These Are The Days Of Miracles And Wonders

who i am

in case anyone’s interested: tomorrow is PSYCH DAY!!! bring your pineapple 🍍

PSYCH (2006 - 2014) Season 1, Episode 15 -  Scary Sherry: Bianca’s Toast

Coffee shop AUs are, like... fine. They're not my thing, but they're hardly going to end the world. We don't need to have a moral panic about people enjoying coffee shop AUs. I'm also not about to come for anyone seeking escapism in the current hellscape.

However, I do think it's interesting to examine the tendency within these AUs to project a sort of idyll onto the coffee shop: here is a whimsical place where you can spend time with your friends and potentially meet your true love; here is a world where the greatest dilemma you may face is choosing the right coffee syrup for a new beverage or sneaking your number onto that to-go cup without being obvious.

The fantasy of the coffee shop AU is divorced almost entirely from the reality of an actual coffee shop. There are no abusive, creepy customers or bosses; there is no mention of the barista's wages; we don't see the dishwasher sweating at their station, the cashiers' aching feet; the person whose job it is to clean the (customer-only?) toilets. These topics are Political and Depressing and Must Be Avoided, because Political and Depressing things are antithetical to this kind of escapism.

The coffee shop AU exists, not in a world without capitalism (because this is a setting where commerce is actively happening) but in a world where capitalism has no teeth: a world where capitalism somehow works. In order to be convinced and soothed by this fantasy, you must suspend your disbelief and avert your eyes. You must filter the coffee shop through a neopastoralist lens.

Olderthannetfic and friends did some stat exploring and, yeah, no. If anything it looks like fics with graphic depictions of violence are taking up a higher proportion of fics than they used to.

what y'all are talking about in regards to pastoralism and coffee shop AUs is like. The broad concept of romanticizing things or of presenting an idealized version of them.

And like, yeah, fascists definitely romanticize some things, but when talking about fascism we gotta delve a little deeper than "this thing has a similar 'feeling' to this other thing, so therefore they must have similar underlying ideologies."

In summary:

1. No actual evidence of an increase in this type of fic or of a change in its level of popularity.

2. No information about who are the primary audience or producers for this type of fic, or what they themselves think about it.

3. Sweeping conclusions based on vibes and "this thing reminds me of another thing" rather than actually any kind of evidence.

i have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm, and that three or more become a congress.