Once upon a time there was a girl who thought fan-fiction was quite possibly one of the stupidest ideas in the world. She couldn't understand why anyone would bother to read it when there were plenty of books out there with new characters, new ideas, and new worlds to discover.

Shortly after her 18th birthday, the girl left home to attend university, studying chemical and bio-engineering, an exciting new program at her school. While there she made some wonderful friends who told her about the fan-fiction they read, and how it was fun to read. As well as keeping their favourite characters alive in their imaginations, it introduced new ideas and plot twists for the characters to deal with, new characters to try out their favourite worlds, and situations that would put the original authors to shame. But the girl was still hesitant.

One day, during spring exams at the end of her first year, the girl was exceptionally bored. There was nothing to study as her next exam was not for several more days. There was nothing to do as all of her friends were dilligently studying, or writing an exam at the moment. So she decided to just wander aimlessly across the vast expanse of the internet. After all, what's the use of a super fast internet connection, supplied by the university to her residence room, if you weren't going to have fun with it. During her wanderings she stumbled across the website of one of her favourite authors, the illustrious Tamora Pierce.

Bah! she said to herself, I wish I could read the lastest book, but it's still in hardcover! looking around she noticed with regret that she had wisely taken all of her non-essential books home, both to eliminate the distraction and to aid with packing when she would have to move back home the next week.

Without quite realizing what she was doing, the girl googled and clicked her way onto Fanfiction.net, signed up with her character from the recent Engineering Musical as a pen name, and was soon trapped in the world of drabbles, never-ending stories, Eomer's love interests, and mud fights with the future Prime Minister of Tortall. Sadly, the girl was never heard from again. Some say she's still out there, reading every story that catches her interest, and doing her best to review each and every one. With the approach of her third looming ever nearer, it is likely she will soon disappear into the abyss of thermodynamics, enzymatic RNA, and polymerization reactions, but she will return.