Today's discovery: I really don't know what I'm doing

The biggest problem, I suppose--illuminated in part by comments to my previous entry but also by trying to figure out just what kind of data I can bring to class tomorrow--is that I have no idea just how I want to narrow my focus. I've gone from "fandom" to "the Doctor Who fandom" and from there to a specific site, so that at least is good, but I haven't narrowed my focus much, and that's what I'm having trouble with.

Here's the thing: what I really want to do is study fandom and the insane, messy culture it's shaped itself into. That's way, way too broad for this assignment for sure, and probably too broad for any reasonable study in general. Can I do much the same thing just by studying one segment of fandom? Sure: that's more or less what I'm doing. But that really doesn't limit my focus in any helpful way, because I'm still looking at all of fandom in microcosm. I don't have a focus because I don't know what to pick, and maybe I'm having a hard time choosing something because I don't want to choose.

I do have a few options that interest me. I could look at fandom itself as a literacy itself, a different way of approaching a text that brings with it all the elements of any other subculture. I could look more specifically at fanfiction as a literacy context, especially since it seems to me that most studies of it have been from an outside perspective, and approaching it from the inside--more critically, maybe, than otherwise--might be interesting. I could do an autoethnography of some kind based on my experiences as a fic writer, probably tracing what happens as I interact with other fic writers on the Gallifrey Base forum, work on my own fic, and receive feedback--but while that idea has the definite appeal of maybe being the easiest for me to grasp, I'm still not sure I totally understand what it would involve or how I'd collect data for that kind of project.

The real problem, I suppose, is that I didn't write this post before I got comments, instead of waiting until after. >_< Good planning on my part, there.