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New fictionsuits - constructive vehicle or pointless distraction?

Ganesh

22:49 / 14.07.01

I'm afraid I err towards the latter. I'm aware that, each time we begin a new incarnation of Barbelith Underground, several individuals decide, for reasons best known to themselves, to manifest as X, Y or Z fictionsuit.

Yeah, initially, it was fun. I did it many, many times. While I'm not sure I was very good at it, I enjoyed bringing different aspects of myself forth as Fatbeard, Ho Garden, Cabinet Maker, etc. I liked having people relate to my less 'responsible' elements, but I could never play them for too long before admitting to being the primary suit, 'Ganesh'.

At the moment, it seems a distraction. I'm so busy trying to work out who's Tyrone, who's Dr Sax, blah, blah, blah, that I can barely put an argument together. Then again, that may be because I'm pished...

Is the current fictionsuit thing a mere exercise in georgraphical cliquery or is there more to it than I suspect?

[ 15-07-2001: Message edited by: Ganesh ]

23:12 / 14.07.01

You get used to the way a fictionsuit feels, comfortable in it. I guess that's why some people have changed theirs. I've tried it, but have to admit that I'm happy being E Randy here. If I want to say anything deeply out of character, something that I'd rather this suit didn't get linked to, I start up a new one.

Does that make sense? I've taken on aspects of this suit IRL, so many that I'm not particularly good at playing the "it's just a game," er, game that a number of people indulge in on the board.

The changes in names, though, are part of what makes communication through this medium different from RL discussion. If you're not certain who exactly it is you're talking to here, you have to take what they say at face value, without any baggage attached. That's got its good and bad points.

Good - you're not likely to carry any personal animosities into the discussion at hand.

Bad - you risk losing the sense of community that the board possesses.

Ganesh

23:32 / 14.07.01

'Ganesh' is my Dr Reasonable persona, the dominant one, the one I tend to manifest In Real Life. I've enjoyed playing other suits but I've stuck with 'Ganesh' over time.

I guess I've established archetypes in my own mind. E Randy Dupre will be witty but sensible; Dr Sax will be relevant but down-to-earth; Laila will be overinclusive and verging upon psychotic. I feel I know the personalities but the guessing game of New Fictionsuits seems unnecessary - unless they're/you're gonna surprise me with some new 'take' upon the world which deserves a new face and suit.

So... if you're the same old brand who's decided, for whatever reason, to choose a new name, I beg of you, please let this sad old unchanging fictionsuit know who you are. You'll save me neurones, really you will.

Please? Who are you?

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:49 / 14.07.01

I'm Zenith... but I got sick of wearing what is essentially someone else's name. What with the new Zenith trade paperbacks about to b release, I thought it was time to get a name which had some of the same... attributes, but not all the implications. The Flyboy stems from, embarrassingly enough, a Mary Sue-style persona in something I wrote.

Tyrone is now the Shoelace Killah, by the way. He was various Soul Brothers as well.

Ganesh

23:54 / 14.07.01

Thankyou, sweets. Are you writing from some weirdo open-all-hours cybercafe, by the way?

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:58 / 14.07.01

Keep up, 007... I'm writing from the brand spanking(wa-hey)-new laptop my flatmate has in our flat...

Ganesh

00:02 / 15.07.01

Niiiice.

reidcourchie

06:29 / 16.07.01

Now when is whomever going to admit that Laila is just a wind up/experiment? Go on which one of you is it?

10:43 / 16.07.01

Fiction suits only interest me if they are not played as novelties. Every name you have here is a unique suit - your 'main' one is not the real you either, that one's just as 'fictional'.

Fiction suits also only interest me if people invest the appropriate seriousness into them. They are to be used to discussions that you don't necessarily want to be associated with over a longer term - they are there to allow you to explore thoughts and discussions that might otherwise worry you. For example - you might want to argue that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of eugenics as in optimising genetic traits to promote a healthier human being and that was quite different from racism and ethnic cleansing. That's a position that might get you into trouble, but simultaneously might be worth raising anyway, to see to falls out when received wisdom gets knocked around a bit. That, for me, is a legitimate use for a fiction suit.

Note that I DON'T think that it's a way of just expressing argumentative positions for the sake of it. I'd like people to be expressing things that they believe 10% or 20% rather than not at all. It's a way that you can work through internal conflicts and contradictions without just concealing them.

Basically I would encourage people to have as few suits as possible (one, two or three at most - including your main one), to use them responsibly, and to bear in mind that there are a whole range of reading practices that go on in a place like this - that some people really WILL trust the name Ganesh quite a lot and will be much more likely to listen to that suit's opinions than on that you've just made up to shout someone down...

Goodness Gracious Meme

11:11 / 16.07.01

I'd second Ganesh's point which I think is more about people remaning their 'main' ficionsuit continually rather than having dozens of suits.

One point is that if you're trying to foster communication between posters/conversation in which posters respond to each other, it gets harder to do this explictly/maintain the contunity if names keep changing.

eg in trying to 'talk' with TAFKA Tyrone, i'm finding myself using clumsy formations like, 'the poster above' etc as by the time i come back to a thread he's changed his name so calling him 'Mecca/LL' whatever is rendered irrelevant and confusing.

which is probably the point, huh?

I've used suits occasionally whne I've wanted to make a point/suggestion without people's overall picture of me influencing their response (also, as someon reasonably established its interersting and useful to remind yourself that your points will get treated differently than those made by a 'newbie' by being newbie for a while) as well as to split off different viewpoints, like randy. Also to play with performing and playing with my 'role' in this community, exploring how influential the naming process is...

-----------

on a related issue, not sure what I think about the 'gentle folks' thread (where someone else has posted as 'lick my bitch, plums')...

It doesn't especially bother me, although I did feel for some reason that I needed to point out that it isn't me. Partly I guess as the 'plums' personality, is, like Ganesh, the most me-ish of my suits so this feels slightly like a hijacking...

Ees odd, certainly, seeing people respond to someone as if it were you...

[ 16-07-2001: Message edited by: Lick my plums, bitch. ]

16:31 / 16.07.01

Cabinet Maker was you, Ganesh?

Shee.

Loved that style. It started rubbing off into personal emails I'd write.

foxy.

Ganesh

09:40 / 17.07.01

foxy

making the owls stop

dirty feathers

.

Jack The Bodiless

09:40 / 17.07.01

He was one of my favourites.

the owls

they won't shut up?

how do i make them shut up

too noisy for sleep

.

02:37 / 18.07.01

quote:Originally posted by grant:
Cabinet Maker was you, Ganesh?

I was surprised, too. And the style WAS foxy! I couldn't keep it up long-term, however.

Fictionsuits: Me, I'll be Cherry Bomb until I've "outgrown" Cherry Bomb, and then I'll be something else. As a fictionsuit though, CB fits me better than any other one I've had. But sometimes I wonder if that's simply the suit bleeding into Real Life, or vice versa.

Changing fictionsuits? Well, I s'pose we'd all wanna kinda follow Tom's rules just to make his life slightly easier, but aside from that - not having the steady internet access that I had, and having only been able to post sporadically over the past six weeks, well when I come back it's kind of fun not knowing who everyone is or what the hell's going on. It is really hard not to get at least some sort of bias behind the Suit, especially a suit that posts all the time. That was why I came to the B.U. in the first place - I was a respected and well-liked "old timer" on a different board, but I wanted to have people challenge me again.
The number one advantage of varying fictionsuits is varying reactions to it.

As far as alternate suits go, I haven't had one since two boards ago. Maybe it's time to play dress up.

16:12 / 19.07.01

Ganesh and anyone else who might have been wondering... I haven't posted at all on the new-look Barbelith so far (up to now, obviously), despite signing up pretty early.

This has been for a variety of reasons, among them starting a new job about 10 weeks ago which is quite demanding and involves a three-hour round trip, meaning I'm getting up at about 5.30am and getting home at about 7pm and am absolutely too fucked to do anything other than watch Big Brother and fall asleep. I'm also in the process of a very fucking expensive house move, which is about to take place and is extremely stressful but will hopefully alleviate the travelling to work problem above.
I'm also (and not wanting to sound twattish here) working furiously on a novel which an agent wants to see as soon as possible.
Oh, and I'm planning to get married early next year.
And my car blew up.

However, now I've roused myself out of my stupor I might start visiting Barbelith again, especially after the house move in a couple of weeks. To be honest, I had been looking in, but it felt a bit like going back to your hometown and visiting your old favourite pub and not recognising anyone there.

Ho hum.

Maybe I should just make more of an effort, but I'm so shagged out these days that I barely get to speak to my girlfriend beyond a couple of grunts as we pass on the stairs at ungodly hours of the morning (she's started work at the same newspaper I have - and she's definitely not a morning person).

But thanks for wondering, Ganesh. If you're sticking around for a bit I promise I'll visit more often and not be a stranger etc etc.

16:13 / 19.07.01

By the way, "relevant but down-to-earth"... I like that. Might get it made up into a T-shirt. Cheers, 'Nesh.

17:07 / 19.07.01

quote:Originally posted by Ganesh:
[...]Laila will be overinclusive and verging upon psychotic

I really had (in the Switchboard threads) taken Laila for a 'real' person which observation implies neither praise or blame.

23:19 / 19.07.01

Doc! It's a pleasure to have you back amongst us, ain't no mistakin'.

Goodness Gracious Meme

23:29 / 19.07.01

seconded love, nice to have you back. stick around....

you had your annual 'agonising over 3/4 trousers' moment yet?

(oh and btw i'm dayglo/umeboshi etc)

Jack The Bodiless

23:29 / 19.07.01

Jack Fear's just paid us a visit, too! Did you see?

It's like the old gang again...

16:44 / 23.07.01

quote:Originally posted by Lick my plums, bitch.:
seconded love, nice to have you back. stick around....

you had your annual 'agonising over 3/4 trousers' moment yet?

(oh and btw i'm dayglo/umeboshi etc)

This season's fashion crisis is "how do I squeeze my ever-expanding belly into French Connection's less than generous fit T-shirts?"

Goodness Gracious Meme

08:47 / 26.07.01

heh. accept your fate and head over to burtons instead. I'm sure they do lots of generously-sized t-shirts...

Blank Faced Avatar

11:29 / 26.07.01

It's good to have a newbie skin to "do a Ganesh" in .. as in " I'm new to this chaos magic stuff.. ".

It's a Dice Man come true - liberating those buried traits, giving them a life in a sphere where we can experiment with less risk than RL. I Love It. I ate Johnny Alpha a while ago, and tho' I was sad to see him go, I know he could always reincarnate... and he was sooo tasty.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:01 / 11.08.01

I'm still me. I've played with a few other suits, but basically "I'm always gonna be me" (pace the Ronsons excellent new Mercury EP).

I can't help but feel that I erode my distinctive me-ness if I change suits all the time. I want you guys to know my brilliant moments, and if that means you seeing my bloopers, spelling mistakes, typos, moments of idiocy, intransigent belligerence and so on...so it goes.

I love Cabinet Maker too. I wish I'd thought of him.

Plus there's no way to sustain anything like a secret identity when Whisky keeps using my computer to post.

Ganesh

14:33 / 12.08.01

Cabinet Maker was born of myself and Glass Act going to see Suspect Culture's 'Casanova Culture' in Glasgow, last year. One of the characters, a cabinet maker, spoke in doomy, sepulchral tones which, for some reason, cracked us up every time he opened his mouth. He also reminded us, strangely, of Ray Fawkes.

I think his final line - and the very last line in the play - was something like "I can't sleep for the sound of the owls in the barn. Should we get a man in to poison them?" That line was Cabinet Maker.

14:56 / 13.08.01

hearing the 'origin' story has sorta spoiled the magic, now...

Ganesh

18:23 / 13.08.01

Well, hell, he was never coming back. This ain't 'Animal Man', honeybuns...

17:14 / 14.08.01

quote:He also reminded us, strangely, of Ray Fawkes.

Fascinating. I am...at a loss.

Ganesh

17:54 / 14.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Ray Fawkes:
Fascinating. I am...at a loss.

He spoke just like that...

14:49 / 15.08.01

Maybe he was one of my sheddings. Normally they just curl up, dry to a fine powder, and blow away in the wind. Every once in a while, though, they do get up, start speaking for themselves, and end up making a living in alarmingly public venues. One day I'll work out a way to turn this to my advantage.

15:03 / 15.08.01

I already have - there's a "Ray Fawkes" doing my dishes as I type...Can't trust him with the silverware, but other than that, quite handy to have around.