Dragons have a marvelous sense of dramatic narrative impact.

It's not like they had been doing much reaving during 300 years of a strong central monarch, anyways.

irrelevant bystander vs thousands of slaughtered allies.

*idyllic scene late at night in a forest clearing, by the dying embers of a campfire*

Yeah, I know it's not TV-friendly, but I HATE how every battle that start out with regimented formations just instantly becomes a chaotic free-for-all the instant that the lines meet.

agree, without the source material, the showrunners are just falling in one stale cliche after another.

He knew all that already. She had nothing specific to say.

when they rolled up like stealthy cats in the night

People surviving because of stupid divine protection is boring.

I think they did a good job with Lord Glover in saying "The North remembers, but weren't not stupid, and we do care about surviving"

I loathe the "dramatic Helm's Deep" rescue so much.

with both of the trees on the Iron Islands.

Ramsay was always so cartoonish and over-the-top that I never saw him as an actual character, so I didn't much care that he died.

Well, it wasn't really a "trap", it was an emotional manipulation designed to make him lose his composure. Which it did perfectly.

What army isn't substantially composed of people who enjoy and embrace killing?

"Waaaaaah no one cares about my input because Im just a girl!"

except that the Bolton force was far outside the walls of Winterfell, and the Vale forces could have easily interposed themselves between them.

That's plausible, but Ramsay doesn't seem like the trusting type.

Yeah, whyyyy the huge secret? "Oh Jon, "i've got a secret army on its way, so don't do anything foolish like destroy your entire own army in some pointless charge"

Not the point. There's no way an army like that could have sneakily traveled through the whole of the North to Winterfell - even if "we" the omniscient audience knew about it.