Epic literature on FimFic · 1:26am Sep 2nd, 2016
Who of us ever envisioned that we'd see such massive, long-form stories on this pony-writing forum? I've read a few 100,000+ word fics on here, and that's just a few out of a great multitude.
I guess what got me to thinking this (again) was me just browsing about on the site, and I swung by Imploding Colon's page. I'd read some of Austraeoh in the past, but only a portion of it, and then I regrettably got pulled away from it and never got back to it. Austraeoh is just the first volume of IC's multi-volume epic, and checking back now I see that they are in the midst of the 8th(!) volume! Just for kicks, I added up all the words currently written from all 8 volumes as of tonight, and this is the sum: 3,120,377 words
Oh yes, that is a massive amount of verbiage. Compare that with Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, a French novel sequence published in 10 volumes in the 17th Century. It is considered the longest novel ever published, coming in at a total 1,954,300 words.
This means that IC's epic, still uncompleted, is already 160% longer than the currently recognized world's longest novel.
Imploding Colon is not alone in the realms of massive stories. Browse stories, set the maximum word length to something prohibitively high, and set it to order by words. Then sit back and gape in awe at the multitude of stories pushing past the million word mark.
Now, having not ventured to read them, I can't speak about the quality of writing and narrative, but you've just got to be impressed and a little in awe of someone writing that much. That's probably the amount of writing I've done in my entire lifetime, which these writers have done in a few years. I am intimidated by these fics and will probably not read them because even I have my limits as to how long a story I can handle, even serialized stories. Still, kudos to them for being so prolific and productive! :3
You wanna hear something mind blowing? IC's epic isn't even the longest saga on this sight. Blooming Moon Chronicles/99 Worlds Saga by BlackRoseRaven clocks in at a grand total of 4.4 million words all together. This is what happens when you don't have publishers who have to pay money for every word and thus limit the length.
4217431 Ah yes, I did happen across those when I was looking. My mind was thoroughly blown after seeing the word count.