Revision: description of chosen site

When I wrote about my chosen research site, I didn't know at all what I was doing with this project, and at that point I'd chosen a specific website to examine. That approach didn't really work for the way my project was going, and since it eventually turned into an autoethnographic study of my own experiences as a fanfiction writer, my site changed as well.

For this project I was, essentially, studying myself and my experiences. That still ended up being a little more nebulous than I'd have liked, but it did narrow my focus onto my own fanfiction, the ways I attempted to gain attention (and reviews) for it, how that attention or lack thereof affected my writing, and the specific attention and reviews my fanfiction received. That makes my study a little more difficult to quantify as a research site, of course, given that it's different from what might be expected.

However, my position as a community insider (though by no means really well-known in the community, just familiar with it) does give me a perspective that's not often seen with such studies. I can more easily look at the specific practices of writing and distributing fanfiction, since it's likely that many other writers have similar practices to mine, and I can look at my own motivations for what I do since they'll be quite plain to me. The primary participant is of course myself, but given that I'm also viewing the comments I receive, the actual participants in these exchanges can fluctuate.

Aside from being a member of fandom in general, I'm also a member of numerous specific fan communities on Livejournal, and the vast majority of my friends are also members of the same fandoms I am, making my actions community-building exercises on a number of levels. I'm also a member of the sub-community of fandom that values high-quality fanfiction, which is a somewhat nebulous term in itself, but other community members would probably define such fiction as being of publishable quality--if it weren't for copyright restrictions, of course. Writers of quality fanfiction are eager to improve their works and are open to constructive criticism, and they apply traditional practices of good writing to their work.

For the most part, I find that fanfiction is rarely studied from an insider's perspective, which often leads to misconceptions and the alienating of those being studied. A closer, more critical, and more nuanced look at fanfiction could definitely be valuable to this field of study.