antennapedia

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

This is indeed hilarious and diverting!

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

All the ones I remember, John was the coffee guy.

I'm not sure if it's factually true or just an impression, but it seems like John's profession is changed more while Rodney stays a scientist or academic.

There should be an H50 coffee shop AU. It seems natural and inevitable, considering coffee is a major agricultural product of the islands.

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?

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!

Coffee shop AU is a genre?

...

Coffee shop???

8^-

This was my reaction almost exactly.

'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^-

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.

No, I'm not writing that. I wrote that just there for you while I was procrastinating on writing Voyager genfic.

But it would be waaaaaay more awesome if it was Giles in the cage. Except I can't buy Giles as a virgin. Can I count it as virginity if all memory of having sex is gone? So it's fatally-horny mind-wiped Giles in a leather harness in a cage, hoping that this young dark-haired guy who's staring at him with his mouth hanging open is going to help him. Because he seems a much safer bet than those salivating brutes over there.

Oh, but little do either Giles or Xander know that Xander has a dark identical twin here, who would use Giles cruelly if he could...

Where's thea_bromine? I've got to give this to thea.

Virgin sacrifice has not been ignored by Buffy fandom, but it certainly deserves more attention.

If there was one thing Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan had covered, it was the cliche fics. I could probably find five of each of all of those in under twenty minutes. On my own hard drive.

8^-

I had the same reaction to the idea of Giles in the cage: far more appealing because it's a turnaround, but the virginity requirement is one he can't meet.

I have a list of cliches I want to write in fic before I'm done with the fanfiction game. Huddling for warmth, trapped in a cave, slavefic, wingfic, fuck or die, virgin sacrifice, amnesia, mpreg, secret kid, secretly related to other major canon character, etc etc. I suspect the world of Spike/Xander is more likely to have done all these than the world of Giles/anybody.

The mind-wipe will fix that. It's the only way to re-virginify him.

Ooh. Entirely independent plot bunny: wouldn't be cool if some Willow-spell-gone-awry or - more likely - Ethan-amusing-himself-spell wiped all and only Giles' memories of sex? So Giles remembers who he is and what he does and all these people, but no memories of getting naked with anyone ever. Ethan would definitely know that spell.


Done. Not done. Surprisingly not. Not my thing. Does enema-or-die count? Twice. Three times. Incomplete draft. Done. Not done.

I've done a virgin sacrifice fic, with a virgin sacrifice sequel. Same character. I'm proud of that.

You did wingfic. Ticky that box. Though perhaps you need to go back and put more sex in. Get on with the others.

Nothing anyone has written for any of these ideas where Spike is half the pairing counts.

8^-

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

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

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.

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.

!!!! 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.)

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.

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.