>>5963944>>5963988>>5964217>>5996953>>5997001>>5982450>>5982481Romance is about desire, so it is imperative to study the psychological mechanisms behind desire.
There is a theory that what differentiates humans from say animals or machines is the HIGHER ORDER DESIRE, essentially desires about desires - and they can be in conflict with each other. This is the theory of consciousness and emotion.
So animals and humans both share wants and cravings, we want to eat food, find shelter, have sex etc. But what differentiates human consciousness is these HIGHER ORDER volitions (often situated in introspection, socio-cultural pressure or conformity to external norms hierarchies, expectations and extrapolation of how the self is perceived by others, with a contingent consequential or temporal anticipation dimension) eg you might crave food but then feel fearful of becoming obese, you might want sex but then feel ashamed of the act or the judgement of others afterwards etc... these desires about desires that then act in opposition to each other which is what creates the agency the nested emotional depth and psychological interior drama. Similarly, machines and algorithms can be assigned goals and exhibit superior cognitive reasoning to humans (eg Dijkstra algorithm or A* pathfinding in a maze etc outperforms a human running around trying to solve a labyrinth for food) but the machine cannot manufacture these higher order volitions (desires about desires, goals about goals) that emotionally conflict with each other.
For an added layer of psychological depth, do not even make it clear what a character's goals even are. People deceive themselves, self-deception, they are often mislead by their own feelings into bizarre or detrimental actions that do not serve their own desires. They do not know what they want or lack, they mostly borrow their desires from others, friends, parents, celebrities, or films or music or advertising. And the reality can be disappointing. So this is a good confused state of mind to embrace, before falling in Love
