sunnyskywalker | (Reply)

From:

"Open" and "closed" make sense as working labels to me. You might be able to distinguish different kinds of openness and closedness, too. I'm thinking "open in terms of the story not being finished," "open in terms of their being lots of room in the characters' pasts and futures to speculate," and "open in the sense that it's a big universe with lots of unexplored corners." Star Wars has the second two, and if you add in the EU has the third as well, skirting right on the edge of being as open as possible. HP had all three until recently (not with the main characters' pasts being open, but plenty of secondary characters' pasts were - like McGonagall, the Marauders, etc). LotR is more closed - there is a lot of world to explore, and characters like Aragorn and Galadriel have lots of unexplored history, but a lot of things are wrapped up.

I know, and I've been meaning to get myself down to the used book store all summer. I need another series to follow :D