Jonesy89: The latter, I think. That said, Game of Thrones suffers a terminal case of what I like to call "Martin's Paradox", a plot-oriented version of Zeno's Paradox. Zeno's paradox is the idea that when you close in half of the distance between two points repeatedly, you constantly get closer but gradually slow down and never get to your destination. Martin's series is so bloated that man of his plot lines seem to never get any closer to finishing, despite getting some development over time.

There's an episode of South Park that has a similar take on the series. Two of the boys go to Martin's house to find out how the series ends because of reasons, and get invited in to wait due to one of the boys getting low blood sugar. Martin ostensibly orders pizzas to fix the blood sugar problem; when asked how the plot line involving dragons ends, Martin commences on a rambling synopsis of everything else going on in Westeros, no matter how inconsequential (also a lot of dick related stuff, because the writers of South Park think that a handful of onscreen male genitalia = dicks everywhere). This goes on for hours, during which Martin calls in an a capella choir to do a parody of the theme song for the show (again, dick oriented). Throughout the entire period, the boys keep asking when the dragons are coming, to which Martin says "don't worry, the dragons are coming, they're on their way"; the boy with low blood sugar also asks about when the pizzas are coming, to which Martin keeps responding, "the pizzas are on their way". Right as the boy with low blood sugar is about to pass out, the other boy demands to know when the pizzas are coming because of the other is almost about to faint, to which Martin responds by picking up the phone and asking what pizzas the boys would like.