Experimental Fiction, part 1: A list of experimental pony stories · 8:39pm March 16th
Regidar recently posted a request for links to experimental fics. I decided to just add a bookshelf, Experimental, and list my favorite and my own experimental stories there. (My stories will probably appear first, because I added them last. 
They need some explaining. So here's a list of those experimental stories, & how I consider them experimental:
My Experimental Fiction bookshelf
The Last Dreams of Pony Island
The colony of Myinnkyun is tearing itself apart after the suspicious death of an old merchant. Piece together its final days from the dreams of its inhabitants.
Experimental because: See my next planned blog post, Experimental Fiction, part 2.
Somewhere Only We Know
Every night, in a little stable just outside of town, an old mare lays down to sleep. Every night she has the same dream of rainbows and open sky...
Experimental because: On the surface, this is experimental because it alternates between a dream and a reality. On a deeper level, it's experimental because it doesn't condemn the dreamer for dreaming. It is a character doing precisely what conventional theory says the protagonist must do, but only in the story's opening: deny the need for change. But this character has… extenuating circumstances.
Peaceable Kingdom
A time without war, a time without fear—until it isn't.
Experimental because: I mean to write a whole blog post about this story, one in a series on techniques that work both in music and in fiction. Basically, this story misleads you without ever deceiving you, by putting all its events in the order and tempo that they would usually be in, in a different type of story. It's analogous to the way that the theme to Gravity Falls fools you into thinking it's in a major key, by visiting the notes of its minor scale in an order that you would normally visit them if you were in the corresponding major key, then resolving to the tonic, making you suddenly realize you never left the minor key.
RUN
There's only one rule: never stop moving.
Experimental because: The style, some typographical topography (mangled by knighty's elimination of writerly control over whitespace), and especially the order in which the story is told: the present-day narrative proceeds chronologically, with the hidden personal meaning of each section revealed by a flashback. The flashbacks are also in chronological order (and also in present tense).
Save the Records
Whether you tacet or play along, all songs must end in silence.
Experimental because: This story has 4 different structures, all operating simultaneously: a harmonic structure (signified by key changes), a poetic structure, a present-tense chronological narration, and the chronological back-story and hypothetical hopeful future-story which the narrator tells, and which matches up part-by-part with the harmonic structure.
Kaleidoscope
Somepony struggles to remember their childhood. But something's wrong...
Experimental because: The narrator seems to keep changing identities. The reason for this is revealed at the end, and makes perfect sense. This sudden reveal made me sympathize with a very unsympathetic character, & see her life as a paradoxical victory and tragedy; and I think keeping me in suspense about who the story was about, and showing the instability of the narrator's identity, was needed to do that.
Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea
Sometimes, a cup of tea is just a cup of tea. This is not one of those times.
Experimental because: There isn't even a shade of a plot. Twilight Sparkle makes a cup of tea. Very nice frame-shifting reveal at end.
Along Softly on the Tongue
A deranged human journalist is invited to explore the newfound world of Equestria, the land of magic and whimsy and adventure. To the ire of everyone involved, and especially Twilight, he isn't particularly impressed.
Experimental because: The gonzo style. It somehow conveys thought so intense and precise that it's psychotic. I don't know how that even makes sense.
Let Me Tell You About the Hole in My Face
Applejack tells you her only secret. It is about a hole. The hole in her face. The breathing, living hole in her face. (Inspired by the cover image and a recurring dream)
Experimental because: The "story" is just one extended metaphor which is never explained in any analytic, Aspy sense.
What If Socks Didn't Work Orally?
Twilight is confronted with a terrifying proposition, one that seeks to rattle the very core of rational thought. She can rest assured that socks work orally, but what if, what if, what if, what if ...
They didn't.
Also, someone seems to be stealing her milk.
If only Spike weren't gone, but he is. He's gone.
Experimental because: Psychotic narrator; difficult to piece together what happened (I did not; I had to read the comments).
Experience
Celestia is thousands of years old, and has experienced almost everything the world has to offer. But there's one ordinary thing she's never experienced.
Experimental because: I tried to make a description of a sunset evocative enough to substitute for a story.
All the Pretty Pony Princesses
...or, "Magical Mystery Cure" if it had been written by Joss Whedon.
Experimental because: Has no conventional story structure or character arc. (Also, uses hidden text.) This experiment may have been a failure. I still can't decide.
Shut Up
This is a happy story about Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, and the friendship they had in the magical land of Equestria. This is what happened. I can prove it. This is science.
Experimental because: It tells a story indirectly, a story which the narrator is trying to rewrite as a happy story. GhostOfHeraclitus said it reminded him in that way of Nabokov's "Pale Fire", which would seem to make it post-modern. I wrote an afterword to it for Worst of Bad Horse explaining why I think it's the opposite of post-modern.
Moments
Practice makes perfect. And Princess Twilight wants everything to be perfect. Especially the end of the world.
Experimental because: There are 4 chapters where the story seems to have come to an end.
Old Friends
Philomena is reborn after she dies. Ponies are reborn before they die. Kind of. It's hard for a bird to understand.
Experimental because: Written in a very simplified grammar, from the POV of a bird.
Happy Ending
After seeing the destiny of the son he is to have with Rarity, Blueblood tries to change the future for the better.
Experimental because: The story is told from the ending, backwards to the beginning. Not really experimental; it's been done before.
some excellent stuff in here!
An interesting annotated list!
Hole in my face kept me up at night, man