wwww god i forgot how protective guts is of griffith. its so good and griff secretly loves it sm.
also yea to the wall lifting and arm wrestling
branching off of kink
whatever but it’s much easier to let yourself be taken care of when the
other person is much stronger and bigger than you and can basically wrap
himself all around you. big hugs.
yeah v true and like i think there’s def a part of griffith that’s v repressed that wants to just be taken care of and wrapped in big trustworthy arms
i’m sure i’ve said this b4 but honestly i think a big part of their relationship is about both of them wanting like the support/protection of the other. it’s more obvious w/ guts since griffith leaping into danger for him is a huge important plot thread, but it’s super true for griffith too and his need to have guts by his side “to the end.”
lol i’m actually writing a thing right now that gets into that a little, tho it’ll be a while b4 i can post it
but yeah like femto specifically I would argue is essentially griffith’s guilt and self-loathing personified, just as the beast of darkness is guts’, and those feelings relate back to trauma for both of them.
For Guts it’s Gambino selling him and later telling him he’s cursed and evil and deserved it + the guilt of killing Gambino. This is v strongly visually suggested during his sewer nightmare right before he overhears Griffith’s promrose hall speech. Watches a monster kill gambino, then child!guts, then turns out the monster is himself. Voila. (also the trauma of the eclipse, buried guilt + self loathing wrt abandoning griffith leading to the eclipse, and his black swordsman sadism, traumatizing and killing children, etc, all makes the beast of darkness grow)
For Griffith it’s the guilt of the deaths of everyone who follows him and tbqh the deaths of people he kills too, and his self-loathing wrt “dirtying” himself in pursuit of his dream, so yk there’s trauma there too with Gennon. Also I think there’s a case to be made that the year of torture had a significant contribution to Femto’s existence, even if the psychological trauma of it isn’t rly discussed like the physical trauma is – I mean the mask he was forced to wear is incorporated into Femto’s design, that’s a big sign at least, plus the talk of darkness and feeling numb at the start of his torture chamber monologue which is echoed during his transformation into Femto.
idk basically strong yes imo, and i’m probably gonna come back and revisit this topic in greater detail eventually
ty! God I really, really want Guts to be shown as Griffith’s equal at some point. I feel like it’s the only way to satisfactorily conclude their whole… thing. Guts letting go of the desire to be Griffith’s equal just isn’t satisfying to me.
But that said I don’t think becoming an apostle is the way to do it. For that literal equality Guts would have to become a Godhand, and unless there’s a 200+ year timeskip after Elfhelm that’s not possible according to the rules of the world. An apostle is a follower of NeoGriff so becoming one wouldn’t make him Griffith’s equal, it would put him back in that position of looking up at him/feeling looked down on.
Ofc one could say that those technical details don’t really matter, what matters is that Griffith succumbed to his superpowered dark side so if Guts does then that’s still equality in a sense, even if he’s a “lesser” monster. But then, he has the armour to represent his dark side, which makes the behelit kind of superfluous now, and it’s been foreshadowed a lot that he’s going to lose himself to the armour at some point.
And since it’s suggested that Skull Knight became a walking skeleton because he succumbed to the amour himself, I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll get more Skull Knight comparisons and there will at least be a danger of Guts becoming like him – powerful but… lacking humanity I guess, if he doesn’t overcome the armour. And that could potentially lead to ~the beast of darkness~ and ~the hawk of light~ regarding each other as equals in a confrontation.
BUT! What I want more than that is acknowledgement that all these standards of literal equality are essentially a smokescreen obscuring what actually made them equal from the beginning, which is the fact that they both loved each other and they were both emotionally vulnerable w/ the other. So honestly acknowledgement that they’re still hung up on each other despite everything is what would work best here imho.
Guts learns that NGriff failed his test on the Hill of Swords and started getting emotional about Guts again, and NGriff learns that in addition to hate Guts still feels residual love, and guilt and regret etc. Followed by an emotionally charged third duel, their strengths (magic superpower, inner darknesses, fate vs not being beholden to fate, whatever) and weaknesses (emotions, love and regret) equally matched.
lmao yk how last time I said Griffith’s hair was basically the main focus of Guts’ first impression of him? Same is true of Guts’ strength for Griffith.
so yk this is like the perfect complement to that ask.
Griffith can say it’s “interesting” and makes Guts “a valuable soldier” all he wants but l b r here there’s a reason Guts is the first person Griffith has ever said something like this to
and it’s not because Guts is a good soldier.
This is the face of a dude who has spent a lot of time “fondly reminiscing” about that fight.
also
and of course, the piece de resistance
Also like we’ve talked about this a bit when we were talking about kinky headcanons but Griffith is definitely super into the fact that Guts is stronger than him. There’s that Griffith kinking on the idea of being held down bc of the whole relinquishing control thing aspect, and I think there’s also a Guts as protector aspect?
Like yk Griffith can take care of himself, but it’s better with someone you can trust at your side, that’s both one of the major points of Berserk and Griffith and Guts’ relationship specifically. So I think there’s an endearing aspect of Griffith appreciating Guts’ strength because he trusts him w/ it. And you see that in canon w/ yk Griffith asking him to assassinate people and moments like Guts not letting any of Gennon’s men through to Griffith during the Battle of Doldrey, but it also fits so neatly into a potential sexual relationship lol.
Like admiring Guts’ strength goes hand in hand with appreciating how Guts like, cares for him and uses it to help him and in his defense etc, and idk it’s got a sweet sort of bodyguard dynamic feel to it? Anyway the point is Griffith would be into Guts demonstrating his strength during sex in non-kinky ways too, like holding him up and fucking him against a wall.
Also they arm wrestle once while drinking at a tavern or smthn, Guts wins, and they both awkwardly get hard.
this is one of those grand thematic statements that applies to a lot of berserk, like guts’ nearly obsessive need to fight monsters, or like, well, most sacrifices imo. But I’m thinking about how it applies to Griffith – the reverse, I mean. Griffith doesn’t really express fear, like he doesn’t really express most of his feelings, but what does he strike out?
Well, here he’s assassinated a bunch of would-be assassins, including the Queen. Gennon. Tyranny/the natural order of things in general lol.
And Guts.
Or maybe more accurately, his feelings for Guts.
tbh one of my major criticisms of Berserk is that as far as I can tell the theme of fear has been mostly dropped, like, i’m pretty sure the last time we saw a suggestion of Guts being afraid for himself rather than of himself was 150 chapters ago with Slan, and that was like the only time post-Eclipse at all lol.
So I can’t exactly say that Guts surviving the Eclipse and then Femto/NeoGriffith pointedly failing to strike Guts out suggests his narrative is gonna end with falling under the wing of what he fears, but screw it that’s what I want and I’m using that panel up there to justify it.
wait this isn’t a big stretch, i basically said this exact same thing in my griffith analysis with thousands of words of justification behind it, the only difference is that here i’m tying it to griffith’s take on fear in his own words, which absolutely is relevant
i half-assed this post probably bc i just wanted to post something but i’m not wrong 😡 smh @ past me
Aw I hope you get better soon, and thank you so much, I appreciate you telling me so ❤ I’m glad my blog can keep you a bit entertained while you’re sick.
got a few replies and anon asks related to last night and sexuality headcanons etc which i’m not answering bc i’m tired and don’t want to resurrect the topic lol, but ty for the responses/input
You haven’t been fair because you’ve made straw-man versions of my positions, and also put words into my side of the argument. I am new to tumblr, I didn’t consider what your fan-group was before commenting.
If you followed me without reading my blog description or anything w/e, I guess now you know lol. I am very griffguts focused and I’m not going to change my mind on that, and I don’t really care to debate it for the most part, which is why I only responded to one part of your comment:
“Intimacy between men is scorned by society if they’re not lovers.”
I don’t think I made a straw-man version of this or put words into your mouth since it’s a very unambiguous, extremely untrue statement. If you misspoke (though I doubt it considering your “homophobia is quite rare” followup) then feel free to correct yourself, otherwise I stand by my response.
Well, I like Griffith so much because his thought process and belief system is just so utterly SAME, for me, down to the fact that if I was also a super smart super hot guy and was having a mental breakdown from Guts leaving I too would probably fuck Charlotte (and down to the fact that part of me feels personally attacked and had close to a literal life crisis after reading bthump’s psychological analysis of him lul….), and while it’s definitely a self destructive act and not an act of love or pleasure, it’s also because she’s …. hot is the wrong word? But I do think he is physically attracted to her. I also think he is attracted to Casca physically in some way. I think those attractions are twisted and warped and spring largely from psychological darkness, but that there is a genuine biological attraction.
I went through several times wondering if I was really bi, or if I only wanted to sleep with men to use them to punish myself because I associated it so much with having to do with conquest and punishment because of past trauma. But my therapist said that most likely if I wasn’t attracted to men to begin with I wouldn’t take it out that way… so that’s my reasoning for Griffith being attracted to women. I know it probably wasn’t a seriously question, though, so sorry for being so extra. I’ve been in a mood. xD
…further thoughts…. I do feel a lot like both times, I think there’s a pattern it’s a power thing for him, because that’s my projection. That Guts leaving made him feel helpless, so he fucked Charlotte because he could. That being physically wrecked from being tortured made him feel helpless, so he raped Casca to prove he could. I guess that doesn’t…really? prove he’s attracted to women?…. but I just feel like maybe something sexual wouldn’t be the route he’d take if he was totally unattracted? Just my personal feeling.
Fair enough, we all have our headcanons based on whatever we get out of the manga + our own experiences + what we find enjoyable/entertaining/reasonable/etc. No worries about answering seriously, I just gave a flippant answer lol bc ngl that’s kind of been my mood today, but god knows I’m all for getting serious and meta-y at any and all possible opportunities lol.
Anyway yeah, as another bi who definitely has done (and still sometimes does lol) a lot of “am I bi or gay?” soul searching I definitely get where you’re coming from even tho I see him as gay myself. Thanks for sharing your input on this tbh, and I hope this isn’t too personal to reblog tho I will ofc delete if you prefer.
I don’t even get how that would simplify anything lol, tbqh Griffith (and Guts) being gay would make the story make 50x more sense and also make it more complex.
But I mean we all know that “X can’t be gay that’s too simple/too reductive/you can’t reduce their relationship down to sexual attraction it’s more ~profound~ then that/X is beyond things like sexual orientation but also he’s straight/etc etc” is just badly disguised homophobia anyway.
But I also feel like deep entangled not specifically romantic relationships are unexplored. People are allowed to feel really intense and complicated emotions about friends and I feel like people ignore the fact that that exists, especially between men. I’m not particularly for or against the gayness in Berserk though, though I like Griffith to be bi because I project and he’s my fave.
Ok I lied it’s not that unexplored, but I feel it’s increasingly unacceptable and disbelieved in recent times.
This is true but I absolutely think the reason for that is because society is increasingly aware that gay people exist and are afraid of being associated with gayness. I mean ia that you wouldn’t get (i know I use this example all the time but it’s a good one) Kirk and Spock’s relationship now – I mean we clearly don’t, we have the reboot movies that downplay the hell out of their relationship and give Spock a het romance, because it’s become common knowledge that their friendship is often interpreted as gay and the creators are afraid of that association.
So yeah I’m all for portraying deep friendships and bonds between men! I personally am still gonna read them as sexual more often than not bc that’s what I enjoy doing, and if that fact scares people away from writing those friendships, that’s their problem, yk?
The bond between Griffith and Guts doesn’t seem sexual at all. Intimacy between men is scorned by society if they’re not lovers. Our society is hypercritical and suspicious of love, admiration, and appreciation between men.
wow i wish i lived in your universe where intimacy between men is celebrated when they’re lovers and scorned when it’s platonic lmao, rather than, yk, my universe where intimacy between men is scorned (to put it incredibly mildly) when it’s sexual, or scorned by derisively suggesting it’s sexual, and platonic bonds between bros are near-universally celebrated as long as they’re appropriately no homoed.
i mean damn are there gay protagonists in blockbuster films in your universe? is the buddy cop genre the gay cop genre there? did kirk and spock make out after the “this simple feeling” monologue? are there more gay romcoms there than say, action movies featuring odd-couple platonic partnerships? hell, were there any mainstream gay romcoms there released in the 20+ years between in and out and love simon? sounds like a paradise.
like please, if society has a problem with depicting intimacy between men it’s because they’re scared it’s too gay, not because it’s not gay enough.
i promise you that mainstream society saying “lol they’re so gay” wrt a close friendship is not a compliment or wishful thinking, and they wouldn’t be more appreciative of that relationship if it was explicitly gay. it’s intended as an insult towards perceived homoeroticism because mainstream society is still very homophobic. The solution to this isn’t “omg men can be friends without being gay!” it’s “gay sexuality is something positive and there’s nothing wrong or shameful with interpreting something as gay, or mistaking someone for gay.”
like you are welcome to your opinion that guts and griffith share a purely platonic non-sexual intimacy. this isn’t in response to your opinion on griffguts – i disagree but yk, you do you, it’s all just personal interpretation. but don’t try to tell me society values gay men more than straight dudes who have friends.
I don’t even get how that would simplify anything lol, tbqh Griffith (and Guts) being gay would make the story make 50x more sense and also make it more complex.
But I mean we all know that “X can’t be gay that’s too simple/too reductive/you can’t reduce their relationship down to sexual attraction it’s more ~profound~ then that/X is beyond things like sexual orientation but also he’s straight/etc etc” is just badly disguised homophobia anyway.
i need a wider variety of ways to start posts
I will never get over how well this flashback puts so much we’ve seen in a new light.
this is one of those grand thematic statements that applies to a lot of berserk, like guts’ nearly obsessive need to fight monsters, or like, well, most sacrifices imo. But I’m thinking about how it applies to Griffith – the reverse, I mean. Griffith doesn’t really express fear, like he doesn’t really express most of his feelings, but what does he strike out?
Well, here he’s assassinated a bunch of would-be assassins, including the Queen. Gennon. Tyranny/the natural order of things in general lol.
And Guts.
Or maybe more accurately, his feelings for Guts.
tbh one of my major criticisms of Berserk is that as far as I can tell the theme of fear has been mostly dropped, like, i’m pretty sure the last time we saw a suggestion of Guts being afraid for himself rather than of himself was 150 chapters ago with Slan, and that was like the only time post-Eclipse at all lol.
So I can’t exactly say that Guts surviving the Eclipse and then Femto/NeoGriffith pointedly failing to strike Guts out suggests his narrative is gonna end with falling under the wing of what he fears, but screw it that’s what I want and I’m using that panel up there to justify it.
For some reason I woke up today thinking about how ridiculously suggestive this beast of darkness design in casca’s mind was
I mean I get that Miura wanted to keep the opposable-thumb-less animal motif but my dude. Surely there was a better solution than sticking the dragonslayer between his legs.
or idk maybe it was deliberate, considering how much innuendo the Beast of Darkness gets.
There’s never enough Casca discussion. Don’t worry ��
yk what, true. and ty!
i know i’ve been talking about casca a lot recently but I just kind of want to outline the biggest issue with her narrative imo:
Griffith throwing her a sword instead of personally killing the nobleman for her was presumably an important aspect of her character development. It’s why she decided to become a mercenary (”you know how to fight already”), it’s the beginning of the sense of pride and accomplishment she feels when she fights to survive.
She is personally invested in her life as a mercenary, in being able to defend herself and fight for her survival, and in rising up with Griffith as well, carving out a new path.
To Casca, Griffith represents an end to the way of life she thought was only natural – starving and being caught in between skirmishes in her village, being exploited by those with more power.
He threw her a sword – Griffith represents her personal empowerment. Rather than someone else saving her, it’s her ability to save herself if she only has access to the right tools.
Casca knows he wants a kingdom, and she has a personal stake in seeing that kingdom come into existence. This isn’t really directly said anywhere, but we know she knows he plans to marry Charlotte to get to the throne, and we know she admires his dream, and we “know” she values her hard-won freedom to fight against people who would oppress her.
This is extremely good shit when you look at it through that perspective – Casca admiring Griffith’s conviction and having a personal stake in the realization of his dream. Seeing Griffith’s vulnerabilities as well, and deciding to be his sword, to help strengthen him so she can see his dream become a reality, because it’s one she shares, and hell, even because on a personal level she loves him in whatever way – not because he saved her but because he enabled her to save herself. That’s fine as an addition.
BUT NOPE
“My dream… had… already ended.”
Like, in this chapter, she’s literally like, ‘yo remember when I said I wanted to be Griffith’s sword? I was lying, I just want to fuck him, and since you’re the only one he wants to fuck and Charlotte’s the only one he has to fuck I’m gonna kill myself.”
Her dream isn’t to fight to survive, it’s not to help Griffith cut away his own path and carve out a place where a young poor girl from a downtrodden village who narrowly escaped becoming a slave could become a celebrated general. Her dream is to fuck Griffith.
Her monologue at the start of chapter 46 starts with how she couldn’t tear her eyes from Guts as he walked away from the Band, and how that freaked her out because she was afraid it meant her feelings for Griffith were a lie. “Afraid of all that, I lived with the intent of sacrificing myself for my unrequited feelings for Griffith.”
Literally, she led the Hawks for that year not even out of duty to them or loyalty to them or Griffith or the dream – just because of her romantic feelings for Griffith.
And that’s why she’s able to drop Griffith’s dream like a hot potato when she focuses on her romantic feelings for Guts instead and he invites her to leave the Hawks and come support his dream instead. She was never actually invested in Griffith’s dream, or her life as a mercenary, or even the Hawks as a family. When Guts left he eventually realizes it was a mistake because the Hawks were his family, the place where he belonged.
When Casca decides to leave with him, there’s no acknowledgement of that for her – no sense that she’s choosing to leave a family. It’s just taken as read that that’s what she should do because she’s in love with Guts and that is what motivates her.
And like, Guts’ dream is literally just “I want to fight whoever the fuck. I just want to kill a lot of people and get better and better at it.” Unlike Griffith’s it’s not noble, it doesn’t make the world a better place, it’s not based on any kind of ideals that can make Casca’s life better. But despite that Casca’s like, sounds great, where do I sign up to cheer you on from the sidelines?
(And we know if she went along with him she would end up on the sidelines rather than fighting alongside him, because that’s exactly what happens soon after with Wyald.
“I’m takin’ him one on one.” “No matter what… I’ve gotta settle the score with him. With them.”)
And this is essentially why Casca’s narrative is misogynist as fuck. Not just because of her romantic feelings, but because of the way Casca having actual values and personal desires that aren’t romance-related was a fucking bait and switch lmao.
She was set up as someone who gave a shit about something, only for that to have been a lie all along because she only gives a shit about hooking up with either Griffith or Guts.
Honestly the more I think about it the more it boggles my mind how awful this is lol. Like chapters 45/46 aren’t even Casca accepting that Griffith’s dream ain’t happening anymore and finding consolation in having a new “place” in Guts’ heart or w/e. It’s straight up about Casca not just being in love with Griffith, but revealing that it’s been her sole motivation all along.
And like, lbr I choose to ignore this entirely because it’s so bad and so stupid and so flat and dumb and terrible, but man – it’s all there outlined clearly in straightforward dialogue
You’re good! ❤️ And like it’s so hard to talk about because it pisses me off when this kind of personal/cultural wearing down of women’s self esteems happens to other women. And like as much as you would like to think that you somehow avoided all that you really don’t. Anyway sometimes how you get woke is you get tossed around by life a lot. I hope Casca gives them hell.
yeah it’s so all-encompassing and like, exhausting to think about sometimes lol. not to mention, yk, living it. And yeah here’s hoping.
And once we bring in the after effects of multiple traumas and possible
closeted feelings it gets even more complicated because I really did
just throw myself into my relationships, both platonic and romantic. So
basically it’s not good writing but it’s all weird and complicated for
me as someone who relates more and more to her as I get older.
Makes me wish we got more pre-Hawks backstory for Casca, what her family life was like, yk, other than her parents selling her lol, to have more of a foundation for her character.
but like this is legit. idk projecting on media is a time-honoured tradition, and if it makes it more entertaining or meaningful or understandable or w/e then it’s probably the best thing to do lol.
I don’t identify with Casca rly myself (I mean tbqh I almost never relate much to fictional characters on a personal level lol, I have kind of a disconnect there) but it absolutely makes her narrative more interesting to me if eg I read her desire to “give something” to the men in her life sexually as a result of trauma and being rescued/feeling like she owes them, rather than Miura just being a misogynist who thinks its romantic.
like idk exactly where to draw the line between ‘good writing’ and ‘bad but makes a surprising amount of sense if you look at it in a certain way writing’ anyway lol.
(btw I think I saw that you replied to one of my posts a couple times around when you sent these but they don’t show up on my activity page bc tumblr is broken so idk lol)
this isnt true i drink a lot of wine and
post like two new two sentence pieces of content a week!!!!
new content for the week: guts rides griffith; griffith drinks a lot of wine
i meant new canon content lol but yk what this is valid and good and basically canon so ty
i feel like i want to say something but idk what
so
griffguts good
yk what i criticize miura for writing casca as solely motivated by her feelings for and relationships to men an awful lot but in all fairness the same is true of guts.
I will never be over the way these two monologues play off each other as a point, counterpoint.
you're the only one 