Hats wanted: an apocalyptic discussion post.

[thevinegarworks]

I'm so bad at hiatuses. *facepalm* (Bear with me, I've spent the better part of a day surrounding by whooping Superbowl-crazed idiots, shoved into a corner scribbling tragic gen fic. devilyouwere, I'm looking at you right now

Comments

[kaylbunny]

Angst, despair, a little maiming if possible but nothing life threatening to main characters unless zombies are going to be involved. UST - it's just never the right time, apocalypse and all. I prefer a more personal approach to the Apocalypse, centered on one or two people and how they cope with the world falling appart around them. The ending doesn't have to be happy so long as it has hope.

Of course my opinion could be completely different once i've had my morning coffee ;D

[thevinegarworks]

Hah, oh you. We're basically the same person. OH HAI SOULMATE~

I do tend to find sex out of place in about 99% of most apocafics, but I think it largely depends on how the story is structured. If it's a very plot-driven one (like, for example, my apocabigbang) then I think sex would actually cheapen it; but if it's a very tightly character-driven story (i.e. my spn_j2_bigbang) then sex is a-okay.

The ending doesn't have to be happy so long as it has hope.

Yes, god, this. This is exactly the way I see it. I almost don't want my apocafics to have a happy ending, you know, because it just seems...unrealistic is a silly word to use since we're talking about fic after all, but really, unrealistic. The apocalypse, whatever kind you choose to explore, is about loss and struggle and rebuilding. I just can't see one where no one comes out without a scratch, but I so absolutely love it when all the despair is capped off by this small group of humans finding their common ground and binding together and discovering hope. That's, yeah, that's what it's all about

[kaylbunny]

Well hello there sailor. Where have you beeeeeen

[thevinegarworks]

I've been in a WRITING COCOON. It's insane, seriously. First there's APBB and then my sister was like "WRITE ME SAM/LUCIFER" so I stayed up all night and wrote 6k of that, and then this other Dean/Cas futurefic thing I've been working on and just, omg, Kayl, hold me. *CLINGS* (Plus I promised I would maintain a safe distance from LJ whilst wrapping up my apbb. You can see how well that's working out, considering it's still languishing on my hard drive, unfinished, as we speak. :D

[uselessplayback]

I've been a fan of apocalyptic stories since I picked up my first one in (oh, god) second grade. The first story I ever read in the genre had a girl trail her father into an underground bunker with peeks of nuclear winter hanging outside and, throughout the story, she had no idea what was going on only that she couldn't leave and the few people she was exposed to were going slowly mad, food storage was dwindling and there was no communication with the outside world. The thing that struck me most in that story was the fact that no one ever explicitly stated what had happened--it was all filtered through the eyes of this kid who had no idea what was going on--but by the end of the story you realized "holy shit, these are probably the only people left on earth

[thevinegarworks]

Dude, that story sounds kind of ridiculously awesome. Nuclear fallouts? Yes please!

I definitely would say that a large part of the apocafic fanbase is based on that vein of hope that runs underneath all the chaos and despair. There's something really moving about seeing people band together and unite for a cause, even if that cause is just survival.

Canticle for Leibowitz, yay!

the danger of large, dramatic endeavors tends to be that there's so much going on you lose the emotional impactAbsolutely, I agree. I think it's possible to have these stories that bring in a global arc, but it does lose some of the impact and moves into sensationalism when the events are epic and terrifying, but they're not tied to the characters' themselves

[janie_tangerine]

Mm. My ideal apocalypse as someone already said is The Stand. Begins with an epic BOOM and shows you in great detail how fucked up the entire world is and then the story becomes character-driven which is what I really prefer. And well, it had the battles and stuff but always liked character-driven stuff better. Personally I prefer it when after depressing you to no end things get better or something, but a total pack of angst is awesome too. I like it better when it's a quiet-intimate ordeal though, and the two times I tried to write one I realized I couldn't do bleak so I ended up with having it optimistic the both of times. So I guess I prefer that kind. In the end it all boils down to how it's written and the characterizations because for reading I'll read anything as long as it's an interesting premise, but let's say that I like my characters pulling together and not suffering to no end. ;)

[thevinegarworks]

Yeah, while I didn't like The Stand as a whole, I do have to agree that it was fabulously creative and sort of stunningly intricate. I always found it intriguing that King didn't get you attached to the characters first, he didn't work up to the big disaster - it was contained in the first like 19 pages and the rest of this massive, ridiculous book is all about the fallout. It comes in at a really interesting time and I think that gives it a lot of momentum and uniqueness.

I would say the same thing, I like that little glimmer of hope at the end. If not, and I've gone through this horrible jolting ride just waiting for something good to finally happen, and it doesn't and everything is just shitty and bleak, I'm just left scratching my head like, "well that was pointless." It can be done, but very, and I mean very rarely.

[heartsonwings]

I prefer it when all the characters are working together, I guess the 'us against the world' kinda thing. And of course, happy endings. :) Lol ♥

[thevinegarworks]

Me too! I get all mushy and want to like hug trees and shit when I read about people banding together for a cause, even if that cause is no more than survival. :')

[entangled_now]

This is such a good question. Because I love a good apocalypse fic but I think depending on which one you choose they can unravel in such different ways. Is the apocalypse a slow inevitable decline, waiting for the end to happen, or a hectic action packed gruesome war? Or is it a plague that needs to be run from? Or even post-apocalyptic struggling to survive the aftermath? I honestly love them all, whether they're hard and fast-paced and gruesome or slow and creepy and hopeless, or even light and a little optimistic. I honestly think it's more how people choose to show the people and bring them through it (or even if they do at all) that makes a good apocalypse.

[thevinegarworks]

Yes, there seems to be infinite ways to approach it and everyone seems to have their own special twist on it, and I think that's really fascinating. I've always been an apocalyptic story/book/movie/anything junkie, so I love all sorts - the slow and inevitable ones and the hectic crazy ones. I agree with you on everything you said, pretty much, that it's more about the people and how they work through it and come out the other end.

I'm just so freaking happy that there's been such an upsurge in apocalyptic things lately. My nerd goggles are firmly affixed for when all the apocabigbangs are released, oh god I'm going to be glued to my computer permanently for a month.