i sometimes have creative streaks where i vid nonstop for a while and then never actually reach the point where i feel comfortable declaring it done, so they all end up 90% finished on my harddrive instead of posted anywhere.
but I’ve also gotten much better at participating in fandom in the last year or so so there’s a much higher chance now of maybe finishing something and posting it at some point in the future. and if I do it will probably be berserk related lol.
I would be so interested to see any vids you do finish! I’m big on vids in fandom and it doesn’t seem to be as common to find them anymore for whatever reason in live action stuff, but berserk just seems like it could be amazing for vids. (I guess also amv’s are a slightly different culture to live action vids, hrm– sidetracked sorry).
also please don’t be shy to share, this fandom needs all the guts/griffith content it can get and you have such an eye for their subtext(/text) that I feel like you must have something to say in a vid 🙂
hey thank you so much for the encouragement 🙂 ikwym i’ve also been a big fan of vidding and vids for most of my time in fandom but on tumblr the live action vid side at least seems less centralized and harder to find.
and ok full disclosure: i actually have a (very self indulgent and kind of ridic fair warning) berserk vid i’ve been working on for the last week or so and it’s just about done so i’ll probably post it in a few days. i didn’t want to say b4 bc i wasn’t sure i was going to finish it lol. but ngl this and @seisans reply kind of spurred me on a bit so ty both :))
Everyone in the Band of the Hawk knows that Casca loves Griffith. But
what if that was by design, to fight off the advances of her comrades? I
wouldn’t be surprised if Casca, having given up on the prospect
of being with Griffith, kept up the facade of this crush so other guys
wouldn’t hit on her. I find it had to believe no other guy in the Band
of the Hawk would have tried to get with her.
As other folks in the notes have pointed out I feel like she was absolutely respected by her men and by the rest of the band so I don’t necessarily see this as a way to de-sexualize herself to them. (She doesn’t have any illusions that she can escape from the attention from other men.)
I do see this as a way to keep herself from ever examining her feelings. Being emotionally tangled with Griffith alone and with Griffith through Guts is much safer than having to examine her own relationship with sexuality which is obviously very heavily informed by trauma.
Heterosexuality in Berserk honestly feels like the social structure all three of our main characters use to hide from trauma. (Homophobia and misogyny being the two bolstering structures of Heterosexism of course.)
fandom needs to give Casca more credit for her earnest, premeditated murder attempt here. Like Griffith’s was a split-second decision to make a move that had a risk of potentially killing Guts, while still aiming only to wound, and it’s taken as proof that he’s been evil all along. Casca’s straight up aiming to kill here, but no one takes her seriously.
Which is partly Miura’s fault for not taking Casca seriously as a threat to Guts, but the intent is here I’m js and I like it because it’s dark and fucked up and shows Casca’s very own interesting inner darkness. I don’t want to just condemn her for it bc I’m into Casca’s violent rage, but I hate how she gets infantalized both by Guts not even bothering to draw his sword and by fandom treating this less like a murder attempt and more like a cute hissy fit.
She went full force on him taking out all her anger on him because she EXPECTED him to dodge her attacks, and also EXPECTED not to hurt him as a result. And that’s also why she was so shook when she did:
I mean: If she REALLY had the SERIOUS intention to kill him she wouldn’t have cared about him getting hurt like this. I think she intended to use Guts more as a punching bag to let out her frustration on (Remember, she prevented Guts from drawing his sword)
She did hate him and the situation with the hawks made her frustration even worse. And part of that hate was because she cared so much about both Griffith and Guts.
She’s also the third best fighter in the Hawks who we’re told can take on ten men at a time. We’re certainly not shown it here, which is one of my issues with this scene, but her threat to Guts should be more significant and dangerous than any other non-monstrous threat, aside from Griffith and Boscogne.
Yes, she was shocked when she did stab him, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was actively trying to and from what we’re told about her skills she had a decent shot at it.
Guts’ running commentary tells us “she’s serious,” she’s really trying to kill him, so Guts at least, based on her fighting style, believes she’s aiming to kill, and I see no reason to doubt him. Her shock and the way she immediately ends the assault when she lands a hit tells us that obviously she’s not committed to killing Guts and she was just irrationally lashing out in anger, and it throws some freezing water on her rage, but nothing about her attack to that point was half-hearted or feigned.
And from what I could tell she didn’t prevent him from drawing his sword at all – she tells him to draw his sword twice, she aimed at his neck, and he barely deflected with his blade still partly in its hilt. He eventually does draw his sword to defend himself.
I’m not saying she’s evil lol, especially in the world of Berserk mercenaries where friends fighting each other seems to be par for the course, based on Judeau’s reaction to Guts and Griffith’s fight and also Casca’s knife-throwing when they’re in the cave being treated as comedy and not drama, but it’s still a very dark, very fucked up outlet for her rage that shocks and does endanger Guts, and it’s a disservice to Casca’s character that it’s not given any weight on either a narrative or a fan reaction level, imo.
So anyway I stand by semi-seriously describing it as a premeditated murder attempt even if she didn’t follow through, because Casca’s hardcore and her skills shouldn’t be dismissed, despite Miura’s writing often doing just that. It’s not a cold “I want you to die,” it’s an emotional “I am going to fucking kill you,” but it’s also not spur of the moment since she lead Guts to this clearing specifically to hack at him with a sword.
Also I’m not trying to say she hates Guts or anything? My point is only that her anger manifests in legit trying to kill people, and I love that as a dark and intense character note, but it’s unfortunately downplayed and brushed off which disappoints me.
Oh so it makes sense that Casca might be more comfortable with another woman given all she’s been through with men right?……..No? Is that not how it works?
funny how they never take that argument to its logical conclusion
i also got 2 v similarly worded and themed messages (tho way longer) like a month ago that i ended up ignoring bc i was on vacation and by the time i had a chance to respond they were 2 weeks old and i didn’t gaf
you’re right anon griffith did not enjoy his sexual contact with charlotte. because he is gay
unless you’re talking about gennon in which case you’re right he did not enjoy that. because it was rape
I fucking hate that trope in swordfighting where they just push grind the swords together as hard as they can while looking in each others eyes. Just fucking kick the other guy in his nuts! Not like he’s going to notice anyway while he’s staring intently at your beautiful eyes, and noticing your stubble, and damn, those lips look surprisingly rosy, and his golden hair…
for someone who doesn’t give a fuck about guts’s tiny existence femto/griffith sure does make subtle/not subtle eye contact with him a hundred times unnecessarily oh boy
also i can’t believe this episode didn’t show griffith’s ‘do you think I’m cruel’ face. we see it like at least 3 times in the manga but in the anime it’s a voiceover 😡
i sometimes have creative streaks where i vid nonstop for a while and then never actually reach the point where i feel comfortable declaring it done, so they all end up 90% finished on my harddrive instead of posted anywhere.
but I’ve also gotten much better at participating in fandom in the last year or so so there’s a much higher chance now of maybe finishing something and posting it at some point in the future. and if I do it will probably be berserk related lol.
“Stay away from me… if you touch me now… if you so much as touch my shoulder… I’ll never be able to… you and I will never be…”
you know how much i love that the moment of despair that opens the behelit is the moment guts touches him but man, preceeding it with “you and I will never be…” is one hell of a choice
like the manga translation of “I’ll never… I’ll never…!” is functionally meaningless as far as I can tell. Maybe I’ll never forgive you? But it’s not the point, the point is Guts’ touch sending Griffith into despair. Griffith’s words just draw attention to it. Despair + touch.
“You and I will never be…” on the other hand, like, that’s nothing but a statement on Griffith’s abject horror of being touched in that moment by a man he can’t have, right? How else can I interpret that? Add “I’ll never be able to” and all I’m getting is something along the lines of, “I’ll never be able to let you go but I’ll never have you either.”
anyway how do ppl interpret Griffith’s horror at being touched by Guts and subsequent despair, regardless of specifics of translation? I’ve always kind of wondered but I don’t think I’ve seen any meta or interpretations or anything about it at all.
I didn’t know the manga version was so different, that’s interesting. Maybe the reason the dub extrapolated to “I’ll never be able to…” is close to what the manga intended. “I’ll never be able to… have you again,” maybe?
I think you’re bang on with never be able to let you go/have you either, because that’s pretty clearly what happens. all of griffith’s despair is essentially that at that point, he can never keep guts and he wants to get away from everything he’s ruined but at the same time he’s clearly still got the same old horror of guts leaving/not being able to hold/own him anymore
I guess it also has a question of how much he instinctively knew what the behelit would do or not?
i can’t remember the original japanese phrasing so just based on the
manga translation i interpreted it as “i’ll never get over you” though
fully knowing that i’ll probably NEVER get to find out what he actually
meant. i mean, we can intuit the basic meaning, but still. god damn it
miura
Yeah regardless of how the sentence might’ve technically ended, I think the meaning of “I’ll never be able to get over you/let you go/that kinda sentiment” makes the most sense and is definitely my favourite interpretation lol.
And yeah since in that moment he believed Guts wanted to leave again, honestly I feel like a visceral emotional understanding of Griffith’s despair at being touched by him (which tbh is rare for me in fiction lol). Like as a response to these circumstances – he’s so consumed by love for this dude that he spent a year thinking about him while being tortured to stay sane, but he thinks this dude is going to leave him, and then Guts’ physical touch as like the final proof of how vulnerable Griffith is to this love and how he can be destroyed by it – the behelit screaming representing Griffith’s despair as Guts touches him just feels so damn right.
Also I tend to think Griffith doesn’t know anything about how the behelit functions, but imo it still works super well narratively with Griffith’s resulting decision to basically cut that love out of him by sacrificing Guts.
lol sorry I’m just so into this scene rn I had to go on another spiel about it.
you're the only one 