u know how usually the 3rd or 4th or 5th time you rewatch a movie or an episode of something youre like not as affected by it WELL its the opposite in berserk literally every time i reread an arc or rewatch episodes of the anime or movies it hurts more. i hate it
i feel like there’s something to be said about guts seeing her as small and vulnerable considering the fact that, i like breezed through the awful sex scene each time i read this manga but, im pretty sure he kept flashing back to his rape which. makes me so sad. under normal circumstances i’d be annoyed about a man seeing a woman as something small and weak but with guts it just makes me feel like he feels bad sexualising her? and that makes me happy
though disclaimer again i never paid attention to their thing so im mostly talking out of my ass here
yeah yk i feel like the way he sees her as smaller and vulnerable, plus the virgin-y awkwardness, does tonally lead directly to his flashback so I could def see Guts feeling that tbh. it’s a shame that Guts’ flashback is bookended by an awkward het sex scene bc imo it was mostly handled rly well and Guts’ breakdown is super touching and painful. But then they pick up where they left off and suddenly the sex is less awkward and it has this “Guts’ emotional scars are fixed bc he finally talked about his issues, yay” vibe that I sideeye.
@chaoticgaygriffith said:
Actually, now that you mention it, I never really paid close attention
to how Casca and Guts acted around each other bc I didn’t care for it,
but if Casca really did get Griffith’s eroticised panels once she and
Guts started being a thing, then I have to laugh because that’s just
further proof (as if further proof was necessary) that she was Guts’
replacement for Griffith. As he was hers, although I don’t see her crush
on Griffith as genuine but more of a misidentified emotion of
admiration and gratitude.
I’m just replying to this instead of reblogging bc that thread is long and full of pictures. feel free to skip this if you don’t feel like reading My Thoughts on Guts’ Attraction to Casca lol, tho it’s v negative.
ngl… after a brief check of some key scenes, ie the ball, the sex scene, guts feeling kind of jealous during the rescue mission, and the huddling in the cave scene, I can say that we got Guts leering at her once when he first sees her in the dress with a cutesy blushy pov shot of her from his perspective, and one (1) panel of her looking sexy from guts’ pov at the very end of the sex scene.
So she doesn’t get nearly the bombshell treatment Griffith does. When Guts looks at her when she’s naked she almost always looks small and vulnerable, rather than erotic. (And I mean unfortunately small and vulnerable can = eroticized, but these shots are mostly Guts empathizing with her so I don’t feel that’s the case). In normal circumstances I’d be like, ok fine gj Miura that’s not a bad thing, but unforch what Guts lacks in finding her a sexy object the “camera” more than makes up for, compartmentalizing her into tits and ass and thighs etc, objectifying her, etc, for the audience’s sake.
I mean I think the most eroticized moment of Guts looking at her, other than the one shot I mentioned from the sex scene, is when he’s picturing her with the hound biting her neck. Which is fucked up but tbh it fits right in with Casca’s narrative treatment. Like she’s more likely to be objectified and made “sexy” for the audience during a rape scene than any other time.
So I mean, I can’t say kudos to miura for not having Guts get a long lingering look at her being sexy, because the audience does all the damn time in absolutely awful circumstances. But I am gonna say that signs point to Guts being gay.
(I know there’s one scene much later where Guts remembers having sex with her and might picture her splayed out on display, but I didn’t have any pics from that saved bc why would I so I have no idea when it was to find it and check.)
(also totally agree about Casca’s crush on Griff not being genuine.)
this is actually how griffith conducts all his business in all aus? modern au griff chewing someone out via skype video call while sitting in guts lap and guts is the awkwardly disembodied torso behind him
i almost missed this reply and that would’ve been tragic tbh
another aspect of that hipocrisy is guts can’t be gay bc he was raped as a child but griffith having to sleep with a paedophile bc he needed funds is XD ultimate proof he’s a f****t
ugh true, I’ve def seen that attitude, and also uggggggh @ those fans
the hypocrisy thing is especially rich considering they think liking griffith is irl condoning killing all ur friends and worse and yet not a peep abt how that some logic means they think women should get over being abused if the dude is hunky enough and feels kind of bad after
the way to your dream is paved with corpses. look at your own body.
& then they try to talk about how well written and deep berserk is and how it’s Not Like Other Mangas or w/e bc guts is complex– like u said wrt ppl seeing it as ‘dude w sword has slightly more feelings than other dudes w/ swords’ essentially. but ur going off about how
incredible the plot is while bending over backwards to deny about 90% of it like!!!! HOW
Right like Guts’ complexity is about Griffith. Like.. almost all of it, give or take his shitty childhood. It’s like, the fans who admire that aspect of Guts, yk he has feelings and he’s complicated and sad but soldiers on, still want him to be 2 dimensional by the end when he overcomes all that complexity so he can happily kill Griffith without feelings getting in the way.
Plus that house metaphor u used is perfect. Bc boy they love this story. Sure they have to pretend most of it doesn’t exist, but goddamn do they think this story is amazing.
@wind-prince said:
Some people are just
way too invested in making Guts “not-gay” and outright try to deny
anything that might have even the slightest homoerotic tone or subtext
yeeep p much what it boils down to lbr. I’ve seen redditbro types who will admit that Griffith was probably in love with Guts, but even they bury their heads in the sand when Guts’ feelings come up.
(I gotta say tho, Berserk is so equal opportunity shitty in some ways that it handily makes a lot of fan hypocracy really really obvious. Like, Guts can’t possibly be attracted to dudes because he was raped as a child how dare you suggest such a thing! Casca? Oh Casca can hop right back on Guts’ dick tho. Or, I just care so much about condemning fictional rapists, obviously Griffith is pure evil from start to finish how can you even consider shipping him with Guts that’s so awful! Oh Casca? Yeah her attempted rapist needs a reward so she’s gotta wake up and fuck him.)
its like.. you dont have to approve of it, if someone’s grossed out or upset by it that’s their business but its also the foundation for the entire plot so idg why ppl seem 2 universally express disapproval by pretending its literally not there (&/or all of guts’s interactions w/ griffith are solely due to Manipulation by Eeeeeevil Schemer Griffith)… if it upsets u to that degree u can read s/t else that will be less upsetting?
yeah, exactly. when it comes to people actively denying that griffith and guts’ relationship is the basic premise of berserk and getting mad at people who enjoy that fact, it just gets weird to me. I fully understand not enjoying Guts and Griffith’s thing, or enjoying it until the Eclipse happens, or not caring for any of many valid reasons (tho why you’d continue reading in that case I understand less, but w/e that’s just bc I’ll quit anything at the drop of a hat lol, and there’s other good stuff in Berserk so each to their own), but surely you can see that Guts and Griffith’s complicated friends to enemies with plentiful gay subtext dynamic is the axis on which the plot turns and therefore understand that a lot of Berserk fans are gonna be into it.
and i mean like, i don’t mean ship guts/griff in the sense of wanting them to live happily ever after lol, i just mean being very invested in their homoerotic relationship, first as friends then as enemies.
like there are other good characters, i’m a big farnese fan, i like berserk’s hot take on religion and some of what it has to say about morality eg, and big sword goes swoosh is rly fun
but guts and griff’s relationship is the emotional hook from beginning to present. so if you’re not invested in that i’m just like ??? what else is there that makes this story worth reading?
i honestly can’t comprehend the concept of sitting down to read berserk and not coming out of it shipping guts/griffith, at least in the sense of being heavily invested in their intense, eroticized relationship
i mean yeah ok it takes all kinds, there are people out there who watched xena and thought her and gabrielle had a sisterly bond, apparently there are people who watched hannibal and thought hannibal being head over heels in love with will was an elaborate fakeout bc they think he’s incapable of emotions or smthn, but like, man, idk
idk how that works. idk how you read a story that’s like:
– these two dudes hate each other. the reason is because one sacrificed the other in a ceremony where to escape unbearable emotional pain you have to sacrifice a person you love so much it’s like they’re a part of you, and your illustrative example for this concept is a husband and wife. – let’s introduce their relationship with the textual suggestion that one is sexually attracted to the other. and just to make it even the other can mention how pretty and beautiful he is multiple times. – oh now here’s 70 chapters to demonstrate the fact that these dudes care more about each other than anything else in the world. we’ll state that outright too. – 90% of the purpose of this arc is to show how meaningful and deep and intense and life-altering this relationship is. – now one guy is supposed to be emotionless but oops turns out when he looks at the dude he loved more than anything his heart starts fluttering. – now this other guy is supposed to be consumed by hate but oops the dude he hates looks just like the dude he loved more than anything again and his resolve crumbles. – now they’ll have totally separate narratives for a while but just look at this foundation of solid bedrock their relationship is built on, informing every pointed moment of emotional ambiguity, every reminder of the past, and every hint of potential foreshadowing.
and come away from it thinking ‘man i can’t wait til guts cuts off griffith’s head and rides off into the sunset with casca as his narrative reward’
just based on guts’ first look at them, who would you guess is the love interest?
casca:
griffith:
Yes yes yes. This Exactly. I’ma little slightly not well I am excited right now so this might not make sense. But. They do this visual chemistry thing, the angles Griffith gets, the way his eyes are drawn, how they stand together, the light breeze running through their hair. How they fit together in the frame, bodies turned in. And you do this for 10 volumes almost with these characters and then suddenly do the same with Guts and Casca for one damn chapter and now we’re supposed to have that superimpose 50 chapters of the same thing with a different set of characters. Like chemistry. Where was this.
It’s like buying a bag of m & ms and finding Cheetos inside Like I don’t hate the Cheetos. But that’s not what I signed up or paid emotional investment for .
This makes perfect sense and ia, when it comes to visual language Griffith is pretty straightforwardly romanticized and eroticized from Guts’ perspective.
like look at Guts’ point of view shot right here
first thing he thinks of when he wakes up after sensing a naked woman in bed with him:
griffith looking vulnerable and in need of rescue with his hair splayed out
this which is even more eroticized than those first panels
actually don’t quote me on this bc i’d have to re-read to make a real judgement call here, but I think these kinds of shots (from Guts’ perspective specifically) actually peter out after the Promrose Hall speech?
which, if so, makes it even more likely to me that it’s purposeful bc that’s when his view of Griffith shifts from him being a guy he likes who likes him back to being a distant goal.
though Griffith remains beautiful, noble, larger than life, dazzling, pretty, etc just to throw a few words guts has used to describe him, in Guts’ mind:
and then all bets are off once guts starts thinking about neogriff.
(the waters get a little muddier once miura starts drawing griffith like a wet dream every time he’s in a panel but honestly this shot of guts thinking about him goes above and beyond to a ridiculous extent)
oh also i was gonna say that it blows that casca gets super diminished and girlier once she ends up slotted into the love interest role, like judeau even comments on it ffs.
griffith has probably had at least one fantasy thats just him sitting on the throne but also guts lap at the same time while he conducts his King bullshit… true bossy power bottom material
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