#this old man and his fucking mindgames and requiring great feats of thought juggling to get in his head

[lululeighsworld]

reasons why i can never decide how chapter 26 possessed!gunter would view the summoner (not as a person but as their role) is because i always get trapped in this old man's mind games

(also musing for a sec that the convenient 'heroes can't physically hurt others' rule doesn't exist. i don't like it. makes things less high-stakes)

pros of keeping the summoner around -potential to summon anankos' puppets should the need arise

cons of keeping the summoner around -the number of heroes they can summon could quickly outpace his strength (in the situation where he's trying to bring destruction to askr)

in thinking about this i always also end up circling back to how the summoner and anankos share a lot of similarities with each other (both are introduced while wearing cloaks with the hood up, both can call on people from other worlds). and i always wonder whether the voice of anankos living in possessed!gunter's head would view the summoner as a threat for this reason. i suppose we do get a taste of that now that anankos is in feh but his lvl 40* convo ends in him proposing the summoner may be a substitute for cadros, which i don't really think possessed!gunter would concern himself with, lol.

[dirtyoldmanhole]

all delicious thoughts here :3 (adding a hodgepodge of more thoughts instead of a reply b/c character limit - don't let me step on your toes though ~)

* BIG nodding at (anankos-side-of)!gunter viewing the summoner as a threat; both in the sense the summoner is an annoying unpredictable source of power that he has to plan around vs fates-verse, and also subconsciously bristling at the parallels you mentioned. ime this feels like it'd go double if the summoner has any sort of relationship with gunter as well - since there's the possibility of an emotional loss of control (of anankos) over gunter. (since fates-verse anankos probably has noticed that people slip away from his possession the closer that they're emotionally attached to others). much like cults both in and out of -verse, anankos keeping the possessed souls isolated is effective...

(gah this hurts worse when one realizes gunter in fates-verse is already so isolated by a situation mostly out of his control - unable to tell anyone about his burning hatred against garon, unable to have a confidante for so long due to emotional scars and justified paranoia .... ;__; )

* to your point the cadros line from anankos feels weirdly like a ... diversion? intentional distraction? it could briefly even be emotionally true as a slip, but there's so many ways of "lying" while very technically still telling the truth, and both anankos and gunter are experts at that, as you know.....

* i wonder what he'd think of the summoning contract (if that's a thing). even if it holds no/less power, would gunter view that as a convenient vector to pretend to be benign (thinking that the summoner (and the askr trio) thinks that he's under their control) - especially early on when possessed!gunter passes for his vanilla self?

*adding to that, wonder if possesed!gunter would stay -and hang around for so long seemingly beningnly- in askr at all because it's a way to much more easily destroy all universes rather than just fates' multiverse(s). targeting $root, so to speak. (funny, root with computers, root with yggdrasil's roots lol). (i ALSO love how you hinted this with our collab, leigh :3)

* tangent to the tangent above - this also feels like a cool way to loop in the current book's plotline since it seems like we (as players) are starting to get closer to the actual meat and potatoes magic of what runs that world. if possessed!gunter attacked everyone in like, book 2 he wouldn't have gained much. now? different story.

reasons why i can never decide how chapter 26 possessed!gunter would view the summoner (not as a person but as their role) is because i always get trapped in this old man's mind games

(also musing for a sec that the convenient 'heroes can't physically hurt others' rule doesn't exist. i don't like it. makes things less high-stakes)

pros of keeping the summoner around -potential to summon anankos' puppets should the need arise

cons of keeping the summoner around -the number of heroes they can summon could quickly outpace his strength (in the situation where he's trying to bring destruction to askr)

in thinking about this i always also end up circling back to how the summoner and anankos share a lot of similarities with each other (both are introduced while wearing cloaks with the hood up, both can call on people from other worlds). and i always wonder whether the voice of anankos living in possessed!gunter's head would view the summoner as a threat for this reason. i suppose we do get a taste of that now that anankos is in feh but his lvl 40* convo ends in him proposing the summoner may be a substitute for cadros, which i don't really think possessed!gunter would concern himself with, lol.