Dramatic Monologue vs. Epic

 Since I'm sure everyone is getting very tired of having boring old characters and authors battle it out, let's see who would win in the very likely event 2 different forms of writing somehow come to life and take offence with one another. Which is how I feel the world is going to end. Isn't the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword? Forget the zombie apocalypse! Anyways, we know that dramatic monologues are long bits of speech that are used to express a characters perspective on something, anything. It's like a soliloquy, but we assume that other people are listening besides the audience. And that makes it less crazy, since soliloquies are usually villains just kind of talking to themselves on a stage... And of course epics are the massive poems telling a story of a hero of some kind. Epics also have a checklist of criteria to say whether it's really an epic or not, but if its complicated and takes a long time to read, chances are it's an epic. But which is better? Points go to the dramatic monologue for being able to be read in less than an eternity, but points go to the epic for having an actual plot line because not matter interesting a person you are, 2000 words on your opinion is always going to be tedious. (Which means I may have seriously overestimated how interesting people find this....) Epics are, well, epic, but dramatic monologues can be very intriguing- an author can write how someone seriously deranged thinks without having to come up with an entire backstory for said crazy person. My Last Duchess anyone?

 And the winner is.....

Epic. This cannot be news to anyone. Epics are the great-great-grandfather to all poetry. Epic were poems before poems were invented. (Also, the hipsters of the literary world, apparently...) And if that doesn't convince you, keep in mind that the dramatic monologue "Ulysses" was based on the epic poem, "The Odyssey". So dramatic monologues only wish they could be as amazing as the epic.