#apocafic

This week’s Featured Article is all about the end of the world! An Apocalypse AU is a trope where a fanwork is set during or after an apocalyptic event and the characters must survive harsh and devastating conditions. This trope is often associated with fanfiction (sometimes called Apocafics), but it appears across all types of fanworks.

Some fandoms have built-in apocalypse potential that characters fight against in canon. In those cases, the apocalypse is typically averted. For example, in the TV series Forever Knight, an asteroid threatens Earth in one episode; although it does not collide with Earth in the show, some canon-divergent AU fanworks often explore what might have happened should that apocalyptic event have occurred. Other fandoms, like Jeremiah or Battlestar Galactica, are already set in an apocalyptic setting in canon, so fanworks that explore this are usually not labeled as an alternate universe unless a new, different apocalypse is created.

These fanworks explore common tropes like survival, found family, and hurt/comfort. Characters search for food and shelter, fight creatures like feral animals or zombies, build communities, and support each other through shared trauma. Apocalypse AUs can also serve as vehicles for political and social commentary, reflecting current societal fears even when set in distant futures or faraway universes.

How would your favorite characters survive the end of the world? Head over to Fanlore to learn more!

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For All Mankind, Margo x Sergei

Fifty kisses, the third. #40: because the world is ending.

Chapters: 1/3 Fandom: The Sandman (TV 2022), Reign of Fire (2002) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus/Hob Gadling Characters: Dream of the Endless | Morpheus, Hob Gadling, Destiny of the Endless, Desire of the Endless, Death of the Endless, Despair of the Endless, Destruction of the Endless, Delight of the Endless, Orpheus (The Sandman), Calliope (The Sandman), Unity Kinkaid Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Several of them actually, Nightmares, Dragons, Hopeful Ending Summary:

What if the absence of Dream of the Endless broke the world much, much more than it did in canon? What if the Corinthian was one of the least dangerous nightmares to escape into the Waking world in his absence? What if Dream got free and discovered a Waking world that needed to be rebuilt as much as the Dreaming?

Hi! You always seem to know where to find obscure Sherlock fics. Quite a few years back, I read a wonderful post-apocalyptic story where John and Sherlock are living a rather nomadic life wandering the UK after a terrible pandemic has swept through the population. I honestly can’t recall if it was a zombie story or not. Eventually, Sherlock contracts the virus, and they set up together in an abandoned house in order to hide out from other survivors, and John sets up an isolation curtain between them, to wait until Sherlock dies from the virus. Again, if I recall correctly, Sherlock survives, although he is left terribly scarred.

Does this ring any bell for you or your readers? I would dearly love to read it again! Thanks.

Reply: There are a few that match the first part (wandering the UK during a pandemic/apocalypse/etc.) but I’ve looked through my bookmarks and am not finding any with the detail about the isolation curtain. Here are the relevant lists if you want to have a look yourself:

Apocalypse fics

Zombie fics

And a few more close ones I came across while looking:

Blood spilled among white roses by Aeriane_Parkes (16K, E, Johnlock) Sherlock must find a way home in the midst of a pandemic, while is barely surviving on his own in an abandoned cottage in the Australian wilderness, but when he meets a man staunchly resembled his lifelong friend attempting to find someone to care for his daughter before his time runs out, Sherlock suddenly find the will to break through this hellish limbo and return home, no matter how dangerous it may be.

Chosen by Remy_Writes5 (37K, E, Johnlock, Mystrade, MorMor) After the collapse of civilization and the spread of "the sickness", Mycroft Holmes has risen to power. As his younger brother, Sherlock Holmes gets to choose the alpha to see him through his heats. John Watson has been chosen.

Clever Dead by jesso (11K, T, Johnlock) There's a zombie apocalypse going down and it's too little too late when John finally realizes that they're up shit creek without a paddle. In trying to escape London, Sherlock and John get separated in a way that changes them both, only to be reunited much later.

Five More Minutes by Vanya (16K, M, Johnlock, Mystrade) Sherlock and John try to survive the end of the world as they know it. Separated from their group, their main focus is to survive and try to get as far North as they can. Unfortunate circumstances follow. Will this world be too much for them to survive?

Haemophilia by kaasknot (10K, T, Johnlock) It started at Baskerville. A leaky pipe, a faulty experiment left to seed by an absent scientist; in the end, it didn't matter. What mattered was that an epidemic spilled through the medical halls of Baskerville, and no one knew the cause—or how to treat it.

Tomorrow by FivePips (41K, M, Johnlock) We join Sherlock and John two weeks into the Zombie Apocalypse. Sherlock has barely spoken a word, he's been mostly pacing the living room of 221B. John has been making the flat as secure as possible while wishing it was more Shaun of the Dead than The Walking Dead. But now Sherlock believes it is time to leave London for a sparsely populated area on the coast. On their way out of the city the meet a few familiar faces and they join their party, to Sherlock's dismay.

Three flowers = at least three sentences, right? Not that I've successfully kept any of these to one sentence, but still.

"Ah," he said softly. "You're growing."

"They need me to," she said. "And I guess I was ready, anyway."

She shook her head, and he could see now that her hair, still in rainbow curls, was now growing out blonde at the roots--not the bright flaxen color of her first incarnation, but a burnished gold.

"I survived," she said. "I came through all this, still here, and it didn't kill me, and I'm growing. Still growing."

From my main NaNoWriMo project, a Dreamling fic about the apocalypse hitting while Dream is stuck in his glass cage, and it changes a lot of things for pretty much everyone, including the youngest of the Endless.

It had been almost no surprise at all to recognize the figure approaching him--the only living person or sign of one Dream had encountered in the hours his nightmare steed had been carrying him away from Fawney Rig--was Hob Gadling.

Of course Hob was still alive. Perhaps only Hob, but at least that one person.

His friend. In all the world, however it was broken, however his failures had broken it, he still had one friend.

Reply: First of all, thank you that’s nice to hear. As for your request, I don’t think I’ve read it. It sounds like an alternate meeting AU. I have a list of “Apocafics” but they all start with Sherlock and John already knowing each other. Here it is anyway in case it’s on there:

Apocafic recs