kradeelav | (no subject)

Title: your ruin, my ruin
Rating: Explicit / ~130k
Series: Fire Emblem: Fates (Revelation)
Relationships: Gunter/My Unit | Corrin

..... so I finished YRMR \o/

I'm going to copy/paste the notes "chapter" here since it's what I've done for other fics, and it feels fitting.

While I’ve been familiar with the Fire Emblem series as a whole for two decades, I only played Fates (Conquest/Revelation routes) over summer 2023 and promptly lost my marbles over Gunter. Curiously, I found afterwards he is one of those characters you either love or hate; there really is no in between.

I’ll be honest, this whole fic was a compulsion. Possession via muse, if you will, for the cheekier ones in the audience. Somewhere during my first Revelation playthrough it hit me what a raw deal Gunter got in the game and metatextuality in fandom as well. Even in the “golden” ending, it’s arguably one of his worst experiences, and the game seems to imply he offs himself post-game in all the non-marriage endings. I’ve always had a weak spot for these oddball characters cast aside and, well… I have many, many faults but ignoring my muses when it comes for a calling to sit down and write is not one of them.

This fic started being written in August 2023, and ended in February 2024. It’s been exhausting. It’s also been absolutely worth it for the character, but I don’t see myself ever writing anything more than 15k in one go ever again.

If you see any grammatical edits, ignore them; I don’t intend on revisiting this fic once when it’s been posted. Notes on individual chapters are as follows, though you don’t need to read them to get the fic.

This fic is mirrored on www.kradeelav.com

Chapter 1: Soldier’s Orders

Akira Yamaoka-san of Silent Hill OST fame is a living legend; I happily nicked many of these titles from his tracks in a long-standing habit of mine.

The interesting thing about this fic is whenever I get stuck on a scene not feeling "alive", my go-to was asking myself "what's the abuse of power here?". Cannot tell you how many times scenes were instantly fixed with that sticky-note reminder.

edit, more about the last line in a comment i added elsewhere:

absolutely! a fairly straightforward example was the near-execution of Silas with Gunter; on first blush, one would think that Gunter effectively coming within a hairsbreadth of killing a kid is a clear-cut abuse of power, but then taking a step back -it's Garon's authority that's forcing his hand and creating more than just one victim; isn't that more the abuse? Or, in another lens, isn't it a different kind of abuse of power that the weight of Nohr as a military power chain is making him relive his absolute worst memory of seeing his own child killed by soldiers? (All can be true, and there's more, to boot.)
Put simply - "abuse of power" as a question that made me the writer, start asking "is it subverted? played straight? played knowingly with in the bedroom? deconstructed?" etc
i find that a lot of kink is about taking power -what could be fairly unironic abuses of power (interrogation play as one example)- and bending it until it's poetry of your own personal form and choice, done with the highest levels of trust. i see a lot of that in Gunter/Corrin's relationship, and so that little sticky-note reminder was a neat way of blending the messiness and pain that they encounter in their lived lives, versus how they seek out catharsis, intimacy, and trust between them.
It's a fantastic question, and I'm glad you asked. :)

Chapter 2: Blades Drawn

Silas makes a lot of noise about being nearly executed by the castle guards in his in-game supports after sneaking Corrin outside the Fortress against orders. I don’t think it takes a genius to put two-and-two-together that Gunter would be directly involved, likewise also with the gaslighting afterwards (also hinted in Silas' supports), and it made for a nice moment of drama and explicitly showing that he’s not a nice guy.

Chapter 3: Mercy Kill

One interesting note is I added both the whip scene and Corrin’s fantasy in at the last minute. Sex fantasies are a reoccuring theme in this fic partially because they’re so bloody useful for pulling out feelings, fears, and wants out of characters who never would admit it otherwise.

For Corrin here, she’s struggling with a mix of repression and sheer lack of knowledge at her body/feelings. Quite a few girls her age fantasise about a specific kind of dangerous man that they can control and play with and "be threatened by" safely within her own imagination. Goes especially for her specifically as a release valve after her whole mind wipes and when a lot of situations are out of her control.

Chapter 4: Relapse

Healer Alaine was a one-off scene stealer that kept coming back for more; Gunter needed an adult foil in the first third that was as stubborn as he was, and she fit the bill, even though I regret there wasn’t a canon character that could work instead. Savvy readers will probably catch onto her being a (somewhat) open butch lesbian; there’s a marvellous book out there on lives of lesbian nuns back in the day that was essential for characterization.

Gunter’s aware, and doesn’t care; competency is one of the few traits he bothers about at all.

Chapter 5: Changes

The chess scene was the first (needful) scene where I think you can tell these two would genuinely get along on a personal level, barring sexual chemistry or trauma bonding. Their age difference is less of a roadblock then it tends to be in modern-days where decades are sharply frozen in time via pop culture, but both of them being private souls that like talking over classics would be a way to fill in empty hours easily.

Chapter 6: Death

Is the voice hallucinations, or his late wife? You decide.

Setting anything sexual in the developing relationship after Gunter fell down the Bottomless Canyon felt pretty critical to keeping the ultimately redemptive tone here. I still want to write “bad touch” Northern Fortress Gunter but this fic was not the place. That said, the wank, while crude, had to be thrown in there to show the distinct difference between Anankos deliberately tempting him sexually versus an old man’s private fantasies. Shame is a hell of a weapon, and Anankos was absolutely going to use it.

Chapter 9: Love

Readers elsewhere will know I based good amount of Corrin’s mind-wipes based off of my own extensive experience with childhood anaesthesia/being in the ICU every year back in the day. Generally speaking children are resilient and/or you’re drugged up to your eyeballs in the initial event; it’s what the body remembers in the aftermath decades later that can be tricky to deal with when all the skeletons in the closet come out. I always had a headcanon that Zola was the lead mage directing the mind-wipes, and wrote Corrin’s extreme reaction as essentially a traumatic response. Playing with her dragon form as a physical manifestation of that/the grief (it has bandages for chrissakes) made a weird in-game hanging plot-point into something that felt a little more emotionally resonant.

I’ve also spilled many words elsewhere on how the class (power) differential is a Big Deal in Fates versus some of the other games in the series; Corrin unintentionally stepping past Gunter’s red line in the bedroom scene is a nod at how easy it is for royals to not even see how that could be an issue, even without his own personal triggers that she wouldn’t be aware of.

Chapter 11: Eros

Strictly speaking, I can’t see Gunter/Corrin having anything that isn’t a kink relationship; their supports alone in Conquest heavily imply daddy play to some degree (plus the infamous “the ball was a WHAT” scene), and both of them feel far too aware of the fun games involved in playing deliberately with their power dynamics.

That said it takes me out every time in fiction when you have fantasy/mediaeval characters suddenly talking specifically modern BDSM acronym gibberish; if you ever see me bungling that, kindly take me out back and put me out of my misery.

Chapter 13: One More Soul to the Call

Still do love what it says about Jakob’s proclivities that he knows exactly what “sir” meant in that context.

I very nearly didn’t add killing Hans in this fic, but in hindsight this fic needed those scenes in this chapter as catharsis. It also allowed villain!Gunter to glimmer through quite blatantly without ruining the whole plot twist, as one of my biggest reasons for writing this was to show how he always had that darker side from day one.

Likewise, writing the Anankos-specific “dreams” in progressing stages of Gunter willingly being complicit (to some degree) was intentional as a more subtle way of showing the real temptation. There’s a line in the JP-only Pelucid Crystal art book that mentions Garon force-fed him the dragon’s blood before sending him to the Northern Fortress (read: he was possessed all along, even while raising Corrin). While it’s an interesting insight into characterization, ultimately I wrote this fic with a slightly different interpretation.

If you’ve ever had an ocular migraine, or weaning-off-of-anaesthesia dreams, that’s roughly what i’m imagining this moment of possession felt. It’s a distinctly trippy as hell sensation.

Chapter 16: So Long Sentiment

This title is also nicked from a Celldweller song that quite possibly got the most replays in the background out of writing this whole fic in conjunction with Neuman’s My Name Is Ruin.

Chapter 17: The Vallite King

Kinksters and old men are the most dramatic queens on the planet, it must be known.

Anyway, there was a chapter briefly planned in-between here and the one before where I dug into Anankos toying directly with Corrin herself vis-a-vis a Hexxus-like smoke form of Gunter, similar to what we see in the in-game confrontation. I’m truly sorry to see that scene go being the incorrigible villainfucker I am, but this fic was getting hefty as is.

While Scarlet is a fascinating character, the plot point involving her flower did no favours to her or Gunter, so that got axed in lieu of being far more focused on his resentments against the royalty, and fear of rejection. Some day I would love to do a fic exploring their dynamic.

Chapter 18: Sacrifice

Thank you particularly to a very lovely comic server which will go unnamed for giving me the word “tailcoat” at 2am one night because I was having a hell of a time finding another word that wasn’t just “skirt”. You know who you are.

The funniest thing about the chapter was I had planned the plot twist regarding Corrin’s dragon form before I even realised there was a niche FE13 support (Brady/Nah, I think) that mentioned this very trait was possible with dragons. So many of these odd little coincidences happened with this fic and so I simply took it as encouragement.

Chapter 20: Anankos

One of the few things that truly bothered me about Revelation’s ending was Gunter bouncing back from a wound at his age that should have been fatal, on-site healers be damned. Adding in a (mild) stroke, shattered knee, plus a much lengthier set of recoveries felt like a decent compromise between having a happy ending versus ignoring how bodies fall apart.

Chapter 21: To Have and Hold

That is indeed a stealth cameo of Rhys from FE9/10.

I’ve always had the long-standing conviction that possession would leave emotional scars remarkably similar to sexual assault given the type of mental violation. This also had the semi-intentional result of paralleling with Corrin’s mind wipes which is also a violation of a very similar kind. Gunter’s insistence on dignity is, hopefully, a bridge between those two and the complicated kind of healing they both need. (He’s going to need it especially after Anankos laid that one little nasty land mine about the familial connection with Corrin. I always felt like he used the “at least I don’t have the biological connection with her” excuse to hand-wave some of his seedier choices, so Anankos deliberately murking that would feel… not great.)

One of the other bits to Gunter’s characterization I had to showcase in this whole fic was the tension of his own body being a taboo between his desire for Corrin; feeling your own body fall apart in the twilight years isn’t pretty. He’s exquisitely aware of that, and wants to protect her from the stuff that’s still coming.

On the flip side though, there’s nothing like that excellent tension to make insanely erotic frisson. Porque no los dos?

Chapter 22: Epilogue

As well-developed fictional characters do in fanfiction, Gunter insisted on doing the proposal again, and I wasn’t going to deny him that.