Jon's biggest error?

[bizzle]

The reason Jon bent the knee to her was that he never wanted to be King in the first place. He didn't want to co-lead with Dany; he doesn't want to lead at all. This is one of the factors that people (in the story) keep missing/forgetting/ignoring when they consider the end-game here. As proven before, Jon will shed his duty to rule as quickly as he can.

Regarding plot progression, I don't think it's acceptable to explain character behavior as a necessary element of plot progression. Plot should drive character behavior; character behavior should never drive plot. 

[Eltharion21]

Jon's biggest error is ever leaving that cave he was in with Ygritte.

[Rubicante]

7 hours ago, Ellimental said:

And what would that have achieved? Hate Sansa all you like, many people do. But Sansa's the only character left with a bit of sense. Had Tyrion listened to her, he could have avoided what happened in King's Landing. As for Jon, he's thick as a brick and without Sansa covering for him, he'd have been lost a long time ago.

Regardless of whether or not Sansa was correct about Dany, there was no reason for her to not tell Jon about the Vale Knights or mistrust Dany.

By not telling Jon about the Vale knights, it makes it seem like she was giving Rickon up for dead and using Jon's army as bait to lure Ramsay out of Winterfell.  It is almost as if she wanted Jon to die, and then when that happened have the Vale knights attack and defeat Ramsay.  This would leave her in charge of Winterfell and the North, which apparently is the only thing she cares about.  If that was her intention, then fine.  But she deserved to be executed for betraying Jon.

As for Dany, why does she distrust her?  Dany lost half of her army, and a Dragon, to save the North.  If it weren't for Dany, everyone in the North would be dead (actually, would be worse than dead).  You would think that would earn some trust.  But apparently "Sansa just kind of forgot that Dany was instrumental in saving the entire North".  And as MinscS2 pointed out, by Sansa betraying Jon (again) and telling Tyrion, it actually made matters worse.  So once again she is a traitor.

I have disliked the show since Stannis burned Shireen in season 5, but if Jon were to execute Sansa in the final episode of the series, I think I may actually give the show a thumbs up.  Of course that is not going to happen.  Jon will probably tell Sansa "You were right.  You are the smartest person I have ever known".  

 

[Dragons dance with Wolves]

2 hours ago, Rubicante said:

Regardless of whether or not Sansa was correct about Dany, there was no reason for her to not tell Jon about the Vale Knights or mistrust Dany.

By not telling Jon about the Vale knights, it makes it seem like she was giving Rickon up for dead and using Jon's army as bait to lure Ramsay out of Winterfell.  It is almost as if she wanted Jon to die, and then when that happened have the Vale knights attack and defeat Ramsay.  This would leave her in charge of Winterfell and the North, which apparently is the only thing she cares about.  If that was her intention, then fine.  But she deserved to be executed for betraying Jon.

As for Dany, why does she distrust her?  Dany lost half of her army, and a Dragon, to save the North.  If it weren't for Dany, everyone in the North would be dead (actually, would be worse than dead).  You would think that would earn some trust.  But apparently "Sansa just kind of forgot that Dany was instrumental in saving the entire North".  And as MinscS2 pointed out, by Sansa betraying Jon (again) and telling Tyrion, it actually made matters worse.  So once again she is a traitor.

I have disliked the show since Stannis burned Shireen in season 5, but if Jon were to execute Sansa in the final episode of the series, I think I may actually give the show a thumbs up.  Of course that is not going to happen.  Jon will probably tell Sansa "You were right.  You are the smartest person I have ever known".  

 

To be fair, if not for Jon convincing Dany to go North, the Night King never slays Viserion and gets his zombie dragon to break the wall. It’d taken a lot longer for the dead to cross the Wall.

[MinscS2]

4 minutes ago, Dragons dance with Wolves said:

To be fair, if not for Jon convincing Dany to go North, the Night King never slays Viserion and gets his zombie dragon to break the wall. It’d taken a lot longer for the dead to cross the Wall.

And who was it that initially caused Jon to freak out and want to leave Dragonstone, which lead to Tyrion having one of his best ideas ever (mostly for the sake of his siblings), and then lead to Daenerys going north to save the team of idiots who never should've left to begin with?

It was Bran!

*Goes back to reading all the "Bran is the real villain"-threads*

[SansaJonRule]

One thing I think people are not taking into consideration is Jon's age. Mid 20s? Young men are not the best communicators where feelings are concerned. Plus, he's never been in a relationship where his lover has needed comforting, so this is new territory for him.

Also, Jon and Dany are both dealing with so much stuff emotionally and mentally that it's not surprising that neither of them was able to recognize what the other was going through.

Last, unless Jon said Dany I love you with all my heart and accepted her advances, I don't think it would matter what else he said. It would have all just sounded like excuses to her. Telling her I don't know if I can be in a romantic relationship with you because you're my aunt wouldn't have made her feel any better. She would still have felt rejected.

 

[TheSmallOther]

15 hours ago, Nightwish said:

Ah but they didn't have the guts to tell her to get her butt and army out of the North? No, they hide behind her protection to stab her in the back, hide, accusing and run away as all traitors do. 

Eh, did I miss something? As far as I could see, the only one who tried to stab her in the back was Varys. Jon didn't, yet he gets most of the blame. I do expect him to stab Dany now, but it won't be in the back.

[Lollygag]

1. Being a character plot device written by D&D

2. Telling Dany who he was in the first place if he had no intention of being with her after that or pushing his claim. 

[Pauld123]

16 hours ago, bizzle said:

The reason Jon bent the knee to her was that he never wanted to be King in the first place. He didn't want to co-lead with Dany; he doesn't want to lead at all. This is one of the factors that people (in the story) keep missing/forgetting/ignoring when they consider the end-game here. As proven before, Jon will shed his duty to rule as quickly as he can.

Regarding plot progression, I don't think it's acceptable to explain character behavior as a necessary element of plot progression. Plot should drive character behavior; character behavior should never drive plot. 

I absolutely could not disagree with you more. The great thing about GRRM is that he is all about character driven story writing. Create the situation, create the characters, develop them fully till you understand them then just see how they would interact and what would happen next. That is so much better than a fixed future, where regardless of character or personality, defined events will happen. That just creates the sort of plot armor we have seen throughout season 8. 

In any major TV show the main protagonist can walk through a hail of bullets and not die because the plot is centered on them and the actor has been contracted for bags of money to play the part for xx number of episodes. You cannot really feel you know the character if the writer can just play "god-in-the-machine" and flip them totally out of personality just so an event can happen. With GRRM events can only happen if the nature of the characters in a given situation would lead to it happening. 

The real world is character driven not plot driven (unless you believe in the omniscient god philosophy). So character driven drama appears more real and believable. 

[Deminelle]

Since there's only one episode to go, not many chances left to speculate... and be wrong big way. But I'll say Bran planned this all along. He maneuvered everything and everyone so that he will ultimately become the ruler.

So, possibly no one made mistakes, it's Bran who succeeded.

[Nightwish]

5 hours ago, TheSmallOther said:

Eh, did I miss something? As far as I could see, the only one who tried to stab her in the back was Varys. Jon didn't, yet he gets most of the blame. I do expect him to stab Dany now, but it won't be in the back.

You probably lost a lot. She tried to save North and the north betrayed her after using her army and forces. You don’t like someone fine? Then have the guts to go and tell him. 

Sansa “the north is yours your majesty” instead say “you are not welcome here”

Sansa and Arya don’t trust her have the guts to say “John no, let her take her dragons and go from where she came”

thats what straight people do, speak up. They don’t hide in the crypts, enjoying the protection of the enemy they hate and at the same time they go “dragon queen is the problem” in the shadows, neither they pretend everything is ok and then wait for the right opportunity to conspire how to get you out of the way, after saving their ass. 

And by defending this logic this is what you are defending. That’s it’s ok going behind people’s back and betraying their effort. No it’s not ok. 

 

[bizzle]

6 hours ago, Pauld123 said:

I absolutely could not disagree with you more. The great thing about GRRM is that he is all about character driven story writing. Create the situation, create the characters, develop them fully till you understand them then just see how they would interact and what would happen next. That is so much better than a fixed future, where regardless of character or personality, defined events will happen. That just creates the sort of plot armor we have seen throughout season 8. 

In any major TV show the main protagonist can walk through a hail of bullets and not die because the plot is centered on them and the actor has been contracted for bags of money to play the part for xx number of episodes. You cannot really feel you know the character if the writer can just play "god-in-the-machine" and flip them totally out of personality just so an event can happen. With GRRM events can only happen if the nature of the characters in a given situation would lead to it happening. 

The real world is character driven not plot driven (unless you believe in the omniscient god philosophy). So character driven drama appears more real and believable. 

That sentence was written poorly. I was responding to the explanation that certain characters are just doing things because the plot needs them to be done.

It seems like the sentence immediately before the sentence you bolded and responded to agrees with your position and the last sentence, read in the way you did, contradicts the rest of the paragraph it is in.  I think you should have asked for clarification instead of disregarding the point the paragraph was making.

I don't think analogies to the real world make sense. In a book or show there does exist an omniscient author. The characters are not simply drawn into a page and allowed to do whatever their hearts lead them. Understanding an author exists along with an overall plot doesn't necessarily lead to the examples you're giving. Those are examples of poor storytelling, not of stories with plots that characters are working towards.

Plots exist. Even in this story GRRM sat down with the creators of the show and outlined the major plot points, so your description of how this story emerges isn't accurate although I think I get what you're saying. There isn't any kind of obvious demands on characters to do strange things out of character regardless of plot, but I would say it's not due to the absence of plot but rather the ability of a good storyteller to keep that side of the story out of view from a reader or viewer.

Anyway, those two sentences were intended to relay the point that I don't think character behavior should be required in any specific way to arrive at a plot point. That's what I meant by characters not driving plot in the same way you think people should not walk through bullet hail to arrive at a specific plot point.

What should happen, in my opinion, is that an overall plot exists, characters should progress toward fulfilling that plot, and their behavior should remain consistent with their past. That's what I meant by plot driving character (development).

[venusboy]

6 hours ago, Pauld123 said:

I absolutely could not disagree with you more. The great thing about GRRM is that he is all about character driven story writing. Create the situation, create the characters, develop them fully till you understand them then just see how they would interact and what would happen next. That is so much better than a fixed future, where regardless of character or personality, defined events will happen. That just creates the sort of plot armor we have seen throughout season 8. 

In any major TV show the main protagonist can walk through a hail of bullets and not die because the plot is centered on them and the actor has been contracted for bags of money to play the part for xx number of episodes. You cannot really feel you know the character if the writer can just play "god-in-the-machine" and flip them totally out of personality just so an event can happen. With GRRM events can only happen if the nature of the characters in a given situation would lead to it happening. 

The real world is character driven not plot driven (unless you believe in the omniscient god philosophy). So character driven drama appears more real and believable. 

Yes, I 100% agree with you. The plot before character development is also evident in what D&D say in the BTS videos: "We knew that we wanted this and that to happen, so then we...". And it is the plot driven writing that led to Almighty Arya, Daenerys goes Mad Queen, Jaime dying with Cersei, and so on and so on.

[bizzle]

5 minutes ago, venusboy said:

Yes, I 100% agree with you. The plot before character development is also evident in what D&D say in the BTS videos: "We knew that we wanted this and that to happen, so then we...". And it is the plot driven writing that led to Almighty Arya, Daenerys goes Mad Queen, Jaime dying with Cersei, and so on and so on.

That's a misattribution. GRRM provided them with those plot points and overall structure. It's their narrative deficiencies that are calling attention to it the points with big glaring arrows, but that's not the fault of a plot being in existence! I don't think that's an accurate quote or at least an accurate statement about the situation. They knew certain things needed to happen, it wasn't their desire, they just don't seem capable or perhaps interested in getting the audience to the end in a believable way.

Excellent stories are heavily plot driven. If characters were just wandering around doing random things, it'd appear more like real life but it'd be a terrible story. An author being heavy handed in the delivery is the problem here-not the existence of plot.

[Rose of Red Lake]

10 hours ago, Lollygag said:

2. Telling Dany who he was in the first place if he had no intention of being with her after that or pushing his claim. 

This!! He should have told his siblings/cousins. 

[Lollygag]

1 minute ago, Rose of Red Lake said:

This!! He should have told his siblings/cousins. 

And they would have explained to him why he could never, ever tell Dany. Despite all of her paranoia over Sansa, Jon was still her first guess for who betrayed her. 

[bizzle]

2 hours ago, Lollygag said:

And they would have explained to him why he could never, ever tell Dany. Despite all of her paranoia over Sansa, Jon was still her first guess for who betrayed her. 

It's strange to me to see how people put these things into perspective. From my perspective, Dany is not paranoid about Sansa. Sansa has made it abundantly clear she doesn't like, respect, want Dany as her sovereign. She's also made it clear that, despite her following protocol, the rest of the north is all but short of outright rejecting her reign already.

She also didn't guess that Jon betrayed her in the sense of taking a WAG at the culprit in the way that sentence implies to me. Not sure if you meant it that way, but Jon told Dany, Dany asked him to tell anyone, he said he needed to tell his family, and she reiterated he can't tell anyone. He wanders off and does tell his family, it circulates until eventually making its way back to Dany, whereupon she confronts him with the fact that he did betray her as the source of that information. She didn't guess so much as deduce who the culprit was.

But impressions of paranoia and guessing at who is or isn't to blame for betraying her imply a certain color to her behavior that aligns with this "mad" Dany we're being offered. Her behavior looks rational to me other than the voiceovers beating me over the head with her eventual insanity.

[Lollygag]

2 hours ago, bizzle said:

It's strange to me to see how people put these things into perspective. From my perspective, Dany is not paranoid about Sansa. Sansa has made it abundantly clear she doesn't like, respect, want Dany as her sovereign. She's also made it clear that, despite her following protocol, the rest of the north is all but short of outright rejecting her reign already.

She also didn't guess that Jon betrayed her in the sense of taking a WAG at the culprit in the way that sentence implies to me. Not sure if you meant it that way, but Jon told Dany, Dany asked him to tell anyone, he said he needed to tell his family, and she reiterated he can't tell anyone. He wanders off and does tell his family, it circulates until eventually making its way back to Dany, whereupon she confronts him with the fact that he did betray her as the source of that information. She didn't guess so much as deduce who the culprit was.

But impressions of paranoia and guessing at who is or isn't to blame for betraying her imply a certain color to her behavior that aligns with this "mad" Dany we're being offered. Her behavior looks rational to me other than the voiceovers beating me over the head with her eventual insanity.

Paranoia by definition just means intense fear and anxiety. It can go over the line into disproportionate, irrational or "mad", but not necessarily. The usage I'm used to in my neck of the woods doesn't usually mean any shade of crazy. 

I don't see it as Jon betraying Dany when telling his family as she didn't make a hard command that he not tell and Jon didn't say he wouldn't tell. I interpreted that as her ultimately leaving the decision to Jon, but she was clear that she really wouldn't like it if he did tell. If that's what Dany thinks is betrayal, Jon's in more trouble than I thought. Betrayal sounds like Jon chose to be a part of an active conspiracy to push his own claim behind her back which is why guessing Jon first sounds really bad to me. 

[Daemos]

NOT GIVING D THE D!!!!

[Nightwish]

Just now, Daemos said:

NOT GIVING D THE D!!!!

From now on he will run with his pants down because Dracarys...