Content warning: discussion of sexual assault, childhood
sexual abuse, and spoilers for the Golden Age Arc
Fantasy stories
like Game of Thrones or stories that
chronicle real dynastic power struggles (albeit in a sensational way) examine the human wreckage that can be wrought
by larger power structure that has been set up.
The personal is the political in Berserk
in a way that I think different than other low fantasy settings in that goes
the extra step of suggesting that there really is no redemption even in
surviving in that environment. . This is, I think, a function of our heroes and
our antagonist being of common birth, while most of our heroes in Game of
Thrones have family name and influence . It’s that privilege that they are
fighting for.
The tragic flaw
of our antagonist, Griffith of course is his ambition. The sin, I argue, is not so much as wanting
too much, but rather in wanting the wrong things: It’s a little scene of
exposition that revels the central pathology of Midland as a political entity.
Griffith explains to Guts what he had been told, that anyone possessing the Crimson Behelit is
destined to rule the world, and then he adds with a laugh;
“In exchange for your flesh and blood, of course.”
Griffith’s broken
human body is of course put though a physical transformation to become Femto,
but it’s the band of the Hawk and their bodies that make up the true
“flesh and blood” of the sacrifice. In the middle ages and into the
modern era there was a notion of a kind of tree that represented the state: God
at the top of course and underneath the king, and so on until you got to
inanimate objects like rocks at the bottom.
Families would naturally follow this pattern as well with the husband at
the top and women and children underneath and so on.
If you take the paternal metaphor for sovereignty
this makes sense; who else are your flesh and blood besides your men? Your
partner(s)? Berserk really emerges
then as an examination the ways that power is created and enforced in a patriarchal
hereditary monarchy. It becomes absolutely impossible to form relationships
outside of this pardam even in marginal, quasi independent communities like The
Band of the Hawk. The language of
intimacy itself has become the way that these power imbalances are maintained by
making violence and love indistinguishable linguistically from each other. It is
imbedded into the very definition of family in this universe. Given this information,
we can really look at the events of the Golden Age Arc as an parade of actions
by bad fathers.
Casca’s parents sell
her into the service of wealthy man to get her out of house. It’s impossible to say to what extent her
family knew or acknowledged that her servitude put her in danger of sexual
exploitation. Her father, (she doesn’t mention her mother) either had always
thought of her as being that disposable and didn’t care or he hoped that she
would be “smart enough” perhaps, to parrot the rape myth, to avoid
that. Yet another possibility is that he figured that if she is passed from man
to man, that she will eventually learn to charge for her trouble and make good.
Casca, of course, characteristically minimizes the impact of this abandonment
on her and her identity as a woman.
Guts is born into
chaos; He is picked up by a woman who is traveling with a band of mercenaries,
and after her death from a plague he is left in the care of her partner,
Gambino. With a malignant
sentimentality that only a specific kind of guilty conscious is capable of,
Gambino channels his rage into withholding his love from Guts and blaming him
for his mother’s illness and death. When
Guts comes home with his first earnings from a battle Gambino while
superficially complimentary is actually poised to terrorize him: He sells him
to one of his men for the night. Donavan taunts Guts during the rape that Gambino was the one
to sell him out. Guts doesn’t believe
him at the time, but of course ultimately learned that the only father he had
ever known had fed him to a monster.
The King summarily
throwing Griffith in prison and torturing him can be seen initially perhaps as understandable reaction of a parent
discovering that an adult has taken advantage of their child. As a parting
shot, Griffith suggests that perhaps the King meant to keep Charlotte for
himself. Griffith has no way of knowing that this turns out to be exactly the
case ,at least now that Charlotte, no longer a virgin, presumably sexually available now that she is
unable to be sold. This turn of events prompts Charlotte to risk everything to
bust Griffith out of jail. *
Both Guts and
Casca (as well as Griffith) turned, of course, to the life of the sword to free
them from this cycle, since it is only in physical violence that they have been
able to rise protect themselves. However, they make the assumption that this is
effective in error. The lines between being a mercenary and other kinds of
marginal labor, like prostitution become blurred by implication rather than
explicit equivocation. Aside from the oblivious instance of Griffith’s rape by
Gennon, the language of sex and battle are often used together, particularly
between Guts and Griffith.
“If I win, I put a hole in your chest as big as
this.” Guts says during their first dual.
“And if I win?”
What Guts says in response is slightly different dependant
on the translation but I have to say I’m partial to this version.
“You can have whatever you want; my sword or my
ass.”
“I rather enjoy settling things by force.” answer’s
Griffith.
There’s a wink in his voice, which is unsettling when paired
with a statement that could fairly, if fighting is sex , be read as a (cheeky?) rape threat.
The language that Griffith uses to talk to Guts about his fighting
when they are in private three years after the initial duel is the same.
“When you fight, and how you fight is all for me.
Because you’re mine.” he says softly.
When you put these things together Guts’ body in battle
really is interchangeable with an erotic Guts.
It felt terribly intimate to hear.
This of course takes us to Griffith and the Eclipse. When,
exactly is he behaving differently than a “legitimate” sovereign in
this context? Yes all of Hawks are sacrificed but in that moment, what is
really the difference between losing them all at once or losing them in pieces
in every battle? The “sacrifice” demanded of Guts and Casca is by
contrast, sexual, and at least among folks I’ve talked to about this these are
regarded as equal crimes. During the Eclipse,
I couldn’t help but think of the moment that Griffith saves her from her first
would-be rapist, (as did she).
“Do you think you have some kind of divine right?”
he yells at the man, before handing
Casca the sword.
We may have seen him
be admitted to the peerage but the Eclipse, when he is literally given the divine
license of kingship, is the true moment
where he becomes an aristocrat.
{{ I honestly love this – this expression he has in the movies, whenever he opens up to a person. It always seemed to me as if he forgets everything around – it’s more of a pondering loudly, than actual dialogue. I think it’s a nice detail, how he always has this very same expression, when it happens. Always looking so far away, as if not really there, not really present, but completely lost in thoughts. }}
@mastermistressofdesire said: Ever since you mentioned it, I’ve also been low-key losing my shit over Serpico-Guts truth be told.
I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.
It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.
Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.
Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.
But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.
The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”
I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”
Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.
In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.
And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.
So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.
(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)
I could be wrong, but I feel like this might be, in part, a response to my rant, and I just want to say that I do agree with you on this. The reason I spend so much time talking about Griffith’s guilt is because a large portion of the fandom doesn’t seem to understand that what he did wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him–to put it simply. But of course his reasons for sacrificing the BotH can’t be boiled down to one emotion, be it guilt or whatever else.
Like you mentioned, part of the appeal of becoming one of the God Hand is you get your emotions stripped away. And Griffith is someone who, I feel, feels things very strongly, but constantly tries to deny that to himself and others. Because he wants to believe that his emotions don’t control him. “Just a pebble in my path” and all that.
Except he couldn’t with Guts. Not only was his obsession with Guts obvious, but it literally ruined his life once, and could have very well ruined it again, and again, and again. He would have “let it happen,” so to speak, it was an obvious weakness. And Guts seemed indecisive to the point where it was clear that he would keep unintentionally playing with Griffith’s heart till it destroyed him.
Griffith hated Guts for leaving him, but he also hated himself for how much it affected him, so the God Hand’s offer was attractive in more than one way.
Like you, I don’t think he regretted his decision. I just don’t think it was an easy decision to make, because that would defeat the point of sacrificing something to gain something else.
Sorry, I’m bad at wording things properly, and always seem to leave out something important, plus I didn’t add anything new to this post but tl;dr I agree with you. And I also apologise if this post had nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier this week, it just reminded me of a lot of points that were brought up.
Actually funnily enough I had a post like this sitting in my drafts for like two weeks but it sounded stilted so I never posted it. Then reading a few things (including I think your post) inspired me to re-write it and focus it better. So not exactly a response but more like, hmm I see a few people talking about the Eclipse sacrifice so now’s a good time to talk about this one aspect of it that I think is awesome that I haven’t seen mentioned. So I’ll add a belated thanks for the inspiration 🙂
But yeah I pretty much agree with you. I’ve gone on at length before about Griffith’s guilt-based motivation and I totally agree that it was not an easy decision (i mean there’s a reason the godhand had to pull out all the psychological stops to manipulate him, and one thing I totally believe is that if Guts had been beside him the whole time he couldn’t’ve done it). Like the idea that he was rubbing his hands with glee and eager to jump on the opportunity as soon as a few magic weirdoes showed up to offer him the chance to exchange everyone he loves for a castle is ridiculous lol, and I’ve seen that belief way too often too. As much as there’s a reason most of the Band went, “oh shit” when they heard the Godhand’s offer, there’s also a reason Guts didn’t believe it until like 10 minutes after Griffith agreed lol, and it’s not because he’s a naive dumbass, it’s because he knew Griffith genuinely cared and he believed in him.
“wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him” that’s a really good way of putting it
I’m always glad when you give us all an opportunity to think and talk about something new, which is pretty much always, so thank you for that!
Also, that thing you said about Guts knowing Griffith well enough to know that he wouldn’t do something like that under normal circumstances kind of reminded me of the scene where Griffith asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel. And I feel like there’s more to be said here, but I’ll just leave it at that.
omg nice connection. Honestly if Guts’ Most Significant Moment That Changed Everything was overhearing Griffith’s speech, then imo Griffith’s MSMTCE was Guts’ non-reply to “do you think I’m cruel?” It keeps coming back to that.
I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.
It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.
Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.
Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.
But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.
The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”
I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”
Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.
In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.
And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.
So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.
(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)
I could be wrong, but I feel like this might be, in part, a response to my rant, and I just want to say that I do agree with you on this. The reason I spend so much time talking about Griffith’s guilt is because a large portion of the fandom doesn’t seem to understand that what he did wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him–to put it simply. But of course his reasons for sacrificing the BotH can’t be boiled down to one emotion, be it guilt or whatever else.
Like you mentioned, part of the appeal of becoming one of the God Hand is you get your emotions stripped away. And Griffith is someone who, I feel, feels things very strongly, but constantly tries to deny that to himself and others. Because he wants to believe that his emotions don’t control him. “Just a pebble in my path” and all that.
Except he couldn’t with Guts. Not only was his obsession with Guts obvious, but it literally ruined his life once, and could have very well ruined it again, and again, and again. He would have “let it happen,” so to speak, it was an obvious weakness. And Guts seemed indecisive to the point where it was clear that he would keep unintentionally playing with Griffith’s heart till it destroyed him.
Griffith hated Guts for leaving him, but he also hated himself for how much it affected him, so the God Hand’s offer was attractive in more than one way.
Like you, I don’t think he regretted his decision. I just don’t think it was an easy decision to make, because that would defeat the point of sacrificing something to gain something else.
Sorry, I’m bad at wording things properly, and always seem to leave out something important, plus I didn’t add anything new to this post but tl;dr I agree with you. And I also apologise if this post had nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier this week, it just reminded me of a lot of points that were brought up.
Actually funnily enough I had a post like this sitting in my drafts for like two weeks but it sounded stilted so I never posted it. Then reading a few things (including I think your post) inspired me to re-write it and focus it better. So not exactly a response but more like, hmm I see a few people talking about the Eclipse sacrifice so now’s a good time to talk about this one aspect of it that I think is awesome that I haven’t seen mentioned. So I’ll add a belated thanks for the inspiration 🙂
But yeah I pretty much agree with you. I’ve gone on at length before about Griffith’s guilt-based motivation and I totally agree that it was not an easy decision (i mean there’s a reason the godhand had to pull out all the psychological stops to manipulate him, and one thing I totally believe is that if Guts had been beside him the whole time he couldn’t’ve done it). Like the idea that he was rubbing his hands with glee and eager to jump on the opportunity as soon as a few magic weirdoes showed up to offer him the chance to exchange everyone he loves for a castle is ridiculous lol, and I’ve seen that belief way too often too. As much as there’s a reason most of the Band went, “oh shit” when they heard the Godhand’s offer, there’s also a reason Guts didn’t believe it until like 10 minutes after Griffith agreed lol, and it’s not because he’s a naive dumbass, it’s because he knew Griffith genuinely cared and he believed in him.
“wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him” that’s a really good way of putting it
I think Guts’ tears were brought on by two things: Femto and Theresia.
The summoning of the Godhand is the first time that Guts sees Femto in the flesh since the Eclipse – literally the last time Guts looked at him, Femto had just finished raping Casca. And no matter how tough Guts may seem, the experience of being faced with Femto and the Godhand again is traumatic and triggering all in itself. And even though Guts wanted this moment and has been hunting apostles with this encounter in mind, the reality is that it’s all on their terms yet again and he’s still not actually ready for it when it happens. It stirs powerful and mixed emotions in him; the kind he hasn’t let himself feel for the past two years. And the worst part of it is that it’s not all negative emotions, because seeing Femto makes him remember the good in the past too – he even has a flashback of how Griffith used to be when he was human and Guts’ friend, and clearly still remembers Griffith with poignancy and longing, whether he wants to or not.
The thing is, I don’t think that Guts’ emotions during this scene are as clear-cut as only hatred and the urge to kill (as overwhelming as those feelings are), because when Femto taunts him and pushes his buttons by repeatedly telling Guts how worthless and pitiful he is…it works. Those words hit Guts where it hurts on a very personal level. Femto turns his attention to the Slug Count for most of the scene, and all he has to say about Guts is that he’s no threat and isn’t worth bothering with – he’s just a fly in need of swatting when the Godhand are really here for the Count and Theresia. He’s too low for Femto to even notice. Not only do those words put Guts’ dream of revenge into really harsh perspective, but he also has to suffer being ridiculed and looked down on by the one person he wanted to respect him and look well on him; the one person he would’ve given anything to stand beside as an equal once. It plays on some of Guts’ deepest insecurities and fears of being insignificant and having no value to the people he cares about, so even after everything that’s happened between Guts and Griffith, those words look like they sting and reopen old wounds (as I imagine they were meant to). So on top of everything else affecting Guts during this scene, he’s also having to deal with the fact that Griffith still has some degree of emotional power over him – including the power to hurt him.
Then Guts has to watch a sacrifice bid play out again, which means re-living the worst and most horrific thing that ever happened to him, and is faced with what’s going to happen to him after he dies. And during this whole sequence, he makes something like three different attempts to kill Femto, and he fails every single time. And not just by a little, but by enough to show that Femto is completely beyond Guts and can’t even be touched by him. It seems to prove the truth in Femto’s words about Guts being too puny and pathetic to even bother with, and how totally outmatched and useless an ordinary human is against him.
The second part of it is Theresia. It’s only after she nearly falls to her death that Guts seems to realise what he nearly did by encouraging her to kill herself. Suddenly, he seems able to see her as a person rather than a tool to use against her father, and can identify with her – because when it came down to it, even after everything she’d been through and in spite of having every reason to just give up and die, this little girl hung onto her life (literally!) with all she had and no matter how much it hurt. Even with the Dragonslayer cutting into her hands! When he sees her wounded palms, it visibly triggers a reaction in Guts and he looks really shaken by the sight of her and the pain she’s in – again, because I think he’s seeing a part of himself in her (the very next chapter, we get this moment) and it humanises her. And it turns him into the monster that causes the pain – and I think the enormity of how badly he messed up hits him right then, if only for a moment, and it’s very upsetting. Then Theresia reflects Guts even more by finding power in her anger and hate, to the point where it’s actually the thing that gives her motivation to keep living. Guts may initially seem satisfied that he gave Theresia something to live for, but as soon as his back is turned on her it all melts away, and I think it indicates that causing another person to exist like him and survive at the same cost he pays isn’t what Guts wanted.
So the whole experience is extremely disturbing and unsatisfying on every possible level, and Guts comes out of it with nothing – and after two years of searching for this chance. Rather than getting any kind of revenge, satisfaction or closure, Guts is left more distraught and outraged than ever, and is emotionally and physically exhausted by everything he’s just been through. The only thing he succeeded in doing was destroying Theresia’s innocence, and he looks bone-weary by the end of it. So it makes sense to me that he’d be full of painful feelings and memories and would be in a very emotionally raw state.
Who wouldn’t cry with all that churning inside them?
@yoikami said:
He said something like
“because of you I almost lost the sight of my dream”, like he wouldn’t
act like that to anyone but Guts, clearly.
ikkkr. ngl “Among thousands of comrades and tens of thousands of enemies you’re the only one… you’re the only one… who made me forget my dream.” is one of my favourite lines/moments in anything ever.
Unless you’re referring to the other amazing line, “But now as he shines so glaring within me… the junk* grows dull.”
*his dream
I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.
It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.
Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.
Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.
But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.
The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”
I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”
Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.
In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.
And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.
So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.
(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)
also speaking of that scene in the dungeons i quickly checked the bit where Guts kills Donovan to see if I could see any scary hound-ness there but didn’t really (he just looks like a hurt kid imo). But tbh the way Guts cuts out the torturer’s tongue reminds me of how he stabbed Donovan through the mouth.
Both kind of violently phallic and both bc Guts doesn’t want to hear what they’re saying.
I took a final look at it and whispered, not the berserk tag. Sorry, but I’m not brave enough.
Is this a reimagination of the falling off the cliff before the battle of doldrey scene or post torture arc?
Good question – but now that you mention it omg a reimagining of the whole cliff debacle with Griffith in place of Casca would be amazing. Casca would step up, take command, and own the battlefield. Griffith could have a debilitating fever and share some of his past while his temp is 103 and he’s out of it after like a fever nightmare about the inevitable battle of Doldrey. Guts would get possessively protective the way he does. Casca could show up in the nick of time to save Griffith from passing out and being killed by the enemy while Guts does his 100 man slayer thing (convincing Griffith to leave his side the same way he convinced Casca, ie, you have a dream and also you’re a burden rn so get lost, which I could see Griff either seeing through and brushing off or having a v bad delayed reaction to) – it would just be wall-to-wall Good Shit.
Oh God yes. The more I think about this the more I want it.
And to me at least the premise of Griffith neglecting to take care of himself, being too busy pulling up strategies and inspecting things all night then falling sick and refusing to acknowledge it – sounds EXACTLY like the kind of thing he’d do.
Holy shit this is amazing. I’m getting the feels out of this train of thought.
It’s so nnngh.
I’m most probably going to come back to this post. But right now I’m thoroughly distracted by the deliciousness of this prospect.
The two of them…. sharing feelings….. FEELINGS????!!!! That might fix everything. And while Griffith is running to someplace safe, the Behelit falls off his neck and he loses track of it. He feels relief wash over him. He’s not “better” but he knows that some of the empty space inside can start to be filled.
Guts’ first disclosure of his rape doesn’t start with him strangling someone he cares about because he can’t help it. Seeing someone he loves vulnerable gives him the space to not feel that violently towards himself as a child.
Edit: and happy and healthy Casca.
omg nice! this is a perfect way to unlock the alternate, happy ending tbh.
also ok another addition: ngl feverish and vulnerable confession of feelings is an extremely good trope and it would work so well with Griffith lmao bc he doesn’t know his own feelings so a half-delerious confession would be like, “you’re the most important person in the world and idk why but i’m rly glad i pulled you off the cliff with me”
and then guts would be like :O and maybe he’d second guess the stupid dream thing if he heard it from griffith instead of casca. instead of a campfire of dreams chapter where guts concludes he should leave, we could get guts and griffith healing up together in a tent knowing they both want to stay close for as long as they can.
Well so far these are probably my favourite pages of the Fantasia arc (+ the slap ofc)
Rickert’s speech as a whole is just breathtaking, Rickert pointing out the difference in the insignias, the present tense of “I am led by the white-winged Griffith” showing he still respects Griffith as he was but considers this guy not to be him, Griffith’s only words are an acknowledgement of that difference – “…so it is” -, the hair over Griffith’s eyes suggesting he is feeling feelings and we just don’t get to know what they are, Rickert’s smile of pride when he talks about the Band he considers himself a part of…
it’s just so good
I personally don’t feel that whatever is being shaded over in Griffith’s face is malice.
I think it’s him having to face the consequences, or at least feel them up close for the first time after the eclipse granted him the powers to enable his escapism. I think Griffith is slowly coming to realise that the numbness he weaponised and clung to on transforming to Femto is sort of out of commission as of his rebirth.
But he’s going to pretend it’s still there for his audiences’ benefit right till the end.
I am actually looking forward to Griffith looking back on what he did and actually looking at it from the human perspective he now has. Back when he made the decision he wasn’t even close to thinking rationally , the decision was influenced by despair and the mindscape fuckery Conrad and Ubik were indulging in and I always saw Griffith’s decision more as motivated from wanting an escape from his current emotional mess rather than a grab for power–but I digress.
My point was that the Eclipse wasn’t a result of Griffith’s clear thinking or reflection which we know he has always been capable of because he wasn’t in the state of mind to be able to do that then. But now he does. Honestly Neo- Grifffith most probably has a fair bit of time on his hand s right now. And I’d love for him to get thinking.
Put in perspective the fact that the nameless bodies he’d decided to ‘pile up’ back then to try and give meaning to the cries of the mangled corpses pleading with him in his mindscape at that very moment- were not nameless or faceless.
These were people he knew, had memories with, had cared about.
And having Rickert come up and spell it out, REMIND him.
I want that to fuck him up. And I’m pretty sure it’s happening too.
Guilt has always been an emotion Griffith feels strongly, maybe even one of the strongest tributaries to his ambition.Its what caused the Gennon incident and it’s arguably what caused the Eclipse.
Bring that back Miura, Please.
P.S. – I am a hundred percent sure it was Locus not Griffith who sent Rakshas after Rickert. Like dude was raving mad about that slap.Broke a wall.
Yk, take the “so you could bury your fragile human heart” line to the count, add Puck pointing out that the Count is still human even though he denies it (like you said in that other response – apostles are in a way almost extra human, I totally agree), add Rosine fucking up because Jill was in danger, especially add Ganeshka’s terrified isolation when he ascended to a higher plane, and add Femto’s failure to kill Guts and NeoGriff’s heartbeat, and I’m js the groundwork is so laid out for NeoGriffith to start demonstrating some intriguing emotions (to the audience if not other people) that you could build a skyscraper on that foundation.
I could see him questioning his own identity after going through 3 magical transformation sequences and Rickert straight up calling him not-Griffith, the way Ganeshka started screaming “WHO AM I.” I could definitely see isolation. I could definitely see longing – for Guts obviously, for an equal in general – and of course if the guilt made a comeback (and esp after Rickert’s speech I could see that too) I’d be ecstatic.
I could see him feeling cut off from his past as a human (or viewing it like a dream a la what the Godhand said as he transformed) and growing perturbed by that rather than content.
Like okay when he became Femto his heart “froze.” Hence the “strange… I don’t feel anything” while the Band were gruesomely dying etc. How that works with wanting to hurt Guts and then not being able to kill him is anyone’s guess, but we know that when he became NeoGriffith his heart started beating again. I could accept, if Miura wants to go this direction, that he’s basically Griffith now (I mean he’s he’s made of flesh and blood again rather than astral plane evil, and his frozen heart has thawed right back up), just ascended to a higher plane of existence and therefore much more capable of distancing himself from human concerns. At least until his past comes for him.
(Also as an aside yeah I totally agree that a big part of his motivation for making the sacrifice was escaping his own emotional vulnerability – both wrt the guilt and wrt his love for Guts.)
@pulseofthestars said:
So proud of Rickert here, I really hope he makes it to the end of the series. He will make a strong and good hearted man.
yeah I can’t wait to see how he turns out hanging out with Silat and co, especially if there’s a time skip. I got surprisingly attached to him watching him grow up, I hope he survives everything too.
@mastermistressofdesire said:
oh yeah. I’ve been
wondering about if there’d eventually going to be a bias towards a
certain endgame philosophy but till now i’ve not really been
dissapointed with the ones we’ve run with so mostly just waiting and
watching. Also I really like this chapter. There’s a lot of food for
thought here.
I’m pretty happy to wait and see where it goes, and tbh none of the options seem that bad to me. Like the anti-utopia thing can be great depending on how it’s done imo, and it definitely wouldn’t mean it’ll automatically be black and white and boring either. If Miura did go that route I’m sure he’d make it interesting.
Well so far these are probably my favourite pages of the Fantasia arc (+ the slap ofc)
Rickert’s speech as a whole is just breathtaking, Rickert pointing out the difference in the insignias, the present tense of “I am led by the white-winged Griffith” showing he still respects Griffith as he was but considers this guy not to be him, Griffith’s only words are an acknowledgement of that difference – “…so it is” -, the hair over Griffith’s eyes suggesting he is feeling feelings and we just don’t get to know what they are, Rickert’s smile of pride when he talks about the Band he considers himself a part of…
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