I mean, that’s like… I was gonna say ‘fair’ but it’s not rly fair to you lol, you shouldn’t feel guilty about liking a good super interesting relationship just bc the mangaka thinks gratuitious rape and rape attempts are gr8 ways to illustrate evil. It makes sense to feel that way, but yk, it sucks.

So like I know it’s easy to say “idc bc it’s fiction” and that probably doesn’t help you because you already know it’s fiction. But I do think it’s good to bear in mind that the only person who has any say in what happens to Casca in the story is Miura, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying some elements of his story just because he likes to go full grimdark at other times.

Also like, while I personally am fine with just saying “it’s fiction so idgaf, I’ll take what I like and dismiss what I don’t,” it doesn’t work for everyone, but an extra like… point that might help you reconcile liking characters who do terrible things is that these two terrible things in particular are bad and genuinely offensive writing lol.

Like it’s probably easier to say “fuck the Eclipse rape idc” when you see it as hugely gratuitous, offensively depicted, contradictory in some ways to earlier canon***, wholly unnecessary, thematically muddy, and kind of disturbingly downplayed in the future for the sake of depicting NeoGriffith as a morally ambiguous hero of his own story (and Miura has straight up said that NGriff is supposed to be morally ambiguous and heroic depending on your pov lol).

Guts sexually assaulting Casca is also unnecessary (trying to murder her seems like it would be a sufficient illustration of darkness), super misogynist in that we’re still supposed to support Guts afterwards and sympathize with him and his guilt moreso than Casca, not to mention homophobic since it’s all about his (super suggestively described by the hound) feelings for Griffith.

So yk, these things may be canon but they suck and if dismissing them makes me enjoy the story more that seems like the best course of action.

And finally, if none of that helps at all, it’s worth taking into account that these are Griffith and Guts’ magical evil alter egos at work. Canonically Femto is the worst aspects of Griffith, magnified by literal evil, with the rest of him burned or shattered away. The last thing Griffith did as a character was sacrifice the Hawks. Everything else has just been a magically augmented part of him.

Guts’ Beast of Darkness similarly is part of Guts, not all of him, and it’s also given strength by Guts’ existence on the interstice, thanks to the Brand. That’s why Flora’s magic seal of protection on the brand helped like, metaphorically chain it up in Guts’ subconscious.

One of Berserk’s main thematic points is that everyone has an inner darkness in them, it’s part of being human, so it’s not that Guts and Griffith are singled out as extra evil.

As pure unmagical humans, Guts and Griffith are just interesting complicated people, neither saints nor demons, with an intense relationship, and imo there’s plenty of room for fluffy content between them pre-Eclipse, or in an AU. I mean canon has them bond during a naked waterfight lol, you know there are a ton of cute off-screen moments between them just waiting to be depicted in fanworks.

(With the caveat that Miura’s misogyny sometimes still shows through, eg Griffith’s night with Charlotte which is narratively treated as consensual even though she says “no” first (typical bodice ripper shit), or Guts sexually assaulting Casca by grabbing her boob to distract her during an argument which is treated as cute rather than fucked up. But yk, welcome to Berserk. Miura sucks.)

***eg in v brief one thing that bothers me is that in the Black Swordsman arc
it was strongly implied that Guts’ reaction to whatever made him so
angry at Griffith/Femto was paralyzing fear, whereas during the Eclipse
all we see is violent rage