Yeah I'm pretty sure that if he was a few hundred years old and had a very large family of his own, that one of the last things on his mind would be a friend of his dead father he knew for 2 years and spent about 6-8 weeks in company with. If family connections are that important to him he has much closer concerns.

 

Eh, it's kind of hard to picture the thought process of someone centuries (or more) old, but writing a Harry that is still hung up about Sirius' death is ridiculous. If anything, his worst enemy would be boredom, so as a sort of coping mechanism I think he would try to take the most fun out of a shitty situation. That or go nuts, whatever comes first.

 

Well shit, man, why wouldn't he be?

Oh. Oh...

Yeah, what the others said. It seems like it's mostly down to a lack of imagination/originality and perspective.

Part of it is that they just aren't putting enough thought into the thought processes and motivations of their character. I realize this is fan fiction, but just because it's a borrowed character doesn't mean you get to skip the part where you consider their thoughts, feelings, and motivations, so that their actions make at least some friggin' sense.

Most of the reason Harry was upset about Sirius's death was due to the fact that he had never known a decent parental figure and was in a shitty living situation. He desperately wanted parents and a home that wasn't abusive, and Sirius was a way to have both. By the time Sirius died, Harry was probably resigned to waiting until he was a legal adult to escape #4 Privet Drive due to Sirius's criminal status, but he still wanted that parental figure.

He simply didn't interact with Sirius enough (at least that we saw or were even told about), though, to miss him on anything more than a somewhat superficial level. Even though he surely didn't actively think of it in these terms, he was mostly mourning the loss of that thing he wanted, and maybe the potential Sirius had to be an actual friend.

Harry being a decent person means he probably felt bad that Sirius had lived an undeniably shabby life and now would never get a chance to live well. Beyond that, though? I'm just not sure Harry knew Sirius well enough to mourn him as a friend or parent, rather than as a conduit to information about his parents and as the physical representation of an opportunity that is now lost to him.

Once Harry grows up a little, like being in his 30s, the sting of not being able to get away from the Dursleys will be long gone, the loss of a parental figure he would have normally been too old to really want hanging around at 15-16 would be a memory, and all that would be left is, "Wow, Sirius was my age when he died. He was a good bloke who got a raw deal in life; it's a shame he never really got to live his own life. Well, thank goodness MY life is better; time to tuck my wonderful son into bed and then go bone my total hottie of a wife."

And if we're talking about one of those (semi-)immortal Harry Potters, it's even weirder that he'd still be hung up on one dead guy he barely knew. In that case, we're talking about someone who would have lived long enough to watch multiple wives and generations of his own children grow old, die, and be lowered into their graves... but apparently the loss that's foremost in his mind is "That guy who my parents knew for about ten years and I knew for about ten weeks, when you sum it all up."

Even sparing a thought for Cedric at such an age would be bizarre, as well. Harry didn't know Cedric in any substantive way. He was that obnoxiously handsome and talented guy with the annoyingly boastful father, who was dating the girl Harry liked, and then Voldemort had him killed.

Three years later, Harry got to see all kinds of his classmates die young -literally witness their deaths in some cases, just like Cedric- including Creevey, who was even younger than Cedric was when he died, so why would he be the one that stands out in his thoughts, all those years/centuries later?

Because you never forget your first? Meh. An immortal Harry has probably had some of his own children die too young, by that point.

Besides, if we're talking about a story that includes canon all the way up to the epilogue, then what you have is a Harry who has spoken to his deceased relatives, died, seen an aspect of the afterlife, and come back to life. Unless Harry decides that it really was all in his head, and that the Resurrection Stone is also just a trick that draws on your subconscious to allow you to essentially have a conversation with yourself, then he knows that there is an afterlife and everyone he even remotely cares about is there, safe and happy.

If anything, an immortal Harry is a million times more likely to be hung up on the reality that he's still alive and missing all the fun of being dead, too, rather than that some people he barely knew, a long time ago, died young.

Lesson #1 for these folks: Take more than a minute to think about whether your characters' thoughts and actions make any damned sense at all, given the reality they are living in and the circumstances that motivate them.

 

Huh, I've never really thought about it like that but you're right, that makes a lot of sense.

Too bad this kind of depth is missed in all but a handful of fanfiction.

 

I wouldn't put all the blame in the fanfiction writers. The books themselves weren't that good at portraying and explaining the mental process of the characters. Take Harry for example, he killed a guy at eleven for fuck's sake, and yet he seemed to shrug off the whole experience as just an adventure.
Okay, it was a book for kids, and there aren't many kids who would like to read about a Harry that develops PTSD, but then as the readers got older Rowling started trying to write a main character that actually got shook up by his adventures. There it comes OotP Harry, who angsted a lot, and since he didn't like talking about his feelings (I'm fine), his whole experience is up for interpretation. Unfortunately, since most readers were teenagers, well...you know what happened. An archetypal teenager rebelling against his unfair life and taking angst to epic levels.

 

That's actually not that strange. Kids handle that sort of thing quite differently to adults. They don't really understand if/how it's messed up so it really can't bother them as much. It actually was an adventure, especially to an 11 year old, it makes sense he sees it as such. From his point of view he was quite a hero in that moment, the consequences probably wouldn't even really register. If Harry had had 6 normal years at Hogwarts then finished his final year with the Quirrell confrontation he probably would have been much more upset.

Realistically speaking of course.

 

Makes sense, and the amount of cheering he got (the House points and Dumbledore's praise) certainly didn't hurt.

 

Its a low effort way to link the new and improved Harry with the vanilla Harry. Ie Pranks, Flying and Expelliarmus.

As well like with Albus and Arianna the authors probably figures it was an important moment in Harrys development that he believes was all his fault, and that with hindsight could have been avoided. But remains a major part of his mental build.

 

This isn't so much a pet peeve as much as something that just baffles me: harem fics that don't have any sex in them. It's just like... what's the point? Why would you write a sexual fantasy without any sex? It'd be like watching porn only to turn it off when they start taking their clothes off.

 

You just described 50 Shades of Grey Taure.

 

One word: anime.

 

Yeah this does baffle me as well because let's be real, there's only one reason to write a harem fic. Surely the writers don't expect me to take it seriously as a reader. Perhaps a party of three could be handled seriously - it never is - but after that just give up trying to have a serious plot, honestly.

 

I don't understand. Most harem fics I've read are the result of some plot of Sirius.

 

New pet peeve:

Voldemort Cruciating his minions constantly. Voldemort only did that in response to extreme fuckups (Department of Mysteries) and considerable cowardice (running during the World Cup). There is no way his minions would have stuck around if he constantly used the Cruciatus Curse on them.

 

Pet peeve: this stupid pun.

 

I'll second that.

A lot of things relating to the twins, but especially the names Gred and Forge.

Also, any sort of twin trope, such as: the two of them constantly finishing each other's sentences, knowing exactly what the other is thinking just by sharing a look, and twincest. That last one especially.

 

I disgustingly read some review recently that complained Voldemort wasn't acting "like a dark lord and torturing his followers". I think fanon might have done some permanent damage in this area. Constantly torturing your followers isn't evil it's stupid.

 

Huh, I didn't realize how much that's annoyed me on the side.

But not just that, but when "Dark Families" use the cruciatus on their children, when random death eaters throw it around like it's a substitute for whatever inventive curse they should have thought of, etc.

 

I haven o problem with finishing each other sentences IF it happens once or twice, when they have a great idea or something like that. But if every conversation with them happens like that I just skip it.

 

Is this on the level of Sirius calling Harry "pup"?