E-reading and fanfic
It's funny how having an e-reader changes how I read fic. I had a Sony Reader for about a year and a half before I managed to break it, and by that time, I was fully in the habit of downloading just about all the fanfic I read. This was before AO3 made it easy to download (or at least before I noticed that feature existed). There were a few sites available to download ebook versions of fanfic, but I also used to copy and paste a lot of fics into rtf files to put onto the reader. For the most part, I would opt for longer fics which would take more time to read.
Then, after I broke my first Reader by setting it on a bedside table that wasn't where I thought it was (otherwise known as dropping it on the floor), I had to get back in the habit of reading fic on a laptop screen again. The main difference was with having to scroll to read more rather than turning the page. Word count started to be a consideration in a different way than before. Since I rarely bookmark a fic to continue reading later, and I use my laptop for work and school, I'm not always comfortable leaving tabs open to finish reading fic later. I try to judge how long it will take me to read a fic of a certain length, and if I don't have time, I won't begin reading.
Now I have a new Sony Reader (I like that they have touch screens), I am getting back in the habit of downloading again. It's funny that it seems foreign after almost a year of only reading on my laptop.
I've also switched fandoms in the meantime, from majority SGA and SPN to almost entirely Inception. There are some big differences between movie and TV fandoms (no new weekly content being the most obvious), and the content of the fic seems to be different as well. Where TV fandoms tend to have a lot of post-ep fic, explaining or elaborating what happened in the canon, for the most part, Inception canon is left alone. There are a lot of what would be considered futurefics in other fandoms, explorations of new jobs or new possibilities with the PASIV technology.
Inception fic has a lot of AUs, though probably no more than other fandoms. The longer fics archived on AO3, however, include a lot of AUs, and those are the ones that are being downloaded for my e-reader.
Then, after I broke my first Reader by setting it on a bedside table that wasn't where I thought it was (otherwise known as dropping it on the floor), I had to get back in the habit of reading fic on a laptop screen again. The main difference was with having to scroll to read more rather than turning the page. Word count started to be a consideration in a different way than before. Since I rarely bookmark a fic to continue reading later, and I use my laptop for work and school, I'm not always comfortable leaving tabs open to finish reading fic later. I try to judge how long it will take me to read a fic of a certain length, and if I don't have time, I won't begin reading.
Now I have a new Sony Reader (I like that they have touch screens), I am getting back in the habit of downloading again. It's funny that it seems foreign after almost a year of only reading on my laptop.
I've also switched fandoms in the meantime, from majority SGA and SPN to almost entirely Inception. There are some big differences between movie and TV fandoms (no new weekly content being the most obvious), and the content of the fic seems to be different as well. Where TV fandoms tend to have a lot of post-ep fic, explaining or elaborating what happened in the canon, for the most part, Inception canon is left alone. There are a lot of what would be considered futurefics in other fandoms, explorations of new jobs or new possibilities with the PASIV technology.
Inception fic has a lot of AUs, though probably no more than other fandoms. The longer fics archived on AO3, however, include a lot of AUs, and those are the ones that are being downloaded for my e-reader.