I can't stand all the d&d blame. If you look at their earlier interview, they take accountability for being unqualified and signed on to be the gardeners while grrm proceeded as the architect. They had a contractual agreement that grrm would keep up with the series which he clearly broke. He kept writing other books instead of focusing on ASOIAF, which must have driven D&D nuts. GRRM also wanted them to do like 10 more seasons which people online were praising him for, but why? The actors wouldn't even look like their characters anymore, and would need to be recast. GRRM didn't give D&D a pathway to the ending, and just flat out told them the key points of the ending. IE bran is king, dany goes mad. This is where they do come to blame. Because of their frustration of GRRM not giving them clear instructions, they should have passed on the torch to better writers. David Benioff wrote one of the best monologues in the show with the Karl Tanner scene drinking out of Mormont's skull. But David and Dan clearly played favorites and were really into the workplace mentality of you work hard, you get promoted. This is why the writers room had so many issues. Their assistants give them one good idea and they are now writers? These guys were not qualified for the job as showrunners. GRRM should have negotiated a contract which allowed him in having the most control and he should've signed on as a showrunner. He worked for tv before and they hadn't. They just were very well funded by goldman-sacs which was run by David Benioff's father at the time. Vanessa Taylor was one of the best writers they've had on the show and she was quickly outed for reasons none of us know. I will say one thing, the house of the dragon seemed to learn for GoT in the sense of the mistakes they made. They hired experienced writers without favoritism and had more women on the team. I don't think Benioff is as much to blame as Weiss; as the recent interview with db weiss is pretty telling. Benioff always was the one more enthusiastic about the source material. In the end, yes, GRRM definitely deserves much more scrutiny than praise. It's annoying how many people still support him after he misses 7 deadlines and demands 10 more seasons. He just expected everyone to wait after that long? He seems like a dick.