Apocafic - Fanlore

A portmanteau of "apocalypse fic", apocafic is fiction set during or after some sort of apocalypse, or end of the world. Some canons carry a built-in apocalypse against which the protagonists are fighting: in apocafic, they lose. For example, apocafic in Stargate and X-Files is usually set after the alien occupation; Supernatural apocafic is set on a demon-controlled Earth.

In some shows, the apocalypse happens as part of the series premise, such as Jeremiah or Battlestar Galactica (or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where characters actually asked each other "what is the plural of apocalypse?"); stories set in these universes tend not to be called 'apocafic' unless the writer makes a different apocalypse happens. Highlander's canonical apocalypse was called "the gathering", and it was a time when all Immortals would be drawn together, killing one another until only one Immortal was left. HL fans also wrote about non-canonical apocalypses, like world-wide disasters that wiped out most of humanity but which the immortals survived, such as in the Immortal Nations series by Maygra and MacGeorge.

In other fandoms, there is no canonical reason to expect an apocalypse, so writers are free to imagine their own. Yahtzee's Goodnight Moon places Joan of Arcadia characters on the cusp of a second ice age, for example; it was written for The Day After Tomorrow Challenge, which produced apocafic for 44 separate fandoms. Starsky & Hutch fandom had several Apocalypse stories, despite being a 1970s buddy cop show.

Fandoms in which apocafic is popular may also have challenges or ficathons built around this trope, like the Stargate SG-1 apocaficathon Apocalypse KREE! Other fandoms offer awards; some X-Files awards, for example the Spookys, had an apocafic category, referred to in that fandom as post-colonization. There are also multifandom ficathons with this themes such as Apocalyptothon.