Aww thank you. I might. I’ve never actually written a fanfic before, but there’s so little content in the berserk fandom, it makes you wanna create more.
yeah ikwym, and it’s as good a place to start as any! i think everyone in this tiny fandom is kind of starving for more content ngl, i’d love to read whatever you wrote 🙂
Idk how it could happen or what kind of AU would lead to this but this is a v depressing concept, I approve lol. Idk what to add but I think I can safely say that Guts wouldn’t leave him in a cave for 2 years tho.
(relatedly, Casca as Godhand? I mean there’s no way to reverse their roles without changing literally everything about the story but still, Casca as a (scary, not naked and slan-y) demon god…)
Hmm Casca as a Godhand. The only thing I can think of that might make her become one is something like: she snapped and thought “I’ll follow my own dream/live for myself, because everyone I love uses and abandons me or puts their own dreams before me” but I honestly can’t see her making a sacrifice.
and anyway guts’ official dream is made up and his genuine dream is to be loved and respected by someone he loves and respects.
and now that i think about it that’s actually some pretty fun irony. to fulfill his actual dream he thinks he has to come up with another dream and in doing so he fucks up his actual dream.
This summarization of his dream to Casca:
then this flashback during the wyald fight:
Like lol once I said that Guts is technically fulfilling his dream by being the Black Swordsman and fighting stronger and stronger enemies in the form of monsters, which is ironic and proves how stupid his dream was, but i mean, he genuinely did want to go out and fight monsters the whole time, he was thinking about it even before Wyald.
Like I’m p sure the dream he chose and settled on pretty much boils down to challenge Zodd to a rematch and defeat him.
Idk how it could happen or what kind of AU would lead to this but this is a v depressing concept, I approve lol. Idk what to add but I think I can safely say that Guts wouldn’t leave him in a cave for 2 years tho.
(relatedly, Casca as Godhand? I mean there’s no way to reverse their roles without changing literally everything about the story but still, Casca as a (scary, not naked and slan-y) demon god…)
fa and i were talking the other day about certain people who (imo) misinterpret griffith’s character to be all about power & control … i think that’s a very stupid but also very interesting character analysis and i think i understand where it comes from lol
what baffles me is how people miss all the not so subtle hints that griffith actually cares. but i guess when you’ve already adopted a point of view, your brain shifts reality to fit it. no one’s exempt from that, really
so griffith is the commander (? idk these titles, sorry if i got it wrong, i’m gay) of the band of the hawk, clearly likes being in control, i won’t deny that. ‘claimed’ guts at least partially due to his strength and fighting ability, schemed behind the scenes a lot, eventually when guts tried to leave he wouldn’t let him, all true. but did he break because he wasn’t in control anymore? well, in a way, i guess, i say with my voice going really high. the real conflict of his character was the contest between his dream, motivated by childish desires and guilt, and guts, the only man who made him forget all about it. guts made him lose his reason, lose control, and he fell apart completely. his raw feelings for guts made him feel so weak and vulnerable it was unbearable.
but even so, what griffith really wanted was guts. the problem was it was already too late. too many people had died. too much time had been wasted. on top of that, guts was no longer a certain and stable presence in his life. he could leave at any moment, again, and griffith wouldn’t be able to stop him, and would have to go through another emotional breakdown.
i don’t know, like. if what you get from that is “griffith is a control freak who throws a fit when he can’t puppet master everyone around him” then i applaud you because that’s an
inconceivable
perspective for me. to me, griffith’s character is about guilt, repression, and an unspeakable love, so strong it made him lose sight of everything else, so intense it shattered him into a million pieces. griffith claims he does things for Logical Reasons, but do you really buy that? when he sold his body to a paedophile, do you really think it was because he just wanted more money? when he decided to throw away his humanity, to bury his fragile heart, do you really think he was doing it strategically? i don’t know, must be nice to not care about anything that truly makes griffith compelling as a character, i bet reading berserk is way less painful then
also a couple of points:
as someone has pointed out already, griffith didn’t force guts to join the band of the hawk. he invited him, guts refused, griffith was surprised but didn’t really say anything. and then guts was like, we’ll duel for it, and griffith saw his opportunity and accepted
this one’s important: griffith ….. didn’t want to become a king so he could have power and money lol. he wanted to create his own society, where things like class, race, and gender wouldn’t matter, just like they didn’t to the hawks. and that’s clearly the type of kingdom falconia is now.
SAME I feel like the aspect of control and whether Griffith has it or not is completely incidental to his character. I don’t think having control is a priority for him, I don’t think it’s a source of anything or a motivation, I think at most it’s a side effect of the enormity of his dream and the fact that to achieve it he has to be a leader.
Like, he is a leader, he sends people to his death and he owns that fact (partially in a denial of his guilt over that fact imho), he wants to be king, and he has a breakdown when Guts leaves that involves claiming ownership of him, but none of those stem from a place of control-freakiness.
When it comes to Guts Casca gets angry because Griffith doesn’t control him as much as he should as a leader and lets him basically do whatever the hell he wants and plans around it. Griffith is the one who tries to ask Guts to help him as a friend by killing a guy rather than ordering him as a soldier, and Guts is the one who wants it to be an order. Griffith makes a point of letting his Hawks choose to follow him because it’s another way he can deny his guilt for their deaths. (”I guess it’s because… they themselves chose to fight.”) Casca follows him after Griffith tells her “do what you wish” (do whatever tf you want is practically a griffith motto, he says it to corkus in the beginning, p much says it to guts wrt battle tactics, etc.)
Idk I don’t get any sense of needing to be in control from Griffith’s personality, I almost see the opposite in the way he denies responsibility for the Hawks’ deaths, his calm interest when discussing the fact that monsters exist even though Zodd almost killed them, his belief in – and more than that, his strong desire to believe in – fate, etc. “We are all at the mercy of a great tide, fate or whatever you want to call it.”
Refusing to let Guts leave came from emotional desperation and falling back on a previously established dynamic that Guts himself suggested and reinforced because he couldn’t communicate his feelings any other way. Imo.
Oh and also like +1 I think Guts fucked him up partially bc to achieve his dream he has to remain in control of himself and when Guts is involved he totally loses it, but I don’t think he really allowed himself to accept the fact that Guts makes him irrational until the torture chamber. I could see an argument that his emotional repression/denial is a way to remain in control of his feelings, but again I don’t think he lives in denial and repression because he’s a control freak, I think it’s because his dream necessitates it.
“Griffith had to make himself strong.” He doesn’t intrinsically desire to be in control of himself or others, he forces himself to be to achieve his dream, which itself is motivated by guilt.
Technically with cut tendons he shouldn’t be able to curl his fingers at all, but Miura seemed to just make his grip extremely weak and useless. Anyway it wasn’t a calculated attempt to strangle Guts, it was an emotional reaction so it doesn’t really matter whether he was physically capable of killing him, it just shows us how he’s feeling.
Yeah we didn’t get a close up of him when Charlotte was throwing herself on him so idt his reaction really mattered and probably wasn’t anything special. Though when Charlotte took the dart we got a few close ups of Griffith looking v intent and shocked so I wouldn’t say he didn’t care. I don’t think he cared for her sake, but I think the idea that she would take a dart for him even after he was unable to present himself as a perfect fiancee for her was a surprise.
Plus he’s not super rational and he tells her he’ll come back for her, so I think he may have taken it as a sign that his dream was still a possibility, Charlotte could still marry him, even though if he stopped and thought about it for half a second (and he does later) he’d realize that no his dream is dead and buried. It’s gr8 foreshadowing though.
Ooh good question. Yeah I wonder. Because it’s really unsurprising to me that he has no Eclipse-related regrets, but it would be so interesting to see him confronted with a reminder of how vulnerable he was to his feelings for Guts.
I’ve seen people theorize that NeoGriffith might’ve had Guts leaving him in the snow on his mind and maybe took a little bit of spiteful pleasure in being the one to leave Guts behind this time, which I rly like as an idea, especially with Guts moping about how NeoGriffith “deserted” him, but it’s just a headcanon really.
Idk. I feel like something as small as an involuntary flinch from NeoGriffith would be extremely satisfying at this point, x10 if a reminder of the second duel and his devastating feelings for Guts is the reason for it. Maybe we’ll get to see something like that in the future.
I love that Guts thinks of the Zodd debacle as something shared between him and Griffith, something they did together, even though they had a troop of Hawks with them.
And I think Griffith thinks of it the same way:
His reaction to Wyald’s transformation into a monster is to try to join Guts’ side, to help him face it or save him from it.
(And yeah I have no problem confidentally stating that that’s why Griffith fell over here lol. He tries it again when he tries to tear himself away from the men holding him when Casca is in danger, and before this he’d tried to grab his sword, so.)
Also to add an actual point, the call-backs to Zodd are rly effective in spotlighting Griffith’s helplessness in contrast, as well as spotlighting Guts’ solitary fight against monsters, again in contrast to his first fight beside Griffith.
He saves Casca but they don’t go on to fight Wyald together, he tells her to fuck off and let him do this himself, while Griffith is removed from everyone else watching helplessly from a distance. Without Griffith Guts is alone, and vice versa.
About the tv tropes: It might not just be the homophobic readers. Sometimes I think the authors themselves are in denial of just how romantic the relationships they’ve created are. Like Miura has repeatedly said in interviews that all that “drama” is normal for male friendships, etc. Idk they might say this so the readership doesn’t drop.
Yeah true. When it comes to tv tropes it’s definitely the readers, but yeah lol it’s sadly the exception rather than the rule when a creator doesn’t no homo gay subtext or sometimes straight up text. And yeah ime it’s generally pretty hard to tell whether the denials are sincere or pr.
#i never rly think about griffith overhearing this bit but sometimes i wonder if connecting guts wanting to leave to his speech changed anything #it’s not rly brought up after this but hmm
@bthump i was thinking about that too because it feels like it should change something but i think all it probably did was dissipate the last bit of griffith’s anger (though he had already forgiven guts at that point). and, this is just speculation on my part, but i think it may have reminded him of his current condition, considering the fact that had he wanted to explain himself to guts … he’d have no way. no tongue, can’t say it, no use of hands, can’t write it. he’s completely dependent on guts, physically and emotionally, and can’t stop him from leaving. and, in his mind, why would guts want to stay with him when he’s useless like this anyway.
Not to the Hawks, but “just me and Griffith.“
I love that Guts thinks of the Zodd debacle as something shared between him and Griffith, something they did together, even though they had a troop of Hawks with them.
And I think Griffith thinks of it the same way:
His reaction to Wyald’s transformation into a monster is to try to join Guts’ side, to help him face it or save him from it.
(And yeah I have no problem confidentally stating that that’s why Griffith fell over here lol. He tries it again when he tries to tear himself away from the men holding him when Casca is in danger, and before this he’d tried to grab his sword, so.)
THE HANDS the hands the hands, panel not included: the way guts first cradles griffith with his hand high on griffith’s thigh
griffith’s hand reaches for his throat, but his tendons are cut and his has no strength, and anyway, guts jerks him closer out of despair and protectiveness (he snarls at casca like an animal telling her to get away) and griffith’s hand falls and he sees guts is crying, and griffith moves his hand down to hold guts. the immediate jump from anger to comfort from griffith k i l l s me.
TRUE! Griff is Gut’s light. Honestly, what I want more than a final battle is Griff bringing Guts back from BM, or Guts going into Griffith’s mind like Casca = ensuing emotional breakdown/unfrozen heart. (& Guts meeting child Griff in his mind this I need) Griffith doesn’t need to die, he needs to become a sobbing mess of feelings.
I second this so hard, I would absolutely love if either of these things happened. And hey there’s been a lot of mind exploration with Schierke around, so again, totally possible.
seisans said: IM SO GLAD YOU MENTIONED THAT RYOUAKIRA MOMENT YES
it’s such a good moment omg
(lmao totally ot but i was browsing the devilman tv tropes page the other day for some stupid reason and there was literally an entry where someone mentioned that akira mysteriously regained his human heart with no explanation and it’s like !!! why are people like this. we literally see it happen on the page omg. i can get homophobes denying gay overtones but seeing them completely blocking climactic plot-relevant scenes out of their head because they’re gay is incredible to me.)
i’ve seen ppl speculate that he Let rickert slap him which …. hmm i don’t know about that. he certainly was surprised by it, tho ig he could let his “guard” down unintentionally
I could maybe see Griffith letting Rickert slap him because it doesn’t really matter and he’s letting Rickert give him an honest answer or w/e.
But what really gets me is Griffith’s silence in response to Rickert’s speech about how he’s loyal to his Griffith, not this Griffith. There’s no way that’s calculated, he just had nothing to say. All he’s got is “so it is,” in response to Rickert saying the insignias are different. Idk I love it, I can’t help but read that ambiguous silence as inner conflict and self doubt.
i mean it’s totally a legit possibility after this
Tho incidentally, as an addendum to that last ask, I think the fact that Griffith is supposed to be untouchable (presumably literally and figuratively) by the vast majority of people means that Rickert being able to slap him and leave him speechless and off-balance is a great big sign that something’s malfunctioning with Griffith and his unfreezing heart.
Which is one reason I think that while no one’s going to be able to murder him or turn Falconia against him directly, there’s a distinct possibility of a future storyline where Griffith fucks himself over because he’s a hot mess.
Continue- My reasoning for insinuating that Griffith is trying to fit in
and erase the old fedora is because he changed the Band of the Hawks
name to Falcon since he’s marrying into high society, uh the dude will
wake into a rude awakening Charlotte might even dislike Griffith if he
starts changing. The tea compliment what’s next, it’ll get annoying he’s
so fake trying to delete the past yet they don’t see him as their equal
even though he’s worked hard at least when he was human.
Anon
I respect your opinion but I’m running out of ways to say I don’t think
that he’s going to do anything particularly evil or cruel to Charlotte
or the rest of Falconia. I feel like I’ve explained my perspective
pretty thoroughly by now and I can’t think of much else to say on the
topic, so we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
Tho I will say that Hawk -> Falcon is a translation discrepency, the word is the same in Japanese.
You grabbed my curiosity expand your reply about Charlotte not being one
to avoid being a causality to Fem/NeoGriff ? I know that term applies
to Guts and he has his own will but Griffith has fate on his side. Very
confusing, and people undermine Charlotte a lot maybe their dislike is
because she has a thing for Griffith but it was him who suduced her not
the other way around. She’ll bail Miura will create drama he slept with
her next day lmao, I believe Charlotte has bad luck ouch.
I’m too lazy to find the panels rn but I’m
referring to I think Skull Knight (or possibly Flora) describing
Griffith as untouchable as an author is to the characters in a book. He
exists on a different level, and the reason he went out of his way to
have Flora killed was because she’s one of the few people in the world
capable of potentially moving against him, as a witch who also exists on
a higher level.
My point is just that very few people can do a
thing to impede Griffith’s plans because he’s a god. Guts and Casca may
be able to due to the effect of their brands, maybe Schierke and maybe
even Farnese due to being witches, probably Skull Knight could, but
Charlotte and/or various nobles undoubtedly can’t.
Finally, I just
want to say that I’m occasionally finding it difficult to respond to
your messages since they mostly seem to be more along the lines of lists
of your opinions rather than an attempt to start a dialogue, and I
often have very little to add. I don’t want to discourage anon
messages, I like getting them and I welcome them from everyone, but I
just want to warn you in advance that from now on I might not publish
every one I get if I find I have little to say in response.
Huh that’s really weird and random sounding. I don’t really go to youtube or reddit for fandom stuff so yeah never seen that myself.
I don’t think Griffith cares enough about Charlotte to really gaf if she leaves tbh. I’m pretty sure once they’re married he’s king no matter what, so if she suddenly disappeared it wouldn’t really affect his ability to rule, and unless something v surprising happens I doubt she’s going to suddenly change her mind and leave before the wedding.
And anyway NeoGriffith’s got fate on his side and only ppl outside causality can do anything to affect his ability to fulfill humanity’s desires, presumably, and Charlotte isn’t one of those people, so I don’t think he has anything to worry about there. + ia she’s not stupid but she also has no reason to doubt or dislike him right now.
you're the only one 