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So... what exactly is a "fiction suit?"

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17:02 / 13.11.02

I'm loving the Invisibles, mostly for the work it puts me through... but I can't quite wrap my head around the John-A-Dreams storyline. As I saw it, he and KM found a timesuit(I don't know from where/when) and he used it to get to the supercontext, from which he went backwards in time as a Gray and was corrupted by the mask orgy. He then was Quimper... and was taken back by the Outer Church after Black Science 2... I don't have the latest trade, but i know he comes out of the Outer Church as a modified version of himself to help out Sir Miles.

Is this right? At what point does he wear a "fiction suit" and join Division X? What was up with that anyway?

Good God. I'm in this book deep without a paddle.

17:16 / 13.11.02

One interpretation is that a fictionsuit is the flesh we're clothed in: "Conditions within time are ferocious; our suits begin to deteriorate after the first 20 years."

But then again, maybe they're closer to a personality: Witness psychic copper "George Harper" talking about his cover personality being a more interesting person than "Eric", his birth name.

Or maybe a "fictionsuit" is whatever character the reader is reading about at a given instant. That the series is something you read more than once shows up repeatedly (like, oh, the first line of the comic). The reader creates the Invisibles in hir head when s/he sees a mass of paper pulp with ink on it and sees violence and hears conversations.

The interface between fictional reality and our reality is a common thread in GM's work, as is the suggestion that if we observe/create a fictional reality within our world, are we being observed/created within the next world up?

I bet someone's already typing up something more clear than I've got...

17:44 / 13.11.02

I don't think everything in The Invisibles was written by GM to have a clear resolution or meaning. There is a lot of stuff that depends on interpretation and a lot of stuff that remains unclear on purpose.

In the final issue we see one interpretation that The Invisibles is actually a game that you participate in as a character. So you would wear a 'fiction suit' to take part in the game.

IIRC GM also described King Mob as the ''fiction suit' he wore for The Invisibles. That is, he swapped places with KM.

The John-A-Dreams storyline is pretty confusing but one way of looking at it is that John finds a discarded 'fiction suit', puts it on and gets booted up to the next level of reality (Perfect Tommy summed that idea up better that I could) discovering that The Invisibles is just a game. I guess this is similar to how Secret Original crossed over from the 'paperverse' in The Filth.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

17:45 / 13.11.02

It seems to change slightly depending on who is using it, Morrison says he was using a fiction suit to talk to Animal Man in #26 of that title, but that is different to fictionsuits in the Invisibles. But we have to be wary because, off the top of my head, I can't remember an occasion in the comic itself where the term 'fictionsuit' is actually used.

Anyway, I'm going to guess wildly, throw in some balls about 'circles', 'the initiation never ends' and finish with 'he never starts wearing a fiction suit, he just swaps the John-A-Dreams one for another'.

My question; When John and King Mob visit the church in Philadelphia, they find a room full of decayed matter, which John says is 'them' trying to build a body from ordinary matter'. Is this the Archons? I take it they get it right later, for the King to be walking around in Issue 1 and the latter part of series 1.
Secondly, they walk into the next room and King Mob sees a primal scene that sends him nuts for a while. Why does seeing a timesuit do that to him? We later find out that the seance that drives Tom O'Bedlam mad is caused by Robin's timesuit passing through the area, so why does the timesuit reflect the Outer Church? Drama?

18:52 / 13.11.02

Fiction Suit:
in VOL#3 King Mob mentiones a conversation that goes something like this... "He said, in our Language it would be called a Fiction Suit."
As this happened in India I suspect he was speaking to Mr. Redding , Edith's Tantra instructor. To me it creates a nice symmitry with the "lesson" he offered her in VOL#3 that was overheard by the young Tom O'Bedlam in VOL#2 "Sensitive Criminals" storyline.

Time Suite:
To Me a Time suit & Fiction suit is pretty much interchangable. One would build a time suit while in normal linear time, enter it and travel outside of linear time where one would realise that linear time is a fictional concept. Thus to renter linear time one would have to ware a fiction suite. A time suite driven ion reverse?

On Drama:
Perhaps the sight of an activated time suit reflects the outer church because of the "grossness" of using technology to transend normal space/time vs. KingMob, Mad Tom & Jack's journey to the academy with-out the use of technology. IMO Or perhaps it's just an inability to reconcile a view of time as a whole while IN linear time that creates the reflection...isn't the image of the outer church based on Not reconciling differences?

19:10 / 13.11.02

Oh christ.

I'm all about theoretical stories and stuff, but I think the concept of fiction suit in the terms of the story and what I needed answered just might not be answerable. I guess I just wanted to hear the solid linear aspects of when he is the Division X guy vs Quimper and normal John. I KNOW that 4-D discussion exists in any summary of the book, but I was hoping to avoid that. I really appreciate everyone's contributions... but I guess I'm still in the same place.

Alright, I get that fiction suits are what WE wear when we enter a story. In some ways the protagonist is OUR fiction suit. But how on Earth or their Earth does a Fictional character wear a fiction suit in the same reality as the one he inhabits?

Maybe it's that the Supercontext is not an object or ANYTHING in their universe, but is simply the unsaid fact and realization that Our Universe is the real one. Once characters get that, ...grrr I have no clue. I'm talking like I know exactly what I'm talking about. You guys ever get to the point where there simply are no more words to communicate your idea?

Plus, I'm stuck thinking of comicverses in terms of Marvel and DC... I'm sure that's to my detriment as well.

19:25 / 13.11.02

I'm not really sold on the idea of the reader donning a fiction suit when reading The Invisibles. GM said something along the lines of swapping places with King Mob so that GM entered the story as KM while KM came out into the real world. I'm sure someone here will have the link to the interview he said this in. The point is that wearing a fiction suit actually appears to involve an active level of participation.

I guess you could approach fiction suits as an extreme version of a memeplex. I did find this idea very, very interesting and I did bother to go and read Susan Blackmore's book 'The Meme Machine' on the back of GM's recommendation. It's also an aspect of magick in stripping down the ego and rebuilding it in different forms.

I didn't fully grasp what the 'supercontext' meant though. I'd love to hear some theories on this.

19:55 / 13.11.02

It wasn't really an idea for sale... in one view, a story's protagonist is the reader's eyes and ears -how he or she interacts with the story(we "wear" the protagonist's character). Naming that activity as being "a fiction suit" was just a stab.

I'll add "The Meme Machine" to my list of Essential Mindbenders... Here's an idea that totally off subject. Do you guys ever feel that the more we read, the more theoretical texts we take in, the more similar and less "real" we become? It just feels sometimes that by exposing my thinking process to more Essential Mindbenders, I'm solidifying my Self to something that isn't necessarily myself. And multiplied times all of us, it's kind of frightening how not real any of our solid ground really is. Am I making sense?

Oh! I was gonna accuse you of not reading the Invisibles, but I think the only real mention of the "Supercontext" is from the Annotated book I picked up last week. Which helped a lot, but didn't really, hence my presence here. The Supercontext was the Invisibles' universe after 8 am Dec 22, 2012. The bomb blows, and everything is The Supercontext.

23:02 / 13.11.02

arcboi, is The Meme Machine any good? Sounds interesting and, um, you read it, but you didn't say if it was any good?

King Mob is a fiction suit for Grant Morrison,
and King Mob is a fictionsuit for Gideon Stargrave,
and Gideon Stargrave is a fictionsuit for Gideon Starorzewski.

I wonder who Grant Morrison is a fuctionsuit for?

23:22 / 13.11.02

The Meme Machine is a very good book - I guess I'm going to be sold on anything that has a Richard Dawkins foreword (but then he did coin the term 'meme') because I always like Dawkin's own work.

It's a bit of a dry read, but there are some great ideas in there - such as looking at Religions as memeplexes and even alien abduction experiences as a memeplex!

I like the idea that we can - in theory - deconstruct ourselves and rebuild a new memeplex thus thwarting the 'selfish meme'. However, this idea is somewhat more tricky to actually put into practice.

I still think I'm missing something with the idea of the 'supercontext'. If the events of the last issue are leading up to the end of history/eschaton/whatever, then why are the characters discussing the supercontext as already existing or arrived? I felt I was only feeling the edges of what the concept meant and GM was being just a bit too fuzzy on this one.

05:06 / 14.11.02

I hear you... it's like he ended it at the beginning. But remember everyone gets the future they want (even the bad guys and even you) so it's sort of appropriate for grant to step out there and let you make of it what you will.

05:15 / 14.11.02

And, I'm not sure if you're aware, but there was a really great fiction suit thread a while back. Check it out.

Fiction Suit: A User's Manual

The Natural Way

08:06 / 14.11.02

I've explained the timesuit loads of times, Lada. Yonks ago when I wore another suit.....

But.

What John and Gideon see is the evolutionary process (or 3D, organic consciousness - the gangfucking, primal-scene-y, evolutionary "biomass" Xavier refers to in X Men) from *above*. Now, whether or not this stuff is completely indigestible and makes you want to puke yr soul up depends upoun how far you've advanced in yr invisible training. Sir Miles and co. perceive this thing as the complete destruction of self - soul totally subsumed in the macro-geometry of Saboath, the Archon of annihilation: the beast hiding in everything. And so...the Outer Church: for those that can't get beyond this point and are unable to recognise it for the initiation it actually is. John has the balls and the understanding to go for full immersion - interfacing with the other/the alien/"the human *body* seen from above...from an angle it's never normally seen from (or whatever Gideon says at the restaurant)". He recognises "Saboath" (or the evolutionary line) for what it actually is - the vast time maggot, the Horus child incubated in universe waiting to be born and, seeing himself for what he is, steps off the board and the flat surface of his skin suit. Gideon, at this point, hasn't got a clue and the whole thing fries his head....it's only later he begins to realise what he really saw...but Robin had it down all along.

We can only speculate as to what happened: did the cult draw the "crack" down? Did they unfold themselves right there beneath the church....Mr. Six, the Harlequinade and the discarded timesuit... Who the fuck knows what heavy magick shit went down - all we know is that John and Gideon interfaced with it.

And for those of you getting confused about the sequence of events that occured after John tried on his flashy new duds....STOP THINKING IN TERMS OF A "SEQUENCE OF EVENTS". IT DIDN'T HAPPEN LIKE THAT. IT'S NOT A STRAIGHT LINE.

If our words are circles, their's are bubbles.

12:47 / 14.11.02

THAT'S JUST IT. Break through the bubble, and make it a circle. Use all your training and creativity to break it down for us mundanes. If you can. I can't, so I'm asking all of you to help me.

The Natural Way

13:04 / 14.11.02

But that's just it - it's not circles. Think iterations, poetry, myth, metaphor and ripples...reflections....sympathetic magic.

God fallen, trapped in his own creation

Quimper twisted, bent and jammed into flesh and measure

The game crashing, embedding the player

John-a-Dreams - the superself buried beneath codename after codename....

This isn't cause and effect. It's fractals, holograms and 5D shockwaves.

The Natural Way

13:10 / 14.11.02

One day i'm going to attempt the definitive L!NW! guide to the Invisibles. Perhaps sooner rather than later.

yawn - thing's buddy

13:25 / 14.11.02

thats a very good idea runx.

how is the wadders, anyhow?

yawn - thing's buddy

13:31 / 14.11.02

I'll chip in with my infamous 'ridgeway in eclipse shocker' quote if you need it.

you can do the rest yersel.

The Natural Way

13:33 / 14.11.02

Oh, he's fine....

And quite, quite mad. He disappeared up his own supercontext.

14:04 / 14.11.02

Screw this. I appreciate your trying to help and all, I understand that you're explaining it by attempting to bring me out of flat thinking, but I'm already there. I get that it's just a comic and self-replicating. It's quantum physics are completely unlike any other fictionverse I've ever read.

The question is itself theoretical: IF the Invisibles were a universe with more mundane physics... i.e. Marvel/DC (and don't play elite, you know what I'm talking about) What WOULD be the cause and effect? What WOULD be the linear aspects? And how exactly do they interact with the nonlinear aspects.

Maybe this isn't a posting-worth question, but maybe it's something to think about while making your L!NW! guide.

14:06 / 14.11.02

Sheesh. That post sounded angry. I'm not, really. Just kind of frustrated is all. Sorry.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:38 / 14.11.02

invisibles is actually pretty linear if you read it out of sequence.

The Natural Way

14:57 / 14.11.02

Thing is, Chesed, yr under the impression I'm being elitist, when I'm not. The 5D, off-the-board, stuff doesn't run in straight lines and, well...I don't know how to make sense of it that way. It won't work for me. I've listed a whole bunch of tools for viddying the book above. Use them.

Interaction? The whole book is about the interface between the circles and bubbles/the linear and the non linear/the flatland and the hologram...etc. I can't *get it* for you.

I'm not trying to be flash or clever - my posts above are the product of a five year, bigbearding love affair w/ the book. Treat them gentle.

--

15:06 / 14.11.02

I read the Meme Machine, it was pretty interesting.

Truth be told, I'm a little fuzzy on a lot of stuff that happens in the final issue (like why the hell was King Mob planning on releasing the Invisibles game on Christmas when he knew the world was going to change into the super context the next day?)

Regarding the whole falling god concept, I wonder what did eventually happen to the magic mirror trapped under Dulce. What ever happened to it I wonder?

The Natural Way

15:17 / 14.11.02

The mirror?

God had a bit of a nightmare for a bit and then he woke up.

The game?

Just another endlessly reiterating fractal for the soup. By vol 3 they're farting them out. The division between the players and the stage gets hopelessly blurred by 2012 - no wonder the whole thing collapses...more internal koans than you can shake a stick at. Hey, I like it! Horus activated by irritation!

19:52 / 14.11.02

I sincerely do not think you're being elitist. I do "get the book" in the sense of what it means to me as a theorist reader. I want to understand it as if I was IN the book, as if I was within their 3 dimensional tempo, and know the ideas and concepts as if they are facts and physics. I was hoping you or somebody could help me bridge that gap.

Your viddying statements were rhetorical. It felt like instead of understanding the challenge of what I was asking, you handed me a fortune cookie like a business card. Again, the only elitist thing that could have occurred would have been you chastising me about "daring to compare The Invisibles to the Marvelverse" and withdrawing completely from my questioning, which you didn't. So we're cool.

I like the book too, I just want a deeper -and flatter- understanding. I get that the book is about rejecting that and instead getting the reader to start looking around and through, but I'm rejecting THAT. I want to see if it CAN be flattened... and to do that, I wanted to understand the nature of John and his fiction suit.

Maybe it cannot be done... you said something along those lines already.

22:09 / 14.11.02

"daring to compare The Invisibles to the Marvelverse"
hmmm... sounds fun...

But based on your last statement Chesed, I'm not sure what your question IS anymore....

The Natural Way

08:10 / 15.11.02

I've already mentioned the "evolutionary biomass" Xavier refers to in NXM, so I'm hardly going to knock any marvelverse comparisons. And what with our young Horus dressed up as a Kree in Marvelboy....and the same fiery bird god iteration wearing Jean Grey-Summers...well....

Chesed...look....there are some things - what happens to John when he dons the "time suit", for instance (aomething yr curious about) - that cannot be properly conveyed in the way you demand. It won't work. You want to know how he experiences his...modification? Well, for a start he's not a "he" anymore - he's not human, and his perception of time and space are completely different from, say, King Mob's. And I could attempt to explain, but I'm not sure it would satisfy you (although, TBH, I do go into quite a lot detail about the timesuit above - if you want to talk about that stuff: groovy). But I will give you a few things to mull over, however. First of all: excavate - figure out what a timesuit, in the invissyverse, actually is. Secondly: it's a "rescue operation". Who/what are they rescuing?

My problem with yr posts is, I can't get a clear handle on what level of head scratching yr at w/ the book. On the one hand, you say you understand the book as a theorist, but, on the other, yr unsure as to what a fictionsuit is, and you expect someone to unpack the sequence of events that occurs when Jon puts on the timesuit... when you should understand that it isn't a sequence of events at all. The point is, I love talking about this stuff, I'm not avoiding the issue, but I can't play the "John dresses up as a grey who gets kidnapped by baddies and then rescued and then is reborn as Jack Flint...etc." game because that's not how I see the thing and I think it's a misleading angle to take; but I'm equally loathe to attempt any kind of explanation, when I know its more fun (and it will provide you w/ a deeper understanding) if you do the work yrself. Hence: pointers and tools.

yawn - thing's buddy

10:07 / 15.11.02

Some good stuff on this thread. Other obvious point about jonny dreams: he’s you. the reader. He disappears at the beginning (into the book) and re-emerges at the end, just as things go crystal. Anybody can be Spartacus Hughes or Johnny dreams for that matter. Just put on the suit (the invisibles comic book) and you’ll dissolve into it’s supercontext – you’ll actually become part of the story by reading it. (also reflected in the text adventures of helga and robin)Every time you read any fiction, this is what you do.So basically the ‘suit’ is representative of the interface between fiction and reality. Reading is an immersive pastime. Without a suit, the Invisibles will give you the bends.On another level Johnny Dreams is also……interesting.Morrison has included notions of superior, privately educated establishment figures in many of his tales.Spartacus Hughes and Slade have the same relationship as Dreams and Mob.When you consider Morrison was at school at the time of the dissolution of many private schools into the comprehensive maelstrom, this rough boy/private lad dichotomy is tres topical.

10:16 / 15.11.02

There's lots of aspects of The Invisibles that won't work with a flat and linear explanation. Once you come 'off' space/time as John did, then linear sequences go out the window.

Saying that, there are some things that irked me such as KM observing himself observing Jack in the kitchen and saying " Wake up in San Francisco..". That didn't happen the first time we saw that scene. I got the impression that GM Had just crowbarred that in there for the sake of a bizarre sense of continuity.

Sypha: Good point about the release of the game. I wondered about that too.

I found the final issue disappointing as an ending. But then it's a difficult thing to wrap up in a satisfying way. I do find that issue very, very compelling though. There's a strange dreamlike atmosphere to it and I could spend hours trying to unravel what some of the dialogue actually meant. I quite enjoyed doing so as well.

As with the memeplex, does anyone know if GM was inspired or influenced by anything to come up with the idea of the supercontext?

10:20 / 15.11.02

yawn: I previously said that I wasn't sold on the idea of the reader donning a fiction suit when reading The Invisibles. But having just read your explanation I think you may have just made a sale. Very interesting stuff.

yawn - thing's buddy

11:44 / 15.11.02

perfect tommy: apologies if I repeated many of you comments.

arcboi: glad I could help 'bend' you.

ps.

when runx and co are around, there's never much to add.

16:41 / 15.11.02

(Semi-aside: If John-a-Dreams puts on a discarded timesuit in the church... who discarded the timesuit in the first place? Robin landed in San Francisco...)

18:48 / 15.11.02

no clue.... but it made me think about all those "bug people" kingmob saw... could they have been the left over cyphermen after jack & Jolly distroyed their tanks?

But that could've been the actual time suit while the first plob of bio-mass KingMob & John found was the equivilant to the 'fake" time suit that was handed over to the government...

Or was that the real time suit they handed over after Robin had used it to jump into the supercontext?

yawn - thing's buddy

18:09 / 16.11.02

I think the time suit is not spatially specific in where it is located. It's everywhere, whether it's being worn, or lying discarded. You can see the time suit if you look for it. If you don't look, you won't see it. The church in Philadephia was a powerful pyschic resonator and amplifier. This, coupled with john and mobs desire for the weird, caused it to be revealed.

As for the insectoid humans: weren't they representative of mob's fear soaked interpretation of the timeworm we're all part of?

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