The fact that Elias treats Jon so much better than any of his “friends” just really gets to me. Like yes, Elias is a manipulative bastard, but he does genuinely treat Jon as someone worthy of respect and who can make his own decisions, not an out-of-control monster who needs to be muzzled, which. Really can’t be said for basically any other character.
And I genuinely thought that was deliberate until s5 and then I realized that it was just poor writing and a weird bias against Jon as a character.