Navigating Livejournal - Part II
I've written an introductory post to Livejournal (and all its twins like Dreamwidth or Insanejournal) here. This post should be of special interest to anyone who likes reading from fandoms that predate AO3 (= stories have been written before 2008). In my case, this means LotRPS and, to some extent, LOTR. There were a handful of dedicated archives for LotRPS and those saw plenty of traffic, but the rule of thumb was that authors at least also had a Livejournal. A lot posted their fic exclusively on Livejournal. And that means, if you want to read those old stories, you'll have to find your way around there. Which is why @estel-elrondion now asks how to find stuff in someone's Livejournal once you've located an author you like.
I'll not rehash here how Livejournal works. Please refer back to the post I linked above if you need further info on that. For this post, we'll assume that you already found a fic on Livejournal and you want to read more from the author. The question is: How do you find other stuff a user has written?
Now, much like Tumblr Livejournal is a blogging plattform (it's just, erm, better insofar as it actually offers navigation instead of simply splashing everything into one continuous doomscroll like Tumblr does). Originally, Livejournal wasn't meant for posting (serialised) fiction, but a lot of authors used it that way because no one at Livejournal's headquarters gave a damn what kind of content you posted to your LJ (until Strikethrough happened). Livejournal was used extensively because it was convenient and allowed for all kinds of adult content (that was - by that time - already banned on ff.net), not because its interface lent itself to posting and reading fiction. I still remember that both Passing Through and Destiny had to be cut in half, because LJ couldn't handle the post-length. (That's not an issue with Dreamwidth, though.)
So let's look at a few usecases:
The Fic Index The Fic Index is the most common way of fic being presented. It's the predecessor of today's masterpost. In contrast to Tumblr, Livejournal users have a whole profile page at their disposal - you can put a lot of info on such a page, including links, pictures and html-code. Many authors either link to their fic index on said profile page or on a pinned post. My first advice would always be to search for a fic index. Some authors have several, one for each fandom or each pairing. Many authors meticulously maintained their fic index, because it showcased their writing.
[Stormatdusk's fic index as linked from the profile page.]
[Jeyhawk's fic index as a pinned post, sorted by fandom.]
-> Always try to find a fic index as it's the most comprehensible list of stories an author can have. Also, in the case of a fic index, the author will have done the work for you and will have linked all the parts in an easily accessible manner.
Tagging Wikipedia tells me that tags were introduced on Livejournal in 2005, but I don't remember tagging being an actual thing back then. Which means, most journals won't have an (elaborate) tagging system. Things look a little different on Dreamwidth (which was born later when tags were already more commonly used). It seems people who moved there, started tagging more extensively.
[ArtemisAllen's tags, leading to different stories.]
[The tagging system in my own fic journal, using related tags for fandom, pairing, genre and series.]
Not everyone tagged in a consistent manner or tagged all posts/all fiction. But if tags are there, look if they lead you to fic!
-> Not every author tags, but if you find tags look for your pairings or for things that look like titles to you!
Memories In older Livejournals that don't have a fic index, stories are most likely organised using the Memories feature. I just noticed now that Livejournal obviously changed the way this is displayed sometime during the last twenty years (shocker), which is why you won't get anything usable out of clicking on Memories on the profile page. Now, you access Memories with a URL like this:
https://username.livejournal.com/memories/
But this will only give you an endless list of ... stuff that's not connected in any way. Basically, it's useless. Instead, if you want to access the old memories feature, use this link:
https://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=username
[Geale's memories using the old link.]
[Espresso Addict's memories using the old link format. You can see that this is used very much like you would use tags nowadays.]
-> Remember to use the old link format listed above to get to this nice list of memories.
The Method of Desperation Sadly, not every author took into account that navigating a Livejournal in the hopes of finding fic might be quite the adventure. Which is to say that not every author chose to employ at least one of the methods listed above. And that means you'll land on someone's Livejournal or maybe on a chapter of something longer and at the end of it you have no idea where the story continues.
If the next chapter isn't linked from the post and there are neither tags, memories or a fic index you have no other choice but to simply and painstakingly click through the person's Livejournal. I'm sorry ... I know that sucks. But if you want to read that fic you'll have to work for it. Each post comes with a set of links. The ones you'll want are "previous" and "next" for the previous and next post in the journal you're viewing. Like so:
[Me posting "With Art" back in 2011 in the old Vigorli Livejournal community.]
Likewise, you can view the archive of a journal. By default, the archive is displayed as a calendar:
[The archive of Vigorli in calendar view.]
You'll see the date in question and a clickable number for how many posts are for that date. This isn't overly helpful. But when you click on View Subjects, the archive looks like this:
Here you can see how my post looks within all the other posts. Everyone posting to that community uses fic title + chapter number in the headline (this was common practice). This way, by clicking through the archive, you can collect all chapters of any given story. Just note that not everyone indicates by 1/1 or 19/20 where in a story we are. Some only state the number of the chapter, without telling you whether the story is finished or continues elsewhere. So better do all your sleuthing before you start reading!
I hope this helps a little. If you still have questions or aren't able to recreate what I did here with a certain journal, let me know.
Happy reading!
