Meet the world’s longest piece of American Fiction… a fanfiction!?!
The protagonist of our story, an average human boy named Chris, gets a huge reality changer when his locally purchased–but cursed–copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl transports him inside the game… Subspace Emissary’s World Conquest.
Oh yeah, I sense a real award-winner here.
The first problem with this picture is the fact that this is a FANFICTION, meaning it is a story based off another person’s creative work. Stretching a lengthy 3,592,814 words in 209 chapters (so far), you’d probably need to plan out a year to finish it… a year of your life that you would never get back…and that is, IF you’d want to finish it. At chapter one this reporter was ready to quit and pull out her little red pen, and if you’re a grammar Nazi this read may prove impossible.
The author himself confesses that English is only a second language and that his love of reading mostly extends to other fan fictions (giving him only a small pool of literary diversity). The people who have read it (and/or skimmed) say the piece is “funny” (it’s listed under fantasy/humor) but this reporter suspects those people picked up their humor from a Scholastic book fair joke book. The humor isn’t necessarily dry, but you had to have a sort of taste for that “Gilligan’s Island rip off” form of humor. I was half waiting for someone to chime in with the inevitable “what could possibly go wrong?” To imagine such a drawn-out version of something like that disturbed me.
The main character Chris, named after the writer himself, is something Fan fiction writers like to call an OC, meaning an original character. Chris was never in SSBB, nor should he ever get the chance to make a cameo for the sake of the worldwide gaming community. He’s not all the brightest either, kind of like a rip off Ash Catchum from Pokémon but with far worse ‘friendship’ speeches. Alongside Chris is the Pokémon Lucario, supposedly zapped from Chris’s Pokémon game… during an… electrical storm… Yep, that bad. I thought it was bad reading this buy typing this now is a ‘friendly’ reminder.
If you’re someone who has played Super Smash Bros Brawl you’d probably wonder what sort of plot they could possibly scheme up for this borderline plot less game. Sticking somewhat true to the Adventure mode, known in the game as the Subspace Emissary, your main villains are Tabu and the hands. Unfortunately, these guys, including both Master Hand and Crazy Hand, can now talk and their lines are more clichéd than a middle schooler’s love poem. No amount of laxatives could produce enough poop to rival this thing!
It’s a crying shame that the closest second word count America has to offer is a whole million short of this college freshman’s fanfiction. Then again, it may inspire the young writers of the nation to rise up to the challenge and bring taste and style back to modern fiction.
If this article has you the least bit curious, the first chapter can be found here, but be warned that this is the same site where you can find stories about Harry Potter becoming a vampire and an intense romance between Hitler and Jesus. Because anything is possible on the Internet; including some things that should be impossible. Or at least illegal, gah.
“The wheel of time” series has 4,410,036 words, but whether this counts as a single work of fiction is debatable.
There’s also a novel called “The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion” which has approximately 9 million words – it’s so long no-one actually KNOWS.
And both of these are by Americans.
I, myself, have never read this particular fan fiction (sorry to say that I’m not that in to video games), but Ms. Hudon, may I inquire, why are you immediately calling off this story because it’s a Fan fiction? You mention in the end that most hated fanfictions on the website; many avid fan fiction readers/writers cringe at the thought of the mentioned stories; yet you mention them like its the only thing the website has to offer? Not to mention, fanfiction.net is not the only fan fiction website out there; to list a few: watt pad, tumblr, ao3, all of these websites contains hundreds of thousands of fanfictions, often times well written and well thought out, so, please, indulge me, is a story automatically bad if its based off another?
And what do you say to the amazing writers who write fan fictions? Stop doing it? Stop doing what you like to do? It’s not like actual novels are very original; Percy Jackson is a sore attempt at a Greek Harry Potter, Harry Potter for all it’s worth format have very groundbreaking ideas, every manga and light novel is a copy off another, so is a fan fiction bad?
You mention in your “report” (it’s more of a parents rambling of the “good-ol’-days”), that the author himself is non-native speaker,yet you seemed to have walked in there with the expectation that its would be a well written story (which half expect it to become, you can’t exactly be a junior in college without at least a slimmer of knowledge of the English language)? And what’s with the whole “Then again, it may inspire the young writers of the nation to rise up to the challenge and bring taste and style back to modern fiction.” Comment?
I understand that fan fiction can and does produce smut. But there are some rare gems in there that aren’t smut and are well-written pieces that rival the originals. What say you to 50 Shades of Grey which is a fan fiction made into a wildly popular movie? AuraChannelerChris and his story is a safe haven compared to 50 Shades!
A 3 million word book? From.America? Challenge accepted.