Tag: b

madchen
replied to your post “I was just thinking that, during Griffith and Guts’ fight when…”

lmao i love the last sitcom lock em in a room together but. griffith would be like a feral bristly cat and not speak but just glare at guts for a good fifteen minutes and guts would just be sheepish and probably start feeling embarrassed about wanting to leave before they actually speak…

yeah i feel like they’d need like, a day and/or some kind of cartoonish ticking time bomb threat before they really started talking. and guts would have to start it, not just because he’s more likely to but also because he at least knows what’s going on lmao while i think griffith’s kind of stuck on ‘guts can’t leave. why? because… idk i own him or something. also the thought of guts leaving me makes me want to set myself on fire.’

ngl i think the easiest (relatively lol) way for this to get figured out is to have one of the ppl in the know about guts’ decision tell griffith, because then he has a starting point (i don’t look down on guts, do i? why or why not?) and prying the truth out of guts would be hard.

prettykitten123
replied to your post

“I was just thinking that, during Griffith and Guts’ fight when…”

If I was Casca I would’ve just said “he’s leaving because of what you said at the Promrose hall. Goddamn. Now can you two please talk it out because there have obviously been some miscommunication”

Like Casca understands those two perfect and knew why Guts was leaving
When she went to get
Griffith she could’ve literally told him “Guts is leaving. He’s going
because of what you said at the Promrose hall, may be you should pull
him aside and talk to him privately”

Knowing Casca that’s probably something that she did say but Griffith didn’t act upon it because of emotions. Damn emotions

mercenaries gonna mercenary i guess

to be fair I think Casca telling Griffith why Guts wanted to leave would be kind of a betrayal of trust. Guts’ reasons are pretty personal. (ON THE OTHER HAND she had no problem telling Guts all about Griffith’s incredibly personal issues, so lmao that’s kind of an inadequate excuse.)

And tbh I feel like she got Griffith to show up to keep Guts from leaving because she thought they’d be able to talk it out. Honestly I think you’re basically right lol, it’s kind of just plot convenience that she doesn’t tell Griffith why Guts was planning to leave. There’s no real reason for her to hold back.

I definitely don’t think she told Griffith though, based on his inner monologue before the duel and like… idk just from everything I feel I understand about Griffith’s narrative and inner conflicts it makes the most sense for him to take Guts leaving as a rejection. If he knew Guts was leaving because he admired him his reaction would still probably be negative, he might even still just default to challenging Guts to another duel to avoid examining how he actually feels lmao, but I think his thoughts would be very different and I don’t think he’d have a huge breakdown after if that was the case.

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:

image

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

image
image
image
image

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:

image

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.

phydia63
replied to your post “griff-guts
replied to your post “I mean I genuinely do think (human,…”

and honestly, from what I’ve gathered, in most people’s opinion Guts is only better than Griffith in that sense that he “didn’t rape the other man’s woman”. I’m not defending Griffith obviously, but Guts is no moral beacon either lmao

idk in some parts of fandom there really are a lot of people who seem to think guts is justified in everything he does because monsters are bad/he’s had a hard life/etc and anything he does that is clearly terrible (like eg assaulting casca) wasn’t his fault anyway/isn’t that bad bc he stopped partway thru and he’s making up for it by taking her to elfhelm so stfu/etc

but luckily i don’t encounter those opinions much unless i start reading like, youtube comments and shit lol.

Tho if you’re including takes like “wow Guts is such a hero and martyr for taking Casca to Elfhelm” or respecting women juice style memes ft Guts then it starts feeling more common. But tbf posts like that don’t necessarily encompass someone’s entire nuanced opinion of a character lol.

How do you think Griffith and Guts would start dating? Would Griffith be the one to confess first or? What about PDA??

imo when it comes to fic and stuff like that like that I can go along with just about anything as long as it’s written well, so yk I have no hard and fast opinions on this

but i do have some sort of default concepts I keep coming back to. So like I think the easiest and most convenient way for Griffith and Guts to get together is to make it an AU where Guts never overheard the Promrose Hall speech. Everything just falls into place that way imo.

I mean you can’t tell me he wouldn’t’ve got a clue when Casca said, “It’s as if… as if…”  if he didn’t have that whole overheard speech blocking the path to understanding Griffith’s feelings. (That) + (Griffith expressing his fear that Guts has a negative opinion of him in Tombstone of Flame) – (Guts convincing himself that Griffith looks down on him) = kiss.

And along with that, I tend to assume Guts would make the first move in most scenarios.

Partially because my thinking is, well Griffith has his “I must obtain the things I desire” mentality, so if he was going to make the first move surely he would’ve done it by now. But he hasn’t, so there must be something preventing him. And I mean I generally believe that Griffith doesn’t realize he’s in love with Guts, and may not even be in a place to recognize his physical attraction to him. Or if he does know he’s attracted, at least, it’s something he dismisses as irrelevant. So what’s preventing him imo is his inability to acknowledge/understand his own feelings.

Guts conversely is the more emotionally open one, imo. He’s the one who wants to know how Griffith feels about him, he wants to know why Griffith saved him so he directly asks him every time. He reflects on his own feelings and acts on them. So I could see Guts realizing he wants to kiss Griffith and then doing it without thinking too much about possible reasons he shouldn’t. Especially if he has reason to believe Griffith might also want that (eg Casca coming this close to telling him so in the cave).

And I don’t think his trauma would necessarily have to factor in or make him hesitant (tho it could), because Griffith is Griffith, he kind of exists as a special category of person in Guts head imo lol, so I don’t think Guts’ brain would necessarily automatically leap from sex with Griffith = sex with a man = emotionally dangerous territory. So basically if you want to bypass Guts’ trauma as a giant factor keeping them apart, or delay it for a while so they can happily make out/have some kinds of sex without Guts flashbacking or w/e, I think it’s totally reasonable (tho mb something worth examining wrt Guts’ internalized homophobia).

But also I could see Griffith confessing his feelings first in an “I need you,” way, and Guts making the leap to romance. OR potentially if Griffith becomes aware or believes that Guts wants him sexually, he might make the first move while framing it to himself as just bros letting off steam together or something lol, because he wants it but can’t admit to himself how desperately he wants it. Or a million other scenarios.

But that’s just my take on Griffith and Guts. If like a fic characterized Griffith as a little more self aware of his feelings but needing a catalyst to act on them, or something like that, it wouldn’t break my suspension of disbelief or anything.

Also wrt PDA I feel like they’d be extremely touchy-feely, but the Berserk setting being what it is would prevent any blatant displays of it. Like they could spend hours cuddling in private, but in public they’d probably both be too aware to even casually touch much. Their casual touches in public might stop happening entirely because they’d second guess them.

Though ngl I could also see them forgetting themselves, letting their hands linger over each other, Guts brushing Griffith’s hair away from his face, sitting pressed together and leaning into each other while drinking around the fire, etc. Like they’d go from getting together to open secret among the Hawk commanders at least within a week. I guess if this was a fic for me it would depend on the tone. This might feel weird in a dark and v close to canon feeling fic, but it would be great in something fluffier and more fun.

Also if it was like a modern AU they would absolutely be that couple that third wheels everyone around them, sits in each others’ laps, etc.

griff-guts
replied to your post

“I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a…”

lmao i think about this all the time. also audience leniency and sympathy towards guts moral failings is amplified due to him being the narrative point of view and protagonist for the majority of chapters, and in comparison to starkly standard evil characters like apostles, femto, etc he SEEMS to be a good guy, even though realistically he isn’t. the grey morality of berserk extends to literally everyone even guts. it’s like really no coincidence that miura draws guts visually similar to
femto and the apostles
often lol. i mean i can’t insert examples or whatever bc this is just a
rambling reply but i’m sure you’ve seen the comparison posts of guts in
berserker armour or just in battle to femto. it’s like….. so not subtle
that he’s an asshole and not presented as a shining example of perfect
morality yet bc the fandom can’t read and he’s their macho straight guy
testosterone hero he gets a pass for doing bad stuff lol

yeah absolutely lol, like most of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he gets pretty damn indistinguishable from demons/monsters even without a magical transformation. Like yeah definitely visually, but tbh it’s also directly stated a lot lol. Like ngl this is actually one of my fave (well, non griffguts) lines:

image

And then once we’re in NeoGriffith’s narrative and meeting the cool apostles, a lot of them seem way better than Guts by any moral standard lol. Grunebeld, Zodd, Irvine.

Like the dock fight really directly compares Guts and Zodd and both of them balancing humanity/reason and bloodlust.

Idk I love this aspect of Berserk basically lol, I’m all about dark monstery protags. And it’s dumb that so many people want to see Guts as an admirable beacon of virtue because that’s like the opposite of the point.

I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a more “moral” person than Guts by most standards lol, which ironically is partly why he ended up succumbing to his inner darkness – pushing past your own moral limits is what makes it grow.

Guts doesn’t push past his own moral limits very often because his moral limits are fewer and far between than Griffith’s, while Griffith pushes past his moral limits p much every time he goes into battle.

It’s a really really fun irony to me.

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.

greenberryl
replied to your post “I have noticed a few people shipping Serpico and Guts together. Do…”

Actually, Guts should just hook up with some cute twink boy and then go and make out right in front of neogriff. And then look where all of his “now i’m free” bullshit goes.

see this is how you get revenge. take notes guts.

@prettykitten123 said:
Damn Miura is just taking inspiration from everywhere! Lol 

yeah lol, there are so many different things i’ve seen cited as inspiration or considered references, it’s p cool

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.

babygriffith:

bthump:

babygriffith:

i’ve talked about these lines before but let’s examine them again

image

グリフィス(あいつ)への執着を振り切って
ここまで辿り着いたはずが･･･

I’ve come this far by letting go of my obsession …

i’m gonna gloss this in an unconventional way just to make it easier to understand what’s going on here grammar-wise

[griffith (him) – particle for direction – possessive particle – obsession (noun)] – object particle – [shake off/break off (verb in -te form)]
[here] – particle for destination – [arrive (verb in past tense)] – suffix (?) that means sth like “should have” – particle that means “but”

or, simpler,

obsession with griffith – object particle – shake off/break off (te form)
to here/this far – arrive (past tense) – should have – but

the key here is the -te form of the verb 振り切る, which is used for a number of things, among which are: connecting phrases, listing successive actions, and uhhh idk how to explain this but doing something by doing something else first. you know, sentences like “taking off my clothes, i entered the bath” and similar.

that last function of the -te form i mentioned is, i believe, the one used here. “i let go of my obsession with him, and i came this far,” or, more accurately, “letting go of my obsession with him, i came this far.” then there’s the はず part too, where guts expresses his uncertainty (meaning that he hasn’t really let go of his obsession and moved on), but that’s a little hard to translate accurately without it sounding weird in english. 

the other thing is, 辿り着く is in past tense. so i really don’t understand what in the world the translators of OP’s photo were thinking. he’s come this far, and he did it by letting go of his obsession. there’s nothing that indicates this was his past hope or whatever, at least from what i can see.

So what I understand is that this translation includes the uncertainty but in doing so basically changes the overall meaning, whereas the version I have “I’ve come this far… by letting go of my obsession…” gets the tense right but misses the uncertainty? Which yk seems fair because it does sound hard to convey without losing the flow of the sentence, plus it’s kind of… infused into the panel just from the fact that Guts is thinking about that glimpse of Griffith on the hill, but obviously that’s the most intriguing part to me lol so I’m glad it’s there somewhat in the original text.

honestly that’s a good way of putting it, that might be what they were trying to do. they just kind of made it sound like this was a past goal of his, which is not really the case. はず is like a … an expectation, but with certainty. expectation that something took place/is going to take place/is currently the case etc. you would use it to say “the shop should be open right now” if it’s like 8 pm and you know that the shop works until 9. it’s like, based on everything i know/have seen, this is how it should be … but it might still not.

that’s the sort of uncertainty guts is expressing here. “i should have let go of my obsession with him by now, but … (did i?).” there’s nothing in this line in original japanese that indicates that he set that as a goal for himself and then failed to achieve it. honestly i have to say i really feel like rather than choosing to focus on the uncertainty, this translator or translation team simply wildly misunderstood the grammatical structure of the sentence, and in doing so accidentally achieved something that the official translators weren’t able to. but who’s to say.

According to @murdersounds apparently this is the official translation lol. I hadn’t realized it’d been released, but I guess so. The one I was quoting is a scanlation, but one of the more reputable ones afaik.

So… ?? not like I’m going to complain much about dark horse either accidentally or purposefully helping push my griffguts agenda lmao, but this does make me wonder what the translator’s thought process was.

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.

babygriffith:

i’ve talked about these lines before but let’s examine them again

image

グリフィス(あいつ)への執着を振り切って
ここまで辿り着いたはずが･･･

I’ve come this far by letting go of my obsession …

i’m gonna gloss this in an unconventional way just to make it easier to understand what’s going on here grammar-wise

[griffith (him) – particle for direction – possessive particle – obsession (noun)] – object particle – [shake off/break off (verb in -te form)]
[here] – particle for destination – [arrive (verb in past tense)] – suffix (?) that means sth like “should have” – particle that means “but”

or, simpler,

obsession with griffith – object particle – shake off/break off (te form)
to here/this far – arrive (past tense) – should have – but

the key here is the -te form of the verb 振り切る, which is used for a number of things, among which are: connecting phrases, listing successive actions, and uhhh idk how to explain this but doing something by doing something else first. you know, sentences like “taking off my clothes, i entered the bath” and similar.

that last function of the -te form i mentioned is, i believe, the one used here. “i let go of my obsession with him, and i came this far,” or, more accurately, “letting go of my obsession with him, i came this far.” then there’s the はず part too, where guts expresses his uncertainty (meaning that he hasn’t really let go of his obsession and moved on), but that’s a little hard to translate accurately without it sounding weird in english. 

the other thing is, 辿り着く is in past tense. so i really don’t understand what in the world the translators of OP’s photo were thinking. he’s come this far, and he did it by letting go of his obsession. there’s nothing that indicates this was his past hope or whatever, at least from what i can see.

So what I understand is that this translation includes the uncertainty but in doing so basically changes the overall meaning, whereas the version I have “I’ve come this far… by letting go of my obsession…” gets the tense right but misses the uncertainty? Which yk seems fair because it does sound hard to convey without losing the flow of the sentence, plus it’s kind of… infused into the panel just from the fact that Guts is thinking about that glimpse of Griffith on the hill, but obviously that’s the most intriguing part to me lol so I’m glad it’s there somewhat in the original text.

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.

griffiths-huggybox:

bthump:

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?

Actually, a lot of your headcanon fits mine quite well. Except I think Guts would more likely give in to impatience and some road rage, but that’s just me. Griffith, otoh, would not.

I agree 100% that Guts would drive a pick-up as he wouldn’t be as comfortable in cars and he would drive a manual like it’s a religion.

As for Griffith, I see him driving a Corvette Stingray type car: https://www.chevrolet.com/performance/corvette-stingray-sports-car

However, I don’t think he’s all that selective as he’s quite pragmatic. He’s just as likely to drive a pick-up as he is say, a Porsche. He does, however, enjoy driving manuals as it gives him more control, has better gas milage, faster overall, and more fun to drive. He is an ideal driver, despite some moment of melodrama in regards to Guts.

Yeah I was kind of waffling on whether or not Guts would be impatient or road-ragey actually but I erred on the side of not bc while he gets intense and riled up in fights he doesn’t really do anything stupid or make impulsive mistakes bc of it. But he is still emotional and driving =/= fighting so idk.

prettykitten123
replied to your post “prettykitten123
replied to your post “prettykitten123
replied to…”

I see what you mean. Yeah I guess in the beginning Griffith wouldn’t really be responsive to Puck but Puck will still try his best to make Griffith feel better so think over time Griffith would probably become fond of him.

Yeah I could see this. Also I mean, the real blame is inconsistent tone/writing, but you could take the difference between Puck in the Black Swordsman/Lost Children arc (kind of bratty but sincere, encouraging Guts to be less of a dick, sympathetic, concerned friend) vs Puck in the MF arc (annoying one-note comic relief with Isidro), and say his magic empathy means he adapts his behaviour depending on who he’s hanging out with lol.

So he might be less annoying with Griffith.

prettykitten123
replied to your post “prettykitten123
replied to your post “If Casca didn’t try a deter…”

Unfortunately all very very true :(…well at least Puck could liven up the mood and I’m sure Griffith would like him

I see Guts driving a motorcycle(its probably cliche but who cares it totally fits him)

As for Griffith maybe a luxury car like a Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, or a tesla

it’d be kind of interesting to see puck and griffith interact imo. i’m not sure myself whether griffith would like him (imo it might depend on griff’s state of mind) but i think puck’s magic empathy powers would make for an interesting combination.

also more suggestions for you divinesong (I’d @ you but it’s not letting me for some reason)

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?

prettykitten123
replied to your post “If Casca didn’t try a deter Guts from staying and if the Eclipse never…”

Sometimes I wonder, if Guts did decide to stay with Griffith post torture, would they have discovered some way to cure him. Elfs and witches exist, I know Guts only met them because of his journey as the black swordsman but who knows? And I doubt that Guts would be the only one there taking care of him since someone has to go out and make some money to support them(Guts in my mind would still be doing mercenary work) so who knows maybe on his way back home from the
Battlefield he meets Puck at that tavern
bar from the Blackswordman arc. I’m not sure if Pucks magic would be
enough, I’m not even sure if Schierke’s would be enough if they were to
meet her in this version. What do you think?

tbh I think for the purposes of fic or whatever you could justify it either way. also imo it would make perfect sense for them to run into Puck like immediately because remember they were in the same area right around the time of the Eclipse – Puck was with the troupe Rickert ran into, probably Judeau’s old troupe.

I would say that Puck wouldn’t be able to heal him though. He doesn’t fix Guts’ scars when he heals him, and idk just going off what feels like logic lol I’d assume you’d need like, a combination of surgery and magic to knit Griffith’s wrist and ankle tendons back together. Like, to get kind of graphic for a sec, when you sever tendons they snap back like elastics afaik, so I feel like you’d need to stretch and hold them together while healing him. Maybe extra strength magic could grow him a new tongue, but probably not Puck or Schierke.

I do think that Puck could probably help the giant patches of missing skin scar over, mostly because if you’re not ignoring that part of his injuries then I would demand that that issue be fixed ASAP in a fic lmao.

But like I think it would also make logical sense that say, if they ran into a witch who specialized in healing, she could probably manage to heal him. Or someone in Elfhelm could do it.

But then if you want it to be impossible you could just say that magic can’t fix wounds that have already healed and scarred over, or regenerate flesh beyond what the body is already equipped to do, (eg it can make scarring happen faster/better, but not actually regrow missing body parts) making his severed tongue and tendons permanent.

murdersounds:

bthump:

xiyyh
replied to your photoset “murdersounds: expository yelling at the count from puck, though it…”

mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least

oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.

Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:

image

I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.

But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.

imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol

And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.

Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.

image

Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.

(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)

oh!! absolutely, you’re right on all of this, i didn’t want to get too wordy on a reply to my own post then spiral into an incomprehensible analysis before dinner, but i know both of my statements were flawed. i got too thinky and offered no explanation to back up because i was in a rush 😭

i didn’t want to discredit the amount of strength it took to hold himself together more than anything else. i don’t know how he made it as far as he did honestly, knowing how thin that veneer was that kept him from shattering. i imagine he was mythologizing himself just to survive. the ~concept~ of griffith was his alone to bear. he’s ABSOLUTELY fragile. and i wouldn’t call it strength per se (in opposition to this fragility idea) but perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of it.

maybe i was thinking in a … “could i possibly deal with this?” kind of mindset. i couldn’t, for sure. i’d have to be an extraordinary actor, at worst (as you mentioned, fake it till you are it, basically). even with his mountain of issues and posturing he somehow managed to pull through (until it was too much, obviously) and it’s very admirable (to me, a very fragile person, lol), and very, very sad. i feel like the guilt alone would’ve killed me. but i know he’s a master of compartmentalization and appearing strong to anyone looking up to him (maybe aside from guts, who i think he was fairly comfortable being honest with, maybe because guts treated him like a real person and not an idea/ideal, among other things.)

i’m sure you’ll agree with some of this! and i absolutely do subscribe to and understand these things you’ve pointed out, i’m just … very clumsy at cobbling together my thoughts together coherently or in order sometimes 🤧 i very much appreciate your deep analyses 💖 i could think and talk about this stuff all day, but i digress, because somehow it’s 4am???

Oh yeah I absolutely agree with all of this! and like yeah I didn’t think one off the cuff sentence encompassed all your thoughts, it’s why i was like idek if I disagree with you bc the word “fragile” is so nebulous, but yk genuinely if someone says something about Griffith to me I’m immediately like LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I THINK lol. And ty for your response, this is all so good!

Like everything you’re saying is something I really, really love about Griffith. it’s a contrast that highlights both sides – the severity of how he cracks in those vulnerable moments, like the self-harm, up to burning his life down around himself when Guts left, really shows how fucking impressive it is that he goes from back-alley peasant to nearly royalty while containing all of that in him. And his sheer self-control and the perfection of the image he portrays shows how intense the dark negative feelings are when they do break through.

Like eg Casca’s flashback makes the scene where he tells Gennon he gives zero fucks about him before killing him that much more powerful, because we know some of what he’s holding back.

Like I wouldn’t really say he’s admirable because his way of dealing with his issues by completely ignoring them is not great and causes many problems to put it mildly lol, but it’s impressive and pretty awesome, and like I would also crumble immediately in Griffith’s shoes lol. So I can see why Casca watches him bury his breakdown behind a smile and calls it strength and decides she wants to be his sword.

also

perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to
focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m
sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of
it. 

yesss i love this. I never really thought of it like this but yeah the idea that he’s focusing on being this ideal image of himself not just because he has to to achieve his goal, but because it’s practically a distraction from looking at the darker, guilt-ridden, fucked up real him buried underneath.

and that makes the “do you think I’m cruel” conversation that much more heartbreaking, because it was Griffith opening himself up to starting to address some of it, maybe able to with Guts as emotional support, but instead he gets shut down.

madchen
replied to your post “If Casca didn’t try a deter Guts from staying and if the Eclipse never…”

this is so sweet… thinking bout a disabled post torture griffith and guts having a potential healthy romantic and even sexual relationship when its narratively framed as Bad is hmmm good
another point for griffiths behelit shouldve cascas all along au tbh

lol like i know there’s a million and one ways guts and post-torture griffith living a life together could go wrong but I’m an optimist and I think they could make it work

plus yk a lot of the narrative tension in the lead up to the Eclipse comes from teasing the audience with hope spots, which become meaningless if Guts and Griffith are doomed no matter what. I say they could’ve been happy together.

also lol idgaf what Miura probably intended, griffguts is extraordinarily readable as a story about how two dudes failing to act on their obvious sexual attraction was what ruined everything and it’s more fun that way.

so yeah if griffguts got together the behelit would have to be Casca’s. It’s perfect.

nico-jero
replied to your post “If Casca didn’t try a deter Guts from staying and if the Eclipse never…”

Your writing is so good! I love you brought up Guts tenderness and helping attitude with holding Shizu’s hand. I wonder how much different Gut’s life would be if she lived? He probably would be a Merc still but would he have the same characteristics that attracted Griffith to him?

thank you so much ❤ and yeah I find that moment so touching ngl, it’s such an interesting character establishing moment for Guts, after the Black Swordsman arc especially.

Good question tbh. We know at least some of Gambino’s abusiveness is rooted in blaming Guts for Shizu’s death (he says it’s why he sold him to Donovan), and it also contributed to the rest of the band considering him cursed. Plus yk just having a mother around, assuming Shizu would’ve been an alright mom, and I’m fine with defaulting to assuming parents aren’t going to suck, would probably be a good influence on Guts. So Guts’ issues with feeling like an ousider would be way lessened, probably.

He’d live a much happier life if Shizu never died imo. More love in his life, Gambino as a distant but maybe not actively horrible father figure. I imagine Guts would’ve started learning the sword at a more reasonable age under these circumstances, being mostly raised by Shizu until he’s actually old enough to fight. No oversized sword in this AU.

Also I think his rape trauma is largely responsible for his run directly into danger by himself and then claw his way back out style of fighting. I think it’s how he deals with a deep seated fear that started there (compounded w/ Gambino trying to kill him later too) and that hits him again every time he faces an opponent and makes him want to lash out to a somewhat irrational extent (tho he wouldn’t be conscious of it when it comes to typical human soldiers imo. monsters bring it out more). Hence things from pre-emptively charging the ram knights as a one-man army to insisting on taking wyald one on one.

So yeah without that trauma I think he would be much chiller on the battlefield. He wouldn’t be as strong as he is, or as driven, or as singular, and he might not’ve caught Griffith’s eye at all. Though I like to think there still would’ve been that spark between them. But they would lose that two lonely dudes finding their loneliness eased around each other vibe. Also Guts would probably not be as desperate for attention, though he might still be a little, since lbr Gambino wouldn’t be a doting parent under any circumstances.

I mean okay I guess I gotta admit that 99% of Guts’ character stems from his childhood and Gambino’s treatment of him, so if that changed, anything and everything could be different, and his relationship with Griffith especially is informed by his shitty childhood imo.

So even if Gambino and Shizu both died b4 he was 15 and he ended up with the Hawks anyway, I feel like his relationship with Griffith just wouldn’t have that intensity. He wouldn’t feel driven to be his equal and have him look at him, Griffith saying he wants him wouldn’t affect him much, Griffith saving him from Zodd wouldn’t have the same impact, same w/ Guts finding a new family with the Hawks, etc etc.

(Maybe this would be good actually lol. I could see this version of Guts telling Griffith what he needed to hear in Tombstone of Flame, eg. And he wouldn’t leave the Hawks even if he did overhear the Promrose speech. He’d probably be more in a position to recognize that Griffith isn’t so much admirable as fucked up. And he’d be more likely to actually apply Casca’s story about him to what he thinks he knows about Griffith and reach a greater understanding of him, when not blinded by a desperate need to be loved.)

xiyyh
replied to your photoset “murdersounds: expository yelling at the count from puck, though it…”

mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least

oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.

Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:

image

I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.

But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.

imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol

And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.

Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.

image

Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.

(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)

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.