And I think you're hugely overestimating it. The ships are a hell of a lot more massive than the bolts.

Anyway, "aiming" is irrelevant. You don't "aim" bows at long range. You send up a volley of many arrows (or bolts), as they clearly did, and you let probability handle the rest.

>And how does one explain arrows blowing a ship apart like
>cannonballs?

YOU'RE the one claiming the bolts were massive enough to make an entire ship recoil! An impact would impart all that momentum in a much shorter span of time, which means much higher forces (\Delta p = \int F dt), and all it takes for a bolt to start breaking up the wood is for that force to exceed its breaking strain.



As for me "misremembering," it would've hardly been a big deal if I had. This is a damn TV show. You're taking it awfully seriously with the "So... there's that."

But looking at the clip you linked, I don't see what you think I misremembered. The dragon was startled when he got hit, but he wasn't even forced to land. He recovered even before he hit the ground, hovered, and blasted the shit out of the ballista.

When I said it didn't "pierce" the skin, what I meant is that it didn't go through (pierce) the skin and damage any tissue underneath. Yeah, it embedded in the skin and Dany had to pull it out (that much was crucial to the plot, so hard to misremember), but it didn't do any significant harm. It was like kicking a cactus. Those barbed thorns hurt like hell, and they're a motherfucker to remove, but they won't do any harm.



I don't want to be the one defending the writing in this show, because I agree it's been piss poor on balance. But we don't have to invent flaws to make that case.