r_scribbles (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
r_scribbles) wrote2011-08-23 09:05 pm
r_scribbles) wrote2011-08-23 09:05 pm
Entry tags:
Tales from the Otherworld – the perils of Twitter RP
Many of you already know this – I make less of a secret of it than I probably should – but as well as being fascinating and hilarious on Twitter as myself, I’m also part of a Twitter Roleplay universe. Here is how it started, the nature of the game and so on.
That was over a year ago now and, even though we’ve had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of changes, the blessed thing’s still going, is still a cultural-reference-packed affectionate parody of the show, canon source and actors alike, it’s still cartoonish and madcap, and it’s still a very fun world for a daft bugger like me who misses acting and improv to be able to play in.
A typical scene, beautifully rendered by a brilliant artist.
I wasn’t a part of the Sherlock fan community when I started the account – I’m barely one now – I loiter at the edges, writing the occasional story, reading the odd pit of porn, looking at the occasional drawing and wishing I was anywhere near as good, avoiding online discussions like the plague, lest the inevitable cheerfully misogynistic comment causes me to go on the rampage like a Rage Infected Zombie… the usual. But RPing as Sherlock, albeit a cartoon clown version of Sherlock , doesn’t so much draw you in to the fan community as slap you around the face with it. Repeatedly.
Cumberholmes now has nearly 900 followers (well… likely more like 800 if you didn’t count the bots I haven’t managed to summon the energy to block) and quite early on they went from largely being friends from my Real Me Twitter who had also seen the programme to people who didn’t know me but were fans of BBC Sherlock/Sherlock Holmes in general/fancied Benedict Cumberbatch. Which is fine, because, hey, I like BBC Sherlock & Sherlock Holmes in general and Benny’s pretty attractive for a Funny Looking Fella, in my opinion.
But I ain’t him. As much as I wish I really was a phenomenally successful young catfaced actor, I’m really not. And I know, I know I never actually say “Not really Benedict Cumberbatch” on the account but I’m not sure what there is about an unverified account that only follows fictional characters, has “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is that I'm the sexiest supergenius ever to put on a beautiful coat” as a profile bio and tweets things like “Just created a dumb waiter system with which Speedy's can send up John's morning croissant without any of us leaving our seats” that suggests these are the tweets of a phenomenally busy star of stage and screen. This doesn’t mean I don’t get tweets asking me why I’m not filming at the moment, or whether I remember meeting them at a charity do once. Although I probably don’t help matters by pretending that Sherlock’s at every televised awards ceremony Benny gets nominated for (in disguise and adopting a ‘ridiculous pseudonym’, obviously) although mainly I do that to a, make fun of the predictably ridiculous clothes Cumberbatch always turns up in (I still know very little about the man – the one thing that I have learned the hard way is that he generally dresses like a tiny child let loose in Oxfam when left to his own devices) and b, to turn Cumberbatch’s gracious defeat every time he doesn’t win into a behind the scenes indignant flounce-fest. These things amuse me.
We are slavish to the Canon material. SLAVISH.
These people generally realise their mistake pretty quickly and move on, sometimes joining me in a joke or two at Catface’s expense as they do. I don’t really have much of an issue with these people.
I do have issues with some followers, though. Some people who do get that it’s an RP, but, well, that’s about all they do get, it seems.
I gain a few watchers a day. It’s all cool. Many of them watch quietly, many more tweet me cheeky little jokey comments, correct my typos (which always makes me shake my fist at the computer screen, albeit not for long. Yes, I know Sherlock Holmes’ spelling & grammar would be nigh-on perfect, which is why I check the online dictionary when tweeting as him far more often than I ever do while tweeting as myself, but these things will slip though the net sometimes), some people send me nice comments, some send me funny links that are relevant to my storyline/jokes at the time, and some – my favourites, I have to admit, tweet me delightfully funny, dry asides that have me giggling like a loon at the screen.
And then, there are the ones who not only start following, they ANNOUNCE that they are following. I had one who followed, then dropped the whole set when a character called her on her assertion that, since Sherlock had had two sexual partners within the same month, he was a “slut” (apparently, disagreeing with this and suggesting she could broaden her worldview without resorting to name-calling for those who had multiple sexual partners was encouraging her to sleep around) then announced about a month later that she was following again, along with the implication that this was a huge favour to us. She dropped us again shortly afterwards, along with a LOT of namecalling, because she didn’t like a romantic pairing that had organically sprung up as a part of the improv. This is the first follower type that irks. The would-be storyline dictator. I was just about to write ‘it’s an RP, not a covers band – we don’t do requests’, but actually we do! We have done. A watcher offered us £10 for Comic Relief to do a certain silly storyline, which we did, with gusto. In fact, if there are any Cumberholmes followers watching who do have a good idea for a funny situation for Sherlock to get into at least, then please do suggest away. What I take exception to is being told what I can’t do – like a sort of online, entitled heckling. “I PAID NOTHING FOR THIS CONTENT THAT I HAVE ELECTED TO RECEIVE OF MY OWN FREE WILL, AND YET I AM NOT GETTING EXACTLY WHAT I PERSONALLY WISH FOR! I HURL VIRTUAL TOMATOES AT THEE, SIRRAH!” It happens from time to time – a furious one-person backlash over a distasteful joke, even though the entire RP is full of jokes about murder, torture and mayhem; or about something being untrue to Doyle because I made Sherlock give a rat’s ass about a character they don’t like, even though they were cheerfully going along with him singing Disney Princess songs the day before. The most ridiculous complaints I get are that Sherlock’s being rude to them.
Sherlock Holmes. Being RUDE. I know, I’m as shocked as you.
So yes, I have learned to become wary of the ‘Strike up the band, I am following you’ followers. Because they might possibly be one of those backseat driver types. Or, they might be the next level of annoying. The ‘HI SHERLOCK I AM FOLLOWING YOU NOW’ tweet might be the sluice gate to a fresh pipe of the dreaded Mary Sewage.
Because, Oh God, the Sues we attract. You’d be amazed how many teenage girls tweet me to let me know that THEY TOO ARE DEDUCTIVE GENIUSES even though they can spell neither ‘genius’, ‘deductive’, or other difficult words like ‘you’ and ‘the’. I’m sure that there are plenty of dyslexic deductive geniuses about, but bearing in mind that these self-confessed ‘geniuses’ generally don’t understand any pop culture/literary/music references more than a year old and apparently don’t even know how to use Google, choosing instead to tweet WHO IS THAT, I DON’T GET IT at me every time they don’t understand something – which is a lot – then you’ll excuse me for being cynical about these genius qualities of which they speak.
Sometimes they make the effort of actually making an RP character – characters which are always unceremoniously ignored. Sues we’ve had over our year have included:
- Mycroft’s hitherto unmentioned “long lost daughter”, who sometimes stays with her oh-so paternal Uncle Sherlock at 221b, apparently
- Mycroft and Sherlock’s spunky, American teenaged girl cousin, who’s just as good a detective as them, if not better
- A hot 23 year old woman who is possibly the youngest university professor ever
- A sexy lady detective at Scotty Yard who also just so happens to be a master thief in her spare time and definitely saw Moriarty driving a pink polo one time, much to said Criminal Mastermind’s bemusement.
Annoying as the Mary Sewage is, at least they (usually) give up and move on swiftly when their character is ignored. Unlike The Chatty Ones. There is always, ALWAYS a Chatty One following me at the very least. Sometimes they like to chat at our Moriarty, as well. Now, I do really enjoy the RP and love chatting, answering questions, etc in character, so the ability to make me groan in despair every time particular usernames pop up in my replies page is quite a feat, but certain Twitterfolk do manage that. There’s a trick to it, you see – it’s called ‘asking me to repeat what I’ve only just said especially for you’. See, I know that not everybody who follows Sherlock follows the whole RP, so when there’s RP action going on, especially with a more obscure character, I’ll often do a little exposition tweet, letting everyone know what Sherlock’s doing, preferably with a little joke to end the tweet. Therefore I have already ‘acted out’ some action in the RP, then narrated it a second time.
This is almost always when a Chatty Follower will pop up, and cheerfully shriek something along the lines of ‘HIII SHERLOCK WOT R U DOIN???!??!’ at me. Sometimes I ignore. Sometimes I indulge, and repeat myself. Again. At which point, it becomes painfully clear that Chatty Follower clearly hasn’t read anything what I have twotted – including, it often seems, the very tweet that they’ve just replied to, certainly has no knowledge of any of our storylines, character or running jokes, has almost no knowledge of the telly programme the RP is based on, let alone the stories that the programme was based on. And, as I mentioned before, don’t seem to have grasped the concepts of Google.
This happened, but I'm not going to tell you how or why.
Now, I have a 4 year old. I’m no stranger to The Why Loop – the endless stream of questions asked not so much out of curiosity as out of a want just to talk – to ask a question and for that question to be responded to. I tolerate Why Loop after Why Loop from my own precious child. I come onto Twitter to get a break from that. Or, at least, that’s the plan.
Behold! The sort of Why Loop Variation I can often expect from the Chatty Follower.
@Cumberholmes – Running over a rooftop, dramatically. I’ll get that Marmite Smuggler eventually.
@IdiotKitten – Hiiiiiiii SherlocK what ru doin??!?
@Cumberholmes – Can’t talk now. Chasing after Marmite Smuggler. On a roof.
@IdiotKitten – lol why is somebody smuggling marmite?
@Cumberholmes – Fetches a high price in Denmark. As I mentioned earlier. Honestly, try to keep up.
@IdiotKitten – lol yes of course sorry just testing lol I’m a strict tester!!!1! I’ll leave you too it u only have 2 say!
THREE SECONDS LATER
@IdiotKitten – Heyyy u said ‘try to keep up’ am I running with u? OMG I am, aren’t I?!?!? Cool!
@IdiotKitten lol I’m running over a rooftop with @Cumberholmes lookin 4 smuggled marmite. WTF is marmite anyway?!?
@Cumberholmes – No, you are not.
@IdiotKitten – Yes I am u said try to keep up so I’m running after u honestly I thought Sherlock Holmes was supposed 2 b a genieous!!
@Cumberholmes – No, really. I just looked behind myself, and you’re not there. It’s just me, John, Lestrade & Gregson.
@IdiotKitten – Who’s Gregson?!?
@Cumberholmes – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Sherlock_Holmes_characters#Tobias_Gregson
@IdiotKitten – Who’s Lestrade?
ET CETERA.
If there is a Twitter user called @IdiotKitten, I apologise. I have never actually been pestered by a user called @IdiotKitten, it’s just that, after a discussion with a fellow Fake Sherlock – the weird & utterly wonderful @AnantaSherlock, who I thoroughly recommend following, by the way, about these people, we decided that we actually rather envy them, since they seem so blissfully happy in their simple little worlds, not getting bogged down with actually knowing anything ever, just merrily batting at us as if we were shiny things on string, like idiot kittens. There are, essentially, all anthropomorphised versions of this cat to me, now.
Maybe we all have something to learn from the Idiot Kittens of this world, after all. All of Twitter is really just a crumply bit of paper or a speck of dust dancing in a patch of sunlight – Twitter RPs even more so. Maybe the key to true happiness is to embrace the Why Loop. That’s why, from now on, Sherlock will be tweeting like this.
@Cumberholmes – HIIIIIII INTERNET!!! WHAT R U DOING?
@Cumberholmes – Why?
@Cumberholmes – Why?!?
@Cumberholmes – WHY?!?!?
That was over a year ago now and, even though we’ve had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of changes, the blessed thing’s still going, is still a cultural-reference-packed affectionate parody of the show, canon source and actors alike, it’s still cartoonish and madcap, and it’s still a very fun world for a daft bugger like me who misses acting and improv to be able to play in.
A typical scene, beautifully rendered by a brilliant artist.
I wasn’t a part of the Sherlock fan community when I started the account – I’m barely one now – I loiter at the edges, writing the occasional story, reading the odd pit of porn, looking at the occasional drawing and wishing I was anywhere near as good, avoiding online discussions like the plague, lest the inevitable cheerfully misogynistic comment causes me to go on the rampage like a Rage Infected Zombie… the usual. But RPing as Sherlock, albeit a cartoon clown version of Sherlock , doesn’t so much draw you in to the fan community as slap you around the face with it. Repeatedly.
Cumberholmes now has nearly 900 followers (well… likely more like 800 if you didn’t count the bots I haven’t managed to summon the energy to block) and quite early on they went from largely being friends from my Real Me Twitter who had also seen the programme to people who didn’t know me but were fans of BBC Sherlock/Sherlock Holmes in general/fancied Benedict Cumberbatch. Which is fine, because, hey, I like BBC Sherlock & Sherlock Holmes in general and Benny’s pretty attractive for a Funny Looking Fella, in my opinion.
But I ain’t him. As much as I wish I really was a phenomenally successful young catfaced actor, I’m really not. And I know, I know I never actually say “Not really Benedict Cumberbatch” on the account but I’m not sure what there is about an unverified account that only follows fictional characters, has “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is that I'm the sexiest supergenius ever to put on a beautiful coat” as a profile bio and tweets things like “Just created a dumb waiter system with which Speedy's can send up John's morning croissant without any of us leaving our seats” that suggests these are the tweets of a phenomenally busy star of stage and screen. This doesn’t mean I don’t get tweets asking me why I’m not filming at the moment, or whether I remember meeting them at a charity do once. Although I probably don’t help matters by pretending that Sherlock’s at every televised awards ceremony Benny gets nominated for (in disguise and adopting a ‘ridiculous pseudonym’, obviously) although mainly I do that to a, make fun of the predictably ridiculous clothes Cumberbatch always turns up in (I still know very little about the man – the one thing that I have learned the hard way is that he generally dresses like a tiny child let loose in Oxfam when left to his own devices) and b, to turn Cumberbatch’s gracious defeat every time he doesn’t win into a behind the scenes indignant flounce-fest. These things amuse me.
We are slavish to the Canon material. SLAVISH.
These people generally realise their mistake pretty quickly and move on, sometimes joining me in a joke or two at Catface’s expense as they do. I don’t really have much of an issue with these people.
I do have issues with some followers, though. Some people who do get that it’s an RP, but, well, that’s about all they do get, it seems.
I gain a few watchers a day. It’s all cool. Many of them watch quietly, many more tweet me cheeky little jokey comments, correct my typos (which always makes me shake my fist at the computer screen, albeit not for long. Yes, I know Sherlock Holmes’ spelling & grammar would be nigh-on perfect, which is why I check the online dictionary when tweeting as him far more often than I ever do while tweeting as myself, but these things will slip though the net sometimes), some people send me nice comments, some send me funny links that are relevant to my storyline/jokes at the time, and some – my favourites, I have to admit, tweet me delightfully funny, dry asides that have me giggling like a loon at the screen.
And then, there are the ones who not only start following, they ANNOUNCE that they are following. I had one who followed, then dropped the whole set when a character called her on her assertion that, since Sherlock had had two sexual partners within the same month, he was a “slut” (apparently, disagreeing with this and suggesting she could broaden her worldview without resorting to name-calling for those who had multiple sexual partners was encouraging her to sleep around) then announced about a month later that she was following again, along with the implication that this was a huge favour to us. She dropped us again shortly afterwards, along with a LOT of namecalling, because she didn’t like a romantic pairing that had organically sprung up as a part of the improv. This is the first follower type that irks. The would-be storyline dictator. I was just about to write ‘it’s an RP, not a covers band – we don’t do requests’, but actually we do! We have done. A watcher offered us £10 for Comic Relief to do a certain silly storyline, which we did, with gusto. In fact, if there are any Cumberholmes followers watching who do have a good idea for a funny situation for Sherlock to get into at least, then please do suggest away. What I take exception to is being told what I can’t do – like a sort of online, entitled heckling. “I PAID NOTHING FOR THIS CONTENT THAT I HAVE ELECTED TO RECEIVE OF MY OWN FREE WILL, AND YET I AM NOT GETTING EXACTLY WHAT I PERSONALLY WISH FOR! I HURL VIRTUAL TOMATOES AT THEE, SIRRAH!” It happens from time to time – a furious one-person backlash over a distasteful joke, even though the entire RP is full of jokes about murder, torture and mayhem; or about something being untrue to Doyle because I made Sherlock give a rat’s ass about a character they don’t like, even though they were cheerfully going along with him singing Disney Princess songs the day before. The most ridiculous complaints I get are that Sherlock’s being rude to them.
Sherlock Holmes. Being RUDE. I know, I’m as shocked as you.
So yes, I have learned to become wary of the ‘Strike up the band, I am following you’ followers. Because they might possibly be one of those backseat driver types. Or, they might be the next level of annoying. The ‘HI SHERLOCK I AM FOLLOWING YOU NOW’ tweet might be the sluice gate to a fresh pipe of the dreaded Mary Sewage.
Because, Oh God, the Sues we attract. You’d be amazed how many teenage girls tweet me to let me know that THEY TOO ARE DEDUCTIVE GENIUSES even though they can spell neither ‘genius’, ‘deductive’, or other difficult words like ‘you’ and ‘the’. I’m sure that there are plenty of dyslexic deductive geniuses about, but bearing in mind that these self-confessed ‘geniuses’ generally don’t understand any pop culture/literary/music references more than a year old and apparently don’t even know how to use Google, choosing instead to tweet WHO IS THAT, I DON’T GET IT at me every time they don’t understand something – which is a lot – then you’ll excuse me for being cynical about these genius qualities of which they speak.
Sometimes they make the effort of actually making an RP character – characters which are always unceremoniously ignored. Sues we’ve had over our year have included:
- Mycroft’s hitherto unmentioned “long lost daughter”, who sometimes stays with her oh-so paternal Uncle Sherlock at 221b, apparently
- Mycroft and Sherlock’s spunky, American teenaged girl cousin, who’s just as good a detective as them, if not better
- A hot 23 year old woman who is possibly the youngest university professor ever
- A sexy lady detective at Scotty Yard who also just so happens to be a master thief in her spare time and definitely saw Moriarty driving a pink polo one time, much to said Criminal Mastermind’s bemusement.
Annoying as the Mary Sewage is, at least they (usually) give up and move on swiftly when their character is ignored. Unlike The Chatty Ones. There is always, ALWAYS a Chatty One following me at the very least. Sometimes they like to chat at our Moriarty, as well. Now, I do really enjoy the RP and love chatting, answering questions, etc in character, so the ability to make me groan in despair every time particular usernames pop up in my replies page is quite a feat, but certain Twitterfolk do manage that. There’s a trick to it, you see – it’s called ‘asking me to repeat what I’ve only just said especially for you’. See, I know that not everybody who follows Sherlock follows the whole RP, so when there’s RP action going on, especially with a more obscure character, I’ll often do a little exposition tweet, letting everyone know what Sherlock’s doing, preferably with a little joke to end the tweet. Therefore I have already ‘acted out’ some action in the RP, then narrated it a second time.
This is almost always when a Chatty Follower will pop up, and cheerfully shriek something along the lines of ‘HIII SHERLOCK WOT R U DOIN???!??!’ at me. Sometimes I ignore. Sometimes I indulge, and repeat myself. Again. At which point, it becomes painfully clear that Chatty Follower clearly hasn’t read anything what I have twotted – including, it often seems, the very tweet that they’ve just replied to, certainly has no knowledge of any of our storylines, character or running jokes, has almost no knowledge of the telly programme the RP is based on, let alone the stories that the programme was based on. And, as I mentioned before, don’t seem to have grasped the concepts of Google.
This happened, but I'm not going to tell you how or why.
Now, I have a 4 year old. I’m no stranger to The Why Loop – the endless stream of questions asked not so much out of curiosity as out of a want just to talk – to ask a question and for that question to be responded to. I tolerate Why Loop after Why Loop from my own precious child. I come onto Twitter to get a break from that. Or, at least, that’s the plan.
Behold! The sort of Why Loop Variation I can often expect from the Chatty Follower.
@Cumberholmes – Running over a rooftop, dramatically. I’ll get that Marmite Smuggler eventually.
@IdiotKitten – Hiiiiiiii SherlocK what ru doin??!?
@Cumberholmes – Can’t talk now. Chasing after Marmite Smuggler. On a roof.
@IdiotKitten – lol why is somebody smuggling marmite?
@Cumberholmes – Fetches a high price in Denmark. As I mentioned earlier. Honestly, try to keep up.
@IdiotKitten – lol yes of course sorry just testing lol I’m a strict tester!!!1! I’ll leave you too it u only have 2 say!
THREE SECONDS LATER
@IdiotKitten – Heyyy u said ‘try to keep up’ am I running with u? OMG I am, aren’t I?!?!? Cool!
@IdiotKitten lol I’m running over a rooftop with @Cumberholmes lookin 4 smuggled marmite. WTF is marmite anyway?!?
@Cumberholmes – No, you are not.
@IdiotKitten – Yes I am u said try to keep up so I’m running after u honestly I thought Sherlock Holmes was supposed 2 b a genieous!!
@Cumberholmes – No, really. I just looked behind myself, and you’re not there. It’s just me, John, Lestrade & Gregson.
@IdiotKitten – Who’s Gregson?!?
@Cumberholmes – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Sherlock_Holmes_characters#Tobias_Gregson
@IdiotKitten – Who’s Lestrade?
ET CETERA.
If there is a Twitter user called @IdiotKitten, I apologise. I have never actually been pestered by a user called @IdiotKitten, it’s just that, after a discussion with a fellow Fake Sherlock – the weird & utterly wonderful @AnantaSherlock, who I thoroughly recommend following, by the way, about these people, we decided that we actually rather envy them, since they seem so blissfully happy in their simple little worlds, not getting bogged down with actually knowing anything ever, just merrily batting at us as if we were shiny things on string, like idiot kittens. There are, essentially, all anthropomorphised versions of this cat to me, now.
Maybe we all have something to learn from the Idiot Kittens of this world, after all. All of Twitter is really just a crumply bit of paper or a speck of dust dancing in a patch of sunlight – Twitter RPs even more so. Maybe the key to true happiness is to embrace the Why Loop. That’s why, from now on, Sherlock will be tweeting like this.
@Cumberholmes – HIIIIIII INTERNET!!! WHAT R U DOING?
@Cumberholmes – Why?
@Cumberholmes – Why?!?
@Cumberholmes – WHY?!?!?