Mockingbirb Responds to a Request for Self-Promotional Wanking About "Experimental Fiction" · 7:00am March 15th
A fimfic user recently put out a call for experimental fics (using the term BROADLY.) They even said
Self promotions encouraged!
But what do people think an experimental fic is, anyway? What does that mean to them?
Most of my stories are experiments in how people might react to them...but that isn't really the stereotype that people apply that ~word~ phrase 'experimental fiction' to.
I have assembled a somewhat satirical ~short~ annotated collection for that person who called for experimental fics.
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(If you're using a screen reader, I'm honestly sorry.)
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A story that doesn't make a lot of sense, but bluffs with a pile of incoherent nonsense? A story that has the writer, and maybe even some of their friends or 'friends' explaining that everything floundering or failing about the story is actually a DEEP SUCCESS? That would be a lot of what gets called 'experimental,' I guess (imho).
If I think I have any of those, I guess I probably won't link to them here.
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meta, self-referential
You asked for it! A story about fimfic's official content warning tags (the red ones.) This story also turns out to be a scavenger hunt (with hints and answers in the comments.) I was happy to see people have fun with that!
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Wow! Maybe Regidar (or this blog post) will be able to get this story about its own verb tenses out of graybar! On the other hand, if you don't care about verb tenses, maybe you shouldn't read this one.
It's my only horsewords in which the narrator's own "Lavender Unicorn Syndrome" is a significant plot point.
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The ending of this story is an ending you 'should' be able to see, after the last fifteen or so years.
So I guess it's...a story about a complete lack of surprise, unless it IS a surprise? idk, I just write these things.
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This was maybe my most successful experiment in making everypony in Ponyville gay.
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This was one of my experiments in letting characters use words like 'f*ck' a lot.
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This was one of my experiments in differently (mis?)interpreting the theme of a contest, I guess.
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What if I wrote for a ship based contest or event on the premise, 'what if this ship was in fact absolute shit?'
Ok, that might be a BIT of an exaggeration. But maybe not MUCH of one. 
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I think this story earns its 100 likes by being good, and its 20 or so dislikes by the way it utterly rips apart the ship (and rips apart some other things too.)
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Anyone can write a story in which Wallflower commits suicide ONCE. What about a story in which thousands or millions of Wallflowers commit suicide? (Ok, ONE exception survives.)
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What the story's short description and long description say.
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What if everyone was transgender? I mean, seriously. Or what if there were a few exceptions but I wasn't all outraged and fake-martyr-y and butthurt about that?
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What if "1984" was a polyamory shipfic?
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Is this a love triangle? I mean, all three of them DO share the same bed...at least until the story's ending.
Incidentally, a horror.
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Trixie doesn't really need legs. (I edited this blog post post-publication to put this line in a spoiler tag.)
Conceptual science fiction horror, I guess.
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The questionable maybe-shipfic that offended at least one contest it wasn't even IN! (~And~it~didn't~refer~to~that~contest~anywhere~either.~ An author's note did analyze the story's possible eligibility for that contest, though.)
I see I also said, in a comment on the story: "This story represents my attempt to comply with EVERY fimfiction.net story contest of the last few years, all at the same time. T AND M rated contests. "
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I FINALLY indulge myself by intentionally writing a story that has readers asking, 'Wait, was the ending that X happened?'
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In a 'stream of consciousness style,' readers might say.
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AS AN EXPERIMENT, I try to prove that I really do understand those 'Anon' fics that are so popular lately, by writing one in that style (the ANON-POPULAR style, not a different style), but with touches of ME.
200+ likes later, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this being the second highest rated fimfic I've pub'd under this account. (But not the second most liked, though.)
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Sometimes, when an experiment succeeds, part of the success is that no one seems to recognize what the experiment was testing.
(Hint: https://duckduckgo.com/?q="more+most+dangerous+game"+contest)
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What if I wanted to write a story that is CLEAR, but doesn't follow the sequential order of events, not exactly...because it's a time travel story that follows the travel and development of a series of letters and a student's homework assignment?
(Also, I experiment with using colored text a LITTLE, but NOT making color mandatory to read the story.)
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This doesn't even count as experimental: it's just ANOTHER apocryphal gospel. That idea is practically as old as Christianity.
A lot of people probably think they are the first person to think of this idea, though, even if maybe they don't quite know what an apocryphal gospel IS.
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Look, I just wanted to write a story about parents throwing their child off a cliff, ok? Is that too much to ask?
Also, maybe this isn't very experimental. I mean, I already KNEW I could make a story about that work, right?
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This was an experiment in differentiating the very extended flashback from the rest of the story by using different writing styles. At least one reader not only consciously noticed, but remarked on that.
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This self-promotional pile of self-wank is PARTLY the fault of https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1034922/give-me-your-wild-and-wacky-experimental-fics
Feel better now, Birb?
Here's to self-promotional wankery. n_n
5772429
Nah, not much.
Writing actual stories, and getting real reactions to that writing, might be the only things that really work reliably for that. Talking about or writing about writing is MOSTLY a distant second.
5772485
This is a good list but clearly
re:
you seem to want to write a story. So, get cracking.
*
*Although, frankly, you've already scribed an enormous amount of entertaining literature.
Excellent! I'm looking forward to the grand majority of these (I'm afraid even you may not be able to supersede my frothing hatred for Anon, however, so don't get your hopes up there). I'll do my best to be even-keeled about the EQG fics as well, I have nothing against them but they're really not my style and by and large I tend to avoid them unlike Anon, which I have deep-seated conceptual issues with and thus hate vs merely avoid.
There will be a score of how experimental something was-or-was-not. My use of the word "experimental" is quite broad, and the self-promo was to drive engagement; funny enough, I tried this exact project in the past WITHOUT encouraging self-promos, and I got maybe 4 or 5 comments. Gotta scratch the narcissist itch artists got, after all
I have taken into account that the majority of people have posted a story of theirs that they feel has deviated from the mould in one way or another, and aren't exactly by strictest definition "experimental", even though the word itself merely implies that one attempted an experiment—there truly being no set parameters for what is and isn't. Hell, if I wanted something more like Bad Horse's blog, I woulda straight up asked for avant-garde! I set the parameters from anything from crackship to unintelligible mess made to boost the writer's ego for a reason 
5773924
It's just an Anon story, Regidar. If you hate Anon in general, you probably won't like it.
That is indeed an interesting definition of 'experimental.'
5772554
Thank you for your kind words!
And for these kind words too.
5772447
Thank you! I think.
5778538
I swear it was meant positively. n_n I'm a fan of having you on this site with your excellent horsewords and contests. To say nothing of the wonderful folks you've brought to my awareness.
5778539
Thank you!
I only meant 'I think' as a joke.
5778548
I was *fairly* confident of your reading comprehension, but figured why not do a little bit of overkill n_n
Plus it was an excuse to stroke your ego a little more.