Tag: ask

for the griffith playlist!! – Take it Like a Man by Dragonette

lol I love this song and I never would’ve considered it for griffith, maybe bc I already have strong associations with it. but actually looking at the lyrics again – I can’t really see them for griffith to guts, but now i’m thinking about it as griffith to himself and it’s working for me weirdly well.

What does “b” stand for in your tags?

oh i tag all my meta-y posts ‘a’ and all my original posts including meta ‘b’

tbh it’s kind of a holdover from when i was liveblogging, so i could read all my own posts chronologically if i ever felt like it and see what i was thinking while reading thru berserk

tho i never actually have so i’m not sure why i still do it other than habit lol. i guess it’s also handy to have a quick way to filter out reblogs if i’m trying to find something too

do you think that the night after guys left was the first time griffith had sex with a woman? i feel like this breaches into more headcanon territory but i have gay griffith thoughts to water

I choose to believe

idk if I can really make a case for it, other than the fact that like… that sex scene was super basic lol.

also i like the idea of griffith thinking he needs to be good at hetero sex so he can seduce charlotte properly for the sake of his dream when the time comes, and then convincing himself that reading the books he canonically has totally covers it and there’s no need to actually have sex with a woman

hope you get your gay griffith thoughts watered bc i always want to read more of them

I don’t know if you went into this before but if so let me know. When romance is discussed I see that they mainly pit just about every single ship there is against griffguts, mainly with Gutsca and Grifflotte whatever. Sometimes people bring up the possibilty of Griffith actually having undisclosed feelings for Casca, as another reason the eclipse occured. Aside from the Gennon scene the other two points mentioned was the wagon scene where it looked like he was trying to rape her or that dream

Sorry I ran out of characters in the last post so I’ll continue from
here: And in the dream sequence where Griffith imagined Casca was his
wife and Guts was there child? Did you think that what happened in the
wagon was Griffith attempting to rape Casca and was the dream sequence
suppose to reveal ANY sort of feeling he had for her?  What do you think
is the case and why? 

I definitely don’t think the wagon scene or the dream sequence (I call
it a nightmare lol) suggest that Griffith has feelings for Casca. And I
don’t think the scene in the wagon was a rape attempt, because I mean
for one Griffith stopped when Casca told him to stop, so yk, qed lol,
but also because I think it’s meant to be a huge contrast to the Eclipse
rape, rather than like, a sneak preview. It’s an offer, the only way he can make that offer without the ability to speak.

Griffith is at his absolute lowest point here. He’s lost everything that he perceives gives him worth, and Wyald’s just literally and metaphorically stripped away his last lingering ability to deny this. He overheard Casca tell Guts she wants to be held right before the wagon scene, and as Casca is bandaging his hand she reflects on how Griffith could always comfort her with just a hand on her shoulder – but now it’s her turn to do that.

So imo Griffith is offering himself to Casca for two reasons:

1. He desperately wants to be this person again:

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She’s shaking, she wants comfort, and Griffith wants to be the strong leader who can ease her trembling.

It’s a way he’s denied his vulnerability in the past:

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But he’s simply no longer able to be this person.

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It’s a humiliating, and depressing reversal of their roles, emphasizing how far Griffith’s fallen.

2. It’s sexual for one or both of these reasons:

Guts and Casca just had comfort sex. As a failed attempt at initiating comfort sex, the contrast highlights Griffith’s removal from their new dynamic. Also, since Griffith knows they’ve hooked up, this could be an attempt to insert himself into that dynamic and redress the balance because he’s afraid of being left behind.

What may be a harder sell depending on your reading of Griffith but makes the most sense to me is that frankly, Griffith is desperate. Wyald just gave the Hawks a run-down of how fucked he is for life – he can no longer be the Hawks’ hope for the future, and he can’t even live on his own. He’s been hiding behind that hawk mask, clinging to the last vestiges of his image (like when he asked Guts for his armour), and now that’s gone. If someone doesn’t take care of him, he’s dead. Griffith is someone who judges his worth by what he can be to other people, and now in his eyes he’s nothing but a burden with tens of thousands of corpses worth of guilt hanging over him.

And kind of hammering this point home for the reader, outside the wagon Judeau is backing up Griffith’s own depressing image of himself too – he’s telling Guts to take Casca and run because otherwise she’ll basically end up stuck taking care of Griffith, while he himself offers to take Griffith with him because he feels like he owes Griffith. And after this scene, Casca cries because she feels like she can’t leave Griffith behind, even though she wants to leave with Guts.

Ironically, considering what Griffith overhears right after, Guts is the only person who actually wants to stay with Griffith now, as he keeps trying to tell the people who keep telling him to leave lol:

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So, imo Griffith’s offering sex to Casca mostly because it’s something he can offer that still
potentially has worth – it’s something he can give in exchange for being
taken care of.

Casca was in love with him, and lbr Griffith knows that, so this is theoretically something she might want.

And Griffith like, sees sex as transactional. It’s something he can trade to those with more power than him, who can give him something he needs. Money, with Gennon. A kingdom, with Charlotte. And here it’s Casca, for security – plus maybe Guts. So imo trading sexual favours absolutely seems like something Griffith would fall back on if he’s desperate.

And this leads right to Griffith’s hallucinatory nightmare after he overhears Casca telling Guts to leave – he’s envisioning the life he just asked for, believing Guts intends to leave, and it’s fucking horrific.

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Griffith is living in what seems like a state of permanent dissociation. Guts is out there, still pursuing his own dream, totally out of their lives.

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You mentioned the child being Guts, as in a surreal nightmare, but I think he’s just intended to be named after him. The “he” swinging his sword out there somewhere who Casca mentions would be the actual Guts, and this – blondish – kid is presumably Griffith and Cacsa’s.

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imo a p disturbing way of underscoring that Guts is gone but far from forgotten.

Anyway yeah to me this whole sequence reads like Griffith grasping at the last straws available to him.

So to basically just sum up My Take on all this:

Griffith offers himself to Casca in the wagon both to try to reclaim a piece of his past self, and in an attempt to secure his future by offering Casca something she wants. And imagining that future, sans Guts, drives him to suicide.

So like, I don’t think it’s indicative of Griffith having any romantic feelings for Casca. It’s more a painful illustration of Griffith’s current powerlessness and desperation.

In case you want to read more lol, I talk about these scenes more thoroughly and with more context and build up in like the first half of the fourth part of this Griffith analysis.

Imo berserk stopped being interesting when guts trauma stopped being adressed. For mb the first time in a dark shonen,its shown sexual abuse can happen even to the machoman protag, and how sexual trauma affects him and his relationships.how it makes him weak, afraid,desperate to form a deep bond wt smo and vulnerable to guenine demonstration of luv. Its so rare to have this characterisation in média,more so with a viril protag! 1/2

And then guts have sex wt casca and that stops. Now hes just a strong
character,never defeated, afraid only of himself bc ooh theres a scary
monster inside him teehee,like every shonen.He wants to defeat his evil
former bff with lingering sentiments (naruto?). His vulnerabilities, his
dependance on smo else opinion,his loneliness and lack of meaning of
his existence,which were rare traits in protag?disappeared. GA was how
life conditions impacted real ppl,now  bersek is just a shonen wt rape
2/2

Yeaaaaah I agree with a lot of this. I’ve ranted about it before but I can always go on more about how much it bugs me that Guts’ personal trauma is basically ignored during and after the Eclipse in favour of switching to being angry about someone else’s trauma (someone who didn’t even get her own reaction to it, at least not for 20 years).

Cause yeah like ia, Guts’ trauma – and not just the csa trauma but also the more overarching abuse from Gambino as he was growing up – is so vital to his entire character in the first two arcs. It informs everything about him from his insecurities, to the way he fights, to the reason he stayed with the Hawks and the reason he left the Hawks, etc. In the Black Swordsman arc, the reason he’s so angry is because Griffith sacrificing him wasn’t just a betrayal, but a replay of that childhood trauma. The ghosts haunting him and claiming him are an echo of Gambino calling him cursed and selling him to someone else. It all fits together perfectly and it’s so good.

And it is a relatively unique backstory when it comes to badass manly man action hero protagonists. I mean to be nitpicky Berserk is a seinen, not a shonen, but the csa backstories seem to be more inspired by classic shojo, based on some of the influences Miura cites (like Kaze to Ki no Uta), and combining those elements with typical seinen action stuff, especially since imo Miura did it very thoughtfully and very well up til the end of the Golden Age, does create a unique and v interesting story.

And then during and after the Eclipse Guts’ trauma is basically dropped, and he does feel more generic to me – more typically cool and badass, much less interestingly vulnerable. Like eg, his very personal, actual fear-for-himself during the Black Swordsman arc was a really compelling element! And the only post-Eclipse instance I can think of where he was shown to be genuinely afraid for his own life and well-being, rather than afraid of his own potential to do harm or afraid for the people he’s trying to protect, is when Slan shows up in the troll cave. And because there was a sexualized threat there I do think that was a deliberate reference to Guts’ own trauma. But it was one scene over a hundred chapters ago that didn’t really have any emotional resonance (unlike, say, the early Golden Age Zodd encounter which changed everything, or the Wyald encounter which imo shed a lot of light on Guts’ dream), and was far from overt.

So like I unfortunately also get the impression that Miura has largely dropped Guts’ personal trauma as a significant factor of his character and story in favour of the far more common and boring fridged girlfriend backstory.

But! I also still have hope that that’s not the case. I feel like Guts’ post Eclipse monster hunting rampage was largely a way to avoid dealing with his complicated feelings, and I feel the same way about Guts’ fix Casca quest. Like, maybe it’s not Miura dropping Guts’ personal trauma to focus on manpain – maybe it’s Guts deliberately cultivating rage to avoid confronting his more difficult feelings like fear and loneliness and longing etc.

Avoidance is kind of his thing, after all.

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This may be (is probably) wishful thinking, but it does give me hope
that if the fix Casca quest goes pear shaped (eg Casca uses the behelit,
or something), Guts’ issues – his childhood, guilt, all his mixed feelings regarding Griffith, etc – will come back front and centre. We
have all the ominous foreshadowing about the Beast of Darkness and the
armour,

and if something makes him go wild and succumb to it it would be nice if it wasn’t just like a one-off bad event but rather a cumulation of everything he’s (I hope) been spending the last 3 years trying to distract himself from.

And then at some point after that he can be pulled back from the armour and yk, actually grow as a person by confronting his issues rather than hitting stuff with a sword, now armed with the knowledge that avoiding stuff just makes them fuck you up harder when your avoidance strategies fail you.

ofc that said, even if that is the case I think Miura’s fucked up w/ pacing. It’s been 250 chapters since the Eclipse, there’s a reason I feel like this is a vain hope even if it does make perfect sense to me as an explanation lol. Plus like… some details do seem to not be pointing in that direction. Like:

Are we meant to regard his choice to take Casca to Elfhelm to be immersing himself in sorrow? Because that is absolutely not the vibe I’m getting, but the dichotemy between chase Griffith for revenge = avoidance vs stick with Casca = positive healing is so explicitly drawn here that maybe Miura’s just half-assing the positive healing to the point where it looks like avoidance lmao. Like that is my genuine fear, is that everything from chapter 130 on is actually meant to be seen as Guts dealing with his shit lol.

But idk like there are still intriguing elements that may be evocative of Guts’ deeper issues, back even to his childhood, that pop up now and then, that I can point to as evidence that they may still be actually dealt with in the future. Like the aforementioned Slan scene, the way he’s still drawn to Griffith as his “true light,” the fact that the Beast of Darkness is personified as a dog

uhhh the self-destructiveness of the armour (the way he doesn’t feel pain and it knits his broken bones together etc) as a metaphor for the way fighting is basically a form of self-harm for him… idk like none of these things are addressed, but they’re there to be picked up on and therefore will hopefully cumulate in something more interesting eventually.

Hey,what if it femto raped guts instead during the eclipse ? I think it would be more in character for femto (embodiment of grif self-loathing aka his fear of being a monster taking what it wants wtv it takes +nice parralel of grif interior monologue during his fight wt guts aka having guts wtv it takes),and more wise story-like (echo of guts past trauma+eclipse being bout him and not casca+the following chapter wld rly be bout guts+etc).And it wld have been depicted respectfully lol

this is a dicey topic so I’m putting it under a cut, cw for somewhat casual discussion of rape

tbh yeah it probably would’ve been more tastefully depicted, both the scene and the aftermath/trauma (not that that’s a hard bar to clear, but Miura does care more about realistic depictions of men with trauma than women with trauma lbr). I mean obviously it would’ve been extra fucked up and offensive w/ that predatory gay villain shit, but it’s not like the canon version is great on that score either. And you’re right that at least the misogynist fridging of a female character + subsequent manpain wouldn’t be a factor. Idk it’s a hypothetical so it doesn’t really matter whether it’d be more or less or the same amount of offensive anyway, and it’s all subjective when it comes to comparing misogyny vs homophobia lol.

and honestly I kinda asked myself the same thing while writing my long Griffith meta, particularly the third part where, yk, I got into parallels w/ the King and his feelings for Charlotte and Griffith’s self-loathing and potentially seeing his feelings as intrinsically predatory wrt the second duel, yadda yadda yadda. Like, I could see it as an alternate version of the Eclipse. I don’t think it would necessarily be ooc for a potential personification of Griffith’s inner evil.

It would be ooc for the Femto we got though imo. Bc Femto and NeoGriffith re-enforce Griffith’s denial, they’re all about denying that they give a single fuck. If raping Guts = Femto taking what he wants, then he’s admitting to himself that he wants him, and one of his main reasons for making the sacrifice was to stop wanting him. Like while I doubt this was Miura’s reasoning lol, I do think it makes sense for him to assault Casca rather than Guts (yk assuming an Eclipse rape has to happen). It fits the pattern of how they both use her as an intermediary to repress their feelings for each other.

And I mean obviously we can talk about how rape isn’t about sex or sexual desire but rather about power and degradation, but wrt a fictional depiction where the evil version of a dude who was in love with the protag sexually assaults him, you can’t really divorce that from the human version’s feelings. Tho I suppose it could be framed as like a version of the Hill of Swords scene, ie Femto testing himself in a grotesque way, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be an admittance of lingering, now twisted and evil feelings from his pov. Idk, whatever.

Anyway it would’ve wildly changed everything post Eclipse. tbh I think it would totally destroy Guts – not like drive him insane like Casca bc honestly that’s just Miura’s cop-out to avoid writing a realistically traumatized woman, but I mean like… it’s the opposite of what his deal is now, in a way.

If post-Eclipse Guts was largely motivated by this continued need for Griffith/Femto’s attention, that connection between them, to be hated as an enemy if he couldn’t be loved as a friend, etc, and I definitely think that’s the case, then like, sexual assault during the Eclipse is a way of hurting him while giving him that attention. A corrupted + weaponized aspect of something he wants.

Like idk I can’t even rly picture what his reaction would be if suddenly Femto’s attention/that “true light” bond between them was a terrifying source of trauma rather than something to pursue. Maybe he would still try to lash out and kill him, but less a genuine attempt and more suicide by monster? Like with how much more powerful Femto is, Guts would know he’s not actually a match for him, but he’s also so driven to kill as his number one reaction to everything that scares him. I feel like he’d have much less self-preservation (and BS Guts did not have much in the first place lbr) bc he doesn’t genuinely want to find and face Femto again in this version of events, and he’d be dead 1 or 2 apostles into his revenge spree.

I suppose there’s also room to explore more complicated feelings, like how would Guts feel about human Griffith in this circumstance – still regret and guilt, or would that be overwritten? Would this reach back and ruin his memories of the old days? Basically, does he still miss human Griffith? Is there any part of him that still wants Griffith’s attention despite everything? I mean you have canon lines like “is she not precious because she’s the wound Griffith left, because you want to keep feeling the pain he caused you,” after all. Like, what would the Beast of Darkness say to him now? If this AU version of the Eclipse rape was yk, the same as canon with the same focus on unwilling arousal + orgasm, how does that aspect fuck Guts up? etc etc.

But lbr those are questions more suited to darkfic than meta.

My favourite thing about Miura’s art style is just how much he can convey through faces. Especially the way you can just see how Guts is still only, like, 24. Through all the scars and physical trauma you can still see how young he is and its absolutely heart-wrenching. *chef’s kiss*

SAME, some of the expressions he draws are just jaw-droppingly good. Like, how do you perfectly convey the feelings of someone who has just decided to sacrifice the person they love because that love drove them into despair? i have no idea, but damn if he didn’t pull it off:

I’d definitely say expressions are Miura’s biggest strength. Maybe it’s bc I’m not an artist lol, but it’s like magic to me how effectively he can convey complex emotion.

And yeah like you mention, there are some really effective moments when Guts looks so young and child-like even though his default appearance is definitely v adult throughout most of the manga. And it always feels natural, never off-model. Just like little hints of vulnerability that create a v strong emotional impression.

since it’s been on topic a bit lately, ya got any possessive guts hcs and general meta thoughtz asia

On the more headcanony side I think that like, Guts would be possessive but he wouldn’t really think of it as possessiveness – it’d feel like a natural extention of their v exclusive, v intense relationship. Griffith would be possessive in turn ofc.

And it wouldn’t manifest in like, being jealous of Charlotte if Griffith still plans to marry her for power. I figure they’d talk about that and Guts would understand it’s business lol, he wouldn’t be threatened by Charlotte. But at the same time he would demand Griffith’s attention and time. Maybe not literally demand lol, but he’s really emotionally needy lbr and I think he’d get sulky if he didn’t get enough time with Griffith bc he’s busy being a king or w/e. We see that in canon even, when he tries to visit him after Zodd but can’t bc of the nobles.

But then like in canon Griffith would reassure him and go out of his way to give him that time and attention because well, he’s also needy and they’re both obsessed with each other and neither wants to spend time apart.

So things like Griffith putting off some king stuff to laze around in bed with Guts would be perfect for Guts. Or things like having sex on the throne at three am when the room’s empty lol, or leaving tea with Charlotte early because the Raider Captain has something important to “discuss” with him. Guts would want to make his claim on Griffith, and have Griffith show that he’s the most important.

But again like, he wouldn’t express that, and Griffith (unless something drastic has gone down) wouldn’t admit to himself that Guts is the most important aspect of his life. But it would still show through in little moments and Guts would notice them (yk assuming no Promrose Hall speech colouring his perception etc etc).

Sexually you got leaving marks under clothes, fucking him hard enough that he still feels it the next day, teasing and drawing it out as a way of focusing Griffith’s attention wholly on him. Like, considering how needy they both are when it comes to wanting the others’ attention and regard and desire, sex could get ridiculously intense lol. We’ve talked about this before a bit but yk it holds true. They just both want to be wanted by the other so badly lol.

On the more meta-y side, I’d argue that their relationship comes with a side of possessiveness from both – again, as a kind of natural byproduct of the singular intensity of it. They are each others’ only one, and they both want to be each others’ only one. I don’t think there’s a lot of like, canon elements that demonstrate Guts being possessive to the same explicit extent of eg Griffith’s “if I can’t have him, I don’t care,” but imo it’s there under the surface.

Guts wants to make Griffith look at him. At first that’s the whole quest for a dream thing, but after the Eclipse it’s his revenge quest. He wants to kill him because, more than anything else, he wants acknowledgement that he matters to him.

This hold on Griffith is exactly what Guts wanted, and still wants.

It doesn’t manifest as jealousy, like we see him trying to set Griffith and Casca up for a while, but it’s more like, yk, that need for attention. He’s possessive of Griffith’s priorities. The reason I think he’s ok with setting Griffith and Casca up is because lover isn’t a category he can see himself fitting into, and moreover, true friend and equal trumps lover anyway as far as he’s concerned. His competition is Griffith’s dream, not Griffith’s other relationships.

I mean you can split hairs on the definition of possessiveness and whether Guts’ feelings count if it’s less jealousy and more wanting to be the most important person to Griffith, but yk I think it’s an element.

I would honestly be ok with Miura killing off everyone in Guts’ rpg group rn cuz tbh this whole happy happy fun times vibes isn’t the Berserk I fell in love with. Everything is going way too well for Guts rn so I hope Casca fucks some shit up. The only person I’d be sad about dying is Farnese but if Miura killed her off I’d get it

yeah i get this feeling. and like, if given a choice between guts getting over revenge/griffith and moving on and living happily ever after vs everyone dying, i would definitely take the latter lol.

but i doubt v much that miura’s gonna kill everyone off, and tbf he doesn’t actually need to for berserk to get darker again, so I’d be more than happy if casca fucks shit up and only/mostly just the minor rpg group characters die. As long as something negative (that can’t be immediately reversed or fixed or solved) happens soon and we lose the lighthearted tone. but i think that’s pretty likely.

Why do you feel Grunbeld would turn Griffith down? Are they all human in this au? (I can’t into any apostles/Griff in canon because his Godhand charm powers are… unsettling) This idea is really cool though, thank you for talking abt these characters (and getting them accurately imo)! ^^

ty! and lol yk idk, it was just my immediate thought. Maybe because of the core apostles he seems a little more above the hype? he seemed kind of disdainful about being sent after flora, and he’s got that noble knight thing going on but it seems less personal/emotional than locus’ loyalty to griffith. i guess i get the impression that he’s following griffith more because of duty than any particular attachment to griffith, unlike the other apostles who are all personally obsessed.

but i feel like i get him least out of all the apostles, which is funny bc he’s the one with a spinoff story, but yk i haven’t read it so he’s still a mystery to me lol.

I was mainly thinking modern au where the apostles are just dudes griffith does some terrible rebounding with after his (temporary in this version) break up with guts. yk zodd is guts 2.0 but more violent/less restrained, irvine is a nerd who spends weeks alone at a time, raksas is probably a serial killer, etc. But ngl I could definitely get behind straight up canon NeoGriffith/various apostles. ikwym about the godhand charm powers but tbh the idea of an army of monsters basically instinctively compelled to desire griffith works for me lol, it’s an inherently fucked up concept so it kinda fits.

I feel like people are so unnecessarily harsh with the post-golden age arcs. All the things that make golden age so great weren’t brought to fruition until really close to the end, and there’s so much groundwork for something similar with the current story. The mysterious behelit, NeoGriffith’s rule, the parallels that keep forming between Guts and former Griffith… plus I’m excited to see how Miura handles Casca now that he has more experience writing Decent Female Characters.

Yeah this is v fair. Right now I feel like I’m on the cusp of either being extremely happy or extremely unhappy with the story depending on what happens with Guts’ narrative now wrt Casca, and I’m kind of in hope for the best prepare for the worst mode, so I can be fairly negative at times for sure.

Yk I oscillate between “what if everything I dislike about the current story is clever build up to an awesome and exciting twist that’ll make it all worthwhile” and “what if everything I dislike about the current story is just Berserk now” lol. Plus my Casca feelings are a mixture of hope and dread, because while Miura does seem to have gotten better in some ways with writing women, and I really like Farnese, dude’s got a long way to go before I trust him with Casca at all lol.

But ia, depending on what happens and where the story goes the current arc could end up being very satisfying, and I definitely have a few hopeful theories I’ve got my fingers crossed for.

At the same time though ngl the golden age definitely had like, way more elements that appealed to me on a personal level throughout, so no matter what it’ll probably always be my fave that other arcs can’t quite compete with. I can’t deny that I’m def v biased lol.

reading ur interpretations and meta sometimes makes me really sad because youre pointing out soooo many parallels and facts that so many fans willfully ignore or just dont catch on to!!!!!! on the other hand im super glad i found your blog because otherwise i wouldnt be as invested in berserk, its a huge and long story and my attention span is small, so its great to read recaps from you!!

aaaaa thank you for the lovely message, I’m so glad you enjoy reading my thoughts and I appreciate you saying so ❤

and yeah ikwym, Berserk isn’t exactly the easiest story to get through or get into lol, so I’m v glad I could help you keep your interest in it up too!

I’m always gonna be pissed at Miura for making Isidro an annoying sidekick for Guts. I wish Miura would have went for a more father/son type of bond with them (although I feel that’s actually what he might have been going for in the beginning, but at this point it’s totally gone imo). There was a lot of potential there but now Isidro is really just so pointless in my eyes and it makes me kinda sad. I just feel like Miura could do so much more with his characters :/

yeah, big mood. I’ve kind of got some mixed feelings because I hate Isidro and I don’t want him to have more importance lol, and I dislike parenthood narratives in general, but it’s still so true that Guts could’ve had much more meaningful relationships with everyone in the rpg group, and it’s kind of glaring to me that he doesn’t.

idk I keep wondering if it’s just because I’m biased towards the golden age lol, if I’m willfully downplaying significant moments between Guts and his new group, or if the interesting aspects are there but subtle and I’m just failing to appreciate it, but idk I mean I’ve read the latter stuff twice or more recently and Guts’ new relationships leave me cold. imo the most interesting relationships in Guts’ narrative are between Farnese and Casca, Farnese and Serpico, and Schierke and Farnese. The one relationship Guts has to anyone that I feel any emotion about is Guts and Puck’s friendship, and that’s been almost dropped completely lol.

Like, I feel more genuine warmth and love between Guts and various random background raiders than Guts and anyone in the rpg group lol.

And I think it does actually make sense for that to be the case from a character standpoint – Guts deliberately keeping them at a distance because he’s been burned before when he lost people he cares about, because he doesn’t trust himself not to turn on them, because he still intends to drop them eventually and return to his revenge quest, etc – but if it is purposeful then I wish I could be shown that from Guts’ perspective. And not just through the Beast taunting him while he’s unconscious (eg ”make them precious to you, it’s all the more to lose”).

I want more moments of self-reflection and telling emotion from Guts, basically. Like, I would’ve loved to see, say, Guts starting to push Isidro too hard during swordfight training and then realizing what he’s doing with a bit of horror and ending it early. Or maybe Guts himself drawing a comparison between Farnese wanting to be useful and Casca wanting to be Griffith’s sword and being a little perturbed. Or in a positive direction, maybe include a scene on the boat where Guts thanks Serpico for stopping him from challenging Zodd with some similar language to the old staircase conversation. Or a million other possible examples of showing what Guts’ current relationships mean to him that I just feel we don’t really get.

do 97 anime guts comes off as less interesting to you? idk if its cuz of cutting his childhood trauma or anime not being good about expressions lol. maybe im being too harsh about the anime but anime guts is maybe closer to the dudebro interpretation.

yeah i feel this tbh. I haven’t watched the anime in its entirety for years but just from checking out a few scenes and episodes here and there i def get this impression, and I think it’s largely because of the character design/animation? like yeah cutting his rape trauma prob doesn’t help but I’m aware of that so it doesn’t affect my take on the character, but i’m still way less fond of anime guts than manga guts.

idk he just comes across as angrier, even when he has no real reason to be during the golden age, yk the happiest time of his life. his default expressions strike me as kind of dour and he doesn’t have that warmth i get in the manga ime.

like just to illustrate this w/ a minor example i picked at random (i was actually gonna look at the rooftop scene from the scene after but i didn’t actually mind the vibe guts gave off there):

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doesn’t really have the same vibe, yk?

and i mean yeah you can cherry pick examples, like i mentioned there are scenes in the anime that i think they depicted pretty well, but this does seem to be a recurring problem i have w/ guts in particular, as far as I’ve seen.

i’ve pointed this one out b4 but

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idk maybe it’s the angle of the eyebrows more than anything lol. he always just looks low key pissed off.

It’d actually be pretty cool if we got more moments between Guts and Serpico. It kinda surprises me that there haven’t been more tbh, they’re the closest in age rn in the new squad, and there are some similarities between Serpico and Griffith. Also Serpico’s personality balances out well with Guts’ personality imo. Maybe we’ll get some development in the future?

ia, I think Guts and Serpico have a lot of potential for an interesting relationship dynamic, parallels, contrasts, both wrt their relationships and each other as individuals. Yk in the conviction arc serpico and farnese had some griffguts vibes (well everyone in the conviction arc did lol), they both have abusive childhoods that involved taking care of a parent and eventually killing them, they’re actually both relatively chill people but guts has a force of personality and a drive that serpico doesn’t have, idk there’s a lot of interesting comparisons to make imo.

tbh their relationship feels way shallower than it could, but honestly I feel the same way about most aspects of guts’ narrative from the millenium falcon arc on. so I’d love to see more development, but I’m not like counting on it lol.

(maybe it’s purposefully shallow to show that Guts isn’t really fully connecting with anyone in his new group. like guts and serpico dueled but… guts doesn’t really give a fuck. serpico saved guts from zodd but guts doesn’t really reflect on that or care. anything interesting between them is from serpico’s point of view, eg reflecting on how being around guts has changed him. guts just gets his bland little ‘hey thanks for the help you guys’ moment in elfhelm and that’s about it.

i’d like to think that’s a purposeful contrast to guts’ actual meaningful relationships of the golden age lol, buuuuuuut yeah right lol, that’s wishful thinking. miura’s just halfassing it.

it’s like guts going to get farnese back from her family. it’s nice, it makes me happy that guts values farnese, but what does that mean for guts? how does his relationship with farnese, or serpico, or schierke, or isidro, etc, make him feel? he likes them, he wants to protect them, but how do they fit in to his complex inner life? i can come up with a million ways griffith and the hawks reflected and refracted guts’ childhood for instance, but not the rpg group.

maybe the difference is that guts is now fulfilling gambino/griffith’s role. he’s switched from needer of attention to distant giver of attention. there are parallels there in theory, yk farnese’s admiration, teaching isidro to fight, casca/shizu similarities potentially, serpico comparing guts to fire/blazing inferno that is griffith, blah blah blah. but they also… don’t seem to emotionally affect guts much. like damn imagine if guts himself was making a comparison between himself and gambino and fearing his own potential to be a shitty abusive life ruiner. instead that all gets channeled into the beast of darkness stuff, easily blamed on a magic suit of armour, without a hint of awareness on guts’ part of the potential parallels there.

uhhhh i went off on a weird tangent, sorry lol.)

I was just thinking that, during Griffith and Guts’ fight when Griffith was trying to keep Guts from leaving, he literallly couldn’t asked to speak with him in private. Just like how Judeau and the others pulled him aside for a chat, Griffith could’ve done the same. I’m sure Casca was internally screaming why they were being such idiots the entire time, especially knowing how close they were and knowing that one little word could keep Guts from going

ikr, like

Casca:

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Guts, and Griffith, and Judeau, and Pippin, and Corkus:

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Because it’s true lol, this is genuinely a conflict they could’ve theoretically fixed by talking it out.

Tho I do think the story really effectively shows us why neither of them are going to talk it out, so it doesn’t feel like… stupidly frustrating the way dumb miscommunication does in fiction. It’s rooted deeply in character – Griffith can’t explain why he needs Guts to stay bc he doesn’t really know, Guts can’t explain why he wants to leave because that defeats the whole purpose, ie:

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Like, I’m rearranging my entire life to be your friend based on some weirdly specific criteria you have that I happened to overhear, criteria which explicitly precludes basing your life around another person, so it’s kind of awkward to fully explain.

So even if they did try to talk I could easily see it going nowhere because neither is quite able to explain themselves without additional motivation/understanding/etc. But yk, if they had that motivation and an opportunity to hash it out I could also see them figuring their stuff out, and then their lives would’ve been a lot happier lol.

Like if Casca had resorted to the old “lock them in a room together” sitcom plot lmao.

do you think griffith have a ‘the ends justifies the means’ mentality? some people use it to describe him. but i think its just what he tells himself when he feels guilty. or people just take godhands the whole ‘you knew this would happen. you wanted this’ attitute too literal.

tbh yeah I think that’s basically his driving philosophy when it comes to his dream. A lot of people get weird about it and think that means he was born as like a cutthroat ruthless evil kid who’d do anything to get what he wants lmao, but yeah I mean his motivations are complex and interesting but you can boil his attitude down to the end justifies the means.

He does commit acts he believes are wrong in the course of achieving his dream, because he considers the goal to be worth it.

There’s also a side of his belief in fate at play, where he thinks if he achieves his dream then that’s a sign from a higher power/arbiter of these things that he was meant to do all the wrong things he does along the way to achieve it.

But it does all come back to guilt. If he achieves his dream then the deaths of all the people who died for it will be meaningful and justified. They died for his dream, therefore he must achieve it.

Also it’s worth noting that the things Griffith considers to be wrong, that make him feel guilty, are mostly things Guts brushes off and doesn’t even give a second thought to. Kill hired goons and keep the money we were supposed to pay them? Yeah that sounds fine. Fight a war, leading many people to their deaths and killing many enemy soldiers? Duh that’s just life. Assassinate people? Yeah why not they’re dicks and I like killing people. Griffith’s mountain of guilt corpses include enemy soldiers, people his Hawks killed, etc. It all fucks him up.

So yk in that sense “the end justifies the means” comes down to what the person in question considers wrong. And Guts also shares this philosophy when his ends (eg become Griffith’s equal, kill monsters) justify his means (abandoning all his friends, torturing apostles for information or fun, using kids as bait/hostages, etc). Guts just has a different standard of immoral, and he crosses it a lot too.

And I tend to think that a major aspect of Berserk is showing how this philosophy can corrupt you, until your means get worse and worse (eg Griffith making the sacrifice) because committing a constant stream of acts you yourself find morally reprehensible kind of numbs you to it and makes it easier to do worse.

Guts leading his Raiders and killing thousands of people in his life would never lead to Guts making a sacrifice, because Guts doesn’t care about the faceless soldiers he kills, he doesn’t feel guilty about being a mercenary, and he differentiates between his friends and everyone else. His friends are important, everyone else isn’t.

Griffith doesn’t differentiate. All those deaths hit him, he deliberately refuses to see the Hawks as his friends because he’s well aware that they can and probably will die for his dream, what with being soldiers, and so eventually sacrificing the Hawks starts looking like adding one more generic scoop of bodies to a mountain.

Sooo idk basically I think you’re v right, his guilt plays a major part and most people would say “Griffith thinks the end justifies the means” and use that as a reason he’s an evil conniving sociopath, but yeah imo while it’s true that Griffith thinks that way, it’s a lot more complicated than “and that proves he’s evil” lol.

I have noticed a few people shipping Serpico and Guts together. Do you think the ship is absurd or do u think it’s something you could possibly stand behind???

I stand behind just about all gay ships on principle lol, but tbh I’m actually fairly interested in Guts/Serpico specifically.

Well, kinda. Like, for me, I can’t really picture them in a committed relationship, or any kind of happily ever after thing, but I feel like there’s def physical chemistry between them, and I think there’s a lot worth exploring there.

I mean tbh griffguts is the otp, I’m generally a happy multishipper in fandom but I can’t imagine either Griffith or Guts ever moving on with anyone else, and everything I’m interested in in Berserk comes back to them, so Guts/Serpico mostly interests me as Guts exploring his attraction to men by fucking a different slim blond dude, or subconsciously searching for another connection with another person like he had w/ Griffith and finding hints of it with Serpico (eg Serpico jumping between him and Zodd, Serpico dueling him, Serpico fighting based largely on clever tactics, the appearance of calm emotional detachment, etc)

As for Serpico, I think he’s fond of and intrigued by Guts and definitely attracted to him imo and I could see him going for a non-committal thing before realizing Guts is in love with his fated demon nemesis and getting the hell out of dodge lol.

Also I like the idea of Guts replaying the entire Golden Age through a new gay lens after fucking Serpico and going “fuck this explains so much.” And Serpico maybe just wanting to get laid by the resident hot guy who isn’t engaged to Farnese and then being blindsided by misaimed emotionally intense sex lol.

Berserk was inspired, in part, by the western film Lady Hawke, in which two lovers are kept apart by their respective transformations. A woman into a hawk by day; a man into a wolf by night. Hawk and wolf (or wolf-like beast).

I’ve heard this and it’s a great little connection tbh. Like to be overly fair I think Miura has only specifically cited Rutger Hauer movies from the 80s as an inspiration, but let’s be real here Ladyhawke is one of them and the hawk/wolf alter-egos keeping two people apart stuff seems like a little more than coincidence. There’s a significant eclipse event in the movie too, isn’t there?

Someday I’m gonna have to actually watch it lol.

I don’t know if you’ve been asked this but I’m curious: what do u think would’ve happened if Griffith didnt know that guts left (ie the second duel never happened and he found out the next day) because casca didn’t think to get him or because no one saw guts leaving? Thanks and love the blog! :)

ty! and tbh no one’s asked me this before, but uhhhh this is the exact premise of a highly self-indulgent fic i’m writing so I don’t want to answer this in depth lol

out of several fic ideas i’ve been switching between depending on mood, this is possibly the one most likely to end up finished and posted at some point, so it’s got that going for it at least, and you might eventually get a full answer to this question.

I think no matter what though the answer boils down to: Griffith would probably do something very stupid and self destructive lol. And I could see an argument that it would be basically the same as canon – like he’d still take Guts leaving in the dead of night as a rejection. But things could maybe differ depending on how he found out, if he learned anything about why Guts wanted to leave (3 ppl know so it’s possible), etc.

I hope u don’t mind but I gotta rant a little bit lol Im frustrated with people thinking that Griffith is incapable of feeling/that he felt nothing about guts and only saw him as a pawn and the only reason he felt despair over losing him was because he couldn’t control him. I mean, putting aside the fact that I believe Griffith loved him, i feel like people think Griffith has always been femto and that he feels nothing. Srry I probs didn’t make any sense but I had to get that off my chest lol

Nah this makes perfect sense and ia with you.

like idk man I can say that I get why people hate Griffith and say I blame Miura (when the culprit isn’t blatant homophobia) for ppl willfully misinterpreting him because they don’t want to see him as relatable in any way due to the Eclipse rape or whatever, but god it still really bugs me lol. Like read the book! It’s not unclear! It’s not subtext, or even subtle! Saying Griffith didn’t care about Guts is a factually incorrect statement!

Literally the entire point of the Golden Age is that Griffith loved Guts. Like, it’s not just a fun extra detail, it’s built into the fabric of the story, it’s the point the Golden Age exists to make. (Or more accurately it’s the point the Black Swordsman arc exists to make, and the point the Golden Age exists to explore the implications of.) It’s not subtext, subtext comes into it when you’re talking about physical attraction between them, but the genuine and wholehearted love is absolutely undeniable text.

And yeah there does seem to be a lot of fans who think Femto is just Griffith in new suit lol. But yk, also factually incorrect, again this is something Berserk is extremely unsubtle about so it baffles me why so many people fail to understand it lol. Femto = Griffith – positive human traits associated with caring for other people + literal essence of evil. It’s spelled out in the Black Swordsman arc and while Griffith transforms. A fissure into which evil will surge. A heart is frozen. The crystalization of your last tear shed. Their deaths are pouring into me. Strange… I don’t feel anything. etc etc etc. We see him visually losing pieces of himself. We see the blood of the sacrificed feeding Femto as he transforms. The Lost Chapter (tho it’s canonicity is in question tbf) says that Femto’s body is made of the same Evil Side of Humanity that the Idea of Evil is.

I mean basically lol yeah I get you, it’s frustrating.

You seem fond talking about AUs, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. I personally have a kink where favored characters drive vehicles even if it’s anachronistic to do so(I actually like Saiyuki style anachronism(jeep in a setting that shouldn’t have it) over actual AUs). So, what sort of vehicles do you think Guts and Griffith would drive? How skilled do you think they would be? What would they prefer? Thanks in advance.

lol as far as oddly specific things to be into go, that one’s kinda cool tbh.

I am probably a terrible person to ask tho, bc I do love talking about AUs and stuff but I know virtually nothing about cars. So I can’t really get specific at all.

I think Guts would drive a pickup truck? yk, tough and useful but not in an overcompensating way.

Griffith, idk. What’s like, a fairly expensive and elegant looking car that isn’t just for show? like one of those cool cars you see in car chase sequences in movies.

I figure they’d both be great drivers because my instinct is just to transfer their main canon skill (swordfighting) to driving and they’re both the best of the best there. Tho even if we’re not doing that I think they’d both be good drivers, because Griffith makes sure he’s good at everything he does, and I could see Guts driving, like going for random cruises, to turn his brain off and just chill. They’d both be great to travel with. No annoying fast acceleration, road rage, impatience, sharp turns, etc, with either of them. Though I could see Guts rolling his eyes at other drivers and calling them assholes under his breath, it wouldn’t alter his driving.

Anyone who knows more about cars and driving than me wanna jump in?

Idk what I’m gonna do with myself if the series ends with Guts n Casca together lol, or some shit like Guts and Farnese together. I really feel like Miura might pull some crap like this lmao I think about Berserk’s “happy ending” he mentioned every day

this is a real mood, and I’m ngl one of the bigger reasons I want Casca to use the behelit is because I feel like it’s the best way of totally destroying any possibility of them eventually getting together, while giving Casca an actually interesting role in the story.

I mean ofc my major fear is that whatever goes wrong (and something will, of that I have no doubt) won’t be enough to completely kill the ship and I’ll be stuck dreading it for the rest of Berserk.

And my other major fear is that g*tsca will be dead in the water as a potential future thing but Guts will end up 100% motivated by whatever happens to her/whatever she does/her trauma/etc, with his complicated feelings towards Griffith dropped. But I don’t think that’s all that likely.

But! I think there’s plenty of reason to maintain hope lol. Like in the context of Berserk a happy ending is probably not gonna be a return of the jedi style elfhelm party where guts and casca make out. A happy ending could be Guts dying with his humanity intact lol. It could be Guts’ whole life being a garbage fire, separated from Casca and the rest of his friends, but having a moment of emotional connection with Griffith and choosing not to kill him, thus saving his soul from hell or whatever. Or the next gen children being able to grow up in a slightly better world regardless of what happens to the adults.

Like I’m pretty sure any ending that isn’t “everyone dies and Guts goes to hell” counts as not grim.

Plus that’s from an interview back when he was still in the middle of the conviction arc

–Is it even possible that we’ll see a happy ending?

Miura: I’d say it’s possible. I used to have the
final moves planned out, but lately I’ve been thinking I’d rather figure
them out when I come to it, so now it’s hard to say what could happen.
Being the sort of person I am, though, I actually don’t think I could
let such a long grim story end with a grim ending — like, say, having
him suddenly die. I don’t really like that kind of entertainment. I’ll
leave it to my subconscious.

and it sounds pretty up in the air anyway. I feel like whatever we’ll get will lean more towards bittersweet than purely happy, especially since his example of a grim ending is “suddenly guts dies” lol. There’s plenty of room there, and Berserk hasn’t been grim for ages anyway.

Plus I think Guts and Farnese getting together at least is pretty unlikely after being overtly compared to Casca and her feelings for Griffith several times, and Guts has never expressed interest in her so it would come out of left field imo (not that that stops het ships, but yk, gives me hope).

Aaaaand lastly the vibe I get from Miura when it comes to romance is that he’s not interested in it and just gives all his female characters one-sided crushes because he doesn’t know what else to do with them lmao, so while I could definitely see a bunch of boring side pairings getting together at the last minute/children making significant eyes at each other so you know they’ll get married when they grow up, I doubt we’re gonna get anything like Guts and Casca resuming their relationship for the last quarter or so of the manga. If we do get more g*tsca content I feel like it’ll come in the form of a sad kiss before one of them dies or something.

Do you think Serpico is going to die to further Farnese’s story somehow? He’s one of my favorite characters but I can see Miura killing him off at some point.

I have this fear that Farnese is going to die in part to motivate Serpico so I’d prefer this to that ngl, tho I want both to live.

And it’s possible I guess, Serpico’s had less development than Farnese overall so he might be more expendable, and it would be kind of ironic if after Serpico being p much entirely motivated by wanting to protect Farnese, he was the one who got killed.

I wouldn’t really bet on it though, mostly bc at this point in Farnese’s narrative, I feel like it wouldn’t further her story much – she’s no longer as attached to Serpico as she had been, or dependent on him in any way, so all it would really do is make her angry or sad.

Tho actually now that I think about it what if things go wrong with Casca’s return and she ends up killing Serpico? (Uses behelit, sacrifices Farnese, apostles kill their sacrifices themselves from the looks of it so monster!Casca tries but Serpico leaps in to save Farny and dies instead, then Skull Knight bursts in like the kool aid man, does his thing w/ sealing the Godhand away, and everyone else manages to escape and survive. w/e) Like i’m js farnesca/griffguts parallels would be super fun.

Or yk it would still be kind of fitting if he died in some other circumstance by sacrificing himself for Farnese, but I think that would be pretty boring unless Casca killed him.

If Casca didn’t try a deter Guts from staying and if the Eclipse never happened, how do you see Guts handling Griffith’s mutilated body? We saw glimpses after the rescue but I am craving more!

omg Guts would just be so tender and gentle with him.

I have this image of Guts sleeping beside Griffith on like the first night and holding him in his sleep, and he’s careful with him even while unconscious because he used to fall asleep cradling his sword sometimes.

Also gentle caretaker Guts is so good in contrast to >:| sword swinging Guts, and it’s like canon. Guts wants to be there for people, he wants to support people, the very first thing we ever see Guts do (chronologically) is hold Shizu’s hand while she dies. Guts cutting himself off from people who need his support (Casca, and I’d argue Griffith during Guts’ year long dream journey too) goes against his own instincts and is associated with his growing inner darkness, it’s a betrayal of himself/his own values.

So yk, I think Guts would kind of be in his element in a way taking care of Griffith. He’d be good at it overall – not treating Griffith all that differently, but taking his physical needs and disabilities into account, taking things like dressing him, helping him wash, helping him eat, etc in stride to minimize Griffith potentially feeling humiliated (tho tbh after a year of torture I don’t really think Griffith would be all that self-conscious).

Like, imo Guts kind of fucks up when he awkwardly pretends that Griffith could still recover as he’s dressing him in his armour, but before that, when he’s reminiscing about Zodd and asking Griffith to take the mask off since it’s just the two of them, etc, that’s the typical attitude Guts would adopt with Griffith once they both fully accept Griffith’s limits. Matter-of-fact and companionable, both verbally and physically.

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Also I think Guts would touch Griffith a lot, like casual pats on the shoulder, steadying hands, helping him stand even when not super necessary, etc, just based on what we see in canon. I could see an argument that Guts might second guess himself, thinking maybe he shouldn’t touch Griffith except when necessary because after a year of torture he’s probably traumatized as shit and Guts remembers not wanting to be touched himself, but in canon Guts’ first instinct around him keeps being to touch him, so yeah.

Plus we see Griffith feeling dissociated from his body and Guts could be a grounding influence that way, helping Griffith reassociate his body with something positive. And I don’t mean sexually, though hey eventually maybe, but just yk, touch being proof of Guts’ physical presence. And I think Griffith would reach out a lot too, physically, he would crave the physical closeness. Like in contrast to Guts taking care of Gambino and getting nothing but neglect and abuse back, Guts would be Griffith’s central focus, I mean Griffith stayed sane during torture by obsessing over him lol, and Guts would love the attention. He’d feel watched whenever he walked into the room, Griffith would gravitate towards him, lean into him, etc, and he’d like it.

This would be after a while together, not like immediately, since in the day’s worth of post-torture Griffith we saw he ran pretty hot and cold. But I feel like eventually things would even out.

And to digress for a sec, I think they’d manage communication just fine too after a while, with body language, lip reading, and Guts asking leading questions. Plus while I think Griffith might be more self-conscious about this and might avoid trying to talk with a severe impediment, with some practice you can be fairly intelligible without a tongue afaik (mb depending on the language, but ik in English you can be understood). So yk it’s not like physical touch would replace actual communication or anything, it wouldn’t have to get weird and objectifying w/ only one-sided conversations etc like we saw in Griffith’s nightmare.

Oh also incidentally I’m imagining Griffith w/ wounds for a while after the rescue that
eventually heal, because uh the missing patches of skin thing is stupid
as fuck and Griffith would be dead of infection long before Guts ever
showed up. So yk Guts can touch Griffith without worrying that he’s
directly prodding exposed muscle (not that that stopped him in canon for
some reason, seriously Miura what the hell).

Anyway ty for asking this was fun to ramble about, and if you want lmk your thoughts too, if you have anything to add or a different opinion or w/e!

heres a fun question… how do you think our boys would eventually (presuming lol) start discussing their relationship on like, romantic and sexual etc terms after they first get together in canonverse?

hmmm as far as terminology goes I’d assume they’d just default to “lover” if they ever like, had to label their relationship. Or when it comes to internal thoughts, I could see both Guts and Griffith just thinking of the other as “mine” lol. “He’s my… mine.”

But like, when it comes to relationship discussions and stuff, lol i have such a hard time imagining them actually talking about it. I feel like it would follow the trajectory of the canon discussions of their relationship, in which Guts asks and Griffith prevaricates. like
Guts: So what are we now?
Griffith: the same as always but now we have sex :)))
Guts: ten minutes ago you were crying and saying you loved me
Griffith: :)))))))))))))

Assuming they got together in a relatively low-key way.

If it was like, after some hugely revelatory event in which eg Griffith threw away his dream for Guts, or Guts nearly died, or something, then I think they could have a v emotionally charged discussion w/ confessions of love, Griffith making Guts promise he’ll never leave, “you’re the only one” “it’s always just been you,” all those fun + v griffguts cliches.

Or even if they got together in an emotionally vulnerable moment, like say Tombstone of Flame but Guts isn’t planning to leave so he actually says the right thing and also kisses him. I could see love confessions then too. Things like “I need you.”

Like if their relationship just evolved naturally I feel like Griffith would avoid examining it as much as possible, but if it happened in a charged, emotionally intense moment then Griffith might be forced to confront his feelings. Like I still think that Griffith genuinely believed what he said when he told Charlotte he had no friends lol, so I feel like the contradiction between seeing none of the Hawks as equals while being wildly in love with Guts is something he’d continue to avoid as long as possible.

He might never even have to confront it if this was a scenario where he did attain his dream and become king etc while in a down low relationship with Guts. He’d just naturally shift to thinking of Guts as the most important thing/an equal despite social status, while letting go of his beliefs about what constitutes equality lol. Since he’s obtained his dream, his obsession is no longer necessary and he automatically drops a lot of the associated bullshit, kinda thing.

I don’t ever really see them sitting down and having a talk about relationship expectations or that kind of thing though lol, I figure they’d deal with stuff as it comes, and probably badly. Like, eg, I think Guts would default to monogamy without them ever having to talk about it, like he wouldn’t be interested in anyone else while fucking Griffith anyway, but if Griffith ever thought he was then… well imo Griffith wouldn’t say anything outright but he’d get sulky and weird and passive aggressive until Guts either forced the issue and made Griffith admit what his problem was or figured it out himself, and then they’d have the talk about exclusivity. After Guts teased him about being jealous.

Idk I always think of Guts as the more emotionally mature one who would actually be able to have adult discussions while Griffith is avoidant, and Guts is mostly fine w/ that bc he’s a go with the flow kinda guy so they generally would leave things unsaid but when it’s immediately important Guts would be able to force the conversation.

Tho that said this is only the case when it’s something bothering Griffith, or something that’s objectively an issue that needs to be resolved, like, idk, Guts asking where he fits in when Griffith gets engaged to Charlotte or w/e. But if Guts was personally bothered by something, feeling neglected, jealous, insecure, whatever, he’d never say anything, at least not to Griffith. Maybe being friends with Casca would come in handy here lol.

I feel like this was v meandering and only kind of actually addressed what you asked lol. But w/e close enough. What do you think?