I don't understand why the MC is self-sabotaging so hard. What is his reason? I'm not t...

I think it’s a lot of compounding reasons. He’s confused and super disoriented from his memory loss, he’s not 100% sure he can trust anyone, he lives a shitty life with lister tormenting him and punishing anyone he gets close to, he doesn’t want to get his hopes up with the ML, etc.

Perfect example of victim blaming through negative framing and harmful assumptions right off the bat. I swear y’all could just not read when you’re insensitive and trying to mask it as curiosity, you’re not fucking slick.

The story, the author, the writer of this fiction has not given him a reason for pushing the ML away.

He's not real. I cannot victim blame him because he is not real. He is not a victim. There is no victim here. It's not real. It's all fictional. This is all completely made up. It's fictional writing.

In this fictional writing no reason has been given for the way the MC is acting.

I'm asking if anybody picked up on a reason that I might have missed.

You are doing too much. Get a life. Learn to differentiate between fiction and reality.

That's logical, and I think that's probably what everyone's thinking but it hasn't been clearly defined in the story. At least it hasn't as far as I can tell. Have you noticed any clear motivations in the story for the MC pulling away like he is?

I haven't seen any evidence that he doesn't trust the ML. It does seem like there's times where he is worried the ML may be doing something violent on his behalf and he does seem very adverse to violence, but even in his own thoughts he never told himself that's the reason for his recent actions.

A lot in this story isn't clearly defined and I'm enjoying learning about the MC's past at the same time he does. The ambiguous nature of the plot is really well done and intriguing.

I feel like you can have an ambiguous plot and past but you still need clear well-defined character motivations and I don't understand the MC's character motivations as they're not well defined within the story. I can make up motivations based on my own experience and what I know about psychology, but the author just hasn't made them clear in the story IMO

I think it’s pretty obvious, but that might just be me. I don’t mean any offense when I say this, but expecting a speech/thought bubble where the main character is like ‘I think this because of that and thus I will conduct this specific action’ seems a little elementary. A lot of these aspects are heavily implied and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to extrapolate his thoughts based on his situation.

And it also kind of defeats the purpose of this story. We don’t get clearly defined motivations because the MC doesn’t know them either. Again, he has had severe memory loss and is only now starting to remember a little bit of his past. Up until recently, he thought there was no hope for him and he was just going to be a slave for the rest of his life. We’re navigating his life purely through *his* lenses, so obviously we’d be just as confused as he is.

I don't think he's confused about his current plan at all. He is going to willingly marry Lister and go into exile while doing nothing to help himself, even though he knows he has the opportunity to save himself.

He was incredibly curious and proactive about learning the truth. Then he found a blueprint and decided he doesn't want to know anything anymore. They didn't explain why at all. He never explained why. He just looked afraid and decided he didn't want to know anything else.

He's madly in love with the ML and was doing whatever he could to see him. Suddenly, he realized that the ML is a violent man and suddenly didn't want to see him anymore. This makes no sense because he always knew that, even though he lost his memories it was well known amongst the slaves and servants that the ML is a violent man in a precarious social position well before they started meeting.

I am not asking for the story to be transparent. What should be transparent is what we actually see. We were there when he made these decisions, we could see his thoughts, but it still was not clear why he's doing what he's doing. There wasn't even the irrational thoughts, it was just nothing. There's a difference between slowly revealing a story and deliberately and obviously hiding things from your audience.

It's like those cliffhangers where you see the characters seeing something and being surprised, but you aren't shown what they're seeing. That's cheap. It's not deep. It doesn't invoke deep thinking in your audience. It's not a slow reveal. It's a deliberate and obvious choice to hide something because you're trying to drum up a very fake suspense. It just doesn't feel the same as real suspense created through good writing.

This author has done such a good job building suspense about everything in the story except the sudden motivation change in the main character. I am on board for the slow burn romance, I know it's not slow burn for sex but it's slow burn romance, and the slow reveal of the mystery. I think this slow burn for the motivation of the main character whose thoughts and feelings we are supposed to be experiencing feels forced and makes me feel like I missed something, when I don't think I did.

Nah, the one who could benefit most from ‘getting a life’ and ‘learning to differentiate between fiction and reality’ is you. You’re the one deflecting like a broken record, refusing to own why you’re so desperate to use a fictional character to externalize blame and ‘appear right,’ under the guise of ‘just asking questions.’
“He's not real. I cannot victim blame him because he is not real. He is not a victim. There is no victim here. It's not real. It's all fictional. This is all completely made up. It's fictional writing.

In this fictional writing no reason has been given for the way the MC is acting.”

Can’t logic your way out of emotions or avoid accountability through denial, because by your own definition, you ‘doing too much’.
Anyways, this thread was made by a child throwing a temper tantrum, bad faith from the start.

You're either deranged or a troll. Either way, please work on your emotional intelligence and your reading comprehension.

I am very clearly talking about the writing and not the character. I don't care what the reason is, I just don't like that no reason has been given. "Just because" is bad writing.