Fanfiction. It seems to be a taboo word around here. People associate it with Fifty Shades of Grey or psychopathic fangirls fantasizing about boy band members and embarrassingly, there is some measure of truth in that, but that is not the whole picture. Some of the best stories I have ever read have come from fandoms, and I am a picky reader. No amount of quoted popularity was enough to win over me and my unusual taste for Lemony Snicket, and yet, here I found myself immensely drawn to the works of anonymous authors who wrote about pseudoscience, passion and the coming of age. When I stumbled upon fanfiction, it had opened up a whole new realm for me. Never seen before concepts of alternate universes and canon extensions amazed and inspired me. As fanfiction writers, we get these characters, perhaps even real people with predetermined personalities, and put them in a different time-space, a parallel destiny, tweak their background stories and observe how this changes them. Writing fanfiction multitasks as both a study of human behaviour and an outlet for creative output. Billions of What-Ifs to be explored, the world is our oyster. …show more content…
From a user’s perspective, I questioned the poor formatting of site layouts that degraded the mobile reading experience and pondered over the low functionality of on-site search engines. As an author, I experimented with fancier text arrangements and was surprised by and learnt from viewers’ discomfort with sudden changes. Soon, my interest expanded: I wanted to know how web page loading speeds were determined, how it affected a user’s decision to exit or stay... and above all: how to make user experience faster, clearer and more friendly towards what they were trying to