Truly, Madly, Deadly_ The Unofficial True Blood Companion - Becca Wilcott [78]
Like many North Americans, Barbara Henderson wasn’t aware of Alexander Skarsgård before True Blood, but quickly took notice, especially after the success of Generation Kill. One night, she was posting on one of HBO’s community forums when fans started to bemoan a lack of online coverage for Skarsgård. Henderson decided to take things into her own hands and created Alexander-Skarsgardfans.com saying, “I felt it was time to help others learn about the mysterious Swede. Also, since Eric was one of my favorite characters from the Sookie Stackhouse novels, it just made sense to spend time on the website for his character.” The result is certainly one of the handsomest blogs on the internet, chock-full of bright and beautiful images of Skarsgård. It also has an active chat room and forums for fans to gather in.
But Henderson’s value to the True Blood community, as well as most of the others mentioned here, extends to when she takes her adoration offline. A great number of the images contained in this book were graciously donated by fans and bloggers who traveled far and wide to snap some pics of the people and places that bring them so much joy. One such shot is of Henderson and her friends, a group of women who flew in from different directions, all to sip some drinks and sing karaoke at Alex’s Bar, which stands in for Fangtasia. It’s a good example of the cyclical nature of social media — each world, online and off, feeds into the other.
Of course, to be a fan doesn’t mean you have to like everything. In fact, some fans are quite critical of True Blood. Few demonstrate this quite like Simba of Blood Bonds (www.bloodbondsblog.com), whose voice drills down through the saccharine like a stake to the heart. She’s smart, crass, and never beats around the bush. One of her beefs was with the portrayal of women in season 2. “They were all pretty much pigeonholed into the madonna or whore category. They were either simpering after men, or if they were strong, they were pretty much evil.” She continues, “The worst part was having Sookie as heroine degraded to doing nothing when she was abducted. It’s 2009, not 1950. The damsel in distress is just not working anymore.”
In fact, Simba is so set in her convictions that she initiated a letter-writing campaign to respond to what she saw as an archetypal white hat/black hat divide between Bill and Eric, a not-uncommon complaint among many fans of books, and something that would have been impossible to mobilize in an era before blogging and online community. Simba explains, “I’m really against the oversimplification of Bill and Eric . . . My natural reaction is to rebel against it . . . They’re using the characters as mouthpieces [and] I prefer characters with depth and complexity.”
All this energy ultimately comes from a place of passion, and Simba is also quick to celebrate the show’s successes along with the other reviewers for the site (such as Lil who also maintains Blood Bond’s Twitter and Facebook presence). “I love seeing the world [Alan Ball’s] built around sets, costumes, and props, and watching the actors bring the characters to life,” she says. “What I’ve loved most, though, is all the people I’ve met online who are fans of both the books and series, great for a lit freak/nerd like me.” Hence, the focus of Blood Bonds, which Simba says has more to do with providing viewpoints and analysis rather than news or spoilers.
And, finally, there are bloggers who could in most respects be considered autodidacts for the amount of information they collect on vampire-entertainment and mythology. One such individual is Aspasia Bissas. Always “drawn to the darker side of the spectrum,” Bissas maintains Blood Lines (bloodtyping.blogspot.com) a mélange of reviews,