us relative fanfiction newbies are REALLY sleeping on LiveJournal
i've been reading & writing fic for the better part of five years now and yet hadn't really acknowledged the TREASURE TROVE that is 'old'er fandom space. of course fanfiction.net had been an occasional perusal, but mostly i'd stuck to good ol' AO3 and the rare tumblrfic, scared off by the clunky LJ ui & all the stories about Strikethrough.
however, recently I've been getting more and more into the 'communities' (specifically st-ficfinder) as a source of both reccommendations & a way to track down new fic... and HOLY LORD there is a MOTHERLOAD of work out there that I'd never even HEARD of, even in fandoms I'd assumed I'd milked dry!!! It's awesome! I feel like a kid in a candy shop... or, rather, a child walking through the library of their elders. Literally after a ~30min skim through a SINGLE journal I had about FIFTY new fics to read!
this probably makes some of you feel old (and for that I'm so sorry, but the decay of time is real... I was still in high school during COVID and now I pay rent!) but I really just had not paid LJ any mind and I'm sure many of my peers haven't either. So, to those peers-- GUYS, CHECK OUT LIVEJOURNAL. EVERYBODY ELSE USED IT FOR A REASON! TAKES A BIT TO GET USED TO THE UI BUT HOLY GOD IS IT MORE THAN WORTH IT!
^not trying to act like i'm reinventing the wheel or that i'm rediscovering something hidden... obv LJ was The Place to be for ages. but i think newgens like me tend to dismiss all old sites and this one rlly just shouldn't go ignored by us^
