So I was inspired to write this by a commenter, SHINeeChocolate.

Recently I've begun to be somewhat disappointed in Livejournal—not as a reader, but as a writer.

(Disclaimer: my rant is mostly centered towards the sonyeoncheonji, aka SNCJ, Livejournal community, which is an EXO Livejournal community, but I've heard similar sentiments for other fandoms.)

On actually finding fics on Livejournal:

Livejournal is great for finding good stories. I'm not entirely sure how it began, but it's extremely difficult to find a bad fic on Livejournal.

That being said, it's extremely hard to find fics on Livejournal, period.

Livejournal is primarily a blogging website that caters to individuals as well as large groups. However, in my experience, it differs from another popular blogging site, tumblr, by the way one finds blogs.

On tumblr, a common way people find other blogs is through tags. You want an EXO blog? The EXO tag is there for you. Looking for pictures of Siwon? Go check the Siwon tag! It's extremely easy to find blogs that way. What's great about tumblr's tagging system is that it works not only for individual blogs, but also site-wide.

However, Livejournal only offers a search bar. When I typed in 'exo fanfiction,' it showed a list of posts tagged 'fanfiction,' 'exo,' and 'exo fanfiction.' When I looked under 'communities,' there were 3 communities listed, all with 'exo' and 'fanfiction' somewhere in the title.

Great, right?

...no, not really.

See, the thing with Livejournal is that tags tend to be more for personal categorization rather than for finding things. It's great for organizing communities, such as SNCJ, with pairings, ratings, fic lengths, and what have you. It's not so great, though, if you're looking for something more general.

On users on Livejournal:

To many people, Livejournal seems to be a warm, welcoming community. There are many of talented people out there who leave long, gushing comments on your work, and users are eager to name their friends as inspirations.

However, what many people don't realize, is that Livejournal is a rather cliqueish site. I say this because although I've been using Livejournal for around a year now, nobody talks to me. Granted, I didn't really make a whole lot of an effort to make friends per se, but it's definitely not the welcoming atmosphere a new writer may wish for.

If you were to go on SNCJ, within the first few pages of fics, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to tell who's friends with who. I don't want to name names, because I have no individual problems with anyone nor do I wish anything bad upon them. They're fantastic writers. However, it is difficult to make friends on that site. I'm not entirely sure why this is so, but it does tend to reiterate the 'Livejournal is for snobs' argument that many people seem to have.

On a bit of a tangent, commenters on Livejournal communities like omonatheydidnt are some of the rudest, close-mided people I've ever come across. And the sad thing is, a lot of people agree with them.

But I digress.

On using Livejournal:

If you want to start writing on Livejournal, but don't know how to start, the best way I suggest is finding a community for your fandom. Otherwise, for reasons specified above, no one is going to read your stories except maybe a lost internet user once in a blue moon.

Once you've found your community, join it and acquaint yourself with the rules. Yes, there are rules. They vary from comm to comm but generally they include how to post your entries and other policies.

Now how you go about posting things is this:

1. Post the fic on your own personal journal (for me, greyskies268).

2. Link your entry in the community, following the post guidelines. For example, in SNCJ, you'll notice that very few people actually post their fics directly in the comm. They instead make a post with the title, rating, summary, pairings, etc in the story, and then include a link.

3. Whenever you post a new story, make a new post in the comm. I cannot stress this enough. It is extremely rare for people to actively follow your individual journal, unless they're your friends. People are more likely to follow the comm, and therefore get all fic updates from there.

3a. If you're updating numerous fics on one day, put them all in one comm post. Many communities get annoyed if you make a lot of posts all at the same time.

4. Don't expect a lot of comments. Seriously. It is a very heartbreaking thing to hear, but the truth of the matter is that, unless you are well-known or write an extremely heart-wrenching fic, you will be lucky to get one or two comments. I mean, I think I'm a pretty decent writer and I have a fairly substantial amount of subscribers here and followers on tumblr, but there are many times where I'll get no comments on a fic. And it'll stay that way for the end of time.

TL;DR: Livejournal isn't bad, but it definitely has its faults, just like any other site. Just make sure you're confident in yourself before posting, and don't have extremely high expecations unless you've written the next Anterograde Tomorrow.