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Old 01-20-2003, 08:04 PM   #13
Westerly Wizard
Haunting Spirit
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
Posts: 72
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Sting

As Lindil mentioned, I don't think we can be sure that Tolkien stuck to his revised ideas entirely, and we certainly can't be sure that he would not have changed back later. But most importantly, if you were to take the MT writings as fact and use them as a basis, it would be nearly impossible (and I hesitate when I add nearly) to create something that is Tolkien's writing and not entirely your own, as the MT ideas were not transferred back into the Silmarillion stories.

This wouldn't simply be to the extent Christopher Tolkien went in the "Fall of Doriath" and "Fall of Gondolin" stories, as he had solid basis from which he could write a story almost as a summary of his father's work. You would almost have to rewrite every story to fit with MT (if you took it all), and who knows how JRR would have done this if he did stick to MT: it very possibly could have led to huge changes in the stories that we cannot envision.

I would definitely choose to write something that is Tolkien's words, regardless if it was his last vision.
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