The process of reading fan fiction at work

Funny thing, technology.

Archive Of Our Own (henceforth AO3) has the option to download stories as .mobi files which can be read on a Kindle. Usually I download them in the .pdf and read them on my laptop but the other day I decided to give the e-reader version a try.

So, there I say, reading a fan written story downloaded from the internet onto my laptop and transferred by USB cable to an e-reader. The odd additional step, qualifier and lack of financial transaction aside that's exactly the same process as any other book on my Kindle. The most astonishing aspect, for me, is how portable fan fiction becomes under these circumstances.

Up to now my own personal stash of fan fiction has been a series of increasingly labyrinthine folders on my laptop divided by series, ship or whatever other method occurred to me at the time, sometimes in open contradition of one another. To be honest, aside from a rather sizable folder of Weiss Schnee/Blake Belladonna stories (shut up, I like me some Love Across The Barricades enemies to lovers action, add in the high probability of Jacques Schnee getting slapped and I'm in) there isn't much sense of order there.

The important here, though, is that its all on my laptop in a format my Kindle makes impossible to read because of screen size and the laptop is actually rather unwieldy. Now, I can simply save these files as .mobis and transfer them to the Kindle at need.

And there's a practically unlimited supply, for free. Payment will be offered, of course, in the form of comments and praise. This process feels, from my rather ostentatiously luddite perspective, very much like magic and anyone who benefits from magic without paying the price is rightfully doomed.

Plus, if the format of the one I downloaded to test the system is any indication they include the archive warnings at the beginning of all the .pdfs so I won't find myself reading something unexpectedly explicit in public.