If it's got a LJ community and at least five or so pages at ff.net, then I say it isn't rare. If it has got a fan base of more than ten or so people, not rare.
I would agree with you if we were talking about a smaller fandom. But HP is huge. We need to look at the fics in terms of % of total fics in the category. 5+ pages on ffnet for a smaller fandom (let's say...15% of fics) = definitely not rare. But when we're talking about tens of thousands of writers and hundreds of thousands of fics, 5+ pages starts looking like nothing (only 0.0003% of fics).
We can't look at absolute number of shippers/fics or there'd be next to nothing that's rare in HP. You're probably going to be able to find 10 people who'll ship anything in HP. A recent Remus/Fat Lady fic I read had more than 10 comments on it. I'm sure in all of fandom, there are at least 10 people who would support it, as ridiculous as it is.
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I would agree with you if we were talking about a smaller fandom. But HP is huge. We need to look at the fics in terms of % of total fics in the category. 5+ pages on ffnet for a smaller fandom (let's say...15% of fics) = definitely not rare. But when we're talking about tens of thousands of writers and hundreds of thousands of fics, 5+ pages starts looking like nothing (only 0.0003% of fics).
We can't look at absolute number of shippers/fics or there'd be next to nothing that's rare in HP. You're probably going to be able to find 10 people who'll ship anything in HP. A recent Remus/Fat Lady fic I read had more than 10 comments on it. I'm sure in all of fandom, there are at least 10 people who would support it, as ridiculous as it is.