The internet has allowed the longest pieces of media ever in existence to be created and has conversely allowed for that longest piece of media to be Super Smash Brothers Brawl fanfiction. Two sides of the same coin that allow us to live in a world where our modern wonders are some guy who really likes Super Smash Bros. To the point that they managed to write a longer story than all of Harry Potter combined about it. While I have yet to read it, it’s an interesting facet of our culture that spawned from the advent of the internet. Are digitally written and published literature works valid?

“When I look at a screen I kinda lose parts of my imagination, and it gets better when I look at books, ya’ know?” Said Hannah Caton, a student at Great bend High school.

“The culture for online fiction tends to be a lot larger and widespread than hand-held fiction is.” Said Tavin Foltz, a sophomore at Great Bend High School. 

The internet and free-speech being so integral to one another has led to a boon in all forms of literature. As mentioned above, the longest piece of literature belongs to a genre called “fanfiction”. Imagine when you were a kid, and you would think up stories and plot lines with your favorite characters. That, but taken to the extreme of actual writing, is fanfiction. From what I understand, it’s been around for a while, but the internet shot it up into the spotlight. There… is a lot of fanfiction online. About kid’s shows, adult movies, adult movies, and people eat this stuff up. 

“Who’s gonna make a fanfiction into a book? A readable book?” Continued Caton. “That’s the truth. You never see like- a published fanfiction.”

One more thing that separates online literature from pen and paper literature is how nearly every web-novel is a serial. If you’re not familiar with serials, basically they’re short chapters, or even just a single page of a larger work that would be published with the newspaper, or some other kind of publication. The story would come out in chunks as the author continued to work on it, responding to criticism and more actively improving. Of course, this offers the risk of a story being left unfinished either because the author would experience heavy burn out or no longer be able to take the criticism. And yes, more often than not, a serial is never finished. But it’s the main method people who write stories online use to both show off their skills and not get an eviction notice. 

Depending on who you ask, the genre I mentioned is abhorrent enough for them to swear off any form of web fiction, ever. Never ever ever ever. And… that’s valid- but! But! There are good, great pieces of literature on the internet. One that immediately comes to mind, from the illustrious Wildbow–John C. Mcrae–is the web novel Worm. It’s a glum take on the Superhero genre, and not in the “Oh wow, what if the good guys were the bad guys” but that is certainly a part of it.

You will hate, and love, the main character. You will root for her and her goofy little bug controlling power, and then you will want to wrangle her by her neck as she makes teenage mistake after mistake. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and that is the main theme of Worm. Well– that and somehow making me read a book that was longer than the entirety of the Harry Potter series combined. And including its sequel Ward it’s approaching over four MILLION words. That’s 4,000,000! SIX ZEROES!

Go read it, but Worm isn’t all the internet has to offer. There are entire communities dedicated for people to put out their writings. RoyalRoad, SufficientVelocity, Reddit, SpaceBattles, Tumblr, uh.. The fanfiction ones (Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, those are really the only ones I know), but whatever you’re looking for there is a surplus. 

Then, if you don’t want to go to distribution centers, you can always just look for individual ones! There are tons. From Worm, as I mentioned previously, to stories about paladins with chickens for swords, you can find all kinds of stuff online, and manage to be entertained somehow. The internet is both the training ground for prospective authors, and their entire careers. Not to mention, audio books! Which are technically normal books but in audio-format!

Read a web serial! Doesn’t matter how debaucherous it is, just go and find one that tickles you plain old pink. And while you’re at it, go ahead and write your own! The internet is vast, and with that vastness comes good and bad in equal measure. Pull and push. All that good stuff.