mostly berserk meta. i'm into berserk mainly for griffguts and i'm a huge fan of griffith.
yk, seeing puck’s ass on every other page rly adds a certain je ne sais quois to the black swordsman stuff
i feel like having guts hang out with a tiny naked twink for 8 chapters before the golden age is a good way of acclimating the str8 dude audience to the incoming homoeroticism
i mean really bad translators can fuck anything up but cutting dialogue off when it’s not cut off in the original doesn’t … really … i can’t say that it happens often lol. a misinterpretation of what she was trying to say IS possible, but having looked at the original now, there’s really nothing else that comes to mind other than “sonna (koto nai)” when a person stops after “so–” and also that scan is dark horse right? they’re pretty good at their job
yep it’s dark horse.
i’ve seen some scanlations where they’ll leave stuff out if they can’t translate it but deliberately cutting off a word would seem really weird lol.
and yeah i’ll take your word for it about the whole phrase being intended to be assumed to be “sonna koto nai.” It makes perfect sense in context and seems pretty straightforward.
I think the dialogue was lost in translation. This may have been the translator’s mistake.
idk from what i’ve heard the official translation is pretty good overall and doesn’t seem like it would drop emotional dialogue in crucial scenes. And I’ve lurked around skullknight for translation info/mistakes specifically which never mentioned this scene
i mean you never know, there’s always room for error, but casca trailing off and failing to reassure griffith fits perfectly into the story
I think he’s a great writer, with a lot of strengths especially when it comes to fleshed-out characters and, like you said, conceptual + thematic stuff. Like I’m def too critical of his flaws to call him one of the best, but when he’s good he’s really good.
“To those who walk among mountains of corpses not a step nor two will ever be enough. This road of carnage does not allow for one to return… A road without end. But how far will you go?”
Miura was cockocking them with plot armour and miscommunication tropes. Let them fuck Miura you coward!
ikkkkkkkkr
the golden age is straight up a slow burn mutually requited pining story except instead of eventually figuring their shit out they ruin everything forever
like
they love each other and they can’t see that they’re loved in return and if miura just let them fuck everyone would’ve lived happily ever after
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 perspectie) 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 indispensible 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.
man, would you maybe mind like. reposting this but without the pics of guts and casca kissing ………. i know they’re essential visuals but i wanna reblog this but they make my stomach turn
lol yeah sure, i feel u. gimme a few minutes and i’ll see what i can do
this is the most explicit and lifechanging analysis ive ever read
lol ty!
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, taking over 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.
Woah this literally made me see gutsca from a different point of view, idk if I can say I like them anymore, especially since I always felt something else between Guts and Griffith. I still believe she deserves better tho smh. Great job!
thank you for your kind words ❤ ia Casca definitely deserves better than what she got from the narrative and Guts, I hope she gets it eventually.
well this is about harry potter not berserk so it’s under a cut lol
So, semi-related; I read the Harry Potter series when I was slightly older and found the level of conscious emotional manipulation of Harry by most if not all of the adults in his life to be chilling but it worked for me? It’s a story about war really and it felt more like the desperate need this child had to believe that the world he was entering was idyllic than an unconscious exploration of an idyllic world. The way that a lot of fans have connected to that world is legitimate I think but I
Never felt the need to
overly sentimentalize the world of Harry Potter and I’m not sure that
was her intent as a writer for the series as a whole. The anti-Semitic
troupes used for the goblins always weirded me out and I had forgotten
about the werewolf.
oop I missed this earlier. But yeah I def read HP as I grew up which is a v different perspective. Idk imo the tonal shift between books 4 + 5 from roald dahl esque whimsy to a more realistic tone really fucked up the series. I think JKR either had to stick with one tone the whole way through or work a lot harder to make the tonal change work by re-examining the whimsical silly parody-of-british-society worldbuilding through a more realistic lens and subverting it.
(eg she tried to complicate the inherently absurd house sorting system by having the sorting hat sing a song about house unity in the later books, but then never followed through because she still made every slytherin child a total cowardly pos lol)
and the tonal shift lead to a kind of mishmash where you have to take some aspects seriously and other aspects as cute humour. so you have fantasy racism and death eaters as nazi parallels alongside ~wacky~ fantasy slavery with the house elves, and arthur weasley (the ministry’s expert on muggles, our oppressed class) as basically an uncritical pastiche of ignorant 18th century colonialist attitudes.
So idk. I think a lot of HP fic does a better and more interesting job of meshing the disparate aspects of the series than JKR did lol. But I can also see how it might work better in some ways at least if you read them one after the other, rather than waiting years between books, especially if you know in advance that it gets darker.
Omg they are all so clueless and awkward and it’s painful. To be fair I wouldn’t really know what to say if I saw someone actively self-destructing in front of me, especially as a teenager/early twenties person.
yeah i mean it’s absolutely one of those things where you can’t blame guts or casca lol, no one’s actually at fault (except maybe fate). the situations just kind of suck all around and the characters happen to help that along for understandable reasons. which lbr p much sums up the golden age lol. can’t blame anyone for what they did or said (for the most part), it all makes sense for their characters based on the information they have, but it still sucks.
It’s something I’ve said to them/myself
more often the more I’ve meditated on it. Corkus was too sane and
cranky for this world.
tbh when Corkus basically tells Guts he’s an ungrateful idiot when Guts explains why he wants to leave I pretty much want to high five him. Like I understand Guts’ motivation, but man Corkus Was Right. he’s wrong about some things (like thinking Griffith dgaf about Guts) but he’s spot on about other things.
you're the only one 