mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
the end of the lost children arc fucks me up because i find rosine’s regret over sacrificing her parents and wanting to return home as she dies to be extremely sad and emotionally affecting, and very understandable and relatable as a character choice
but contrasting that to jill’s “i’m going to go home and just deal with my alcoholic physically abusive dad and his pedo friends :D” ending completely ruins it
like, if that’s presented as the alternative, yeah i give rosine a high five for sacrificing her parents and becoming a monster. good for her. fuck her parents, she should’ve been allowed to die with no regrets.
like it’s one thing for, eg, old man troll fight to talk about how dreams can be opportune escapes from reality when his reality was taking care of a sick parent and working for a living, but when your reality is an abusive family, yeah escaping from that is good, actually. and i feel like that nuance is unaccounted for in berserk lol. like you can say it’s bad to kidnap children and transform them into monsters and kill people etc without also saying it’s bad/weak/immature/whatever to want to escape from your abusive home.
and by having rosine regret the sacrifice and long for home as she dies, contrasted to jill grinning and bearing her abuse, the narrative is essentially placing the blame on rosine for not being able to cope with abuse rather than where it should be, ie, on her father for abusing his kid and orchestrating his own death.
like, the lost children arc should’ve been about condemning abusive parents but… it wasn’t, and it’s fucking bizarre really. the abusive parents are just like, generic 2 dimensional stand-ins for any kind of life struggle, and the kids get the burden of reacting to life struggles correctly. we’re not shown that the parents should’ve or even could’ve made different choices, the parents just exist as trials to test these children, essentially.
and ok fine if you want to focus on reactions to abuse, rather than the perpetuation of it, that’s fair enough, but to then condemn one kid for seizing on the only escape she had and give another kid a pat on the back for deciding not to escape but rather to just suck it up… like damn. this fucking arc lol.
@bthump i Guess that being founded by Griffith a man who betrayed his comrades, among other things shows that Falconia is based on a lie, and tragedy will come.
this response to you basically just became an excuse to disjointedly ramble about this subject more, sorry for how unnecessarily long it is lol
tbh the main point of that post was to demonstrate how personal the stakes are, and how falconia is essentially a response to the child abuse all three of our main characters have gone through, thematically. so if it does boil down to ‘welp the dude who enabled the existence of a utopia where lives aren’t bought and sold and more people aren’t traumatized the way our faves were is an asshole so throw out the whole thing’ i will find that very unsatisfying.
i think falconia poses a lot of interesting moral questions. is it worth griffith’s mountain of corpses? is granting humanity’s dream worth also granting their nightmares? was it worth the sacrifice? and those moral questions only work if falconia is portrayed as positive, which it has been so far (and as long as those negatives happened with the intention of creating the positive, hence why most of that post turned into complaining about the eclipse rape lol.)
i think miura could also go down a route where he portrays falconia more negatively in the sense that humanity shouldn’t wish for a saviour/escape, but should instead struggle through an uncaring universe. a la the lost children arc, essentially, which seems like a potentially very strong parallel.
though again, considering how personal the stakes are – always the child abuse, come on – i would find that message… sucky, to say the least. i mean honestly the message of the lost children arc basically boiled down to ‘child abuse happens, dwi kids bc running away is bad.’ i kind of hope that miura is either still going to complicate that at some point down the line (lol pipe dream) or at the very least that he does something different with falconia than he did with rosine’s land of the elves bc dear god i couldn’t stand a repeat of that shit lol.
I mean here’s one way of looking at it:
Guts, Griffith, and Casca all have experiences with csa. Guts’ way of coping is to lash out and kill everything that scares him. Casca’s way of coping is to latch onto a saviour. Griffith’s way of coping is to change the world.
Like, of the three, Griffith’s coping mechanism wins lol, and I’m not down with an overall message that says, you shouldn’t try to change things, you should just struggle your ass through life like Guts here, and fuck everyone else. I mean tbf I don’t think Guts’ method is shown in a great light, so it’s already a bit more complex than Griffith’s dream bad Guts’ dream good, but yk, I worry lol.
Again, like, the moral question shouldn’t be “is this place where people are free to live their lives without being exploited a good thing,” it should be “is this good thing worth all the bad things that led to its existence,” and I don’t want the story to answer that question for me, I want to be presented with the evidence and decide for myself. Do the ends justify the means narratives are only interesting as questions, not answers, imo.
so idk basically my response is yeah maybe some kind of tragedy will come to demonstrate that falconia was a doomed venture from the start, and/or that wanting to create a place without exploitation is an inherently flawed or immature desire, but if that happens i will be unimpressed lol. If falconia does end up being destroyed, ideally for me there would be negative consequences to that too, because there are no easy black and whites in Berserk (or there shouldn’t be.)
and like, the whole thematic connection to child abuse could be coincidental, but facts are that falconia is explicitly a place where the strong aren’t given free rein to exploit the weak, and our central and most emotionally resonant examples of strong given free rein to exploit the weak are the nobleman who bought casca, donovan, and gennon. Plus the apt Lost Children parallel. so if miura didn’t intend this he shouldn’t’ve filled berserk so full of thematically on the nose depressing backstories lol.
well that was underwhelming lol
thanks for a month spent in nervous anticipation for nothing miura
otoh i’m glad we’re still getting ngriff’s side of things, i was wondering if that was over since after the millenium falcon arc we technically only saw him thru rickert i think
also i guess throwing a break in right after casca starts to freak out means it’s more likely her reaction is going to cause some real important shit to go down, and that she’s not going to be talked down after a chapter or two
I like that we get Griffith’s monologue just one chapter before Guts starts to put it all together for himself, neatly referencing the same moments, and nearly coming to the same conclusion.
Yeah I think this is a pretty common conception of Griffith tbh. I’m not sure exactly why you feel this way, but I’ve seen lots of people taking it as read that he’s like, power-obsessed, or a control freak, and that impacts how they see his character.
But I don’t see that at all tbh. I’m going to like, rly briefly summarize how I feel, bc I have a lot of long versions that expand on these points (eg here and here and ofc here if you want the nearly thesis length take lol) if you want more explanation.
Basically Griffith wants power for a reason. He doesn’t want power for the sake of power, he wants power to achieve a goal, a goal that he feels he needs to achieve because of guilt.
A significant aspect of Griffith’s narrative is about how being a leader, being responsible for lives, being distant from everyone who follows him so he can maintain an image, etc, is a burden that takes a huge emotional toll on him.
Griffith is kind of trapped in this paradigm of control and being controlled. He has to be in control for the sake of his dream, in control of himself, in control of others as a leader, but again like, a big point of his narrative is that it’s a burden on him, and at least subconsciously, he wants out. Being a leader who always has to portray the correct image isolates him, being responsible for lives lost fills him with guilt, and he’s stuck because his entire sense of worth revolves around achieving his dream.
And by being controlled I’m referring to the way fate absolves him of guilt, and how he learns it was his destiny and everything he’s ever done was puppeteered by God and he’s nothing more than a pawn, etc. This holds true even as Femto and NeoGriffith, kind of ironically – at his most powerful he is aware that he has no control at all. Like, most of NeoGriffith’s apparent powers seem to be just this intrinsic knowledge that whatever he wants to do is what he’s destined to do, and therefore he can’t be harmed or stopped or prevented from doing what he wants.
(There’s probably also something to be said about Griffith’s powerlessness post-torture, but idk that basically boils down to Griffith still being responsible for that mountain of corpses, but not having the power to follow through and justify it. control vs no power, vs say ngriff’s power but no control. idk this is too long already lol, vague musing on that is enough for now.)
Umm okay to get back to my point, basically imo Griffith is kind of pushed and pulled between the burden of having too much control and the paradoxical freedom of having no control, and his desire for an equal seems to me to be like, an escape from these two extremes. Someone whose life he doesn’t control, who pursues their own reason for being, who Griffith can’t order to their death, who Griffith doesn’t have to wear a mask for – and someone who would fight him if their dreams ever clashed. Valuable as a friend and as an enemy as someone independent of him, who he has no power over and who has no power over him – or who they each have an equal amount of emotional power over.
Lol okay this was all very theme-y rather than based on characterization. So as for like, actual depictions of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, you have moments like asking him to kill Julius rather than ordering him, the water fight, “it’s funny… you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this” after explaining his thoughts on fate and wanting to know what he’s destined for, “do you think that I’m cruel?”, refusing to rein him in during battle to Casca’s consternation, reminiscing fondly on the duel he almost lost, risking his life and dream for Guts, basically his emotional dependence on him in general.
And wrt his tantrum when Guts leaves, often cited as Griffith’s control-freakiness at work lol, it’s actually another instance of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, but compilcated by knowing that the reality of their relationship is that Griffith is Guts’ boss, and moreover, he won his loyalty in a fight. He has a breakdown because he sees Guts leaving as a rejection and a statement on their entire relationship – he thinks Guts only stayed with him because Griffith won that duel, and it horrifies him and affirms his belief that he’s cruel, but also narrows his options down to “let him go or win him in another duel” lol, when what he actually wants is for Guts to choose to stay because he wants to stay. (Again, I’ve written about this at great length here if you want more evidence for this reading.)
so that wasn’t as short as I was hoping it would be lmao. But yeah basically the way I see Griffith is that being in control is a burden to him, and he wants an equal/friend because he wants someone whose life he doesn’t control to know him and freely choose him, not as a figurehead but as a person. And he wanted that someone to be Guts.
❝If there is one thing I can do for the dead, it is to win, and keep winning until I obtain my dream. My dream, my dream is already smeared with blood!❞
I’ve probably touched on it before but hell if I can remember where or
how much lol, and I like talking about this so I’ll totally share my
thoughts here.
I think the main reason, which I generally come back to, is because Guts doesn’t treat Griffith with the same awe and reverence the rest of the Hawks tend to treat him with.
Their relationship is very wrapped up in power dynamics – Guts joining the Hawks after losing a duel to him, Guts feeling inadequate after Promrose, Griffith stuck on a pedestal wanting someone to share in the aspects of his rise to power that he feels he has to keep hidden from the rest of the Hawks, Griffith proclaiming none of the Hawks are his friends because they aren’t his equals, “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold on me?”, Guts internally waxing poetic about how untouchable and perfect Griffith is until remembering moments where Griffith was extremely vulnerable w/ him, etc etc.
This is a moment when they both felt like they were equals. “Now we’re even.” Just two kids having a water fight.
Griffith distances himself shortly after this with his speech about his dream, but I feel like it kind of encapsulates them. There are all these artificial power dynamics standing in their way – leader/soldier, dude with a dream/dude without a dream, griffith trying to maintain an image/guts buying into that image after overhearing the Promrose speech – but at their core they’re just two people who have a strong connection.
This shows through when Guts treats Griffith’s orders as suggestions and gets chewed out by Casca, when Griffith asks him to assassinate Julius like a favour rather than an order, when Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts, when Griffith asks if Guts thinks he’s cruel, when Guts says Griffith can take off the mask since it’s just the two of them, etc. All these little glimpses of equality that can never last – and every time they fall by the wayside in favour of reinforcing the power dynamics, it leads to tragedy.
Like
But someone has to win the duel they insist on fighting.
lol I think I kinda veered off topic. But basically Guts is the one person who comes closest to treating Griffith as a person rather than a figurehead, and this marks their relationship as different, and brings them closer than Griffith is with anyone else. It’s why Guts is the person Griffith chooses to help assassinate people. You can even see this in Guts’ decision to leave – Casca hears the speech too and pretty much resigns herself to playing second fiddle, but Guts decides to do whatever it takes to become Griffith’s equal, misguided as his reasoning was.
Yk, rather than upholding the artificial dream criteria of equality, ignore it and recognize that it’s just getting in the way of actual equality.
Buuuut that explains like, why Griffith came to rely so heavily on Guts, and let him be the only person to see underneath the mask of perfection. It doesn’t explain why he was so drawn to Guts in the first place, or why he risked his life to save him the very first time, after only knowing him like a week.
Honestly idk lol. I think this was partially meant to be a little ironic, coming right after the Black Swordsman arc – showing that what fascinates Griffith about Guts is exactly those qualities Guts embodies to an extreme extent as the Black Swordsman, and which Femto claimed to have no interest in.
Overall I think it’s definitely the case that Griffith is enamoured of these traits of Guts’ – his stubbornness, his willingness to do anything to win, the way he faces danger head on, etc. I’m not entirely sure what that says about Griffith though, or even if it’s intended to reflect on Griffith’s character beyond that irony of how Guts is at his most “interesting” by this criteria when he’s Griffith’s enemy.
Though…
I wonder if it still kind of comes back to that equality.
The fight Griffith reminisces fondly about is the one where he got punched in the face and nearly lost because the other dude bit his fucking sword and pushed him off a hill lol.
Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?
Ooooh and that makes the second duel really interesting. Guts is the only person Griffith has lost a fight to, and that maybe straight up symbolizes his love. Like Guts walked away after demonstrating exactly what Griffith loves most about him.
Idk lol this has kind of devolved into me just like musing outloud, sorry.
And actually I do know I talked about the whole equality thing more here (this is the 2nd part of a very long analysis lol) if you feel like reading more of my thoughts on that lol. I kind of want to sit down and think about how the duels and Guts’ “struggler” thing fit in more now lol.
Anyway ty for the question and comments, and I hope you had a lovely day when you sent this lol, and are having another lovely day now!
There’s two things I gotta add:
1. I’m not one to deny that, aside from being really fucking gay, Griffith saw an excellent soldier in Guts at first, a good investment. It quickly changed into not being about that at all, but when he first saw him and didn’t know him at all, I feel like it’d be naive to claim that Guts’ potential played no part in Griffith’s fascination. On that note,
2. “Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?” I could see some kinky sex come out of this, js.
extremely good addition, ty
actually wrt 1, yk maybe I am overthinking it lol. Like, clearly Guts is extra special from the start, according to Casca’s internal commentary and Griffith saving his life, fighting a duel for him, etc etc. But there’s no reason that can’t be his assessment of Guts’ fighting prowress/recognizing an asset when he sees one + like, plain old physical attraction.
also wrt 2, nice, and also i feel like this is like a big part of the appeal of guts/neogriff especially lol.
I’ve probably touched on it before but hell if I can remember where or
how much lol, and I like talking about this so I’ll totally share my
thoughts here.
I think the main reason, which I generally come back to, is because Guts doesn’t treat Griffith with the same awe and reverence the rest of the Hawks tend to treat him with.
Their relationship is very wrapped up in power dynamics – Guts joining the Hawks after losing a duel to him, Guts feeling inadequate after Promrose, Griffith stuck on a pedestal wanting someone to share in the aspects of his rise to power that he feels he has to keep hidden from the rest of the Hawks, Griffith proclaiming none of the Hawks are his friends because they aren’t his equals, “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold on me?”, Guts internally waxing poetic about how untouchable and perfect Griffith is until remembering moments where Griffith was extremely vulnerable w/ him, etc etc.
This is a moment when they both felt like they were equals. “Now we’re even.” Just two kids having a water fight.
Griffith distances himself shortly after this with his speech about his dream, but I feel like it kind of encapsulates them. There are all these artificial power dynamics standing in their way – leader/soldier, dude with a dream/dude without a dream, griffith trying to maintain an image/guts buying into that image after overhearing the Promrose speech – but at their core they’re just two people who have a strong connection.
This shows through when Guts treats Griffith’s orders as suggestions and gets chewed out by Casca, when Griffith asks him to assassinate Julius like a favour rather than an order, when Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts, when Griffith asks if Guts thinks he’s cruel, when Guts says Griffith can take off the mask since it’s just the two of them, etc. All these little glimpses of equality that can never last – and every time they fall by the wayside in favour of reinforcing the power dynamics, it leads to tragedy.
Like
But someone has to win the duel they insist on fighting.
lol I think I kinda veered off topic. But basically Guts is the one person who comes closest to treating Griffith as a person rather than a figurehead, and this marks their relationship as different, and brings them closer than Griffith is with anyone else. It’s why Guts is the person Griffith chooses to help assassinate people. You can even see this in Guts’ decision to leave – Casca hears the speech too and pretty much resigns herself to playing second fiddle, but Guts decides to do whatever it takes to become Griffith’s equal, misguided as his reasoning was.
Yk, rather than upholding the artificial dream criteria of equality, ignore it and recognize that it’s just getting in the way of actual equality.
Buuuut that explains like, why Griffith came to rely so heavily on Guts, and let him be the only person to see underneath the mask of perfection. It doesn’t explain why he was so drawn to Guts in the first place, or why he risked his life to save him the very first time, after only knowing him like a week.
Honestly idk lol. I think this was partially meant to be a little ironic, coming right after the Black Swordsman arc – showing that what fascinates Griffith about Guts is exactly those qualities Guts embodies to an extreme extent as the Black Swordsman, and which Femto claimed to have no interest in.
Overall I think it’s definitely the case that Griffith is enamoured of these traits of Guts’ – his stubbornness, his willingness to do anything to win, the way he faces danger head on, etc. I’m not entirely sure what that says about Griffith though, or even if it’s intended to reflect on Griffith’s character beyond that irony of how Guts is at his most “interesting” by this criteria when he’s Griffith’s enemy.
Though…
I wonder if it still kind of comes back to that equality.
The fight Griffith reminisces fondly about is the one where he got punched in the face and nearly lost because the other dude bit his fucking sword and pushed him off a hill lol.
Like it kind of comes down to Griffith being knocked off his pedestal, and Guts having the ability to do that?
Ooooh and that makes the second duel really interesting. Guts is the only person Griffith has lost a fight to, and that maybe straight up symbolizes his love. Like Guts walked away after demonstrating exactly what Griffith loves most about him.
Idk lol this has kind of devolved into me just like musing outloud, sorry.
And actually I do know I talked about the whole equality thing more here (this is the 2nd part of a very long analysis lol) if you feel like reading more of my thoughts on that lol. I kind of want to sit down and think about how the duels and Guts’ “struggler” thing fit in more now lol.
Anyway ty for the question and comments, and I hope you had a lovely day when you sent this lol, and are having another lovely day now!
like guts particularly loving griffith’s more masculine features and maybe angsting about it? bc yeah that sounds like, good and interesting and well-rounded, as opposed to shit like “it’s ok for him to be attracted to griffith because he looks like a girl/griffith as the one exception to guts’ heterosexuality.” Which is not to say that wouldn’t also be interesting, but yk, as an examined part of Guts’ internalized homophobia, not played straight like a lot of ppl tend to do (not so much in griffguts fandom that I’ve seen, I just mean as a gay fic trope in general).
actually the whole general idea of exploring griffith’s androgyny and how guts relates to that wrt internalized homophobia sounds rly potentially interesting. Dealing with recognizing that he’s not just attracted to his long curly hair and full lips, but also his masculinity, and what that means to Guts as a closeted dude who may be still in denial over his sexuality.
(which is not to say that a dude being attracted to a dude’s feminine features isn’t still gay attraction, but i mean from guts’ un-nuanced pov ofc)
I hope this is what you meant lol.
YEA VERY GOOD i was just sort of batting around thinking about how actual gay guts attraction would pan out lol
and like this is great guts has always aknowledged that griffith is beautiful etc and its like to contextualize that beyond placing him on a pedestal is difficult bc it comes wth the realization that guts is attracted to griffith not obly because of what he is conceptually but also bc he is a man. and he is attracted to his masculine features and how his feminine features look on him. this doesnt make sense because im sttuggling organizing my thoughts today but this is all good and griffiths adrogyny is imho like a physical mode of him “rationalizing” that attraction, like griffith being so cool and shining and awsome is a la romantic mode or whatever.
tbh yeah like that works rly well with how guts refers to him as “beautiful” and “pretty” in canon too imo. when he refers to his appearance or fixates on it it’s that, and it’s his long hair
but like how he admires him – for having a dream, honing himself to the limit, no room beside him for the weak, blah blah blah, all that bullshit – it’s kind of based on masculine traits (not rly physical but ykwim and I think in like fic you could extrapolate guts tricking himself into thinking his sexy masculine qualities, like his shoulders or toned arms etc, are just admiration of like, how Griffith is also physically ~ideal~ or w/e lol)
and then he calls him dazzling because of this.
it’s like, it’s all attraction, my dude. he’s “beautiful, noble, and larger than life” and you’re into all of it.
I love the Golden Age as a continuation of the Black Swordsman arc so much. Guts taken aback by Griffith’s interest in him when they first meet vs Guts absolutely fuming from Femto professing a lack of interest.
i can’t believe i’ve written multiple long posts about casca and guts trying to replace griffith with each other and i never noticed that visual parallel when they each save her til now
like i’ve been v vocally back and forth on whether casca becoming guts “sword” is intentionally negative or meant to be seen as a positive symbol of moving on from griffith, and noticing that last panel just put me way more firmly on the “negative” side lol
Millennium Falcon x White Hawk We know it from the beginning, isn’t it? He won’t love you. We have nothing left but our dream. Abandon your heart and then you will not feel pain anymore.
I’m gonna block you, which is why I capped this message instead of responding directly, but I do actually want to take a sec and answer your questions first lol, because hey it’s an excuse to talk about this shit, responding to these basic attempts at takedowns can occasionally be useful as validation for other shippers lol, and the first one is actually kinda worth discussing.
first question
Guts and Griffith both ended up opening up to Casca about their respective traumas because she happened to be there at a point when they were both particularly vulnerable.
Guts didn’t sit down with Casca and consciously decide to tell her his life story, Guts had a violent flashback during sex, strangled Casca, and then rambled about his childhood in a daze while hardly even noticing she was in front of him until she touched him and he jumped and realized what he’d just said and done.
If he’d been hitting Griffith from behind instead of Casca the exact same thing probably would’ve happened.
And if Guts had been around back then and happened upon Griffith in the river after seeing him with Gennon the previous night, the exact same thing probably would’ve happened then too, give or take Guts’ response to the “am I dirty” question.
And neither of these dudes would’ve brought these subjects up without a catalyst to anyone, including each other. Griffith because he’s repressed about it, and Guts because it wouldn’t even occur to him as something worth sharing until he’s mid-flashback.
And Griffith did have an equivalent conversation with Guts, when he asked, “do you think that I’m cruel?” That also had a catalyst, ie, they just carried out some assassinations together, but it was just as vulnerable and intimate a question as Griffith’s “am I dirty?” to Casca.
So basically the answer is: just because Guts has never had a flashback in front of Griffith doesn’t mean he’s not comfortable with him.
second question
well for a start, here are a few:
Also the entirety of the Count’s backstory in chapter 7. And a bunch of panels I skipped because I’m lazy and I’ve already posted a million collections of Gay Berserk Moments.
third question
he hasn’t chosen to sleep with a man bc a) trauma, b) he doesn’t even consciously recognize his own feelings for griffith, his subconscious beast of darkness is the one telling him he’s longing for him etc, c) even if he did figure it out during the golden age he doesn’t think he’s worthy of griffith lol there’s a whole arc about that, d) he’s only had sex twice in his life give him a chance, e) most relevantly, he’s the protagonist of a story in a seinen mag written by and for presumably hetero men.
Damn that some hard stuff to swallow, but i agree. In the eclipse he didnt even remember about her until the end.
lol sorry I don’t mean to rain negativity down or anything, and I don’t want to sound like I’m saying you shouldn’t enjoy their relationship. But yeah for me these are some of the reasons I personally don’t see them as all that romantic or particularly good for each other – and yeah the way he didn’t think of her at all during most of the eclipse was pretty telling as well.
you're the only one 