Oh, god. I'm going to have to split this comment on you. Sorry!
Hmm... have you been through the "journal" function on the .org? Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Or is it more a matter of circulated essays?
From what I've seen (limited), the "journal" function appears to be used (by those who use it at all) kind of like we use our LJs - a combination of thinky posts, personal posts, random personal messages, and stuff relating to our various fanworks.
When I say meta, I mean - ummmm. Okay, the first example would be metafandom, which is a newsletter. (And I'm going to define that, just in case you don't know what it is - I'm trying to remember our jargon doesn't always mesh. A newsletter is a LJ comm where a small group of editors rounds up all the relevant links for a given fandom or fannish topic and posts them on a daily, semiweekly, or weekly basis; the vidding equivalent is, right now, veni_vidi_vids, where you can see all the live-action vids, meta, news, etc. gathered from around LJ and beyond.) So, metafandom rounds up all the links of people writing about fandom: essays, rants, whatever. Essentially, whenever fans are talking about some aspect of fannishness (in public, on LJ), metafandom is there.
Another example would be a post I linked Scintilla to, up above: this one (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/45633.html). This is a pretty typical fannish meta post, aside from the fact that I was a non-vidder talking about vidding. (Well, and also I can't shut up. Some meta is that long. But some people - people other than me - manage to come to a conclusion before their audience experiences verbiage-related brain damage, and so their meta is shorter.)
So I guess the short answer is "circulated essays," but it's important to know that most fans write them, and most fans read them, and there is a lot of discussion of them. And we write these essays on every topic possible. In extreme cases, we go the acafan route and publish anthologies (http://www.amazon.com/Fan-Fiction-Communities-Age-Internet/dp/0786426403/sr=1-1/qid=1170986538/ref=sr_1_1/002-9751280-1690410?ie=UTF8&s=books) of academic analysis. Which is just so much meta, except published under real names. (And, you know, with all the trimmings of academic writing - APA style, citations, etc.)
As a community, we really really like writing about ourselves. And what we do.
With all the highschoolers and teenagers we get flooding in, it's hard to keep anything like a "cultural consensus." If y'all manage it, my hat's off to you.
We manage it mostly by having a bifurcated community - if you go to fanfiction.net, you will find a group of very different people. If I was going to describe the typical ff.net denizen, she'd be about 14 years old. She'd write stories in which every Gundam Wing or Harry Potter character falls in love with an original character, who is a girl, and who is better at everything than all the characters. (Smarter! A better fighter! Nicer! Prettier! Etc.!) She has a tragic past. And she has cerulean orbs instead of eyes.
These stories are typically not spellchecked or proofread.
They make those of us, even the teenagers (and there are many, but most of ours know how to write), on LJ either laugh or cry.
The equivalent to an ff.netter in the AMV world would be - okay. He'd be 14. He'd make a Naruto vid set to Linkin Park. He would use downloaded fansubs as his source, so the video quality was incredibly crappy. And he'd leave the subtitles in, all over the place. He wouldn't compress the audio. He'd have stray frames everywhere, so watching it would be kind of like having an eye tic. He'd leave in random lip movements. And his information section would read like this (in toto): "this took liek 2 FUCKIN HOURS to do!!!!11 and naruto ownz so you better leave a good opinion!!!!"
We call ff.net the Pit of Voles for a very good reason. AMV.org kind of contains its own Pit of Voles, which has to suck.
no subject
Hmm... have you been through the "journal" function on the .org? Is that the sort of thing you're talking about? Or is it more a matter of circulated essays?
From what I've seen (limited), the "journal" function appears to be used (by those who use it at all) kind of like we use our LJs - a combination of thinky posts, personal posts, random personal messages, and stuff relating to our various fanworks.
When I say meta, I mean - ummmm. Okay, the first example would be
Another example would be a post I linked Scintilla to, up above: this one (http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/45633.html). This is a pretty typical fannish meta post, aside from the fact that I was a non-vidder talking about vidding. (Well, and also I can't shut up. Some meta is that long. But some people - people other than me - manage to come to a conclusion before their audience experiences verbiage-related brain damage, and so their meta is shorter.)
So I guess the short answer is "circulated essays," but it's important to know that most fans write them, and most fans read them, and there is a lot of discussion of them. And we write these essays on every topic possible. In extreme cases, we go the acafan route and publish anthologies (http://www.amazon.com/Fan-Fiction-Communities-Age-Internet/dp/0786426403/sr=1-1/qid=1170986538/ref=sr_1_1/002-9751280-1690410?ie=UTF8&s=books) of academic analysis. Which is just so much meta, except published under real names. (And, you know, with all the trimmings of academic writing - APA style, citations, etc.)
As a community, we really really like writing about ourselves. And what we do.
With all the highschoolers and teenagers we get flooding in, it's hard to keep anything like a "cultural consensus." If y'all manage it, my hat's off to you.
We manage it mostly by having a bifurcated community - if you go to fanfiction.net, you will find a group of very different people. If I was going to describe the typical ff.net denizen, she'd be about 14 years old. She'd write stories in which every Gundam Wing or Harry Potter character falls in love with an original character, who is a girl, and who is better at everything than all the characters. (Smarter! A better fighter! Nicer! Prettier! Etc.!) She has a tragic past. And she has cerulean orbs instead of eyes.
These stories are typically not spellchecked or proofread.
They make those of us, even the teenagers (and there are many, but most of ours know how to write), on LJ either laugh or cry.
The equivalent to an ff.netter in the AMV world would be - okay. He'd be 14. He'd make a Naruto vid set to Linkin Park. He would use downloaded fansubs as his source, so the video quality was incredibly crappy. And he'd leave the subtitles in, all over the place. He wouldn't compress the audio. He'd have stray frames everywhere, so watching it would be kind of like having an eye tic. He'd leave in random lip movements. And his information section would read like this (in toto): "this took liek 2 FUCKIN HOURS to do!!!!11 and naruto ownz so you better leave a good opinion!!!!"
We call ff.net the Pit of Voles for a very good reason. AMV.org kind of contains its own Pit of Voles, which has to suck.
Continued in part 2.