Permanent div box on The Backrooms Wiki frontpage, aluding to SCP as inspiration.
Liminal fiction, or limfic, is the stylistic designation given to a literary subgenre that is focused on transitionary ethereal spaces, and later, the narratives and characters that take place within them. Limfic communities are primarily extant on the WikiDot platform and feature a heavy overlap with containment fiction demographics, authors, and social media spaces, and like containment fiction, trace their lineage to 4chan message boards. The subgenre has been referred to as “second generation” containment fiction due to the family resemblance and general familiarity each demographic has with the other.[1]https://archive.ph/OuDxr#selection-1401.0-1415.38
Limfic arguably began with the creation of Backrooms/Tech Support. The term “liminal fiction” was coined by SCF member DrKrim/Krim to describe offshoots of containment fiction and its communities, such as Tech Support/The Backrooms, and Liminal Archives.
Examples
Style
Stylistically, limfic primarily deals with sparsely occupied spaces and architecture in order to convey an unsettling, other-worldly atmosphere, with an emotional focus on anxiety, isolation, nostalgia (sometimes referred to as “liminality”), and helplessness.
Early limfic, or “first-wave”, was largely centered on the liminal spaces themselves, unorganized into any overarching themes, whether stylistic or format-based (e.g. the addition of Levels or Entities). Like containment fiction, early instances were derivations from images. The content of proto-limfic articles dealt primarily with the qualities and attributes apparent from these images.[2]https://archive.4plebs.org/x/thread/22661164/
Limfic next saw the expansion of literary instruments along with a constriction of acceptable content, as well as format-based serialization, and a heightened presence of criticism. Generally, these instruments include narrative, lore, character placement, and entities. For Backrooms, second-wave was in part heralded by preexisting authors in the general space, notably those from the SCP Wiki.[3]https://archive.ph/mh6WP Many second-wave limfic authors do not regard liminality is essential or even relevant.
The genre is beginning to see a call to return to more limfic-specific fundamentals of style, with a focus on the spaces themselves, as opposed to character development and narrative.[4]https://archive.ph/5iNHn[5]https://archive.ph/mh6WP[6]http://web.archive.org/web/20220404001653/https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueBackrooms/