Precisely the effect that GRRM was hoping for with this story.

A major part of the problem with the Iron Islands is that they're an inherently kind of vile society. The Greyjoy words are emblematic of the Iron Born creed: "We Do Not Sow." People always pick up on the obvious viking parallels with the Iron Born, but the Vikings were actually a fair sophisticated society, with…

The Greyjoys haven't been enormously successful, but not because they're bigger talkers than doers. Balon did rise up and only his sons' incompetence stopped him from seizing Lannisport. Robert had to storm Pyke to end the first Greyjoy rebellion. During the War of the Five Kings, the Greyjoys seized valuable land…

The visuals were mostly incredible. As a series of images of a brutal, epic, medieval battle, this episode was real eye candy. The envelopment with pikes at the end was kind of clunky, but the direction and cinematography were really effective in evoking that sense of panic and claustrophobia that soldiers caught in…

By scattering? Naval forces have escaped actual airplanes accompanied by pursuing enemy ships; if everyone did the lizard brain thing and just booked it for open waters, the vast majority of the Masters' fleet (and thus the vast majority of the sailors in the Masters' navy) would have escaped.

He mounted an excellent defense of Castle Black, even after the Wildlings pulled off a special-forces level flanking maneuver by having the Thenns scale a 700 foot wall and forced march up to the unfortified rear of the castle.

The Greyjoys and Iron Islands have rebelled twice in the last twenty years in order to reclaim their way of life. In the books, Theon waxes at length about how the Iron Islands have been humiliated by their allegiance to the Iron Throne, turned into "a backwater" and reduced to scraping out a meager existence farming…

The show and the book begin (after their respective prologues) with Ned Stark showing his children how the Starks and North keep the old ways specifically with respect to execution. The man who passes sentence swings the sword. A major tension between House Stark and House Bolton is that the former outlawed the…

As it turns out, the lack of cavalry didn't matter at all, and in fact wasn't even noticeable. The one cavalry charge that took place appears to have been even, or a Snow win. The Boltons won with superior pike and (maybe?) superior archery. Literally nothing other than Sansa's insight about Ramsay being a better…

If the show gave half a shit about any of the feudal politicking that is a hallmark of the books, this would be an interesting plot point. Does she assert her claim as Lady Bolton to justify the seizure of the Dreadfort and its appurtenant lands/fees etc… or does she deny it and allow the lesser houses vassal to the…

There is precisely one old lady in the North who remembers shit. And all she does is tell Sansa to light a candle that Brienne doesn't see because she's off mercy killing Stannis.

Even if Thermopylae has been propagandized beyond recognition, the main point is still essentially correct. Crecy and Agincourt are the most obvious examples that come to mind, but there are any number of essentially defensive victories where massively outnumbered forces won through smart tactics.

The Wildling army didn't have anything under lock. They lacked the men, materiel and food for a siege. They said so repeatedly.

So Littlefinger marched the knights of the Vale hundreds of miles North in the encroaching winter and then just sat around waiting for Sansa to send a raven. A raven that found him in the field. And the Boltons and northern lords were completely unaware that a southron invading force was camped near Winterfell for…

She had no idea. She sent a letter and Littlefinger just happened to show up at the perfect time and no one noticed them coming up and they also got there incredibly fast. It's implausibility alloyed with impossibility (the fast travel, bypassing the Northern defenses at the Neck), but hey, I'm sure this will…

You can check my comment history if you want to, but the answer is no. This season has been markedly worse than the previous seasons though. But hey, that battle scene did remind me pretty strongly of the Battle of Stirling Bridge scene from Braveheart for a couple of minutes before it devolved into overlong,…

Again: you're in the middle of a battle. Dragons swoop in and start burning ships. Do you (a) decide that you're the Dragon Queen's slave now and wait patiently for someone to row out to you to inform you of the conditions of your servitude or (b) scatter and haul fucking ass, assuming every other ship is going to…

Sorry that pointing out that the episode was a badly plotted waste of potential is a personal attack on you. Bully if you enjoyed it. It was still a series of stupidities strung together by a need to stagger to the next stage of the plot in a mechanical fashion without taxing the show runners or writers with…

How do you make that argument to men aboard a boat? It's not like she has a megaphone. Why would the boats not flee and return to their ports? What happens to the crews? She's not taking slaves. She needs sailors. Do they just decide "welp, fuck where I'm from, this is my life now"?

This was just awful. One of the worst episodes from a "this shit can't possibly be this dumb" perspective of any episode. The battle had some good sequences, but that was pretty much the sole virtue of the episode.