True Blood

About

True Blood is a television supernatural drama airing on HBO which follows Sookie Stackhouse as she navigates a world where vampires have recently revealed themselves and desire to integrate into society. The show is based on the The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris.

History

True Blood is based on The Southern Vampire Mysteries series by Charlaine Harris, the first novel in the series, Dead Until Dark was released in May 2001. The television show premiered on HBO on September 7th, 2008. It ran for seven seasons, and will conclude at the end of the 7th season on August 24th, 2014, after 80 episodes.

Premise

Two years after synthetic blood makes it possible for vampires to survive without feeding off people, they’re fighting for their rights to become equal American citizens. During this time Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is a telepathic waitress in a small town in Louisiana. Sookie begins a relationship with Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a vampire who recently returned to town. The other people in Sookie’s life include her best friend Tara Thorton (Rutina Wesley), her brother Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) and her grandmother Adele Stackhouse (Lois Smith).

Reception

True Blood received a score of 8.1 on IMDB^[12] and a rating of 64 on Metacritic.^[13] Its season premiere drew over 1.4 million viewers^[14] and its last season premiere drew over 4 million viewers. It has been nominated for four Golden Globes, winning one in 2009 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Drama (Anna Paquin).

Online Presence

As of July 2014, True Blood’s official Twitter account^[1] has over 700,000 followers and its Facebook page^[2] has over 11.6 million likes. All seasons are available to HBO subscribers to watch online through HBO Go. Fans can all access episode guides and character sketches at the True Blood Wikia.^[2]

Fandom

There are numerous fan-run Tumblr blogs dedicated to the True Blood fandom including trublood^[4], hellyeahtrueblood^[5] and ericandsookielovers.^[6] Popular Tumblr tags fans use to tag their content include TrueBlood^[7] and TB.^[8] Fans also gather to discuss the show on the subreddit /r/TrueBlood^[9], which has over 18,000 subscribers as of July 2014. As of July 2014, there are over 1,600 True Blood fanfiction submissions on Fanfic.net^[10] and more than 61,000 fan art submissions for the show on DeviantArt.^[11]