Ser Arthur Hightower

Not sure if this has been brought up: I think this pretty much proves that Euron has been to Valyria, if he didn't he has obviously discovered some cache of Valyrian relics, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. This passage begs the question; can Euron even be defeated in combat? Valyrian steel is both light and unbreakable, it may also magically enhance the skills of the user, so if his armour is valyrian steel it is likely impenetrable, very mobile, and may magically grant him other abilities.

I've not been watching this season properly due to my dissatisfaction at the direction the show has taken after season 4, just watching the scenes that have interested me on youtube, so I've not partaken in any of these voting threads. However I have observed all of them and within 12 hours of the episode showing each one automatically seems to have a solid 12 dislikes, which rises to 20 or more within a few days. This seems to be basically regardless of how the rest of the audience votes, for episode 5 more than 50% of the votes were 9 or 10, less than 4% were 2 or 3, yet 6% (36 votes) were for 1. This episode also has a very high average, but 2 people have already voted 1, almost as many and 2, 3 and 4 put together. So who are these people who are seemingly watching every episode, finding nothing to enjoy, and then giving each episode a "1" every single week? (I think I should specify that I have generally enjoyed what I have seen of season 6, though I'm still not particularly interested in watching all the way through.)

I think people are simply painting all the psychos/sadists in the series with the same brush, people saying that Ramsay/Euron/Whoever else are exactly the same. I think Euron is actually unique as he is the only character that causes senseless violence and destruction at both the micro and macro scale; Tywin for instance caused a massive amount of destruction, but he did most of it for pragmatic reasons, and in terms of individuals most of his cruelty was towards those who he feel damaged the Lannisters in some way. Ramsay is exceptionally cruel but doesn't particularly want to cause chaos on a greater level, Baelish causes chaos because he thinks it will help him acquire power. Euron has the power he wanted and uses it to create chaos on a massive scale, seemingly because that it what he enjoys (on top of personally being cruel to individuals like Ramsay is). You may feel that his character is boring/shallow, but he does do things differently from other characters in the series

Pretty much this, I was starting to type something similar, then I remembered I barely post here anymore and can't be bothered to type long posts.

I'm not 100% sure how I feel about this chapter, but I think it says something fairly good about the pacing: the next Arianne chapter will be either just before, during, or just after a major battle, so it's only taken two chapters in her arc to get there. I did quite like the implication that Lysono Marr will be taking on a bigger role from now on.

1, It's not objective at all, there was some good stuff in there, but I could feel nothing but contempt for this episode, so even the reasonably good stuff pissed me off. Let's ignore for now whether book Stannis would do this, or what Martin actually meant when he mentioned this event, or whether the roles of Davos, Selyse and Melisandre we in character. Let's just accept that Stannis this episode was completely contrary to every bit of character development over the last season and a half. What we saw was an extreme desperate version of the season 3/early season four Stannis that burned his brother in law for keeping the Seven and threatened to kill Davos for not magicking up a war winning strategy, not the season 5 Stannis who is rough around the edges (arguably even less so than book Stannis), loves his daughter, gives friendly advice, lends out his ships to Jon for a humanitarian goal and seems to want to do what is best for his Kingdom. So essentially what D&D have done is start off with an unlikeable character, gradually make him more and more likeable and interesting as a character, then they suddenly undermined that and made him do something abhorrent for shock value so now everyone who watches the show (rightly) hates him again. That's not to say they haven't done some shit stuff with various characters this season or in previous seasons, but the reason this is (IMO) so much worse than the other characters and storylines they have butchered is that Stannis is one of the two main characters I have been coming back for every week this year, the other being Jon. So this episode gets a 1, because Stannis' plot gets destroyed in my eyes, and Jon's continues to get weaker (Hardhome was likely the best 20 minute sequence on TV ever, IMO, but Jon's arc is undermined by a paper thin political situation on the wall itself). Maybe tomorrow after my anger has subsided a bit I will be willing to bump the episode up to a 4 or 5, but right now I just watched it and I'm angry.

Theon presumably heard Stannis speak at some point in the last day or so. Tybald is the Maester of the Dreadfort, Arnolf was at the Dreadfort, which is why Theon and Arnolf immediately recognise one another. They have the Maester of the Dreadfort presumably because Ramsay or Roose thought he could send them ravens, perhaps they hadn't thought to bring their own maester, else he is elderly or frail. I really don't think this is that complicated, Tybald is the Dreadfort maester claiming to be the Karhold maester, Stannis (somehow) figures out that Tybald does not actually serve the Karstarks and that he has loosed a raven, he doesn't know whether that raven is trained for the Dreadfort or Winterfell, but it seems doubtful it would not go to one of those two places. From reading the Night Lamp theory I believe that Stannis knew from Mors Umber that the Karstarks were disloyal, he may even have been informed (by way of Hother Umber) that they had the Dreadfort maester with them.