#throw my warg sansa agenda at you

[northsballadmoved]

“ tell me about these dreams. ” ― @khalesci.

for a moment, sansa feels off - balance; pulled in two opposing directions by the rope upon which she dangles precariously. it is the weakness of hesitation, the breath that stalls in her sternum before it is released. it's a subject she had willingly breached, and yet now she is uncertain. the dilemma of trust. their lives are already in the dragon queen's hands, a feat that after many weeks of counsel and planning, she does believe her intentions of honoring. but something as personal as her dreams, the world as she sees it through her direwolf's eyes . . . daenerys' expression is patient, earnest, and the stark weakly grasps onto a mental reminder that they are not only allies but friends. at least, she hopes.

❝ they are . . . difficult to explain, ❞ she begins with a slight frown, pressing her hands together in her lap, the unconscious motion of fingertips over knuckles a self - soothing habit. sansa has shared little even with jon, the one who seems to understand it the most, as they ever so rarely have the time to speak of anything other than survival nowadays. ❝ at least, in a way that still clings somewhat to reality. i'm afraid they are nothing of the sort. ❞ it's an experimental venture. daenerys has fire in her blood, magic in her birthright, but this is still different. and sansa is used to being careful.

[fedonciadale]

The pack of cohesiva writing. In s4 Battle of Castle Black Jon follows orders from a senior ofrecer, later takes command and gave tactical orders like holding the gates or telling Sam to libertad Ghos and gives up command to a competent officer when he needs to personally fight. In Hardcore he Rally his men, tries to cover a hole in the walls and when the walkers enter the fight tries to reach the caché of dragonglass weapons.

(2) We jump to s6 and Jon enters the fight without any plan, he can't command his men, he's an action man. And this Is done because the plot point of the Vale Knights pulling a rohirrim saving momento needed to be hit. Character consistency was throw to the trash bin because hitting plot points was key instead of letting the narrative advance towards the lógical way. Sansa in the first chapters of s6 is the ultimate damsel in distress to become in a couple of episodes into the Uber political player.

(3) No natural progresion, only characters be having the way the plot need them to be to make certain events go On.

Hi there!

As much as I love season 6 (if only for the iconic moment where the Bolton banners were replaced with Stark banners....), the writing certainly became worse after the Red Wedding.

I do think that D&D never understood that secretive story telling has a comeuppance. If you don’t learn enough about the characters you stop to care, and then the impact of the plot twist falls short. Jon Snow is my favourite character of the books, closely followed by Sansa, but I stopped caring about him in season 8, because I had no idea what his agenda was, what he felt etc. We had been cut off so long from his PoV that in the end it didn’t matter anymore.

Good plot twists are the twists that you could have seen coming, but didn’t. Good plot twists are the destination of character development and the culmination of foreshadowing. I still think that the Hodor moment is one of the best twists ever.... Hodor was actually named for his destiny, and yet there was no way you could have seen that. As a reader you know that Hodor is in danger of course, but his actual death is something that punches you in the gut... And it has been there the entire time: Bran’s warging, his visits in the past, we know that Hodor at some point could talk more than one word, the threat of the walkers.... And still, when it happens, your reaction is WTF!

Another way to do plot twists are reached via secretive story telling, withholding information. And if it’s done good, it can be satisfying as well. I still think that the Sirius Black/Peter Pettigrew revelation in the Prisoner of Azkaban is a very good example for that. Some information was withheld from Harry to spare him, but some information was just not available to the persons around him, because Peter Pettigrew had hidden himself. And the hints there were. Peter did show up on the Marauders’ Map after all.

So, if you decide to have characters have a secret, there must be a very good reason for them to withhold that information.... And even more important: You have to explain later why! If you look at season 6 a scene where Sansa explains, why she did not tell Jon about the Knights of the Vale would have been absolutely crucial for good story telling. But the writers already thought about season 7 and their Winterhell plot and had to veil Sansa’s devotion to her family....

Yes, and in season 7 it was worse. People needed to be at a certain point and therefore the narrative moved them there, without giving them motives, letting us viewers guess about their motives. And I would say that there is no way that you can claim that any of the characters save Dany were in any way consistent in season 7 and 8.

Don’t get me wrong: The Knights of the Vale riding in was poetic cinema, but if you compare it with the Rohirim you can easily see the difference.... In the Return of the King we spend two hours watching Minas Tirith get under siege and the Rohirim desperately trying to get there on time. We see Aragorn trying to prevent the corsars coming in....

So we know, help is coming, we are just not sure, if they will be on time. Does the fact that we knew the Rohirim are on their way to Minas Tirith in any way diminish the impact of their charge? NOT AT ALL!

Would the impact of the Knights of the Vale ride have been any less if we had seen them desperately trying to arrive on time? If we had seen Sansa’s letter. If we had seen Littlefinger hesitating if he should come? If we had seen Sansa desperately asking if a raven for her had arrived? NO.

But that is how D&D do things. It was how they did the Red Wedding as well. But there had been hints at least. The real art is to weave the story and let the reader appreciate in hindsight how we got there, how suddenly the whole tapestry is visible and not just the single thread. It’s sooo cheap to achieve plot twists just by withholding information. And the characters suffer the most.

A skilled author/writer will move his characters where he needs them to be by letting them decide in consistency with the character, the readers/watchers know.

Thanks for the ask!