Same, kinda. This year I’ve been leaning into recreating that sense of childhood creativity in my writing/art; for me, it’s about bringing back the earnestness and enthusiasm that got dulled in my teen/adult years. I think we’re all still the same creative kid inside, we’re just embarrassed now about our ideas being “cringe” or “unoriginal”. Or we’re making stuff to appeal to an audience instead of ourselves.
Foo Fighters - There Is Nothing Left To Lose
Mitchell, Manos, and Pod People are probably a three-way tie for me. Some of my underrated favorites are Girls Town, The Incredible Melting Man, The Giant Spider Invasion, Teen-Age Crime Wave, and Kitten With a Whip.
Presto is amazing!!! So much of their 90s-00s discography is so slept on.
Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti
Tool - 10,000 Days
Rush - Test for Echo
Metallica - Metallica
Rush - Clockwork Angels
Michael Jackson - HIStory
BIGBANG - MADE
[bodyendtag] - Information Superhighway
Kumi Koda - BEST 2000-2020
A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms
I saw BigBang on the MADE tour T__T So good! Probably biased since it was my first real concert ever. Taeyang and G-Dragon’s solo shows were also very good; pretty much all the kpop shows I’ve been to have been amazing (BigBang, Taeyang, CL, G-Dragon, Blackpink(x2), BTS(x2)). I would love to see Dreamcatcher, EXO, or Shinee!
Big Bang, 2NE1, Girls’ Generation, EXO, BTS, Blackpink, XG, Shinee, f(x), Wonder Girls…
Looking for BoA’s “Every Heart” song for Inuyasha, I discovered her Korean stuff too, then found out about DBSK, Lee Hyori, BigBang, and I never looked back. lol Yes I am old…
Chapter cliffhangers are fun! I want to be engaged and wonder what will happen next. If the story itself ends on a cliffhanger… I guess that kinda depends. Is it setting up for a sequel? Is the author leaning into ambiguity? Both can work if the author can pull it off. I don’t think I would drop a fic for cliffhangers; I usually drop fics when I stop caring about the story/characters, or reading the story feels more like a chore than something fun that I look forward to.
Get out while you still can! Go make friends and have a real life! Don’t repeat my mistakes! XD
Jokes aside, I would advise to keep on keepin’ on. :) And stop doomscrolling fanfic_rants trying to figure out what you shouldn’t write based on people’s pet peeves and annoyances. Yes, people are needlessly critical but tbh you’re gonna be writing rarepairs and rare fandoms so readers will have to engage with your stuff anyway or make their own :P
I stopped crossposting my stuff to ffnet around 2017. A lot of effort for not much return. AO3 is just so much nicer to look at, navigate, and add tags/summaries (boo @ ffnet’s summary character limit). And AO3 allows all the whack stuff I write (explicit, original works, RPF) so it’s pretty much a one-stop shop. I might peek at ffnet if I’m desperate for fic, especially for old shows who had their heyday before AO3, but if I’m that desperate I’m usually writing my own fic at that point.
Blackened! 'cause it goes hard. One is also Very Good, in an “objectively better” way, but I’m not always in the mood to listen to it.
Just off the top of my head:
-The Woman in the Room -Gray Matter -I Am the Doorway -Gramma -Umney’s Last Case
honorable mentions: The Ten O’Clock People, The Jaunt, The Gingerbread Girl, A Very Tight Place, Dolan’s Cadillac, The End of the Whole Mess
though Night Shift really is a superb collection of stories overall.
I’ve gotten way more sensitive to clothing textures as I get older, and I don’t remember having too much texture sensitivity as a kid (except for hating itchy tags). I’m also way too aware now of my clothes when I sleep, so sleeping in any kind of pajama bottoms or socks is impossible for me. That never used to be A Thing for me until a few years ago. It doesn’t really impact my life very much though.