https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/164417005396/audio_player_iframe/bthump/tumblr_mz4313es0b1r6kavg?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fbthump%2F164417005396%2Ftumblr_mz4313es0b1r6kavg

faith-is-unavailable:

Awash in the blood of the wounded earth, we sleep… 
Oh stars, grandly recount the events of this night!
I will never forget about you.
On this road of unfulfillment, I still stand alone.
Like a wounded bird, I endure the rain with grace.

yesgabsstuff
replied to your post “yesgabsstuff
replied to your post “i feel like the fact that guts…”

@bthump One thing that really struck me about the sex scene between Guts and Casca was the way that he became triggered. She turns her back to him if I remember correctly and he at that moment sees himself as a child in her place and reacts violently. Her being a woman in that moment really only reminds him of both his pervious vulnerability and also dare I say the fear of the “feminine” he has in himself. I don’t know really what else to say about this and I want to to know what you think.

Hmm, from an in-universe perspective idk if it’s really because Casca’s a woman, if he happened to be fucking a man in that position I imagine his reaction would be the same.

When it comes to what Miura intended to convey, man, idk lol. Honestly I’m gonna bypass this bc I tried to write smthn about it but Miura + deliberate criticisms of misogyny + gender and gender roles + his own misogyny + homophobia, is such a hot mess, I can’t come up with anything useful to say. Like equating being raped with being forced into the role of a woman does seem in line with his deliberate portrayals of misogyny, but tbh I just don’t have the energy to add my own critique to that, it’s a v heavy topic that requires a lot of nuance. Suffice to say I have v mixed feelings.

But! On the subject of Guts’ flashback one thing I was thinking of after I wrote that last post about how gay Guts is that I should’ve added, is that after having sex with her she’s like, “that’s why you used to hate being touched by anyone, isn’t it?”
“It never mattered with you. When you first saved my life. For some reason… at that time… it was fine. But only with you.”

And Miura is probably trying to re-write that scene to seem kind of romantic, but let’s be real here Guts was about to have a flashback when he woke up next to a naked person before realizing she was a woman and calming down. We know the reason he was okay with Casca then, and it’s because she’s not a man. And then ever since she’s been the only woman he like… knows. At all. With this being brought up right after sex, the overall takeaway I get from this exchange between Guts and Casca is that Guts registers Casca as extra non-threatening because she’s the only woman he knows, and therefore she’s the only person he would’ve been okay having sex with at this point in time, regardless of his actual sexuality.

(I mean granted if Guts was deliberately written as canonically gay I’d be pretty unhappy about Miura having him have sex with women because of trauma, but since I’m reaching here and I don’t think it’s deliberate and the het sex scene is there whether I like it or not, I’m still gonna grasp at this straw to support my Guts is Gay thesis statement.)

yesgabsstuff
replied to your post “i feel like the fact that guts sees the band down there, including his…”

I’m having feelings about this and your essay about Griffith’s arc of being closeted. I kind of feel that you could write a parallel essay about moments like this with Guts honestly. Despite coming across generally as the one who is more willing to confront his feelings during the GA arc he feels like the less self aware of the two here. It’s interesting. The idea that he would throw himself into a sexual entanglement with someone who he does trust certainly but isn’t really in love with so
He could I don’t know
“enact” loving someone.(I’m pretty sure that was how Casca felt too. The
idea of her being kind of so soaked in compulsory heterosexuality that
she can’t really name or give herself room to think of her own desires
resonates with me a lot.) I don’t know how emotionally cavalier and
dangerous to himself and others that is while at the same time being
“easier” socially isn’t really all that different than Griffith’s
relationship with Charlotte to me.
Honestly Guts being more normatively
“masculine” seems to give their relationship this veneer of authenticity
to a lot of the fans and I can’t see any other reason for it. His
behavior certainly doesn’t support those conclusions.

I completely agree. Like het in general almost always feels paint-by-numbers boring to me but Berserk goes an extra step – it doesn’t just feel like inauthentic he was a boy she was a girl bs, it feels aggressively… idk, harmful? Negative? The comparison to Griffith and Charlotte makes a lot of sense to me, the only difference is that Griffith knows his relationship is a sham.

Like @mastermistressofdesire said, a chapter later they’re getting weird and jealous and love-quadrangle-y with Griffith and Charlotte thrown into the mix, and then a short while after that Casca’s telling him to leave and Guts is trying to reaffirm his loyalty and love for Griffith, and then during the Eclipse they’re entirely separated in body and thought until it’s time for Casca to become solely a pawn of Guts and Griffith/Femto’s intense enmity.

At their most positive they never feel like more than friends trying something out – even Guts is like, yeah you can come with me and maybe it’ll suck and you’ll throw off my groove but w/e we’ll see.

And at their most negative Guts assaults her to feel a connection to Griffith.

Also to address the actual like, compulsory heterosexuality vibe from an in-universe perspective, god like, they are so gay. Casca’s crush on Griffith feels extremely like a lesbian with a “crush” on a gay dude, ie someone safe to focus on who will never return her feelings (and no you don’t have to know the dude is gay for this to be a thing lol, citation: me and quite a bit of anecdata of gay women who’ve nursed crushes on dudes who also later came out). And excuse my messiness wrt personal identification but as someone who started out as ambivalent wrt having sex with men and is now firmly Not Into It, Casca having bad sex with Guts and going ‘yeah this is fine i guess i could do this more’ because she feels like a relationship with him validates her as a person is also #relatable.

And obviously Guts is gay but has related trauma. The first time he slept with Casca he was freaked out until he registered the fact that she was a woman, which seems like a pretty relevant prelude to their “relationship” such as it is.

you said it more eloquently tho here:

 I think the idea that they didn’t have
another way to imagine their intense feelings at that moment outside of a
romantic relationship tells you how deeply they don’t really understand
themselves at that moment and how much I think a part of them longs for
“normalcy.”

like tl;dr ia with yours and mmod’s convo in the comments lol, allow me to join in on the gay projection.

mastermistressofdesire
replied to your post “so a couple nights ago i was bored and spent like 3 hours re-reading…”

I mean I would totally dig the long multi chapter version
Like I can never have enough of GriffGuts meta. Or yours in. particular

ty the feeling is mutual ❤

ohhhh if you don’t mind doing it, the multi part… 

i’ll aim for the long ass self indulgence then, i had fun with the first part so. plus it was already going to be 2 parts (one w/ more words, one with more visuals) so why not more. tho fair warning the thing i wrote reads like the ending of clue.

(in order to help you understand how gay it is, allow me to take you through the events of the manga step. by. step.)

so a couple nights ago i was bored and spent like 3 hours re-reading some early chapters and writing a 1500 word and 20 pic post about how guts is attracted to griffith, covering just the black swordsman arc

in hindsight that seems pretty excessive when my point can be boiled down to:

it’s p gay that the way the nature of guts and griffith’s relationship is revealed to the reader is through a direct parallel to a married couple, and then immediately after that our first glimpse of their past relationship involves guts calling griffith ‘beautiful.’

i feel like the fact that guts sees the band down there, including his pseudo girlfriend, dying horribly and turns away to continue trying to save griffith long after it’s too late should be a bigger thing, both in fandom and in canon

re-reading a few eclipse chapters and it feels so striking to me that casca is down there with judeau and the hawks facing an army of demons while guts is up there with griffith, neither sparing a thought for the other. it feels like a short, rougher and more intense version of casca leading the hawks as outlaws while griffith is being tortured and guts is off trying to become his equal.

except it comes after guts and casca have slept together and seem to be having a thing, which makes it very… stark in the way it completely doesn’t fit into a romantic narrative.

plus you’d think that while guts is bemoaning his own shittiness in abandoning casca for two years and comparing it to leaving griffith in the snow he could spare a thought for that time he left her to fight a hoarde of rapey monsters because he was wrapped up in futilely trying to help griffith.

speaking of the eclipse, griffith is shown this to convince him to sacrifice everyone

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and this is what guts thinks of when he’s reluctantly coming to accept that griffith just agreed to sacrifice them

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Guts remembers Griffith’s willingness to do underhanded shit despite feeling guilty about it, and Griffith remembers Guts telling him to do whatever’s necessary.

and while I think Guts feels guilty for driving Griffith to the point of desperation by leaving him, I don’t think he ever realized the effect his words here had on him. That thread’s probably been dropped by now but man I’d love for him to somehow realize what Griffith’s reaction was.

chaoticgaygriffith:

Honestly, you could talk about the Guts POV shots of Griffith in the films, too. Yes, he’s beautiful in every frame, but somehow when Guts is the one whose eyes we’re seeing him through his hair billows in the wind enticingly and the sun is shining down upon him like a prophet 

chaoticgaygriffith:

mastermistressofdesire:

Boy that didn’t work out.

YEAH lol

But this really reminded me of something either bthump or you said (or maybe it was a convo between the two of you? Bad memory sorry) about Guts’ feelings towards Neo-Griffith being complicated bc he still sees old Griffith as a victim of what happened here & still bears (badly repressed) guilt for leaving him.

Yeah I remember we talked about it a bit here, and oh man ia this moment in the movie is so good and rly does get that sense that Griffith is a victim across.

Like idt Guts wanting to save him, even after the sacrifice, means he’s naive. When Guts finally stops hacking away at the egg after remembering Griffith talking about his dream, and thinks “is this what you wanted?” he looks like he’s had the wind taken out of his sails but this is how he pulls away to fight monsters:

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and

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He doesn’t condemn Griffith for choosing his dream over the Hawks. He doesn’t even look angry (except at the Godhand) – he just looks sad.

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Like tbh I can see why Miura had to have Femto go above and beyond in a horrific way (not saying the rape is narratively justified, like torture or some brutal hands-on murder would’ve sufficed but he definitely had to do something cruel) because Guts straight up isn’t mad about the sacrifice, and I for sure think it’s because he feels largely responsible for driving Griffith to that point.

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