Tag: b

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

madchen
replied to your post “@madchen said:
whenever i see people
gush about casca as like a…”

tbh luca might be one of the better written female characters too never mind that shes a sex worker. she gets a few monologues of her own which is more than i can say for casca.
anyway yea i dont
think its intentional and even if it is its full of many of the mistakes
that men make when depicting violence against women that idc

i always forget about luca lol but yeah she is actually a pretty well-rounded character considering her comparatively small amount of screentime and she gets to fill the role of smart philosophical character explaining the arc’s themes lol, which is kind of refreshing. ofc we still see her tiddies and get ridiculous campy fanservice from her, but i mean, that’s a woman in berserk for you. like jeez we even saw flora’s aged-down tits lmao.

@seisans said: i honestly feel like all the good
writing involving the female characters of berserk was like. purely
accidental. not that miura didn’t try to portray gutsca as a stupid
decision, he really did imo, but he also has no idea what women are like
and is just writing out of his ass. i firmly believe that

I know in my soul you and maddie are right but I’m trying to cling to every scrap of hope I can now that Casca’s mind is back and she could potentially like, do literally anything that isn’t either ‘get back together with guts’ or ‘maintain a tense relationship that could return to romance at some point in the future for the sake of a happy ending, thus filling me with dread for the remainder of berserk.’

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

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

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

yeeeep.

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

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

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

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

Kind of yes, kind of no lol.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and casca would be…..

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

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

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

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

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

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

image

come tf on Miura.

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

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

image

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

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

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

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

yesgabsstuff replied to your post “griff-guts replied to your post “huh, i just noticed that the…”

Also the placement of the panels where Guts is angrily swinging his sword around at the same time Griffith is being given peerage has a lot of fodder for that as well. Griffith is kissing a noble’s sword when the one he really wants to be kissing is being kept on the outside of his dream by design…..

YES lmao, this reminds me of this half joke half serious post i wrote a while ago

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/172009797586/chapter-one-serves-to-re-establish-the-characters

but yeah there’s no way that imagery is accidental. i mean ignore the phallic symbolism if u want, but those swords are deliberately being contrasted, + it foreshadows guts and griffith’s mutual self-imposed isolation from each other thru their dreams as symbolized by those swords right there

griff-guts
replied to your post “huh, i just noticed that the post-zodd chapters w/ guts and griffith’s…”

griffith is the master of guts sword 😉 😉 😉

yk what this works as a d/s joke, a masturbation pun, and as serious analysis

like the chapter title actually does seem like a potential reference to guts dedicating his sword to him now that you mention it. and lol i saw this reply right after posting a long thing about how that moment basically is what motivates guts for the rest of the story

hmmm

ohhh man re-reading those chapters in particular and like

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

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

He’s prevented by social status.

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

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

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

image

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

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

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

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

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

image

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

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

image

The end of chapter six.

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

Three years ago Guts began this sentence:

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

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

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

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

image

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

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

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

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

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vs

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of only 10 chapters previous

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

griffithsgaymom:

um griffguts berserk au ish idea where guts changes his mind and comes back to the hawks like a few weeks later and rescues griffith who isnt physically destroyed but pretty fucked up and his tongue is gone and then they just gotta deal with that. bonus if behelit casca somehow? also has griffith been castrated post year of torture or?

it would make so much sense for guts to hear a rumour or smthn that the hawks were declared traitors etc before a whole year passed tbh and come running back. i want to read this.

also like, ignoring the behelit, the idea of griffith totally losing his chance to be king after being declared a traitor but not being able to come to terms with it/being in denial for a while has so much good angst potential.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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