I’m tired of simple character motives in shows/movies/books (dead family member, love, save the city from terrorist, win the big game). Even literary characters mostly just add a second contradictory motive like “wants to get rich but also keep his friends.”
Maybe because one of the uses of fiction is test-driving simpler motivational structures for size through identification. Since real people are a rolling quagmire of motives that never really get figured out, and then you die basically confused about wtf it was all about.
Hmm. Many candidates being proposed are more obscure literary fiction of the sort I don’t enjoy reading for other reasons. I guess I’m most interested in complex but still genre.
In complex-but-genre, some I’ve liked are:
Abelard Lindsay in Schismatrix Plus, whose motive seems to be to get out alive and adapt.
Bender in Futurama: needy, selfish, suicidal, but pulls his weight even while grumbling.
Genre motives are easier to make complex if it’s an indefinite series. Poirot is fairly complex due to mechanical effect of being in a series of novels. It’s like a real person hidden under a cartoon. Opposite of the villain in roger rabbit.
Realizing a lot of my sanity rests on the not caring to probe (real) people’s motivations beyond a point. Model things deeply enough to be situationally effective. Treat the rest as zero-mean character noise.
Every time I post a prompt like this I realize people who respond generally have more refined tastes and esoteric awareness than I do. It’s like knowing a language well enough to ask questions but not really understand the answers.
Mahit Dzmare from Arkady Martine's sci-fi A Memory Called Empire and the sequel A Desolation Called Peace.
Personal survival, protecting a home that doesn't love her, loving and hating the culture and people of her home's oppressor.