lol as far as oddly specific things to be into go, that one’s kinda cool tbh.
I am probably a terrible person to ask tho, bc I do love talking about AUs and stuff but I know virtually nothing about cars. So I can’t really get specific at all.
I think Guts would drive a pickup truck? yk, tough and useful but not in an overcompensating way.
Griffith, idk. What’s like, a fairly expensive and elegant looking car that isn’t just for show? like one of those cool cars you see in car chase sequences in movies.
I figure they’d both be great drivers because my instinct is just to transfer their main canon skill (swordfighting) to driving and they’re both the best of the best there. Tho even if we’re not doing that I think they’d both be good drivers, because Griffith makes sure he’s good at everything he does, and I could see Guts driving, like going for random cruises, to turn his brain off and just chill. They’d both be great to travel with. No annoying fast acceleration, road rage, impatience, sharp turns, etc, with either of them. Though I could see Guts rolling his eyes at other drivers and calling them assholes under his breath, it wouldn’t alter his driving.
Anyone who knows more about cars and driving than me wanna jump in?
Sometimes I wonder, if Guts did decide to stay with Griffith post torture, would they have discovered some way to cure him. Elfs and witches exist, I know Guts only met them because of his journey as the black swordsman but who knows? And I doubt that Guts would be the only one there taking care of him since someone has to go out and make some money to support them(Guts in my mind would still be doing mercenary work) so who knows maybe on his way back home from the
Battlefield he meets Puck at that tavern
bar from the Blackswordman arc. I’m not sure if Pucks magic would be
enough, I’m not even sure if Schierke’s would be enough if they were to
meet her in this version. What do you think?
tbh I think for the purposes of fic or whatever you could justify it either way. also imo it would make perfect sense for them to run into Puck like immediately because remember they were in the same area right around the time of the Eclipse – Puck was with the troupe Rickert ran into, probably Judeau’s old troupe.
I would say that Puck wouldn’t be able to heal him though. He doesn’t fix Guts’ scars when he heals him, and idk just going off what feels like logic lol I’d assume you’d need like, a combination of surgery and magic to knit Griffith’s wrist and ankle tendons back together. Like, to get kind of graphic for a sec, when you sever tendons they snap back like elastics afaik, so I feel like you’d need to stretch and hold them together while healing him. Maybe extra strength magic could grow him a new tongue, but probably not Puck or Schierke.
I do think that Puck could probably help the giant patches of missing skin scar over, mostly because if you’re not ignoring that part of his injuries then I would demand that that issue be fixed ASAP in a fic lmao.
But like I think it would also make logical sense that say, if they ran into a witch who specialized in healing, she could probably manage to heal him. Or someone in Elfhelm could do it.
But then if you want it to be impossible you could just say that magic can’t fix wounds that have already healed and scarred over, or regenerate flesh beyond what the body is already equipped to do, (eg it can make scarring happen faster/better, but not actually regrow missing body parts) making his severed tongue and tendons permanent.
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
oh!! absolutely, you’re right on all of this, i didn’t want to get too wordy on a reply to my own post then spiral into an incomprehensible analysis before dinner, but i know both of my statements were flawed. i got too thinky and offered no explanation to back up because i was in a rush 😭
i didn’t want to discredit the amount of strength it took to hold himself together more than anything else. i don’t know how he made it as far as he did honestly, knowing how thin that veneer was that kept him from shattering. i imagine he was mythologizing himself just to survive. the ~concept~ of griffith was his alone to bear. he’s ABSOLUTELY fragile. and i wouldn’t call it strength per se (in opposition to this fragility idea) but perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of it.
maybe i was thinking in a … “could i possibly deal with this?” kind of mindset. i couldn’t, for sure. i’d have to be an extraordinary actor, at worst (as you mentioned, fake it till you are it, basically). even with his mountain of issues and posturing he somehow managed to pull through (until it was too much, obviously) and it’s very admirable (to me, a very fragile person, lol), and very, very sad. i feel like the guilt alone would’ve killed me. but i know he’s a master of compartmentalization and appearing strong to anyone looking up to him (maybe aside from guts, who i think he was fairly comfortable being honest with, maybe because guts treated him like a real person and not an idea/ideal, among other things.)
i’m sure you’ll agree with some of this! and i absolutely do subscribe to and understand these things you’ve pointed out, i’m just … very clumsy at cobbling together my thoughts together coherently or in order sometimes 🤧 i very much appreciate your deep analyses 💖 i could think and talk about this stuff all day, but i digress, because somehow it’s 4am???
Oh yeah I absolutely agree with all of this! and like yeah I didn’t think one off the cuff sentence encompassed all your thoughts, it’s why i was like idek if I disagree with you bc the word “fragile” is so nebulous, but yk genuinely if someone says something about Griffith to me I’m immediately like LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I THINK lol. And ty for your response, this is all so good!
Like everything you’re saying is something I really, really love about Griffith. it’s a contrast that highlights both sides – the severity of how he cracks in those vulnerable moments, like the self-harm, up to burning his life down around himself when Guts left, really shows how fucking impressive it is that he goes from back-alley peasant to nearly royalty while containing all of that in him. And his sheer self-control and the perfection of the image he portrays shows how intense the dark negative feelings are when they do break through.
Like eg Casca’s flashback makes the scene where he tells Gennon he gives zero fucks about him before killing him that much more powerful, because we know some of what he’s holding back.
Like I wouldn’t really say he’s admirable because his way of dealing with his issues by completely ignoring them is not great and causes many problems to put it mildly lol, but it’s impressive and pretty awesome, and like I would also crumble immediately in Griffith’s shoes lol. So I can see why Casca watches him bury his breakdown behind a smile and calls it strength and decides she wants to be his sword.
also
perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to
focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m
sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of
it.
yesss i love this. I never really thought of it like this but yeah the idea that he’s focusing on being this ideal image of himself not just because he has to to achieve his goal, but because it’s practically a distraction from looking at the darker, guilt-ridden, fucked up real him buried underneath.
and that makes the “do you think I’m cruel” conversation that much more heartbreaking, because it was Griffith opening himself up to starting to address some of it, maybe able to with Guts as emotional support, but instead he gets shut down.
this is so sweet… thinking bout a disabled post torture griffith and guts having a potential healthy romantic and even sexual relationship when its narratively framed as Bad is hmmm good
another point for griffiths behelit shouldve cascas all along au tbh
lol like i know there’s a million and one ways guts and post-torture griffith living a life together could go wrong but I’m an optimist and I think they could make it work
plus yk a lot of the narrative tension in the lead up to the Eclipse comes from teasing the audience with hope spots, which become meaningless if Guts and Griffith are doomed no matter what. I say they could’ve been happy together.
also lol idgaf what Miura probably intended, griffguts is extraordinarily readable as a story about how two dudes failing to act on their obvious sexual attraction was what ruined everything and it’s more fun that way.
so yeah if griffguts got together the behelit would have to be Casca’s. It’s perfect.
Your writing is so good! I love you brought up Guts tenderness and helping attitude with holding Shizu’s hand. I wonder how much different Gut’s life would be if she lived? He probably would be a Merc still but would he have the same characteristics that attracted Griffith to him?
thank you so much ❤ and yeah I find that moment so touching ngl, it’s such an interesting character establishing moment for Guts, after the Black Swordsman arc especially.
Good question tbh. We know at least some of Gambino’s abusiveness is rooted in blaming Guts for Shizu’s death (he says it’s why he sold him to Donovan), and it also contributed to the rest of the band considering him cursed. Plus yk just having a mother around, assuming Shizu would’ve been an alright mom, and I’m fine with defaulting to assuming parents aren’t going to suck, would probably be a good influence on Guts. So Guts’ issues with feeling like an ousider would be way lessened, probably.
He’d live a much happier life if Shizu never died imo. More love in his life, Gambino as a distant but maybe not actively horrible father figure. I imagine Guts would’ve started learning the sword at a more reasonable age under these circumstances, being mostly raised by Shizu until he’s actually old enough to fight. No oversized sword in this AU.
Also I think his rape trauma is largely responsible for his run directly into danger by himself and then claw his way back out style of fighting. I think it’s how he deals with a deep seated fear that started there (compounded w/ Gambino trying to kill him later too) and that hits him again every time he faces an opponent and makes him want to lash out to a somewhat irrational extent (tho he wouldn’t be conscious of it when it comes to typical human soldiers imo. monsters bring it out more). Hence things from pre-emptively charging the ram knights as a one-man army to insisting on taking wyald one on one.
So yeah without that trauma I think he would be much chiller on the battlefield. He wouldn’t be as strong as he is, or as driven, or as singular, and he might not’ve caught Griffith’s eye at all. Though I like to think there still would’ve been that spark between them. But they would lose that two lonely dudes finding their loneliness eased around each other vibe. Also Guts would probably not be as desperate for attention, though he might still be a little, since lbr Gambino wouldn’t be a doting parent under any circumstances.
I mean okay I guess I gotta admit that 99% of Guts’ character stems from his childhood and Gambino’s treatment of him, so if that changed, anything and everything could be different, and his relationship with Griffith especially is informed by his shitty childhood imo.
So even if Gambino and Shizu both died b4 he was 15 and he ended up with the Hawks anyway, I feel like his relationship with Griffith just wouldn’t have that intensity. He wouldn’t feel driven to be his equal and have him look at him, Griffith saying he wants him wouldn’t affect him much, Griffith saving him from Zodd wouldn’t have the same impact, same w/ Guts finding a new family with the Hawks, etc etc.
(Maybe this would be good actually lol. I could see this version of Guts telling Griffith what he needed to hear in Tombstone of Flame, eg. And he wouldn’t leave the Hawks even if he did overhear the Promrose speech. He’d probably be more in a position to recognize that Griffith isn’t so much admirable as fucked up. And he’d be more likely to actually apply Casca’s story about him to what he thinks he knows about Griffith and reach a greater understanding of him, when not blinded by a desperate need to be loved.)
mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least
oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.
Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:
I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.
But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.
imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol
And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.
Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.
Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.
(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)
this is a real mood, and I’m ngl one of the bigger reasons I want Casca to use the behelit is because I feel like it’s the best way of totally destroying any possibility of them eventually getting together, while giving Casca an actually interesting role in the story.
I mean ofc my major fear is that whatever goes wrong (and something will, of that I have no doubt) won’t be enough to completely kill the ship and I’ll be stuck dreading it for the rest of Berserk.
And my other major fear is that g*tsca will be dead in the water as a potential future thing but Guts will end up 100% motivated by whatever happens to her/whatever she does/her trauma/etc, with his complicated feelings towards Griffith dropped. But I don’t think that’sall that likely.
But! I think there’s plenty of reason to maintain hope lol. Like in the context of Berserk a happy ending is probably not gonna be a return of the jedi style elfhelm party where guts and casca make out. A happy ending could be Guts dying with his humanity intact lol. It could be Guts’ whole life being a garbage fire, separated from Casca and the rest of his friends, but having a moment of emotional connection with Griffith and choosing not to kill him, thus saving his soul from hell or whatever. Or the next gen children being able to grow up in a slightly better world regardless of what happens to the adults.
Like I’m pretty sure any ending that isn’t “everyone dies and Guts goes to hell” counts as not grim.
Plus that’s from an interview back when he was still in the middle of the conviction arc
–Is it even possible that we’ll see a happy ending?
Miura: I’d say it’s possible. I used to have the
final moves planned out, but lately I’ve been thinking I’d rather figure
them out when I come to it, so now it’s hard to say what could happen.
Being the sort of person I am, though, I actually don’t think I could
let such a long grim story end with a grim ending — like, say, having
him suddenly die. I don’t really like that kind of entertainment. I’ll
leave it to my subconscious.
and it sounds pretty up in the air anyway. I feel like whatever we’ll get will lean more towards bittersweet than purely happy, especially since his example of a grim ending is “suddenly guts dies” lol. There’s plenty of room there, and Berserk hasn’t been grim for ages anyway.
Plus I think Guts and Farnese getting together at least is pretty unlikely after being overtly compared to Casca and her feelings for Griffith several times, and Guts has never expressed interest in her so it would come out of left field imo (not that that stops het ships, but yk, gives me hope).
Aaaaand lastly the vibe I get from Miura when it comes to romance is that he’s not interested in it and just gives all his female characters one-sided crushes because he doesn’t know what else to do with them lmao, so while I could definitely see a bunch of boring side pairings getting together at the last minute/children making significant eyes at each other so you know they’ll get married when they grow up, I doubt we’re gonna get anything like Guts and Casca resuming their relationship for the last quarter or so of the manga. If we do get more g*tsca content I feel like it’ll come in the form of a sad kiss before one of them dies or something.
I have this fear that Farnese is going to die in part to motivate Serpico so I’d prefer this to that ngl, tho I want both to live.
And it’s possible I guess, Serpico’s had less development than Farnese overall so he might be more expendable, and it would be kind of ironic if after Serpico being p much entirely motivated by wanting to protect Farnese, he was the one who got killed.
I wouldn’t really bet on it though, mostly bc at this point in Farnese’s narrative, I feel like it wouldn’t further her story much – she’s no longer as attached to Serpico as she had been, or dependent on him in any way, so all it would really do is make her angry or sad.
Tho actually now that I think about it what if things go wrong with Casca’s return and she ends up killing Serpico? (Uses behelit, sacrifices Farnese, apostles kill their sacrifices themselves from the looks of it so monster!Casca tries but Serpico leaps in to save Farny and dies instead, then Skull Knight bursts in like the kool aid man, does his thing w/ sealing the Godhand away, and everyone else manages to escape and survive. w/e) Like i’m js farnesca/griffguts parallels would be super fun.
Or yk it would still be kind of fitting if he died in some other circumstance by sacrificing himself for Farnese, but I think that would be pretty boring unless Casca killed him.
omg Guts would just be so tender and gentle with him.
I have this image of Guts sleeping beside Griffith on like the first night and holding him in his sleep, and he’s careful with him even while unconscious because he used to fall asleep cradling his sword sometimes.
Also gentle caretaker Guts is so good in contrast to >:| sword swinging Guts, and it’s like canon. Guts wants to be there for people, he wants to support people, the very first thing we ever see Guts do (chronologically) is hold Shizu’s hand while she dies. Guts cutting himself off from people who need his support (Casca, and I’d argue Griffith during Guts’ year long dream journey too) goes against his own instincts and is associated with his growing inner darkness, it’s a betrayal of himself/his own values.
So yk, I think Guts would kind of be in his element in a way taking care of Griffith. He’d be good at it overall – not treating Griffith all that differently, but taking his physical needs and disabilities into account, taking things like dressing him, helping him wash, helping him eat, etc in stride to minimize Griffith potentially feeling humiliated (tho tbh after a year of torture I don’t really think Griffith would be all that self-conscious).
Like, imo Guts kind of fucks up when he awkwardly pretends that Griffith could still recover as he’s dressing him in his armour, but before that, when he’s reminiscing about Zodd and asking Griffith to take the mask off since it’s just the two of them, etc, that’s the typical attitude Guts would adopt with Griffith once they both fully accept Griffith’s limits. Matter-of-fact and companionable, both verbally and physically.
Also I think Guts would touch Griffith a lot, like casual pats on the shoulder, steadying hands, helping him stand even when not super necessary, etc, just based on what we see in canon. I could see an argument that Guts might second guess himself, thinking maybe he shouldn’t touch Griffith except when necessary because after a year of torture he’s probably traumatized as shit and Guts remembers not wanting to be touched himself, but in canon Guts’ first instinct around him keeps being to touch him, so yeah.
Plus we see Griffith feeling dissociated from his body and Guts could be a grounding influence that way, helping Griffith reassociate his body with something positive. And I don’t mean sexually, though hey eventually maybe, but just yk, touch being proof of Guts’ physical presence. And I think Griffith would reach out a lot too, physically, he would crave the physical closeness. Like in contrast to Guts taking care of Gambino and getting nothing but neglect and abuse back, Guts would be Griffith’s central focus, I mean Griffith stayed sane during torture by obsessing over him lol, and Guts would love the attention. He’d feel watched whenever he walked into the room, Griffith would gravitate towards him, lean into him, etc, and he’d like it.
This would be after a while together, not like immediately, since in the day’s worth of post-torture Griffith we saw he ran pretty hot and cold. But I feel like eventually things would even out.
And to digress for a sec, I think they’d manage communication just fine too after a while, with body language, lip reading, and Guts asking leading questions. Plus while I think Griffith might be more self-conscious about this and might avoid trying to talk with a severe impediment, with some practice you can be fairly intelligible without a tongue afaik (mb depending on the language, but ik in English you can be understood). So yk it’s not like physical touch would replace actual communication or anything, it wouldn’t have to get weird and objectifying w/ only one-sided conversations etc like we saw in Griffith’s nightmare.
Oh also incidentally I’m imagining Griffith w/ wounds for a while after the rescue that
eventually heal, because uh the missing patches of skin thing is stupid
as fuck and Griffith would be dead of infection long before Guts ever
showed up. So yk Guts can touch Griffith without worrying that he’s
directly prodding exposed muscle (not that that stopped him in canon for
some reason, seriously Miura what the hell).
Anyway ty for asking this was fun to ramble about, and if you want lmk your thoughts too, if you have anything to add or a different opinion or w/e!
hmmm as far as terminology goes I’d assume they’d just default to “lover” if they ever like, had to label their relationship. Or when it comes to internal thoughts, I could see both Guts and Griffith just thinking of the other as “mine” lol. “He’s my… mine.”
But like, when it comes to relationship discussions and stuff, lol i have such a hard time imagining them actually talking about it. I feel like it would follow the trajectory of the canon discussions of their relationship, in which Guts asks and Griffith prevaricates. like Guts: So what are we now? Griffith: the same as always but now we have sex :))) Guts: ten minutes ago you were crying and saying you loved me Griffith: :)))))))))))))
Assuming they got together in a relatively low-key way.
If it was like, after some hugely revelatory event in which eg Griffith threw away his dream for Guts, or Guts nearly died, or something, then I think they could have a v emotionally charged discussion w/ confessions of love, Griffith making Guts promise he’ll never leave, “you’re the only one” “it’s always just been you,” all those fun + v griffguts cliches.
Or even if they got together in an emotionally vulnerable moment, like say Tombstone of Flame but Guts isn’t planning to leave so he actually says the right thing and also kisses him. I could see love confessions then too. Things like “I need you.”
Like if their relationship just evolved naturally I feel like Griffith would avoid examining it as much as possible, but if it happened in a charged, emotionally intense moment then Griffith might be forced to confront his feelings. Like I still think that Griffith genuinely believed what he said when he told Charlotte he had no friends lol, so I feel like the contradiction between seeing none of the Hawks as equals while being wildly in love with Guts is something he’d continue to avoid as long as possible.
He might never even have to confront it if this was a scenario where he did attain his dream and become king etc while in a down low relationship with Guts. He’d just naturally shift to thinking of Guts as the most important thing/an equal despite social status, while letting go of his beliefs about what constitutes equality lol. Since he’s obtained his dream, his obsession is no longer necessary and he automatically drops a lot of the associated bullshit, kinda thing.
I don’t ever really see them sitting down and having a talk about relationship expectations or that kind of thing though lol, I figure they’d deal with stuff as it comes, and probably badly. Like, eg, I think Guts would default to monogamy without them ever having to talk about it, like he wouldn’t be interested in anyone else while fucking Griffith anyway, but if Griffith ever thought he was then… well imo Griffith wouldn’t say anything outright but he’d get sulky and weird and passive aggressive until Guts either forced the issue and made Griffith admit what his problem was or figured it out himself, and then they’d have the talk about exclusivity. After Guts teased him about being jealous.
Idk I always think of Guts as the more emotionally mature one who would actually be able to have adult discussions while Griffith is avoidant, and Guts is mostly fine w/ that bc he’s a go with the flow kinda guy so they generally would leave things unsaid but when it’s immediately important Guts would be able to force the conversation.
Tho that said this is only the case when it’s something bothering Griffith, or something that’s objectively an issue that needs to be resolved, like, idk, Guts asking where he fits in when Griffith gets engaged to Charlotte or w/e. But if Guts was personally bothered by something, feeling neglected, jealous, insecure, whatever, he’d never say anything, at least not to Griffith. Maybe being friends with Casca would come in handy here lol.
I feel like this was v meandering and only kind of actually addressed what you asked lol. But w/e close enough. What do you think?
oh no lol I think this got cut off. i have another message sent right after but it’s only the letter “S” so I think something went wrong/tumblr glitched and it would be great if you could resend your second question, because I’d love to answer it!
But as for the first part (and idk maybe I’ll end up accidentally answering the rest too) I think it would almost certainly change things.
And imo it wouldn’t be so much because of what Griffith would say than because of what Guts would say knowing Griffith can actually have a conversation.
Like, even despite having the relevation that he loves Guts so much his dream is dull in comparison, I find it so hard to picture Griffith actually saying anything like that outloud to Guts lol. He might, and I think that like, if someone was writing a fic eg, it’s possible to make it feel in character, so yk maybe having a tongue would fix everything because Griffith would finally be at the point where he knows what he feels and has nothing to lose by telling Guts.
But I think it’s more likely that what would actually change things is Guts starting the conversation. In canon he had that slow creeping realization that he fucked everything up, Griffith isn’t a god, Griffith needed Guts, and by leaving Guts threw away what he actually wanted. With Griffith actually available for comment, I could see Guts bringing this up.
Not like, “hey so are you in love with me or what?” lol, but more like just asking Griffith why, the way he always does when Griffith demonstrates feelings for him. He can’t come at it from an assumption that Griffith does love him, because Guts defaults to assuming he doesn’t, hence why it took him 3 days to finally accept Casca directly telling him he broke Griffith. He wouldn’t say, “is it my fault you ended up in a dungeon?”
But he might say, how did it all go so wrong? Some of the Hawks think it’s bc I left. I told them that was ridic but… then he sees the telling look on griffith’s face or something. THEN maybe the truth would smack Guts across the face and he’d tell Griffith why he left.
Conversely I could see Guts avoiding this conversation and Griffith absolutely not talking about his feelings unprompted until the Eclipse happens anyway lol. Or yk if they still got to the point where Griffith snapped and ended up in a shallow pond with a broken arm trying to kill himself, he would have screamed “stay away!” to Guts outloud, and everything would’ve come flooding out then. Considering his thoughts at that point (”I’ll never – never again with you”) I could see him just finally confessing everything he feels if he was able to, because he’s pretty far past self-restraint in that scene.
Idk if there’s anything Guts could say to avert the Eclipse tho, because at that point I think Griffith’s despair comes not so much from Guts maybe leaving again as the fact that because of how he feels Guts is fully capable of destroying him with a word. Buuut on the other hand Guts like falling to his knees in front of him and telling him he’s sorry and having his own mini guilt breakdown might assuage Griffith enough to pull him back from the brink of despair, and then they can start dealing with their shit.
I mean to be fair there’s a narrative reason Griffith had to lose his tongue, and it’s because they could theoretically talk everything out. So if Griffith could talk I think the Eclipse would be averted, though it might be a last minute thing lol bc they’re both still dumb and avoidant.
you're the only one 