The longest piece of fiction...

[Shiyonasan]

...is a fanfiction. No, I'm not joking.

http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/proust-longest-fan-fiction-super-smash-bros-teen-titans/

An excerpt from the article:

"It had been a long battle for survival, but he managed to stop the imbeciles from defeating him for real."

Thus begins the longest work of fiction ever written.

Nope, it's not Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).

It's The Subspace Emissary's Worlds Conquest, and it's a Super Smash Bros. WIP (work-in-progress) on fanfiction.net. As of July, the fic is 3,548,615 words long. That's three times longer than Proust, and six times longer than War and Peace.

You might say that AuraChannelerChris, the author of Subspace Emissary, has a tendency to wax verbose. Their FF.net author profile alone is ten thousand words long. There's even a 60,000 word prequel, itself longer than some novels, that brings the current word-count above 3.6 million. It also has 2,200 reviews (an average of one review every 1,700 words), and its own TV Tropes page.

For reference, Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu is 1.2 million words long. Currently, this fanfic is in its 208th chapter.

I'm quite astonished to say the least.

[Sporkia]

Oh wow. I just heard about this the other day, but I still can't believe it's an actual thing. Like, I can't even imagine the dedication somebody's got to have to write this behemoth. Heck, I usually get stuck after about seven pages worth of writing and this thing has 208 chapters. That is impressive.

[Little Brown Fox]

Wow. That is just, like... damn. And I thought Eloze was long... it's certainly old, but not that long. I can't remember when it was last updated- but I haven't exactly checked recently... The last I can remember was from 2007...

[Alittleacorn]

Duuuude, that's a long fic o_o how on earth did they write so much? That must be hell to revise through.

[diehard67]

I would bet avatargirl's story could give it a run for it's money for time spent on it.

nice to see ya again acorn.

[EyeOdyssey]

I wonder how long it will take if someone (with a lot of spare time) decides to have a marathon and read every chapter one after another, with no breaks. I assume that after the 100th chapter they would be a skeleton.

[fafner]

I read around 7500 words per hour (very approximately). Starting from that, I estimate it would take almost 20 days. Not THAT long

[Little Brown Fox]

I have too short an attention span to devote that much time to something I'm not even entirely familiar with (I don't have Brawl yet- it's unlikely that I ever will, actually- and I haven't seen a lot of Teen Titans; even when it was on the WB, it wasn't exactly my favorite show; not terrible, but still not much my thing, after a certain point). Also, I'm too busy with the Rockman.EXE anime right now to be overly concerned with anything else at the moment.

[jeffbert]

I think I read at a medium pace; but I much prefer reading stories that have already been completed.

BTW, nice to see you again, Donguri-chan!

[Earthshine]

Holy!... What? Really?!

Wow... I usually have a philosophy for my own fanfiction that if it EVER reaches 50,000 words then I am focusing far too much on it, because 50,000 words is a standard novel, and with that time I could have written on my original story.

Whew, gotta give the person credit though.