I'm not sure if I should even bother going into a serious debate with someone who thinks the most mature argument against someone who backed up their points with carefully worded explanations and a few name-drops is, "You were traumatized by a long fic as a child." Seriously, dude? You have to make this personal by implying I was
molested traumatized by bad fic? I mean,
wow. Talk about trying to escalate things to unnecessary levels.
But hey, since you asked, my thoughts. Let me show you them.
I beg to differ. The longer a fic is the better it is written, generally speaking. If you stop and think about why a fic is so bloody long? There are really only two answers. The first being the fic is a good read, implying quality. The second being, the author is bad but determined. Quite frankly, the bad but determined kind of an occurrence actually happening is highly unlikely.
Actually, a lot of trainer fics are that way in my opinion. You have quite a few authors who believe their work to be absolutely amazing, but they actually have bland characterization and take forever to get into the story. The unfortunate part is that quite a few
readers buy into superficial bits. They believe that a story is good
just because it's long. But listen to what you just said. You said that a fic is long because it's a good read. Except what is a good read? You said it earlier than that: it has to do with the
content. It's not dictated by length at all, and you could very well have all the makings of a crap fic that goes on for thirty chapters with twenty pages a chapter. That would still constitute a bad fic in that case, and yes, it's happened.
So in a way, you're contradicting yourself by saying that the difference between a good and bad fic has a lot to do with its content, but then you turn around and say that it's impossible for there to be a short fic with all the makings you've specified. None of those things you've mentioned -- good grammar, good formatting, deep characters, and so forth -- are necessarily tied to a fic's length. You could write a drabble with incredible grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, and so forth as well as a pretty awesome snapshot of a character, and that would be logically better than a fic that uses terrible grammar, barely coherent spelling, and shallow characters but happens to span across fifteen chapters.
Of course, as I've said repeatedly, my judgment about trainer fics and some of the more popular fics in this fandom is also subjective and my personal opinion. I've been in the fandom since 1999 (back when we actually wrote about more than our OCs going on trainer journeys), so of course I'm probably also going to be biased... against
trainer fics.
Meanwhile, the shorter chapters here or elsewhere in the fandom might have had a bland plot, fast-as-eff pacing, wooden characterisation, and pretentiousness up the wazoo.
Aaaaand you've simultaneously missed and proven my point. That entire post I wrote? Was an argument that length is irrelevant.
Yes, you can have short crap fics, but long fics can be crap too. (I've even brought up concrete examples -- even a
title -- of long fics that were bad.) Yet not all or even most of
either are crappy, too. It all depends on the
content, not the length. If a bunch of awesome writers wrote short but amazing fics (which happens quite frequently on other fandom outlets besides this one) and if a bunch of terrible writers wrote eighteen lengthy and boring chapters, then, well, they don't fit in with the generalization both you and gotpika brought up.
You just happened to get caught up in the idea that most of the fics I've disliked were also lengthy, but I was saying that as a means to tell gotpika that, yes, it's entirely possible for a longer fic to be unlikable to some people for reasons that had nothing to do with length. It just happened to be a coincidence that, in my experience, bad lengthy fics or fics that were meant to be lengthy (crapfic chapter fics that were abandoned shortly after launching included) outnumbered the good short ones that I've read. I didn't say that most lengthy fics were crap; in fact, I said
the exact opposite. I mean, did you just skip over this part in my first post to this thread? Legit question because I know I tl;dr sometimes.
It's quality, not quantity, even with word count. Honestly, I think that a lengthy or even "average-length" chapter has an equal chance of being a pile of crap in one way or another compared to a short chapter. There is no usually for one or the other. It just depends on the skill of the writer.
That isn't to say that all or most short fics are good or that all or most long fics are bad. Certainly, the kind of fic – the ones where there's short chapters that the author just threw together without bothering to put much effort into them – exists. It's just that I wouldn't say that most of them are like that. It depends on where you're looking and whose library you're browsing.
You should have known where that would have gone.
Unfortunately, a writer bragging about their work is nothing new and not necessarily a sign that the masses will think it's a bad fic. There's a lot of authors (not naming names or places -- and note that plural again -- because lol drama) who were egotistical jackasses, but their fics were either insanely popular for some reason or actually not half-bad. I'll bring up a Sailor Moon/Doctor Who fic later on in this post in which the author even
outright insults their potential reviewers, but... the fic is unfortunately awesome.
There's also plenty of mediocre fics that could very well be turned into awesome ones if the author put forth a bit of effort, but the author was too egotistical to take criticism of any sort. I can't tell you how many people I've encountered who were like that.
And why is it most smaller fics aren't bad? Have you ever been on FF.NET!!!
Have you? The majority of long fics there aren't exactly examples of quality either. A Little Night Music, for example. Most people think it's awesome, but its characters are obnoxious in all the wrong ways, it makes light of suicide, its grammar (one of your points for a good fic) had
plenty of room for improvement, and its writing gets extremely pretentious at times. That's only one example. Another reborn fic there had over 300 reviews and thirty chapters... except its grammar was also not the best, and it started off by killing the unlikable-to-begin-with main character via 9/11. Then, there's plenty of lengthy shipping fics with characters being massively OOC (never mind the grammar, which in some cases renders fics unreadable to experienced readers), trainer fics with trite and boring plots, parody fics that just aren't funny, and so on and so forth. And yes, note I said "lengthy." I'm talking ten or more chapters here.
That isn't to say that short fics there aren't by comparison better. It's just saying that FFNet is a terrible place to use as an example because there's a
reason why it was at one point called the Pit of Voles.
Meanwhile, if you head anywhere else (like LJ or DW), you're very likely to find a lot of interesting fics that are well-written but not necessarily the longest fics out there. These fics build pretty interesting premises, use likable characters, or generally show off some pretty awesome writing skills on the part of the writer him or herself. For example, there's
this lovely Doctor Who fic that's only 530 words long, and it accomplishes a lot in those 500+ words.
This is a hilarious NPR (yes really) fic that keeps everyone in-character despite the absurd situation they're in.
This Pokémon fic does an amazing job of building something interesting out of a character who barely has three lines of dialogue in canon.
This one is a very short fic that does a beautiful job of capturing Green's frustration with Red. You also have writers like moon_blitz and Larky, who create amazing, in-depth characters and a lot of interesting tension between them in just a tiny space. Even
this one, which is slightly longer (unless we don't count the author's notes) but does an amazing job turning something sparkly and "good" into a parasite of pure evil. There's a lot of tension and emotion in that space (and, in fact, in any of the spaces I've mentioned -- including the works by Larky, et al), and in the end, it doesn't matter how long these fics are. Their authors are skilled and perfectly capable of writing incredibly powerful stories; it's just that these fics don't
need to be long in order to get their messages across. That's why I said what I did about short fics versus long ones. It's not that I hate long fics; it's just that a lot of people
miss the point. As a result, there's a
lot of longer fics that just plain aren't as powerful or memorable as my favorite short ones, not because of their length but instead
because the content isn't as great. If the authors of the long fics I've shrugged off as bland wrote short fics using the exact same techniques they use for their epic-length fics, then it wouldn't
matter that they've written short fics; I'd
still say their fics are bland because, well, they write bland fics.
That said, to be fair (and to counter that hilarious bit of potential flaming you did right there), I
can like long fics... if they're well-written. One of my favorite fics in this fandom is a trainer fic
and over forty chapters long. (Unfortunately, it's also down at the moment for revamping, but just in case you want to stalk its website, it's called
Ultimatum.) Likewise, one of my favorite fics
ever is
this hilarious tome that spans probably the longest nineteen pages ever. (Note: Some of its pages are actually more like twenty pages in Word.) Then you have
this amazing fic that not only does script fics correctly but
also pays an insane amount of attention to detail when it comes to everything from science to its own fandom. It may look like it's eighteen(-ish) chapters long, but
its chapters have chapters. And all of them are worth if it you're an Eva fan. And if you want something right here on Serebii,
there's a tome I can recommend for that too.
Point is -- and the point I was trying to make
all along, thank you -- that it's quality, not quantity. There's so many people in this fandom who look at a lengthy fic and, without opening it, automatically go, "OMG IT'S LENGTHY IT MUST BE AWESOME." Except that kind of mindset causes you to pass over a
lot of good fic out there that's actually not that bad (or even pretty awesome) while you settle for fic that's comparatively mediocre. Length is by no means a guarantee for quality, and a good reader or reviewer understands that and looks past the stats of a fic in order to judge that for themselves.
I mean, if you think about it, it's true for professionally published literature too. A lot of people said
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows wasn't that great compared to earlier books in the series, and it was one of the longest. Likewise,
Twilight spans three decent-sized volumes, and need I say more? On the other hand, a lot of people loved
Order of the Phoenix, and it's a door stopper, and I have to say that the
Artemis Fowl books are pretty awesome, even though they're shorter compared to
Twilight. Length just isn't a reliable indicator for quality.
Quality is a good indicator for quality, and you only figure out what level of
that a book (or fic) has by picking it up and looking at its parts.
In all honesty, those kind of fics, are the most common. Check any fandom (except the intelligent ones like EVE) and most of the fics will be of that sort, small and crappy.
Just because that's (half-)true on FFNet (as in, it's true that short fics are common and true that crap fics are common but not necessarily true that they're the same thing all the time) that doesn't mean that one type is better or worse than another most of the time everywhere. As I've said, quality is subjective, and I've seen just as many long fics on FFNet that were piles of crap in my personal opinion as I have short fics on FFNet that were piles of crap... because, well, that's how FFNet is. It just so happens that the short ones there outnumber the long ones because more people write short fics or abandon their fics shortly after starting. Of course, this also doesn't mean that all fics or even most fics on FFNet are automatically crap either (especially given that many of the favorites I've just linked to are on that site). It just means that saying that there's a ton of crap on the most accessible and popular fanfiction archives, which is full of writers who have just started out or can't take criticism, is unfortunately a given. And also a bit unfair, but that doesn't really stop the fact that FFNet has been a bit of a joke to fan writers in every fandom for almost a decade.
But rambling aside, tl;dr, FFNet is a terrible example for quality because it's far too easy to point out crap in every genre, category, rating, length, and insert-what-have-you here. Because it's FFNet.
To conclude, you have heavy bias against longer fanfics.
Or maybe you missed the point of what I was trying to say.
Not to mention that's not a comprehensive list of my favorites. I have a second account with older favorites (no, you may not look because the fic archived there are my old shames), and I'm more likely to bookmark fics I like via the favorites feature of my browser, rather than on my profile that I barely ever update anymore.
This is probably the closest thing to my favorites right now, and even then, it's only a fraction of the huge chunk of fics that is my favorites folder.
Quality wise they have a much better representation than smaller fics.
You have yet to bring up solid arguments as to why.
That said, because I've mentioned repeatedly that quality and length do not necessarily go hand-in-hand, all I can say to your last question is that there isn't one, in my personal opinion. So answering that question would actually be off-topic because any reason I could possibly give to back up a specific number has nothing to do with the quality of the fic (and everything to do with the reader's/writer's comfort).