useful meditations on fictional characters

I've been thinking today that it's unfair to spend your entire experience of someone wishing he would just grow the hell up, and then when he finally does grow the hell up, to feel somehow cheated and/or furious because he didn't grow up exactly the way you wanted or expected him to.

It's diabolically hard to resist the urge to be disappointed in people when they aren't necessarily even doing anything wrong except failing to live up to the expectations which you are conveniently unable to communicate to them. I mean, do you find it so? Because clearly I do.

(I think this meditation could conceivably apply to real life as well, lalala. Seriously, though, this is not about real life.)