“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

[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.