Character Blog

"In his shocking 200th episode, Strong Bad turns the entire series on its ear. Will we ever see a 201? Is the reign of HREmails at hand? For the answers to these questions, be sure and NOT check out my blog. I haven't updated that thing in years!"
—Strong Sad, Homestar Runner, "email thunder"

With the rise of the internet, a new method of breaking the fourth wall has been developed; a blog kept under the alias of one of the fictional heroes (or, occasionally, villains) in a comic, show or book. The writing will be done "in character," and readers may be allowed to correspond with the character as if they were a real person.

They are becoming increasingly popular, with many major series having some sort of Character Blog in operation. Quite a few webcomics like to employ these as well.

The Character Blog may serve several functions:

  • It can provide a new angle to the existing plotline, by writing the story in first-person perspective rather than the omniscient view of the story that the audience usually gets. This can be highly effective if there are blogs for different characters in the same show - The Ditz will probably have a very different take on things than The Smart Guy, for example.
  • It can offer supplemental stories, filling in the time that the characters were "off air" or providing relief from the main storyline, such as doing a silly entry or personality when the Canon plotline is rather dark. May also fill in backstory or provide more Character Focus than the canon can afford to provide, or keep the audience informed on a character who is currently Out of Focus or uninvolved in the present rotating arc. This is a popular use of the Character Blog for webcomics, which often don't have the time or space to fit in all the stories an author would like to tell - it's much quicker to write a text entry than to draw a comic.
  • It acts as a Fourth Wall Mail Slot, allowing the fans to interact with the creators, with the alias of the fictional character as an intermediary.
  • Basically, it makes the character seem more real.

Usually, the Character Blog is seen as positive, a quirky addition that exists between Canon and Fanon; it adds to the story, but isn't mandatory reading.

Webcomic Time can be a headache to such blogs, since the comic may take several weeks to tell a day's worth of story, while the blog is kept in real time.

It's not without its pitfalls, however. It's much more difficult to hide things such as Writer on Board or Creator Breakdown when writing a blog, and the assumed identity may slip from time to time. Conversely, a writer assuming the identity of a character with strong Jerkass tendencies has a fine line to walk between portraying the character accurately, and using the fictional personality as an excuse to sneer at any fan who ventures a question via the blog. A lack of professionalism in the blog's writing may result in an extreme example of the GIFT theory.

It may also be confusing to young readers, or to people who stumble across the blog without being familiar with the show. It's unlikely, but the possibility exists that the character is mistaken for a real person, particularly if the source material is obscure.

Since a full-on blog can take a lot of work to update regularly, characters often instead create microblogs on Facebook or Twitter.

May be part of a larger Alternate Reality Game. Compare Vlog Series. A complete work in this form is a variety of Log Fic.

Examples of Character Blog include:

Anime & Manga

  • Prussia in Axis Powers Hetalia kept one on April Fool's Day until he dropped his ice cream on his laptop and broke it. The blog can be found here.
  • The four main characters of Black Lagoon have Myspace pages. They've not been updated in a while, but entail the characters introducing themselves. Anyone familiar with the series would see these introductions as plausible the characters might say in such a circumstance. The blogs are as follows: Benny, Dutch, Revy, and Rock.
  • As part of the promotion for the Updated Rerelease of Chaos;Head, seven character blogs, one for each of the girls and one for protagonist Takumi, appeared on the website.
  • The protagonists(?) of Disgaea also have their own Myspace pages, up to and including bickering with each other in the comments page. More amusingly, the Black Lagoon characters link the Disgaea characters as their friends, and vice versa.
  • Albert from Gankutsuou had a blog written by, iirc, the scenario writer of the series as an unofficial sequel to the series. It chronicled his days on Janina where he met various people from his past, including someone who was very heavily implied to be the Count in disguise. His friends from Earth often left comments on the entries. (Before you start wondering: yes, it was officially recognized. The official blog even links to it.)
  • The English versions of The Melancholy Of Haruhi Suzumiya and Lucky Star both have Myspace accounts, from Kyon and Minoru respectively. They're apparently run by Bandai.
    • Lelouch has one, too, also presumably run by Bandai.
  • Nearly the entire named cast of Puella Magi Madoka Magica have Twitter accounts: Kaname Madoka, Miki Sayaka, Tomoe Mami, Sakura Kyouko, Akemi Homura, Kyubey, Shizuki Hitomi, Kamijou Kyousuke, and Ensemble Darkhorse Charlotte.
  • Various Type-Moon characters had twitter accounts created for an april-fools joke. (Including Saber, Shirou, Archer, Kohaku, and Sion.)
    • The concept of Rin having a twitter account is even funnier by the fact that Fate/Hollow Ataraxia states that she's technologically illiterate.
    • The accounts that are still active to this date are Gil's and Arc's.
      • You can scratch Arc off.
  • 3 notable Pani Poni Dash! characters have Twitter accounts: Becky, Kurumi, #6, AKA Sayaka


Comics

  • The Archie Comics website has character blogs for Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, and Jughead.
    • They have one for the Sonic comics, too.
  • DR. DINOSAUR IS HERE TO PROVE REPTILIAN SUPERIORITY TO YOU PATHETIC MAMMALS!
  • Notable only because it is very well written, Batman villain Scarecrow has a fake Twitter account. It's one of the few fan examples that are extremely difficult to distinguish from one written by the actual writers due to the perfect characterization.
  • April Patterson from the newspaper comic For Better or For Worse used to have a blog on that comic's website.
  • Garfield has a Facebook account.
  • Hell, even Johnny the Homicidal Maniac has a (creepy) Twitter, presumed to be run by Jhonen Vasquez.
  • The syndicated comic Luann had a short arc where Luann and Tiffany have a competition to see which of their Myspace pages can get more friends. Both page addresses appeared in the comic; both actually exist on the web and are written as if by the two characters.
  • MODOK has a blog on the Marvel website.
  • Cooper from the print comic Retail has his own, though it's rarely updated, and he mentions Norm Feuti often, in a delicate mix of "reality" and comic reality.
  • Superboy Prime of DC comics is supposed to be using his computer in the real world. However, it's hard to determine how, since both Twitter and the official forums have several different people all claiming to be him and fighting over it.
  • Carl "Deathtrap" Draper, a minor Superman villain turned Checkmate operative in DC Comics, has a blog here, accessable with the user ID "CARL DRAPER" and the password "wilhelmina".
  • Bob the Dog, of the comic Horndog posts on the comic's Facebook page, and has his own Twitter. Another character from the comic, Charlene, has her own Twitter as well.
  • Not quite the same as a proper blog, but Mayor Dalton's Prostate has gotten it's own Facebook fan page after Rex Morgan, M.D.'s discussions of the organ became a minor meme on The Comics Curmudgeon.
  • Marvel Comics' Galacta, the Daughter of Galactus has an official Twitter account.
    • In the original one-shot featuring her, it was a part of her characterization as an up-to-date teenager, with her posting an entry, summarizing the events so far in (kinda fake) tweetspeak, every few pages. The final pages of the one-shot also featured a collection of miscellaneous tweets from her. The Twitter account linked contains all the tweets from the one-shot (except for the ones that break the fourth wall or spoil the ending) as well as many more.
  • Marvel Comics' Captain Britain has his own offical Twitter.


Fanfiction

  • "The Very Secret Diaries", a series of diary entries purportedly written by the main characters of The Lord of the Rings, covering the events of the first film and some of the second. Lots of Ho Yay ensues. They were actually published on the author's blog, though—not the characters' blogs—so it's not quite the same thing.
  • Maintaining character blogs as a form of Fan Fiction or roleplay is a popular practice. In fact, many of the blogs linked elsewhere on this page are fan-made
  • Dennis St. Michel keeps one of these, which are purportedly excerpts from his memoirs, although they're posted daily.
  • DC Nation keeps most of its action on the main comm, but some of the players use the character journals to play out side stories or make in-character comments on the plot lines.
  • There's a set of ask blogs on Tumblr for the X-Men, mostly based on First Class, which has now extended to ask blogs for their inexplicably-sentient clothing and inanimate objects.
  • There are also ask blogs and character blogs for other Marvel characters on Tumblr, including a very well done Thor-based roleplay.
  • The Diary of Ralph Dibny covers the Elongated Man's increasingly deranged thoughts as his 52 storyline progresses.
  • Eyrie Productions, Unlimited's Bubblegum Crisis/Iron Man crossover The Iron Age has intermittently been supplemented by a news/opinion blog written by viewpoint character Benjamin Stark.

Film

  • The main characters of Cloverfield had Myspace accounts which they updated as viral marketing prior to the film's release. Many fans were heartbroken when they (understandably) stopped updating once the movie debuted.
  • In a Crowning Moment of Awesome, a British design studio recreated the film Home Alone entirely through tweets, including a Twitter page for every character who had a part, in realtime over Christmas 2009. They also did Home Alone 2 over Christmas 2010. They don't plan on doing Home Alone 3 or 4..."ever...as those movies suck. That is all."
  • The leading character of Saw 3D, Bobby Dagen, has a Twitter account, a Facebook account and a website. His support group, S.U.R.V.I.V.E. has a Facebook page and a blog with a few group members (a few survivors from past films, including Dr. Gordon, and just one of the new ones) posting about their experience in the Jigsaw traps and how Bobby is helping them heal.
  • In the lead-up to the release of District 9, alien refugee Christopher Johnson ran an anti-MNU propaganda blog in his native Starfish Language (but with English translations available at literally the click of a button), unsurprisingly called MNU Spreads Lies. The blog is, of course, no longer online and the URL now redirects to Sony's official site for the movie; luckily, every post has been archived.
  • Amanda Waller started a blog (written by her creator John Ostrander) as a tie-in to the Green Lantern movie.
  • Max Keeble, Troy McGinty, and presumably Jenna from Max Keeble's Big Move each have a Facebook account for unknown reasons.


Literature

  • Bartimaeus of the Bartimaeus Trilogy has an official blog - but it's more of a close-ended short story masquerading as a blog.
  • Fang from Maximum Ride has a blog. Its original location is here, and that's the URL that's given in the books.


Live Action Television

  • Arrested Development: Oscar Bluth had a blog while he was in prison (when they thought he was his twin brother George), imoscar.com. It wasn't a "real" blog though, in that it always had the same content. Later there was a Saddam Hussein body double, arrested in the infamous spider hole instead of the real Saddam. As seen on TV he claimed that the way you could tell them apart was because the Real Saddam had a scar, and "I'm no scar." He had a blog, imnoscar.com, which looked just like imoscar.com except it was in Arabic.
  • The characters of the Buffy Verse all have Twitter accounts that are coordinated and currently reenacting the series storyline. They are currently near the end of Season Three of Buffy.
    • The showrunners also created Cassie Newton's poetry website.
  • Serge, the robot butler in Caprica, has a twitter account. He provides little details about life on Caprica, and seems a lot more intelligent than his behavior in the show would suggest.
  • On Castle's official website Detective Ryan has one of these, called The Ryan Report, in which he gives his viewpoint on whatever case was worked on in that episode. Castle also has a Twitter account that during the season posts random bits and pieces, but has, for the last two summers, had him solving a mystery without the rest of the cast. A pretty well done mystery too. Occasionally made odd by the Twitter replying to Nathan Filion...
  • Greendale has a website.
    • Also, everyone in the study group has a twitter account, including Annie's Boobs.
  • While not exactly the same as the others, Hank Yarbo, from Corner Gas had a blog in one episode called Hank Talkin' which was, for a time, available on the official site. (however, it didn't extend from the three entries from the episode.)
  • During the first four seasons of Degrassi the next generation, ALL the student characters had their own blogs. But once the show kept getting more extreme and melodramatic, they dropped it. You can find captions and screen shots of some of the entries on fan sites.
    • Most current student characters on Degrassi have Twitter accounts; none of the faculty do, including the longtime and current media-studies teachers although their actors' accounts are listed on the official page.
  • Martha Jones from Doctor Who has a MySpace page, with references to her family, Series 3, the animated serial The Infinite Quest, the novels she appears in, and the Terrible Zodin, an offscreen character who was referenced as far back as the Fifth Doctor era.
  • Senator Daniel Perrin from Dollhouse has a Twitter account.
  • Lloyd from Entourage has a blog on HBO's site.
  • Dr. Matt Hunter on General Hospital is on Twitter. The tweets are supposedly from Jason Cook in Hunter's character.
  • Some of the characters of Glee have their own Twitter accounts. Sue Sylvester's is truly epic.
  • Obvious example: Gossip Girl.
  • Several characters in Heroes have online blogs of some kind or another, including, not surprisingly, the geeky Hiro Nakamura and the hacker Hana Gitelman.
  • Barney from How I Met Your Mother has one, stemming from the fact that he frequently makes mention of it in the show, and puts a great deal of significance in it.
  • iCarly uses them as part of the extensive tie-in website.
  • The official website of the 2008 Knight Rider series had "Billy's Blog," ostensibly written by The Smart Guy from the show.
  • During the first two seasons of Lost, an online diary appeared on the ABC site supposedly written by one of the background characters (then picked up by a different background character in the second season.) The diary, however, was written by ABC's promotional department, not the show's writers, and conflicts with Canon emerged.
  • Several of the main characters from Misfits have official facebook and/or twitter accounts. It was apparently the first tv series to use twitter in such a way, as it actually featured characters posting comments about the show's events during the original broadcast of the episodes, to maintain a sense of soliloquy. Smart Guy Simon also has a youtube account, where he posts footage of the other characters that he has supposedly recorded himself (most of it is just-for-fun, supplemental stuff, but one or two of his videos are vital to the plot)
    • They've stepped things up a notch since season 2 began. The characters now also use twitter to verbally abuse each other on a regular basis.
  • Randy from My Name Is Earl has a blog on the NBC website.
  • The serial killer Carver from Nip Tuck had a Myspace, in which he would post videos about his motives and philosophy of life, and finally, unmasking.
  • The Office has blogs for Dwight, Meredith, and Creed.
    • Actor Brian Baumgartner wrote a blog as his character Kevin.
  • Gus and Lassiter of Psych both have blogs on the show's official site. Lassiter's blog is actually written by Tim Ormundson, the actor who plays him.
    • Lassiter also has a Twitter.
  • Several characters from Sherlock have blogs, chief among them being John Watson's.
  • One of the earliest character blogs was Stargate SG-1, which had a website in the early seasons which posted "mission reports" after each new episode, although it didn't mention whether any of the on-screen characters wrote them.
  • Earth: Final Conflict also had these, primarily Augur's site.
  • On True Blood, Jessica Hamby has her own video blog as of season 3, giving partial glimpses into her new life or just providing an extra laugh.


Music


Newspaper Comics

  • Dethany in On the Fastrack has tweets presented on the official main page. Like Lindesfarne (see Kevin and Kell below), she appears to consider herself real but knows that Bill Holbrook chronicles much of her life in a comic strip.
    • Bud Spore used to have a blog titled "Spore Samples," but it died of disinterest.
  • For yet another Holbrook example, Roger in Safe Havens has a weekly blog.


Nonfiction Series

  • An in-character Twitter for Stephen Colbert appears on the members-only part of ColbertNation.com.


Professional Wrestling

  • CHIKARA has an example of the concept done in wrestling, as periodically on their web site new blog posts from members of their roster writing in character are uploaded.
    • It could be argued that most pro wrestlers in the indy scene with MySpaces would be doing this as well, most notably Vin Gerard, Chris Hero and all the 'guest columnists' on wwe.com


Theatre

  • The Drowsy Chaperone did this with the Man In Chair during the Broadway run, and some local productions have vlogs or even Facebook pages for him.


Video Games

  • General Alfonso Knoxx, the Big Bad of the Borderlands DLC Armory of General Knoxx, has his own Twitter Account.
  • Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party's Rena writes blog updates for the DDR Wii games. When Furu Furu Party (Japan's HP2) was coming out, she even did interviews with the main staff of FFP!
  • Bannable Offenses is a blog where a Game Master for Final Fantasy XI, [GM]Dave, lists his many, many, many cases of cruel and unusual punishment against stupid and/or ignorant players and gilsellers, along with some snippets of his everyday life. A Magnificent Bastard if there ever was one.
    • The same person also did another character blog from the perspective of an enemy from the game, Goblin Smithy. This one actually came first, but got less attention and never made it back from the author's first hiatus.
  • The official blog for the Updated Rerelease of La-Mulana has several archeology lectures done by Lemeza himself.
  • The little red sisters of The Path posted their own blogs up to the time of release, with entries that became Harsher in Hindsight after playing.
  • During the development of Psychonauts, Tim Schafer created profiles for each of the game's child characters in a small online friending network to better develop each character's personality.
  • Sam Fisher, the hero of Splinter Cell, once had one. Just like the "interviews" with him in the games' special features, it claimed that the games were merely based on his real life adventures. Strangely, he explicitly named the top-secret organization he's supposedly a part of.
  • There is a rather lengthy series of fan-made character blogs for the cast of Suikoden IV and Suikoden Tactics, which tell the story of both games, although Tactics is incomplete. The archives can be found here.
  • Eri Mizutani, from the DS game THE iDOLM@STER Dearly Stars, has her own blog, named Fountain of Ellie.
  • For Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and a few other series, a large collection of fan-made character blogs can be found on Formspring. Here's the trope page.
  • A series of Twitter posts were written by Shantae summarizing the plot of the first game, to promote the sequel.
  • There is an official Twitter page for Doug Rattman of Portal
    • There are various handfuls of both ask and roleplay blogs on Tumblr for practiacally all characters from both Portal games. Including, and not limited to, all the personality cores, GLaDOS, Chell, Rattmann, Cave Johnson, turrets, the emancipation grill, a lemon, the radio... actually, if it's appeared in Portal, there's probably been a blog made for it.
  • Norman Jayden from Heavy Rain has several, including a popular Formspring and Twitter account run by the You Tuber Nahman Jayden (now inactive). He also has Facebook and Tumblr pages owned by different people.
    • Ethan Mars, Scott Shelby, Madison Paige, Carter Blake, and even Shaun/Jason Mars also have some blogs floating around on the internet, although many of them are inactive or infrequently updated.
  • During the buildup to the release of Mass Effect 3, Emily Wong had a Twitter feed (technically, she took over the preexisting Alliance News Network account). For twelve hours, she livetweeted the Reaper invasion of Earth until she died, ramming her skyvan into a Reaper.
  • Yukabacera of Iji kept secret news posts on Daniel Remar's official website to provide some backstory to the game and to characterize himself more. They're right here.


Webcomic

  • Achewood takes this to extremes, with frequently updated blogs for Ray, Roast Beef, Pat, Teodor, Philippe, Cornelius, Lyle, Molly, Nice Pete, Little Nephew, Emeril, and finally cartoonist Chris Onstad himself (whose house is a key setting for the comic, and who has turned up sparingly throughout)
    • Also, the Chris Onstad who appears in the comic and writes the blog isn't the "real" Chris Onstad; that is, he's a fictionalized version of himself and his blog is not the same it would be if it were the "real" Onstad. He very rarely breaks character from the fictional Onstad anywhere.
  • Erfworld uses two variations of the Character Blog. The creators have set up a site with an archive of Parson's "real world" webcomic and comments. After he is summoned into Erfworld, Parson records his thoughts in a series of Klogs (booK logs) that are occasionally interspersed with regular Erfworld pages.
  • A borderline example: the most prominent characters in Far Out There have their own personal Pandora Radio stations.
  • Friendly Hostility had blogs supposedly kept by Fox, Collin and Bootsie. The real writers never revealed their identities. All but defunct now, the blogs are still a fun read, and worth looking into for their alternate/supplemental takes on the story.
  • Othar Tryggvassen, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!! of Girl Genius, Genre Savvy, and a Well-Intentioned Extremist, has his own Twitter.
  • The cast of Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name has fan-run Twitter blogs, though they're admittedly fake and not terribly true to character (rather, most tend to be exaggerated) (the rest of the characters can be found through each character's 'following' page).
  • The author of the Insecticomics kept a livejournal for Safeguard for a while. However, it was completely in Mini-Con beeps and thus completely incomprehensible.
  • It should be no surprise that Lindesfarne of Kevin and Kell would keep a blog. "The Virtual Quill" updates weekly with her own commentary on recent events in the comic. Recently, she's begun to respond to her readers' comments as well. Even more recently, former regular Catherine Aura has been posting to Twitter to spy on strip author Bill Holbrook because of his vast knowledge of the Domain universe. To do so, she's even taken the measure of making herself and her son human. Unlike Lindesfarne's blog, however, the readers are encouraged not to let her in on the "secret".
  • The in-universe creator of The Life of Nob T. Mouse, Hubert Schlongson, occasionally pops up on the website to provide increasingly surreal anecdotes about his time visiting Nob Mouse and friends.
  • Marten of Questionable Content had a music blog for a while, but it's long been defunct.
    • The author has recently started Twitter pages for the main characters, all communicating with each other.
  • Romantically Apocalyptic has "Ask (Character)" tumblrs for each main character. Though run by fans, the people in charge are kept up to date on plot plans and character bios by the author so that they can be as accurate as possible, and they are effectively official. There are also some less-official ones for side-characters such as Photoshop and Mister Kittyhawk that do not receive the plot-backing.
  • Shelley Winters, the nominal main character of Scary Go Round had her own Twitter, described by her creator as "the greatest betrayal of my professional career". He later abandoned it, however.
  • Many characters from Unwinder's Tall Comics have their own Internet presence. For example a Journal Comic made by Felicity Walsh is here. Another character, Sonty Mick has a webcomic criticism blog. Unwinder himself has a blog chronicling his attempts to chat with Vin Diesel via Omegle. Then there are Shadow and Chug from Power Up Comics...
  • Death, from the webcomic The Kenny Chronicles, on Twitter.
  • Wolf, from the webcomic Here Wolf posts on the comic's Twitter and Facebook pages.
  • Nick Zerhakker, the cyborg helicopter from Skin Horse, has a LiveJournal where he gets to complain about the field team (and everything else) without his in-universe profanity-blocking software interfering.. It was temporarily comandeered by Unity for her New Orleans Mission Log (ie, a sidestory about what she was doing while Tip and Sweetheart were in Cleveland).
  • Homestuck: Dave Strider, in addition to his webcomic, has a blog.


Web Original


Western Animation

  • Bionicle has done two online serials this way with a blog written by Gali in 2007 and a Takanuva Blog in 2008. Takanuva's blog though generally retells the climax of the 2008 arc from his perspective.
  • Various Transformers have Twitter accounts, including Shattered Glass Ravage and bunch of characters from Animated. It's uncertain if any (and if so which) are "officially" run, or just random fans.
    • None of them are official in terms of canon, but off the top of my head Animated Sentinel Prime's Twitter is run by Jim Sorenson, compiler/writer of several official knowledge guides, and Ravage's Twitter is run by David Willis, the guy who created the character.
      • In addition, Derrick J. Wyatt has officially sanctioned the blogs of Shattered Glass Sari and that fat, pompous old loon, Lord High Governor Straxus.
  • Homer Simpson only has one Twitter account. The other one is fake.
  • There are well over fifty twitter accounts associated with My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (including separate ones for Nightmare Moon and Princess Luna). At this point, it's unclear how many, if any at all, are canon.
  • Archer has a twitter account
  • Howie, Narwhal, Bunny and Duck from Almost Naked Animals all have Facebook pages. Narwhal also has a Twitter.
  • Spongebob Squarepants and Patrick Star both have official twitter accounts.
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