One of my characters.

Remember when I said I wasn't going to post about writing anymore and instead focus on other aspects of my life? This was an inaccurate statement. I seem to be incapable of not talking about writing. This most likely proves I have definite dedication to "the job", so to speak. (I'm practically married to the job, anyway. Which I say mostly because, due to my personal nature, I'm not going to marry anyone/anything else. Hey, look, topics that aren't writing.)

But I digress.

The reason I am making this blog post is because I want to talk about a certain character of mine. His name is Clive Benedict. He's a rather pathetic painkiller addict who's afraid of pretty much every aspect of life or could potentially be so, and he's pretty self-hating and apathetic (about many things, mostly his own life), but of all the characters in this story, he's the one I admire the most. You know why? Because, when you look at everyone's motivation in this story and you get right down to it, he's the only one who's motivated by kindness. 

Everyone else is trying to defend their ideals/factions/interests, and while they're nice people who do care about what happens to others, this guy is the only one who is doing what he's doing specifically because he wants to help someone. It starts with him wanting to save his sister's life, and as he comes to care for more people, he wants to make sure they don't come to harm, but the reason he doesn't run screaming from the adventure is because he loves his sister and thinks he can help her and he has no underlying ideas or ulterior motives like literally everyone else. He just wants to help someone.  

You wouldn't expect it from him, either. He seems pretty self-absorbed (in the sense of "I don't want to come to harm") but his personality traits are not mutually exclusive to working out of love for another person. This makes him interesting (in my opinion) and it makes his virtue seem even more virtuous, in a way. If he can overcome his selfishness and fear, then it proves that his love and concern is very strong, possibly stronger than everyone else's - most of the things that the other characters do are relatively easy for them, or are at least related to things that come naturally to them.

He's working out of kindness, which is more than you can say for everyone else in this story. And that's why he's so far the only character in this whole story who I admire. He's not the only one I like. Far from it. There are amusing characters, nice characters, good characters. He's just the only one who does what he does out of purely selfless ideals. He's the only one who's not preoccupied with something that doesn't inherently relate to morality. I like him.