Highlander Chronicles - Day

10:14PM - the epic tale

Having heard a recent radio program about Wagner's The Ring Cycle (what could be more epic?), it got me to thinking. In this day and age of textmessages and drabbles, is there any room left for the epic story in fanfiction?

I'm not disparaging the short story writer (heck, I am a short story writer) but once upon a time, the epic story was something that a a lot more writers worked on. Now we get short tales, episodes of stories given to us over long stretches of time that may fall in the same universe but don't necessarily follow an overall arc. There are a lot of drabbles, maybe not so many ficlets? Is it enough to give us an acorn of an idea, a thought, a laughline, a snippet of a scene, or do we need the epic tale to tell us something?

Readers in this and other fandoms: is the epic story still thriving elsewhere? Do you have time to read the epics? Or do the short ones fit your busy lifestyle better?

Writers: do your fingers itch to write long tales, or do the short, succinct ones hold you better in thrall? Have you changed what you write over time? Do the stories grow longer? Or have they tightened up to only the most essential pieces? Do the long stories just tend to linger on your harddrives, unfinished?

What do you think about the epic tale?

What are the true Highlander epics? Not just a novel sized story, but something so extensive that it deserves the description?