The Mortal's Lover

So I'm going through the Skins again as we might be playing Monsterhearts again soon, with me finally getting to be a player. Yes.

I'm leaning towards the Mortal, and noticed their True Love, Mess With Me, Mess With Him, and Excuses Are My Armor Moves as well as their Backstory has the word "lover" in italics. "You always have exactly one lover.", "You always carry 1 forward to earning your lover's heart or fancy." for example. Does that mean "lover" is a Condition? I'm pretty sure that Conditions and Moves are always presented in italics throughout the Monsterhearts book leading me to believe I'm right, but I could be dead wrong.

Can someone help me out on this?

I assume its written that way to signify that this one chosen lover the mortal has is meant here - not any random lover the mortal could have have. So even if you would tell a story with the mortal torn between two love interests there would always be only one lover.

I dont think its some kind of condition (nor move).

But this is just my understanding.

Yeah, I would agree with that. Joe italicises various things in the book, including game principles and move names. In the main text, conditions are normally prefixed with "Condition" unless they're in the section about Conditions.

Lover wouldn't work as a condition in any case. You can remove conditions, whereas the Mortal skin explicitly states that they always have one - and only one - lover.

Thanks for the responses, guys.

I think you might right about the word being italicized to indicate that the rules and Moves are referring to the one, specific lover the Mortal always has. As CoveredInFish points out, the Mortal could have several lovers but only one lover.

I can still see the term being a Condition though. As any character can take advantage of a Condition on another character (not just the character who initially placed it there), if the relationship between the Mortal's and their lover is common knowledge to everyone I could see someone taking advantage of that. Bad mouthing the lover or using them as a threat or leverage to get that +1 when making a Move against the Mortal. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer verbally attacking Angel was a good way to get under Buffy's skin. The same goes for badmouthing Bill in True Blood; it'd cause a strong reaction from Sookie. So I could se it being used the way other Conditions are. Plus, as Conditions only go away when the character takes appropriate action, breaking up with the Mortal seems like it would clear the lover Condition.

Of course that causes messiness when interacting with some of the other Moves. The Chosen's Sex Move allows them to clear all their Conditions. How would that work fictionally if the Chosen was the Mortal's lover? The same goes for the Ghoul's Satiety Move; they can choose to remove a Condition if they satisfy a Hunger. Hmm...

The intention is not for lover to be a Condition, no -- but I agree that it could be an interesting Condition, particularly in a longer-running game, where the Mortal's predilection for obsessive co-dependency has become a social 'thing' that people are aware of and can react to. Much like being the current boyfriend of a notorious harridan, or the girlfriend of a controlling jerk, etc.

But the Condition in this case would be divorced from the Mortal-relevant mechanic. The Mortal is the only person who can decide who is and is not their one true love -- though of course other people may do their best to convince them to change their mind. AS IF THAT COULD EVEN WORK OMG.