Tag: a

what are contrasts and parallels between guts and griffith in your opinion?

lol despite this being a gr8 essay prompt I’m just going to brainstorm and list a bunch of stuff.

parallels:

larger-than-life figures often compared to storybook characters.

self-harming
while denying feeling responsible about people’s deaths. (Guts does
this a couple times in the Black Swordsman arc lol)

obsessions/dreams (castle vs revenge/becoming griffith’s equal/killing a bunch of stuff)

in
both cases dreams are defense mechanisms/escapes from the pain of the
world. “what do you fear in this place?” *points at castle* vs “when I’m
swinging this sword I don’t have to think about anything.”

personified inner darknesses (maybe you can become a real monster, like your friend)

guts deserting griffith vs neogriffith deserting guts, complete with maudlin comparison from guts

guts picking up the behelit in the black swordsman arc

farnese’s feelings for guts vs casca’s feelings for griffith

guts
similarly gathering followers with the phrase, “do what you want,”
maybe even things like griffith’s “blazing inferno” vs say serpico
musing on being affected by guts’ heat.

ok it’s a stretch but possibly both of them currently doing their damndest to forget the other?

denying feelings of guilt by rambling about their dreams in front of
Casca while dripping blood as Casca screams at them to stop hurting
themselves.

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nightmares/visions of being children screaming apologies to corpses? i mean you could sum this up with “guilt issues” I guess lol:

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ooh I’d argue the way both their dreams are based in childhood desires, a la:

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this

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this

(re: dude’s son who died in battle)

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Contrasts:

Well there’s the surrendering to fate vs defying fate thing. Griffith embracing destiny by making the sacrifice. Relatedly ofc, defying God vs becoming the messiah.

I
have a post here that kind of boils down to saying that Griffith’s
narrative is about succumbing to evil in pursuit of the good, while
Guts’ narrative is about balancing the good and evil within himself. In a
way you could maybe say that Griffith is about harsh contrasts while
Guts is about shades of grey.

Guts allowing Casca to comfort him vs Griffith shutting her out.

Potentially the way Guts deliberately attempts to “let go” of his obsession with Griffith vs Griffith choosing his obsession, if
Guts’ revenge quest is meant to parallel Griffith’s kingdom. imo the
waters get muddy thanks to Guts’ dream sabotaging his relationship with
Griffith in the Golden Age vs Guts dream being the remnants of his
relationship with Griffith and sabotaging his “relationship” with Casca
post-Eclipse. Like, you could at the same time argue it’s a parallel in that they both try to let go of their obsession with the other by fixating on a goal (kingdom/fix casca). I mean the former is more likely, but fuck it I prefer the latter lol. (Hey Guts didn’t get the ominous armour of inner darkness until choosing Casca and since then his warnings about losing himself to it have gone hand in hand with warnings about Casca’s wishes not being Guts’ wishes. So in a way sticking with Casca is actually subtly tied to his inner darkness even if it is telling him to chase down Griffith. Hey you never know.)

Their Golden Age narratives parallel each other but in opposite directions which makes for a contrast: Griffith shifts from his dream as the most important thing to his relationship with Guts as the most important thing, while Guts shifts from his relationship with Griffith as the most important thing to his dream as the most important thing.

I guess there’s the obvious black vs white colour scheme thing lol. Which goes hand in hand with Griffith’s image as a knight in shining armour vs Guts’ scary black swordsman image. Tho I think it’s an oversimplification to say that eg NeoGriffith is evil with a good image and Guts is the opposite, which I’ve seen a lot lol.

Guts as a human struggling with his inner monster, NeoGriffith as a monster struggling with his inner human?

both struggle with loneliness and isolation but Griffith is social and Guts is a loner.

strategy vs… instinct? not quite the right word, but yk Griffith’s way of fighting is more intellectual and strategic and while Guts utilizes strategy a lot it’s more subconscious – like when he caught Silat’s chakrams because he didn’t overthink their trajectories.

Hmm I’m probably missing some obvious ones ngl, but I have to stop at some point and I feel like I’ve started scraping the bottom of the barrel lol.

who is the best written character in your opinion? not like the others wouldnt be great but like the character with the least writing mistakes.

GRIFFITH.

lol tbh I’ve been overthinking this question which is why it took me a while to answer. Like, weighing pros and cons, does the Eclipse rape count as bad character writing for Griffith/Femto/NGriff or does it at least make sense as long as you accept Miura’s premise that people’s inner darknesses are gonna be rapists 99% of the time, or is it a mistake that reflects on the character writing because of the weird tonal issues it raises with NGriff’s narrative? Like, is it a flaw more because it disaligns the way the author wants to portray Griffith vs the way the audience responds to Griffith? How is that weighted against Guts losing so much of what made him interesting through sometimes good, sometimes poor character development? If it’s believable character development is becoming less interesting still a flaw or just like, my opinion man?

And honestly fuck all that, idc. Griffith is the best written character because his highs are higher and more consistent and I find his lows easier to ignore bc they’re wrapped up in other bad writing, and there’s no way to give an objective answer to this anyway so I might as well let my opinions fly and gush for a while.

I just love his narrative.

From his first appearance as Femto taunting Guts by saying he’s beneath his notice to the hints that he certainly didn’t always feel that way to the first flashback of Griffith telling Guts he’s “the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this,” he’s introduced in such an interesting, intriguing way. Then in the Golden Age the way his apparent easy superiority and confidence eventually gives way to the reveal that he’s a giant mess of insecurities and guilt – and the way this reveal sheds so much interesting light on everything that came before, like his dream speech to Charlotte, his “I will choose the place where you die” speech to Guts, risking his life to save Guts, asking Guts to assassinate Julius, etc.

And the way all these apparent contradictions manage to come together to perfectly depict a man who hides behind an image so well that he believes the act himself, except in occasional moments of vulnerability when the truth seeps out.

Like there are so many interesting subtleties to dig into and so many contradictions to navigate but at the same time this one page tells you everything you really need to know to understand him:

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This is a dude who will prostitute himself to a pedophile to prevent as many deaths as possible and then the next morning claim he doesn’t feel responsible for those deaths.

He will bury his guilt so hard that his reaction to a kid’s convenient death is triumphant delight, and then fret about killing hired goons and ask if Guts thinks he’s cruel, because Charlotte/his dream reinforces his image – his conviction – and Guts/love unravels it.

Also like, in general it’s fantastic how our impression of Griffith begins with the impression he leaves on everyone:

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and then that is like, turned over and examined in the way Miura does, by showing how fucked up you have to be to embody a cool fictional archetype. (Incidentally I love how he does this with Guts’ antiheroism too. Like, hey turns out you gotta have a pretty fucked up life to become a cool monster fighting badass. tho even so Griffith’s is a little better imo because we spend more time with the image before revealing what’s underneath, whereas Guts didn’t even get a full chapter of tricking the audience into thinking he’s just a surly badass b4 the cracks started appearing.)

THEN his feelings for Guts come into it and complicate everything and we’re shown that there’s an internal war in Griffith between Guts and the dream that Griffith himself doesn’t even seem to realize until it’s too late. Which is just delightful bc god knows my favourite literary device is dramatic irony and idk if knowing more about Griffith’s inner conflicts than Griffith himself understands counts but damn it’s fun. And the moment when he does finally acknowledge it (”as he shines so glaring within me… the junk grows dull.”) is just intensely satisfying because we’ve been waiting for it since at least Casca’s “it’s as if… as if…” in chapter 18.

And the way everything cumulates so utterly perfectly in the sacrifice. Everything we see, everything in Griffith’s narrative, every moment leads directly to “I sacrifice,” and it all fits together immaculately. The dream as a defense mechanism, guilt, shame, emotional denial, “take all the frightening and sad things and cast them into the fire,” his desperate search for like, absolution, the way in the build up to the eclipse he’s stripped of everything he ever relied on as a defense, fucking love as the determining factor

the fact that he’s not sacrificing guts because he values the dream more, he’s sacrificing guts because he values guts more. like that’s just so fucking good, come on.

Honestly, Femto and NeoGriffith are both great as symbols too – Femto as everything Griffith was ashamed of but without the shame; NGriff as pure conviction, as the perfect image with none of the driving guilt. I can’t exactly say they’re great characters since the whole point of them is that they’re not fleshed out or relatable or understandable as humans one can empathize with, but they’re great conceptually. It’s cool to see the fully fleshed out, contradictory Griffith and then see him divided and carved up into representational aspects of himself.

Also the few hints of more are super satisfying with the full weight of Griffith’s human narrative behind them – Femto letting Guts escape, the unfrozen heartbeat, you know what I’m about.

And idk at the end of the day with Griffith Miura successfully (IMO) depicted a dude who would choose to sacrifice a group of people I really liked and become a demon for the greater good, for petty reasons, and out of fear of his own feelings, all at the same time, and make me empathize with that decision, and that seems like it would be hard to do. I mean granted, I’m in the minority when it comes to empathizing with him, but idk I can only answer this from my perspective lol.

Anyway to wrap this up I’m plugging this thing again because really could I have ever given any answer other than “the dude whose character arc I wrote over fifteen thousand words about”?

honestly before reading berserk i expected g*tsca to be some star crossed lovers shit and griffith to be one dimensional gay villain with one-sided crush. like g*tsca isnt even that good and griffith is really sympathic. this fandom is really straight and have no reading comprehension lol

ikr, it really surprised me how downplayed and non-romantic their relationship was in the manga considering how fandom talks about it. and ofc it’s not even close to subtle about the fact that griffith is guts’ #1 priority and vice versa throughout the Golden Age. I mean, that’s literally the whole point lol, Griffith’s conflict during the GA is Guts vs the dream, and Guts’ conflict post-Eclipse is Griffith vs his humanity.

like the direct source of tension of both of their narratives is in resisting the fact that the other is Their Most Important Thing In Life.

also tbh I think the anime is to blame for a lot of the fandom’s interpretation of g*tsca. It often emphasizes their relationship in a way the manga just didn’t lol. Like eg anime Guts’ ultra romantic “I never want to stop holding you” or w/e the line was complete with Touching Music vs manga Guts’ ‘come with me because I want to fuck more’ complete with Ominous Eclipse Foreshadowing.

flooracle
replied to your post “flooracle
replied to your post “Hi! I have read an opinion ‘bout…”

Kinda does! 😮 To me it comes off as he’s finally found a social order he can get behind and will do whatever is necessary (by his morals) to uphold it. Nothing personal for Griffith like Guts.

yeah ia, locus’ devotion to griffith really feels way more like a knight to a king or even symbol, rather than anything personal. which is fitting for neogriffith who doesn’t seem like he’s had a personally revealing interaction ever lol, and it makes a great contrast to human griffith and his relationship w/ guts, and even the rest of the hawks too.

I liked your theory about casca using the behelit but it made me worry that it will be guts who uses it and he’ll sacrifice casca to do it (similar to ‘the beast’ wanting him to rape/eat/kill casca so he could be close to griffith) and therefore reduce her to just another pain source AGAIN but idk… I guess their ‘sacrifice’ status helps prevent that but then can either of them use the behelit because of that?

ty! and tbh I don’t think you don’t have to worry about that (unless Miura decides to retcon hard facts).

in addition to the count not being able to sacrifice guts because he doesn’t love guts lol, they point out

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you can’t mark someone for sacrifice twice.

But yeah there’s nothing saying that someone marked for sacrifice can’t use a behelit themselves, and everyone knowledgeable about these things seems to believe that Guts potentially could use it (like Slan saying “why not make a sacrifice” in the troll cave, eg).

Though I don’t think the behelit is Guts’. Whether Miura was considering it for a while is a possibility, but since the Berserk armour made an appearance and we started getting a lot of “is it yours or are you just carrying it for someone hmmm” moments, I feel like it’s been really unlikely that Guts is ever going to use it. The armour is more his way of letting his inner darkness loose. Which has the handy effect of not being necessarily permanent, but with the ever present threat of becoming permanent. Perfect for a protagonist lol.

Also speaking of the Beast of Darkness telling Guts to assault and murder Casca so he can pursue Griffith, I think that could be another like… factor in Casca using the behelit. Right now she’s the symbol of Guts’ humanity, so if she becomes a monster it makes thematic sense for Guts to follow suit by losing himself to the armour. He could later be brought back by ~the power of friendship~ to demonstrate that despite their quest ending in tragedy and darkness, it was still worthwhile because of the character development and relationships formed along the way.

Ha! I’ve been fretting for ages about how Casca going apostle could work thematically w/ the whole interpersonal relationships as positive influences/power of love and friendship stuff of the last 200 chapters, but there, that totally fits! Then mb Casca could have her own personal narrative rather than continuing to be a symbol of Guts’ humanity.

ok yk what

if half of the g*tsca sex scene is meant to be a positive step towards guts getting over his trauma, and ignoring my personal feelings by all rights it absolutely should be, because the central point of berserk is that interpersonal relationships are positive ways to heal from trauma and guts having a flashback and then talking it through in front of Casca b4 having comfort sex seems like it fits right into that theme

so yeah if that is meant to be a positive emotionally healing experience, then i simply do not understand why it… changes literally nothing.

guts’ dream is a distraction, swinging his sword is his way of not thinking about his issues, and after this he goes right back to harping on about his dream and insisting he’s gonna keep fighting stronger and stronger enemies.

during the wyald fight he refuses to let casca help and refuses to run because he feels like he’s got a score to settle with monsters as a concept, and therefore he has to beat wyald all by himself (”by my own sword”), which is also an indication that he’s still mired in his issues, obsessed with his dream, lashing out to assuage his personal pain.

and he finally, finally chooses to let go of his dream for someone else’s sake when it’s Griffith who needs him, not Casca.

having sex with Casca after the flashback should be Guts’ turning point. When Casca asks him to stay his answer should be yes, or at least be ambiguous enough to show that he’s seriously considering it. that he’s beginning to recognize that relationships > dreams and the Hawks are his family. He suggests that Casca come along, but makes it very clear that his dream gets first priority when he does. “Whether bein’ with you will get in the way of what I want to do… or the opposite… I can’t tell now.”

rather than considering staying when Casca asks, he immediately says he wants “to draw a line, keep things separate.” And ofc Griffith ends up being the turning point. Casca telling him Griffith destroyed himself because of him, thinking about Griffith’s emotional vulnerability during the rescue mission, finding Griffith after a year of torture and now dependant – these are all what lead to Guts wavering and wondering if leaving was a mistake. Not Casca yelling that he’s a selfish idiot who only cares about himself and dreams, but Casca yelling that Griffith ended up in a torture chamber because of him.

Miura even shows us Guts choosing to stay with Griffith before even consulting Casca.

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Like he could’ve split the difference, had Casca tell Guts she can’t leave with him because she needs to take care of Griffith and have Guts make up his mind then, showing that his relationships with Casca and Griffith are at least equal in importance, but nope. Guts wants to stay with Griffith regardless of what Casca decides. It’s before they talk again that he reaches his conclusion that he fucked up and the Hawks were his home all along:

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their relationship could not be more of an afterthought to Miura here. it’s so painfully clear that he added it just to destroy her character and motivate Guts, because where there should be a shitload of thematic resonance and character development in their relationship, there’s none. it’s absolutely unnecessary, it affects nothing at all except the eclipse rape, to such an extent that it’s awkward, because it would’ve been so easy and straightforward to tie it into existing themes and make their relationship matter, and Miura just didn’t bother.

Like if I shipped them I’d be mad lol, I’d feel ripped off. Instead I’m just weirded out by how badly written this one subplot is in the midst of the otherwise pretty outstanding Golden Age.

What characters do you want to make it to the end of the series? Like who do you most want to see get a happy ending (or even a not so happy ending)?

C A S C A

I got this pipe dream of Casca using the behelit, being the one to kill NGriff, then ending up an immortal mercenary a la Zodd. (Hey, if the rumours are true about her being named after this book it might be plausible.) It would be a sad happy ending for her – alone, a monster, but like, finally her own sword.

And Casca riding off into the sunset with Farnese as a genuine happy ending is my other pipe dream, so Farnese is another character I’d prefer not to die.

I suppose I’d like Rickert to live too. And I can’t immediately think of a fitting way for Serpico to die, and I like him, so I’ll err on the side of wanting him to survive also.

I’d probably want Puck to live, though I could maybe see killing him off for a huge “shit just got real” moment since he’s the second longest running character in the manga and p much represents positivity lol. But I doubt it.

I’d want Charlotte to outlive NGriff and take over ruling Falconia. With Anna.

I think that’s about it, everyone else I either couldn’t care less if they live or die, or I actively want them to die lol.

On that note, Guts is the character who I probably most want to die. After his whole narrative full of being “the struggler,” refusing to die againt all odds, etc, I’d find it so anticlimatic if he lived happily ever after and died of old age lmao. His story should build to a v meaningful and emotional death imo. Also purposeful – self-sacrifice, dying to take NGriff down with him (lbr the two of them dying together would be gr8), letting NGriff stab him the way he often lets people stab him when he’s upset lol, something like that. It should feel like a choice on his part, a significant and revealing contrast to his struggler thing.

imo the only other fitting cap to his life of refusing to die would be becoming immortal, and I think that would be framed as a sadder ending for him than a meaningful death, since he’d basically be following in Skull Knight’s footsteps in that case, which has always been suggested as a Bad Ending.

Also I want NGriff to either die or live forever haunted by Guts’ memory.

This is all ignoring the ominous afterlife thing, which tbf is a huge thing to ignore, but w/e. I’m not that interested in Berserk’s afterlife, idc whether my faves go to the nice whirlpool or the mean whirlpool. (Tho honestly the happiest ending of all as far as I’m concerned would be Casca and Farnese living happily ever after while Guts and Griffith end up dragging each other to hell and ~becoming one~ so if afterlives feature heavily at the end let’s do that. hey it’d be a fitting end to all the equals shit too. you’re truly equal when you’re just a big mass of souls melding together.)

(I mean theoretically ending up in heaven together works too but I feel like there are too many hoops to jump through to justify that lol. just as long as they aren’t in separate afterlife pools.)

Any thoughts on the chapters about Cascas mind and her restoration?

Oh, lots.

Off the top of my head I find them fairly disappointing. I feel like Miura’s really half-assing this glimpse into Casca’s psyche – eg we got a few scattered Golden Age scenes from Casca’s perspective, but they didn’t bring anything new to the table, we didn’t learn anything about Casca that wasn’t already obvious. The chapter full of dick monsters was ridiculous lol, and the whole concept of piecing Casca together like gluing together a broken doll is like, kind of cliche and super shallow? Again, we’re not learning anything about Casca, we’re just montaging through a dumb dream quest.

On the other hand this sequence does have good points. I loved Farnese w/ tiny Casca. The fact that Farnese is now v intimately familiar with Casca’s whole life, seeing through her eyes and feeling her feelings, is interesting from a shippy standpoint even if canon does nothing with it. I liked that dog Guts just fucked right off and got destructive to everyone around him when pterodactyl Femto showed up, to the point where they were worried he’d smash Casca. Gives me hope lmao. The portrayal of the Eclipse was remarkably restrained so I applaud Miura for that lol. And of course I loved that Casca’s heart is covered in ominous despair thorns, and that shit got dark as soon as Casca saw Guts after waking up.

Like it’s not enough to make me super confident that g*tsca isn’t gonna happen, but it was enough to make me fistpump lol.

I have mixed feelings about the fetus showing up. On the one hand, I fucking hate that fetus and every glimpse of it fills me with dread. On the other hand, the fact that it symbolizes Casca’s heart backs up my wild reach-y theory that she might sacrifice it lol.

I have seized on the fact that Danann 180ed from ‘get lost Guts Casca’s scared of you’ to ‘wear this dress and go see Guts right now’ and I completely believe that Danann is plotting something and Casca going into despair as soon as she sees Guts (who has a behelit on him js js) was planned.

Actually here’s my post full of plot-focused theorizing if you’re interested.

Also my immediate reactions to recent chapters are here

What do you mean by ‘suggestive climax’ of Guts and Griffith? (you mentioned it in your answer to the Farnese/Guts ask). And do you really think there’s an actual chance Miura won’t go all nohomo on us in the end? Cause I’m dreading Guts settling down with Casca as an ending and that would be just so….meh story-wise. But also, Miura’s been so focused on Guts forming a new family with his new group lately and doing the weird harem thing while they were on the ship which was disturbing as fUCK

There’s always a chance. I mean I don’t think he’s going to go yes homo, but I definitely think there’s a strong possibility that Guts is gonna die single and thinking about Griffith.

I am trying to brace myself for disappointment ofc. I mean you’re right, the rpg group constantly succeeding in all they do and never having actual problems narrative has been going on for 150 chapters now so banking on the results of their quest being tragedy (ie Casca gets her mind back, proceeds to fuck shit completely up) is, yk, not a sure thing. the power of friendship could come through again and Guts and Casca could reunite happily, and if that happens I’ll finally give up on my optimism lol.

But til then I think there’s a good chance that all this awful harem vibe shit is a prelude to tragedy and disillusionment (not that that makes it better, but yk at least it would mean it ends), and the narrative is going to refocus back onto Guts and Griffith’s unconcluded story. That’s p much what I mean by suggestive climax – Guts and Griffith confronting each other at the climax of the story, emotions running high, allusions to their emotionally intimate history and the way they’re each still “the only one,” “the true light” for the other despite both trying so so hard to cut the other out lol.

Yk, finally dealing with the shit they’re avoiding by focusing on a kingdom/forcing Casca’s mind back, and cathartically reconciling the fact that they’re simultaneously fated enemies and true lights. Probably right before one or the other dies.

here have some optimistic picspam under the cut:

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I really hate Schierke as a character like… her crush on guts is so yawn to me because like everyone has one at this point and it’s just causing her to be selfish and childish like wanting to keep the ability to control the armour/beast and help guts to herself rather than teach the rest of the group to help is stupid and I feel goes against everything she’s been taught about being a witch and kind of working for the world seperate from the world and also with farnese even though I like her1/2

2/2 I just feel like any kind of character development she could have
had was just quickly glazed over like she went from someone who got off
on watching people get burnt to death and wanting to torture serpico for
‘fun’ or whatever to this simpering woman who’s working on bettering
herself way too fast I wish her journey was explored more and not just
kind of put as if she met guts and suddenly all her problems were solved
and she’s just perfectly good other than a little weak and scared now

Idk I agree with most of this but I think you’re being a little harsh.

Like it’s been a while since I re-read any of the later chapters but I never really got the impression that Schierke was keeping her ability to help Guts to herself, more that she’s just… the only person in the RPG group proficient enough w/ magic to help keep the armour at bay. Like Farnese is still a beginner and no one else knows any magic, so there’s nothing they can really do. (Also I’m kind of loling at calling Schierke childish, like, she is a child.)

But otherwise I pretty much agree, there’s nothing I particularly like about Schierke and her crush is annoying and offputting.

Also wrt Farnese, describing her as “simpering” makes no sense at all. The word means coquettish in an affected, ingratiating way, and that is basically the opposite of Farnese’s character lol, both as an enemy and as an ally.

But other than that I mean yeah I do agree that her character development was not well written. I like both antagonist Farnese and ally Farnese but it’s hard to see them as the same character, because Miura really like, did not show how one became the other lol.

It might be believable that after having her religious faith shattered she’d latch onto Guts as something new to believe in, as an emotional crutch, but it’s never depicted that way really – deciding to follow Guts has been 100% positive for her, while religion was 100% negative and evil, even though they’re both presumably filling the same emotional niche for her. (And if they’re not basically the same drive pointed at different objects of belief, God vs Guts, then Farnese’s sudden switch from religion to Guts is actually super weird and nonsensical, so either way it’s not well done.)

Like, her black and white, us vs them, pure vs impure, etc, thinking should still have been an issue, at least at the start of her time with the rpg group, even if the subjects of that thinking have changed. Or if Miura wanted that type of thinking shattered with her religious faith, she should have had difficulty adjusting to seeing the world in shades of grey. Her related buried guilt and self-doubt should also not have just conveniently disappeared, aside from one vague attempt at an apology for burning witches alive to Flora lol.

(Man now that I mention it it would’ve been fantastic to see Farnese struggling with letting go of her pure vs impure thinking and more slowly accepting that everyone is greyscale, and finding self-acceptance in that too. What a missed opportunity.)

Something else that would’ve been good is showing that Farnese dedicating herself to taking care of Casca, learning magic, etc, is a continuation of her tendency to like, violently throw herself into things. “become the storm yourself,” that life philosophy. Like if she was overeager to an off-putting, borderline unhealthy extent. Or if she wholeheartedly devoted herself to taking care of Casca because of her guilt issues, but again in a not-wholly-positive, overcompensating way.

I think this is a basic problem with Guts’ entire side of the narrative actually lol. It’s too damn good. Everyone is bettered by hanging out with him, plain and simple. Not even two steps forward, one step back – everyone just happily grows as a person on his stupid journey. Farnese replacing God with Guts causes no problems for her or anyone else, because Guts is just a good person to build your entire life around, when imo there should be some critique there wrt the concept of building your life around anything or anyone. The problem isn’t what you’re worshipping, it’s that you’re worshipping, but idk if Miura sees it that way.

Tho I still have hope that this apparent sense that Guts is just the fucking bees knees who changes everyone around him for the better could be subverted. I mean we’re about to get the payoff of his whole quest, and he’s just been compared to Griffith again specifically wrt how Farnese feels about him vs how Casca felt about Griffith, which is promising. Like, Golden Age Griffith was the same wrt everyone around him growing and being happy bc of his ~conviction~ and the feeling that they’re all going places, it’s something Guts comments on when he first meets the Hawks lol, and we all know how that turned out.

But even if that is the case it doesn’t really fix the 150ish chapters of Farnese’s super quick, super positive character growth lol. Idk it’s a disappointment to me too. I still like “both” Farneses, but I really feel like Miura half-assed the hell out of her development.

anyway ty for the asks and sorry for being a bit nitpicky, i mostly agree with you, just my contrary streak kicks in if i think some crit is unfair lol.

Hi! I have read an opinion ’bout Locus sending Raksas for Rickert because he was so indulged by Rickert’s slap. I could hardly imagine it. Because Locus such a “knight in shining armour” not a coward one.

Yeah like I think the scenes are framed to make the reader wonder whether Locus or Griffith sent Raksas after Rickert. SInce it’s supposed to be ambiguous it could be either.

Idk if I think it would be out of character for Locus tbh. Grunbeld is the apostle we saw with a distinct honourable streak, while Locus’ thing seems to be more like, hardcore loyalty lol, so I could potentially see him doing something underhanded if it was for Griffith.

But yeah he does still have that knight in shining armour image that assassinations don’t quite fit. Then again so did Griffith lol. So idk I could see it either way.

I allude to how the monsters Guts fights are reminiscent of his childhood trauma a lot, so I decided to finally illustrate it.

under a cut for length and for images implying sexual assault/csa

glowing/monstrous eye(s) in a dark background, reaching hands:

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and Gambino gets similar visual treatment after telling Guts he sold him, neatly showing how Gambino’s betrayal compounds Guts’ trauma:

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glowing/monstrous eyes and reaching hands in nightmare form:

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in flashback form:

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and in monster form:

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this could be an interesting early version from his nightmare in chapter 2:

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Skull Knight also gets this imagery:

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and i’m ngl his consistently glowing eyes as a design choice make me highly suspicious lol:

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here’s Guts’ vision in the sewer before promrose, the imagery depressingly contextualizing the self-loathing he feels:

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more giant hands emphasizing helplessness:

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And Guts himself gets a lot of this imagery ofc:

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plus you can argue the design of the beast of darkness incorporates the bright eyes on a dark background motif:

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Also it’s worth noting that while this imagery comes from Guts’ trauma, Miura uses it to illustrate fear in general from other characters’ points of view too:

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and I’d argue this is the point of the stylization of Ganeshka’s backstory of extreme paranoia:

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Berserk is Guts’ story after all and it makes sense to expand his own motifs to illustrate fear as a concept in general imo.

oddly Femto does not get this imagery very often at all. In fact this is the only instance I can think of that comes close:

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Usually he’s stylized as monstrous by totally removing his face and just portraying the mask, or his face is shown in full. Now I could see an argument that his design automatically incorporates bright eyes in a dark background due to the black helmet:

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But it’s really not emphasized, like even when we get five thousand closeups of his staring eyes during the rape scene, they don’t pop against a dark background, they’re not the brightest things in the panel like other monsters’ eyes:

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So idk. Maybe the stylization of the mask, the way his face can disappear within it like so

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is meant to be reminiscent of the more mundane and natural way Miura has of making someone/thing look intimidating, ie shadowing their eyes. Or maybe it was more important to him to be able to draw Femto as either monstrous (no face) or unnervingly human (fully visible human face) with little in between.

Anyway that’s just an aside, the only point of this post is to illustrate some recurring concepts and show how the imagery ties Guts’ urge to fight monsters back to his childhood trauma.

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I mean it’s not exactly a hard sell lol, but I’m just like a big fan of
the recurring stylized imagery and I think it’s a great touch.

Idk why, but for some reason I feel like Isidro might use the behelit. I have no evidence to back this up, but I think it’d be a cool twist. His character has kind of just been “there” for me. I don’t really feel anything towards him. I guess I kind of just want Miura to make me interested in him lmao. I know Casca is probs gonna use it, but still. A part of me just wants Isidro to step it up, if that makes sense. This isn’t really a question but I’m curious about your thoughts on Isidro

Well that would be one way to make Isidro interesting to me lol. bc same, I really don’t care about him at all. I’m mostly just kind of annoyed whenever he’s on the page lol, I’ve never been much of a fan of kid characters in general and Isidro really has nothing going for him imo.

I think like… idk my prediction is that his mermaid crush is going to die and he’s going to grow up a little because of it, but it’s not a concept I’m all that into lol, it just seems like a logical direction for the story to go. It would be a lot more fun to see Isidro go villainous lol, and he does have that whole “ambition” thing going on. I think the natural end to his storyline would actually be giving up adventuring and settling down though, after his whole conversation with that old dude during the troll fight.

Miura did (sigh) mention Isidro/Schierke as an obvious potential relationship, which is super uninteresting to me but also I don’t really care about either of them so yk, whatever. My biggest hope is just that Isidro doesn’t suck up too much screen time lol, and there’s no focus on any potential romance there – if it happens let it be a random aside in the epilogue or smthn.

Do you think Miura’s happy ending is gonna include romance for Guts?? I can’t imagine him living happily ever after with Casca (if that happens it would just be unbelievable), but like Farnese has a crush on him so I’m just wondering if anything is gonna come out of that? Honestly I just want Farnese to be happy lol I love her

tbh it doesn’t seem likely to me. Farnese’s “crush” on Guts is compared to Casca’s on Griffith, which isn’t a promising prelude to romance lol, and to me it seems like Farnese herself doesn’t really consider it a genuine romantic thing so much as admiration bc he shattered her worldview and changed her life.

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But yeah I feel you about wanting Farnese to be happy. I want her to become like a full-fledged witch – she genuinely loves helping people, and we know she’s never been happier than when protecting Casca and feeling like she can contribute something unique, and imo it’d be great to see that aspect of her character growth focused on, whether she ends up in a relationship or not.

As for Guts + romance I think it’s either Casca or bust (wherein bust = an emotional and somewhat suggestive climax w/ Griffith lbr), and I’ve got my fingers crossed hard for the latter.

what are your favourite character moments?

oh man. ok i’m sorry this is honestly a terrible answer, i got really carried away when it came to griffith lol.

i have a more thoughtful, meta-y answer to a similar question here and i’m linking it to sort of compensate for just answering this with a picspam lol.

under a cut bc it’s long.

Guts:

standing up w/ like 50 broken bones and marching up a staircase with his giant sword to try to kill his ex bc he said he’s beneath his notice:

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this one might actually be my favourite guts character moment:

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Guts finally getting close to moving on and recovering:

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sums it tf up:

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i wanted one moment that shows guts’ like, tender, caretaker side, and this is the most painful:

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a purely self-indulgent choice bc i love that “he’s back” feeling so much lol:

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and how could I not include this:

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Casca

love the concept of casca being invested in the dream:

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her proud smile here:

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physically lashing out with her sword in a rage:

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in a good au casca went on to lead the still-undefeated band of the hawks:

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sure it’s ruined two pages later, but man i love her attempt at a last stand:

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Farnese

i love her early black and white thinking tbh:

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this is my favourite character establishing moment for farnese:

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stabbing a demon tiger in the eye is probably my fave farnese moment overall:

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Serpico

I love this early moment where he tells a dude he doesn’t even know his tragic life story while vaguely hitting on him and makes him uncomfortable:

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like he’s a weird but enjoyable combination of diplomatic and offputting:

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preventing guts from getting himself killed the same night he tried to kill him himself:

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And finally a more dramatic, serious moment because the first three moments there rly don’t do him justice and I love his backstory:

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Griffith (I will try to show restraint but I could spam almost every panel he’s in honestly)

I’m including Femto and NGriff:

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what an introduction:

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getting himself killed for guts:

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somehow simultaneously maintaining denial while essentially confessing his feelings:

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this:

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but especially when paired with this:

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there’s a lot to love about this scene but this is the best moment imo:

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every single second of chapter 17 but let’s sum it up with this:

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this whole exchange but especially this first panel here:

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he just heard that he’s achieved one of the most important steps on the way to his dream and this is what he fucking does:

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sorry but this is the coolest moment in anything ever:

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again literally all of tombstone of flame really but let’s go with this moment in particular:

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all of the second duel as well:

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of course:

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obviously the whole monologue but it always comes back to this:

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fuckin ripping my heart out:

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and again:

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and again:

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i’m gonna keep going like this:

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The Moment Of Despair Is The Touch Of Guts’ Hand:

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and then:

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i’m sorry i really did mean to be more restrained than this lmao:

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the entire moment of the sacrifice but i’m picking this panel to illustrate it:

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can you believe:

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OBVIOUSLY but this also includes Griffith blaming it on the fetus because that is so in character:

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you, of all people:

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aaaaaand let’s call it a day w/ this:

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As a sacrificial offering for the Invocation of Doom, not just any lump of flesh and blood will do. It must be someone important to you, part of your soul… someone so close to you that it’s almost like giving up a part of you.

do you plan to make a big guts meta? if yes how many arcs would it cover. love your metas.

Thank you!

Hmm I sort of do have a plan for a more extensive Guts-centric post, though I don’t think it would be as long as the Griffith one. Though like the Griffith one it would be largely about Guts’ dream and his relationship with Griffith.

And it would probably cover Black Swordsman – right before the Eclipse, with a shorter, more critical section or maybe follow up post on everything from the Eclipse on, because honestly I want to sit down and really hash out exactly how the Eclipse fails to knock down the thematic pins Miura had set up. Like even up to the Wyald chapters he has this perfect set-up going on, and then imo he mostly fails to utilize it during and after the Eclipse, and I keep kind of talking about it on my blog lol but only in broad strokes, I want to dig into it.

BUT that said most of it would be talking about how great Guts’ narrative is in the first two arcs, I wouldn’t let the criticism overwhelm it. And who knows, I might catch more interesting details when I look over everything again with this in mind and end up less critical than expected.

sad thing about black swordsman arc is that i liked what miura was going for in the first place (guts motives for revenge, evil fetus being a metaphor) also they were actually ~deeper~ than emasculating guts. miura making g*tsca happen for the drama ruined it. also it made berserk kinda mediocre lol

Yeah I really feel like the Eclipse just, hugely cheapened just about everything that was interesting about Guts in the Black Swordsman arc by putting all the focus on a) how someone else’s pain affects Guts and b) like you said, the suggested emasculation of Guts watching someone else give his girlfriend an orgasm. And that might be seen as an uncharitable take on the scene lol but Casca’s arousal seriously is the central visual focus, and it’s what the rape scene builds up to, and it remains all about Guts’ feelings, and it’s so simultaneously offensive and just… cheap and boring.

It straight up mystifies me how Miura decided to add g*tsca for more Eclipse drama (ie the rape scene) and somehow didn’t realize that not only does the Eclipse not require any additional drama, but it overwrites the actual drama the Eclipse should’ve had as a personally traumatizing event to Guts. It’s just so frustrating lmao.

Wrt the fetus you can kind of tilt your head and still see it as a symbol for the futility of revenge – in hindsight now it’s more like a haunting reminder of Guts abandoning Casca – but it doesn’t work nearly as well because in the BS arc it’s visually depicted as a representation of like, Guts’ own inner demon – the pathetic monstrousness left when revenge consumes the rest of you.

So you have things like Guts’ nightmare where it’s chasing him which is echoed in his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s Donovan chasing him, and then echoed again in his vision after killing Adonis where it’s Zodd/Donovan/himself. How’s that supposed to work thematically if the fetus is a symbol of a relationship/his humanity lmao? Or the vision Guts had of the fetus with Vargas’ face?

And I mean I love the Beast of Darkness bc i’m easy for evil dark sides lol, but honestly the vibe the fetus had in the BS arc was better, because of that patheticness. It wasn’t cool, it wasn’t powerful, it was just sad, like the Vargas parallels.

Anyway ty for this ask and giving me an opportunity to complain some more, I’m glad you agree.

ALSO ngriff getting sacrificed by guts could be like… depicted as a contrast between the hawks and the godhand, how he exchanged one family for another, because the godhand would find that hilarious and presumably they would be the ones to kill him, or enable monster guts to kill him as per the sacrifice, or whatever. so yk it also harks back to what griffith gave up when he sacrificed the hawks.

what would you like to change in berserk? actually im asking how the story would work without using rape as a plot device but also in general (characterization, plot etc.)

Ooh this is an interesting question, ty!

I wouldn’t change either Guts or Griffith’s backstories tbh, I think they’re actually pretty well done, and important to their characters and narratives without being the be all end all. Well, I’d like to make Gennon less of an evil gay stereotype and Donovan less of a scary black man stereotype but yk, other than those details the existence of rape in their backstories isn’t something I’d change.

With Casca… tough call. Her story is all about gendered violence to the point where if you got rid of the rape attempts you’d have to come up with a whole new story for her. But it’s still a shallower and less well-rounded depiction of abuse than either guts or griffith’s backstories, bc it’s so emphatically gendered, like, rather than informing her personality or her choices it’s just framed as being a woman.

So actually I guess for Casca what I’d change is (actually pretty obviously lol) her motivations. She’s not in love with Griffith, she idealizes his dream because she knows he wants to dismantle those power structures that fuck her over and create a place where those w/ power can’t easily abuse their power over others. She hates Guts not because she’s jealous of him (tho she could still be jealous of his emotional closeness with Griffith, like she’d still admire Griffith here even if she’s not in love with him and I like that rival dynamic), but because she recognizes that he could end up destroying Griffith’s dream.

Also I think we can still cut out most of the rape threats she gets while still showing that she has something to fight against. Maybe keep Adon being a gross dick (in all fairness he kind of mirrors Gennon towards Griffith which kind of shows how they’re fighting for the same dream – ie a world where those kinds of dudes are shut down) but have Casca just fighting for her life rather than against rape attempts as she runs from the 100 man fight.

So nothing really changes much until Guts comes back from his vacation. And now Casca is genuinely, genuinely angry and hateful towards him, because he did exactly what she’s been afraid he was going to do – destroyed Griffith’s dream, and her hope for a better future.

Which means they don’t have sex lol, Casca was never into Guts, they began a friendship towards the end of the war but nothing more. And now that Guts has come back Casca is actively hostile to him, though after Guts lets her stab him she probably forgives him a bit bc it’s not like he intended to destroy absolutely everything, and he’s clearly fucked up about it.

Also no suicide attempt.

So their dynamic during the rescue mission is resentful allies, like a throwback to their first three years knowing each other.

Wyald still happens but no attempted rape w/ Casca obviously.

Now when it comes to the Eclipse, I want it to be all about Guts, and I want it to hit the audience over the head with parallels to his childhood. It’s the Eclipse, it doesn’t need to be subtle. Rather than looking wistful when Griffith sacrifices everyone, I want Guts to look betrayed, I want him to look just as sad and horrified as he did when he was 11 and Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan.

Agh I’d hate to lose the creepy silent monster vibe from Femto, but something like a cold, “you’re still alive?” would be v fitting w/ the “you should have died” parallels. Tho idk I’m torn on that.

And ok I said I want it to be all about Guts but I can’t just kill off Casca. But if she’s gonna live the Eclipse needs some serious personal meaning for her too. So maybe her reaction to being sacrificed, knowing it’s for the dream she’s dedicated her life to and in theory she should be willing to give her life for it, and trying to reconcile that with the horrificness of the situation and her desperate desire to survive anyway. So she survives long enough for Femto to show up, because she’s not the third best fighter in the Hawks for nothing, and then…

torture? Femto has monsters hold Guts down and tortures Casca in a way reminiscent of a kid pulling the wings off a fly. She loses an arm, Guts keeps his because he’s too busy being utterly terrified and possibly flashbacking to hack his own arm off in a rage.

Like, one thing about the Eclipse rape, is that if Miura had to have it as a way of emotionally affecting Guts, how the fuck did he manage to draw like two chapters of awful awful shit with Guts being held down by monsters that he’d just watched rape Casca, and completely fail to allude to Guts’ own rape trauma? How. Hooooow it’s mind boggling. It’s absurd.

But you don’t even need the graphic rape for that, like hell, Miura has absolutely adequately set up the correlation between giant monsters Guts is compelled to fight and his own childhood trauma imo to justify Guts having a very emotional traumatic reaction to just being held down and made helpless by monsters after being essentially given to them.

There’s Black Swordsman Guts in a nutshell, and this is exactly what was implied to have caused him to go full traumatized amoral asshole. Before g*tsca was a gleam in Miura’s eye all he had were those parallels to Guts’ childhood trauma – Guts being given away to monsters by someone he trusted – and that’s all he needed.

So anyway, because Casca lives, she has her own reaction to being casually tortured by Femto before being rescued, which is also a replay of her childhood trauma but without the agency of killing her attacker herself with a sword. So her reaction could very well be similar to Guts’ – a desire to kill monsters and get revenge. Maybe she’s lost her idealism wrt the dream, and she’s more cynical now – a better world is impossible, best you can do is survive this one.

She and Guts go their separate ways because they’re barely friends, let alone lovers, and remember 2 brands = big ghost problems.

After this the narrative splits 3 ways between NGriff, Guts, and Casca.

I’m reaching the limits of my creativity lol. So I’m just gonna suggest that Guts gets the behelit, Casca gets the armour and the rpg group, Casca gets the moving on arc and hooks up with Farnese while maybe finding a happy medium between changing the world and lashing out against the world, and Guts succumbs to his inner darkness and gets a highly emotional confrontation with Griffith. Since he has the behelit maybe he uses it upon realizing that Griffith’s heart is still beating for him, bc the emotional conflict is just too much, and sacrifices Griffith to become a Zodd-esque apostle wandering battlefields and fighting for no reason, basically returned to his pre-Griffith state.

It’s probably shorter than 355 chapters too lbr. I’d say NGriff creates Falconia right before the confrontation with Guts, so yk he achieves his dream b4 ironically getting sacrificed. Otherwise his story doesn’t change much. Maybe stronger suggestions that he’s not as unemotional as he looks, to build up to a guts confrontation better.

Like… I’m not a very creative or good writer lol but I feel this general outline could be written in a very good and satisfying way by someone with talent, like Miura.

chaoticgaygriffith:

#the damn dream is everywhere

@bthump literally the conclusion i came to when i was thinking about scenes in which he was, to some degree, relaxed

i want to like brainstorm personality traits that he didn’t deliberately manufacture to help him achieve his dream now lol.

like yeah, playful. i think he’s naturally confident, charismatic, and a leader type. competitive, but still a graceful loser. empathetic too tbqh, he’s very aware of ppl’s feelings and he genuinely cares, and you’d see that way more if he didn’t constantly bury it lol. also a bit of a mediator? he doesn’t like real interpersonal conflict (his reaction to guts and casca’s rivalry, or casca being pissy at corkus, etc). he still cares what people think of him, dream or no dream imo. but he might take pride in being hated by awful people. i don’t think he’d necessarily try to get everyone to like him – just the people he likes.

would he still be ambitious? if he didn’t have the one dream, would he find another, maybe less soul destroying goal to latch onto? I think he’d still feel a need to prove his worth as a person, to justify his existence by contributing something to the world. but if he didn’t get people killed when he first started maybe he’d be more chill about it. maybe he’d volunteer at a non profit or something instead.

would he still be a complete idiot about his own feelings or would he be more self-aware if he didn’t need to bury his emotions for the sake of his dream? i could def see him being more self-aware, but that’s not as fun lol.

what is your favorite berserk adaptation?

mmm I’d have to go with the 97 anime. I appreciate the ovas and how in one or two ways they actually manage to improve on the source material (i’m thinking griffith going to charlotte after guts leaves) and how despite making terrible adaptation choices they do manage to largely emphasize what i like about the story (ie griffguts) and indicate that despite yk, cutting most of griffith’s character, they do understand him to an extent (eg subtly showing that he’s bullshitting when he says he feels nothing towards gennon by having him back his horse away when gennon touches him).

the anime is different in that I don’t think the creators really like what I like about the manga or have the same understanding of it as me, but it’s also a much more faithful adaptation overall, so by virtue of that it’s still better. everything it changes from the manga is for the worse, but it doesn’t change all that much, and it gets some key moments very right in contrast to the ovas (eg the moment griffith chooses to sacrifice the hawks. the anime did it perfectly by copying the manga exactly, while the ovas made griffith look like a sinister scheming villain lol).

plus in the dub at least (i still haven’t rewatched the sub to that point) griffith lists “love” as one of the feelings he has towards guts that he’s been obsessing over in the torture chamber, and i can’t deny i fuckin love that.

also yk it includes the naked waterfight and griffith’s backstory and motivation.

like i have a lot of nitpicky beefs with the anime and I’d never consider it a legit alternative to the manga lol, but it’s still a pretty good adaptation.

i love griffith, guts and griffguts, but sometimes i feel super guilty about it bc of what griffith and guts have done to casca. i can’t even read fluffy stuff with them bc it just feels off mark given canon :/

I mean, that’s like… I was gonna say ‘fair’ but it’s not rly fair to you lol, you shouldn’t feel guilty about liking a good super interesting relationship just bc the mangaka thinks gratuitious rape and rape attempts are gr8 ways to illustrate evil. It makes sense to feel that way, but yk, it sucks.

So like I know it’s easy to say “idc bc it’s fiction” and that probably doesn’t help you because you already know it’s fiction. But I do think it’s good to bear in mind that the only person who has any say in what happens to Casca in the story is Miura, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying some elements of his story just because he likes to go full grimdark at other times.

Also like, while I personally am fine with just saying “it’s fiction so idgaf, I’ll take what I like and dismiss what I don’t,” it doesn’t work for everyone, but an extra like… point that might help you reconcile liking characters who do terrible things is that these two terrible things in particular are bad and genuinely offensive writing lol.

Like it’s probably easier to say “fuck the Eclipse rape idc” when you see it as hugely gratuitous, offensively depicted, contradictory in some ways to earlier canon***, wholly unnecessary, thematically muddy, and kind of disturbingly downplayed in the future for the sake of depicting NeoGriffith as a morally ambiguous hero of his own story (and Miura has straight up said that NGriff is supposed to be morally ambiguous and heroic depending on your pov lol).

Guts sexually assaulting Casca is also unnecessary (trying to murder her seems like it would be a sufficient illustration of darkness), super misogynist in that we’re still supposed to support Guts afterwards and sympathize with him and his guilt moreso than Casca, not to mention homophobic since it’s all about his (super suggestively described by the hound) feelings for Griffith.

So yk, these things may be canon but they suck and if dismissing them makes me enjoy the story more that seems like the best course of action.

And finally, if none of that helps at all, it’s worth taking into account that these are Griffith and Guts’ magical evil alter egos at work. Canonically Femto is the worst aspects of Griffith, magnified by literal evil, with the rest of him burned or shattered away. The last thing Griffith did as a character was sacrifice the Hawks. Everything else has just been a magically augmented part of him.

Guts’ Beast of Darkness similarly is part of Guts, not all of him, and it’s also given strength by Guts’ existence on the interstice, thanks to the Brand. That’s why Flora’s magic seal of protection on the brand helped like, metaphorically chain it up in Guts’ subconscious.

One of Berserk’s main thematic points is that everyone has an inner darkness in them, it’s part of being human, so it’s not that Guts and Griffith are singled out as extra evil.

As pure unmagical humans, Guts and Griffith are just interesting complicated people, neither saints nor demons, with an intense relationship, and imo there’s plenty of room for fluffy content between them pre-Eclipse, or in an AU. I mean canon has them bond during a naked waterfight lol, you know there are a ton of cute off-screen moments between them just waiting to be depicted in fanworks.

(With the caveat that Miura’s misogyny sometimes still shows through, eg Griffith’s night with Charlotte which is narratively treated as consensual even though she says “no” first (typical bodice ripper shit), or Guts sexually assaulting Casca by grabbing her boob to distract her during an argument which is treated as cute rather than fucked up. But yk, welcome to Berserk. Miura sucks.)

***eg in v brief one thing that bothers me is that in the Black Swordsman arc
it was strongly implied that Guts’ reaction to whatever made him so
angry at Griffith/Femto was paralyzing fear, whereas during the Eclipse
all we see is violent rage

@madchen said:
oh also griffith wants
guts to bridal style carry him when he’s real drunk and refuses to move
at all until guts picks him up he holds his arms outstretched
expectantly and everything 

lmao this is true and adorable

i saw the argument that the hound being born from guts’ trauma. i know the stuations are kinda different but do you think the same thing can be said femto as a being? like their traumas showing itself through their dark sides.

ABSOLUTELY

lol i’m actually writing a thing right now that gets into that a little, tho it’ll be a while b4 i can post it

but yeah like femto specifically I would argue is essentially griffith’s guilt and self-loathing personified, just as the beast of darkness is guts’, and those feelings relate back to trauma for both of them.

For Guts it’s Gambino selling him and later telling him he’s cursed and evil and deserved it + the guilt of killing Gambino. This is v strongly visually suggested during his sewer nightmare right before he overhears Griffith’s promrose hall speech. Watches a monster kill gambino, then child!guts, then turns out the monster is himself. Voila. (also the trauma of the eclipse, buried guilt + self loathing wrt abandoning griffith leading to the eclipse, and his black swordsman sadism, traumatizing and killing children, etc, all makes the beast of darkness grow)

For Griffith it’s the guilt of the deaths of everyone who follows him and tbqh the deaths of people he kills too, and his self-loathing wrt “dirtying” himself in pursuit of his dream, so yk there’s trauma there too with Gennon. Also I think there’s a case to be made that the year of torture had a significant contribution to Femto’s existence, even if the psychological trauma of it isn’t rly discussed like the physical trauma is – I mean the mask he was forced to wear is incorporated into Femto’s design, that’s a big sign at least, plus the talk of darkness and feeling numb at the start of his torture chamber monologue which is echoed during his transformation into Femto.

idk basically strong yes imo, and i’m probably gonna come back and revisit this topic in greater detail eventually

i really love your theory about how the behelit Guts carries around might belong to Casca, but do you think it would be likely to see in future that Guts will become some sort of apostle and thus become Griffiths/Femtos “equal” (and thus carry on forth the theme of Guts striving for this equality)? Or might Guts become something Skull Knight is now? Im rambling but id love to hear your rambling/thoughts on this haha

ty! God I really, really want Guts to be shown as Griffith’s equal at some point. I feel like it’s the only way to satisfactorily conclude their whole… thing. Guts letting go of the desire to be Griffith’s equal just isn’t satisfying to me.

But that said I don’t think becoming an apostle is the way to do it. For that literal equality Guts would have to become a Godhand, and unless there’s a 200+ year timeskip after Elfhelm that’s not possible according to the rules of the world. An apostle is a follower of NeoGriff so becoming one wouldn’t make him Griffith’s equal, it would put him back in that position of looking up at him/feeling looked down on.

Ofc one could say that those technical details don’t really matter, what matters is that Griffith succumbed to his superpowered dark side so if Guts does then that’s still equality in a sense, even if he’s a “lesser” monster. But then, he has the armour to represent his dark side, which makes the behelit kind of superfluous now, and it’s been foreshadowed a lot that he’s going to lose himself to the armour at some point.

And since it’s suggested that Skull Knight became a walking skeleton because he succumbed to the amour himself, I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll get more Skull Knight comparisons and there will at least be a danger of Guts becoming like him – powerful but… lacking humanity I guess, if he doesn’t overcome the armour. And that could potentially lead to ~the beast of darkness~ and ~the hawk of light~ regarding each other as equals in a confrontation.

BUT! What I want more than that is acknowledgement that all these standards of literal equality are essentially a smokescreen obscuring what actually made them equal from the beginning, which is the fact that they both loved each other and they were both emotionally vulnerable w/ the other. So honestly acknowledgement that they’re still hung up on each other despite everything is what would work best here imho.

Guts learns that NGriff failed his test on the Hill of Swords and started getting emotional about Guts again, and NGriff learns that in addition to hate Guts still feels residual love, and guilt and regret etc. Followed by an emotionally charged third duel, their strengths (magic superpower, inner darknesses, fate vs not being beholden to fate, whatever) and weaknesses (emotions, love and regret) equally matched.

Wait, Griffith is attracted to women? Where???

inablackmirror:

bthump:

don’t ask me lol, I read him as 110% gay

Well, I like Griffith so much because his thought process and belief system is just so utterly SAME, for me, down to the fact that if I was also a super smart super hot guy and was having a mental breakdown from Guts leaving I too would probably fuck Charlotte (and down to the fact that part of me feels personally attacked and had close to a literal life crisis after reading bthump’s psychological analysis of him lul….), and while it’s definitely a self destructive act and not an act of love or pleasure, it’s also because she’s …. hot is the wrong word? But I do think he is physically attracted to her. I also think he is attracted to Casca physically in some way. I think those attractions are twisted and warped and spring largely from psychological darkness, but that there is a genuine biological attraction.

I went through several times wondering if I was really bi, or if I only wanted to sleep with men to use them to punish myself because I associated it so much with having to do with conquest and punishment because of past trauma. But my therapist said that most likely if I wasn’t attracted to men to begin with I wouldn’t take it out that way… so that’s my reasoning for Griffith being attracted to women. I know it probably wasn’t a seriously question, though, so sorry for being so extra. I’ve been in a mood. xD

…further thoughts…. I do feel a lot like both times, I think there’s a pattern it’s a power thing for him, because that’s my projection. That Guts leaving made him feel helpless, so he fucked Charlotte because he could. That being physically wrecked from being tortured made him feel helpless, so he raped Casca to prove he could. I guess that doesn’t…really? prove he’s attracted to women?…. but I just feel like maybe something sexual wouldn’t be the route he’d take if he was totally unattracted? Just my personal feeling.

Fair enough, we all have our headcanons based on whatever we get out of the manga + our own experiences + what we find enjoyable/entertaining/reasonable/etc. No worries about answering seriously, I just gave a flippant answer lol bc ngl that’s kind of been my mood today, but god knows I’m all for getting serious and meta-y at any and all possible opportunities lol.

Anyway yeah, as another bi who definitely has done (and still sometimes does lol) a lot of “am I bi or gay?” soul searching I definitely get where you’re coming from even tho I see him as gay myself. Thanks for sharing your input on this tbh, and I hope this isn’t too personal to reblog tho I will ofc delete if you prefer.

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this is one of those grand thematic statements that applies to a lot of berserk, like guts’ nearly obsessive need to fight monsters, or like, well, most sacrifices imo. But I’m thinking about how it applies to Griffith – the reverse, I mean. Griffith doesn’t really express fear, like he doesn’t really express most of his feelings, but what does he strike out?

Well, here he’s assassinated a bunch of would-be assassins, including the Queen. Gennon. Tyranny/the natural order of things in general lol.

And Guts.

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Or maybe more accurately, his feelings for Guts.

tbh one of my major criticisms of Berserk is that as far as I can tell the theme of fear has been mostly dropped, like, i’m pretty sure the last time we saw a suggestion of Guts being afraid for himself rather than of himself was 150 chapters ago with Slan, and that was like the only time post-Eclipse at all lol.

So I can’t exactly say that Guts surviving the Eclipse and then Femto/NeoGriffith pointedly failing to strike Guts out suggests his narrative is gonna end with falling under the wing of what he fears, but screw it that’s what I want and I’m using that panel up there to justify it.