A lot of us know where our heroes end up and don’t want to put them through the torment of growth, so we avoid the pain for them. And just like raising a child, you can’t do that. These characters have to grow by getting bumped on the nose, and whether we like it or not, we have to let them.

(In the case of the Golden Fleece story, the problem was that) we didn’t see that getting there was the story.