Reminds me of some underrated Peter Thiel advice: almost always an extra hour invested in a project you’re already deeply into will have greater returns than starting some totally tangential thing from scratch.
The tangential thing will always feel better because you make rapid progress at the start, but the real returns come from completion.
I think that GRRM could have delivered the same ending in a way that the fans would have loved. The failure really comes down to how quickly they rushed it, and didn't really give plausible explanations for the characters actions.
Honestly the books were hinting that Daenerys would end up the way she did in the show. The show just did it in a very hamfisted manner.
This is my take as well. It was the right ending -- the problem was the last season should have been 2 (maybe even 3) seasons. I think the decision to "wrap it up" with season 8 was the network's decision for budgetary reasons? Can't remember.
The story I heard at the time was that HBO really did want to extend it to more seasons (why wouldn't they?), but the two show runners wanted to be done. They had recently signed on to a Star Wars show I believe.
Every gymnast's routine ends with them on the floor. People didn't hate the ending, they hated the landing. A bad landing can trash a gymnast's score or a show's IMDb rating.
Edit: I'm amazed at Season 8's IMDb ratings. I thought the whole thing was a trash fire but the first 3 episodes - half the season - are still rated over 7.5.
> but the first 3 episodes - half the season - are still rated over 7.5
From what I remember the first three were competent and engaging enough in isolation but their plot beats locked in the inevitable car crash that only the book readers and super fans saw coming. Most of the ratings were probably soon after airing so the scores don't reflect the season as a whole.
The series of the universe the paper is set in is one he's been editing since before he wrote Game of Thrones so is this procrastination on GoT or the opposite and he's no longer procrastinating by writing the ASOIAF series?
