(no subject)

[kradeelav]

mirrored from my gunter tumblr since i am still having a normal time about that game.

 

okay, so on my first read-through, one line when he finally snaps / goes traitor felt really odd; specifically the part in bold:

Possessed!Gunter: Excellent reasoning, milady. You've found me out. Though I suppose there is no further need for honorifics, Corrin. I don't have to feign respect for you any longer.

it feels a little ... technical? a weirdly detailed throw-away line that could have been mistranslated, but was still emphasized in the JP script too? why does he make the active decision to mention that, versus what's always been rote?

but it's been dawning on me that is exactly his biggest psychological wound. everything starts from there.

i've mentioned before i can't write fates without constantly thinking about the stark class differences - not in an economic 'seize the means of production' sense but the terrible sharp-cliff bleakness of who has Power, and who does not. (and it's not mutually exclusive either; i think of Leo who has a lot of power and blackmail but he is as desperately vulnerable as anyone playing in the death-games of Krakenberg's court. His EN supports with Xander kinda hints at this.)

and when i write characters/scenes, the biggest thing in my mind is always the power relationships -- between individuals, individuals and society, and how society leverages individuals and vice versa. (this post isn't about me, but I live a life where I have to be starkly aware of this in a different axis for survival; there is no choice. most of us do this, in invisible ways.)

to gunter - the biggest thing with this line is that everyone who Has Power always uses it to hurt people he cares about, either ordering him to be that weapon, or ordering others.

put simply, he's been violated a lot, by those orders.

every worst memory that he has - garon trying to force him to drink the dragon's blood, grieving at the devastation of his village/wife/children, the concubine wars of nohr that he had a front row seat to, the loss of his own soldiers after trying and failing to protect them ("war and me go way back", etc), failing to protect corrin after mind wipes, hell throw in Anankos forcibly using divine power to take his mind as the last but greatest indignity ...

no wonder that's what finally breaks him -- not him as a possessed, dead husk, but him as the living man, that always-was traitor who loved as much as he lost.