Yeah, pretty much. I remember watching a retrospective on GoT and the guy was saying that Jon should have been the guy to take down the Night King, since his entire story up to that point was building the coalition of the living to face the army of the dead, and that actions have consequences, that should have been his fight.
GRRM would likely not have the Night King be killed by Jon. Ideas of prophecy and divine-right monarchs saving people disgust GRRM, so that whole thing with Arya killing the Night King is something I can see GRRM doing, since it's a subversion of a trope, like how Ned dying was a subversion. If ASOIAF worked the way other fantasy stories worked, Ned would've defeated Cersei, and Robb, who had already proven himself on the field, would've defeated Tywin.
Speaking of which, it would've been funny to see more ROTK tactics being used in ASOIAF. Especially since the Battle of Blackwater already looks like the Battle of Red Cliff. Like maybe, with Tywin Lannister staying in Harrenhal to avoid engaging Robb Stark in the field, Robb would send a ''gift box'' to Tywin with a woman's dress inside, and a letter saying that the dress is for Tywin, since he ''fights like a girl'' by staying behind high walls. I could just imagine Tywin's rage when he sees that message and that dress, and the utter humiliation his generals and soldiers would feel at that insult.
Which got me thinking that yeah, if the premise of your writing is that actions have consequences, then those consequences can be good as well. Three Kingdoms exemplifies this with the Peach Garden Oath, where the unwavering honor and loyalty of the three brothers is so valuable because both they and everyone else knows that they are bound by that.
That also came to bite the brothers in the ass. When Guan Yu died thanks to Wu soldiers and his own hubris, Liu Bei sought vengeance and ignored the Wei forces who overthrew the Han Emperor, instead devoting most of his army to vengeance. That then led to the death of Liu Bei's brother, Zhang Fei, thanks to the latter's alcoholism and mistreatment of his troops, and Liu Bei's own death, when the war against Wu turned sour for him.
But of course that's not edgy enough for GURM, so you can do everything perfectly, but the second you slip up you're done. Nobody gets cut any slack, no good deed is rewarded, no virtue goes unpunished. This is his idea of "realism."
His idea of realism is that if you're a good person, you get fucked in the ass with no hope. It really shows to the world that GRRM is really in a stage of depression, if the good guys in his works just end up getting fucked by the world.
This is the number one repeated plot point in ASOIAF. GRRM finds the "heroic knight" or "prince charming" story then inverts it into some retarded and ridiculous plot twist. Where the knight is just about to fight in battle then dies shitting on the toilet of medieval pox instead. The first time or second time it was still shocking. The fifteenth then twentieth time it became expected and eye rolling. And now it's just cringe worthy "subverting expectations" hack level writing.
The thing is, that would've been bold ten to twenty years ago, but now, it's just hack writing that reeks of laziness. With how ''subverted'' our view of media is, a straightforward fantasy story where good triumphs and evil is destroyed would actually be the subversion to the norm.
GRRM strikes me as one of those pseudo-intellectuals that had a decent idea for a story, but then he lays it over with too much detail, and it becomes weighed down by it. That, and his penchant for subverting things could end with plotlines that have been developing for years ending up being nothing. That's why I'm not really digging the Euron subplot in the books. Sure, it sounds awesome, him becoming some kind of eldritch god, but it could all just end up being nothing, and he's just some pirate who's lost his marbles on the poop deck.
Same goes for Jon Snow becoming Westeros' pseudo-messiah. He could just end up staying dead on the table, and someone else like Stannis, Arya, the Lannisters, or the Boltons could wind up dealing with the White Walkers, especially since all you need are dudes with crossbows and dragonglass bolts to kill the Walkers, and the Wights could be easily dealt with using fire. Fire arrows and wildfire are more than enough.
Given that the crown could create wildfire on the fly, since they have the Mad King's alchemists, they can make enough wildfire to burn the entire undead army, and the walkers get shot by dragonglass crossbow bolts. Or, do as the show did and have some leader among them that gets stabbed by a trained assassin like Arya. You don't need supernatural tools to defeat the White Walkers. Just some fire, some obsidian, and some ten to twenty thousand competent men.
At the end of the day, that ending the show had was made with GRRM's outline, and as much as the fans might deny it, his themes are all over it. The divine-right monarch who had the support and blessing of the Lord of Light ends up blowtorching the capital when the enemy kills her friend and then surrenders, and she believes that it's attempt to deny her the vengeance she thought was due. The anointed messiah who came back from the dead winds up not being the one who defeats the evil Night King, it's the assassin girl with the really sharp knife who does the ice demon in.
The message shown by the ending is that you shouldn't put too much faith in divine-right monarchs or religious prophecies, which is exactly what GRRM has been trying to teach through ASOIAF by making the religious kooks like Melisandre into nutcases, and divine-right monarchs like Joffrey and Robert are portrayed at best as well-meaning but flawed, and in the worst, as downright evil. This is how the cookie crumbles. And the book fans who think GRRM would write something better are at best, deluding themselves. The man doesn't know how to end things properly. And his constant ideas of subverting is why he's so concerned about what the audience thinks, when the author should ideally just push on through and care only about what he thinks is best for the story.
When Tolkien got to work for a sequel to LOTR, he found it tiresome and depressing, so he cancelled it and kept to the idea that the story ended after Return of the King, with only some background info on what happened afterwards. GRRM would've been the kind of person who'd write that LOTR part 2, only to get bogged down and never finish it.
. I haven't read the book, but as far as the Internet told me she's the prime culprit for the Blacks nearly managing to get wiped out, despite holding every advantage and Martin handing them victories left and right.
