The return of Elmer Studios

Back in the wild, heady days of the 1990s, one of the "Big Things" was MSTings. A cultural phenomena of the early days of the internets, MSTings of fanfic and other material, inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000, was a big thing. In short order, zillions of MSTers were leaping at the burgeoning fanfic "industry" providing laughs and "alternative criticism" based not only on the original MST3K cast of Mike/Joel and the Bots, but also using their own original characters, settings and situations.

Elmer Studios was one of those groups. And I'm one of the people from Elmer Studios. Hi! I'm the "Rick R." half of it, who had a hand in 150 151 MSTings as well as a wealth of other material and side stories.

For a while, it was a hell of a lot of fun. Relentless mockery and laughs at some of the epic badness out there was amusing. The combination of community and entertainment was driving and encouraging, as well as the never-ending "I cannot believe something could be this bad" level of bile fascination that sent us looking for more. Along the way we made friends, created running gags, discovered some epic badness and maybe, just maybe, launched an internet legend or two. Fun times.

But then, real life happened.

For the Elmer Studios team, it became a hard truth. Jobs, changing schedules, lack of free time and other such matters took their toll. The riffers were struggling to find time and energy to work, which resulted in a slowdown and eventually a halt. Projects were abandoned and left unfinished by the roadside, vanishing into the depths of e-mail archives and dead hard disks. With the imminent demise of Geocities, it seemed like Elmer Studios would simply vanish into internet history.

It didn’t. One thoroughly awesome guy took it upon himself to archive the entire content of the site, preserving it for all time. Likewise, the memories of certain fanfics would never dim.

And then, inspired by these things as well as a particularly silly conversation, a pair of MSTers decided “let’s get back into the game”. What became a single idle thought quickly snowballed into a whole new MSTing, with plans for a lot, lot more.

This Blog will be used to post new MSTings as well as host other information and the occasional ramblings of one (or both) of the writers. It's also a handy place if you have comments, questions, feedback or general jeffs. You can also e-mail us at elmerstudios00 (at) gmail.com as well.

It's good to be back.