Cascade Library Interview with Robyn

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Cascade Library Interview with Robyn
Interviewer:	Cascade Library
Interviewee:	Robyn
Date(s):	January 17, 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	The Sentinel
External Links:	interview is here, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

In 2000, Robyn was interviewed for Cascade Library.

Some Excerpts

For those of you who don't know, Becky (yes, THE Becky of TS fanfic fame ~grin~) and I share an apartment. We got acquainted as college dorm roommates. I was basically a big-time premed nerd/study-holic when she met me, with basically no hobbies to speak of. In her own insidious way, she managed to convert me into a fan of several TV shows -- namely Star Trek: The Next Generation and Lois and Clark. When I entered medical school, we got an apartment and she started watching this show called The Sentinel. All I knew was that the show was about some army guy and they did a lot of explosions, and that didn't exactly sound like my kind of show -- I like mostly comedy. I'd be studying my head off and have to take a potty break. I'd walk from my bedroom past the living room where she was watching TV, to the bathroom. Inevitably, I'd end up stuck in the living room, standing behind the couch and watching the show over her shoulder! This went on for a while, and eventually she got me to sit down and watch Spare Parts and I was *totally* hooked. Jim and Blair were seriously gorgeous men and I just loved their banter. And then I realized the show had this totally deep friendship concept! Wow! Then I went through the period of "Uh-uh, I'm *never* gonna be caught writing fanfic," but obviously that didn't last too long either! LOL! Did I mention Jim and Blair are SO handsome? Beautiful smiles, vivid blue eyes, handsome faces, wonderful bodies... What more could you want?

I've never posted my first Sentinel fanfic story. I wrote it before I was a true TS fan, as a gift for Becky. It was a total Mary Sue (not that I knew what a Mary Sue was back then) -- basically a story about Jim and Blair coming to southern California to help out in a murder case at the university where I was going to medical school. They stayed at our apartment and everything! LOL! It was really bad. By the time Becky wrote Disneyland Detour, I knew enough about The Sentinel to help her come up with ideas for the stories, but she did all the actual writing. The first story I wrote by myself was a humor piece -- The Cascade Supermarket Incident. I think I wrote that in November 1997 sometime. Becky posted it for me since I didn't belong to any of the lists. I don't remember being particularly scared to post. I was more like a naive happy dog, eagerly waiting to see if people really thought the story was as funny as I thought it was. Fortunately, I received some incredibly kind feedback and have been writing ever since.

Speaking specifically about TS fanfic, I hope it will stick around for a long time! Because new episodes are no longer being filmed, the writers and readers of our fandom are going to be the ones that keep Jim and Blair alive forever. That thought is exciting to me, because that's something *we* as a fandom have control over. I've been so pleased to see that so many new TS stories still continue to be written even after the show's run on UPN ended, and that we regularly have new authors appearing. And even if the volume of fic ever drops off, we can be proud that our fandom has amassed a wonderful collection of stories that should be around for readers to enjoy indefinitely.

~grin~ I suppose I like all of [the Sentinel websites I've created] for different reasons. They're basically different kinds of resource pages for TS, and they were all created during some holiday weekend during med school ~grin~. Sensory Overload was my first attempt at a TS webpage. I got the idea from a webpage Becky found that had kept track of all the clever tricks MacGyver had ever done, and I thought it would be neat to keep track of all the ways Jim used his senses. The Cascade Hospital was created when I realized I could use my medical school education for the greater good of the fandom ~grin~ to help authors who wanted advice on medical stuff. That page is desperately in need of an update -- I have a huge email directory of questions and answers waiting to be added, but in the meantime, I still answer questions when I can. If I had any medical advice for fanfic writers, it would be to please not spend time talking about Foley catheters ~grin~. Get to the emotional H/C part -- it's more fun! ~grin~ Also, don't stress out over medical details. That should always be secondary to the heart of your story, which is Jim and Blair's friendship. Best of TS Fanfic on the Web and Welcome to the Sentinel Fandom were both aimed more toward newer fans to get them into TS fanfic and show them how to get involved in the fandom. Becky and I had a lot of fun doing the Welcome page because we just thought up all the stuff we wish we would have known when we first discovered the online fandom -- which mailing lists were the major ones and how to join, a quick who's-who listing of the supporting characters (when you have no clue who the other listsibs are talking about), where to get autographs, how to get copies of old episodes, etc. It felt really good to hear from a lot of new fans thanking us for the site and old fans telling us they wished the site had been around when they entered the fandom ~grin~.

Let's see... well, the Library itself takes up a surprisingly small amount of space -- only 8.3 megs at the moment. Fortunately most authors have their own websites, otherwise we'd have to obtain a massive amount of web space to hold all the stories! The search engine gets about 1,000 queries each month and FreeFind keeps track of the most common and most recent search queries (don't worry, it doesn't remember or track who did the search). The top 50 queries currently include Blair, Jim, sentinel, Rafe, blind, crossover, sick, Highlander, accident, Alex, alternate, and angst. As of this writing, the most recent search queries have been for Nash Bridges, flu, rogue, Chapel, Due South, and Girl Next Door ~grin~. One of my favorite things about the Library (besides the wonderful writers who keep bringing us the stories and the readers who faithfully keep coming back for more) is the Featured Author Interview. I am in awe of the talent we have in our fandom and happy that I could be a part of it. I've really enjoyed interviewing and reading about so many of our fandom's writers, and I think it's fun for readers to get to know something about the people who create the stories we love to read. I got the idea for the author interview from a Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres fanfic archive -- I think they posted a new interview only about once a year, and I knew we had a lot more authors to read about than that ~grin~.

We have a pretty old-fashioned system compared to Guide Posts' spiffy search engine (which, by the way, I think is *really* cool!) The librarians work in shifts, usually a week at a time. We watch the Library's email account for stories to come through Senfic or SENTIN-L with archiving permission. Then we add the story to the New Arrivals page, the appropriate author and title page, and the stories-in-progress page if applicable. I'm pretty slow at doing it all compared to the other librarians -- they're speedy! Generally we try our best to archive a story within 24 hours of the time we receive it, as long as it's already available on an outside website. If the author doesn't have her own website, then we format the story to look pretty and store it at the Library itself.