for real though, by having such a pivotal moment happen while griffith was naked and backlit by streaming sunlight as guts stared up at him makes every flashback intensely homoerotic
i’m also rly feeling the loss of cute incidental moments like griffith shoving the kama sutra in guts’ face and guts patting him on the back in tombstone of flame lol
yk the anime is a good guide to how to copy really gay scenes shot for shot and suck the homoeroticism right out of them
idt this is anything more than coincidence but that tree looks like the branches in the sky circa Falconia and combined with Griffith’s words it’s making me feel feelings
I re-read this chapter and tbh I’m still feeling this, and wondering if it might even be intentional considering the placement of the words
surely Miura had some future worldbuilding concepts in mind early on
I haven’t heard of him, but I’ll check him out when I get a chance, thanks for the rec. I’m about to head off to work but maybe when I get home I’ll watch smthn of his.
the thing with berserk is I’d love more fan content and there is stuff out there in the non-tumblr portion of the internet that’s mostly discussion, which would be great but I don’t think I could be more scared of cis-male opinions on berserk tbh
I’ve barely read any and but I feel like I can… picture it based on what little I’ve seen and I do not want. strongly.
this is the only thing that springs to mind as something from straight dude-centric berserk fandom that i mostly agreed with. it’s been a while since i watched it and i’m sure i’ve refined my own opinions since then so idk if i’d still be going ‘yeah you’re not wrong’ at most of his points, but it’s probably still worth a watch
but yeah in general i avoid everything outside my little tumblr circle, greater berserk fandom is the absolute worst
a) oh hell yeah, thank you! the title of that video is even interesting and it’s actually come up recommended on youtube for me a few times and is one of the ones I was scared to click on and
that’s the kind of thing I want to avoid but at the same time if it’s a downplaying or an alternate explanation I can live with it– I think the only thing I’d come close to accepting is that there’s something more “profound” that motivates him, or well. no accepting, but I can fully understand why people would take that view while also completely disagreeing? there’s at least justification for that in some ways. (although I think that view in itself is as you said, no homo-ish, but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest reasons for griffith doing what he does imo).
and c) I’ve now had like my first ever unexpected negative anon (a transphobic one to boot! wow amazing) from this fandom. oh. dear.
(also just watching now and “the less you look at griffith, the worse he seems” is a pretty observation though. yes good).
but also accepts something the narrative pretty explicitly explains is a
Bad Idea: making griffith into something “more than”, or someone on a
pedestal, who is incomprehensible in nature, is one of the deepest
reasons for griffith doing what he does imo
yk this is a great point actually. part of the point of griffith’s narrative is that he’s only human. like, i do think his feelings are incomprehensible to him, at least until he spends a year doing nothing but being tortured and examining those feelings, but they’re not particularly grandiose or more-than.
I actually really dig that as a thematic thing now that you’ve brought it up – Griffith’s feelings for Guts should be plain old ordinary human love and sexuality, because Griffith is an ordinary human who just like… sucks at recognizing/accepting that he is, and sucks at being recognized as an ordinary human.
and the same goes for femto/neogriff since despite being a demigod demon in berserk all these monsters and gods originate in recognizable ordinary human feelings.
like damn that just neatly tied one of my favourite berserk themes to griffith and guts’ love, that’s perfect.
(also tbf I may be misrepresenting what he says about griffguts since I don’t remember the one i linked very well and I haven’t actually watched his video about it, I’m just going off a few comments on it that I read while trying to figure out if it was worth watching lol)
ps lol i went for a good like 8 months without getting any anon hate
despite regularly posting controversial opinions, but now there’s one
anon blowing up my inbox, and it’s def the same person who sent you
those messages lol. sorry about that, she probably found you thru me.
the thing with berserk is I’d love more fan content and there is stuff out there in the non-tumblr portion of the internet that’s mostly discussion, which would be great but I don’t think I could be more scared of cis-male opinions on berserk tbh
I’ve barely read any and but I feel like I can… picture it based on what little I’ve seen and I do not want. strongly.
this is the only thing that springs to mind as something from straight dude-centric berserk fandom that i mostly agreed with. it’s been a while since i watched it and i’m sure i’ve refined my own opinions since then so idk if i’d still be going ‘yeah you’re not wrong’ at most of his points, but it’s probably still worth a watch
but yeah in general i avoid everything outside my little tumblr circle, greater berserk fandom is the absolute worst
it’s exactly that, there’s like venn diagrams of what my friends are into and it doesn’t fully overlap with annnyone else I know irl except well me obvs. if it doesn’t put someone off because of the graphic and unpleasantly depicted rape, it’s the violence factor, or the anime factor, or the tragic “ending” factor, or the “hey this isn’t actually finished” factor ha.
yeah. it’s too bad because there’s so much to love about it, but like ngl if I’d heard about it and been warned about what happens I might’ve avoided it too so I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to get into it. i’m actually pretty glad i had a friend who got me to watch the anime without telling me anything about it first lol, tho I’d never spring it on anyone myself.
god every damn time i think of that wyald scene i see red, ugh
like, guts pauses while fighting wyald to crack wise, sexualize casca and then yell at her to go away, and then afterwards when the fighting is over and done it’s casca getting teary over guts’ wounds, rather than guts showing any compassion or empathy at all.
like this is a narrative problem, casca doesn’t even get a reaction to her own assault there, and when judeau comforts her it’s while she’s crying over guts fighting wyald, not what happened to her, so it’s hard to hate guts for this when it’s more of a miura problem, but still. it’s so so so bad.
(funny enough the closest thing we get to acknowledgement of casca’s assault was griffith trying desperately to tear himself away from the men holding him to somehow help her as soon as wyald starts stripping her. so like, incidentally, there’s another point to throw out there when people start going off on their griffith is a sociopath arguments lol)
actually that post reminded me of a quick thing i was gonna write a while ago and forgot about
so i’ve mentioned before a few times that Guts and Judeau’s conversation here is kind of weird because Guts swivels from ‘what the hell are you talking about’ to ‘actually yeah I should totally fuck Casca, I just need to become Griffith’s equal first’ within about a minute
In other posts I suggested that this was an awkwardly written way of bringing a romance with Casca to the forefront. This seems to reframe Guts’ motivation for leaving as at least in part to become worthy of Casca, despite this never occuring to Guts before.
Now I’m thinking that this scene isn’t actually about complicating Guts’ motivation for leaving at the last minute – I’m thinking it’s set up for Guts’ motivation for romancing Casca.
Meaning, he doesn’t want to become Griffith’s equal so he can feel worthy of Casca’s love, he wants to win Casca to feel like Griffith’s equal.
And I’m js, that reading fits with the way the Guts/Casca “romance” is written throughout the rest of the story, ie, as secondary and serving the relationship between Guts and Griffith, and often falling by the wayside next to it, rather than vice versa.
Like when Guts says he can accept the fact that Casca is still obsessed with Griffith because he’s even more obsessed. Like how (as I thoroughly explained in the post linked above) their sex scene revolves around their relationships to Griffith. Like how Wyald almost raping Casca is treated as an opportunity not for compassion or comfort but for one-liners by Guts (his reaction is to tell her to go away because she’s distracting with ripped clothes !!! like !!! fucking hell). Like how Guts is focused solely on Griffith during the Eclipse, up to and including a moment where he looks down, sees the Band being eaten by monsters, and goes right back to trying to hack Griffith’s egg open, without even sparing a thought for Casca. Like how he abandons her in a cave for two years while hunting Femto down. Like how he only realizes that was a bad decision when he compares it to leaving Griffith kneeling in the snow. Like everything the Hound says. Like Miura’s direct statement that Casca only survived the Eclipse to keep Guts pissed off about it. etc etc etc
Basically I’m not saying it’s better writing this way, but it’s bad in a different way. It’s not clunky so much as plain old misogynistic, but hey p much everything regarding Guts and Casca’s relationship is misogynistic either way, so at least if the romance with Casca was never an end in itself but rather a means to the end of being Griffith’s equal, it’s consistent. At least it means we’re not supposed to read this bullshit and think “aw true love,” yk?
@kissing-monsters lmao ikr Berserk is the kind of thing I’d rec like… only if someone was specifically looking for a gay shakespearean tragedy and doesn’t mind rly dark shit, and then only with about 500 caveats and warnings.
but man it really hits the spot if that’s what you’re after ngl
and ty! lol i think especially part 4 has kind of a ship manifesto feel to it so I get what you mean.
griffith will be lying in bed thinking about becoming king and at first it’s normal shit like picturing himself riding into battle with his troops, looking out the castle windows down at his kingdom, etc but slowly it turns into imagining guts smiling at him during his coronation, sitting in his throne with guts standing behind him and his hand on griffiths shoulder, commissioning blacksmiths all over the country to craft ridiculously huge swords for guts……
u ever think about how griffith was dangling from a broken arm at the start of the eclipse and frantically reached down so guts could catch his hand as he fell anyway
and guts was the one who let go bc griffith’s arm couldn’t take the strain
and all this after guts’ touch is what sent him into eclipse-causing despair 2 minutes earlier
Thesis statement of this goddamn thesis: Guts is sexually attracted to Griffith.
Now, this is long. This is the shortest part of a four-part series, and this isn’t a short post. And basically my intention is to show why I find it so incredibly easy to read Guts as attracted to Griffith, and explain how this reading adds layers of meaning that fit neatly within Berserk’s themes and enrich the story. I’m not going to speculate on Miura’s motives for adding a ton of gay subtext, like, it could be anything from trying to be as gay as possible without pissing off his publishers to it all being totally coincidental and meaningless with an alternate explanation for every point I have, or anywhere in between.
My point is only that Berserk readily lends itself to gay readings, with a focus on Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith (as I feel like it tends to be neglected in favour of interpretations that Griffith has a one-sided crush.)
Part one covers the Black Swordsman stuff and the way Guts and Griffith’s relationship is revealed to the audience, part two covers the first several chapters of the Golden Age with a focus on visuals and how Guts sees Griffith, part three tackles Casca’s role in the story, and part four is more of an overview on why I think reading Berserk through a gay lens works so well.
So here we go.
Part One – Our Introduction to the Concept of Guts and Griffith
We’re introduced to Guts and Griffith’s relationship near the end of the Black Swordsman arc. Before the appearance of the Godhand we know that Guts is really fucking angry, we know he’s monster slaying because he’s out for revenge, we know he’s looking for a group called “the Godhand,” and thanks to Puck spelling some stuff out we know that he’s also sad and deeply afraid that he’s fighting a losing battle.
The comparison to Vargas hints that maybe he lost some loved ones, plus an eye and a limb to an apostle which is close enough to the truth to be decent foreshadowing.
But it’s not until the Godhand show up as the Count’s about to die that we learn what’s really going on with Guts. The information is given to us surprisingly straightforwardly, and the way the information is revealed to us is pretty telling.
The first six chapters have been teasing the mystery of what happened to Guts to piss him off so much, from the way we kick off in media res, to hints about his issues and trauma (eg the aforementioned Vargas comparison, the way he lets the possessed corpse of the kid stab him, etc), to Puck directly asking what the hell happened to him outloud for the benefit of the audience. We start to get our answer in chapter 7.
I don’t really have much to say about Charlotte tbh, nothing about her character really grabs me, but if anything comes to mind or she gets more meaty content in the story eventually, I’ll def write something. Though I don’t really think Casca’s reaction to trauma should be used as a benchmark for how strong anyone else is lol, because her reaction was v unrealistic and pretty much just Miura’s convenient way of getting her out of the way and explaining why she wasn’t around during the Black Swordsman arc despite being alive. I don’t think it means she’s suffered more than anyone else (she may have, but it’s not relevant), or that she’s emotionally or mentally weaker than anyone else.
Charlotte is pretty resilient though, totally agree.
Yeah I’m assuming we’re not far from seeing some revealing emotional NeoGriffith moments, after his interaction with Rickert, but we’ll see I guess. I have my doubts that it has anything to do with the magic baby, but again, we’ll see.
Though speaking of, one thing I can say is that I don’t think it will be a tantrum because things aren’t going his way. We’ve never seen that from human Griffith – when things get bad for him, he’s serene about it. He deals with people plotting against him easily, he uses something that could be very distressing (facing Gennon at the most important battle of the war) and turns it to his advantage, he faces Zodd with calm battle tactics and determination even when the odds of him succeeding are nil, when he’s captured after fucking Charlotte he reaches for his sword and then peacefully gives up when he remembers he’s unarmed, he smugly taunts the king after losing everything and being whipped, and the torturer even comments on how quiet and non-responsive he is during torture, at least during the first day or two.
The only circumstances we saw that made him lose control emotionally were sex with Gennon/guilt + self-loathing, and Guts-related stuff (including Femto failing to kill him and NeoGriffith’s heart going off).
So when NeoGriff does eventually show some emotion, my bets are on it being because of Guts.
Yk I wonder if this is part of what motivates him to leave. Like maybe if he hadn’t heard this speech he would’ve given up, continued to fight for Griffith as a soldier but never felt up to potentially becoming his friend/equal. But, even if he doesn’t connect the dots that Griffith’s speech was stupid and he in fact is loved, this chapter must still reinforce the fact that Griffith is irrational around him, does seem to value him moreso than anyone else, etc.
So maybe this gives Guts the confidence that becoming Griffith’s friend is an actual achievable possibility for him and something he should work towards.
It’s like during the 2nd duel, when Guts was thinking, well I’m glad he wants to fight me, this tells me I’m still worth spilling blood over. He gets it, he just doesn’t get how gone Griffith is for him. And in fairness, neither does Griffith, so.
what if the one who ends up using Dragonslayer (from Farnese’s dream) is not Farnese or Schierke or even Dog-Guts, but rather…
Casca herself?
Hear me out, the broken doll is only missing but a few fragments and this lil one here changes with every memory the girls retrieved (she spoke and expressed her desires when she couldn’t speak at all at first). If this keeps up, which is the whole point of this arc, Casca will slowly come back more and at some point, she’ll be able to confront her own past in order to fulfill her wishes and end this journey.
This might imply having to fight by herself the embodiment of her fears once we get to the final fragment…
otherwise she’ll never find her resolve in order to finally cope with everything that she went through.
Besides, it’d be a beautiful parallel considering that Dragonslayer is a big reason our Black Swordsman managed to fight and survive all this time, so much that the sword itself became stronger and more efficient against Apostles after killing so many of them.
Finally, it would also be an interesting nod back to why Casca once took a sword and learnt how to fight for herself…
…right after she was assaulted for the first time. Using Griffith’s initial advice to overcome what he did to her, wouldn’t it be awesome?
I’m looking forward to anyone who might use Dragonslayer in a future chapter, but I’ll be extra happy if this person turns out to be Casca, who’s finally ready to come back. 😀
yo @ the anon now whining about heterophobia or w/e in my inbox, i’m not publishing any more of your messages bc i don’t feel like dignifying them with either an argument or an audience
so feel free to keep sending them to me but you’re not getting a platform for your shit here lol
you're the only one 