More From The Fandom Vaults: Part IV
Sep. 19th, 2012 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morgandawnMost of us remember the days before Kindle. Most of us have held paper books in our hands, carried them onto buses and trains and read them over lunch at our desks.
Reading fanfiction in those days of yore was another matter altogether. If you were lucky, the fanfic was neatly bound in a fanzine with a plain cover that you could carry out in public. Not like this zine cover or this zine (NSFW images). But some fanfic was never printed in fanzines, it was distributed loose as part of a "circuit" - stories written anonymously, hand typed, photo-copied and mailed fan to fan.
The question then became...how to read this loose fanfiction safely in public. Binders, clips, and folders could only go so far. But what if the story you were reading was 600+ pages? What then?
Well, one fan never did get the hang of it.
"I'd finally snagged a copy of the massive Pros novel "Waiting to Fall"
(AKA "Waiting to Screw"), at 600+ pages, a tome to be reckoned with. I
reckoned with it my carrying 200 page sections about with me at one
time. These pages were not in a binder, nay, they were kept loose in
file folders preparatory to my plan to copy them at work while no one was
looking. So there I was one morning, riding the bus, engrossed in the
pages I was currently reading whilst a 200-page section sat in my backpack
destined for the photocopier. The pages I was reading were a tad
exciting. So exciting that I failed to notice how close we were coming
to my stop until the bus began to make its final approach--I looked up,
saw the University hospital, and thought, Oops. I leaped from my seat,
grabbing up my backpack. Which was not zipped shut.
The file folder inside, with the 200 pages of "Waiting to Fall", went
flying down the aisle. Many people were attempting to walk down the
aisle to leave the bus. The bus itself was lurching mightily to a long,
drawn-out stop. As I scrambled to retrieve the mess, bumping into people as
the bus lurched along, I had one clear thought in mind: the
page with the sex scene is going to get stuck under the seats.
My second thought was, [my friend T] is going to kill me. She's the one I
borrowed the novel from, and it was her pristine copy which was making
its merry way down the filthy bus aisle. By some incredible miracle
granted to me by the Slash Slut Goddess, I got the miscreant pages in
hand, managed to exit the bus before finding myself in another county,
got to the office, ate some chocolate immediately, and then carefully put
it all in the right order and not only was nothing missing, but nothing
was even smudged, torn, or mangled. Two page corners were slightly bent
(sorry, T). I unbent them and offered a silent thank-you to the
above-mentioned SSG.
I have, however, never read slash on the bus since, as I don't believe in
tempting fate too terribly often."*
*Story reprinted with permission
Reading fanfiction in those days of yore was another matter altogether. If you were lucky, the fanfic was neatly bound in a fanzine with a plain cover that you could carry out in public. Not like this zine cover or this zine (NSFW images). But some fanfic was never printed in fanzines, it was distributed loose as part of a "circuit" - stories written anonymously, hand typed, photo-copied and mailed fan to fan.
The question then became...how to read this loose fanfiction safely in public. Binders, clips, and folders could only go so far. But what if the story you were reading was 600+ pages? What then?
Well, one fan never did get the hang of it.
"I'd finally snagged a copy of the massive Pros novel "Waiting to Fall"
(AKA "Waiting to Screw"), at 600+ pages, a tome to be reckoned with. I
reckoned with it my carrying 200 page sections about with me at one
time. These pages were not in a binder, nay, they were kept loose in
file folders preparatory to my plan to copy them at work while no one was
looking. So there I was one morning, riding the bus, engrossed in the
pages I was currently reading whilst a 200-page section sat in my backpack
destined for the photocopier. The pages I was reading were a tad
exciting. So exciting that I failed to notice how close we were coming
to my stop until the bus began to make its final approach--I looked up,
saw the University hospital, and thought, Oops. I leaped from my seat,
grabbing up my backpack. Which was not zipped shut.
The file folder inside, with the 200 pages of "Waiting to Fall", went
flying down the aisle. Many people were attempting to walk down the
aisle to leave the bus. The bus itself was lurching mightily to a long,
drawn-out stop. As I scrambled to retrieve the mess, bumping into people as
the bus lurched along, I had one clear thought in mind: the
page with the sex scene is going to get stuck under the seats.
My second thought was, [my friend T] is going to kill me. She's the one I
borrowed the novel from, and it was her pristine copy which was making
its merry way down the filthy bus aisle. By some incredible miracle
granted to me by the Slash Slut Goddess, I got the miscreant pages in
hand, managed to exit the bus before finding myself in another county,
got to the office, ate some chocolate immediately, and then carefully put
it all in the right order and not only was nothing missing, but nothing
was even smudged, torn, or mangled. Two page corners were slightly bent
(sorry, T). I unbent them and offered a silent thank-you to the
above-mentioned SSG.
I have, however, never read slash on the bus since, as I don't believe in
tempting fate too terribly often."*
*Story reprinted with permission
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-20 02:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-20 07:08 pm (UTC)And oh, yeah, I know the feeling--coming home from a con carrying my copy of It's All Greek to Me with the cover carefully folded back, or being paranoid that the punched holes in my circuit stories were tearing loose and running the risk of snowing slash hither and yon.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-21 10:21 pm (UTC)I liked the circuit stories for bus reading on the whole, because you didn't have to worry about explicit cover art!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-22 03:08 am (UTC)