What's The Deal With Super Long Stories? · 7:41am Nov 26th, 2023
Did you notice that there's nearly 60 stories on this site that are over a million words long? Some of which have been going on since the early days of this site? It's certainly impressive. The longest of course being My Little Pokemon by Amarvax, who's been releasing a chapter a day since June 14th, 2020 and hit the 1000 chapter limit and immediately moved on to the sequel. Over 5.8 million words total. Very impressive. Now, I've never read the story myself; can't see myself trying to get invested in such an absurdly long story; but that's what got me wondering.
How do y'all feel about long stories? Not even the ones that pass a million or even half a million words. Just long fics in general? To me, it's always felt rather intimidating and off-putting. I mean, it would take so much time dedicated to reading, even if just for spare time. And then there's the question if it's worth getting invested in. This is especially the case for fics that end up unfinished.
A good example is the Austraeoh series by Imploding Colon (Yeah, that's the username; it's actually ShortSkirts). I read the first half of the first story and it's genuinely some of the best and most beautiful writing I've ever seen; fanfic or otherwise. But it's a very long series of stories that's been set to have 12 books in yet the 9th and most recent hasn't been updated since February 2021. It seems like such a waste of time to dedicate to reading through the story just it to be dropped and be denied the built up conclusion. This is especially prevalent in fanfics seeing as they are updated a chapter at a time and have no release dates or such that proper novels have.
So, again, how do y'all feel about long fic stories?
Personally, this whole thought process is one of the biggest blocks in my bigger ideas. While I definitely have no plans to make a million+ word story of any kind; fic or original; they are far longer and more ambitious than my typical one-shots. In fact, my fic that I just realized, The Void, is actually connected to a much bigger story I have planned. But there's always that fear of building up a story; getting yourself and others invested in it, only to find a lack of satisfying conclusion. Something I've dealt with in my earlier stories in fact.
So, gimme your thoughts on all this. Oh, and hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving.
I can get behind a lot of long fics, but it more easily shows their weaknesses when reading them in bulk instead of digesting the stories slowly.
For example, whatever that multiversal time loop story was that was going on forever. It really didn’t connect all too well with me having read it up to a point in bulk.
Other stories can be pretty addicting to the point that you do indeed want to read them in bulk, like The Only Mark That Matters. It let you see more of the author’s talents with the world and characters.
What I feel worse about reading are the short fics, the ones you don’t know if they’ll ever be continued, the ones that are such instant bangers and hits from the first chapter, but will likely never be updated again. I don’t want to waste my time with the little stories that I’ll probably never see appear again in my watchlist.