Basic Social Media Strategy Can Be Used For Roleplay

Even if roleplay is cursory, to start off on the best of your ability, consider creating a social media strategy that works for you optimally. Hypefury has a few suggestions.

There is a key to create SMART goals that can be measured. One idea to consider in the SMART system is if you WANT to do it. If you do not want to do it, then don’t.

What is your target audience. It cannot be broad. It must be honed in and the only way to understand your audience is deciding your research.

While reach and engagement is very important in social media, for roleplay there is a watching factor that inherently occurs with each performance and the more in character you maintain. Out of character discussion, while simpler in concept have to be maintained. Roleplay if staged must be organized for effectiveness. Nevertheless, metrics are important for business related posts, no so much for hobbies. And yes, vanity metrics, such as likes and followers mean nothing overall.

Have engaging content. Posting several different concepts in life is confusing to your followers. Posting consistent content sets your expertise for the social media you want. Then content should be a balance between content text and images. A picture is worth 1000 words. Some pictures are utterly controversial, not because of nudity, but because someone, somewhere, disagrees about the content and they want to make their point known. Links that post images are the most useful. Without that image, the text goes unread. Videos and gifs work better.

Social media calendars are essential for specific campaigns for roleplayers. Discussing overall your expertise is a good thing, but directing dates and times of your posts to optimize the interaction with the audience is what you use your social media metrics for.

The issue with strict RP accounts is there is a time where there lots of interaction, then there is a long lull period. Lost of interaction period is when the new content is released. Use your calendar for estimating the concept of that. Use holidays. Prepare featured product releases. All podcasts and video releases. Think about how you are going to lead your audience and persuade them to your ideas of your expertise. Be prepared for hecklers because there is always a schism. Have a plan for that. The lull periods should be used for all your ideas being written somewhere on a blog, or site, etc. Your audience can be referred to your sites that go in depth. Then you can charge for more exclusive information.

Roleplay to the Star Wars Actors Guild 77 (SWAG77) means an outline and script written to perform on social media. Portrayal of a character is NOT roleplay to SWAG77. Portrayal is fun to do, but it does lead to wasted social media time. If all someone wants to do is distraction, shoot the breeze, piddle about, meaningless conversation, and/or trying to make friends you have never met, okay. Define what you want. But if you ever seen our roleplays, they are incredible. Lots of people wake up and watch. But it takes a lot of planning and practice.

How to Create a Social Media Strategy in 6 Easy Steps

Star Wars: Vernissage Version 1.o – fan-fiction feat. #Grand AdmiralThrawn #SabineWren

Star Wars Rebels: The Vernissage (12614 words) by SWAG_77
Chapters: 6/?
Fandom: Star Wars – All Media Types, Star Wars Legends – All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Thrawn | Mitth’raw’nuruodo, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, Stormtroopers, Chiss Troopers, Imperials – Character, Sabine Wren, Lando Calrissian, Rebels – Character
Additional Tags: Observations, Star Wars Actors Guild 77, SWAG 77
Series: Part 1 of Get Thrawn In Star Wars Rebels
Summary:

Thrawn in Star Wars Rebels fan-fictions

Grand Admiral Thrawn is an Imperial Chiss Officer – an alien and the only one of his kind within the hierarchy of the Empire. He is ordered by Emperor Palpatine to retrieve a secret fleet built by his Master’s Master, Darth Tenebreous or Rugess Nome, a Bith Shipbuilder that used Sith enchanted materials for the starships. However before Thrawn became a Grand Admiral, he had to care for a small Mandalorian girl whom he was her patron until he lost contact with her from the Imperial Academy on Mandalore. The girl’s name was Sabine Wren and he taught her art and music theory. Their lives suddenly become interwoven into a galaxy replete with art and him tracking her every direction.

Oversharing as an #RP Character

How much is too much?

Review of the blog: When Everything’s Shareable, You’re Never Not Performing from a RP performance perspective

Our blog is about what is going on in RL regular profile, non-RP accounts. Imagine what happens in RP accounts when there is a MUSE vs MUN problem?

If 70% of 18+ are using social media and it affects their real interactions with people, and 60% are unhappy with their interactions on social media, think how it affects our RPs in performances? IF SOMEONE SEES RP LIKE A PERFORMANCE!

Most RPers are trying to develop relationships with one another. Some serious relationship that lead to dating, marriage or otherwise. To some people who is very strange, to others it’s the norm. In reality, from a socio-psychological standpoint, it’s unrealistic of how a relationship truly develop no matter the words of the intimacy. Historically it could be true, but humans need physical interaction and not through a keyboard.

Treating RP like creating a movie, television show or play production, makes it easier to digest the psychological connections people erroneously conceive as real relationships, even if on-screen there was a sexual filming. This is why not anyone is an actor without classes.

RP works the same way.

Roleplaying Help by King of Ravens – modified

rp help — let me sing you the song of my people

This guide is a good one from a roleplayer who performs as “LOKI”.  The person has extensive experience in online RP and understands the verse they are from. Slight modifications have been made and while it was not requested if this content can be used, we are respecting the content and provide trackbacks to the original node.

Everyone should know this information if they call themselves creating a character and roleplaying it.

 

A simple guide to roleplaying terms to read and follow. Simple RP etiquette. If you violate any of these, chances are there will be no reply

Godmoding/Godmodding

v. THE ACT OF BEING A GODDAMN ASSHOLE.

No, really. This is essentially when your character is a perfect, flawless, cannot-be-killed God. If you play a God, you better not even fucking do this because it’s annoying and people will hate you.

This typically arises in fights. A Godmod will dodge every, or nearly every, attack aimed at them and will somehow become Hulk-strong and smash you to pieces without letting you have the chance to dodge or protect yourself.

IF YOU ARE THIS ASSHOLE, PEOPLE WILL HATE YOU.

A few other things that make you a Godmod

• Killing/maiming/severely injuring/kidnapping another person’s character without their direct permission (and by this I mean you messaged and asked them for permission BEFORE YOU REPLIED. You do not get to reply with your Godmodding bullshit and then ask them if that was okay. NO NO NO NO NO).
• Powerplaying can sometimes fit under this category, but I like powerplaying all by itself since a lot of people do it and it pisses me the fuck off.

Powerplaying:

This is huge for me. H U G E. I’m honestly so upset that most you have never even heard of this term because it’s extremely important.

v. The act of controlling someone else’s character along with your own (and without permission).

Essentially “Sue” forces your character do something. YOU, AS THE PLAYER, CONTROL YOUR CHARACTER AND YOUR CHARACTER ALONE. You do not, in any way, shape, or form, get to choose the actions, thoughts, etc that another character does UNLESS HIS OR HER PLAYER GIVES YOU PERMISSION!

This also relates to characters who have an NPC (non-player character) with them. YOU DO NOT GET TO CONTROL THAT NPC UNLESS YOU HAVE PERMISSION.

 

Meta-fucking-gaming

v. “The act of using outside or previously gained knowledge within a [RP] universe for personal gain or advantage” [x]

EVERYONE WILL HATE YOU IF YOU DO THIS, TOO.

A great example of this is: “Sally” is a goddamn stupid muggle (I mean Midgardian) who only knows Loki because he tried to take over Midgard. She’s never read the myths (not that they’re entirely accurate for him), she doesn’t know anything about his life, nothing.

So one fucking day, when Loki is threatening her because she spit on his brand new, shiny shoes, and she goes “Well, at least I’m not adopted like you, you poor miserable soul.”

SALLY YOU GODDAMN SHIT. WHERE DID YOU GAIN THIS KNOWLEDGE?

Do not use OOC (out of character) knowledge IC (in character). DO NOT!  Just because you, as the player, knows Loki is adopted doesn’t mean “Sally” the character does.

To be completely honest, no Midgardian should know he’s fucking adopted, not unless he, Odin, Frigga, or Thor have directly told you that. Don’t get me fucking started on that.

Mary/Gary Sue

n. A character who is flawless and perfect with absolutely nothing wrong with them, with all the perfect traits/qualities, and is so fucking boring that no one wants to RP with them.

Don’t be this fucking person. Dear fucking lord. There are quizzes online to help you decide if your character is a Mary/Gary sue or not, though YOU HONESTLY SHOULDN’T NEED TO TAKE A QUIZ TO KNOW.

Plagiarism

To put it bluntly, don’t be friends with Sally.

If you do any of the above to me, I will break something.

If you plagiarize me, I will literally hunt you down and shove a golf club so far up your fucking ass that it’ll rip out of your chest.

That’s all. Have a good day.

STOP NECROPOSTING!

Please. Stop necroposting on Character pages on Facebook. It’s really not smart. The administrators cannot respond because you MISSED OUT! There won’t be a rerun. Facebook doesn’t append pages past a certain date. So expecting any page response from an administrator on a post older than 3 months means you are ignorant on how to use Facebook pages. You need to learn how to do that.

The first way is to STOP NECROPOSTING!

 

What is necroposting:

Any post made 2-3 months ago, often associated with an image and specifically associated with a “fictional character” page – and you the post runs as fast as you can trying to put your 2 cents worth of an opinion that is IRRELEVANT to the post or discussion.

 

Not all pages are FAN PAGES!

FAN PAGES generally do not PERFORM or ROLEPLAY! They do not ACT IN CHARACTER! They are NOT PORTRAYING the character. Fan pages are because Fans made the page and the company, Lucasfilm, does not know about them.

SWAG 77 pages are PERFORMANCE PAGES which means page ACTS like and responds IN CHARACTER to your questions. Pointing out fan or lore related information is NOT PERFORMANCE. It’s not ROLEPLAY! It is stupid. If we behaved in character to your requests, we’d kill you. You would not know what hit you and you would not know how to respond.

Perhaps a FAN page or LORE page is more suited to your faire and questions. Consider joining those communities first before joining a full performance page.

ALL PAGES THAT ARE ENDORSED BY SWAG 77 ARE LISTED IN OUR SWAG77 NAV COORDINATES

 

SO SICK OF #RP MARY SUES!

What a Mary Sue is

In “Roleplay” or RP you will meet one of a Mary Sue, eventually. While mostly dedicated to girls, guys can be “Mary Sues” or “Gary Stus”.

What is a Mary Sue: think of an individual who does not want to tell a story, but be everything to everyone in every story. The lines of demarcation are blurred. They will have all their “objects of desire” fall in love with them, including her villains. Mary Sues can do no wrong, and if she does wrong, it can be easily overlooked.

They have no story and their backstory is so confusing to listen to, it will be like “Mommy and Daddy didn’t give me a pony for Christmas and so I’m mad at them”, but then the character is an orphan.

For guys it’s the “Ultimate Power of the Universe” and it I build my super saiyan powers to maximum with a COD lightsaber pistol with a grew up hard, gangster lifestyle as a Sith Lord, then no one will beat me, ever.

In essence it is a form of GODMODDING!

Example of a Mary Sue character sheet: More than 1 story & it’s the first 1 = mary sue.

It ruins storytelling. Those that delve in it are NOT RPing, hence they are not performing with SWAG 77.

What a character has to have:

A character sheet somewhere. What are their reasons for existing? What is the plot to their story? Exposition? Theme? What is here that I want to see a character.

A believable backstory based on the facts of the genre and a reasonable continuity.  Making up new stuff is a flow of creativity, but not a fairytale that makes it impossible to believe.

Why do people do this? LAZINESS! They don’t care, they just want to plug and play. They have not qualms or quips about being better. All they want on social media is to be distracted from their mundane lives than to build anything positive. They are TROLLS in the RP community and when they are discovered, they resort to cyberbullying the individual who has discovered their insecurities.

These same individuals will cry foul on you, when you delve deeper into their motivations. When you review their feeds, they are of no substance.

They are fantasizing about their “character” really being with your character and they LIVE THEIR LIVES BEING THEIR CHARACTERS. They actually believe they ARE ________________ (insert latest popular movie/book/RL celebrity) — an no, not talking about cosplayers, or page or Twitter managers. If you ask them their true name, they will say their character as their name. They LIVE through their character’s lives and they want to be that. It’s a dissociation identity disorder hiding behind a mask with a mix of narcissism.   It’s like, “I am Napoleon…”

What to do: If all you want to do is be distracted, there are other ways than misleading the public that you are a badass character from your favorite story, then switching your character when their popularity wanes.

You TELL YOUR STORY! If you don’t know how? We offer resources to where you can learn how to do that on our Facebook page.

Write your character sheet and test your character in this litmus test.

OUTLINE the story you wish to tell. Be prepared to receive criticism. Don’t be afraid of that. Because if you are, it means you refuse to grow into something better. And most of the time, people are well-meaning.

Participate in writing activities. Do you blog? Are you participating in NaNoWriMo? If you are a good performer, step up your performance and put in the written word. Show what you’ve got. And remember:

Break a leg!

The Warped World of the Unmedicated Star Wars Fan Online

SWAG 77 follows the canon, continuity and timeline of Star Wars as outlined by the Holocron Keeper, Leland Chee and his team. Lucasfilm hired him to specifically conform all the stories to align to what is said in “G-canon” – “George-Canon” which are the movies.  According to Star Wars Infinities, the Star Wars canon follows as outlined:

What is Star Wars Canon

Canon is what is licensed, approved and paid for by Lucasfilm and supports the vision of George Lucas, or the leaders of Lucasfilm. which is Disney and Kathleen Kennedy.

In a story, canonicity shifts to tell a great story. Just like politics, medicine, morals and ideas shift, so do stories. Old theories change with new data. To evolve, we have to change. It is about survival. If the story of Star Wars is to survive, the canon will change. Getting too wrapped up in story absolutes limits everyone’s potential.

Ironically, all the content creators at Lucasfilm understand this fact. However, fans are a different breed. Fans that have been involved with Star Wars Fandom and know few of the Star Wars celebrities, are okay with new content creation.

It is the casual or the new fans, that don’t cosplay, have not read a novel or seen the latest TV show – they just have not had the full Star Wars fan experience that lacks the open-mindedness to change. And with every organization that has a hierarchy, a sociological design, there will always be fans that if you mess with their equilibrium, there will become some explosive diatribes on social media. From “George Lucas raped my childhood” to “Disney is going to destroy Star Wars”.

Those of us who perform on social media (or roleplay) and like to write fan-fiction in Star Wars get the brunt end of those vocal few that are closed-minded. We suffer the litanies of the big-bad-corporation dominating over “THEIR” Star Wars! And it is weird to us because what we do is take all the information we can get from Lucasfilm and incorporate it into a presentable story for Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.

At SWAG 77, EVERYDAY, we read a lot of material from EVERY source to understand the characters we portray. We talk to cosplayers, actors and if we can, the writers and directors, who can guide our understanding of the thoughts and ideas behind a story so we can effectively bring characters to life on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. There are several ways we do this process.

Sadly, our work gets diminished by rabid fans in their “warped world being unmedicated”.  Sometimes it gets downright ugly. We get called real-life names, such as racial and gender-preference epithets on our canon character pages. We are trolled. We are attacked sexually – called e-raping by some fans. Our real-life gets outed and mocked, and we are not protected by the content creators of Lucasfilm or Disney.

All for portraying a movie/TV character on Facebook and Twitter.

No story is worth that much by telling it social media, and we do it out sheer love, no remuneration or perks all for Star Wars.

Character Sheet Reasons

In SWAG 77 we use character sheets for all our N-canon characters.  The character sheets we have used vary from the Star Wars The Old Republic Long Form to an abbreviated short form.

What we found is, both of the SWTOR forms lacked a good backstory necessary for character development and performing the character on social media without attack.

Having a good backstory takes time, and the audience does not want to see your personal history as a backstory for your character. It appears as if you are living your life through your fictional character, rather than trying to really tell a story and having your character’s voice. It lacks plot and depth and your character is trivialized in the story.

 

A good backstory generally gives the motivation for the plot and the story arc.  Some backstories are too long and no one wants to read them. Other backstories are too short and leaves too much to be desired. But a backstory in social media entertainment should be nearly a “tagline” to a plot or the “blurb” on the back cover of a book. Long enough to be intriguing, but short enough to read it quickly.

 

Character identification: SWAG 77 is Star Wars Actors Guild 77. STAR WARS! Not the latest popular fiction out there, but STAR WARS! Characters must be identified MORE than the movies and television. You must delve into the literature to fully understand the nature of your character’s identity.

A Sith Hutt would have poor exposition in performing a Star Wars story on Facebook. Your character would be unbelievable in Star Wars and would be traumatic for you when explain your character to Star Wars fans. Most of the time people who do that overpower their characters making them “Mary Sues” to fit into the performance, rather than studying the canon and seeing what is possible.

When you create your character, you had better know something about his or her homeworld, what the latest Star Wars Expanded Universe literature is on it, and you should know everything about your character.

Senator Yemaja is half-Human, half-Yuuzhan Vong. 1) How can that happen? It is justified on the power of the Force to go absence as desired if one believes in the Unifying Force Theory. The basis of this was Force Sever. Does one become absent in the Force when severing herself from it? What causes that severance? What I found is Force Sever is a choice. The Force user can choose to sever herself from the Force and it is painful. The research was obtained by reading all the novels about the Yuuzhan Vong, what Force Severing was in the book, “Jedi vs Sith” and constantly looking for updates on Wookieepedia.  2) Senator Yemaja is part Korunnai from Haruun Kal, making her a power in the Force due to her past Jedi heritage. I used the molecular cellular biological concept of “variegation” to justify that not all of Yemaja’s cells had “midichlorians” in them. That in fact Yemaja’s mother was a Chimera – the eggs in her mother did not match the cells in her body. This is a real occurred in human biology. By implementing this process, I enriched the plot into what does the Force do with variegation and chimeras?  These are the stories that are performed under SWAG 77.

 

SWAG77 is not affiliated with Lucasfilm except in Star Wars Celebration 6. The reason for that is the information submitted on the application. We read and write a lot for our stories and characters. Our reading list is long. Our sample writings spread over several blogs and stories. We follow a scripting format. Our process is intense. Our purpose is to not only get as close to canon as possible, but also to predict it. We have followed information on our favorite characters so closely that we have been accurate on what is shown on television and/or written in the novels. We ask the content creators of Star Wars, keep aspects on the characters and situations. We stay on top of the Lucasfilm Star Wars franchise. That is what it takes to perform on social media.

Many people barely do that and want to chase “roleplayers” for sexual conquest. But our performances are like a production for television – the audience wants more.  Screen Actors Guild actors ask us what we are doing. Bestselling authors are watching our progress. Now we need Lucasfilm to see us at our best. So when we say “audition”, these people are the ones that we have to impress, not some alleged little girl (maybe) attempting to sleep her way to the top with all the “Star Wars Jedi”.

On SWAG77 we follow the rules of Facebook and Google+ and use pages for all our characters. If you cannot use a page because you use a phone, then SWAG77 is not for you at this time. Our work demands us to create and manage a lot of pages. The demand to switch from one character to another on the numerous different pages. There will be NO fake impostor accounts in our system. Other groups may use different systems and that is them, but that is not SWAG77. We have a standard and we would like to keep it. Using fake accounts is risky and you can lose them. We are running an ethical business and we want people to be honest for their best performances.

You do not need a performing page, we have several members who do not perform but assist us in writing, evaluating and developing our stories. That is a great service to us and we appreciate their input.

Assume all information you present to us is an “audition” for your admittance to SWAG77. So would it not be in your best interest to put your best foot forward? If you think you are up to the challenge, complete our simple character sheet!

 

 

May The SWAG77 Be With You

Star Wars Performance University is a project under SWAG77

Star Wars Performance University started as “Star Wars Roleplaying University” in 2011 to assist new performers in improvisation techniques and writing. There were several courses organized. Due to circumstances, beyond our control, SWRPU had to change.

By December, 2011,  the “Star Wars Actors Guild 77” or SWAG77 separated from the Isle Sanctuary Creative Artists (ISCA) to be dedicated solely to fans of Star Wars.

All pages associated with Star Wars that were under ISCA were moved to SWAG77 for one unifying page dedicated to the promotion of Star Wars fandom on social media. To unleash one’s inner fandom online and promote real life fan related activities.

One page was SWRPU. However, to be fair to other groups, it was decided to allow SWRPU should be an autonomous entity. Its sole goal was to help performers write creatively, set up their social media and market their efforts in a professional manner. The goal for SWRPU was to show Lucasfilm a novel form of entertainment and performance of their products on social media.

However, in the business of social media entertainment and performance, things rarely go as planned and business expectations could not be predicted. The owner of SWAG77 and SWRPU was cyberattacked, late 2011 and partially resolved until early 2012.

SWAG77 retooled and shifted its policies to a traditional form of social media and introduced several products to the market. The shift changed the goal and name of the SWRPU to “Star Wars Performance University”.

In May, 2012 SWAG77 was accepted to have a fan table at Star Wars Celebration 6 in Orlando, Florida on August, 2012.

All activities of SWAG77 must comply with Lucasfilm standards and one of them is removing the word “Roleplaying” from the activities on social media.

SWAG77 also has to agree to perform canon characters only and stay within the continuity of the canon.

SWAG77 are like “Costumed Players” or “Cosplayers”, but we are online. Everything we use to perform is from Lucasfilm licensed and published materials.

As such, SWAG77 and Star Wars Performance University (SWPU) must follow the guidelines of the social media platform, such as Facebook and only use pages to represent their fictional characters. SWAG77 will no longer use profiles to perform. Anyone using a profile to perform will only be seen as a member of the audience or a heckler.

All characters or entities will be performing “in character”. RARELY will the person behind the character release personal information from the page.

“Roleplayers” who lack a page and a character sheet will be seen as a member of the audience and any responses by the Page Character, if there are any responses will be made in character.  If there are altercations, the person will be banned from the page.

“Roleplayers” who have inappropriate names for said characters, usually aligning with a lack of a character sheet, will be seen as a member of audience and any responses by the Page Character, if there are any responses, will be made in character. If there are altercations, the person will be banned from the page.

Be realistic, it took many hours of hard work to make this project happen and to catch Lucasfilm’s eye. When someone refuses to follow our rules belligerently in both SWAG77, SWPU and ISCA cannot be tolerated.  What we are talking about here is just posting and interacting on our pages… Not “roleplaying” or setting up a story arc for performance. Simply to post and interact.

If these guidelines are ignored, then membership into SWAG77 is compromised. These are courtesies so that posters avoid being banned from our pages.

These are about respecting the process of character development and the work that has been done.

If  the SWAG77 organization is for you, we would love to have you come on board through our membership intake process.

If you prefer another group, we wish you much success in your goals!

Take care!

Dr.G-

Star Wars Performance University Tidbits: DO YOUR RESEARCH!

Performance tidbit: If you choose to Perform Improv on FB, BE CREATIVE! In order to be creative, you have study MORE than Wookieepedia – even they said it’s a jumping off point.

You got to get to the Star Wars Books. You need to read Star Wars Insider Magazine. And learn how to write! You are lame if you don’t do it.

Added:Vordis Korrupto StarkillerWookieepedia is a guide, nothing more. A quick and easy research tool, or a search engine to find good books to read based on your interests. It should not be the sole basis of any performer’s knowledge

Visit us more on Star Wars Performance University on FB