luna-azzurra:

The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it’s what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don’t deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won’t even notice they’re doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.

variations on this include:

-belief that the whole concept of “deserving” is bullshit and people should just get what they want and need, as long as it isn’t blocking that from someone else

(may or may not be combined with a tendency to still deny oneself things anyway, on the logic that everything you get is blocking someone else from getting something, and so you can’t allow yourself anything until everyone else has everything they need first. Which will be any moment now, almost there)

- belief in one’s own value to a megalomaniacal degree, to the point of “I deserve everything I want, much more than any of you do.” Combined with very low opinions of other people, especially of “how they are going to treat me”

(you believe you are the only good person; others are cruel and selfish and will not willingly help you, will resent you for having or wanting anything, and will punish you in horrible creative ways for not giving up everything you possibly can. Your own self-interest thus ends up looking exactly like self-sacrifice and extremely low self-esteem, despite being the opposite)