Random discussion topic.

[antennapedia]

Okay, I'll bite. What's a coffeeshop AU? Is this like a highschool AU only everybody's a hipster instead?

ETA: Oh wow, there are coffeeshop AUs for everything. Though not for BtVS. Obviously it needs one. Giles owns it, of course, and Anya is one of his baristas. Tara & Willow are college students who hang out there often to study. Where I go from

Comments

[fuzzyboo03]

I can only speak to the Sherlock coffeeshop AU, wherein he snarks at everyone while ruthlessly deducing their coffee needs (not wants). Very amusing.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6746713/1/Ratiocination_The_Logic_Behind_a_Perfect_Coffee

[antennapedia]

This is indeed hilarious and diverting!

[shibela]

Almost?? :D I've always taken it to mean that it revolves around a coffeeshop, usually with at least one of the main characters being an employee at (or owner of) said coffeeshop -- premise similar to a highschool AU, but everyone, including whichever character(s) is working at the coffeeshop, is not necessarily a hipster.

[antennapedia]

Bah! Coffeeshop means hipster! Especially if there's latte foam art. (I like hipsters. Non-ironically.)

[elayna88]

The SGA fics that I would describe as coffee shop AUs have John as either a barista (generally while he puts himself through a second degree after having left the military) or a coffee shop owner (where he mixes special blends of coffee and bakes scrumptious pastries).

Rodney is, of course, a frequent visitor, and John uses him as a taste tester for the newest experiments as their relationship grows closer. Rodney's usually still a scientist, though not necessarily for the Stargate program.

The other SGA characters slot in as other customers, friends or colleagues. No one's really a hipster.

I don't read a lot of fandoms, so the concept may be different for other pairings.

[antennapedia]

Interesting. Do any of them ever feature Rodney as, say, the expert who's doing the innovative bean selection & roasting? Or is it always John as the coffee shop connection?

[jamoche]

Pretty sure I've seen one where Rodney was the barista who knew exactly what coffee you needed and could do it faster than you thought possible because he'd also designed his own espresso machine.

[fuzzyboo03]

Right, it's possible I have an unhealthy addiction to SGA AU's.

The one where Rodney modifies an espresso machine: http://suzvoy.livejournal.com/1678564.html

The one where where John builds a coffee shop and Rodney is furious when he won't reveal the source of his beans: http://mamaesme.livejournal.com/27516.html

The series where John owns a coffee shop and roasts his own beans, Rodney is customer zero, but eventually ends up helping take shifts and does modifications for the roasters and works on his own blends (for the serious coffee geek): http://archiveofourown.org/works/3979/chapters/5116

The closely related bakery AU: http://archiveofourown.org/works/136964

[helenkacan]

Hmmmm. Perhaps it's because we already do have the Espresso Pump in canon, so to create a different coffee shop AU would be ... weird?

[antennapedia]

I think the genre is the kind of thing those mad, mad SGA sock AU writers come up with, and it appeals to the sort of writers who have long since moved on from writing Buffyverse fic. Those of us remaining are a little stodgier. Or obsessed with working out the details of the canon universe. Or... I dunno!

[the_emu]

Coffee shop AU is a genre?

...

Coffee shop???

8^-

[antennapedia]

This was my reaction almost exactly.

[the_emu]

'Virgin sacrifice'. That's a genre.

'Pon Farr' is a genre.

'Mindwipe allows long-repressed feelings to surface': genre.

'Trapped in a world where one character must pretend to be the other's bdsm sex slave', totally a genre.

'Coffee shop' is the location where the virginal character is slipped a fuck-or-die roofie-laced beverage which causes them to trip over a chair, knocking themselves unconscious, so they can wake up an amnesiac naked slave in a cage in a hedonistic world where only their long-unacknowledged object of affection can protect them from a never-ending horde of sexual predators.

The entire sensory description of the beverage may be conveyed in ten words at the very most. Twenty if the barista has utilised the swirl on top to draw a significant magical rune which will be referenced later in the form of a collar tag or arse-branding.

8^-

[antennapedia]

You are writing this story now, yes? And it is of course Xander in the cage?

In other news, I want a virgin sacrifice ficathon nao. Perhaps I will attempt to collect a set of links on the theme. It is less common than fuck-or-die in BtVS, I think.