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

[seldomifever]

Hehe. Something like Gabi Schulz's "The Library".

[antennapedia]

That was her book shop AU, right? I barely remember that.

[seldomifever]

Yup. I just tried to read a few. I haven't been able to finish any yet. Sometimes old ff is like a comfy blankie and sometimes it's just not.

[brutti_ma_buoni]

Small, shamed cough:

Fresh Brewed, Xander/Riley, coffeeshop AU.

For it was I who did this in the Jossverse. Though to be fair to myself it was to someone else's prompt. But quite fun to take the most superficially normal of the gang and see what they're like when actually normal.

[antennapedia]

!!!! We can always rely upon you for the utter crack, which you are guaranteed to write for us, however reluctantly! (Though it was Snick who wrote the Cheeseman fic, so you aren't alone. Eeek!)

Riley sort of goes through a similar character arc in that little story as in canon, in some ways. Only in your story he makes it all the way out. Xander changes least. I think Xander retains his core self through the weirdness far better than the other Scoobies do. (Buffy's core self is of course erased utterly in the end, which is the tragedy of Buffy.)

[brutti_ma_buoni]

I have no idea what you mean. I'm known throughout fandom for my serious, heartwrenching addiction to my OTP...

*g*

I think if anything I'd say Willow loses more of her original self than Buffy, but perhaps she had a more positive overall trajectory. Xander's much more grounded.

[clavally]

Huh, I really thought the coffeeshop thing was just an SGA thing. SGA writers looooove their AUs. Mostly because the characters translate so well into other settings. In the good ones you can recognize the characters no matter what, the bad...well, not so much.

I always thought the coffeeshop one was because John just lends himself to being a coffeeshop owner and it's fanon that Rodney is obsessed with drinking coffee, so people gave him a yen for special varieties of coffee and it took off from there.