Uhm.

[hmpf]

I have at least four fics I could post to this community (when I get around to it):

http://archiveofourown.org/collections/experimentalfic/works

Five, if I also decided to post a very old, very crap one.

Does that make me the most pretentious writer in fandom, I wonder?

Comments

[unovis-lj.livejournal.com]

Hardly.
The last time I mentioned experimental fic, I was pretty much bitchslapped and told that it was just a pretentious term -- or that if it did exist, I didn't know what it was.
But I still like the idea, wrong and ignorant and pretentious as I am.

Link?

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about that conversation now.

And yeah, I am aware that experimental literature is far more experimental than any fic could be (not least because fic still needs characters, or it wouldn't be fic), so the term may not be entirely technically correct, but I still find it a useful shorthand for "fic that does not follow the *most* traditional of available formats etc.", or "fic that tries to find slightly different ways of dealing with fanfic-like content".

Re: Link?

[unovis-lj.livejournal.com]

It was a private exchange, part of a general heave-ho.

There's room for a range of stuff, from recognized but seldom-used techniques and forms to efforts to create something new. I have a few things that are just eccentric that I might throw in there. I'm happy to see the category.

I think there are some familiar kinds of stories in fanfic that would strike mainstream audiences as "experimental" or new and different, too.

Re: Link?

[hmpf.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay.

And yeah, I agree that there's stuff in fanfic that does not exactly conform to mainstream ideas of literature - in several ways.