Transmedia Webseries - specifically, Green Gables Fables

Last March, I wrote this blog post regarding the end of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a wildly popular, Emmy award winning transmedia webseries on YouTube (the first of it's kind), explaining the effect it had on me: /http://inmyfathershands.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-lizzie-bennet-diaries.html

What's a transmedia webseries? Essentially, it's a YouTube show where the characters "live in the real world with us". That is, they have Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/Tumblr accounts and will respond to your comments on their YouTube videos. You, as the audience, can live "In-world" and "out-of-world" - i.e. you can interact with the characters AND with the actors on social media (though an audience member who tries to break the barriers between them will be ignored and is kind of missing the point).

Imagine actually being friends with a character from your favorite TV show. That's what transmedia webseries do for the modern day fan. Mostly, they're based on classic literature, because that's what started the trend (although Classic Alice is branching out and being extremely meta by making Alice (the character) be a real person pretending to live her life by books. So, unlike other webseries characters, she's aware of the books her show is based on).

Since LBD (as it is affectionately called), a lot of transmedia shows have been produced, including:
- The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy
- Emma Approved
- Frankenstein, MD
- A Tell-Tale Vlog
- Classic Alice
- Green Gables Fables

(These are the ones I actively watched. I know there are many more that have been produced!)

I want to specifically applaud Green Gables Fables because they are a super low budget group of students who are producing a show that's REALLY accurate to what I believe Anne would be like (and she's one of my absolute favorite characters in literature). They are taking the minute details of the book and moving the plot along just as slowly as I believe Anne would live in real life.

Also, Gilbert Blythe, one of literature's greatest, most attractive men, just tweeted at me. Green Gables Fables has gotten me hooked on my relationship with their characters, and brought characters I never really liked (we're looking at you, Jane Andrews) into vivid, lovable color.

And that's one reason I'm obsessed with YouTube.