Tag: a

i know i’ve been talking about casca a lot recently but I just kind of want to outline the biggest issue with her narrative imo:

Griffith throwing her a sword instead of personally killing the nobleman for her was presumably an important aspect of her character development. It’s why she decided to become a mercenary (”you know how to fight already”), it’s the beginning of the sense of pride and accomplishment she feels when she fights to survive.

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She is personally invested in her life as a mercenary, in being able to defend herself and fight for her survival, and in rising up with Griffith as well, carving out a new path.

To Casca, Griffith represents an end to the way of life she thought was only natural – starving and being caught in between skirmishes in her village, being exploited by those with more power.

He threw her a sword – Griffith represents her personal empowerment. Rather than someone else saving her, it’s her ability to save herself if she only has access to the right tools.

Casca knows he wants a kingdom, and she has a personal stake in seeing that kingdom come into existence. This isn’t really directly said anywhere, but we know she knows he plans to marry Charlotte to get to the throne, and we know she admires his dream, and we “know” she values her hard-won freedom to fight against people who would oppress her.

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This is extremely good shit when you look at it through that perspective – Casca admiring Griffith’s conviction and having a personal stake in the realization of his dream. Seeing Griffith’s vulnerabilities as well, and deciding to be his sword, to help strengthen him so she can see his dream become a reality, because it’s one she shares, and hell, even because on a personal level she loves him in whatever way – not because he saved her but because he enabled her to save herself. That’s fine as an addition.

BUT NOPE

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“My dream… had… already ended.”

Like, in this chapter, she’s literally like, ‘yo remember when I said I wanted to be Griffith’s sword? I was lying, I just want to fuck him, and since you’re the only one he wants to fuck and Charlotte’s the only one he has to fuck I’m gonna kill myself.”

Her dream isn’t to fight to survive, it’s not to help Griffith cut away his own path and carve out a place where a young poor girl from a downtrodden village who narrowly escaped becoming a slave could become a celebrated general. Her dream is to fuck Griffith.

Her monologue at the start of chapter 46 starts with how she couldn’t tear her eyes from Guts as he walked away from the Band, and how that freaked her out because she was afraid it meant her feelings for Griffith were a lie. “Afraid of all that, I lived with the intent of sacrificing myself for my unrequited feelings for Griffith.”

Literally, she led the Hawks for that year not even out of duty to them or loyalty to them or Griffith or the dream – just because of her romantic feelings for Griffith.

And that’s why she’s able to drop Griffith’s dream like a hot potato when she focuses on her romantic feelings for Guts instead and he invites her to leave the Hawks and come support his dream instead. She was never actually invested in Griffith’s dream, or her life as a mercenary, or even the Hawks as a family. When Guts left he eventually realizes it was a mistake because the Hawks were his family, the place where he belonged.

When Casca decides to leave with him, there’s no acknowledgement of that for her – no sense that she’s choosing to leave a family. It’s just taken as read that that’s what she should do because she’s in love with Guts and that is what motivates her.

And like, Guts’ dream is literally just “I want to fight whoever the fuck. I just want to kill a lot of people and get better and better at it.” Unlike Griffith’s it’s not noble, it doesn’t make the world a better place, it’s not based on any kind of ideals that can make Casca’s life better. But despite that Casca’s like, sounds great, where do I sign up to cheer you on from the sidelines?

(And we know if she went along with him she would end up on the sidelines rather than fighting alongside him, because that’s exactly what happens soon after with Wyald.

“I’m takin’ him one on one.”
“No matter what… I’ve gotta settle the score with him. With them.”)

And this is essentially why Casca’s narrative is misogynist as fuck. Not just because of her romantic feelings, but because of the way Casca having actual values and personal desires that aren’t romance-related was a fucking bait and switch lmao.

She was set up as someone who gave a shit about something, only for that to have been a lie all along because she only gives a shit about hooking up with either Griffith or Guts.

Honestly the more I think about it the more it boggles my mind how awful this is lol. Like chapters 45/46 aren’t even Casca accepting that Griffith’s dream ain’t happening anymore and finding consolation in having a new “place” in Guts’ heart or w/e. It’s straight up about Casca not just being in love with Griffith, but revealing that it’s been her sole motivation all along.

And like, lbr I choose to ignore this entirely because it’s so bad and so stupid and so flat and dumb and terrible, but man – it’s all there outlined clearly in straightforward dialogue :/

I’ve just been having feelings about Casca lately that are probs 90% projection. We’ve talked about this before I think the most likely explanation of Casca’s character arc revolving around feelings about the men around her (that therefore must be romantic) is misogyny. But it’s also shitty and #relatable because despite being in an atypically profession for women Casca is a Good Girl. And as someone who was raised to be that way you are pretty much trained to be this way by your parents.

And once we bring in the after effects of multiple traumas and possible
closeted feelings it gets even more complicated because I really did
just throw myself into my relationships, both platonic and romantic. So
basically it’s not good writing but it’s all weird and complicated for
me as someone who relates more and more to her as I get older.

Makes me wish we got more pre-Hawks backstory for Casca, what her family life was like, yk, other than her parents selling her lol, to have more of a foundation for her character.

but like this is legit. idk projecting on media is a time-honoured tradition, and if it makes it more entertaining or meaningful or understandable or w/e then it’s probably the best thing to do lol.

I don’t identify with Casca rly myself (I mean tbqh I almost never relate much to fictional characters on a personal level lol, I have kind of a disconnect there) but it absolutely makes her narrative more interesting to me if eg I read her desire to “give something” to the men in her life sexually as a result of trauma and being rescued/feeling like she owes them, rather than Miura just being a misogynist who thinks its romantic.

like idk exactly where to draw the line between ‘good writing’ and ‘bad but makes a surprising amount of sense if you look at it in a certain way writing’ anyway lol.

(btw I think I saw that you replied to one of my posts a couple times around when you sent these but they don’t show up on my activity page bc tumblr is broken so idk lol)

seisans
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “@madchen said:
whenever i see people…”

oh i do actually think casca’s not gonna forgive guts though! say what you will about miura but at the end of the day he’s a brilliant writer, and i feel like whether or not he understands women and casca as a character, he knows what would make for a really bad story. guts and casca having a happily ever after would be the most boring shit ever, i don’t think he would do that
but i DO think that all the little
nuances of casca that make her so relatable to women and maybe
especially wlw were just kind of accidental. no man understands women
like that

ohh yeah i see what you mean then by Miura only ever accidentally writing women well. bc like I do think he sometimes does pretty good with writing women as interesting well rounded characters, but boy when he gets into gendered stuff specifically, yk that kind of men are like this and women are like this shit, or the experience of being a woman in a misogynistic world stuff, etc, it’s absolutely super basic at best and usually just Bad as we see over and over with Casca, among other examples.

So yeah when it comes to like, eg expectations of a nuanced and thoughtful portrayal of Casca’s reaction to her extremely gendered trauma I have basement level expectations, and it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if Miura thought Casca being in love with Guts and/or forgiving him was a reasonable emotional response as a woman-driven-by-her-emotions-for-men.

But yeah, characterization aside, narratively it would just not be good writing, and lbr we’ve had a ton of foreshadowing and it’s not pointing towards Guts and Casca getting a happily ever after. At least not any time soon. And I’m just gonna keep my fingers crossed that whatever actually happens effectively nips the romantic potential in the bud.

You’re acting like Casca is being forced to stay with the Hawks , when she could’ve leave anytime she wanted. Victimizing her when she was an equal warrior like the rest of the Hawks until Guts came along, even Corkus said no one could beat her when they assaulted Guts and tried to take his silver coins. She was amongst the best warrior Griffith had they all respected her. Both Guts and Griffith hurt her more especially Griffith since she’s more familiar with him since she knows him longer.

…what is this a response to? Where did I suggest Casca was forced to stay with the Hawks?

The closest thing I can come up with is my tags on this post, which are referring to the fact that Casca is upset because she wants to leave with Guts and now feels like she can’t because of Griffith, and I think that’s pathetic writing that could be vastly improved if Casca was motivated by something other than men.

I mean if we’re talking about Casca’s term as leader of the Hawks, the text insists over and over again that she’s basically forced to lead them bc of her sense of duty and bc everyone just turned to her as their replacement for Griffith – Judeau tells Guts multiple times that leading the Hawks is terrible for her, we see that it drives her to suicide, and when the Hawks learn that Griffith isn’t going to recover they want Casca to keep leading them and Judeau tells them to stfu because they’re asking too much of her.

And I think Miura choosing to emphasize the toll leading takes on Casca emotionally is a shitty writing choice, especially compared to Griffith’s issues with leadership which are all about guilt, vs Casca’s which are all about how difficult it is.

Also like, are you saying I’m victimizing her by pointing out how often she needs to be rescued because she’s always conveniently feverish/on the verge of exhaustion/suicidal/up against someone so strong someone else has to step in/etc? There’s a well-known piece of writing advice: “show, don’t tell.” We’re told that Casca is the third best fighter in the Hawks who can defeat ten men. We’re shown Guts or Griffith rescuing her (or Guts easily defeating her) way, way more often than we’re ever shown her actual fighting skills.

This is a deliberate choice on Miura’s part, to shove Casca into the role of victim as often as possible despite what we’re told of her skills. I’m not dumping on a real woman who has a lot of bad luck lmao, I’m dumping on Miura’s misogynist writing.

Casca was a full character for about 90 chapters, in which she had to be rescued, let’s see… I count eight times: nobleman, guts, ch 15-21 (which could be counted as like 4 separate rescues but i’m being generous here), silat, suicide attempt, wyald, judeau during the eclipse (could be 2 separate times but let’s call it one), skull knight at the eclipse.

Compare it to the number of times we see Casca defeat her enemies
herself in those 90 chapters: Adon at Doldrey, the nobleman (after Griffith throws her a
sword), a few attempted rapists as she’s running from the 100 man fight
(before Judeau and co show up and get the rest for her), and one of the
Bakiraka assassins.

(I counted the nobleman in both categories lol bc Griff threw her a
sword and chopped off his ear first to interrupt the rape attempt, but
Casca finished him off and was also a kid so she gets points for that.
Just fyi.)

Or compare that to Guts, who is a full character throughout the whole 300+ chapters of story, and had to be rescued once when Griffith rode back for him after their first raid, once when Griff leapt in to save him from Zodd, a monster neither of them could actually defeat and it was actually fate that saved their asses, and once when Skull Knight showed up at the Eclipse. Oh, I suppose there was one time Gambino killed an enemy on the battlefield for him when he was like six. And Skull Knight didn’t save him from Slan, but he did save him from the subsequent cave collapse, so let’s be fair and count that too.

Versus an uncountable number of times he defeated his enemies himself.

Or compare it to human Griffith who is a character for about as long as Casca, and has to be rescued once after he’s tortured to the point of helplessness. Maybe twice if you include Zodd killing Wyald while Wyald’s holding him. And even after he’s physically helpless he manages to save the group once himself.

My point being that Miura chooses what to write, and he chose to write a ridiculous amount of situations where Casca needs to be rescued. He chose to make her a victim many many times even though she’s theoretically a highly accomplished warrior, and then he went all in and turned that into her entire character in the 250 chapters post-Golden Age, and I am absolutely gonna criticize that choice.

Finally, I often cite the way the Hawks fully respect and admire Casca as one of my favourite things about her character, and I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that she wasn’t hurt by Griffith and Guts lol, so i’m not sure why you brought those things up.

@madchen said:
whenever i see people
gush about casca as like a strong female character its like… what the
fuck are yall talking about she literally is there to throw hysterical
fits and then gets fridged 😦

also you put into
words what is eternally frustrating to me abt casca ie miura is a pretty
decent writer when it comes to portraying human fault in his characters
so cascas writing comes off almost like a deliberate comment on her
places as a woman constantly bound to two men and being miserable and
directionless bc of it.
i mean miuras female characters in
general like dude… please i know its “””dark fantasy”” but not every
woman has to be under constant threat of depowering and rape or be frail
and helpless before she meets guts or w/e

and then our
“”powerful women”” are bland and matronly or sexualized femme fatales
snooze. this turned into a rant  basically cascas writing is my kill
switch 

yeeeep.

and yeah like agh that’s basically what i mean when i say her lack of independence is interesting to me in theory, like… i genuinely believe it could be intended as an actual flaw and commentary on misogyny, like I’m torn on that. bc Miura does use Casca to give us his hot takes on misogyny a lot, and it really, really feels to me like he wrote g*tsca as a highly flawed relationship on purpose, and ffs she’s compared to his sword right after they fuck, that cannot be intended as a good thing, right?

but his writing of Casca is just so genuinely bad and misogynist so often that it’s just as likely that he just plain sucks at writing a hetero romance that isn’t super sexist.

honestly it almost feels ridiculous to complain about the misogyny in berserk, because duh lmao, but sometimes I just get caught up in how frustrating it is, esp bc Miura is such a good writer in other ways. Like I’d say Farnese is the best written woman in Berserk and even she goes from sexy sadomasochist to caretaker with almost nothing in between, with a side of being into Guts the same way Casca was into Griffith.

Don’t you think that Casca is a little boring and overrated? The character who only purpose is revolve around male characters and be their love interest -especially if those men have special bond- is annoying, but people think so highly of her when she’s not really that complex, interesting and independent character, especially when her sole role only is rubbing the salt on Guts’ wonds. ://

Kind of yes, kind of no lol.

I find Casca a very frustrating character because I think she had plenty of potential to be interesting, and we see brief flashes of that in canon, but Miura fucked her over at every turn, flattening her, making sure every aspect of her character revolved around men somehow, etc. Personally that potential is more than enough for me to love her, because I’m easy when it comes to angry women with swords lol, but that’s just me and my ability to ignore what I don’t like about canon.

For example, when she brought Guts up to that cliff by the waterfall so she could take her anger out on him by trying to murder him. The narrative never really acknowledges how utterly fucked up that was, it’s played off as Casca being a hysterical woman, but man in theory that is a very interesting, super dark character note.

Casca’s lack of independence is actually interesting to me too as a major character flaw. But again, it’s something that the narrative… doesn’t necessarily acknowledge, but rather seems to treat as the default role of a woman.

Like Miura’s misogyny is never more blatant than when it comes to how he writes Casca, and it sucks, but despite that he’s still a really good character writer, and that still shines through even with Casca. She has relatable moments, she has awesome moments, she has strong dialogue, moments that make me feel empathy, and interesting traits. I mean the most heart-wrenching part of the Eclipse imo was when we saw it through her point of view as she fought with Judeau. Miura’s writing still makes me feel real feelings for her, and I can’t not love a character I feel for lol, even if that writing fails her enormously in many other ways.

Like it blows that her motivation for joining the Hawks and becoming an incredible swordsman was being in love with Griffith, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s an incredible swordsman who can lead an army and it’s cool and badass. Like, it seriously blows that she’s almost 100% motivated by men – either being in love with them or fighting against their misogynist violence – but I can still read moments like her capture of Doldrey, or the way she can take command of the Hawks in moments of panic, and want to cheer for her. It blows that she’s always being depowered somehow so she can be rescued, but I can still read dialogue like “they say she can defeat ten strong men at once” and go ‘yeah that’s my girl’ lol.

BUT ALL THAT SAID like, I can completely understand being exasperated by her character too. Like, I personally can kind of… ignore how badly she’s often written and just take the parts I like and form my opinion based on that. But that’s not something anyone should be required to do, and her writing fucking sucks let’s be real.

No one should feel like they have to like her when she pretty much exists as an example of Miura’s misogyny, and when she is forced into the love interest role for the sole purposes of a) no homoing Guts and Griffith and b) getting horrifically and off-the-charts offensively fridged for Guts’ manpain. One of my pet peeves is people calling fans misogynist for disliking fictional women, cause like, the thing is she’s not real and hating her as a poorly written and often offensive fictional construct isn’t the same as hating a real woman, so yk, I support you lol.

Plus yeah I do think she’s often overrated in lots of fandom – a good chunk of Berserk fandom doesn’t acknowledge the enormous flaws in her writing, and does consider her to be genuinely a well-written ~strong female character~ lol. So yeah in that case I think she’s overrated. Though it might be more accurate to say Miura’s writing is overrated.

idk tl;dr I like Casca but her writing is so deeply flawed that I completely get disliking her.

freewilllife
replied to your post “ugggggh tumblr still refusing to show me like half my notifications so…”

In a way it shows that the mangaka is not able to imagine that there are women who don t consider it a true sacrifice if there aren t “feminine” and soft. Like I have barely seen a woman who is able to perform that “trick” 100 % of her time anyway.

yeah pretty much. it wouldn’t even bother me much if Miura didn’t keep framing Casca’s more feminine traits as a prelude to romance/establishing her as an acceptable love interest, while also having her ask for reassurance that she’s feminine enough for Guts multiple times. Like, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing a woman who has a combination of masculine and feminine traits, or even writing a woman who’s insecure about not being as feminine as other women, but lol I hate how Miura went about it.

also hey if femininity is a prerequisite for being guts’ love interest there’s no need to awkwardly feminize casca when griffith is right there being described as “prettier than me, and I’m a woman”/”so pretty i could hardly tell he was a man”/etc js lol

ugggggh tumblr still refusing to show me like half my notifications so i missed these til now, sry.

@madchen said:
whenever casca starts
acting out i think of that ten year study that concluded women only
express rage at the incompetence of others and at injustice

not that its That Deep
like u said… alovelyburn said that miura starts “chickifying cascas
character” once he decides to make her a love interest and it shows.
suddenly she starts crying more often, is passing out from endometriosis
and her anger is explicitly regarded as womanly as opposed to just

at some point I want to write out a full “it could be that deep” style analysis of Casca’s role in the story wrt the intersection of misogyny and heteronormativity. Like, I swear to god there’s a bizarrely coherent reading there even though there’s no possible way it was intentional on Miura’s part lmao.

But yeah as far as reasonable interpretations go it’s just sad facts that Miura uses Casca as like, a shallow way to examine misogyny, in how yk her whole life revolves around sexual violence, while simultaneously writing her romance v misogynistically as well, and it’s awkward af.

Like yeah Casca definitely got more feminine when she became Guts’ love interest, like to the point where Guts reassuring her that she’s “womanly” enough is a prelude to sex (jfc) and every one of their positive encounters before up to then shows her being nuturing/”soft”: bandaging his wound at Promrose, needing to be rescued bc of her period, tending to Guts’ wounds with the elf dust (w/ Judeau commentating that she’s softer now), wearing a dress while Guts reassures her that she looks good in it, being rescued by Guts again, etc.

But also ngl I get the sense that she was kind of doomed from the start with Judeau’s “our Casca gave up being a woman” line while talking about how she’s the 2nd best swordsman in the Hawks.

Like Casca was sadly never going to be a good portrayal of gender non-conformity because her lack of femininity was framed as an unfortunate sacrifice and something that should be rectified as soon as we met her.

and casca would be…..

ok i’m having a hard time responding to this bc frankly this reads as salty that i didn’t include her, but i want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just curious about my thoughts on Casca’s terrible way of dealing with her feelings.

so for the record I’m not obligated to do a version of every post i make for every character in berserk. i focused on guts and griffith bc

a) their shitty ways of dealing with their feelings drive the plot and are related to their dreams/coping mechanisms of choice and story arcs, unlike Casca’s which is entirely incidental and separate from her dream/coping mechanism (ie, supporting others’ dreams)
b) they parallel each other in several ways
c) i have more pages featuring guts and griffith’s denial/avoidance saved so I didn’t have to search for examples
and d) they’re my faves

but if you are just curious and i’m reading your tone wrong, then here you go: Casca is queen of lashing out imo

punching guts several times, attacking him by the waterfall, physically lashing out at corkus a few times, screaming in outrage a lot, and you could maybe argue her suicide attempt counts as lashing out against herself, but honestly i don’t think I’d count it based on how it was depicted.

but yeah to me this reads as less a carefully considered individualized and plot-and-theme-relevant character trait and more “haha women are so irrational, amirite?” on miura’s part so I’m hard-pressed to lay it all out like it’s a solid writing choice the way i did w/ the other two. I mean

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come tf on Miura.

Griffith has been described by the Godhand as kinsman. He is put in a womb and then becomes a bird that leaves its nest. He is often seen in a fetal position. I see this as Griffith becoming part of a family means Griffith can grow and start over.

Seems like a fair take. I mean becoming Femto was very much shown as a rebirth – you could definitely say he was reborn into a new family, the godhand, to begin a new life. I always particularly loved this panel as an illustration for this ngl:

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the very image of a newly hatched (evil) baby bird right there.

But yeah like, the chapter where the hand begins to unfold to reveal Femto is called “quickening” and the next chapter is “birth.” There’s no doubt it’s def a monstrous gestation thing.

Makes me wonder about NeoGriffith’s similar birth tbh. It gets a series of chapters titled “birth ceremony,” he hatches from an egg there too, rapidly grows from fetus to adult, etc.

Though we don’t know enough about NeoGriffith to conclude whether it means there’s significant differences between him and Femto/it’s another new start in a way. But I mean the parallels and contrasts between the Eclipse and the Conviction Arc’s shadow Eclipse were hammered through the reader’s head for a reason right? There’s got to be something to it.

ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like

there’s such a clear little mini-arc. This isn’t brand new information at all, but I love seeing it laid out like this so I’m going to talk about it.

Chapter 6 starts with Guts trying to visit Griffith while brooding about Casca’s “it’s your fault!”

He’s prevented by social status.

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Casca punches him out and Guts leaves and sulks, and the rest of the Hawks have this exchange:

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So we start with the statement that everyone’s feeling a little distanced from Griffith thanks to his promotions, and this is very much affecting Guts too, which is why he threw a couple guards down the stairs and made an ass of himself while trying to visit him.

Then we go straight to Guts angrily swinging his sword on the staircase.

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He’s pissed off about Casca making him feel like an outsider. This is a dude who has clearly defined issues when it comes to being blamed for bad shit happening. See, eg, Gambino blaming him for the death of Shizu, calling him “cursed,” along with the rest of his first mercenary band.

Three years with the Hawks, and Guts is mostly content and happy, but there’s still this doubt, still this sense that he’s a little on the outside looking in, a little distanced, and Griffith more recently drifting away from everyone puts that background feeling into sharp relief. This is why we begin our narrative, after the three year gap, when Griffith gets promoted into the nobility.

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Guts angrily swinging his sword, alone, probably brooding over Casca accusing him of not caring about his comrades since this scene is placed right after that confrontation, while Griffith gets promoted, rising away from him.

Chapter six returns us to Guts swinging his sword angrily and alone while brooding over his feelings of being an outsider. His place is with the Hawks, but is it really? When it’s “his fault” Griffith nearly died, when he’s accused of not caring about anyone but himself?

And then Griffith seeks him out, joining Guts at the midpoint of a staircase, for that extra bit of symbolism.

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He talks about how much he hates the other nobles, talks about how nightmarish their encounter with Zodd was, but how it was also interesting theologically lol. A bit of philosophy, a bit of personal connection and emotional opening up. Guts asks the question.

And the turn of this little mini-arc is, of course, this:

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The end of chapter six.

It’s Griffith completely assuaging those fears of being an outsider, of losing him to the nobles, of being looked-down on. It’s Griffith negating his deep-seated belief that his only worth is as an asset.

Three years ago Guts began this sentence:

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And now, in chapter seven, he’s finally reached a place where he can finish it.

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Idk basically this is the pinnacle of Guts’ search for belonging, and I love how well it’s built up to by emphasizing Guts’ outsider status first, through Casca’s angry tirades and through Griffith’s promotions.

Which ofc also provides a solid foundation for the dissolving of Guts’ feeling of personal fulfillment in another few chapters. Honestly it provides a solid foundation for literally everything that comes after. This is the skeletal structure of Berserk – Guts’ longing for love and acceptance vs Guts never quite feeling like he has it. Except right here and right now.

“Even so, incidentally, I found someone I really wanted… to have look at me.”

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That feeling goes as easily as it came, with a few words, but it’s what motivates Guts at least until chapter 130 (potentially til chapter 182), after which trying to forget that feeling and focus on what he does have is what motivates him (”I came this far by letting go of my obsession…”) And we’ll see how that goes.

huh, i just noticed that the post-zodd chapters w/ guts and griffith’s conversation on the staircase and ending w/ guts dedicating his sword to griffith are called “Master of the Sword” 1+2.

which seems fairly loaded since these 2 chapters are the direct opposite of guts leaving the hawks to become a master of the sword.

feels like a subtle little acknowledgement that the place where guts can find genuine personal fulfillment is with the hawks, wielding his sword “for his sake.”

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vs

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of only 10 chapters previous

I think it’s really cool that Berserk is basically taking this theme of darkness/light, isolation/connection, and portraying it on both an interpersonal scale and a like, grandiose cosmic scale.

With Ganeshka and Griffith the darkness is the isolation of being singular, unknowable even to oneself, and the light is another being existing on the same plane as you, seeing the world the same way as you, seeing you as you truly are. This sense of cosmic understanding.

With Guts and Griffith there’s nothing objectively grandiose or cosmic about it, it’s just a relationship between two dudes that fell apart and still haunts both of them. But their connection is meaningful enough to them that existing without the other is comparable to being a solitary eldrich abomination who can barely even perceive others.

Griffith’s existence as a monster “beyond the reach of man” is basically a symbol of choosing to isolate yourself rather than surrendering to the vulnerability of loving and being loved, and that’s underscored at the climax of the Millenium Falcon arc just as he achieves his dream (both through that moment of connection up there and through Ganeshka’s backstory of paranoia feeding into isolation which is placed right before that moment).

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Like for real, all this untouchable, unknowable, eldrich abomination jesus figure stuff is essentially a metaphor for Guts and Griffith breaking up.

And like, I always get a huge kick out of this concept of playing with scales when it comes to interpersonal connection. This isn’t a groundbreaking thing, this is a relatively common fantasy friendship/romance trope – yk the world only gets saved after the couple confesses their feelings, love is the key to achieving X goal, a single person can’t do the magic thing but when their friends join/support them they can do it, Spock running away from his feelings for Kirk is a parallel to a godlike machine’s inability to understand emotion, etc etc etc.

And Griffith and Guts’ moments of connection are like finding the one being you can see and understand in a world of isolation, and losing that is like becoming a monster in a sea of darkness. See also: the Black Swordsman arc and the Berserk armour for a slightly more down-to-earth fantasy metaphor.

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yk what this is what Berserk is about. Like if I had to pick one image to encapsulate Berserk, this is what I’d go with.

The Black Swordsman arc builds up to a reveal that Guts’ revenge-y feelings are a giant mishmash that confuses tf out of Puck because this is how he used to feel about Griffith, and his original feelings for Griffith are still tangled up in his current feelings.

Like, kind of the point of the Black Swordsman arc is to start with this one dimensional portrayal of rage and then unravel and unravel that until all of Guts’ various issues are laid out.

These mixed feelings are the big reveal of the first arc. Our look into Guts’ childhood right after deepens our understanding of these mixed feelings, but it’s his feelings towards Griffith that wholly drive the plot, not his feelings towards Gambino. Then the entire Golden Age continues to deepen our understanding of Guts’ mixed feelings. Like pretty much the whole point of the story up until we pick back up with Guts in the Lost Children Arc is to illuminate the complexity of Guts’ feelings towards Griffith (and vice versa) now that they’re enemies. It’s to build that foundation.

And anyway I guess my point is that with all this attention and time devoted to these painfully mixed feelings, if the ultimate resolution of the story is Guts straight up dropping/moving on from those feelings rather than finally untangling and examining them, that will essentially be a deeply unsatisfying betrayal of the first hundred or so chapters.

But hey the ominous foreshadowing’s got my back at least.

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berserk is the story of two dudes who keep trying and failing to not be obsessed with each other, taking more and more drastic and destructive measures each time, and still fucking failing to get over their mutual obsession

griffith: focuses on his dream, still risks everything to save guts’ life multiple times

guts: separates himself from the hawks, tries not to focus on the fact that it’s all to be griffith’s friend

griffith: has sex as a distraction from guts leaving him; cries and ends up in a dungeon where he thinks about nothing but guts for a year

guts: has sex as a distraction from breaking griffith’s heart; eventually has to face the fact that he screwed up and decides to abandon his dream and stay with griffith. leads to obsessively pursuing him in a rage for 2-3 years.

griffith: becomes a demon to try to get over guts; next time he sees him with a corporeal form he starts getting heart palpitations

guts: focuses on restoring casca’s sanity and making new friends, doing his damndest to ignore griffith’s existence

ominous foreshadowing:

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hey challenge headcanon question what do you think guts thoughts on griffiths hair are? [ LMAOOOO i was at work and did the thing where i cant proofread for shit]

he fuckin loves griffith’s hair omg

i have like, actual things to say but first i want to get my obligatory picspam out of the way lol

like there’s a reason his very first sight of griffith is a slow sexy letting his hair down moment

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that comes first in his memory even when his association with griffith should be ‘the jerk who stabbed me’ not ‘the pretty guy with gorgeous hair that i’m imagining extra fanned out and sensuous’

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and then there’s this

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and don’t even get me started on how mesmerised he is by neogriffith’s hair

like sure it works as a visual contrast to femto to emphasize his lack of demonic appearance, but man

i mean there’s a panel of just his hair as like an abstract design as a lead in to the full pages of naked griffith, framed by guts’ awestruck expression

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and guts’ memories of the big moment of course which exaggerate his hair even more

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oh and like all of guts’ memories of human griffith that aren’t his back after the swordfight include his hair flowing in the wind

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ANYWAY in addition to bombarding you with visuals bc I enjoy spamming panels from berserk, my take is that Guts totally eroticizes Griffith’s hair, whether consciously or unconsciously, and wouldn’t actually touch it, say, to casually brush something away, until their relationship turns sexual, because it feels off-limits to him bc of that erotic association.

but then he wouldn’t be able to get enough of gently brushing it behind his ear before going in for a kiss, or looking at it all splayed out and messy while he’s asleep, or mb eventually grabbing handfuls and using it to physically guide him during sex a bit, or even brushing it for him sometimes, though he’d probably be a little intimidated at first cause lbr he wouldn’t know the first thing to do with hair longer than an inch and a half. (also ik you don’t brush curly hair but griffith’s seems less curly and more wavy to me and therefore brushable? either way tho, guts helping w/ hair care is good. washing it for him too.)

also griffith and guts cuddling w/ guts just like gently scratching/massaging his head and playing with his hair.

I was also considering the idea of guts coming in his hair like, by accident, and getting awkwardly turned on even as he apologizes lol, but actually idk… it def wouldn’t work as a humiliation thing, and i feel like come marking as a d/s thing automatically has associations of humiliation, but then there’s also just the way bodily fluids are intimate. i could see guts being into it as like a physical sign of how close they are and more physically associating griffith’s hair with sex lol.

i like the idea of it as an accident during a blowjob that griffith laughs off and guts is awkward and a little turned on about, but mb not as a deliberate sexual activity, i think.

ok so in my defense i hadn’t read this full scene in ages, i only referred back to the saved pages i had which didn’t include the context, which is why i didn’t realize until now exactly why the beast of darkness phrased it as “true light” here

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but now i have read the full scene again and i have the context and i’m fucking dying lol

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griffith is the true light in comparison to the warm lights that are his current companions, like, fuck me that’s good.

that’s so so good

like yeah i already knew light often refers to companionship and love in berserk but to have that explicitly laid out right before griffith is called guts’ “true light” is so fucking satisfying i can’t handle it.

like there you go, griffith is still the bar by which all other relationships are not just measured but found wanting. as much as guts talks about “letting go” of his obsession the longing is always there.

and like “the true light that burns us,” is literally saying that guts still loves griffith, still “longs for” griffith, and that hurts now, and that’s his motivation for wanting to lash out and kill him. it’s a bit of a repeat of what the bod told him after the hill of swords, but more direct.

lmao i may be a little overenthusiastic about this but reading the full scene literally just made me go from fear that guts is genuinely just going to move on and that will be his happy ending, to feeling like there’s no way we’re not getting a cathartic emotional climax that involves guts finally forced to confront his conflicting feelings.

LIKE!! if it was just “true light” I’d be willing to entertain the idea that it’s just revenge, framed as a dream, in opposition to his companions, the way Griffith’s castle was also a source of light to him. but “true light that burns us”? That’s Guts’ lingering, now intensely painful feelings. That’s love. That’s something he’s gonna have to deal with at some point.

bthump:

bthump:

hohoho

so i did what i said i was going to do, re-read most of the elfhelm chapters to see if i could figure anything out.

and idk how solid this is, especially considering how biased in favour of it i am lol, but i came up with this theory last night

Keep reading

hey guys i just solved berserk

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This is like, the fucking plan. Skull Knight and Danann are conspiring to have the behelit open in Elfhelm, by Danann’s spirit tree, summoning the Godhand, so Skull Knight can do his thing, quite probably aided by Elfhelm tree magic, and entomb them in the vortex. Probably alongside Guts and Casca and everyone else watching the show.

Also something genuinely bad and dark has to happen because of this, like say, Casca becoming an apostle, because Guts needs to feel the full weight of betrayal by SK and succumb to the armour. And this will be a heavy painful betrayal because it’s gonna remind Guts of Griffith, because of the way Skull Knight has rescued him in the past and earned his trust. (tbh more on this whenever I get off my ass and write a long meta post about Guts and what his relationship to Griffith means to him.)

But also the power of friendship is going to prevent Guts from going full Beast of Darkness forever the way it’s been suggested that Skull Knight lost his humanity to the armour. Just, god willing, hopefully not before g*tsca is laid to rest.

So. Still think Guts and Casca are pawns, still think the tree and Dragon’s Road thing are relevant, definitely think the behelit’s relevant, and I’m actually pretty confident that the Godhand are coming to Elfhelm and Danann and Skull Knight have this trap waiting for them.

Whether Danann and Skull Knight’s plan is successful is another story entirely. Whether defeating and trapping the Godhand away in the vortex is even a good idea is also another story entirely. And idk whether NeoGriff figures into this at all lol.

Oh also I know the behelit only opens when the laws of causality like, make it happen, but, a) Skull Knight referred to that in that ominous scene where Flora suggests he might be using Guts and it’s not stopping him from maneuvering things into place it’s just giving him a handy excuse b) fate works thru people’s encounters and choices and Danann and Skull Knight and Guts etc are people c) they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for their own ends or smthn.

Also I know Miura has said he writes on the fly and doesn’t have a plan, but he must have some idea of where things are headed because he has actively been throwing foreshadowing down for 150 chapters. Maybe the details are vague in his mind but I’m quite sure he knows the broadstrokes of the story. Like after all he wrote the entire golden age knowing exactly where it would end up, give or take a few details. I’m willing to bet he’s been planning some Skull Knight shit since Flora’s appearance.

Anyway this is my theory now. I may go about it backwards, ie having a destination I absolutely want and then finding evidence for it, but yk what i want to live in hope until the next chapter so screw it.

Ok so to summarize, my theory is that Casca’s despair is going to open the behelit, this was deliberately arranged by Danann and Skull Knight so they can trap the Godhand in the vortex, and the fall-out of this is going to be Guts going full Berserker for some period of time, most likely (though I am a little less confident about this aspect than the rest of it) because Casca opts for monsterism.

So anyway I was re-reading chapter 328, another one of those chapters that basically exists to be crammed full of foreshadowing, and this jumped out at me

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Hey Schierke, quick question for you:

what the hell does deciphering “fates that transcend time” have to do with the elf king showing up as a child to stalk your rpg group?

Nothing. That’s just completely unrelated infodumping that happens to fully support my theory that Danann and Skull Knight are conspiring to have Casca open the behelit.

Up there I wrote
“they’re high level magic users a step outside causality maybe they can
tell when the behelit’s likely to open and are facilitating that for
their own ends or smthn” and basically I’m just giving myself a pat on the back because that’s absolutely correct, as Schierke tells us here.

Incidentally I’m also now contemplating the possibility that Schierke is right and moon kid is Danann in disguise, but I have nothing conclusive to say about that, other than it would be another extra hilarious example of Danann playing up g*tsca for the sake of betraying them and tearing them apart for her own ends.

madchen
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the implications of this make me sad but like its good in the content way
theres the assumption
that griffith knows that guts finds him physically/sexually attractive
(which gets worse when you tie in his feminine features and the
internalized homophobia) but the jump from him wanting guts to stay
around and offering his body just ends in static…

griffith drops 2 his knees and offers to suck guts off if he promises he wont leave just yet

it’s like, the combination of most plausible and most depressing way for them to turn/try to turn their relationship sexual

and i feel like guts would have to be the one who recognizes that griffith has fucked up attitudes towards sex bc i rly don’t think griffith is self aware enough to recognize that this is terrible lol, at least not without a serious wake-up call. but idk if guts has enough like… social awareness. it’s like griffith has the social awareness and guts has the self awareness and while in some circumstances that could work out really well, in this circumstance it’s the opposite of what they need.

agh this is such a disaster scenario. and like if griffith did offer then and there during a fraught moment as he’s freaked out about guts leaving, guts would absolutely be like ‘no what the fuck’ and griffith would then ofc take it as a rejection/condemnation.

but at least it might be enough to convince guts that griffith needs him a lot more than he believes? it’s a starting point at least.

also yeah the point about griffith knowing guts finds him attractive is so 😦 like we were talking a bit before about guts’ internalized homophobia + griffith’s femininity vs masculinity, but yeah it would be sad and interesting to explore how griffith feels about that too.

madchen
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lmaoo im the same i like ships that are on “the friends to enemies to its complicated and cant be explained in a trope” sid so fluff is a relief. griffiths issues with sex and intimacy have me fucked beyond his rape i think crossing that line with guts would lead to a contradiction with his sex=transaction viewpoint
like i can see him
trying to seduce guts when they have a disagreement because some part of
him thinks that  trading his body/objectifying himself (?) is a viable
option to get what he wants or come to a compromise. as opposed to an
thing he does with a person he loves because he loves him and he wants
to do it. guts of course freaks out which only makes griffith more
hysterical etc

aaaaaaaaa yeah this is so real and now i’m depressed. i tried to add something but i just ended up re-stating what you said lol.

but also this has me immediately thinking of an au w/ griffith learning that guts intends to leave in a situation less immediate than the canon one but still incredibly emotionally intense for him, and leaping to offering sex. especially if he learns, unlike canon, that guts wants to leave to be his friend/equal, and therefore doesn’t necessarily see it as a rejection, but as a problem that could be fixed by offering himself.

and of course griffith does want sex for its own sake, as an expression of love and intimacy and pleasure etc, but it just isn’t how he thinks of it or frames it to himself. when it comes to sex w/ guts the transaction concept is more like an excuse to experience something he wants but can’t really admit he wants due to a) trauma and/or b) the way it runs counter to his dream.

ugh this is so angsty and good.

welcome to controversy country

Griffith’s decision to sacrifice the Hawks was perfectly reasonable not just taking into account Griffith’s own values and priorities, ie ensuring the thousands of dead posthumously achieve the thing they died for, but taking into account the Hawks’ own attitudes towards their lives, including Guts’.

It’s all there in Requiem of the Wind.

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“More than half of us’ve been killed…”

These are the core group of Hawks. These are the ones who believe in Griffith so strongly that they’re willing to spend a year living as outlaws, dying in raids, so they can rescue him – so Griffith can lead them again.

There were lots of deserters over that year. People who didn’t think it was worth risking their lives for a chance at achieving Griffith’s dream. They’re presumably out there living happily ever after.

These Hawks are the ones who are willing to risk their lives, not out of friendship or loyalty to a man, but out of loyalty to what the man symbolizes for them, what he can bring them, the success that comes to them when they follow him. Out of loyalty to the dream.

Corkus is the only one throwing a tantrum, but he’s voicing all their thoughts, as we can see when his words are placed over their depressed faces.

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Wyald spells it all out.

This is who Griffith is to them. He’s the facilitator of their dreams, dreams that each and every one of them is willing to risk their lives for.

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And when he can’t be that to them anymore, what happens? He becomes a burden to them.

Judeau offers to take care of him because it’s the least he can do, because he owes it to him, but mostly because if he doesn’t he thinks Casca will, and he thinks it will be a life ruining burden for her. His offer is a personal sacrifice.

Casca offers to take care of him because it’s the least she can do, he’s so small now, he needs someone, and because if she doesn’t Guts will, and she thinks it will be a life ruining burden for him. Her offer is a personal sacrifice.

Guts’ offer is probably the only one based on a genuine desire to stay with Griffith.

Now, Guts doesn’t see Griffith as the guy who can grant him his dreams. Guts is the exception to that. He sees Griffith as a guy he wants to be friends with.

But here’s Guts’ take on the situation:

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Finish the battles you start.

Well, that’s exactly what Griffith chose to do. The Eclipse is, in part, a narrative rebuke of Guts’ stubbornness lol, it happens because he seized on the concept of finding his own dream and couldn’t let it go until it was a moment too late.

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When Guts finally drops his own “battle” in favour of staying with Griffith, ie makes the right choice contrary to his dogged nature, it comes too late because he’d successfully convinced Casca that he was dedicated to his dream at the expense of his friendships with the Hawks. “I want to draw a line, keep things separate.” He told her he didn’t want to stay with the Hawks, and she believed him, and that attitude is what ruins everything.

And ironically that’s the exact path Griffith chose when he agreed to the sacrifice. Drop his friends and relationships in favour of renewing his committment to a dream, and finishing his own battle.

For the rest of the Hawks, the Eclipse is a rebuke of their choice to live and risk their lives for tomorrow’s success rather than today’s existence.

Now, this absolutely isn’t me arguing that the Hawks deserved to die or anything lol, this is just me saying that Requiem of the Wind is largely set-up for the sacrifice, and I think it’s a clever way of like… depicting the sacrifice not just as a random tragedy that befell a group of people, but as a darkly fitting end to the way they live their lives.

It shows that the sacrifice is consistent with everything the Hawks profess to believe in.

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They are all willing to lay down their lives for a victory they may never see.

The Eclipse is the fucked up yet logical conclusion to the Hawks’ very existence as a mercenary band that fights for an ideal, a dream, rather than just day to day living. They agree to potentially sacrifice their lives in every battle. The Eclipse is just one more battle, by this logic, and it’s one they win by losing their lives in it. By dying, they achieve their ultimate victory.

And I think by taking this whole philosophy of dedicating one’s life to a dream to its logical and horrific conclusion, Berserk is basically critiquing the concept of living for an ideal. In making the sacrifice, Griffith gave the Hawks what they wanted at a cost they’ve already agreed to by choosing to risk their lives for Griffith’s victories and the success he can bring them.

Of course, in the moment, knowing that death was inevitable, they would have preferred to live. None of them would knowingly trade their life for a future they won’t live to see. But that’s essentially what they’re doing by fighting battles for future hopes and dreams.

At the end of the day, the moral of Berserk’s story is really simple and basic: live for the sake of being alive. Guts had it right during his three years with the Hawks, before overhearing the Promrose Hall speech: no grand dream, no living for a potential future, nothing but doing the job of a mercenary with a group of people he considered family, enjoying life day to day, fighting just to live a life he considered worthwhile.

Personally I have mixed feelings about this message, but I’m pretty sure that’s basically the point of Berserk.

Black Swordsman: living for revenge (and, for extra irony, Guts’ own dream of fighting stronger and stronger enemies) is bad, living day to day with those “irreplacable things” – friends – is good.
Golden Age: “I was too stupid and stubborn to notice it, but what I really wished for back then was here.” Guts left for a dream and by leaving threw away what he truly wanted – companionship.
Conviction arc: the people who survived the shadow Eclipse were the people who acted to save their own lives, rather than out of a conviction, their faith in a higher power.
Millennium Falcon: “Dreams can make for courageous challenges or opportune escapes” – emphasis on escapes. Troll village dude wanted to escape the darkness of life through a dream as a child, but eventually found greater fulfillment just living an ordinary life in his village.
etc etc. Stop dreaming, focus on living.

And essentially the despair we see from the Hawks upon their realization that the fight is over and Griffith is no longer able to lead them to a greater dream leads directly to the Eclipse and gives it a layer of dark irony.

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lol i posted the whole scene bc the context makes it better, but Griffith’s expression in this panel in particular is underappreciated.

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right after guts calls him out on lying 3 years ago and before he turns away, smiles, and throws out the appropriately vague ‘no reason in particular’ denial.

like he’s uncomfortable at being called out on his distancing bullshit lol. this combined with “for your sake” *smoulder* seems like a good example of griffith being unaware of his own feelings. like i always feel like that moment, the bedroom eyes, the “for your sake,” nearly contradicts my reading of griffith as totally in denial and unaware that he’s in love, because it’s so pointed lol. it’s hard for me to read that moment and come away thinking griffith is unaware that he’s in love.

but i mean if that’s the case then griffith’s discomfort right before that is less of a “shit he’s got a point, why the hell did i save him?” and more of an “i know why i saved him and i resent my inconvenient feelings.”

Which doesn’t work because he does get genuine and personal enough immediately after for Guts to take it as a sign that he’s found the place where he belongs. It would be weird for Griffith to be thinking “because I love you(/feel very strong feelings towards you) and that could ruin everything” right before saying “for your sake” and giving him that sultry look.

so “for your sake” *smoulder* could just be a genuine expression of feelings regardless of whether he fully understands them. like it doesn’t have to be deliberate, it could just be an accidentally revealing choice of phrasing. i mean like, that’s how i default to reading it anyway, i just think that panel of griffith’s contemplative frowny face backs me up.

idk i’m just kinda bored rn and thinking outloud rly.

ok heres a question that could warrant headcanon and possibly meta/character analysis… how do you see progression of physical relationship (in thinking more like comfortability with touching rather than explicitly sexual stuff lol) with griff and guts when they enter a relationship for the first time? like i think theyre pretty physical and intimate to an extent as friends but theyd probably be like… fucking shy about it at first…

Yeah like, in canon they are surprisingly physical with each other. Or at least it surprises me on re-read how many of their significant relationship moments not just include but revolve around and specifically highlight physical touch.

Like from Griffith grabbing Guts’ face like he’s going to pull him into a kiss after defeating him in a physical fight to Griffith’s “if you touch me now…” moment of reality-breaking despair, touch is portrayed as a really significant component of their relationship.

Actually to get on my meta shit real quick, check out their first interactions. First Griffith shoving Casca at Guts, explicitly because she’s the only woman around and only a woman can cuddle naked with a dude (and damn if her first appearance doesn’t define her role in the story to a tee). Next, they duel with swords. Extensions of themselves, but not their actual physical bodies. Then they lose their swords and end up physically grappling with each other, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m wracking my brain and I’m pretty sure this is the only time we’ve ever seen either of them fight without weapons.

Which leads to this:

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Their first meeting has the sense of an inevitable, physical pull between them imo, and that is a constant of their relationship.

And their mutual desire for physical contact can only be satisfied when they have the pretense of guys being dudes to fall back on lol. A fight, in this case. In other cases it’s saving each others’ lives, and supporting each other while injured mainly, and sometimes casual friendly touches, like Guts’ hand on Griffith’s shoulder which gains significance during Griffith’s torture chamber monologue.

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When they don’t have that pretense available, when sex inevitably comes into the equation, that’s when Casca or Charlotte comes between them as outlets for those decidedly non platonic feelings, as The Designated Socially (and psychologically thanks to trauma) Acceptable Woman.

(I’d elaborate on that but like, I talk about Casca as an emotional and physical bridge between them a lot and have at least one giant thorough post about it. And Charlotte is just obvious. I figure we’re all on the same page here.)

Idk it’s not like they touch in every scene they’re in or anything, more that most of their intensely emotional and narratively significant scenes either involve touch in significant ways, or the very pointed absence of it (eg Guts reaching out towards Griffith as he transforms before pulling his hand away and turning to fight apostles. Or, yk, Griffith straight up thinking about Guts at the exact moment of penetration during the Charlotte sex scene, which I still can’t believe happened. Stuff like that lol).

So while I think them being physically drawn to each other and wanting to touch is v in character, and I can easily imagine them brushing shoulders, casually grabbing arms or w/e to get the others’ attention, back and shoulder pats, arm wrestling, play fighting, etc etc, and I think there’s plenty of indication that they probably find excuses to touch a lot, more importantly I think the narrative is telling us that physical touch is a significant aspect of their expression of feelings for each other regardless of how often they might actually get touchy feely.

ANYWAY i’m realizing that i have like fifty million things to say on this topic so I’m going to write more posts later. For now I’ll get into the headcanony stuff.

So basically I think that they absolutely would get v awkward and kind of shy about touch after acknowledging that their feelings are sexual. Suddenly they realize why they want to touch each other so much, they both have hangups about it even assuming they navigate the whole sexuality issue smoothly, and it would probably take a little while to adjust even if everything goes perfectly.

But I don’t think it would take very long, because the facts are that they really like being in physical contact with each other, and even if they got awkward for a while and second guessed things like shoulder pats or w/e a lot lol, they are ultimately used to touching and it’s pretty natural to them. It’s how they express their emotional closeness, and it would become even moreso once they accepted the sexual aspect of their feelings.

If this is in the canon universe I could see trying to keep their hands off each other being more of a problem lol. I feel like if they did get together, just about everyone would figure it out pretty quickly. They are absolutely the couple who sits in each others’ laps, leans against each other, casually wraps their arms around each other, etc, and it would be hard for them to refrain in general day to day interactions i m h o.

Also they’d be adorable as fuck.

Tho also for the sake of angst I could see things going much less than smoothly wrt the sexuality angle, particularly with Guts, and if one of them realized their feelings aren’t platonic first I could definitely see him physically withdrawing and specifically avoiding contact, whether it’s Guts or Griffith, though maybe especially if it’s Guts, and subtly making the other feel kind of neglected/rejected. But they’d get through that eventually.