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Message: <blockquote data-quote="J_D" data-source="post: 1901222" data-attributes="member: 20956">No, the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and it wasn't really a trilogy in his conception, just how it ended up being published) is about the passing of the Third Age.  The world itself is bigger than that.Patent nonsense.  The former does not at all follow from the latter.  That Tolkien didn't write any stories set after the Lord of the Rings means only that — that he didn't write them.  It does not at all mean that he couldn't have written them if he had wanted, or that there aren't other stories to write.  History didn't end with the passing of the Third Age.  Humans, hobbits, and dwarves still live, and even the elves still live although they left to go west.  So long as people live, there will be stories to be told.  The only way for there to be no more stories to be told (note that my phrasing is precise and means something different than choosing to not tell another story) to is to kill everyone off.  Tolkien didn't do this.That the Professor himself didn't publish it is irrelevant.  That it was created in the first place is what's relevant, and the mere fact that such a vast amount of history exists and in such detail means that many more stories can be spun out of it.That is the reason for which Tolkien created the world, true, but that does not mean that there are no other stories to be told of Middle Earth.  I don't believe it is even possible to create a backstory that complex and detailed without also creating the potential for many different stories of all scales.Yes, it does.  Who published them is irrelevant; the fact that they exist and were published is sufficient to support my contention.I disagree.  Tolkien's motivation for creating the world is not a limitation on the possibilities that world presents.If the created world is created to a sufficient level of depth and complexity then it cannot be limited to only one possible story regardless of the motive of the creator for creating the world in the first place.  That all worldbuilding processes stop at some point is primarily due to the limitations on the time and level of interest of the author, not due to any limits of the world itself.  In the worldbuilding sense, there truly is no such thing as a "fully complete" world because the world has characters in who have lives and things change; all that's needed is for an author to create and record those lives and the events they live through.Exactly.  That doesn't mean that there are no more stories to tell, which is the point I'm trying to get across.  It only means that the creator chose not to tell more stories.A point that I never argued or disputed.  I'm trying to argue that a rich and deep world easily can support more than one story, and in fact cannot be limited to only one possible to story to tell.  The fact that the creator chooses to only tell one story does not at all mean that there is only one story to tell.  The fact that the creator stops at one story does not mean that the world is over or done; it does not mean that there are no more stories to tell in that world; it does not mean that the world ceases to be exiting after the one story is told.  A world in which there is only one possible story to tell and the excitement is over once it is told is a shallow and lame world!  That is my point, and that point cannot be equated to what your last sentence says.</blockquote>

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