#at the time of queuing this I have been in a fugue state for about 5 days because of a cold

[beesgav]

yeah I suppose I'll toss this up here

[littleeyesofpallas]

okay admittedly my queue has been running uninterrupted for a day or say and I have no idea what's in there anymore but it looks like i was going thru a rough patch. i've hit shuffle on that for now and ill comb thru it to be safe. I've not got my head so far up my own ass as to pretend i've been immaculate with my due diligence. Certainly when I go about drafting and queuing dozens of posts at a time, in my mechanical fugue state, I don't always take the most care to distinguish which ones need community labels. But as has always been the case, if an individual post is found to be inappropriate, it can just be flagged. And generally I don't even bother appealing those.

so guess i just have to start labeling anything with cleavage as "sexual themes" to be safe

[agent-cupcake]

Garreg Mach Café 

Episode One: Dead Eye (Dimitri x Reader)

Yes this is a coffee shop AU and yes I intend to do a few of these because I am basic and this is fun to work on while violently procrastinating and yes I’m a little sorry. Just a little.

//

From the moment you keyed your employee code into the machine and clocked in until your shoes met the cracked pavement covering the parking lot out back, the hours you spent selling coffee and faking smiles were slotted into a strange fugue state in your mind. Existence in only the most technical sense.

Morning shifts were the worst for that sense of customer service depersonalization. After the initial rush, which you usually got through with the crutch of obscene amounts of caffeine and focus, weekdays always fell away into an exhausting kind of lull. You might as well have been living in a private world where only you, the radio with a station you weren’t allowed to change, and a minifridge of overpriced mineral waters that needed restocking existed. Which was pretty fine, all things considered. The downtime was nice.

Until you were disturbed by the swooshing sound of the opening door, a rush of cold outside air, and the distinctively familiar jingle of bells. At this point, you were pretty sure that perky tinkling sound activated some sort of twisted fight or flight mechanism deep in your gut. Despite that, you stood up straight from organizing the display and put on your best service smile, sidling up to the register. Just in time to have the air knocked right out of your lungs.

Well, not literally. You were pretty sure that cliché was a line used in books to convey the inherent frailty of the female condition. There was no such romanticism to your reaction. It would have been more accurate to say that your caffeine-hyped brain shorted out when you got a good look at the customer who had just come in because you were simple and weak and that amount of handsome on your abysmal amount of sleep made you forgot how to breathe for a moment or twenty.  

The most obvious and immediately striking aspect of the man was the eyepatch. Not some basic pastel goth kind of white bandage attached with ribbons, but a properly utilitarian black piece that cut harsh lines of black across his pretty blond hair. Had you ever seen somebody in real life wearing one? Your spastic thoughts lingered on that for a second before deciding it didn’t really matter. It was barely even a factor in your undoubtedly impolite staring. You dealt with exhausted people from every demographic while selling, making, and serving coffee. Snappy, loopy, mean, giggly, you knew sleep deprivation in nearly every form and function. Never did you realize in full that it also came in its premium form: devastatingly handsome.

He was gorgeous. Like, drop-dead level gorgeous. So, yeah, maybe it wasn’t too corny for you to say that this tall blond with a sharp jaw, nice cheekbones, and broad shoulders covered in a dark blazer/blue sweater combo of expensive if understated business casual took your breath away. You were, after all, occasionally subject to the frailty of the female condition.

Be professional! Your sane mind —or at least the part that wasn’t dominated by the giddy mix of shy nerves and creepy admiration— urged.

Right. Professional.

“Good morning!” you greeted him with belated cheerfulness, managing to pull your jaw up from the floor before he stopped in front of the counter. “Are you ready to order, or do you need a moment?” He didn’t respond at first, which almost made your smile falter. His eye, ringed in the telltale shadow of a sleepless night, was blue. Really, ultra blue. You forced yourself to keep up the act, to stick to the script. “If this is your first time here, I could walk you through the menu.”

The man cleared his throat, shaking his head a little as he glanced —awkwardly, like he wasn’t actually looking but he needed a reason to avert his gaze— up to the menu. He’d gathered about half of his longish hair into a tail in the back, but the shorter strands framing his face fluttered with the movement. Did you have a thing for guys with long hair? You couldn’t remember, but you were pretty sure you did now. “No… Thank you,” he replied somewhat apologetically. His voice was low, holding this kind of rough, husky tone. In other words, it was nearly enough to send you right back out of your customer service mode and into a swooning catastrophe. “Could you make a dead eye?”

The request was made, accepted, and then it registered. And, really, you liked to think you were a good person. You really, really did.

“A dead… eye…” you repeated slowly, internally screaming at yourself to not stare at the glaring black eyepatch covering his right eye or crack a smile at the horrible joke. Good Lord. You didn’t like to think that you were a bad person, or a mean person. You were a professional, you’d dealt with a lot while keeping a straight face. So you cleared your throat. “A black coffee with a triple espresso shot, right. Is that to go?”

“Yes,” he agreed with a sharp nod, ready with cash and very obviously not realizing the dark humor of what he’d ordered or the reason you were trying very, very hard not to make this all very, horribly awkward. No, he looked exhausted. And attractive. You were a very bad person. So you told him the total and broke the twenty and quickly turned to make the drink because a good cup of coffee was just about the only way you could apologize for your wicked, terrible thoughts.  

Since there were no other customers queuing up, he was fine to wait at the counter, watching you make the drink. You pretended like you couldn’t feel his intense gaze, bobbing your head to the piped-in indie music playing in the background. The song was awful, truly, you really didn’t think there was anything you wanted to hear less than some young nobody with a guitar butchering the English language in an ode to their unrequited love. At the very least, not at ten-thirty in the morning on a Tuesday. At least you didn’t mess up, so there was something to be said for your so-called professionalism.

“Here you go,” you said as you handed him the to-go cup with as wide of a smile as you could muster all the while working very, very hard not to think that it was a dead eye for a dead eye. You were going to hell.

Ignorant to your thoughts, he met your gaze intently —his iris wasn’t any sort of bright, intimidating electric blue, but something softer like cornflower or powder or the dreamy gentle pale afternoon sky—  and accepted the cup with a black gloved hand. “You have my most sincere thanks.”

You heard yourself laugh a little in response, but it was a bright and overly jittery sound, not only because you were trying desperately to be polite but because you couldn’t help but feel a bubble of strangely excitable disbelief that he would be so serious about something that was so mundane. Not to mention the fact that he was so handsome or that his voice was as candid as his words implied and gruff in a way you really liked. At the very least, it drove out all intrusively poor taste jokes.

“Oh, it was nothing,” you said, the words coming from your lips without so much as a thought that it was definitely not apart of the preapproved corporate script. “Wait ‘till you see what I can do with the mixed drinks.”

He considered you for what felt like ages before finally nodding. “I will look forward to it.” Despite the lack of irony, there wasn’t even a hint of a smile playing on his lips to match your own. Just more of that discomforting, intense sincerity that you couldn’t tell if you liked or not. And that was basically the end of that because you had no idea what to say other than to wish him a good day. He left, your handsome strange customer, the bells jingling merrily behind him.

After the door closed to the temperamental winter air, you melted, bracing your arms on the counter as you felt jittery nerves work through you. It took a moment to collect yourself, but when you did, you realized that he’d left a great tip, too. Fantastic tip, actually. Which, ultimately, was what got you. There was something uniquely sexy about rich guys who were kind to the underpaid and overworked wait staff. 

That comforting customer service fugue state didn’t return after that. You were too caught up wondering about his name, or why he was so tired that he’d need such a potent drink, or if you were to take his words to mean that he was coming back. You probably shouldn’t have hoped for that as much as you did, but you could blame it on the inherent frailty of the female condition.

[nautilusopus]

sorry this is a lot but I enjoy your opinions. G, P, U, W, X, Z

G - Have you ever had an OTP? If so, do you remember your first one? Who was in it?

Nah. I’m aggressively boring and uninvested in general in most romances so I usually just go with whatever’s canon and call it a day.

The closest thing I got to ever shipping in the past was being mildly surprised that people saw Link and Zelda as an item in Twilight Princess because they don’t really talk much in that game (they have maybe two conversations? Three if we count any presumed dialogue they might’ve had during the last boss battle when they’re on a horse together). I wouldn’t say I’m actually invested in it one way or another though. Link didn’t really have much of a personality until Wind Waker came along. 

P - Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

FFXV AU where Noctis asks literally any questions at all about anything and interacts with the plot as an active participant in it instead of a copypasted emotional beat from FFX and thus doesn’t die at the end due to lazy writer caveat. (spoilers i guess) 

I am so so so so tempted to write this and the urge has been growing stronger over the last few weeks. I imagine fans of XV wouldn’t be too thrilled I’m writing fanfic specifically because I hate everything about XV, but y’all keep circulating posts about how writing fanfic to fix canon is totally valid!!! so I fully expect everyone to walk the walk after talking the talk. 

On another note, AU where Cloud never actually makes it to Midgar after Zack gets filled with lead, thus never meeting Tifa at and least screwing his head on semi-straight, and just wanders around in the wilderness as a weird amnesiac murderhobo in a perpetual fugue state. Hijinks ensue I guess.

Shit, I should write that. 

And now I have 48 fics queued. Look at what you’ve done. Are you proud of yourself?

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

alright let’s get the obvious one out of the way

Cloud because I used to fucking despise him and over time he really grew on me after I was exposed to his genuinely moving character arc and narrative that actively trampled every expectation I had about what it would be. Dumb asshole that unabashedly loves his friends, which is something that you rarely if ever see in other protagonists of his mould which is why it infurates me as much as it does when people (Square or the fanbase, it’s annoying either way) try to downplay it. That was one of the things that made him unique and compelling in the first place and you’re actively discarding it? Fuck you. 

It’s genuinely refreshing to see someone try as hard as they can and fail catastrophically in every possible respect, and then that’s just the result and he has to come terms with that pain as something shaping who he was instead of just learning a lesson and then getting over it. There are a lot of matter-of-fact moments like that with regards to loss and pain in VII but Cloud’s arc actually took one of said moments and made it extremely cathartic. 

I have a lot of fukken feelings about Cloud, man. That character analysis essay is officially four years old and the ETA on it is “whenever I guess”.

Azula from ATLA. I mean, I adore basically everyone in that series so I don’t even know which one I’d call my favourite, but I do think I ought to highlight Azula since a lot of who she is kinda gets overlooked. She’s like a family-friendly Eva character. 

It’s genuinely fascinating to watch her break down, and on a second rewatch you can sort of tell which beats fell into place where. Ironically, she considers Zuko the “favoured child”, and part of the reasons she utterly despises/loves/despises him as much as she does is because she tries to earn his approval in her own weird, sociopathic way. Then, when he inevitably bails, he not only rejects her, he goes and shacks up with even more people that consciously chose to love him, and for all her talent, after all her hard work, all she has is Ozai, who’s probably never loved anything in his life. The unfairness of it all. 

The breakdown she has at the end isn’t even anything new, really. It’s just the first time other people get to see it. 

Speaking of Eva, Shinji. DISCLAIMER: YES SHINJI MASTURBATED TO COMPLETION OVER ASUKA’S COMATOSE BODY IN A BLATANT DISPLAY OF NOT ONLY HIS GENERAL DISLIKE AND FEAR OF WOMEN BUT IN AN EXPRESSION OF HIS REFUSAL TO PROJECT AFFECTION ONTO PEOPLE BECAUSE PEOPLE CAN REJECT HIM, PREFERRING TO SEE ASUKA AS A PERSON-SHAPED OBJECT INSTEAD. THERE I HAVE ACKNOWLEDGED THE PROBLEMATIQUE ™ BIT NOW. CAN I LIKE THIS CHARACTER YET?

Shinji and Cloud have a lot of the same character arc, as I’ve mentioned probably more than a few times because I repeat myself a lot. Where Cloud is a more optimistic take on defining oneself on one’s own terms and as a result accepting that they can be someone worthy of love, Shinji’s side of that concept is waaaaaaaaaaay more cynical, in that Shinji kind of… doesn’t learn to do that in the end. Refuses to, in fact, to the point where it gets everyone killed. Also Kaworu is Zack if Zack actually had character development and if C//la/ck was actually canon. Where Cloud overcomes his fear of rejection by learning he is deserving of existence on his own merits, otherwise why would he have people that care about him in the first place, Shinji is crippled by it and spends most of the series screaming at anything that remotely resembles responsibility. For a guy that repeatedly tells himself “I mustn’t run away” his reaction to everything is almost exclusively to run away. 

Now, I’m not necessarily implying that if things had gone worse, Cloud might have masturbated to completion over Tifa’s comatose body, but like… I’m just saying.

(Though Aeris and Tifa were admittedly a lot more stable than poor Asuka or Rei ever were, as low of a bar as that may be.)

In case it wasn’t obvious, I clearly have a Type. And that type is a maladjusted child soldier screaming VALIDATE MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE from the top of the lightpole they climbed up to avoid their feelings, and they all deserve a good hug and a firm shove down a flight of stairs or two, in either order. 

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Love triangles. If I wanted to see a bunch of assholes do a bunch of petty bickering fueled by hormones and poor communication and pitting two people against one another for extremely asinine reasons, I’d lurk outside a high school. 

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Apart from the aforementioned Type ™ I have, people getting overwhelmed by gestures of basic human decency and the implications of that. 

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

God they did poor Luna so dirty. You could have replaced her with another fucking crystal or something and it would affect the plot about as much. Man, didn’t the selling point for FF used to be its rich, inventive storytelling? 

Come the fuck on, Square, you had female characters figured out in fucking 1992. This isn’t hard.