Fanfiction, for those of you who feel that great big question mark that appeared on your forehead at the mention of the word, is a genre of amateur creative expression that features characters from movies, TV shows and popular culture in new situations or adventures. Fanfiction in its basic form has been around for centuries, dating back to Miguel de Cervantes’ famous novel Don Quixote when an anonymous fan published a “Part Two” long before Cervantes himself had finished writing the actual Don Quixote: Part Two. In modern day, fanfiction really got its start when Star Trek became popular in the 1960s and took off from there. Fans published amateur works of fiction through fanzines, printing and distributing the fanzines through the mail and conventions around the world. As computer and the internet became a common household item in the ‘90s, LiveJournal became a fanfiction writer’s best friend.

LiveJournal is a place where fanfiction writers have united and where communities have sprung up overnight to communicate and share anything and everything to do with fanfiction. Since fanfiction migrated to LiveJournal roughly around 1990, fanfiction writers  and readers have amassed in this large and intricate online community. There are fanfiction communities about popular TV shows such as Doctor Who, Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, The Big Bang Theory, and movies such as Star Trek, Twilight, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, etc… More than likely, if you can think of a popular form of media entertainment (books, TV shows, movies, games, etc…) and you will find a community for it somewhere on LiveJournal.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of fanfiction communities on LiveJournal today. According to Bill Tancer, an online intelligence agent and webstatics author, fanfiction comprises 33% of the content revolving around books on the web today. LiveJournal has turned the fanfiction community into a living, breathing social network of like minds. A online group sharing and evolving to improve and reinvent their favorite media entertainment into something that even the creators may have never dreamed of. LiveJournal and fanfiction go hand-in-hand, making media entertainment into a collaborative effort to remake and re-inspire interest in some of the shows, movies and books that defined multiple generations and will continue to define us into the future.

Submitted by guest blogger:  Piper Westwood