I personally don't even understand wth exactly Martin was trying to do in the first place. I hear people talk about how he wanted to "combat the fantasy tropes", and it seems pretty clear he wants to add some sense of realism/the mundane (that is de-emphasize the fantasy side of things), but if you're going to do either what's the point? Why would you go into writing a series, never mind a book, just because you don't like seeing good vs. evil in a fantasy story for example? Like what else are you supposed to do in that kind of setting that's supposed to be interesting or moving and mind you do while embracing the genre that you're writing about?
This honestly leads me to believe Martin doesn't actually really know or care what he's doing because the impression I get from some of his comments especially the ones that were part of that Rolling Stones interview talking about Aragorn's tax policy, is that he seems more concerned about the lore, history, and perhaps say the mechanics of his fantasy story (and by mechanics I mean say how X, say dragons, if available effects and influences the world around them). than providing a general straight forward narrative the audience can care about. Because if the show is any (and I mean any) indication of things, it seems pretty clear the fantasy side of things, white walkers, all the prophecies, etc. don't really matter. In fact, really nothing seems to matter that much because guess what the characters go back to doing? Killing themselves over who gets to sit in the iron throne. And surely someone might respond, well that's the point. It's a tragic story, to which I say, why would you spend this amount of time then just to deliver a tragic story or try making us believe it wouldn't be one? You mean to tell me you couldn't shorten the overall story to a few characters, houses and historical tidbits that will actually matter to the plot just to arrive to your goal? Like how is this ok with folks? It's one thing to accept a tragic story. That's not hard to do especially when it's fairly short and sweet, but it's another thing entirely to accept one where, you lead us to believe maybe such and such characters will fix things or at least mitigate the damage done by say their forebears, only for that likely not being the case. In fact, if we're going to go by the show we clearly not going to get that since Daenerys has clearly gone further than her own father, Tywin Lannister, Ramsay and Roose Bolton, Cersei, and Walder Frey combined. Seven seasons of the character pretending she might be an ok ruler, only to piss all over that just because we need a tragic ending.
