (Chapter 1)
Love Is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies
is a Fanfic written by ShadyDave- a crossover between the famously creepy podcast Welcome to Night Vale and the famous Urban Fantasy books The Dresden Files.
Wizard Carlos Ramirez is the recently appointed Regional Warden-Commander for the Western United States, and it falls to him to safe guard the magical beings from California to Colorado, and to enforce the Seven Laws of Magic. Within his purview, is a friendly desert community where the Sun is hot, the Moon is beautiful, and the mysterious lights that make up the Master Wards, walls of the prison to ancient long-dead eldritch beings, shine overhead while its citizens pretend to sleep. Carlos, Welcome to Night Vale.
The main focus of the story is Carlos's attempts to watch over Night Vale and its Wards- which are set to detonate and turn the entire area to ash if they are ever pierced. Things however, take a turn for the worse when Carlos has to make am emergency run to Night Vale during a sand-storm that threatens the Wards, is attacked by his double and is pushed through a Time Vortex that sends him back a year. Unable to leave the town for fear that it might damage the Currents of Time, and in order for mutual survival he bands together with a team of Scientists who have come to Night Vale for the first time. Things spiral out of control from there.
The Fanfic is complete, and due to time travel shenanigans, spoilers are eminent. Proceed with caution.
Love Is All You Need to Destroy Your Enemies provides examples of:
- Becoming the Mask: Carlos initially only becomes a "scientist" as a cover to keep his identity (and accidental time travel) a secret in Night Vale. At the end of the story he decides to become a scientist for real through online classes.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Dr Caroline Raith serves as the primary antagonist of the series along with Carlos's Double. Both of them however are subservient to The Man Behind the Man that is the Smiling God, who rules Strex Corp with an iron fist.
- Big Damn Heroes: Tamika Flynn makes several guest appearances as the leader of the Strex-Resistance, usually to bail Carlos out of trouble. Tamika's mother (a friend of Carlos' and magical practitioner) also joins the fray and smacks an enemy Mook with her minivan at one point, saving Carlos from certain death.
- Book Ends: The first and last chapters both open with the same line: Carlos decides he's going to become a scientist when he's 6 years old. The only difference between them is the age when Carlos decides.
- Composite Character: Carlos is a raw combination of both Carlos the Scientist and Carlos the Warden- they fit together well, particularly when certain assumption about Carlos's 'science' are accepted.
- Everyone Knew Already: When Carlos decides to date Cecil, his family is quite accepting and reveals they were waiting for him to come out for a while. Harry starts floored by his friend's relationship, but later confesses he finds it logical - Carlos was really laying on too thick about his imaginary female conquests.
- Fusion Fic: Naturally.
- Hero of Another Story: The other story, mainly, though the events of the main series are referenced several times making it feel like that is the other story, and Harry is the the other hero. It's reinforced when Harry shows up for the final clash between Strex and the Night Vale citizens.
- Layman's Terms: When Carlos tells Dr. Kwan the seven Laws of Magic (complete with "thee's" and "thou's") she reinterprets them as: No avada kedavra, no frog prince, no mind-melds, no mind-whammies, no zombies, no wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey stuff, and no Cthulhu.
- Love at First Sight: Justified and subverted; the first sight between Carlos and Cecil is a Soulgaze, and because of that Cecil actually knows Carlos pretty well, and is lovestruck by his overall personality.
- Noodle Incident: Carlos, being a wizard who has fought/is fighting in two supernatural wars, has a few of these. They're occasionally referenced to show that his life was plenty strange even before he started spending so much time in Night Vale.It’s not the most uncomfortable yet righteously indignant five minutes of Carlos' life, but that's only because he's not in prison this time.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Carlos spends the latter half of the story convinced that his double is genuinely evil, but finally in the end realizes that he really is just an exact copy of Carlos different only in that he gave up on his nobility after being faced with the death and hopelessness of Desert Bluffs.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Right when Carlos has been feeling guilty about keeping his identity as a wizard secret from Cecil and is working up the nerve to tell him, Cecil goes on a rant about how untrustworthy and nefarious he thinks wizards are.
- Oddly Small Organization: While Strex Corp never really had to many named members in Welcome To Nightvale canon, only three employees have speaking roles in the fic, and even then it might be a stretch to call Double!Carlos a employee.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Early on it's revealed that Night Vale serves as both graveyard and prison to defeated Outsiders- evil horrors from beyond reality itself. The Master Wards ensure the monsters can never escape. This is the source of some of Night Vale's crazy hi-jinks. Why anyone would choose to live on there considering where it is, no one can explain. It's revealed that the citizens actually help reinforce the prison. Double-Carlos claims that the White Council knew this and stopped trying to discourage settlers as a result.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: One of the motivations behiend Strex Corp's experimentation with Time Travel, and Double!Carlos, however it's discussed how this is a mostly pointless struggle as most time travel stabilizes into loops. Strex hopes to overcome this limitation through blending of science and magic, and through use of the way time is screwy in Night Vale. They fail, despite their best efforts.
- Stable Time Loop: Several are happen over the course of the series, with odd or unexplained events in earlier chapters often the result of the time meddling that went on in later chapters, most notably Carlos' double causes the time travel that results in his own existence during the sandstorm. It's not till the epilogue where it's revealed the sheer *scope* of some of them, with it being implied more will come.
- Technobabble: Carlos insists on the term pararrayos, because "wierd metal trees" sounds stupid.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Actually averted, despite all of Carlos' misgivings about potentially causing paradoxes and messing up the Currents of Time by changing history. All of the time travel seen in the story itself is consistently of a Stable Time Loop variety.
- The Vamp: Dr Caroline Raith, a White Court Vampire who uses her powers to gain a edge inside the Strex Corp hierarchy. Works usually, but when she runs afoul of the Asexual Dr Kwan it's...not as effective as she would like.
- Trapped in the Past: The first major arc features Carlos suffering from this, being sent back a year in time during a terrible Sand Storm and being unable to leave Night Vale (for fear of messing up the timeline) until he passes the point where he was sent into the past.
- Was It All a Lie?: When Cecil reacts badly to finding out that Carlos is a wizard, Carlos assumes it has to do with Night Vale's negative view of wizards. When they're finally able to talk about it, Cecil clarifies he was more upset because he was questioning the reality of their relationship, specifically.
- Year Inside Hour Out Side: Time is screwy, because the Master Wards are so powerful and take up so much energy that the space within them and the space outside aren't in great sync. Internally it's even worse, because the Outsiders' power warps time, and leads to one person perceiving a certain event as taking hours, and another perceiving it and taking minutes. This is one reason why Time Magic works especially well in Night Vale as compared to the outside world.
