dirtyoldmanhole - Tumblr blog

[dirtyoldmanhole]

WOAHWOAH

[dirtyoldmanhole]

My guilty pleasure is going into the Accessory Shop just to stare at Gunter’s model in 4K from all angles. Like…

And…

The side eye… I’m a slut for that killer of a side eye

And just for fun :3 …

Yeah. He looks….!! Great here (*＾＾*)

[dirtyoldmanhole]

this falls solidly in the 'krad you're kind of reaching' meta bucket, but:

i'm lowkey convinced that the "the black pillar" mention in Azura's CQ (EN) version of the song is directly referring to Gunter.

More specifically, the lyrics around this line are:

Sing with me a song of conquest and fate The black pillar cracks beneath its weight Night breaks through the day, hard as a stone Lost in thoughts all alone

the obvious connection is the level in Valla where you find him in CQ is literally. the black pillar. so much of the level is about him and the foreshadowing/connection he has with Corrin and Azura.

squint at him and honestly, it's a pretty accurate visual description of him. black knight, black pillar, etc. (it's another thing that makes him such a good villain. he's got the silhouette/character design for it although you don't realize it right up until it happens.)

Spoilers, but it was, I think(?) revealed later in Heirs of Fate DLC that the song is actually from human!Anankos' point of view towards Corrin. certinally huge chunks of it suddenly makes sense regardless of route, and considering who possessed Gunter, there's a real morbid sense of irony with that layered addition. there's a fuck load of complicated feelings that both of them share towards Corrin.

Stepping back for a more poetic interpretation, knowing his backstory - and how it weaves into Garon's/Corrin's/Anankos' - there's a genuine sense of tragedy ('cracking'); but also ultimately, that whisper of hope to the next generation.

(it's not perfect b/c i think the JP version of the song has it as 'the blackened sun' and a different level title but hey i'll take any nods where i can get them)

[dirtyoldmanhole]

my brain: so gunter/jagen feh summer duo, right. jagen in a speedo.

me: we've gone over this.

my brain: no no, think about it, they're lifeguards. for the bodyguard and caretaker angle with all the other summer units. it makes perfect sense.

me: are you seriously.....

my brain: mouth to mouth resuscitation. chest compressions. rescued out of the water by those handsome studs.

me: lordy, imagine that thirst applied to something useful.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

suck him good n hard thru his platemail

[dirtyoldmanhole]

sooooo the peerless @lululeighsworld and I got together to make a possessed!Gunter FE: Heroes unit ~ !

Leigh did all of the amazing writing (seriously, I was on the floor mallet'd by FEELINGS upon reading the forging bonds for the first time), and yours truly stitched together the art & UI. Leigh's inspired me with their unshakeable devotion to the character not to mention talented writing and so it felt like a delightful inevitability, and an honor nonetheless, to collaborate here :D

Ao3 mirror (writing & art): https://archiveofourown.org/works/53279173

log mirror (for art): https://log.kradeelav.com/archives/1935

[dirtyoldmanhole]

not gonna lie, keaton's wolfssegner GIANT GLOWING RED EYES eyes jumpscared me the first (few) times.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

me making a silly mistake in 'black flames' getting kana killed right in front of gunter and realizing the horrific angst implications of that:

o w

[dirtyoldmanhole]

from the first time I read m!Corrin+Gunter's support (after playing rev):

I had always assumed that it was more or less equal to the other support chain from C-A, but there's some worldbuilding gems in here.

(also feelings ;_; )

Corrin: What about your random wanderings around the fortress? Gunter: I could tell when I would visit you that you were not sleeping all that well. Whenever I could, I would make my way to your quarters after hours. I'd read stories to you until you fell asleep, then watch over you as you slept. It looked like I was wandering around because no one at the fort could risk the king's anger. They would have reported my visits had they seen me come directly to you.

that last line really says something about how closely observed Corrin was.

given how things relaxed eventually in the NF, I strongly suspect Gunter (and Jakob/Flora/Felicia/Lilith) rooted out the spies over time, but it would make sense in the first year or two he specifically would have to exercise caution before figuring out who was Garon's people.

Feels like it also says a lot Gunter knew the trap in advance; of everyone in the NF (not including the royals), he's the one with first-hand experience just how lethal a critical gap in that ever-present paranoia could be.

(There's a part of me that goes 'damn, even more respect to him for quietly defying Garon.' which yes, but: what worse could Garon do to him? What's he gonna do, kill his whole family again? I have a sneaky feeling that that style of quiet defiance went a long way to stoking his ice-cold anchor of revenge. In a morbid way, it wasn't all lovey dovey feelsy shit about Corrin, it was that defiance that gave him a reason to stay alive day by day.)

He's also real clever about leaning on the excuse of 'senile old man developing weird habits' - not the first time Gunter's ironically weaponized his age to fool everyone else, or the last. I think this kind of mention make Revelation's eventual reveal even stronger when he's remarkably consistent about hoodwinking everyone on so many levels (including Corrin!).

[dirtyoldmanhole]

[dirtyoldmanhole]

it warms my heart to know that with your 'gunter aging slower' headcanon that it means he'll get to watch Kana grow up into a sweet lil prince ;wwwwwww;

:')

as you probably know, your ruin, my ruin - in the end - was all about giving Gunter the happiness I thought that the vanilla Rev route denied him, so it's a little bit of an extra nudge towards earned closure. Not ignoring all laws of nature or bittersweetness, of course; but something earned and beautiful in how he could enjoy the last third of his life with a real legacy and happy family.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

If I speak I‘m in trouble

[dirtyoldmanhole]

assorted grab bag of gunter/corrin headcanons (vaguely yrmr/rev based) that i've been rotating in my mind for.... a while.

occasionally even after the events of revelation, corrin gets overstimulated over the day or has bad dreams that wake her; he still rocks her tenderly just as he did as a child, or holds her until she stops shivering. he sometimes has endearingly paternal gestures like kissing her on her forehead as well as the above; they never think anything strange about it, as it just is.

likewise to her quiet dismay after sleeping with him a few times, corrin realizes he still suffers from occasional night terrors, occasionally mumbling or thrashing enough to throw out limbs. accidentally whacks her a few times before she figures out the warning signs when he fidgets around and knows how to soothe him (gunter spooning her does wonders). gradually, these get less severe.

interestingly, he initiates (sexually) more in the night, being slightly more inhibited and usually looking for a pleasant distraction from insomnia that never goes away; she initiates more in the daytime.

while they're the opposite of demonstrative in public (being conscious of everyone's thoughts towards their relationship) - there's an undeniable frission between them at times (a subtle knowing look as an order, or a throwaway sir); they'd never pass for vanilla especially to the likes of niles.

in public, she leads. in private, he does. there's never a specific conversation where they explicitly talk about their type of dynamic, although they do get steadily more adventurous as time goes on. theirs is the happy long marriage where the sex only gets better.

gunter tries to spar with corrin once like old times, after the events of Revelation. they both realize that's a terrible mistake when she essentially has a panic flashback of them fighting (when he was possessed), and almost goes to pieces in his arms. he misses their sparring afterwards, a little, but never presses about that again to his dying day.

one of their mutual favorite quiet things to do is corrin massaging his more arthritic joints, particularly knees and ankles which sometimes get slightly swollen if he's on them for too long, and become more of an issue as he ages. gunter's embarrassed/guilty of the assistance, let alone wanting the touch, but they work it into part of their service (and teaching) based love language - eventually he's often raspily reading various reports to her (with his commentary, to corrin's delight) as she's leaning between his thighs.

yrmr-wise, he ages slightly slower than he would normally, given corrin's actions in the story (i'd say he gets ~40 more years of stable good health, versus ~15-20 at best naturally), though with the stroke he's never quite back to peak health like before, which chafes at him. they don't have true fights, but if there's points of brief contention it's usually his pride and getting stubborn about doing something he used to be able to do. (corrin learns the fastest way to sweet talk him is after they've been in bed for a bit, naturally)

[dirtyoldmanhole]

the lord works fast but sicko fanartists are pretty close too

( @lululeighsworld's gagged gunter comment activated an immediate sleeper cell inside of my brain. what can I say. )

[dirtyoldmanhole]

truly evil meme back at @lululeighsworld in light of the new xmen97 episode :))))

[dirtyoldmanhole]

gone fishin', ama !

[dirtyoldmanhole]

Sometimes I see a respected mutual in my notes and remember they follow me and I'm like. Should I apologize for what I'm doing here. But they did choose to be in my house