i don’t wanna rb that post bc het sloppy makeouts but wrt guts not protesting to casca touching him
i mean, he does–until he wakes up and realises she’s a woman. that means her touch isn’t ~magical~ – it’s just that his trauma is specifically tied to men
so what’s more impressive than him not freaking out about a naked woman clinging to him is him not freaking out when griffith takes his head in his hands and brings his face intimately close to his own
he doesn’t protest, he doesn’t flinch away. he looks enchanted
“only your touch didn’t offend me” isn’t just a bullshit lie, it’s moot
why would her touch offend you? she’s a woman lol
tbh I feel like Miura started with one narrative before he had the idea of hooking Guts and Casca up and then tried to mildly retcon it to make it seem more romantic. But since he didn’t have future g*tsca in mind back then the only thing Guts’ nightmare and brief panic does is
a) remind us that he’s traumatized and it’s still affecting him
b) tell us that trauma is tied specifically to men
c) specifically highlight the way griffith totally bypasses it in the next chapter
like there’s no reason for that scene to exist except to make Griffith winning him in a duel with sexual stakes and then grabbing his face and saying, “now you belong to me” stand out as shockingly dazzling to guts instead of traumatic.
basically, except i’m a little more optimistic and i think that miura purposely had guts lie there
not super intentionally of course, i don’t think guts’ inner monologue was “let me conveniently blur the gay truth so i can sound romantic” or anything like that. but yeah. miura’s a really good writer and though he has introduced stupid plot elements like a forced heterosexual romance into berserk plenty of times, he has imo always managed to make it make some sort of sense, whether intentionally or not ig. and since i enjoy coming up with excuses as to why whatever we’re talking about was “totally his intention all along,” i see that lie there as fitting considering it happens during a scene where guts is using casca as a substitute for griffith
in a way, it makes their romance seem like a parody. which i enjoy
Anonymous requested Guts rescuing Griffith who still has a chance of recovery. I kind of took the liberty with this, so Guts already rescued Griffith and is checking to see how his injuries are healing. srry, hope you like it
i don’t wanna rb that post bc het sloppy makeouts but wrt guts not protesting to casca touching him
i mean, he does–until he wakes up and realises she’s a woman. that means her touch isn’t ~magical~ – it’s just that his trauma is specifically tied to men
so what’s more impressive than him not freaking out about a naked woman clinging to him is him not freaking out when griffith takes his head in his hands and brings his face intimately close to his own
he doesn’t protest, he doesn’t flinch away. he looks enchanted
“only your touch didn’t offend me” isn’t just a bullshit lie, it’s moot
why would her touch offend you? she’s a woman lol
tbh I feel like Miura started with one narrative before he had the idea of hooking Guts and Casca up and then tried to mildly retcon it to make it seem more romantic. But since he didn’t have future g*tsca in mind back then the only thing Guts’ nightmare and brief panic does is
a) remind us that he’s traumatized and it’s still affecting him
b) tell us that trauma is tied specifically to men
c) specifically highlight the way griffith totally bypasses it in the next chapter
like there’s no reason for that scene to exist except to make Griffith winning him in a duel with sexual stakes and then grabbing his face and saying, “now you belong to me” stand out as shockingly dazzling to guts instead of traumatic.
this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???
i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying
But that’s the thing, Guts probably didn’t have prophetic dreams about neo!Griffith because Femto/n!Griff is not what he desired. Everyone who dreamed of The White Hawk desired him for the sake of absolution or social change or w/e, Guts just wants back the dork he had naked water fights with.
good point tbh. idk I was kind of just assuming everyone in the world had them regardless of their personal desire for a saviour bc the ~collective desire~ was that strong, but this makes sense too, and it’s nicely angsty so I’m into it.
There are two important parallels during the waterfall scene, when Guts and Casca fight, then fuck.
The first is this parallel to Guts and Griffith’s second duel.
Casca is the new leader of the Hawks, replacing Griffith’s role. She
challenges and fights Guts when he returns, in a mirror of Griffith
challenging and fighting him before he leaves. Then she falls to her
knees and has a self-destructive
breakdown. The last time the leader of the Hawks had a breakdown after
fighting him, Guts walked away. The scenario has presented itself again,
and this time Guts makes a different choice, one that might have
changed everything a year ago: he comforts her.
Sex with Casca is Guts subconsciously (from a character perspective) or symbolically (from a narrative perspective) trying to fix past mistakes, imo.
Throughout the fight by the waterfall, Casca is screaming at him that he broke Griffith by leaving, that it’s his fault. This scene is all about Griffith and their feelings towards him. For Guts, it’s the beginning of his eventual revelation that leaving was a mistake because Griffith didn’t look down on him after all – because Griffith’s “no good without” him.
The fact that Guts lets Casca stab him as she screams this tells us that her words hit home and he feels guilty, even as he denies it. It’s a pattern of behaviour for Guts that we’ve seen before and will see again, eg, when he let the zombie child stab him in the second chapter because he blamed himself for her death, and then denied feeling responsible to Puck afterwards (”If you’re always worried about crushing the ants beneath you… you won’t be able to walk.”)
He represses that guilt and doesn’t manage to acknowledge his mistake until about five minutes before the Eclipse, unfortunately, but this is how we know he feels it regardless, and this is how we know it’s informing his choices now – specifically, his choice to comfort, kiss, and have sex with Casca.
Guts’ denial of guilt while clearly feeling it is reminiscent of another character too:
This is the second parallel, to Casca finding Griffith in the river.
Casca eventually yanks her sword out of Guts, admits to him that she’s romantically in love with Griffith, proceeds to list all the ways Griffith is wholly unavailable (he needs to marry Charlotte, Guts took the place she wanted at Griffith’s side, and now he may not even be alive), bequeaths Griffith to Guts, and tries to kill herself. Griffith Griffith Griffith – the lead-in to sex revolves around him. Guts thinking about how he abandoned him in the snow, Casca thinking about how Griffith doesn’t need her, and Guts beginning to realize that Griffith needed him.
So Guts saves her from her suicide attempt, then comforts her through sex.
And Casca does the same in return:
She couldn’t comfort Griffith, she couldn’t be Griffith’s “woman,” she couldn’t be be something indispensable to Griffith’s dream, but she can comfort Guts, she can have sex with Guts, she can help Guts achieve his dream.
The situations requiring her comfort are even v similar – Guts has just had a flashback to his rape, and Griffith was calling himself “unclean” after selling himself to a pedophilic rapist. Griffith buries his feelings and refuses to be comforted, but Guts pours his heart out to Casca and lets her hold him.
My point is that Guts and Casca having sex is not about the other for either of them – it’s about their respective relationships to Griffith. Guts is presented with a similar scenario to the morning he left the Hawks, and after being told by Casca that he fucked up then and broke Griffith, he chooses a different course of action this time, and comforts and has sex with Casca. Casca is presented with a similar scenario to finding Griffith in the river after Gennon, but instead of being shut out she’s able to comfort the man in emotional turmoil this time.
tl;dr they’re both on the rebound from Griffith here, giving to each other what they didn’t or couldn’t give to him, and there are deliberate visual and situational parallels to illustrate this.
This is what I have thought for years. Casca and Guts whole “relationship” came about because they are in love with the same man. Griffith. Every time they are together conversation turns towards Griffith and lets face it they were both most likely thinking of Griffith during the sex.
Btw I want to say thank you for this post.
In a fandom as vitriol as most of Berserk’s western “fans” are they don’t allow for any kind of insight or discussion like this. But when I read things like this post it reminds me that I wasn’t just fucking seeing things because I swear certain types of people had me believing I was crazy.(I guess that is what those people wanted me to think).
It is posts like yours that make me want to get right back into everything that I love about Berserk.
Edit: Oh yeah I just remembered the all these talk about scars
and how the beast say that Guts basically only holding on to Casca because she is the scar Griffith give him.
Kind of like all the scars Guts indirectly gave Griffith due to his time in torture.
A nice reminder of how Guts subconscious won’t let him forget and how he really doesn’t want to let go of Griffith.
Also Guts looks fucking board after he and Casca had sex
Not to mention he out right lies here
Because
and with Griffith
There is no shoving away or telling him to not to touch him (like with Casca).
So Guts is really forgetful about whose touch it is he didn’t mind or unless you know he is projecting on to Casca that he is talking/being with someone else, a particular someone else.
Oh man I know what you mean. I’ve written so much about my interpretation of Berserk by now and sometimes the rest of the fandom still makes me wonder if I’m just seeing things or making things up. That’s one reason it’s important to find like-minded people imo, especially in a fandom that can be as hostile as this one.
Luckily I’ve managed to find a good place on tumblr where I don’t really have to deal with the majority of the fandom that hates griffith and griffguts lol.
And ty for the addition! That point about the scars and the Beast of Darkness referring to Casca as the wound Griffith left him, like damn I never thought of that but holy shit it’s perfect and fits into that scar discussion between Guts and Casca like a puzzle piece.
And lol yeah, I’m not sure whether that’s Guts fudging the details or Miura conveniently forgetting that moment with Griffith, but either way Guts’ statement that Casca was the only one who could touch him is demonstratably false.
@bthump Oh I agree, I think Guts’ dreams on Griffith after the eclipse would be a mix of longing,sorrow,mourning,regret, happiness,joy and dreaming of the good times as well as things he would have liked happen, anything romantic or otherwise.But I like to think Guts never gets a damn moment of rest without his dreams always going back to Griffith one way or the other.
lol poor guts, fighting ghosts all night, having confusing + painful dreams about griffith all morning and walking all afternoon, for months.
i’m fully on board with this concept.
Hehe No rest for the wicked 😉
Love Guts but sometimes I want to shake him by the shoulders and go “What were you thinking in leaving, you could have had it all”. Except it was because he wanted just that with Griffith,he left to try and get it. Silly Guts, Silly Griffith they really need to just hug it out and allow for each other to heal.
“They could’ve had it all” is a perfect summary of berserk lol. sigh.
@bthump Oh I agree, I think Guts’ dreams on Griffith after the eclipse would be a mix of longing,sorrow,mourning,regret, happiness,joy and dreaming of the good times as well as things he would have liked happen, anything romantic or otherwise.But I like to think Guts never gets a damn moment of rest without his dreams always going back to Griffith one way or the other.
lol poor guts, fighting ghosts all night, having confusing + painful dreams about griffith all morning and walking all afternoon, for months.
this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???
i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying
Hey considering how often Griffith was naked in the Golden age, I’m sure one of Guts’ dreams had a naked Griffith in it.
lmao right?
and lbr the odds that guts has not dreamed about griffith naked after spending half the golden age thinking about this moment
and then goes straight to intently pondering this moment for a while
are zero
@scenesthatmakeugowow said:
Well, as you noted in a previous post and as Puck would say “it’s more complex” which is why is so damn interesting.
so I just assumed without double checking that you were commenting on
that last ask, not my jokey post about Guts’ Griffith dreams lol, and I just noticed that i missed the context.
to me gay subtext and relationships and feelings are synonymous with complex and interesting and I don’t think there’s anything reductive about saying Guts’ feelings for Griffith (and vice versa) are gay af and probably quite sexual.
i can think of quite a few dream scenarios that are both gay and extremely complex and interesting and wholly reflective of the complicated emotions Guts feels tbqh. and, not to assume that you were implying this but it’s always worth saying, if anything, I’d say stripping away or ignoring the romantic and sexual subtext reduces the complexity of their relationship.
Well, as you noted in a previous post and as Puck would say “it’s more complex” which is why is so damn interesting.
totally! I mean the hill of swords reunion shortly after is such a powerful and painful mix of rage and longing and regret and loneliness etc for guts. moments like the one anon pointed out are gr8 preludes to that.
like this is one of my favourite exchanges:
like fucking, imagine being guts, obsessed with getting griffith’s attention since he was like 15, still obsessed after everything, and hearing that now. and right before griffith declares he feels nothing and “deserts” him.
his feelings are so complex and interesting to me.
ALSO speaking of “the desired”
this is a pretty glaring omission. we saw zodd and the king’s griffith dreams but not guts’, our protagonist with a “profound connection” to him???
i’m not saying guts’ canonical dreams about griffith are too gay and revealing for berserk’s general readership but that’s exactly what i’m saying
and like a chapter and a half of build up to this moment of griffith’s incarnation is about everyone in the world crying out with desire for griffith/a new world, the voices all resonating and affecting reality to climactically bring this about, and everyone being able to sense it. so like he can sense griffith, “the desired,” hatching and this is his reaction.
to quote puck
You clash head-on with your own destiny. Compared to my cooled demeanor, that is a life similar to being scorched by hellfire itself.
i want to say something about serpico and how he and guts make a good compare/contrast as basically opposite reactions to an abusive childhood, but i don’t really know what to say so i’m just going to throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks
serpico’s coping mechanism is emotional repression and calm acceptance, where he just takes absolutely everything thrown at him by his mother’s expectations and childhood bullies at first (learning quickly that fighting back led to worse) and then farnese, while guts fights back and struggles, killing donovan, defending himself against gambino’s attack, etc. i mean one was a mercenary and one was a servant, one was taught by his father figure to fight and the other was taught by his mother to bear everything, so yk it makes sense.
both killed a parent: serpico killed his mother bc he was pressured to by circumstances and did so when farnese told him to (imo farnese making it an order and holding the torch with him is what made him capable of doing it), basically just numbly doing what he’s directed to do, while guts killed his father in reactive self defense, and both are pretty messed up about it.
serpico lay down to die bc it was easier and was found by farnese who nursed him back to health; guts lay down to die bc it was easier and then got back up and fought wolves.
it feels easy to compare gambino and serpico’s mother in that both guts and serpico were their caregivers for a while. and i want to compare serpico’s mother telling him he’s noble vs gambino telling guts he’s cursed but i’m not sure where to go with that. both statements kinda fucked them up tho.
they both have tendencies to fight in a self-destructive way now that i think of it: guts throws himself into the fray and just tries to kill before he gets killed, serpico otoh lets himself be wounded in order to fight to a draw + avoid making trouble.
guts and serpico both found themselves nursed back to health and then kept by haughty insecure blond ppl, and both relationships were extremely intense and exclusive. only yk guts and griff were in love and farnese and serpico are gay bffs/siblings, and neither farnese nor serpico have epically fucked their relationship up yet.
in conclusion: i have no conclusion, idk. turns out everyone responds differently to abuse and berserk is largely about that? surprise surprise guts is active and serpico is passive? guts and serpico might have more stuff to talk about if they ever got 3am drunk together than you’d think?
lol sorry anon this got kind of long and meandering, hopefully it answers your questions though.
I guess I think that Guts isn’t really fully self-aware about the fact that he’s still trying to be Griffith’s equal. It’s not like a real goal for him the way it was when he left the Hawks, it’s just that he can’t help but crave Griffith’s attention. He needs Griffith to see and acknowledge him as someone who matters to him.
It’s why Femto’s dismissal back in the Black Swordsman arc was what spurred him to finally stand and walk up to him despite like a million broken bones, it’s why he refused to heed much sounder advice like stay and take care of the Hawks that are left, and insisted on his attention-getting revenge campaign instead, and it’s why NeoGriffith ditching him makes him do this:
Because becoming Griffith’s “equal” was only a means to an end in the first place – what Guts really wanted was to be Griffith’s friend, or, put in Guts’ own terms:
He wants to be Griffith’s number one priority. At the most genuine point of their relationship, when Griffith admitted he had no rational reason for risking his life for Guts, Guts like basically found personal fulfillment. That scene on the rooftop where Guts contemplates it and decides that this means his home (at least for now bc Guts sucks at committment) is with the Hawks, is probably the happiest moment of Guts’ life.
And when Griffith became an evil demon this core desire of Guts’ didn’t go away, I guess, Guts just started expressing it through attention-getting monster killing and wanting to personally murder Femto, to force him to look at him and value him, if not as a loved one then as an enemy.
Also, to address that last bit, I think it’s very telling that Guts doesn’t hate Griffith. It wasn’t sacrificing all his friends that made Guts’ love turn to rage and hate, it was Femto spitefully raping Casca, which is something Guts knows his Griffith wouldn’t’ve done. While Femto was born out of the darkness of Griffith, something Guts probably at least has some understanding of, he’s not the same as Griffith. He tells that to Rickert too on the Hill of Swords “That’s not the Griffith you know anymore.”
And I think a huge part of the reason he doesn’t hate or blame Griffith for making the sacrifice is because he blames himself for breaking Griffith’s heart and ruining his life.
Like Guts’ narrative from coming back after a year to this moment revolves around his slow realization that leaving was a huge fucking mistake lol. And he finally figured it out right before the Eclipse, so when he thinks of Griffith afterwards he’s associated with guilt and sadness and regret and love, rather than bitterness or hate or resentment.
Like I guess Guts’ feelings are kind of contradictory but in a way that makes sense to me. The situation is complicated af and while Guts is consumed by hate, that doesn’t conveniently erase his love. Separating Femto from Griffith is probably part of how he reconciles that, which is also why when NeoGriffith shows up looking like the old Griffith it was particularly confusing and painful for Guts to handle, and why he “forgot” he wanted to kill him lol.
And both Guts’ hate and his love lead to wanting Femto/Griffith’s attention, it just changes how he goes about trying to accomplish that.
I have to agree. Also people very rarely if ever have one motivation for things they do or their feelings inside. Humans are contradictory by nature. The heart never just wants one thing. Griffith pushing people away to protect himself but really wanting someone to be close to (someone he won’t easily lose to harshness of war). Also seen with Guts and Schierke where Guts’ calls Griffith his friend and enemy.
I think people forget at the eclipse with Casca as Guts was being held down. He also witnessed Femto killing Griffith before his eyes in that moment. This thing was not his Griffith.
Guts wanting revenge is also him wanting revenge on the Godhand and Femto for taking and destroying Griffith.
lol sorry anon this got kind of long and meandering, hopefully it answers your questions though.
I guess I think that Guts isn’t really fully self-aware about the fact that he’s still trying to be Griffith’s equal. It’s not like a real goal for him the way it was when he left the Hawks, it’s just that he can’t help but crave Griffith’s attention. He needs Griffith to see and acknowledge him as someone who matters to him.
It’s why Femto’s dismissal back in the Black Swordsman arc was what spurred him to finally stand and walk up to him despite like a million broken bones, it’s why he refused to heed much sounder advice like stay and take care of the Hawks that are left, and insisted on his attention-getting revenge campaign instead, and it’s why NeoGriffith ditching him makes him do this:
Because becoming Griffith’s “equal” was only a means to an end in the first place – what Guts really wanted was to be Griffith’s friend, or, put in Guts’ own terms:
He wants to be Griffith’s number one priority. At the most genuine point of their relationship, when Griffith admitted he had no rational reason for risking his life for Guts, Guts like basically found personal fulfillment. That scene on the rooftop where Guts contemplates it and decides that this means his home (at least for now bc Guts sucks at committment) is with the Hawks, is probably the happiest moment of Guts’ life.
And when Griffith became an evil demon this core desire of Guts’ didn’t go away, I guess, Guts just started expressing it through attention-getting monster killing and wanting to personally murder Femto, to force him to look at him and value him, if not as a loved one then as an enemy.
Also, to address that last bit, I think it’s very telling that Guts doesn’t hate Griffith. It wasn’t sacrificing all his friends that made Guts’ love turn to rage and hate, it was Femto spitefully raping Casca, which is something Guts knows his Griffith wouldn’t’ve done. While Femto was born out of the darkness of Griffith, something Guts probably at least has some understanding of, he’s not the same as Griffith. He tells that to Rickert too on the Hill of Swords “That’s not the Griffith you know anymore.”
And I think a huge part of the reason he doesn’t hate or blame Griffith for making the sacrifice is because he blames himself for breaking Griffith’s heart and ruining his life.
Like Guts’ narrative from coming back after a year to this moment revolves around his slow realization that leaving was a huge fucking mistake lol. And he finally figured it out right before the Eclipse, so when he thinks of Griffith afterwards he’s associated with guilt and sadness and regret and love, rather than bitterness or hate or resentment.
Like I guess Guts’ feelings are kind of contradictory but in a way that makes sense to me. The situation is complicated af and while Guts is consumed by hate, that doesn’t conveniently erase his love. Separating Femto from Griffith is probably part of how he reconciles that, which is also why when NeoGriffith shows up looking like the old Griffith it was particularly confusing and painful for Guts to handle, and why he “forgot” he wanted to kill him lol.
And both Guts’ hate and his love lead to wanting Femto/Griffith’s attention, it just changes how he goes about trying to accomplish that.
my feelings on his art is basically that it progressively got worse, so the mf arc is like. still pretty ok near the beginning and then slowly gets worse. griffith is mostly still very pretty, but i feel like he still cannot compare to ga griffith. farnese is cute, no one looks like a wooden doll. wbu?
hmm yeah i kind of agree. I have mixed feelings on it because I think it’s like, genuinely pretty impressive and totally gorgeous at times, but it feels a little too polished almost, and not as visceral/raw as it could during the golden age
but then again i’m more emotionally attached to the golden age so it’s not like i’m objective, and despite that a few of my favourite panels are from the millenium falcon arc, so idk really
you're the only one 