Truly, Madly, Deadly_ The Unofficial True Blood Companion - Becca Wilcott [118]
Both roleplayers enjoy using Twitter as a challenging and creative outlet and understand its value to the True Blood audience. “I’ve been involved in creative writing and other performing arts since I was young,” Sam explains, “and this is another angle on them both. I think the audience enjoys having their favorite (or not so favorite) characters around to get a beer from, ask questions of, or just chew the fat with.” Maryann agrees, expanding on that to say, “[The audience] also gets a place where it can voice frustrations. It’s like watching the football game on TV and yelling and screaming when something you don’t like happens. But the TV never talks back. Here they can actually get a response back from us.”
The popularity of Twitter is undisputed, but its 140-character constraints make it difficult to elaborate. The roleplayers have to find their way around it, but so far it hasn’t proven to be problematic. “Obviously it’s hard to get everything into the little box, but it does help you be concise,” says Maryann, “which is perfect for my character because she doesn’t beat around the bush too much.” Sam, too, has learned to craft his tweets to their best advantage, something he believes has improved his overall writing. The immediacy of the medium can sometimes be a challenge, however. “[R]eaders sometimes expect us to be there all the time and real life does not always work very well with that.”
So, how do they engage with other users? And do they often encounter people who believe them to be their characters? Sam says, “It was more common in the beginning. Most people seem to realize by now that we’re just fans like they are.” Fans, not employees of HBO? No, says Sam. “Payment would taint the fun of it for the players and the audience, in my opinion. My only ‘payment’ has been an advance bottle of Tru Blood soda.”
As for the other people in their lives knowing about their roleplay, Sam says that his family and close friends know. Maryann says that not many people in her life know about her “alternative lifestyle” because “it’s hard explaining what makes you want to play a maenad on Twitter.”
There’s also a lot of racy material on True Blood. But how do these players monitor their storylines in a public venue where they can’t know the true identities, or ages, of the people they’re engaging? “I prefer to avoid storylines that are gratuitously violent or sexual because I’m not personally comfortable with that,” Sam says. Users who constantly play out “adult situations” typically lock their accounts, but Maryann prefers to remain as true to her character as possible with the caveat that if something is out there, anyone can see it. “You can suggest minors not follow but they can put on a face and follow anyway,” she says. Sam generally tries to keep his tweets family-friendly, “but there will always be one or two things that aren’t suitable for juvenile eyes. That’s the nature of the internet, though,” he continues, “it’s not really my job to police anyone.”
Besides, for Sam, who works for an equipment manufacturer, he dislikes drama as much as his character. “We’re both interested in living our lives and being happy . . . However, I am not a bartender and have never been a bartender, much less a shapeshifting bartender.”
Perhaps the most admirable quality of these players is how they use their presence to inform and motivate, as well as entertain. When they set up “Bites for Blood,” a virtual blood drive, HBO took notice. Behind the scenes, the players constructed a simply sophisticated page on their site, their goal being to fill a vial of 500,000 virtual drops of blood. To donate, users were asked to click on the image of a number of participating characters. Doing so generated an automatic tweet including the Twitter handle for both HBO and the American Red Cross, and the message that you’d received a kiss (from a human) or a bite (from a vampire).
One-shot campaigns