“The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling / Can center both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.”

[larryhammer]

An important genre question: Does Legends & Lattes count as a Coffee Shop AU of bog-standard high fantasy?

On the one hand, it has a bog-standard high fantasy setting, one that just happens to have a coffee shop (it’s an exotic drink imported from gnomish sources), which means it’s not actually an Alternate Universe. On the other hand, the story leans on several tropes of Coffee Shop AUs.

Please discuss.

It is, btw, a nice, cozy story. Recommended if you want one of those right now. I did.

---L.

Subject quote from “Often rebuked, yet always back returning,” Emily Brontë.

Comments

[sartorias]

Haven't gotten to it yet--my tbr pile is huuuuuuge!

[larryhammer]

So is mine. This bumped up to the top only because my library hold came through, and I was in the mood for something fluffy.

[mme_n_b]

OMG, that's what it is. Thank you for formulating it so clearly. It's an escape genre of an escape genre, which is why the whole fantasy world around them feels so unnecessary.

[larryhammer]

Now that's a comment that made me ponder for a while. I disagree with calling it "unnecessary," but I get the concept you're going for -- "gratuitous" comes closer, I think, though it's still not quite right. There are aspects of the fantasy setting that were essentially to the story it's trying to tell, but some of them (such as Val's species, and for that matter T's species) that are very much underused, and as such look like "merely" decorative trappings.

Escape genre of escape genre is spot on, though.

[mme_n_b]

Not that decorative trappings are bad :) They do add to the enjoyment - like a foam flower on top of a latte.

[larryhammer]

Oh, indeed. Part of both the enjoyment and genre signaling.

[ranunculus]

I understand you first sentence. I understand the first seven words of the next sentence. I've read a lot of fantasy but I'm stumbling on Coffee Shop AU and bog-standard. Obviously I haven't explored the universe of fan-fic enough! Legends & Lates was a pleasant little book though.

[larryhammer]

Quite pleasant. I'm already forgetting many details, though.

[genarti]

I haven't read it, but based on my general impression of it, hmm, it really is in a grey area, isn't it? I do feel like it's a coffeeshop AU, based on vibes and tropes, but maybe it's really more of a coffeeshop universe without the alternate part...

[larryhammer]

Genre boundaries are grey areas -- they are fuzzy, and I think this is one example that highlights this.

[movingfinger]

Hm. I read it as a coffee-shop original fic.

To label it an AU throws an unnecessary boundary around the possibilities of D&D-Del Rey genre high fantasy. It's not unrelated to Callahan's Cross-Time Saloon, for example, and down the street there's probably a magical shop that only appears to the right people. In its strict focus on practical everyday life and interpersonal relationships, it is very unlike the genre from which it stems. The coffee shop setting is so popular in fanwriting because it allows those "small" things that are not epic events to be explored in luxurious depth. Doorstop fantasies have historically been thin on interpersonal relationships and anxiety about succeeding as a businessperson. Steve Brust's Adrilankha setting, at least initially, allows for some of that, but (I have not read all of them) overall it is more like traditional fantasy products in its engagement with higher powers as prime movers, epic realm business, and significant deeds and weapons. Legends and Lattes would serve the population of Adrinlankha, but it would be unlikely to arise in that place because of the way the narrative structure the world. It is more closely related to Discworld than anything else. We might very plausibly label it a Discworld coffee-shop AU.

I would be interested in a take each from Farah Mendleson and John Clute, because they are both good at perceiving categories. Coffee Shops and Ships could be a great panel.