Hello

Today i'm going to talk about the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which is something that people have been asking me to talk about since the beginning of VEDA and I don't know why I haven't talked about it yet - but maybe because I feel a little bit weird about it.

There's this strange thing about the Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which is usually in my, you know, history of creating things, it's just been me. And, you know, and my brother.

Definitely, I feel like the things that I've been doing have been undoable without me. Like, a Hank Green vlogbrothers video cannot happen without Hank Green. A SciShow video cannot happen without Hank Green - though, we're sort of changing that with Michael Aranda's help. Like, a Crash Course chemistry episode cannot happen without Hank Green. VidCon! I don't feel like could happen without Hank Green.

But the Lizzie Bennett Diaries was a really big project that I cared a lot about and put a lot of creative vision into, and also a fair bit of money into, and that's something that I'd never been able to do before then. And that's something that YouTube and Nerdfighteria enabled me to do because I had enough money to, instead of buying a new car maybe, I would buy this experience of creating a webseries. I would create something cool instead of y'know, paying someone in Detroit to make me something cool - a car! I got to pay people in LA to make me something cool - a webseries!

Now of course I had a lot of input into the whole process of the Lizzie Bennett Diaries from start to finish. And there were parts that I wasn't paying a lot of attention to, and parts that I was. And that's, you know, a long story, and that's for the DVD commentaries and interviews that you will see but i'm not gonna tell the whole story of the Lizzie Bennett Diaries here.

But, it was really wonderful to see a product that could take it's own shape and be it's own thing and not need me. Like, I feel like if I died half way through The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, it would have kept going and it would probably have been just as good, It probably wouldn't have been exactly the same, but it probably would have been just as good!!

And what's really rewarding is to see the amount of, of dedication coming out, not just from the people who were creating it - the writers, the actors, and Bernie and everybody who was working on the project. But also, the community and to know and see that level of dedication. And I'm seeing that with The Brain Scoop too where people are just so interested in the thing. And they wanna be a part of it and wanna make art, and gifs, and fan-fiction, and cool stuff y' know? They wanna surround it with their own creations. And that's something that I'm always so proud to be a part of. When it becomes, not just a creation that gets consumed, but a creation that gets created around and then it creates itself around those creations and then it becomes this huge thing that's much more than just a linear y'know story being told.

The experience of consuming the Lizzie Bennett Diaries as it happened was so cool, y'know? Not just the fact that we were like on twitter and instagram and Pinterest. Also, when the fans were creating content around Lizzie Bennett Diaries. And that always made me very inspired and proud. I guess, I guess that's the feeling I'm having mostly, is that I'm proud. But also, the Lizzie Bennett Diaries can never exist the way that it did when it was happening. It can never, like, it can never be as rewarding as it was right when it was occurring. Now, the DVD of course will have lots of stuff, that y'know, nobody got to experience whilst they were experiencing The Lizzie Bennett Diaries. But, that real time element in so many different facets. Not just the stuff that we were doing through social media, but the stuff that the fans were doing. And I feel like that's gone away now, and I don't like, you don't, I'm never gonna be able to feel that exact way again. And it's kind of sad. So I'm kind of sad.

Of course, it's not a surprise that I'm kind of sad. I'm also kind of sad that I can never like watch Firefly for the first time again, or I can never watch Star Wars in the way that Star Wars was released in the theaters cause it wasn't born yet, y'know? So of course I'm a little bit sad. And I'm a little bit sad that the whole process, and the team isn't going to be working together and isn't going to be making things together anymore.  

BUT, overall, I'm very proud, I'm very happy, I'm very enthusiastic about the next things that are on the horizon for Pemberley Digital - which is a real company by the way! That I am an officer of! The world is weird.

Goodbye.