Free choice: data analysis

For reasons I still don't entirely understand, I've spent this entire project having a difficult time getting my head around what exactly I meant to do with it, despite a not inconsiderable amount of feedback, a large amount of background knowledge in my digital literacy field, and a reasonable (but probably not long enough) amount of time spent interacting in that field during the semester. So, I suppose, this post is another attempt to figure out what interests me so much about fanfiction, for one thing, and what makes it a worthy field of study.

So, this entry is another way of trying to work that out, this time through analyzing another chunk of data. That's because I have more actual data to analyze, in the form of a fairly short fanfic I finished and posted just this weekend--the first fanfic I've finished in over a year, sadly. I wrote all of it this semester, a significant amount of it during November when I was sort of participating in mini-NaNoWriMo, and as such things tend to do, it became rather longer than I'd intended. A brief exploration of a scene not explicitly described in canon doesn't sound like it should take long, after all, but between lots of internal monologue and a flashback, it clocked in at 2,300 words. (And yet, despite how parts of it were like pulling teeth, it was so much easier than writing a shorter academic paper. Go figure.)

I think the idea for this fic came to me at some point while I was reading or reading about the Twilight franchise, despite the fact that the fic itself has absolutely nothing to do with Twilight but is rather a Harry Potter fic set during Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, fleshing out Remus' return to his wife. I don't remember what specifically brought me to write about this, but it may have been realizing that while I genuinely like the character of Tonks as she's presented in the books, there's not a lot in canon that clearly shows she's not just as blindly obsessed with Remus as, say, Bella is with Edward--or that she has a sense of what is and isn't healthy for her, or even that she's the strong young woman I see in most fanfiction about her. I didn't want to see her as weak or silly; I wanted even less to think that she had anything in common with Bella. (Um...yes, I do have some issues with Twilight; can you tell?)

The actual writing took me a while, mostly because I tended to do it in bursts, often late at night when it was much easier to sleep rather than write. I had to strike a fine balance with both characters, remaining true to their portrayal in canon while still expressing my own personal canon with how I wanted them to act. The romantic elements needed to seem realistic too, not forced or unnatural, which was a bit difficult given that I haven't read a lot in that genre and have written even less. Then it required a little editing--smoothing out rough patches, adding a few necessary paragraphs to the beginning, sticking in several more paragraphs of dialogue where it turned out I'd skipped over something--before I could finally post it. I suspect this sort of process is common to many fanfic writers, or at least the ones I know, although it's by no means common to all writers (for instance, nothing can convince me that a fic about Voldemort and several Death Eaters having a party with pizza and chick flicks is somehow a good idea).

After I posted the finished product to my writing journal, I cross-posted it to several other communities on Livejournal where I might be able to get people to read and comment on the fic. Cross-posting isn't an official Livejournal term or a fandom term per se, although it probably appears most often in fandom-related situations; it simply means that the content in question has been posted in more than one location, such as two communities or a community and a blogger's personal journal. Livejournal has no built-in feature to do this, so it just means that the blogger makes as many new posts as are necessary, each to a different community, copying and pasting the exact same post each time. In my case, I posted this fanfic header to 30 different Livejournal communities:

Title: Only the Cause and End of Movement
Fandom: Harry Potter
Format & Word Count: Fic, 2,000 words
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Tonks, with appearances by Ted and Andromeda Tonks
Description: Angst with a side order of romantic fluff.
Warnings: Various Deathly Hallows spoilers regarding Remus and Tonks' relationship. Also, did I mention angst?
Summary: Remus comes home for the last time.

(love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement)

In this case, so I don't go crazy trying to remember where I posted it and what comments I got, I wrote the header exactly like this so that anyone who came across it in any of these many communities would click the link and arrive at my writing journal, instead of actually reposting the fic itself to all 30 communities. I've also done this cross-posting over a space of two days, starting with communities I'd already joined and then expanding to others I found through those communities or through Livejournal searches of interests. Some of these are more active than others, although that's true of any online community.

So far, out of these 30 communities (plus fanfiction.net) where I've posted this fic, I've received these comments:

MaidenStar:
This is a really awesome, well written oneshot and I really loved it =) I think this has to be one of the best Remus-returning-to-Tonks fics I've read, which I think is mainly to do with the way you captured Tonks and her reaction to Remus coming home. I liked that you didn't want her to seem foolish and shallow because that's not how I like to see her character either. This was a gem of a oneshot, thanks for posting!

piratecatarina: Love love love it. Please write lots more.

eternal_moonie: totally awesome!

pretty_panther: I love it. Beautiful work!! And a really realistic take on them both that you don't get often. I love it:)

ladielazarus: Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. I loved the style of it, as well. Well done, all around. :)

catastrofica: i've almost cried reading your fanfiction.
Remus is absolutely stupid by his fears, but i still love him, and, of course, with my dearing Dora.
great job. <3
(sorry my awful english, but i'm a brazilian reader. =P)

sspring92: Just lovely. you rally captured the inner turmoil of Remus and the strength of Tonks. I love her telling him she won't let him do this to her child and that he needs to make up his mind! Love to see more from you! Are you signed up at metamorfic_moon Christmas Cracker event?

lilyrin: I love Remus!! =DDD
Nice story. >3< Really liked it!! <3

faeriemaiden (commented by retweeting my link to my fic on Twitter, rather than leaving comments on the fic itself): ♥! Remus/Tonks, Eliot references, angsty delicious AWESOME. RT @100_indecisions http://theturningworld.livejournal.com/12214.html
Go forth to read this fic(& comment); it is gorgeous. Only the Cause & End of Movement(Remus/Tonks) by @100_indecisions http://bit.ly/8oH2q0

What I find interesting here is that I have, thus far, posted this particular fic to more communities than I have any of the others, thereby exposing it to the widest potential readership, but it's received a proportionally smaller number of comments. "The Lost Boy," by contrast, was only posted in 8 places but received at least 19 comments and an award. The two fics are of roughly the same length, and both involve the Harry Potter fandom, but the new fanfic is Harry Potter only, focusing on a tense moment in Lupin and Tonks' relationship, while "The Lost Boy" is a Harry Potter/Doctor Who crossover that details a child's minor adventure. I actually would have expected a basic piece of Remus/Tonks angstfluff to get more attention than a crossover, since crossovers do tend to narrow a potential audience further: they must be familiar with both fandoms and be open to the possibility of crossing the two, for instance. I would also expect the Harry Potter fandom in general to be pretty active, given that it's the largest category at fanfiction.net and the movies are keeping it in the public consciousness, but it's also possible I didn't post in the right places or Remus/Tonks simply isn't as popular as I'd like.

I was pleased by the fact that more than one commenter related having not seen a similar situation in this sort of fic before and agreed with my portrayal of Tonks, at least; I also seemed to get a slightly higher proportion of detailed reviews (by which I mean, more detailed than "Love it!" or the like). And oddly enough, I also got a review on a much older fic, apparently from someone who came across my writing journal through one of my cross-postings--but not only did she not comment on the fic I'd actually posted, she would have had to do a considerable amount of browsing in my writing journal to find the one she did comment on. But anyone who's actually read this far is probably going ANGELS AND MINISTERS OF GRACE PRESERVE US, ENOUGH WORD VOMIT NO ONE CARES, so I'll stop.

Polished analysis

Given that my data, methods, and in fact entire project are a little different from others' and, in fact, I don't have much in the way of traditional quantitative data...well, or for that matter, I'm not even sure how much I have in the way of traditional qualitative data. Whatever exactly that might be. (Look, I was a lit major, I don't know what I'm doing with these things.)

However, the primary data I did gather that's a little more quantifiable than "Hey look, I have a crush on fictional characters and it totally shows, watch me write about it" was the reviews I received from re-posting/cross-posting previously published fanfics. I did organize all of it into a data sheet that I'd really love to embed, except I don't know how, and probably it got lost in the flood of text when I originally posted it.

So here it is again: a data sheet breaking down the comments I received so they're a little easier to see and quantify. It's also a PDF so I guarantee everyone can view it. Although my commenters don't add up to a large enough pool to be a truly representative sample, the comment breakdown is still interesting--it's immediately obvious that virtually all of my reviewers were female, for instance, which came as no surprise to me. While I suspect the gender ratio varies from fandom to fandom and has also varied over time (I've gotten the impression that the sort of people who wrote fanfiction for fanzines in the pre-internet area were primarily male, for instance), it seems that the bulk of active internet fandom today is female, as are the majority of those who write fanfiction. This seems to hold true even in fandoms that might be seen as appealing to the stereotypical male nerd, such as Doctor Who: it's science fiction, after all, which I believe also began as a male-dominated field. In this case, it may have something to do with the preponderance of female readers in general, although that's pure speculation.

Of course, it's also possible that a decent amount of males also read my fanfics and simply didn't comment, which I'd have no way of discovering, but the fact that more females commented probably says something.

The communities where the commenters found these fics may also be significant, although it's a little more difficult to determine since they didn't all start from the same point; there were only two or three places each to post "The Lost Boy" and "Too Close to the Moon," while "No Splendid Phoenix Wings" had only been previously posted in two locations and could then be posted to six additional communities. However, the majority of comments on that fic came from the communities DWFiction and/or doctorwho, which is where most of the new comments on the longer fics also came from. Perhaps more interesting, the non-fandom-specific communities--those open to fanfics from any fandom or even any kind of fiction--garnered me no new comments, even though they probably have a larger readership; since they're less specific and focused, they also gained me a much less targeted readership.

As for the actual content of the comments, the fact that they were all positive was certainly nice for my ego and my confidence as a writer, although given that the majority of the comments were simple praise (i.e., "Loved it!!!" or "Oooh... Nice!") with nothing specific and nothing resembling negative feedback or criticism, that may say more about the reviewers themselves than about me and my writing. Reviewers who provided specific feedback, even if it didn't necessarily tell me what could use revision, were at least the most satisfying--knowing what you did well is just as useful as knowing what you didn't do well, in just about any field.

Methodology

The actual methodology that I followed in collecting the data that I did--as presented in my data sheet, primarily--is similar to further research I would plan to do, although my beginning data analysis didn't count any of the ways I moved in fandom more casually during that time period. I spent more time than I should have last night re-reading Cleolinda's Twilight Saga recaps, for instance, which is certainly a fandom-based, fanfiction-related activity but isn't necessarily related to my own writing and review-gathering. For that matter, I probably talk about or read something fandom-related every single day and barely realize it because it's so integrated into my normal daily experiences.

1) Site--Where did you conduct your research? Why? Because my project was an autoethnography that focused on my own experience as a writer of fanfiction, I didn't limit myself only to one website (although I did carry out most of my interactions within the extremely broad confines of the blog host Livejournal); instead I looked at how my work was received across various fan communities at varying levels of specificity.
2) Participants--Who did you study in your project? Why? That's an easy one: myself, and my own experiences as a fanfic writer and fandom participant. At the same time, though, I had to look at others since fandom is, by definition, a community experience, so I was studying my interactions with others as well.
3) Self--What role did you play in your site? In some ways, I was the site, just like I was the subject of study. I tracked my experience as I wrote and edited fanfiction (well...at least that was always the intention) and as I received reviews on it when I posted it in different places.
4) Data--What kinds of data did you collect? How did you collect it? For the most part, my data centered on the comments and reviews I received; I organized and analyzed them by determining the the gender of the commenter and where she (because usually it was a she) found my fic in the first place.
5) Analysis--How did you analyze your data? As described above, although I didn't carry it nearly as far as I'd like to; looking at how my fics seemed to garner certain kinds of attention would be good, and while I did sort the comments by gender and community to some extent, I didn't do much in the way of drawing conclusions from that data...aside from the fact that the overwhelming majority of commenters were female, which was no surprise, since the areas of fandom that I frequent tend to be predominantly female anyway. For that matter, the areas of fandom that have the most fanfiction, fanart, etc. tend to be populated largely by females anyway.
6) Tradition(s)--What major research tradition(s) did you draw upon to conduct your study? I really had no idea, before I did some preliminary research for my extremely preliminary literature review, that fanfiction and fandom in general had been studied so extensively. Rebecca Black is one of the most important academic figures in the fanfiction discussion, and Henry Jenkins is a major figure in academic discussions of fandom, although the traditions I drew from more tended to be the insider traditions of fandom and fanfiction itself.

Preliminary synthesis of related research

Maybe unfortunately for my purposes, fanfiction has been studied far more extensively than I'd realized, at least from what appear to me to be outsider perspectives. The sources I examine--as well as the overall focus of my project, I guess--will need to be narrowed and focused more closely, especially because there is such a wealth of research on this topic, enough to get fairly overwhelming. One quick search of the library's database of journal articles turned up some 85 articles, for instance, many of which looked at least somewhat relevant--and adding some existing resources from a previous class (ENGl 476) and other articles I've come across, I'll have a considerable amount of material to go through.

So in the interests of situating myself in this conversation, I guess I'll just post the list of possible resources, for now--it's a long list, like I said, so there's no analysis right now, but it should give some idea of what's out there for me to work with. I'm also thinking of turning this into a paper for PacRim, given the emphasis on third space and intertextuality.


Black, Rebecca. "Digital Design: English Language Learners and Reader Reviews in Online Fiction."

Thomas, Angela. "Blurring and Breaking Through the Boundaries of Narrative, Literacy, and Identity in Adolescent Fan Fiction."

Other possible sources from our book:
Hammer, Jessica. "Agency and Authority in Role-Playing 'Texts'"
Knobel, Michele and Colin Lankshear. "Online Memes, Affinities, and Cultural Production"
Alvermann article, and study on two girls writing fanfic cited in there

Transformative Works and Cultures: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc (may also look at other sites by the Organization for Transformative Works, like Vidding History and Fanlore)

Access and affiliation: The literacy and composition practices of English-language learners in an online fanfiction community. By: Black, Rebecca W.. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Oct2005, Vol. 49 Issue 2, p118-128, 11p; DOI: 10.1598/JAAL.49.2.4; (AN 18508925)
full text

The Slash Fanfiction Connection to Bi Men. By: Davies, Raven. Journal of Bisexuality, 2005, Vol. 5 Issue 2/3, p195-202, 7p; (AN 19108668)

Limit Play: Fan Authorship between Source Text, Intertext, and Context. By: Stein, Louisa; Busse, Kristina. Popular Communication, Oct-Dec2009, Vol. 7 Issue 4, p192-207, 16p; DOI: 10.1080/15405700903177545; (AN 44620499)

When Harry Met Bella. By: Burns, Elizabeth; Webber, Carlie. School Library Journal, Aug2009, Vol. 55 Issue 8, p26-29, 4p, 1 color; (AN 43698156)

Should Fan Fiction Be Free? By: DE KOSNIK, ABIGAIL. Cinema Journal, Summer2009, Vol. 48 Issue 4, p118-124, 7p; (AN 44227396)

USING SOCIAL NORMS TO REGULATE FAN FICTION AND REMIX CULTURE. By: Hetcher, Steven A.. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Jun2009, Vol. 157 Issue 6, p1869-1935, 67p; (AN 43801509) (full text)

Slashing the Fiction of Queer Theory: Slash Fiction, Queer Reading, and Transgressing the Boundaries of Screen Studies, Representations, and Audiences. By: Dhaenens, Frederik; Van Bauwel, Sofie; Biltereyst, Daniel. Journal of Communication Inquiry, Oct2008, Vol. 32 Issue 4, p335-347, 13p; (AN 34151961)

Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. By: Hills, Matt. Popular Communication, Oct-Dec2008, Vol. 6 Issue 4, p262-263, 2p; DOI: 10.1080/15405700802240451; (AN 34741416)

Selections from Dreamsongs: Fan Fiction and SciFi from Martin's Early Years.
Stories of Fantasy, Horror/Sci-Fi, and a Man Called Tuf.
Wild Cards and More Stories from Martin's Later Years. By: Lord, Douglas C. Library Journal, 4/1/2008, Vol. 133 Issue 6, p120-121, 2p; (AN 31574270)

Everyone's a Superhero: A Cultural Theory of "Mary Sue" Fan Fiction as Fair Use. By: Chander, Anupam; Sunder, Madhavi. California Law Review, Apr2007, Vol. 95 Issue 2, p597-626, 30p; (AN 24806545)

The Fan Fiction Phenomena. By: Young, Cathy. Reason, Feb2007, Vol. 38 Issue 9, p14-15, 2p; (AN 23632753) http://reason.com/archives/2007/01/30/the-fan-fiction-phenomena

Fan fiction online: Engagement, critical response and affective play through writing. By: Thomas, Angela. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, Oct2006, Vol. 29 Issue 3, p226-239, 14p; (AN 22317451)

Rewriting the Rules of Fiction. By: JURGENSEN, JOHN. Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition, 9/16/2006, Vol. 248 Issue 65, pP1-P4, 2p, 1 chart, 1 color; (AN 22362650)

Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenom. By: MacDonald, Marianne. Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Jan/Feb2006, Vol. 13 Issue 1, p28-30, 3p; (AN 19362052)

Filling the Gaps: What's Happening in the World of Fan Fiction. By: Collins, Tara. Library Media Connection, Jan2006, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p36-38, 3p; (AN 19363573)

Decoding Desire: From Kirk and Spock to K/S1. By: Woledge, Elizabeth. Social Semiotics, Aug2005, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p235-250, 16p; DOI: 10.1080/10350330500154857; (AN 17926969)

Spike, sex and subtext. By: Williamson, Milly. European Journal of Cultural Studies, Aug2005, Vol. 8 Issue 3, p289-311, 23p; DOI: 10.1177/1367549405054863; (AN 18033365)

Slashing the Romance Narrative. By: Kustritz, Anne. Journal of American Culture, Sep2003, Vol. 26 Issue 3, p371-384, 14p; DOI: 10.1111/1542-734X.00098; (AN 10351834)

Fanfic: Is It Right to Write? By: Razer, Helen. World Press Review, Mar2004, Vol. 51 Issue 3, p39-39, 1p, 1 bw; (AN 12384932)

Resistance Re-Examined: Gender, Fan Practices, and Science Fiction Television. By: Scodari, Christine. Popular Communication, 2003, Vol. 1 Issue 2, p111, 20p; (AN 9771550)

Confronting Enterprise Slash Fan Fiction. By: Lee, Kylie. Extrapolation (University of Texas at Brownsville), Spring2003, Vol. 44 Issue 1, p69, 14p; (AN 9895643)

CREATING A POCKET UNIVERSE: 'SHIPPERS,' FAN FICTION, AND THE X-FILES ONLINE. By: Scodari, Christine; Felder, Jenna L. Communication Studies, Fall2000, Vol. 51 Issue 3, p238, 20p; (AN 4094240)

Black, Rebecca. Online Fanfiction: What Technology and Popular Culture Can Teach Us About Writing and Literacy Instruction. New Horizons for Learning, March 2005. http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/literacy/black.htm

Black, Rebecca. Language, Culture, and Identity in Online Fanfiction. E-Learning. Vol. 3.2, 2006.

"John Rogers on fanfic: re: Leverage." http://cerusee.livejournal.com/235907.html

"Transmedia: a brave new world in entertainment marketing." http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-henry-jenkins22-2009nov22,0,4168038.story

I also remember posting two good links to Twitter for future reference...but because Twitter doesn't have a good search function, I can't find them. >_<

Updates and such

Right, so...still making no actual progress with writing new fic, because I just suck like that (and most of my schoolwork time has ended up going toward lesson planning). But I'm going to start working on that soon, especially to explore the differences in comments/reviews toward long chaptered fics and one-off pieces. As I've mentioned, I've only got the three Doctor Who fic, and they fall pretty easily in length ranges of really short (about 500 words), medium (about 2,000 words), and longish (about 7,500 words). The comments I've received probably do depend somewhat on the length and whether readers are interested enough to put in whatever the time commitment might be--I know I tend to avoid otherwise-interesting fics I stumble across when they're any longer than maybe 2,000 words, just because it'll take me too long to read--and I haven't really observed whether that's been the same across my other fics or not.

I have yet to complete and post a fanfic that wasn't a one-shot, though, theoretically readable in one sitting, so I have no experience with multi-part fics that could conceivably build up something of an audience over a more extended period of time and keep people coming back to read future installments. I do have just such a fic in need of editing, though, which I've mentioned before as the only one that's received zero feedback, partly because it is crazy long and maybe partly because it was kind of weird...but since I haven't given the story a good edit to smooth out what I know to be some trouble spots (specifically, minor areas where my story contradicts established canon, because it was written before said canon was aired) and haven't cross-posted it anywhere except in the original fic-exchange community, I don't have a good way of knowing why it hasn't received feedback. I should be able to get the story edited relatively quickly and begin posting it in three or four parts, probably a few days to a week apart, and see what kind of response I get. There are other variables, of course: it's a crossover, again, so all the disclaimers for other crossovers apply here, and its primary canon is from The Sarah Jane Adventures, a spinoff children's show in the Doctor Who universe. This show seems to have a much smaller fandom than that of the main Doctor Who show or the adult spinoff Torchwood, which might also narrow my possible audience.

But that's all speculation, at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, I've created a data sheet for the comments and reviews I received on my three Doctor Who fics, laying each out so that any correlations in gender, community, length/genre of fic, and nature of comment might be more easily seen. It's a long way from representing complete findings, since it's not a very large sample and I'm only presenting possible variables, not trying to control for them and thereby reach some slightly more scientific conclusions...but all the same, it might be interesting.

I've also been making a few community/fandom connections through cross-posting these fics, as well as through compiling my data sheet. I wanted to see whether it seemed to make a difference what community commenters found my fic on--if certain communities were getting me read more than others, for instance--but since all my cross-posting directed back to a single place, I didn't have an easy way of determining where people were coming from. So I had to look at their profiles to see which communities they and I shared membership in (sometimes there was more than one, in which case I included both, and sometimes there weren't any, which led me to discover that my fic had been linked in a couple different fandom newsletters). That led me to half a dozen new communities I didn't know about before that were relevant to my interests--additional places to post Doctor Who fic, mostly. I came across a community called Fanthropology, which I think is awesome, because anthropological/sociological studies of fandom fascinate me to begin with, and finding a community within fandom dedicated to just this sort of study might end up being a big help for this and future classes, beyond being interesting in its own right. Stemming from a conversation I had with severely_lupine about my fic "The Lost Boy," I was invited to participate in a long-fanfic fest centered on Remus Lupin, something I haven't really done before, so that's fun, especially since I usually just stumble across these things by accident if at all (and a deadline might actually force me to get this particular fic written).

Other mildly interesting notes: the use of the term "handwave," first by me and then by a subsequent reviewer who'd clearly read my earlier comment; it's kind of an in-fandom term already and functions as another sign of inclusion in the same discourse community, especially since it's likely to be a little confusing for someone who doesn't already know what it means. That doesn't mean we're deliberately excluding others who aren't in this discourse community, of course, but even though we don't personally know each other, it does function as a sort of shorthand, both for a slightly complicated concept and for the fact that we have these fandom things in common.

Also rather interesting how I went about determining the gender of my reviewers--Livejournal doesn't automatically say, so I did have to put in a little detective work that almost always paid off. Some people would say right on their profile, especially if they were describing themselves as "a 30-year-old wife and mother" or something, but usually I had to check other sites they’d linked to or skim through their entries, which often identified them as a mom, an aunt, a crazy cat lady, etc.

Data analysis: comments on cross-posted entries

I still haven't finished any new Doctor Who fic, but of the three I'd already written, one had only been posted to Teaspoon and ff.net, and there were at least a handful of LJ communities to which I could post the other two that I hadn't done before. So that's what I did, and now I have some new comments to analyze.

To No Splendid Phoenix Wings:
rose_cat: Awesome! It's like being in his skin and, well, burning with him ;) I just recently saw CIN for the first time, and your last two paragraphs really capture the pain he clearly feels when Rose rejects him. Very nice work :)
Pinchin_lane: Gorgeous. Very well done. :)
lorelaisquared: Awwww this is lovely and beautiful and achingly sad all at once. Nicely done.
helygen: This is excellent, a very nice look into the process and his thoughts :)
amberite: I really felt that one. Well done.
jennytork: Absolutely brilliant!
quean-of-swords*: Oooh... Nice!
the-10thdoctor: Beautiful. Absolutely perfect.
ssshunt: Oh this is very nice. I really loved it. Very well done.
goodbye2spices: This is wonderful. What an insightful glimpse into the process of regeneration and beautifully written as well. Just lovely :)

To The Lost Boy:
cecilegrey: *squee* Teddy and the Doctor! I love it! Awesome fic.
Gioia: Loved it!!!
ZiggyChaos: Brilliant! More, please?
faeriemaiden**: okay, i just re-read your fic and flailed all over myself. ALKSHDHG TEN. how is your ten so perfect, seriously.

To Too Close to the Moon:
michele72: This is well done despite the built-in impediments (which I see why you just handwaved away). The parallels between Lupin and the Doctor are nicely observed, and you do a very good job with the Doctor's voice.***
dariclone: Aww, very nice. I'm not a huge Reamus/Tonks fan, but I love this a lot. So true to the characters from both series' and I love how the action in the TARDIS takes place.
quean-of-swords: I like this! Nice parallels between Rose and Tonks. Lupin and Ten; two of my favorite characters in one place. Well done. ^^
torn-eledhwen: Excellent - great characterisation and I liked the plot. It's difficult, I think, to cross a fandom like DW where the Doctor's explicitly stated that magic doesn't exist, with HP, but it works here.
ffutures: Nice - I would have liked to see the other story.
jellocomics: I love this fic. It's got just the right amount of detail- things like Rose's accent, references to Harry Potter, and how Tonks and Rose are similar. And the romance was so subtle! :)


Notes:
* Quean-of-swords first found this LJ when I cross-posted "Too Close to the Moon"; she read more of my fic then and friended me, so she got to "No Splendid Phoenix Wings" that way rather than from one of the places I cross-posted it.
** Faeriemaiden is a close friend of mine and has been for about seven years, so she's very familiar with me and my writing.
*** Posted after I wrote this reply to an earlier comment by torn-eledhwen:

Yeeeeah, for this particular story I just decided, what the heck, I'll ignore that inconvenience since I didn't have time to address it. >_< In a fairly epic crossover I haven't written yet, though, Ten sort of keeps an eye on Teddy as he's growing up (which eventually results in them going back in time and Teddy saving his parents, which would be a major problem except it turns out they weren't really supposed to die because...something, somebody else tweaked the timeline so they would, I don't know exactly, haven't figured it all out yet), and at one point Teddy finds the whole Harry Potter series in the Doctor's library. I'm not totally sure how the Doctor will handwave this, but it'll have something to do with the fact that, well, it doesn't matter all that much that you're in a book, Teddy, because nobody's 100% in control of their lives and does it really matter whether you attribute that to fate or God or an author or chance or something? Teddy's like 13 at this point so he pretty much just accepts this explanation with a shrug, because really, what are you going to do? Although he does wonder whether Remus knew about the books, and Ten says no, Remus was already way too into existential angst and this wouldn't have helped. >_< So...yeah.

Points to consider for analysis:
-differences in comments between crossovers and oneshot--crossovers require a level of familiarity with two fandoms and canons rather than just one, and they tend to be longer and more complicated due to the difficulty of reconciling two canons that may or may not be compatible with each other. A reader's enjoyment of a crossover therefore depends on whether they're part of the fandoms in question, how far they're willing to suspend their disbelief, and how good the author is at reconciling those fandoms. Some readers just don't like crossovers on principle (although this can also be nice, because I've had a few commenters specifically say they dislike crossovers but enjoyed mine) or might take issue with how the fandoms are crossed. All of this results in a smaller readership pool for my crossovers to begin with.
-short vs. long stories, especially since there seems to be some direct correlation there--really long fics presented in one go (evidence A: my Sarah Jane Adventures crossover, which has been posted--unedited, essentially as one chunk rather than a multi-chapter fic--in more than one place) get no comments. Long fics broken into chapters and posted serially tend to get a lot, at least based on others' observations--I have none of these yet so I can't judge that personally. Fics that are too short don't get much, but there seems to be a sweet spot that garners the most (and least critical?) comments. "No Splendid Phoenix Wings" appears to hit that spot, especially with this set of cross-posts--but then, of the three fics, it was the one I posted to the most communities at one time, and "The Lost Boy" also appeared to hit this sweet spot based on the comments it received when it was first posted.
-how many new places I cross-posted, and which comments came from where--that's a little trickier, because all my cross-postings just directed people back to the original posting in my personal journal, meaning I don't have a way of easily seeing on which community each commenter found my fic. I can tell which communities each reader is a member of from their Livejournal profiles, however, which lets me make a reasonable guess, and the question is relevant for a number of reasons. Some communities are more active than others, meaning more people are likely to come across my fic, but it's also more likely to be buried more quickly below more recent posts; some are more specific than others, meaning those who come across my fic are more likely to be familiar enough with the fandom to read it (Doctor Who-specific communities rather than general-fic, or crossover-specific communities, or even a couple communities devoted to Doctor Who crossovers), but the more specific the community, the smaller it's generally likely to be. The crossovers can be posted to slightly more places--communities dedicated to Doctor Who and those dedicated to Harry Potter, rather than just one or the other--but they do have the limitations mentioned above.
-oddly, "The Lost Boy" originally got the most attention--including my first fic award--and continues to (it's still getting faved and reviewed on fanfiction.net, for instance), but in this particular go-round, it got the least number of comments. This may be due to the fact that, of the three, it had been cross-posted to the greatest number of communities previously and was therefore posted to the fewest additional communities this time. I've found a few other places to post it, though, so that may change.

All these variables mean a lot more data just from these comments than I realized I had in the first place, so I'm actually putting together a table to see if I can draw any correlations--it's not very scientific, but it might be interesting to see whether the number and kind of comments left on these three fics fall into classes by length, type, etc. I'm also including the gender of the commenter, something that can typically be determined from user profiles if it's not explicitly stated, to see if there are similarities by gender, although that may be a bit pointless since the majority of online fandom--particularly the parts of fandom that write fanfic--seems to be female anyway.

Well, to analyze data, first you need some data...

And as I mentioned, I don't have much since the forum I planned to focus on isn't as active--at least in the fanfic-specific part--as I'd thought it was (my post asking for feedback on my fic has received exactly 0 replies, even though 16 people have read it). Anyway, my focus has changed or narrowed a bit, or at least I hope it has; because I find fandom in general and fanfiction in particular fascinating as a community-based writing practice and as a discourse/literacy in its own right, I'll still be looking at that, but I'll do so in the context of my own writing in the Doctor Who fandom. I'll probably still do some of that at Gallifrey Base, but since I'm very new there and the fanfiction board isn't terribly active except for established writers, I'll be interacting elsewhere as well. I already post fanfic (well...when I finish it, and...I haven't finished one since last July. That is sad) at Fanfiction.net, a multifandom fanfic site, and at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind, a Doctor Who fanfiction site; I also maintain my own personal writing journal, which hosts all my fanfics, plus fanmixes and original writing (my original fiction is behind a friends-lock for copyright purposes, but anything published elsewhere is public). This personal journal tends to be the most versatile, since Livejournal is host to hundreds of fandom-specific communities where members can post their fanfiction for feedback, allowing me to link easily between posts there and my original posts at my journal. I've listed these cross-postings in each entry--for instance, "The Lost Boy," a Doctor Who/Harry Potter crossover, is cross-posted at two general fanfiction communities, one Doctor Who community, one Harry Potter fanfic community, two communities dedicated to Doctor Who crossovers, and two more for all crossovers.

Having my fanfics posted even at three different locations around the internet makes things a little complicated, since I get different reviews from different people at each place; that's why I started the writing journal on Livejournal in the first place, since it allowed me to gather more of my fanfic in one place and link to it there. Still, my few existing Doctor Who fics do allow me to compile some data, which I'll be able to continue with as I write more and interact in these various communities. Just from glancing over my statistics at each site, I've noticed something interesting: at ff.net, my three Doctor Who fics are about equally popular (13 reviews each for two crossovers, 9 reviews for a shorter single-fandom fic). On my personal journal, the shorter, more recently written crossover experienced decent popularity: almost 20 positive comments, a recommendation on the personal journal of someone I didn't know, and an award in the Best Crossover category at a multifandom fanfic award site. The other two have no reviews, despite having cross-posted the longer crossover to almost as many communities as the shorter one (the remaining fic hasn't been cross-posted to any communities yet). At Teaspoon, however, the situation is almost the opposite: "The Lost Boy," the crossover popular elsewhere, has 0 reviews; the longer crossover has 2, while the single-fandom Doctor Who fic has 9 positive reviews.

There are plenty of variables here, of course, like the people who happened to stumble across each fic when it was originally posted, the number of places to which I cross-posted them, the length of each fic, and so on. It does appear at first glance, though, that--if nothing else--Teaspoon is less friendly to crossovers than multifandom archives tend to be...but then, I don't really have enough data to state that at all firmly. I'd be interested in looking at this more as I write and post more fic, though, especially since I have two fics I can think of that are semi-close to being finished--one is a long crossover, and the other is a shorter single-fandom Doctor Who fic.