Quotes from James Lowder

The legends of heroic men protecting helpless women turn out to be lies and, worse, propaganda intended to encourage women to embrace their helplessness.

Here's where PTSD is particularly nasty. It isn't really a "disorder" as modern medical experts understand it. It's a shift in perspective. Being forced into Condition Black and being trained to live in Condition Yellow are both highly traumatizing. Both shift your worldview, often permanently. Both become hard-coded into personality, changing the individual in ways they never expected. Sometimes, amazingly enough, for the better.

In the midst of what appears to be a traditional male-power fantasy about war and politics, he serves up a grim, realistic, and harrowing depiction of what happens when women aren't fully empowered in a society. In doing so, by creating such diverse and fully rendered female characters and thrusting them into this grim and bitter world, Martin has created a subversively feminist tale.

And as for the gods, I've never been satisfied by any of the answers that are given. If there really is a benevolent loving god, why is the world full of rape and torture? Why do we even have pain? I was taught pain is to let us know when our body is breaking down. Well, why couldn't we have a light? Like a dashboard light? If Chevrolet could come up with that, why couldn't God? Why is agony a good way to handle things?

Characters who engage in murder, sadistic cruelty, malignant selfishness or narcissism, dishonorable and dishonest acts, and obsessions with relative frivolities such as political intrigue and playing the game of thrones transgress against not just individuals but society itself.

When minority or outcast characters exist in a story solely to teach lessons to members of the majority, it's just one more way of seeing everything from the majority point of view.

One needn't worry about turning heads if keeping one's own was a matter left unresolved.