Tag: ask

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.

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.

I have a problem, my tumblr will not let me upload more than one image in my textsI have a question Why when I upload more than one image in a text publication Tumblr will not let me post? I want to review Griffith and when I had finished it I was surprised that Tumblr does not let me upload more than one image in my text or does not let me publish. Do you know how to fix this? (By the way, i love your blog). By the way, i love your blog

Idk sometimes I have a problem where while I’m making a post and adding pictures, it takes a few seconds to upload during which the “post” button is yk unclickable. And sometimes it glitches out and won’t finish uploading, and it makes the post unpostable forever. Is that the problem you’re having?

Because my only solution is to save as a draft after adding every pic or two just to make sure if it does glitch on one of them I have most of the post saved. You might have to copypaste the text and start again with a new post, and try uploading the pics again.

If what I described isn’t the problem you’re having then idk you might just have to contact tumblr support. Good luck 🙂

Everytime Griffith is connected to family, it is always in a bad scenario. When he dreams of being married to Casca, he is crippled and looks miserable. When the God hand call him their kinsmen, the fucking eclipse happens. When he wants to marry Charlotte, her uncle, stepmother and father try to kill him!

To be fair almost every family in Berserk is either terrible or ends horribly, from blood relations to adopted families to found families. Give or take the found-family rpg group, Farnese and Serpico, and the suggested Casca Guts and moonlight kid thing, but I’m willing to bet on two out of three ending in tragedy there too. Overall I think it’s more a Berserk thing than a Griffith-specific thing.

But yeah Griffith doesn’t have a great track record there at all lol.

canon verse headcanon for griff being horny in the morning and guts being like okaaayyyyy i gotta get up and train/do shit tho bc i cant stop thinking about it and i love your takes on my stupid ideas?

lmao ngl idk if i have any more thoughts on this beyond my “omg this is perf” *like* reaction to your posts on this subject.

though… actually I guess since you specified canonverse I’m suddenly rly taken by the idea of king Griffith spending the night with Guts and not wanting to leave in the morning, trying to draw it out and get laid again once or twice, and Guts being like “…don’t you have important shit to do?”

like anything w/ griffith getting his kingdom and then lowkey preferring spending time w/ guts to actually running it is like the epitome of griffguts to me lol

and I guess Guts is practical but given the choice between… idk training drills or whatever a raider captain does in peacetime and fucking griffith idt he’d protest too hard about doing the latter. his protests would be very token and he’d secretly melt at the thought that griffith is putting his Very Important Life on hold just to spend another 15 minutes blowing him or w/e.

lol this is basically just repeating what you’ve said with an added ‘but like if griffith was a king,’ sry

Hi Asia! How ’bout some old traditional love triangle? But gayyyyy. You see, today I saw a page from guidebook with some info ’bout Locus but I couldn’t stop laughing ’cause the panel from manga they choosed to descript him was that emotional balcony wreck. Also a friend of mine showed me how similar were situations in which Guts and Locus act like a totally overprotective defender and are showing bright emotions. Could it be that NGriffith choosed Locus ti be his Guts but not Zodd?

Hey 🙂

lol yeah I def see the comparisons too. Like both getting super offended on Griffith’s behalf after someone slaps him is pretty specific lol. And in general his devoted attitude, like I’ve seen Locus compared to Casca (I’ve probably made the comparison b4 actually) as long as we’re comparing the old band to the new, but I can also see comparing him to Guts.

Actually speaking of, rather than comparing the new apostle band to the old band I could see comparing all of them to different aspects of Guts. Like Zodd is the blood lusty raider captain, Locus is the devoted soldier, Irvine is the loner who got drawn into a group, Raksas is… the kind of shitty assassin who causes a big scene lmao? Okay maybe it doesn’t work perfectly, but there are a lot of purposeful parallels between Guts and various apostles, it’s a pretty consistent thing, and it’s fun to think about.

ANYway all that aside you know there would definitely be weird mutual jealousy between Guts and Locus, I’m 100% on board for this potential love triangle.

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 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.

to the anon who sent an ask yesterday i think re: g*tsca shippers

i’m just kind of bypassing answering your ask bc it’s discoursey in a way i don’t want to deal with lol, sorry.

i cant believe berserk fandom is real sometimes. they use eclipse rape as a gotcha to anyone who complains about griffith hate and think femto is just griffith+power. but hound is just a random spirit possessing guts apparently. even ones who think hound is a part of guts think guts cant be really blamed cuz he blacked out or feels bad about it i guess. like you feel this strongly about a fictional characters crime but make excuses for another for doing the same thing.

cutting this for kind of graphic descriptions of sexual assault

I’d argue he didn’t even black out, he was clearly aware when he forcibly kissed her after pointedly noticing she’d been assaulted (we get a closeup from Guts’ perspective of blood dripping from her vag, ffs), we get like literally five whole pages of sexual assault depicted completely without any kind of possession or beast-y imagery, and the subsequent beast of darkness imagery in Guts’ mind that we see after that isn’t indicative of “possession,” it’s an illustration of what’s going on in his subconscious – his own inner darkness gaining strength.

Like it happens in broad daylight for a reason, in contrast to the chapter earlier when he strangled her while actually briefly possessed during a night-time ghost fight, and that reason is so that the readers can’t absolve Guts of blame. There’s nothing but Guts in this scene.

And anyway, at the end of the day the whole point of the Beast of Darkness is to show that Guts’ inner darkness is no better than Griffith’s. According to Berserk practically every dude has an evil rapist lurking in their subconscious, it’s not a great nuanced examination of male entitlement or anything lol, it’s just using rape as a lazy shorthand for inner darkness.

Like imo the only valid reaction to have to this dumb story is to recognize the misogyny on the part of the author, and honestly both excusing Guts and reacting with ott hatred towards Griffith is the exact opposite of that. Like I can’t blame anyone for hating Griffith, everyone’s entitled to their emotional reactions to a rape scene, especially one as offensively depicted as the Eclipse rape, but when that’s your reaction instead of recognizing the author’s horrendous writing, or while praising the author’s writing because he made you feel that angry, that’s an issue, yk?

And people blaming Griffith/Femto for Casca’s character being destroyed, for Casca’s gratuitious and sexualized victimization, etc, lets Miura off the hook. Like, Femto is ink on paper, Miura is the one with actual agency who chose to write Casca out of the story in the most misogynist way possible for the sake of making his protagonist feel bad.

tl;dr berserk is an offensive story about two dudes who both have rapist alter-egos, we all gotta acknowledge that.

how do griff and guts react when the other is sick:(?

ok modern au style because i can’t imagine either of them fussing over the other over a cold as mercenaries in the middle ages lol

griffith goes full doting husband, makes chicken soup, buys three kinds of cold medicine and the extra soft kleenex, and actively tries to catch his cold thru cuddling and making out so guts can either reciprocate or he can have a minor crisis over loving guts more than guts loves him.

guts has learned to dote on griffith too tho it’s not his first instinct, and he does it while rolling his eyes and calling him a giant baby. griffith doesn’t care if he makes him soup and tucks him into bed sardonically as long as he demonstrates that he’s willing to shower him with attention.

it eventually becomes a thing they can joke about.

OR

griffith refuses to acknowledge that he’s sick, and probably works even harder doing whatever modern au griffith does just to prove he can, and guts is like, here I made you chicken noodle soup, eat it, while griffith is like, i told you i’m not sick, and guts is like, eat it anyway, and griffith does while feeling very warm and fuzzy inside.

(this griffith would still drop everything and lavish guts with attention when he’s sick.)

depending on which aspects of griffith’s personality are more prominent in a hypothetical modern au lol.

Hi! I haven’t been here in a while but I hope you’re doing well :D I wanted to ask, what’s your take on the last couple of chapters? People speculate that it’s supposed to be a whole chapter divided in two parts, but do you think it is relevant somehow? I just can’t see the point of it and I’m wracking my brains trying to get Miuras intentions. because drawing the entire battle is no easy fit and he wouldn’t do it unless he had a reason. Sorry if this has been answered before btw!

lmao this is very timely because last night i re-read those chapters and it just kind of hit me how completely and utterly fucking weird it is for ngriff to be personally out there leading a giant-killing army

like

it’s baffling

he
has a huge army of monsters and humans with perfectly competent leaders
among them. he no longer has to prove himself with fancy heroics,
considering he’s now the saviour of the world. he’s in charge of an
enormous city-state, which must keep him fairly busy.

why is he out leading an army from the
front to kill a random group of fantasy monsters? why is he the one
leaping off a horse off a staircase-dragon so he can stab the giant leader in the
eye? he has flying monsters on his side! grunbeld breathes fire!

like
either miura is really letting himself go, ignoring all logic just so
he can draw griffith doing mildly cool fight-y shit, or this has to be
like, a thing. like griffith is avoiding charlotte, or he’s incredibly
bored, or restless, or there is a real plot related reason for this fight and for griffith being there personally.

but idk it has the feeling of being routine to me, and it feels mostly like place setting for the state of the current world/what griffith and co are doing now. I hope there’s a good reason for this scene but idk what it could be.

(sonia mentioned that there’s something dark lurking to beware of or w/e, but then the next chapter started with that hydra so it seems that might’ve been what she was referring to? idk it all feels very pointless so far.)

I remember during the Wyald fight, Griffith was trying to pick up his sword to fight but couldn’t. It was the last time he was willing to help the original band of the hawk.

Oh man, I love those moments so much, they’re absolutely heartwrenching to me.

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And yeah it kind of helps hammer home the contrast after Griffith makes the sacrifice, by reminding us that Griffith was the kind of guy who would grab a sword and run to fight a monster to help the people he cares about, who still tried to even when it was completely impossible.

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It’s such a good touch for the lead-up to the eclipse imo.

some berserk readers are so wild,, can you believe that there are actually a lot of people who think that griffith had romantic feelings for casca? because of the dream sequence pre eclipse.. like I always thought it was more like a nightmare for griffith since guts is gone swinging his sword elsewhere and casca has to feed him because he‘s disabled I think [..]

Are there really??? omggg

i mean i guess to be fair the scene w/ casca and griffith in the wagon confuses everyone, and if you add that to the (absolutely nightmarish) dream sequence i could… maybe kinda sorta see how some people come away not knowing what else to think if they’re the kind of person who defaults to man+woman=attraction lol.

But I mean come on even if you can’t make sense of some of it it’s so clearly about Griffith’s helplessness and powerlessness. Like, the nightmare of living with Casca while Guts is off doing his thing is his worst case scenario and he tries to kill himself right after! How do you read that and think, ah yes clearly Casca is the person Griffith wants.

I mean I’d say a solid potential throughline from Griffith and Casca in the wagon to that nightmare is Griffith grasping at straws for some kind of life, since he’s dependant now and has no choice but to rely on someone else to take care of him (which Wyald helpfully made absolutely clear a chapter earlier), and then realizing that he’d rather kill himself than live that life if Guts is absent from it.

I mean there are romantic feelings there, but they sure aren’t directed at Casca.

When Guts and Casca saw Griffith in the hill of swords, everyone thinks that maybe the two of them could possibly forgive him. But I always saw it as being surprised to see a pre-eclipse Griffith before he was tortured. I think guts would get use to it and proceed in trying to kill him, next time he sees Griffith.

Huh, I’ve never rly seen that opinion tbh, maybe we hang out in different parts of fandom. Well, I’ve seen a few people expressing worry that Casca might forgive Griffith, but honestly if Miura writes that I will like, personally fly across the ocean to salt his garden. And I definitely don’t think it’s likely.

As for Guts… hm I’m just going to go all out and explain my take on Guts’ reaction to NGriff bc you gave me an opening lol.

I don’t think forgiveness for the Eclipse rape is on the table. But I definitely think his feelings towards NeoGriffith are very complex and he’s absolutely emotionally conflicted towards him, not just surprised by his appearance.

But yeah I don’t think his emotional conflict stems from wanting to forgive Griffith. What he wants is for Griffith to be or contain the version of himself that like, doesn’t require forgiving, because the only thing human Griffith did that hurt Guts was sacrifice the Band – and Guts never seemed to really blame him for that anyway.

Like when we’re talking about a dude who has undergone two (2) magical transformations and basically exists as three versions of himself, each with apparently very different internal emotional lives, it’s hard not to be conflicted about him.

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Guts differentiates between human Griffith and Femto, and Guts does not hate human Griffith. We never ever not once see Guts direct an iota of rage towards Griffith as a human. Not even during the Eclipse, after he sacrificed everyone.

Very consistently, every time Guts thinks about human Griffith it’s with regret, sadness, a sense of loss. He regretfully thinks about Griffith kneeling in the snow like a million times, and never expresses anger about how Griffith sacrificed everyone and turned into an evil demon a year later. He thinks about Griffith among the dead Hawks during his run through memory lane, right after the Eclipse, and cries. Griffith is the most prominent shining light Schierke sees in his subconscious. Griffith is a part of the “campfire from those days” that still burns in his chest, and prevents him from being fully consumed by hate. etc etc.

He thinks about demonic-looking Femto when he’s feeling rage and hate, never human Griffith.

And I’m going to suggest that there are three main, related reasons that Guts feels emotional conflict in regards to NeoGriffith.

One is that it’s another change. Guts doesn’t know what exactly to expect from this third version of Griffith, who looks human again rather than demonic. He knows that he’s not “his” Griffith, because Skull Knight told him the fifth Godhand would incarnate, because he flew away from the Tower of Conviction on Zodd, and because the brand bleeds around him, but there’s a reason Guts rather desperately searches for a hint that NeoGriffith has regrets or feels remorse. Deep down he’s hoping that he’s closer to human Griffith than to Femto, basically, or that more of human Griffith is in there and reachable, or however you want to phrase it.

He lets Rickert hold him back from attacking until NeoGriffith directly says he’s free from his emotions, and then doesn’t actually try to strike until NGriff reiterates that sentiment with “I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”

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If NeoGriffith had feelings, if he felt regret, if he was no longer a malevolent demon, then Femto could be considered an anomaly that would carry sole blame for the Eclipse rape. Like, when we’re talking magical transformations that affect your mind as well as your body, the concept of blame is kind of nebulous. If NeoGriffith basically had all of human Griffith’s emotions and was horrified by his actions as Femto, and wanted to regain his relationship with Guts, then tbqh Guts would probably be able to go “oh well it wasn’t really you anyway.”

Yk, kinda like a Berserk fan who doesn’t consider Guts to be responsible for “the beast of darkness” assaulting Casca, but with the handy addition of a literal transformation. You can argue fictional moral philosophy wrt the morality of magically transforming into a monster and back again lol, but I definitely think Guts would seize the opportunity to write Femto off.

So, to split hairs, it’s less about potentially forgiving him, and more about potentially not holding him responsible. But yk, unfortunately for Guts NGriff turns out to be an apparently emotionless asshole who still won’t give him the time of day and says straight up that he regrets nothing, so that’s not an option for him.

The second reason is that, well, he looks like the dude that Guts felt such ridiculously intense feelings for that he rearranged his entire life and abandoned the people he considered his family just to feel like he was worthy of being his friend.

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It’s a whole lot easier to feel rage against an aspect of someone you’re p much in love with when they look like a bona fide monster, rather than exactly like the person you love. You’ll even notice that, except in moments that emphasize the potential Guts has of following in his footsteps, Griffith’s face tends to be obscured or completely nonexistent when Guts thinks about Femto.

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And the third reason is that he was already very emotionally conflicted over Femto. Femto raping Casca did not make him retroactively hate human Griffith, but his love for the man Griffith once was absolutely complicates his feelings with regards to Femto.

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We see this in the way becoming a rage-fueled monster is framed as a temptation because he still wants to be his friend and equal, as per Griffith’s Promrose speech.

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It’s also there in how Guts blatantly wants his attention and regard after everything.

He “threw away” Griffith’s love, so if he can’t have that then he wants Femto’s hate. He wants to be seen and acknowledged, even as a threat, so when Femto says that Guts doesn’t even register to him as an enemy, it pisses him off so much it gives him the strength to climb a flight of stairs with like half his bones broken and potentially-fatal pain in his brand, and swing his giant sword at him.

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And we see it when he still thinks of him as a shining light in the darkness, despite everything.

Basically, on some emotional, irrational level, he still wants this:

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Like, to reiterate, imo Guts’ emotional conflict isn’t about whether he can forgive Femto/NeoGriffith. It’s about the fact that Femto and NeoGriffith are both aspects of a dude that Guts had incredibly intense feelings for. They are distinct from Griffith but also inseparable from him, and that’s really, really hard to reconcile emotionally.

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Hence, eg, a bunch of this maudlin shit:

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Idk basically no I don’t think Guts is going to forgive NeoGriffith, but I do think that he is still very conflicted about him. He wants to want to kill him lol, but just as much, he wants to be seen by him, he wants his attention, he wants his love, he wants to be his equal, and he also wants to completely move on and just forget all his painfully fucked up and conflicting feelings towards him.

And I guess time will tell whether he achieves any of that.

Hi)) So, I wanna ask – have you some headcanons about Griffith’s childhood? Is he an orphan or maybe he has any family? And I’m f*cking interested – why he’s so beautiful???😏 He isn’t look like commoner, he has very aristocratic apperance. Who was his parents in that case? (he couldn’t have hatched from an egg, could he?)))

I think Griffith’s story works best imo if he’s completely common, so I’d say his parents were nobody important. Can’t rly judge nobility vs commoners by looks anyway, inbreeding notwithstanding lol.

I guess technically the in story reason he’s so beautiful is because he needed to be to fulfill his destiny – he incarnates as humanity’s “desired” after all and has to look the part, plus yk it’s a big factor in almost all of the shit that fucked him up to the point of making the sacrifice, from Gennon and the torturer obsessing over him to being seen more as a symbol than a person to being a huge asset in his ability to rise up the ladder of nobility – so god made sure his genetics were exactly right for looks as well as personality or w/e.

I generally hc that both his parents died when he was young, or maybe he just never knew his father, and I tend to just go with the idea that his mother was a prostitute bc it’s a headcanon I’ve seen other ppl have that makes sense to me/could inform some of his attitude towards sex and commodified bodies etc. But either way, I’d say he was orphaned at a young age.

Idk about any other headcanons about Griffith’s childhood tbh. My mind kind of goes blank when I’m asked stuff like this lol, if you had a specific question I could probably come up with something, but when it comes to just any headcanons in general, idk lol.

Oh wait one I have, which I’m v fond of, is that Griffith had no particular affinity for hawks or birds or whatever. Someone else suggested the name Band of the Hawk and he went with it bc it sounded good and gave the impression of rising up. Everything hawk related that came after, like Falconia, the whole armour look, the Hawk of Light, etc, is because of the Band of the Hawk, rather than the Band being just one of several hawk-related things in Griffith’s life.

That’s kind of childhood related at least.

WAIT OKAY hear me out i know you prefer canon aus but i absolutely need to know your take on Who Proposes

I could see either of them proposing tbh. I could see Guts saving up to buy something way too expensive and trying to plan the perfect grand gesture that Griffith would love. I mean this a dude who went on a knight errant quest to win Griffith’s favour basically, lol.

And I could see Griffith like, hmmmm, buying a ring and carrying it around for six months waiting for the perfect opportunity? I feel like he’d be pro-active enough to buy the ring and then second guess himself every time he thinks about proposing bc it has to be perfect to guarantee that Guts says yes, even tho nothing can possibly guarantee it.

And then finally he’d break and just pull it out one night while they’re sitting around watching a movie and eating leftovers.

Idk like, I can see Griffith being confident in their relationship, especially if unlike canon Guts has never abandoned him in a modern au lol, but idk I think there’d always be this seed of self-doubt and insecurity. like his confidence and total self-assurance is his way of covering that up, but something as high-stakes and outside of his control as proposing to the dude he loves would bring it out.

What do you think about Miura’s statement that he created Farnese with his female readers in mind?

was that the same thing where he like described her as a medieval version of a business woman or something like that lol?

tbh… idk. as far as female characters in Berserk go Farnese is the best imo. she’s got character depth and agency and a full arc and is only threatened with rape once lmao, which is sadly v refreshing after the golden age. it’s nice that her narrative isn’t “the sad plight of being a woman,” like her gender is important to various parts of her narrative like her engagement and her early physical helplessness having never learned to fight, and probably the way Casca trusts her, etc, but she’s not solely defined by being a woman, which is also refreshing after Casca’s golden age narrative lol.

like i’ll roll my eyes at the idea that miura only added another female character to the cast because he has female readers, and if his audience was entirely men he wouldn’t’ve bothered, but w/e. Farnese isn’t written like The Token Chick or like a 2 dimensional stereotype so I don’t really mind, i love Farnese and whatever his reasoning i’m glad she’s there.

Have you noticed that in the movie Griffith doesn’t have the single wound on the shoulder but multiple scratch ones? I dunno if they got Miura to suggest it or if they took some liberties, but it always bothered me how in the manga he had that weird wound: it didn’t look like his scratching from the Casca flashback at all.

Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!

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Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:

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But look at this:

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You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.

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They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.

Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.

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imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.

And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.

If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.

On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”

Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.

Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.

Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.