Fading into obscurity?

[laurenthemself]

Discovering that RD is apparently a valid fandom for Yuletide, where the requirement is that 'fandoms should generally be fairly small, relatively inactive, or very new', is making me wonder: We're not that inactive, are we? I mean, I know that the Yahoo ML has slowed down a hell of a lot, but that's because people tend to post here, right?

I dunno, it's just a bit mind-boggling (and, I'll admit, a tad upsetting) to think that RD qualifies as 'small' or 'inactive'. Sure, we're no Harry Potter, but thank Cloister for that, because frankly I don't think I could deal with that amount of shite -- HP's produced some great stuff but also some howlingly bad stuff, whereas I like to think that we do fairly well at producing consistently good-quality fic (and by 'we' I mean 'you guys who actually still, y'know, post fic, as opposed to maudlin whinges like this').

After all the effort we put into the fic exchange over at 20yearsofdwarf, and all the fics that keep getting posted here, I just felt the need to mention this. I'll admit I feel a little guilty over the forsaken_fandom awards thing, mainly because I think I still have the RDSS Awards nominations list, half-finished, kicking around my hard drive from, like, 2005 or 2004 or something, and the whole awards-in-the-fandom thing kind of died, so yeah. I will start brainstorming after exams and try to do something involving polls and pretty banners so's people don't have to go elsewhere for their poll-and-pretty-banner fix.

Also, there are apparently two RD fic requests still outstanding from last year's Yuletide, and this one made my mind boggle: 'Cat/David Lister/Kristine Kochanski/Kryten'. Please tell me that the slashes in that instance don't mean what they mean to us!

Comments

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

The Mighty Boosh qualified for Yuletide last year. I wouldn't worry.

Also, does this mean you're writing? :)

EDIT: Ah, from your comment about the request, I see that you don't. No, they don't. :) They're just dividers. Scared me too, when I was assigned a request for Granny Weatherwax/Susan Death the first time I did it!

[laurenthemself]

Was thinking about giving it a go this year, partly because someone on my flist has nommed xkcd and I think that would be funny to try. But I still have fifteen out of sixteen fic requests from the poll I did about a year ago on my LJ to write, so maybe not; I don't want to commit and then not do it, that wouldn't be nice at all.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

That's a good thought, but I hope you'll consider it. It's one of the greatest things fandom has to offer, IMO. :)

[laurenthemself]

I've always liked reading the stuff that other people have written; some really good quality stuff gets written for it.

I guess I'm also partly scared (me, with over a million words of fic under my belt) that I'll suck at it. But then, I was worried about that with 20yearsofdwarf and it came out all right (even with the diabolical pairing of Rimmer/Compere-from-Backwards that Fia threw at me).

What the heck. I'll have to sign up when I'm not at work, though. Checking my email's one thing; spending hours picking obscure fandoms is not something I can pass off as work-related.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Awesome!

Oh, everyone worries about that. It wouldn't be Yuletide without the obligatory fretful angst. :D

[beedekka]

(even with the diabolical pairing of Rimmer/Compere-from-Backwards that Fia threw at me)

Eeek! I knew it was an obscure pairing to request, but I wasn't aiming to create worry or anything on the part of the author... Gosh, I feel quite bad about that now. The fic was great, though - I was chuffed to bits that it got written well.

Lol - you'll have to challenge me to write something awkward, sometime, to make up for it ;o)

[laurenthemself]

Awww, don't feel bad! It was diabolical, but the thing is, that's the fun part. I've written so much Rimmer/Lister and the common pairings that this was a real challenge for me, which made it better than churning out yet another R/L fic. I enjoyed the opportunity to do something outside the box!