Lettin' down the ponytail for just a minute with @SookieBonTemps !

Our wonderful Twitter friend @SookieBonTemps writes more that just a tweet!

There are a couple of things I never thought I'd do:

1) Role-play. I've never had any interest in role-playing games. Hell, I had to ask someone what "RP" meant when I first got on Twitter.

2) Write fan-fic.

I've been Tweeting since November 30. For the first month or so on Twitter, I tweeted alone. There was no @EricNorthman, no @VampireBill, no @MerlottesBar. Eventually @DeantheCollie showed up.

I tweeted about my days poking fun at True Blood characters that did not exist in the Twitterverse. And some people felt like listening. So I spent that first month getting to know my followers. I met folks who were die-hard True Blood fans or had read all of Charlaine Harris' wonderful Southern Vampire Mysteries. We talked about everything from Christmas gifts to deadbeat boyfriends. On New Year's Eve, I even managed to tweet a UK follower instructions on how to stop severe bleeding (he'd cut his hand pretty deeply on a shard of glass). My followers repaid me in kind by RT-ing something silly I said or asking their friends to follow me (@themia, @juliaroy, @bsimi, @karma_musings you know what you've done).

And then the Viking came to Bon Temps. Followed by Sam, the first Bill, then the second Bill, etc.

My tweets changed. No more laundry lists of vampire jokes. No more "Top 5 Reasons why I can't date a shifter." No more gratuitous tweeting. I had two sets of relationships to build: 1) with my followers who were with me and 2) with these characters from my life who'd reappeared here on Twitter.

As our daily banter grew to include not just the world of True Blood, but the world of Twitter, something strange started to happen: all of the little character plays that were ordinarily relegated to the forums and fan-fic started to playout here in the mainstream. In 140-character tweets.

It finally occurred to me after @EricNorthman and I did Loving True Blood in Dallas' show on BlogTalkRadio that we'd gotten ourselves into something hotter than the morning after a FotS sleepover. Soon after the show the fangrrls who'd been living on the Wiki, the forums, etc. came pouring in to join the fun on Twitter. On the days when things get busy and I happen to go missing from the bar, there is a steady stream of willing women ready to be the next Merlotte's waitress. Never mind that Merlotte's waitresses have shorter life spans than Spinal Tap drummers.

So what's next? I guess I'll keep RP-ing, fan-fic-ing whatever the hell I'm doing. I guess that means I get to keep rolling around in the dust with the Viking. Keep you posted.

Check it out here and please post a comment for Sook !

http://sookiebontemps.posterous.com/lettin-down-the-ponytail-for-j

Time to let all the characters come out and play in social media

Tris Hussey at Media2 is talking about "character blogging " and after our fantastic , ground breaking radio show last night, we are oh -so-very interested in it. If you missed the show it it's archived on the right " Role Playing " we interviewed by twitterboth Sookie and Eric and it was a great show!

I’m sure there are still people who might disagree with me, that “blogging” needs to be personal, real, authentic to be “true blogging”, but I think we’ve finally reached a point where we see social media for what is it: writing, storytelling, and sharing.

The main argument against character blogs was the lack of authenticity. How could a “character” be real? Hmm, we could ask Stephen King about Richard Bachman, I’d ask Samuel Clemens about Mark Twain, but well he’s dead. Literature and storytelling has a long history of pen names and characters. Sometimes you need to assume a pen name, or alter ego, to have the freedom to write and express what you’d like.

If I write anonymously, or as a character, is that not being true to me or am I just expressing another aspect of my personality more openly?

What got me thinking about this is True Blood. You see recently Sookie, Pam, Eric, and other characters from True Blood have been on Twitter (Bill was on there, but I guess he’s gone into hiding). No one has been up in arms. Fans of True Blood, like me, have been chatting with them. I know I’m not really chatting with Sookie (now if Anna Paquin were chatting with me, that would send a shiver down my spine!), and I don’t care because it’s fun.

I don’t know, or care, who is behind the accounts. Interns at HBO? Dedicated fans? PR group? Doesn’t matter. Not a social media fail, social media coup. Because True Blood is off air right now, and we’re dying for Season Two to start, getting a little reminder of the cast and characters keeps the fans going. Keeps us craving more shows. Reminds us how much we dig the show and how much we miss it.

Maybe now I don’t miss it as much now, because I can chat with Sookie (I’d like to chat with Bill again). I haven’t seen anything like they are going to pimp a DVD set. They are in character. Their world and ours is intersecting so why would we buy a DVD set of Season One of their real lives?

I think social media is growing into a more mature form of media. We are accepting that media, art, writing, literature, has many forms. There are so many ways to express oneself. Maybe I’d like to become a character on a blog. Maybe the escape of being free to be another is healthy. I follow a few “character blogs” and love them. What is even more fun is knowing the people behind the characters. Seeing the different facets of their personalities come out is damn cool.

Now, let’s get some more characters out there telling their stories.

And if you’ll excuse me, there is a tall, pall woman in a cloak at the door…

Read entire article :

http://www.blogm2o.com/time-to-let-all-the-characters-come-out-and-play-on-in-social-media/