#we aren't smart enough to write using the skills format

[the-shipping-forecasters]

Something Beautiful* Is Going To Happen

*by beautiful we mean Disco Elysium Yaoi

This week, left to their own devices James and Nick opt to get political by talking about Disco Elysium, a game they both got so into that it changed their brain chemistry.

Join us as we talk about how feelings, and heavy spoilers for the game so if that matters to you I'd encourage you to go play it beforehand.

Anyway, if listening to that sounds like your jam, you can find the full episode here

Or here

And even here

And join us next time, when we look at more games about old man yaoi, one that finally got a (sort of) update after several years...

[rise-my-angel]

The show had to conjure some dark matter in order to at all come up with the idea that Sansa is in any way equivalent to a leader. It was purely to write her in a girlboss way, which a lot of late show female characters suffer horrendously from. Girlbossification.

The books have the advantage of format, so we can more easily see minute details in adwd that showcase the more day to day of Jon's leadership as Lord Commander. So book fans know very explicitly that Jon is a character being primed for leadership in a way we rarely see amongst rulers in asoiaf. But the show does this well too just in more subtle ways. Season 4 and 5 are really Jon's time to shine, because by the time we see him win the vote for Lord Commander, we feel it just as realistically. It feels earned. Season 1 was a journey about accepting circumstances of what the wall is really like, and using that to help push him to become someone who would rather help and befriend his new brothers rather then assume they cant be just as skilled as him. Season 2 and 3 has Jon at his lowest point, being both a spy and a hostage and having to fight to stay a good man against a group of people all trying to force him to be brutal or selfish. But season 4 and 5, Jon still has all the traits of a leader we all beleive in, it's just shown in a more subtle manner. You have to pay attention a little more because we don't get those easy day to day details. But the same leader is all there.

Then season 6 happens and it's a weird power struggle. Jon is the one doing the hard work, hes the one with the brains and the skill and the drive. But hes pitted up against both an antagonistic Sansa and a uncharacteristically unsympathetic North, which means Jon now has to work even harder to prove his worth.

I think 2 major things have caused people to wrongly think Sansa is smarter then him, and the first is more obvious. Her framing. Sansa is just framed as smarter and more clever during a period in which we were also actively watching Jon's character in season 7 get continuously sabotaged. So while we are watching Jon being unfairly written, we are watching at the same time, the writers frame Sansa as a smart, clever, knowing girl who the people think is better for them. Despite her having no actual understanding of leadership what so ever. She has even less experience in the show, because she left the Vale so early. Sansa is not a leader or ruler but by framing her as smart and clever while also writing Jon as furthermore out of character it makes her appear more competent.

Second honestly, was her involvement in the battle against Ramsay. Which is a shame, because it's both an amazingly shot and choreographed battle with great stunts and impressively high feeling stakes. But, it needed to be Jon's time to shine. It needed to be Jon's victory. It needed to be the North coming to the side of the leader who is actually fighting for them rather then himself. But by having Sansa show up, it gives the illusion that Jon couldn't have won without her. Which is nonsense and goes against what we previously saw with Robb.

Robb won every battle he fought without having the numbers, because he was a great commander with loyal men. There no reason Jon needed Sansa to win, everything we know and saw about him says he would have won that battle. But again, Sansa has to be framed as a smart badass because that's all there is to her character anymore.

The only reason people pretend Sansa is the smart one is because the show purposely wrote her to be smarter then Jon. I think they always wanted Sansa to be Queen but had no realistic way to get there other then to write Jon as a moron.

And a lot of stans aren't smart enough to realize that or just do not care.

Sansa isn't stupid, but she's not smart. Not in the way Jon is. Who is incredibly smart.

super confused why in 90% of KitN!Jon fanfics, Jon has zero idea how to run Winterfell and just leaves it all to Sansa while he sits back and looks pretty.

considering for all of adwd Jon does nothing but day to day management and actively ignores any task that isn't counting beetroots or changing people's shifts, and Sansa hasn't had a formal education since she was 11 and spends most of her time praying or babysitting, it would be completely understandable for Sansa to not know this stuff and Jon to just be like "yep. back to the grind i guess."

anyway i'm not actually confused it's obviously the shows fault.