{"id":288,"date":"2018-08-16T08:31:05","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T12:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/?p=288"},"modified":"2018-08-07T19:51:54","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T23:51:54","slug":"legosity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/2018\/08\/16\/legosity\/","title":{"rendered":"Legosity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article by Tom Simon is a sequel to Ozamataz and first appeared on Bondwine<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Oz Legos!<\/p><\/div>\n

So far, I have described\u00a0my thoughts about ozamataz<\/a>\u00a0up to the point where I asked whether one could\u00a0attract<\/em>\u00a0that kind of self-sustaining fan participation, and if so, how. This is also the point at which the Muse, or the Guardian Angel, or the Collective Subconscious, or Something, stepped in. Perhaps it was the Great Oz himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Having worked out something of the nature of ozamataz, I asked my brain: \u2018OK, brain, what is it that makes some things have ozamataz when others don\u2019t?\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

And my brain, without missing a beat, obligingly answered: \u2018Legosity.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

I was duly annoyed, for I then had to figure out what\u00a0legosity<\/em>\u00a0was. My brain is cryptic and has no manners, and seldom troubles\u00a0to explain itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

The one thing my brain did deign to tell me is that legosity has something to do with\u00a0Lego<\/a>. This made sense on the face of it. Lego toys have an ozamataz of their own. They have inspired movies, games, theme parks, and of course, the imaginations of millions of children the world over. The manufacturer\u2019s recent habit of producing specific single-purpose Lego sets like model kits, which hardly fit together with other Lego and are hardly intended to, is most regrettable. These kits tend to take up shelf space at the toy shops and displace the kind of Lego that you can really play with. But the original bricks and doors and windows, Lego people and Lego cars and Lego trees, and so on \u2013 those are still available, and you can do\u00a0anything<\/em>\u00a0with them. Nowadays, you can even buy Lego with moving parts and electric motors, and build Lego machines that can be controlled via computer. There are Lego robots in the world, and serious men with doctorates in the hard sciences have been known to play with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Lego Kits!<\/p><\/div>\n

As the unfortunate history of the kit-model kind of Lego shows, it is not so much the brand name, or even the mechanical ingenuity of Lego that gives the toys their unique quality. It is the\u00a0concept.<\/em>\u00a0At bottom, Lego consists of a whole range of bits and pieces, all designed to fit together easily and without fuss, so that they can be used to build anything the imagination can conceive. You do not have to be a skilled carpenter, or a watchmaker, or know how to build ships in bottles, to build houses and cities and fairy castles out of Lego. The skill in your fingers (especially a child\u2019s fingers) ceases to be a limit on what you can achieve, and the mind is set free to soar.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even the name\u00a0Lego<\/em>\u00a0is well chosen, and means, I think, more than its inventor intended. We are assured that it comes from the Danish phrase\u00a0leg godt,<\/em>\u00a0\u2018Play well\u2019. But it is also Latin and Greek, and in those languages the word has a wide and subtle range of meanings that reach right down into the guts of the human psyche.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In classical Greek,\u00a0\u03bb\u03ad\u03b3\u03c9 means \u2018I put in order, I arrange, I gather\u2019: which are certainly things that you do with Lego, and indeed with any toy worth having. It also means \u2018I choose, I count, I reckon\u2019: the basic methods by which the creative process works on the raw materials furnished by the imagination. It\u00a0means \u2018I say, I speak,\u2019 and even \u2018I mean\u2019. And \u2013 most important of all, for our present purpose \u2013 it means \u2018I tell a story\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stories, in whatever medium, are more complex than toy bricks, for they have extension in time as well as (imagined) space. They\u00a0move,<\/em>\u00a0within their own confines, or they do not exist at all. But the tropes and elements and imaginative bits and pieces that go into a story function very much like Lego bricks. You can spend years of your life inventing a monster that will metaphorically express the horror of death and the fear of lost identity; or you can dip into the barrel of Lego bits and fish out a ghost, a zombie, or the vampire\u2019s enslaved and unwilling bride. Every story ever written, probably, uses some of this conceptual Lego; for some of the pieces are older than writing itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I wanted to make up a bogus\u00a0etymology for\u00a0legosity,<\/em>\u00a0I would pretend that it did not come from\u00a0Lego<\/em>\u00a0at all. I would choose the Latin form,\u00a0lego,<\/em>\u00a0which means \u2018I choose\u2019, and \u2018I gather\u2019, and also \u2018I read\u2019 (originally in the sense of reading\u00a0aloud<\/em>). I would make up an adjective\u00a0legosus,<\/i>\u00a0which would mean \u2018well-chosen\u2019 and also \u2018worth reading\u2019; from which one naturally gets the abstract noun\u00a0legositas,<\/em>\u00a0which goes into English as\u00a0legosity<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 and there you are. But I shall not dissemble. I got the word from my brain, and my brain got it from Lego.<\/span><\/p>\n

Legosity, then, is the quality that makes an idea go easily into stories. Things that have legosity tend to connect together easily, like Lego bricks. They are adaptable and reusable; their play-value is not exhausted in one telling. There are thousands of stories about Robin Hood, and tens of thousands about vampires. Kings and queens, heroes and villains, monsters, perils, and things of nameless dread: these are some of the simple bricks that have gone into stories from time immemorial. They are conceptual Lego, and they are free for anybody to use.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lego Wheel of Time fan art by Rick Martin, click on pic to see more.<\/p><\/div>\n

Because they are free, they\u00a0are taken for granted; because they are not original, they are not striking. They don\u2019t contribute to any story\u2019s ozamataz.\u00a0The Wheel of Time<\/em>\u00a0contains barrels of conceptual Lego, swiped or stolen or recycled from every great story-cycle known to Western man: which, I believe, was the author\u2019s intention. But it has precious little originality. When you take it apart to play with the pieces, you find that all the pieces are somebody else\u2019s. From\u00a0Dune,<\/em>\u00a0you have the secret magic sisterhood that controls the fates of families and nations, the Bene Gesserit (renamed\u00a0Aes Sedai<\/em>); and the shockingly\u00a0male<\/em>\u00a0creature that sets the world on its ear by having access to the magic and ignoring the sisterhood, the Kwisatz Haderach (renamed\u00a0Dragon Reborn<\/em>); and the wild desert-dwelling people who have a hard-won lore of their own, with whom nobody can tangle and not regret it \u2013 the Fremen (renamed\u00a0Aiel<\/em>). From Tolkien \u2013 well, the very first page of Jordan\u2019s interminable saga mentions \u2018the Third Age\u2019 and \u2018the Mountains of Mist\u2019, and if that isn\u2019t straight-up theft with the serial numbers left in blatant sight, I don\u2019t know what it is. Nobody writes\u00a0Wheel of Time<\/em>\u00a0fan fiction \u2013 at least none worth speaking of \u2013 for\u00a0The Wheel of Time<\/em>\u00a0is itself fan fiction, in which all the fandoms collide together.<\/span><\/p>\n

The works or franchises that I mentioned earlier, the ones that have long-lived and fruitful fandoms \u2013 the ones, as I put it, with ozamataz \u2013 all have this in common: they have\u00a0original<\/em>\u00a0toys. They contribute new conceptual Lego to the barrel. \u2018Who can invent a new leaf, or a new story?\u2019 Tolkien asked \u2013 and then answered his own question, by inventing a whole botanical garden of new leaves, and resurrecting old ones that had been forgotten since the Middle Ages. It is this quality of primary invention \u2013 the\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0ideas, the\u00a0new<\/em>\u00a0toys \u2013 that I shall refer to as \u2018legosity\u2019 hereafter. And I shall refer to the ideas or toys themselves as\u00a0lego,<\/em>\u00a0with a small L, to distinguish them from the (trademarked) building toys.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,<\/em>\u00a0which has had ozamataz for more than a century, has this kind of legosity in abundance. Everybody in our culture knows the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears; but few people know that the Three Bears were invented less than two hundred years ago by Robert Southey, or that Goldilocks was added to the tale at a later date (to its great improvement). Everybody knows the\u00a0legos\u00a0of the first Oz book; and everybody\u00a0attributes<\/em>\u00a0them. The Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion; the Good Witches of the North and South, the Wicked Witches of the West and East; the Silver Shoes (which became Ruby Slippers in the movie, the better to show off in Technicolor); the Yellow Brick Road, the Emerald City, the Munchkins, the Land of Oz, and of course, the Wizard himself, hiding behind a curtain while he dazzles the world with special effects \u2013 all these things are part of our popular culture, and we know exactly where they came from.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Logo-las<\/p><\/div>\n

You can go through each one of the works or franchises that I listed in \u2018Ozamataz\u2019, and identify the bits that give each one its legosity. When I perform this exercise, I find myself marvelling at the sheer richness of our storytelling heritage \u2013 the vast and delightful variety of legos\u00a0that our imaginations have to play with. So\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

From the original\u00a0Star Trek:<\/em>\u00a0the U.S.S.\u00a0Enterprise;<\/em>\u00a0Starfleet and the Federation; Vulcans, Romulans, and Klingons; warp drive (very differently imagined from the point-to-point \u2018jump drive\u2019 then common in\u00a0science fiction); phasers, photon torpedoes, communicators, tricorders; the transporter beam; the Vulcan Nerve Pinch.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the original\u00a0Doctor Who:<\/em>\u00a0Timelords and the TARDIS; regeneration; sonic screwdrivers; the Daleks, Cybermen, Silurians, Sontarans; the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, which is narratively important, because it sets boundaries on the kinds of paradoxes that so many time-travel stories have snarled themselves up in.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"From\u00a0Star Wars<\/em>\u00a0(the first film only): Darth Vader, droids, Jedi Knights, light sabres, Storm Troopers, the\u00a0Millennium Falcon,<\/em>\u00a0the Death Star, jawas, dogfights in space, the Force, and of course Mos Eisley, the \u2018wretched hive of scum and villainy\u2019, of which the cantina was merely the most theatrical part.<\/span><\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Hobbit<\/em>\u00a0(leaving aside\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>): hobbits; Gandalf; Thror\u2019s Map, with its runes and key; the Stone-trolls; Elrond Half-elven and the Last Homely House; orcs and the Great Goblin; Beorn the skin-changer, the Eagles, the Wood-elves; Mirkwood, Lake-town, the Lonely Mountain; and of course Smaug the Magnificent, Chiefest of Calamities.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can, I am sure, make lists of your own, from the fandoms you participate in, and from things you know to have ozamataz; and they will probably bear a fair resemblance to the five I have given.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read the rest here…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article by Tom Simon is a sequel to Ozamataz and first appeared on Bondwine. So far, I have described\u00a0my thoughts about ozamataz\u00a0up to the point where I asked whether one could\u00a0attract\u00a0that kind of self-sustaining fan participation, and if so, how. This is also the point at which the Muse, or the Guardian Angel, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,51,48,47,50,8],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bondwine","tag-dr-who","tag-lego","tag-oz","tag-star-wars","tag-tom-simon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.superversivesf.com\/inklings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}