(Note: this was going to be a contribution to an UnCon vidshow, but it got out of hand. Badly out of hand. So I figured I'd post it here and spare all the virtual con-goers a lot of scrolling
( Read more... )
Which means that to the average fan fiction fan who is used to reading metafandom, it's completely bewildering how little meta there is about AMVs.
Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while. Hell, AWA's grand prize Expo winner this year was Brian's Song, and the whole thing is an enormous in-joke. Most of the meta stuff, though, is disguised so that most viewers will still think it funny without understanding it. Similarly, dokidoki's Hello Fairy video is actually a meta commentary about the "Hell" trend, but is pretty hilarious in all other respects too. (See also doki's Sunshine Lollipops and RRRrrrr.) The "Hell" vids themselves could be considered somewhat meta. And, of course, there's plenty of "meta" commentary about anime trends in amvs... jokes on similarities between shows, the predictability of stories, the lameness of it's fans. (Don't mean to be boosting Doki so much, he's just who came to mind in the "meta" category.)
(And one more meta vid I just have to plug, 'cause I'm in it...this one.)
On the other topics... I dunno what to tell you about the comments. As a contest director I figured out a while ago that it would be a conflict for me to do extensive commenting on vids I might eventually have to judge, so I bowed out of that aspect. I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized. That means when a really popular vid does the rounds the editor can just get mobbed with people gushing over the vid, with very little interesting to say. Then, since everyone's looking in their direction, everyone sees when they pay much more attention to someone with a detailed review instead of a simple "good work" comment.
However, back when I was doing feedback, I found that AMVers who hadn't made it into the spotlight were very appreciative of my reviews, would go back and forth a couple of times in discussion, and beam in their journals about getting a review. Our version of your "big names" may be doing vids with a more specific audience in mind (specific amvers & friends) while newcomers are more apt to throw their vid out into the world, hoping to attract any attention they could get.
As for elitists... yeah that seems pretty universal. In AMVs it's mostly that the "old schoolers" were a pretty tightly-knit group for three or four years when stuff like the contests started coming out. Time allowed for drama & personality conflicts to fragment it, but more importantly the flood of new blood all wanting to be best buds with the "old schoolers" became difficult to deal with on an individual basis. Regional cliques formed, pseudo-factions broke out on the message boards, and we oldest and most bitter of amvers started retiring. It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.
Okay, first, I just have to ask: how did you find this? I'm delighted to have you weighing in on this topic, but this is the tail-end of the comments section of an ancient post that I'm not even sure how Scintilla found, so I'm also confused.
Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while.
Oh, good point. I should've specified "written meta." Because, of course, AMVs have a fantastic amount of meta-in-the-form-of-AMVs - they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and. (Live-action vidders do meta vids, too, but the difference in terms of meta essays - well, unless I'm missing a major source of AMV meta writing, we're talking about many orders of magnitude.)
This is one of those fannish language disconnects, I think; in this neck of fandom, when we say "meta," we definitely mean essays unless we tag another noun on there, like "meta vid" or whatever. (And, although we have vids that are commenting on vidding, the most famed meta vid is actually a vid commenting on being a fan.) I keep forgetting that there's a fannish jargon barrier.
I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized.
So, basically, comments on AMVs are, at least in that respect, a lot more like comments on fan fiction - the pattern you're describing is precisely what's happened as fan fiction fandom has exploded over the past six years. (Only the last three of which I was around for; I'm relatively new here.)
But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior. Even though we argue it endlessly, there are definite unspoken rules about how you deal with feedback and comments (not to mention about a dozen massive, ongoing, never-to-be-resolved debates, and by "debates," I of course mean "vicious fights, often with severe casualities"). AMV makers don't seem to have a more-or-less shared general consensus about when and how you should leave opinions/comments/whatever or how you should respond to them.
Interesting.
It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.
Uh, yeah. We've got that, too. People go through stages in any hobby, and there's a time, usually when you're newer, when you're expanding your circle of acquaintances and making good friends, and then you come to a point where you don't have the time to do that anymore, so you pretty much just stick with the friends you have, adding one here and there when you can. And then, if you're one of the popular writers or vidders or whatever, people point and shout "clique" and "BNF."
Oh, fandom. We're so consistent in our wankiness. (But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.)
> I'm delighted to have you weighing in on this topic, but this is the tail-end of the comments section of an ancient post that I'm not even sure how Scintilla found, so I'm also confused.
Oh, sorry about that... I probably should have mentioned that the LJ multifandom RP community campfuckudie's OOC community, campersfuckoff, had an AMV-pimping post, and somebody linked to both of your AMV recommendation posts, partially for the AMVs but also because they were good reading.
Okay, first, I just have to ask: how did you find this?
Heh. I followed dwchang who followed Scintilla. Dunno how dwchang found you.
they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and.
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?
But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior.
Heh. 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. I'm feeling more and more like the cranky old guy shouting at the kids on his lawn, but my impression is that the hobby has very suddenly skewed younger as I've gotten older, and brought a lot of teen angst & HS bullshit with it. On the other hand, it's also skewed more international, so you take the good with the bad. (New perspectives are helping to revitalize the creativity.) There's also a much higher turnover rate in the hobby lately... AMVing has become more like cosplay in that it's something fans consider they have to do qualify as real fans... rather than something a fan will do if they enjoy it.
People go through stages in any hobby...
Well, the difference is that there really was "a" group to start. The first "AMVer group." The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's. But they really didn't know one another on a one-on-one basis. The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers. (Plus one of the contest heads made a massive effort to get 'em all down to Atlanta eventually.) And they, the ones that didn't burn out in a year, were a managable number... twenty or thirty people at most. Everyone really did get to know one another one-on-one, and formed a single all-inclusive group of friends who stayed together & hit all the cons for about four years. It was no exaggeration to say that you knew all the AMVers on the East or West coast. That's the group most AMVers refer to as the "old schoolers." The gradually increasing flood that the mailing list, ftp, then the website brought overwhelmed that ability. And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up. (Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.) Anyrate, I kinda go into this here if you're at all interested.
But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.
Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?
The link I'd been given before was a "reply thread" that only showed a dozen or so replies. I've probably repeated half the stuff others have said above, trying to be helpful.
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. 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 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.
Ah. Film school essays. Gotcha. (Kidding, a little.) It's kinda odd to me for such stuff to be organized enough to circulate. AMVers used to conduct something sorta similar, expounding and explaining on their favs, trends, ideas, etc. on the Journal system on the .org. (There's a device that showed you when your "friends" last updated their journal so you could check on 'em. Weird, stilted, but fairly elaborate discussions happend simultaneously in multi-part across journals in the absence of a "comment" function.) Prior to that, there was some "meta" discussion throughout the amv mailing list when there was a controllable number of people. Upon the appearance of livejournal, though, the more interesting stuff collapsed as the more determined writers jumped ship for the better functionality. I tried to maintain my stuff across both for a few years, but it got tiring.
Now? Hmm. I suppose there might be some meta stuff on the boards. Wouldn't know. You couldn't pay me to go back in there and look. I'll do my fandom/flick/comic reviews out here, thank you very much.
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.
Oh, I know what a "Mary Sue" is. Or, more recently, a "Rose Tyler."
I'm feeling more and more like the cranky old guy shouting at the kids on his lawn, but my impression is that the hobby has very suddenly skewed younger as I've gotten older, and brought a lot of teen angst & HS bullshit with it.
*nods*
That's happened here, too. Fortunately, the bifurcation I mentioned means that the kids get a few of their roughest edges knocked off before they come onto my lawn. Still. I know the feeling.
The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's
Live-action vidding had this, too, but I have only the vaguest clue about it. Names like "the Media Cannibals" are still spoken in these parts (and their VCR vids have been digitally remastered, so you can see what they did), but I got into vids way after I got into fandom, and I got to fandom after it had already been transformed by the LJ revolution.
The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers.
Live-action vidding probably has the analogy of Vividcon, which is a vids-only con that takes place in August. It's got a capped membership of (I think) 200. When it first started, that was, like, just about all the live-action vidders who could afford to be in one place in the US at one time. Now, membership sells out in the first few minutes of posting and most vidders, especially the, um - can I call them more informal? Because that's probably the nicest way to put it - the more informal ones can't go or don't want to.
And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up.
I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense. But then, live-action vidding arose from slash fandom, which has been kerfluffling and trolling and wanking for about as long as I've been alive. (You don't know true fannish joy, I don't think, until you're caught up in an argument that started when you were learning to walk.)
(Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.)
Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!
Anyrate, I kinda go into this here if you're at all interested.
Of course I'm interested; that was a fascinating post. It's also meta. Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it. Please please please tell me how to?
Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?
I'm not exactly sure. No, really, I'm not. I picked it because of all the reoccurring discussions we have, that one makes me the most crazy, because I have never entirely understood it.
The best I can do is - okay. Fans, at least in my neck of the woods, virtually all share a common history of having been outcasts - having been the weird kid, the smart kid, the dorky kid, the kid who had interests no one else shared. Usually this happened in middle school or in high school. So, we all have this common experience of having been losers in the popularity war. And we were mostly afraid of the popular kids.
So, the "mean girls" thing is in some way connected to being "popular." As defined in fannish terms (mostly friend of list size and feedback numbers, as far as I can tell).
The second part is - well, some people are nice all the time, right? And some people are not. Some people mock. Some people make unkind remarks. Some people call other people on their bullshit. These people are mean.
So, the mean girls are - mean. And popular. And they are oppressing the nice girls, and attempting to keep them down.
I think. Don't quote me on it. I'm as lost as you are. But, believe me, someone uses the term "mean girls from high school" at least once a week in LJ fandom.
Live-action vidding had this, too, but I have only the vaguest clue about it.
My bad, I should have been clearer. The difficulties involved in getting Japanese Animation in the US before about 1985 necessitated writing letters across the country to people who had friends in Japan. The Japanese friend would tape something off the TV & send it to their American friends. They would then make copies and trade to other people, shipping VHS tapes across the US. If you were very lucky, the more industrious fans would make up scripts and hard-sub the videos. (I should note that this was all long before my time.) Thus you would try and follow 42-episode series piecemeal at varying levels of translation (or not). The very first AMVers were usually subbers or distributors with access to the right equipment (flying erase heads FTW) who put 'em together for their friend's amusement. Somewhere down the line, they'd just stick the vids on the end of the tapes they were distributing as a free extra for whoever had asked for a copy. They weren't actually distributing the vids on purpose, it just kinda ended up that way, filling up whatever extra space was on the tape.
Re: Contests (I noted your question of doki above) I think AMV contests pre-dated my own personal experience by about a year, but I've never been very clear on that. (Can't get out to many cons.) However I can point you to the true Alpha of AMV contests: Daric Jackson (aka jingoro). He started his first AMV contest at AWA 1 (it's on 13 now) with the sole intention of "getting everyone to send me their videos." Since it was never an actually "distroed" hobby before, a lot of AMVers simply weren't interested in the hassle of copying their tapes and sending 'em out. He'd been collecting those he could get his hands on for years, but the more reticent could only be lured out with the idea of a mass showing. The contests (as thoroughly promoted as he could) got him a bumper crop for two or three years. (Contests that pre-date his are largely forgotten, I think, as his were clearer, more courteous, and better organized.) Unfortunately, God disapproved, a tornado came down, tore the top of his house off, and destroyed the entire collection. (No, I'm not kidding.) A lot of those turned out to be irreplaceable (the makers unreachable), but Daric rebuilt and carried on for several more years.
As for how the contests affect the hobby? Well... I could go into that for pages and pages. I'll just say 1) ENORMOUSLY increased volume 2) increase in creative quality (though not nearly in proportion, making it appear diluted) 3) visible appearance of trends and imitations 4) general raising the bar as to technical quality (all vids playable) 5) some newbies found it intimidating 6) some wankery 7) some ego-related web horrors 8) breakneck pace. Some good, some bad.
I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense.
Too bad. The idealism and togetherness was a sight to behold.
Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!
It's really more my opinion, but I've asked around and everyone who was there (a member of the org at the time) pretty much agrees. Unfortunately, it's not my story to tell. Essentially, a f***ing troll showed up, harrassed a well-liked, exceedingly creative AMVer, & the AMVer left. For good. The thing to understand was that had never happened before.
Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it.
Uh... not really. I just write a hell of a lot. (I regularly used to break the lj wordlimit before I got it under control.) What little meta there is on lj is just a matter of having a lot of AMVers as friends & seeing when they talk about their hobby. I couldn't even point you at someone who's done it more than a couple times.
Re: Mean girls
Huh. Never heard the term, but I think I get the idea. Not entirely sure of the connotation though, but I bet that shifts.
Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while. Hell, AWA's grand prize Expo winner this year was Brian's Song, and the whole thing is an enormous in-joke. Most of the meta stuff, though, is disguised so that most viewers will still think it funny without understanding it. Similarly, dokidoki's Hello Fairy video is actually a meta commentary about the "Hell" trend, but is pretty hilarious in all other respects too. (See also doki's Sunshine Lollipops and RRRrrrr.) The "Hell" vids themselves could be considered somewhat meta. And, of course, there's plenty of "meta" commentary about anime trends in amvs... jokes on similarities between shows, the predictability of stories, the lameness of it's fans. (Don't mean to be boosting Doki so much, he's just who came to mind in the "meta" category.)
(And one more meta vid I just have to plug, 'cause I'm in it...this one.)
On the other topics... I dunno what to tell you about the comments. As a contest director I figured out a while ago that it would be a conflict for me to do extensive commenting on vids I might eventually have to judge, so I bowed out of that aspect. I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized. That means when a really popular vid does the rounds the editor can just get mobbed with people gushing over the vid, with very little interesting to say. Then, since everyone's looking in their direction, everyone sees when they pay much more attention to someone with a detailed review instead of a simple "good work" comment.
However, back when I was doing feedback, I found that AMVers who hadn't made it into the spotlight were very appreciative of my reviews, would go back and forth a couple of times in discussion, and beam in their journals about getting a review. Our version of your "big names" may be doing vids with a more specific audience in mind (specific amvers & friends) while newcomers are more apt to throw their vid out into the world, hoping to attract any attention they could get.
As for elitists... yeah that seems pretty universal. In AMVs it's mostly that the "old schoolers" were a pretty tightly-knit group for three or four years when stuff like the contests started coming out. Time allowed for drama & personality conflicts to fragment it, but more importantly the flood of new blood all wanting to be best buds with the "old schoolers" became difficult to deal with on an individual basis. Regional cliques formed, pseudo-factions broke out on the message boards, and we oldest and most bitter of amvers started retiring. It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.
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Well, there is meta (by which I figure you mean "amvs about amving/amvers") but it may not be immediately obvious unless you've been digging around in AMVs for a while.
Oh, good point. I should've specified "written meta." Because, of course, AMVs have a fantastic amount of meta-in-the-form-of-AMVs - they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and. (Live-action vidders do meta vids, too, but the difference in terms of meta essays - well, unless I'm missing a major source of AMV meta writing, we're talking about many orders of magnitude.)
This is one of those fannish language disconnects, I think; in this neck of fandom, when we say "meta," we definitely mean essays unless we tag another noun on there, like "meta vid" or whatever. (And, although we have vids that are commenting on vidding, the most famed meta vid is actually a vid commenting on being a fan.) I keep forgetting that there's a fannish jargon barrier.
I think your impression about the complexity of the comments desired might be true to a larger extent in AMVs than for vidders, largely because the AMV community expanded so rapidly to enormous dimensions, and yet remained largely centralized.
So, basically, comments on AMVs are, at least in that respect, a lot more like comments on fan fiction - the pattern you're describing is precisely what's happened as fan fiction fandom has exploded over the past six years. (Only the last three of which I was around for; I'm relatively new here.)
But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior. Even though we argue it endlessly, there are definite unspoken rules about how you deal with feedback and comments (not to mention about a dozen massive, ongoing, never-to-be-resolved debates, and by "debates," I of course mean "vicious fights, often with severe casualities"). AMV makers don't seem to have a more-or-less shared general consensus about when and how you should leave opinions/comments/whatever or how you should respond to them.
Interesting.
It's not really elitism, it's just who we're good friends with.
Uh, yeah. We've got that, too. People go through stages in any hobby, and there's a time, usually when you're newer, when you're expanding your circle of acquaintances and making good friends, and then you come to a point where you don't have the time to do that anymore, so you pretty much just stick with the friends you have, adding one here and there when you can. And then, if you're one of the popular writers or vidders or whatever, people point and shout "clique" and "BNF."
Oh, fandom. We're so consistent in our wankiness. (But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.)
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Oh, sorry about that... I probably should have mentioned that the LJ multifandom RP community campfuckudie's OOC community, campersfuckoff, had an AMV-pimping post, and somebody linked to both of your AMV recommendation posts, partially for the AMVs but also because they were good reading.
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Heh. I followed dwchang who followed Scintilla. Dunno how dwchang found you.
they just don't seem to have the same number of essays about AMV making, and the AMV world, and and and.
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?
But, hmm. There seems to be less of a cultural directive in AMVs about appropriate feedback and comment behavior.
Heh. 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. I'm feeling more and more like the cranky old guy shouting at the kids on his lawn, but my impression is that the hobby has very suddenly skewed younger as I've gotten older, and brought a lot of teen angst & HS bullshit with it. On the other hand, it's also skewed more international, so you take the good with the bad. (New perspectives are helping to revitalize the creativity.) There's also a much higher turnover rate in the hobby lately... AMVing has become more like cosplay in that it's something fans consider they have to do qualify as real fans... rather than something a fan will do if they enjoy it.
People go through stages in any hobby...
Well, the difference is that there really was "a" group to start. The first "AMVer group." The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's. But they really didn't know one another on a one-on-one basis. The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers. (Plus one of the contest heads made a massive effort to get 'em all down to Atlanta eventually.) And they, the ones that didn't burn out in a year, were a managable number... twenty or thirty people at most. Everyone really did get to know one another one-on-one, and formed a single all-inclusive group of friends who stayed together & hit all the cons for about four years. It was no exaggeration to say that you knew all the AMVers on the East or West coast. That's the group most AMVers refer to as the "old schoolers." The gradually increasing flood that the mailing list, ftp, then the website brought overwhelmed that ability. And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up. (Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.) Anyrate, I kinda go into this here if you're at all interested.
But at least in AMVs you're probably spared the "mean girls from high school" discussions.
Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?
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The link I'd been given before was a "reply thread" that only showed a dozen or so replies. I've probably repeated half the stuff others have said above, trying to be helpful.
Sorry for the repetition.
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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. 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 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.
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Ah. Film school essays. Gotcha. (Kidding, a little.) It's kinda odd to me for such stuff to be organized enough to circulate. AMVers used to conduct something sorta similar, expounding and explaining on their favs, trends, ideas, etc. on the Journal system on the .org. (There's a device that showed you when your "friends" last updated their journal so you could check on 'em. Weird, stilted, but fairly elaborate discussions happend simultaneously in multi-part across journals in the absence of a "comment" function.) Prior to that, there was some "meta" discussion throughout the amv mailing list when there was a controllable number of people. Upon the appearance of livejournal, though, the more interesting stuff collapsed as the more determined writers jumped ship for the better functionality. I tried to maintain my stuff across both for a few years, but it got tiring.
Now? Hmm. I suppose there might be some meta stuff on the boards. Wouldn't know. You couldn't pay me to go back in there and look. I'll do my fandom/flick/comic reviews out here, thank you very much.
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.
Oh, I know what a "Mary Sue" is. Or, more recently, a "Rose Tyler."
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*nods*
That's happened here, too. Fortunately, the bifurcation I mentioned means that the kids get a few of their roughest edges knocked off before they come onto my lawn. Still. I know the feeling.
The very first AMVers (mid 80's on) all vaugely knew one another through the daisy-chain tape-trading circles that had cropped up in the 70's
Live-action vidding had this, too, but I have only the vaguest clue about it. Names like "the Media Cannibals" are still spoken in these parts (and their VCR vids have been digitally remastered, so you can see what they did), but I got into vids way after I got into fandom, and I got to fandom after it had already been transformed by the LJ revolution.
The advent of the AMV contests in the mid-to-late 90's, however, meant a place to go and show your work and actually MEET other AMVers.
Live-action vidding probably has the analogy of Vividcon, which is a vids-only con that takes place in August. It's got a capped membership of (I think) 200. When it first started, that was, like, just about all the live-action vidders who could afford to be in one place in the US at one time. Now, membership sells out in the first few minutes of posting and most vidders, especially the, um - can I call them more informal? Because that's probably the nicest way to put it - the more informal ones can't go or don't want to.
And then the trolls showed up & any pretense of our hobby being an "all for one" utopia blew up.
I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense. But then, live-action vidding arose from slash fandom, which has been kerfluffling and trolling and wanking for about as long as I've been alive. (You don't know true fannish joy, I don't think, until you're caught up in an argument that started when you were learning to walk.)
(Hell, I could put a date to when that happened.)
Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!
Anyrate, I kinda go into this here if you're at all interested.
Of course I'm interested; that was a fascinating post. It's also meta. Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it. Please please please tell me how to?
Well... I'm not familiar with the term. What does it mean?
I'm not exactly sure. No, really, I'm not. I picked it because of all the reoccurring discussions we have, that one makes me the most crazy, because I have never entirely understood it.
The best I can do is - okay. Fans, at least in my neck of the woods, virtually all share a common history of having been outcasts - having been the weird kid, the smart kid, the dorky kid, the kid who had interests no one else shared. Usually this happened in middle school or in high school. So, we all have this common experience of having been losers in the popularity war. And we were mostly afraid of the popular kids.
So, the "mean girls" thing is in some way connected to being "popular." As defined in fannish terms (mostly friend of list size and feedback numbers, as far as I can tell).
The second part is - well, some people are nice all the time, right? And some people are not. Some people mock. Some people make unkind remarks. Some people call other people on their bullshit. These people are mean.
So, the mean girls are - mean. And popular. And they are oppressing the nice girls, and attempting to keep them down.
I think. Don't quote me on it. I'm as lost as you are. But, believe me, someone uses the term "mean girls from high school" at least once a week in LJ fandom.
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My bad, I should have been clearer. The difficulties involved in getting Japanese Animation in the US before about 1985 necessitated writing letters across the country to people who had friends in Japan. The Japanese friend would tape something off the TV & send it to their American friends. They would then make copies and trade to other people, shipping VHS tapes across the US. If you were very lucky, the more industrious fans would make up scripts and hard-sub the videos. (I should note that this was all long before my time.) Thus you would try and follow 42-episode series piecemeal at varying levels of translation (or not). The very first AMVers were usually subbers or distributors with access to the right equipment (flying erase heads FTW) who put 'em together for their friend's amusement. Somewhere down the line, they'd just stick the vids on the end of the tapes they were distributing as a free extra for whoever had asked for a copy. They weren't actually distributing the vids on purpose, it just kinda ended up that way, filling up whatever extra space was on the tape.
Re: Contests (I noted your question of doki above)
I think AMV contests pre-dated my own personal experience by about a year, but I've never been very clear on that. (Can't get out to many cons.) However I can point you to the true Alpha of AMV contests: Daric Jackson (aka jingoro). He started his first AMV contest at AWA 1 (it's on 13 now) with the sole intention of "getting everyone to send me their videos." Since it was never an actually "distroed" hobby before, a lot of AMVers simply weren't interested in the hassle of copying their tapes and sending 'em out. He'd been collecting those he could get his hands on for years, but the more reticent could only be lured out with the idea of a mass showing. The contests (as thoroughly promoted as he could) got him a bumper crop for two or three years. (Contests that pre-date his are largely forgotten, I think, as his were clearer, more courteous, and better organized.) Unfortunately, God disapproved, a tornado came down, tore the top of his house off, and destroyed the entire collection. (No, I'm not kidding.) A lot of those turned out to be irreplaceable (the makers unreachable), but Daric rebuilt and carried on for several more years.
As for how the contests affect the hobby? Well... I could go into that for pages and pages. I'll just say 1) ENORMOUSLY increased volume 2) increase in creative quality (though not nearly in proportion, making it appear diluted) 3) visible appearance of trends and imitations 4) general raising the bar as to technical quality (all vids playable) 5) some newbies found it intimidating 6) some wankery 7) some ego-related web horrors 8) breakneck pace. Some good, some bad.
I don't think live-action vidders ever had this pretense.
Too bad. The idealism and togetherness was a sight to behold.
Seriously? Oh, please do. I'm curious!
It's really more my opinion, but I've asked around and everyone who was there (a member of the org at the time) pretty much agrees. Unfortunately, it's not my story to tell. Essentially, a f***ing troll showed up, harrassed a well-liked, exceedingly creative AMVer, & the AMVer left. For good. The thing to understand was that had never happened before.
Which means there is AMV meta being posted out there, and I'm just not finding it.
Uh... not really. I just write a hell of a lot. (I regularly used to break the lj wordlimit before I got it under control.) What little meta there is on lj is just a matter of having a lot of AMVers as friends & seeing when they talk about their hobby. I couldn't even point you at someone who's done it more than a couple times.
Re: Mean girls
Huh. Never heard the term, but I think I get the idea. Not entirely sure of the connotation though, but I bet that shifts.
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