Lufty's MSTing Conversion Project Archive
So what is this?
This is a project to preserve a classic format of fanfiction for a newer generation. I'm converting a specific form of Mystery Science theater 3000 fanfic from carefully formatted TXT files into reflowable Epub files, suited for reading with a dedicated ereader, or a ereader app.
These fanfics took the form of MSTings, where-in instead of riffing on a old movie, Joel or Mike and the bots would riff on email spam, fanfics, movie scripts, and books that fell into the public domain. MSTings were fairly popular during the mid to late 90s to about 2003. That's when Website #9, the main repository of MSTings, suddenly went offline. This pretty much destroyed the community and scattered it to the wind.
Granted, I don't think that MSTings will ever be resurrected as a artform, due to a fair number of reasons, but I do feel that they still have value, and should be preserved.
Thus, this archive. Reading habits have changed, the screens people try to read stuff online no longer guarantee a solid 80 columns to work with. Text must be reflowable in order to be readable, and the old TXT MSTings were definitely not that. Thus, I've been converting these fanfics to Epub by hand.
Next Update?
Finished with "Caretaker" and "Dale goes Nuts" and to be honest, this will probably be the last epub conversion I do for a while. I don't really have any other MSTings that I have fond memories about, and given world events, I want to focus on other things, namely drawing and staring at the wall. Happy reading though!
The Archive
Just click on the cover to download the epub within! If your Ereader cannot read Epubs, then just use a app like Calibre to convert it over to the format of your own choice.
Links
The MSTing Canon This is where I've been getting most of my raw TXT files, and it's also has a far more highly informative overview of MSTings than my humble webpage. Go check it out!
The Fanlore entry on MSTings I've included this as a different view on the MSTing phenomenon.