You know you're a crazy author when . . .
1. You come up with sequels to stories you haven't started.
2. You actually consider a self-insertion into Eva a fairly good idea
and work out the details like language barrier and such so quickly
you scare yourself and mistake it for eagerness.
3. You manage to create valid backgrounds for original characters.
4. Your Prologue is bigger than your first chapter.
5. Many consider your prologue cooler than your first chapter.
6. You say, "Screw the canon, I'm going to do this on my own."
7. You prioritize finishing a tangent over just getting back to the main
story.
8. You want your main character to be distantly related to the person
(s)he despises most.
9. You want the epilogue to lead into the sequel you promised you'd
never write.
10. You want to try the Scooby-Doo ending.
11. You put James Rahn in anything.
12. Even in your self-insertion fics, when you get the girl, you never
get laid.
13. You can't spell worth a damn and call it "Creative License".
14. Anything dealing with Carebears becomes 'such a cute idea'.
15. Inspiration arrives in the form of mass media.
16. Your favorite quote: "That's a cool idea for a story."
17. You have more than twenty things you can write at any given time.
18. You create dozens of inconceivable tangents and then specifically
create other horribly unlikely crossovers just to explain the events
in the tangents before you write the original story.
19. You don't really mind when the above happens.
20. You write a damn-near full-length novel just to add 2 characters to
a fanfiction work, then junk the idea at the last minute and write a
two-hundred-page prologue instead.
21. You include an extra 20-minute gunfight at the conclusion of your
greatest action work just for the hell of it.
22. You create entire stories from single random words from television
advertisements.
23. You write your own characters into television advertisements to
procrastinate writing on your 'main' project.
24. You experiment with someone else's characters experimenting while
dreaming.
25. You really, truly wish you were an Oscar Meyer Wiener.
26. Jusenkyo, for instant fun, just add water.
27. You let a penguin pilot an Evangelion.
28. Much like in California, the majority of the women in your stories
are babes.
29. You reword songs to insult anime characters.
30. You... wait, I JUST GOT THIS COOL IDEA
31. You come up with cool ideas at inopportune times.
32. It doesn't matter that the idea has been done before YOU can do it
better.
33. Your thought process goes something like this: Meow, meow, meow,
meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow,
meow, meow. (Meow Mix jingle)
34. "Creative License" also covers grammar.
35. Your battle cry, "It's to advance the plot!"
36. One robot fic is the just the same as another.
37. The falsity of this belief is shown when trying to mix and match
between these so-called similar robot fics.
38. The effects of #37 are rather comical.
39. Honestly, "A Pizza Crime Story?" Come on, what's with you, man?
40. Nouns beware! You can turn anything into a verb!
41. One word people: Adjectivize.
42. You let a fellow author make a lemon scene with one of your original
characters.
43. You can make fanfiction have more crossovers than original fiction.
44. You try, try to very hard to find one story to drop from your query,
but can't seem to find the inner strength to do it until you come up
with a new Ranma 1/2 fic idea...
45. People keep saying you're trying to reinvent the wheel and you shout
'Do you have a problem with that?!'
46. You prove the above by actually spending two weeks in your garage
reinventing the wheel in order to dodge writing a decent story.
47. The longest original story you've ever written is less than 10%
percent complete when you've finished the fifth crossover with it.
48. You try to patent your reinvented wheel.
49. You occasionally read that technologies you've put in your fics for
fun are being invented and you wonder where your share of the
profits are.
50. FOOLS! I'LL SHOW THEM! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!
51. The Scooby-Doo ending ends up better than your original ending.
52. You occasionally rant about the possibility of stuff in your fics
actually happening.
53. You are really, truly afraid of Antarctica exploding late this
year. What?! It's 2000 already! Damn, I have some stories to finish!
54. The Mega-Happy ending is where everyone dies.
55. Do NOT ask about the evil ending.
56. Super-evil assassin turned dimension-jumping world savior doesn't
even phase you.
57. Every time you ask, 'The Manga version or the anime version?' You
end up doing both.
58. Face it buddy, there are only a few select original characters that
could defeat Ranma Saotome in a fair fight.
59. A Kuno with a brain is like Gendo Ikari with feelings...
Hey, I just got an idea...
60. You remember you are the author! Those characters bow down to you!
61. You have Ed Flemming fire the Legacy at ANY single target more than
ten times.
62. You're afraid to die and go to Heaven because the Angels might be
angry with you.
63. You put Ed Flemming in anything (applies to sign #11).
64. You actually do behold the power of cheese.
65. You try to switch characters between stories or between roles. (It
doesn't matter you're nuts to try.)
66. You often wake up screaming, "YOU DAMN DIRTY APES!!"
67. You can take almost any fic and name their appropriate Loony Tune
Character.
68. 'Whoops' is a good thing to say when you're writing.
69. Whoops! Ouch! and Blink and You Die are the most effective fighting
styles in the world.
70. Now what did I do with that Care Bears/Neon Genisis:Evangelion/
Bubblegum Crisis/La Blue Girl/Sailor Moon/Revolutionary Girl: Utena/
Powerpuff Girls crossover?
71. I'm already writing that one.
72. You become a back-yard recluse, make a wooden folding deck chair by
hand, then claim to have invented a new martial art called chair-fu,
all for the purpose of 'research'.
73. Outlines are for the unadventurous.
74. Bah! You can cross ANYTHING with Ranma 1/2!
75. You start abbreviating the longer names of stories and martial arts
moves.
76. You read on a fic's teaser that it will be in theatre's this summer
and you actually try to buy tickets in advance.
77. You have a shrine to the all-powerful Cheezor.
78. You realize that writing a self insertion fic damns you to the
lowest level of Hell.
79. You realize TOO LATE that Ranma and James DO NOT MIX in the same
body. Don't ask.
80. Your thought process purports teaching a female Super-Saiyajin the
secrets of the Mido clan Sexcraft is seen as a good idea at the
story's inception...
81. You just have to prove Eva ISN'T DARK ENOUGH, GOD DAMNIT!!!
82. You get into a fight over formatting your text files.
83. You get into a fight over the Ryouga/Ryoga conflict with other
authors.
84. You remember, this is not the worst that can happen.
85. You shout 'Super-Saiyajin Level 7, whee!!!'
86. You deny any difference between "the Force" and "ki".
87. You'll fix the problem in the re-write.
88. The best fights have the audience eating popcorn or running from the
city/county/state-province/country/continent/hemisphere/planet/solar
system/galaxy it's occurring in.
89. You actually have business cards and stationary and fountain
pens... etc. for your little group of authors.
90. You write by the seat of your badly frayed pants.
91. 'We NEED Mecha' is heard at least once in every one of your stories.
92. There _is_ Mecha in every one of your stories.
93. The heroes are usually allies of Cheese.
94. You don't care if a character dies in the original story. That's the
whole dang point of crossovers!!
95. You blow up Tokyo for the heck of it.
96. The above isn't really a big deal in most of your fics.
97. You actually go out hunting for the Dragonballs.
98. You attempt to make your own mecha (see sign #72).
99. Your idea of a tough choice is whether to dub or sub-title the
fighting moves/names/curses/etc. in your fics.
100. You finally have 99 signs for a crazy fanfic author and can't think
of a hundredth...
101. You have at least one reference to your other works in all of your
fics.
102. "Plot? We don't need plot."
103. You speak like you type.
104. You provide your own sound effects.
105. All promises relating to writing are pie crust promises, easily
made, easily broken.
106. You take random lines from your own stories and create unlikely but
seemingly cool story ideas.
107. You eliminate your main story to write its side stories.
108. You learn to cannibalize ideas/scenes from dying stories (commonly
known as 'feature migration'), even if they aren't yours.
109. Your shortest story features an outline longer than the story
itself.
110: Your weirdest dreams end up your best stories.
111. You create a mega-crossover to tie up all your loose threads, then
quickly sketch out the Epilogue so you can prepare the sequels to
this mega-crossover before even finishing the so-called outlines to
your main stories.
112. 'Fanservice' applies to weapons, cars, and martial arts as well as chicks.
113. When one lesbian assassin story gets 'hit by a train', you
immediately scrape up another one so there isn't a 'hole' in your
fall lineup.
114. You can come up with titles to stories you probably won't even
write, but you can't name the one you're working on.
115. Frequent comments on your story ideas go something like this:
"Sick, twisted, completely demented, perverted, obviously the work
of a deranged child molester with several important parts of
his/her brain missing, but somehow undeniably interesting."
116. You self-insert a self-insert, just to keep it interesting.....
wait, I already tried that.
117. You threaten fellow authors with bad story ideas that become
legendary epics.
118. You get so bored not writing your greatest fight epic that you
actually create and now practice the martial arts style of the main
character, no matter how crazy it is (see sign #72).
119. You try to change your legal name to your nom de plume.
120. You complain about movie stars being type-casted and then begin
your fifth consecutive assassin story.
121. You sell your soul to finish the fic.
122. You need obscure mathematical equations to figure the number of
remaining parts in your latest epic.
123. You are like an electron. No one (self included) can be sure where
you are and what you are doing at the same time. (IP Uncertainty
Principle)
124. Obsessive-compulsive is a complement to you.
125. This list was supposed to stop at 100 signs.
126. You gather with other authors much the the Highlander Gathering, to
edit other people's works in order to avoid writing any of your
own.
127. The best way to deal with another author's characters is to kill
them off.
128. You try to patent the technology in your stories, using your
stories as an example that the technology works.
129. You have more story ideas than you do signs for a crazy author.
130. You try to fill out your resume and end up with a ten chapter tale
of adventure and tradgedy.
131. Your excuse for the above is that your editor is on vacation.
132. The number of characters exceeds the number of chapters/episodes.
133. Explaining a new story idea, you frequently have to pause and say
"don't look at me like that", "what?" and "it sounded good at the
time" and of course "but I'll take care of that little loophole in
the re-write."
134. Before attempting the above, you pump a fist into the air, shouting
"YOSH! I'll tell them!" to psyche yourself up.
135. You tire of the conventional Fantasy, Drama, Humor, Action, Science
Fiction, etc. types and try out things like 'Draumer' and
'Hantasy', with incredibly good results... Which is to say, the
strangest things work out the best when you least expect them to.
136. To you, any fic with Japanese characters taking place in Tokyo is
just the same as any other, but each and every fic with assassins
is different as night and day.
137. Archeological digs are occasionally sponsored at your residence to
recover old story ideas... which then try to _eat_ the
archeologists... and this doesn't bother you in the least... in
fact, you decide to write a fic about it....
138. TO HELL WITH THE HISTORY BOOKS! IF YOU HAVE TO RE-WRITE FIVE
HUNDRED YEARS OF HISTORY SPANNING FIVE COUNTRIES, SO BE IT!!!
139. You cheer most for your own silly ideas that you know won't become
actual fics (includes ideas for people/places/things in fics).
140. You recycle old failed ideas into new ones and expect them to work.
141. You classify some of your stories as "low budget" because they
aren't as carefully reviewed as others.
142. The relative "worth" of a story is measured by comparing it to the
story that your fellow authors hate and the other story, that you
and your fellow authors fear.
143. "I'm NOT going to write that story! The guy's a lunatic! A loose
cannon! He probably eats small children for break--oh... now
_there's_ an interesting character trait..."
144. You fear your character list more than death itself.
145. Your character list is longer than any single chapter/part/episode
of its parent story.
146. You write the wrong episode details into your outline, then ignore
said outline and write the correct episode anyway.
147. The above happened so much you haven't looked at your outline in
months.
148. You know the names, birthdays, and important life events of the
most minute extras, but still can't remember the phone number to
your best friend.
149. You coin plot devices like the "Series Hero Effect" and their
collolaries such as the "Saga's Uber-Villian" and the "Inducive
Generic Power-up" just as an excuse to write titanic fight scenes.
150. You're still reading this list.
151. You keep saying "I'm going somewhere with this, trust me!" But when
you actually do go somewhere with it, you're the one who's amazed.
152. When reading book review, you frequently say "Wait... I'm already
writing that, right?"
153. You dream about actually being a character in your most f*cked up
work.
154. When you run away with an idea, it usually involves a getaway car
and a live police chase on channel 6.
And the most reliable way to tell if you're a crazy author.....
You actually come up with this many signs that you are a crazy author.
By John Genoni & (occasionally) Jared Waddell
(
geocities.com/rick_spiff)