He has made his bank and has no major incentive to finish the series. It’s been 13 years, the guy is 76, and he’s supposedly got two books left to go.

My money is on Sanderson getting handed the notes after Martin dies and bringing the series to an unsatisfying conclusion because, at this point, nothing will be satisfying.

Neil Druckman said that nothing is allowed to be changed unless it’s an improvement on the game’s story. I think it’s really important to have the initial writer/creator’s input on everything. Too many movies and TV shows just stray too far from the source material and disappoint everyone.

Eh, I view it more as "This is a better, but different Bill." There's a place for paranoid hoarding weirdos in your zombie stories, don't take that away from them.

You're always trying to take things from them...

The thing is, with enough background and time many of the endings we got make sense.

• Bran becoming King. Makes sense if planned out by Bloodraven. He's been slowly moving things around and controlling the fates of others to ensure he is in control when the white walkers attack. (It's possible it will be more of a dictator situation rather than king, or he will control/heavily advise whomever is the "king")
• Dany going "mad". (f)Aegon is a huge problem for her conquest. She has been told her whole life she is meant to save Westeros. She has put in all the time and effort. She has dragons. But is she a savior or a conqueror?
• Jon ultimately killing Dany. A lot will change in the lead up, but it probably roughly plays our similarly.
• Varys killed by Dany. I assume related to the (f)Aegon plot. He isn't going to join Dany in Essos. He'll just be on the wrong side of things.

There is plenty more. The issue of course is that you need A LOT more story you need to tell. And the books have a lot more characters. And we need to rewind a handful of stories that show already closed off much earlier. So I understand that there is a lot to write. But also, I agree it's been soooooo long.

I'd always thought that the theme was that the White Walkers weren't a world ender: it'd just end pseudo-Britain. The world is a bigger place than your corner of it, no matter how important it seems to you.

My personal conspiracy theory is that they’re mostly done and he’s just going to wait to release them when he’s dead. Then he doesn’t have to hear everyone bitching about it lol

That was hard for us - outside your head - to read. If only there were some additional markings, like spicy dots, that you could have put in there to delineate sub-clauses and such; and help reproduce the sentence flow you were imagining.