Does Circe Have Weak Motivation?

[John Venus]

Do you think Circe's motivation for fighting Diana is weak?

What do you think will help improve it?

[SiegePerilous02]

Perez's Circe was cool, but the soul swapping of Hecate was always lame and needlessly complex.

All she needs is to be an old foe of Hippolyta that attacks Diana out of spite, and builds animosity towards Diana herself over their encounters. The redacted info from the Historia pitch document mentions Hippolyta striking a deal with someone. I wonder if it will be Circe?

[Mel Dyer]

Do you think Circe's motivation for fighting Diana is weak?

What do you think will help improve it?

What happens, if Circe wins? Everybody shops at PetSmart? Mass distribution of flea collars? Who knows?

Even with James Tynion IV's excellent re-tooling of Circe's motivation, when we imagine the worst case scenario of Circe winning, ..what do we have? The trillion dollar question: What does Circe want, and what's she willing to do to get it? There's the test of how weak or compelling her motivation is.

[Fuzzy Mittens]

I think one of the the everlasting things about Circe is that her motivations can change (heh) to suit the situation.
Golden Age she was all 'I want revenge on Hippolyta~ If I cannot have my way with her however, her daughter is fine too~'
Bronze age and Perez both played with the idea of a prophecy foretelling her death being motivation.

We have seen her motivated by a desire to reshape the universe in her image.
Acting out of friendship towards Diana.
Wanting revenge on Diana for perceived slights.
Desire the world so she can give it to her daughter.
Decide the world is crap and it needs to be changed for the better and SHES the one to do it. Whether the world is willing or not.

Regardless of the era, its always canon that Circe has been around for thousands of years. Be it stranded on a magical planet unmoored from a solar system, or living contently on island as the secret shadow ruler of Greece.

You have an incredibly powerful immortal whose seen a fair chunk of human history and a number of motivations and reasonings for what she does.

Are her motivations weak? It depends on which ones you mean!
Revenge? Its basic, simple, and her end goal is getting what she wants and probably going back to her island. Shes probably done this before, and has the power to go pretty over the top because its not that much trouble on her part.
Changing the world or even the universe to what she believes would be better? Again she has the power to back it up, and in a twisted way she does have a clear idea of what that would entail.
Conquest for the sake of her daughter? It establishes Circe having a goal outside of herself and shifts the question over to the wants of a toddler who actually acts her age.

Its really just about how one wants to approach it because Circes such a broad and versitile character that anything can be made to work well if someones willing to put in the work.

[WonderScott]

Circe through a villainous lens has always been about self-aggrandizement, control, humiliation, pleasure, punishment, manipulation, self-preservation, vengeance deception and instigation to me. On the plus side, she’s knowledgeable, curious, resourceful, charismatic, intelligent, sophisticated, insightful, self-confident and unparalleled when it comes to divine and other forms of magic. (At least it’s how I think she should be portrayed.)

I also see her as an incredibly lonely individual (not that she’d ever describe herself that way.)

I also like the parallels and contrasts between Circe and Diana and the Amazons.

All this is to say that I think Circe’s qualities give her motives past simply revenge against Diana and the Amazons, but that’s how she typically gets limited. There’s a whole multiverse of Earths and different divine spheres for Circe to cause trouble in. If they take her there, so Diana better learn to catch up!

[marhawkman]

Yeah, #1 thing with Circe: TIME, Circe is millennia old, and has the patience to wait a year or more for a plan to unfold.

[Mel Dyer]

I think the writing on the wall, where Circe's motivation is concerned, is pretty plain.

I'm really getting tired of waiting for the WW comic to figure out what to do with Circe, in ANY form. Her JLD/Tynion motivation for tormenting mankind, which makes narrative sense, doesn't seem to interest WW's editors or writers. Don't really care what happens to Circe, at this point, and don't see how she has much to do with why Diana left Paradise ..or became Wonder Woman. Like the rest of WW's rogues, Circe gets more speculative development on online forums, like this, than she ever has in the WW comic, ..and there's nothing on the horizon, signaling that will change, anytime soon.

Just look at all the hot DC Comics writers lined up to use Circe in other comics, ..like Justice League, Green Lantern and Superman. No? Well, there you go.

Yes, outside of 'The Witching War' arc in JLD, she has a pathetically weak motivation. "I'm here to PROVE mortals are irredeemably corrupt and that your faith in them is foolish, Diana! Mwuahaha-aaa..." Wisecrack. Purple hair toss. Check the nails. Divatude moment. What does any of this have to do with anything Wonder Woman is doing? How does anything Circe is doing have any lasting impact on Diana's story, going forward? What are the earth-shattering consequences to be suffered, if Circe succeeds in proving to Wonder Woman that mankind is grumpy and selfish? Yes, yes, yes...

Very, very weak. Enough. Bye, girl.

[Stanlos]

Do you think Circe's motivation for fighting Diana is weak?

What do you think will help improve it?

Post War of the Gods, it has been a VERY mixed bag.

[Stanlos]

Yeah, #1 thing with Circe: TIME, Circe is millennia old, and has the patience to wait a year or more for a plan to unfold.

This was a characteristic I loved pre-WOTG. She plotted for 5 years. And actually succeeded. It was only the slightest coincidence via the precocious meddling of Klarion the Witch Boy that afforded her undoing.