Ah, sorry I didn't get back to reply sooner. Yes, tumblr is totally different - you can tag your work and people will find it via the tags, am I right? Here, not so much. You could find active people by browsing other people's friends feeds, so if you click on my name, then where it says "Friends" at the top, that shows you all the unlocked posts from my flist lately. Following fests is also a good way to make friends - you could read from a recent fest eg hd_fan_fair and if you liked a writer / artist there, you could friend them, or if you saw someone commenting a lot, you know they're active and you could message them and ask if it was OK to be friends.

Cross posting h/d art is easier because there are more comms for that, but non-shippy stuff or rare pairs... I don't really know. Maybe shiftylinguini or capitu would know... (I don't think tagging is working on LJ atm, which doesn't help, haha, but you could message them?)

I hope you're finding everything OK? It's good to see you settling in nicely, LOL