My daughter is often quite bossy about what roles she will and won’t play in a pretend game, but I was thinking that trying to get her to speak for the characters on both sides might work (since she is often quite bossy about the scripts–sometimes, she’ll interrupt me in a game and say “no, you have to say X instead.”) What I’m really trying to avoid is being in the pretend game and having her say “why didn’t you keep me?” and me “pretending” an answer that would be plausible but not factual (but might become authoritative as I speak it). But with “So what would J. say now?” I’d get to help her elicit her own fantasies and speak them for her, and comment. That’s a really nice way of playing with her, helping her continue talking and processing, but keeping her thoughts/feelings/dreams at the center.