A difficulty in writing Snarry featuring mature!Harry

[ptyx]

The problem is, most readers are asking us to write older!Harry, but at the same time they want Harry and Snape to hate each other

Comments

[alecto_chan]

Hate is a funny little "emotion", isn't it? I guess you are lucky enough to never really hate another person with that kind of passion. For Snape and Harry, I think it's a matter of first impressions sticking (and they often do stick very well with us despite how little social and affective information they can actually offer about the target). There are also years of social and power inequity between the two (though who has the upper hand differs from time to time and it seems to continue very much so in your fic, lol). I don't think people can be just one thing or another. People are various things all at once: mature and immature, smart and stupid, etc. And I have been reading Schola Obscura (you make the history/anthropology geek in me happy xDD) and I think the interaction between the two of them are fine.

I guess to bring this back on track and to end my rambling. What exactly is your definition of a "believable mature!Harry"?

[ptyx]

As I was telling Vain above, perhaps my problem is that I stopped hating people very early in my teens, and now I don't deeply hate anyone. Maybe that's why I think Harry's hate is not a mature feeling. Oh, of course, if someone is pestering you, you better hate him/her, it's a self-defence feeling, but what Harry feels for Snape is too deep for me to understand.

Yay, I'm glad you're reading Schola. I'm also glad that, although I can't really empathise with this Harry, he seems plausible to you.

[imkalena]

I stopped hating people very early in my teens, and now I don't deeply hate anyone.

Wow, you are very lucky. I'm guessing there was never anyone close to you that hurt you deeply enough to make hatred stick. It took me nearly three decades of life to stop hating my father -- although I loved him, too. That only makes it even more difficult. It's why there's a name for a love-hate relationship.

I'm not saying Harry has any love for Snape, but Snape's contempt and ill treatment of Harry gouged into the same wounds already cut by the neglect and contempt of the Dursleys. Then he murdered Harry's only father figure in cold blood.

[ptyx]

Well, my father... never was my father. I met him for the first time when I was 26. He said he didn't want to abandon me, but that life forced him to do that. I think my life was marked by what I perceived as a rejection, but that was more than compensated by my mother's love. Anyway, maybe the lack of a paternal figure near me made me emotional... immune to some kinds of feelings.

I can understand why Harry hates Snape. I just think when a person gets older, if he/she doesn't come to terms with that kind of feeling, it's because this person is not really mature. But I agree with you that this hate may transform into a kind of despise or dislike.

[imkalena]

Anyway, maybe the lack of a paternal figure near me made me emotionally ... immune to some kinds of feelings.

Huh. If that's so, then you really got the best possible deal out of a bad situation. I suspect there are others who grew up in a similar situation who didn't do nearly so well emotionally.

Yay for emotional strength. :)

[ptyx]

Er, I meant emotionally immune.