I have something to tell you:

I was once three middle-aged men and a robot.

I could just leave it at that and let you fill in the “how the…” but I will elaborate.

I am a massive fan of The Venture Bros. “Obsessive nerd” may actually be a better descriptor. Back in 2009ish, an unofficial twitter fan account for Dean Venture became rather popular. My memory is not clear on the details of how everything unfolded from there. I had just moved to Los Angeles and was adjusting to a new life. It’s even possible that some of this all got started on one of the nights I had taken Ambien as that was a… thing… for a few months around the time of my move. Be wary of that drug is all I’m going to say on that subject. It’s a weird one.

Anyway, it turned out there was a group of people and they all wanted to start other role playing Venture Bros fan accounts and were looking for other players.

“Please tell me you need a Doctor Orpheus!”

“We do!”

And so it started. On Christmas night, I became Doctor O, hands down my favorite character on the show.

He’s a necromancer styled after Doctor Strange. His manner of speech is archaic and dramatic. He wields powerful magic and is often the only voice of reason in the Venture household. But he’s also a single dad in the midst of a midlife crisis and teased mercilessly by Dr. Venture, who for much of the show is his landlord. I took WAY too much pleasure crafting inane everyday tweets in his “voice.” Some examples:

I could go on and on, or you could just go check out Doctor Orpheus on Twitter if you want more.

Eventually, the other Venture players and I revealed our real-life selves to one another over chat. I will not out my fellow players, but I was tickled that every single one of us was female. I’m still good virtual friends with some of them and hope we can meet in the real world some day.

We divvied out some of the other roles. Soon I became Hunter Gathers, another favorite. He (and sometimes she) is an agent of various clandestine groups on the show. His mannerisms are 100% Hunter S. Thompson as an action spy. Another voice to play with.

As you can see, we all started “conversing” with one another on Twitter. Sometimes “accidentally.” Doctor O tweeted out his “phone number” once- a google voice number I had purchased only to make a voicemail message to see how many people would call. Quite a few did. We created story lines and it was fun tweeting to friends who were fans of the show and who had absolutely no idea I was behind the accounts. Tweeting conversations with yourself is an interesting experience.

Eventually, I added Brock Samson to my repertoire (though there were a few of us tweeting as him and I couldn’t keep us straight after a while). This had an extra layer of geek fun to it as I once worked with Patrick Warburton on a short film. Yes, it was super cool. Imagine him looking up at you and with that voice saying, “I feel like I’m gonna throw up.” (I was the script supervisor and we maybe overdid it a bit with the fog machines…)

Etc. I was taking the whole thing very seriously (and having way too much fun doing it). Soon, Doctor Orpheus had more Twitter followers than my personal Twitter account. Sadly, the characters have been pretty quiet for the past few years and most of their followers have vanished. The account interactions are no longer reflective of how popular these characters were back then. Ah, digital. The whole thing was a wonderful writing/improv exercise, though. I got to play with different voices in specific situations. Eventually, I took up a bigger challenge: tweeting as the non-human H.E.L.P.eR. robot.

…what? H.E.L.P.eR. doesn’t actually speak on the show. At least, he doesn’t speak English. His character posed more of a technical question of “how do I capture his voice” than a writerly one. My solution? H.E.L.P.eR. speaks in hexadecimal and kaomoji. Here’s a translator (the one on his profile doesn’t link to anything anymore and I kind of lost half of these accounts’ login info).

This was a fun way to pass the time between extras and temp/contract web developing gigs. Eventually, though, life took over and I had no more time to devote to this little Twitter world (and figured I should probably start focusing on my other writing). I miss this side of the Internet, though. If it’s still there, it’s damn hard to find amidst all of the conspiracy theories and online political “news” screaming.

Now, I know some of you are wondering is this legal? As far as I know, since we were all parody accounts, yes. We never claimed to be affiliated with the show and stated so regularly. I mean, I guess I will find out, now that I have outted myself here. Though, I outted myself to one of the show’s producers/writers long ago at Comic-Con and wasn’t immediately arrested. We ran into Doc Hammer and I fessed up to him. He was actually tickled and dying to know how I did H.E.L.P.eR. He told me his dialog is always fun to try to write in a script.

I’m actually writing this in honor of that convention. I haven’t been since I had a kid. The logistics and costs of going to a giant convention with a young one who might need to be wheeled to a nearby hotel for a nap mid-day made such an adventure pretty much impossible. Not to mention the fact that the “nerd flu” that circulates around the halls is bad enough in a non-COVID year. This year, I was finally able to afford it and felt the little one was old enough to appreciate it. Alas.