Find a new fandom. Haven't watched Buffy before? Cadge the box set from a friend and you're set for days, and that's before you even start the fanfic. I think there's an official translation for Ranma these days, but the scanlations are still out there and although a lot of the fanfic has 404'd out due to Geocities hosting or similar, there's still plenty out there. Firefly's got some damn good fanfic out there, Supernatural is popular as hell though I can't tell you much about the quality, and if there isn't a story out there where the guy from the Mentalist pimp-slaps the guy from Psych, I'll be sadly disappointed in the world.

Failing all that, start reading actual books. Pull out the local Yellow Pages and look up your local second-hand book stores. Find the local libraries. Or just download them, but seriously, that old-book smell is divine.

And that's just when you're in the mood for reading. I split my idle time pretty much equally between video games, TV shows and movies, fanfiction, books, tabletop games, and various internet distractions. If fanfiction is your only choice for entertainment, you really need to branch out.

 

Wallow in despair.

Seriously. At first, I searched fics according to my fav pairings. Then, I went through the entire darn 20k+ words fic list, trying those fics whose summaries I liked. Then, I went through every single author's own fics and fav list fics who were on my own fav list. Sometimes, it became a massive link, which led me to a great many deal of good fics. After that, I branced out to new fandoms. All the good books I've read, all the good games I've played, all the good anime and manga I've watched and read. And go through the fav lists of all those people.

But when you've seriously exhausted the entire fiction reserve of a fanon - there's only two things you can do. Like people have already said, get intrested in a new fanon, or wait for any new, good fics that pop up in recommendations.

Oh, and re-read all your favourites. Maybe delete those that you're outgrown, those that seemed cool three years ago.

 

Start reading the weird shit?

 

Ok, so I've just been doing that, I found my old ff.net account and was looking through my old favorites (bear in mind, when I say old, I mean 2002, 2003), and holy god there is so much shit in there. I found this little gem, for instance:

or how about:

Good lord. How did I read this shit? The only thing I could still stand is the whole Existence After Life arc by Cygnus Crux. Not DLP material, but still a worthwhile read, I think.


But yeah, I just troll through various respected author's favorites lists. That's my most tried and true way of finding fics. Also, there's no way many people have finished the entire DLP library. Even if there are things that don't look necessarily appealing, I'll take a look for the shit of it.

 

Many good ideas. I'm still stuck in the "I just graduated from college" rut. I have no car, no job and my parents still have dial up internet on the farm. Nearest friends/things to do are a 30 minute car ride away. Fanfics and lots of masturbation between job applications & interviews are pretty much the only things keeping me from using my chemistry degree and blowing a large crater in the center of this livestock infested hellhole I call home.

As for writing, my shit sucks. The amount of editing even my newest work needs to become readable, let alone decent is excessive. Note: for a laugh at my expense, I suggest you take a peek at "Ginny Weasley and the Disasterous Date" at the bottom of my list. I keep it there for the same reason there's a monument at Auschwitz: Never again!

www.fanfiction.net/~neopyro

I couldn't get into Buffy. The series just wasn't worth the time for me to watch it. I suppose if I wanted to really kill me some time I could dig up my x-files seasons and watch them all. Again.

Well fuck this. Sorry to sit here bitching. Thanks for the suggestions. Hopefully I'll find enough between C2's and author favorites to kill time until I find employment.

 

Don't WATCH buffy, just read it. The fanfiction is in a lot of cases, far better than the show.

 

I'm subscribed to quite a few c2s that have a fairly decent ratio of decent ideas, and let others do my searching most of the time.

I usually need to delete quite a lot of junk each day, but the good stuff somehow sneaks its way in on occasion.

Looking at reviews for stories often helps also, chances are that insightful reviewers are hiding some cool stuff on their favourites.

 

Good luck with the job hunt. Though the economy numbers signal a recovery of sorts, it's not been felt by the early career ranks of the workforce yet.

Books are a good option, as has been mentioned, and you have the advantage of not tying up the phone/computer. Also, spending time working on your writing if you have the interest is pretty much the only way to get good at it. If you don't have an interest in doing so, it's probably not for you.

A site I used to visit when looking for fanfiction was the fanfiction.net forum, where story updates and lists of recommended stories were posted. The forum is gone now from fanfiction.net proper, but has continued elsewhere. While it has maybe half the size of membership of the old fanfiction.net forum, the most active threads (the story updates and other-fandom story updates threads) are still going strong. I occasionally find stuff worth reading there.

 

I read books, like a few other people said. Sites like What Should I Read Next are always a good starting point.

 

http://jim-butcher.com/books/

Try Jim Butcher's books as each one is superb .This pretty much has me set for the next month as I am only on the fourth Dresden Files book and haven't even started the Codex Alera yet .

 

If you liked Dresden Files, try the Nightside series by Simon R Green. The two are eerily similar - I could rattle off a few paragraphs of points where they're incredibly similar (and Google tells me someone has beat me to it).

Nightside is fun, but... it's nothing but fun pulp noir, whereas Dresden Files is fun pulp noir with awesome character development. Still, I'd say it's worth a shot, as well as SRG's other works.

Edit: Oh, and Google also reminds me that it was pimped a couple years ago by our own madeyemoody.

 

I've read everything Jim Butcher has written. And every Nightside book.

 

Shitty. 12-year-old girls own what should be a good fandom. Incest, yaoi, rape, child abuse. Angst. Dear god, so... much... angst!

 

What I do when I run out of stories to read is... y'know... have other hobbies.

 

Go fuck yourself.

 

Just saying. :awesome

 

This. So much.

 

Obviously curl in bed and cry about the unfairness of life.

 

Yes. That is the only answer girl who is missing a sleeve on her shirt.