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Notes -
I think he had an idea, back at the very start, of what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. Worldbuilding is not his forte so he didn't stress too much about "how do seasons/dragons/magic work?"
Then as he went along over the years, he started writing side-quests and new characters (because I do think he gets bored trying to stick to the outline) and that meant he wrote himself into several corners, with no idea how to get out of them, and the original ending is now badly outdated but he can't create a new one because he's tangled up with too many plot threads and new characters.
He did give an unmerciful hostage to fortune with that crack about Aragorn's tax policy, even if it was meant as a joke, because dude. You can't even figure out how your damn seasons work, and that's more important than tax freakin' policies. He was trying to say he would be more realistic (translation: write the smexy with rape and incest and bare boobies all over the place and also gory violence and torture, just like Real Adult Writing) than Tolkien's work, but that only works if you the reader need descriptions of bare boobies and gut-ripping every five pages or you get bored.
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