like guts particularly loving griffith’s more masculine features and maybe angsting about it? bc yeah that sounds like, good and interesting and well-rounded, as opposed to shit like “it’s ok for him to be attracted to griffith because he looks like a girl/griffith as the one exception to guts’ heterosexuality.” Which is not to say that wouldn’t also be interesting, but yk, as an examined part of Guts’ internalized homophobia, not played straight like a lot of ppl tend to do (not so much in griffguts fandom that I’ve seen, I just mean as a gay fic trope in general).
actually the whole general idea of exploring griffith’s androgyny and how guts relates to that wrt internalized homophobia sounds rly potentially interesting. Dealing with recognizing that he’s not just attracted to his long curly hair and full lips, but also his masculinity, and what that means to Guts as a closeted dude who may be still in denial over his sexuality.
(which is not to say that a dude being attracted to a dude’s feminine features isn’t still gay attraction, but i mean from guts’ un-nuanced pov ofc)
oh my god mood… the people who actually say that were misogynist for not liking her being put in a dress are on a whole other level of galaxy brain
but have you considered… that it is you who are misogynist for denying this made up fictional construct’s right to freely choose to wear a dress (that someone else magicked her into as she protested)
@a-girl-named-chester I’m not reblogging that post to talk about it because I thoroughly disagree with the op and I don’t want to start shit lol
but basically I am constantly low-key irritated at people who conflate femininity (a set of traits that any given society encourages women to adopt and discourages men from adopting) with women and therefore call anyone exasperated with compulsory femininity and/or fictional portrayals of femininity (especially those written by men lbr) misogynist.
Casca isn’t a real person, she doesn’t have her own opinions on what she wants to wear, those are given to her by the man writing her character, and I personally hate how Miura goes to great lengths to feminize Casca once she becomes a viable romantic interest for Guts – by putting her in a dress and literally having her ask Guts to validate her attractiveness, but also by things like this:
and by depowering her through her period of all things so Guts can save her, and by having her try to kill herself because of unrequited love so Guts can save her again, and by having her feel fulfilled when she is able to take the role of nurturer and (sexually) comfort someone else, all culminating in turning her into a helpless long haired childlike waif in a dress after being raped to make Guts feel bad and give him someone to protect.
Like, Miura plays lipservice to Casca as a Strong Woman lol, but he never follows through. We hear that she can beat ten men, but we see her feverish and at the brink of exhaustion needing to be saved more often than we’ve ever seen that.
I don’t even necessarily mind moments like Casca feeling insecure about how she looks in a dress, like it’s fine as a character trait and I think it makes sense that Casca might be self-conscious, but it goes hand in hand with things like Casca “showing a soft side” to hamfistedly indicate her burgeoning feelings for Guts, so it’s impossible to separate moments like Casca asking Guts if she looks okay in a dress from Miura deliberately making Casca more feminine as she becomes a love interest.
And that sucks, and is itself deeply misogynist, so I can’t with anyone saying that people who are disappointed at seeing Casca put into a dress (as she herself protests) in the most recent chapter are misogynist lol.
Like we’re not even deriding a real woman putting on a dress, we’re deriding a male writer putting a female character in a dress explicitly to make a reunion feel more romantic. Because who cares that she’s a mercenary who doesn’t feel comfortable in dresses, as a love interest she needs to be appropriately feminine to complement Guts’ rugged masculinity. Gag.
I mean personally I’m actually reserving judgement on this scene in particular because I think(/hope/pray/oh my god do i pray) this is going to end up being sinister and not actually romantic lol. But god if it is played straight, fuckin yikes.
There’s nothing progressive or worth celebrating about a dude writing a romance between a man and a woman and consistently and overtly making sure the woman’s masculine traits are offset by heaping on more femininity.
I sort of figured you’d stand somewhere along that line. I p much agree with you, and really really wanted to hear your thoughts, so thank you.
I definitely wish that her feminine interests were less obviously contrived to make her a better love interest for guts. It feels like there are too few female characters whose battle prowess genuinely coexists with their more traditional feminine interests and it’s such a shame that Casca was shoehorned the way she was.
lol I was getting so into my response I forgot to add ty for asking lol, it’s cool to know ppl are interested in your thoughts ❤
and yeah I think like, Casca could’ve easily been written with a set of masculine and feminine traits without it feeling misogynist but the way the femininity went hand in hand with the romance, and almost always correlated with making her weaker either physically or emotionally, ruins it for me.
@a-girl-named-chester I’m not reblogging that post to talk about it because I thoroughly disagree with the op and I don’t want to start shit lol
but basically I am constantly low-key irritated at people who conflate femininity (a set of traits that any given society encourages women to adopt and discourages men from adopting) with women and therefore call anyone exasperated with compulsory femininity and/or fictional portrayals of femininity (especially those written by men lbr) misogynist.
Casca isn’t a real person, she doesn’t have her own opinions on what she wants to wear, those are given to her by the man writing her character, and I personally hate how Miura goes to great lengths to feminize Casca once she becomes a viable romantic interest for Guts – by putting her in a dress and literally having her ask Guts to validate her attractiveness, but also by things like this:
and by depowering her through her period of all things so Guts can save her, and by having her try to kill herself because of unrequited love so Guts can save her again, and by having her feel fulfilled when she is able to take the role of nurturer and (sexually) comfort someone else, all culminating in turning her into a helpless long haired childlike waif in a dress after being raped to make Guts feel bad and give him someone to protect.
Like, Miura plays lipservice to Casca as a Strong Woman lol, but he never follows through. We hear that she can beat ten men, but we see her feverish and at the brink of exhaustion needing to be saved more often than we’ve ever seen that.
I don’t even necessarily mind moments like Casca feeling insecure about how she looks in a dress, like it’s fine as a character trait and I think it makes sense that Casca might be self-conscious, but it goes hand in hand with things like Casca “showing a soft side” to hamfistedly indicate her burgeoning feelings for Guts, so it’s impossible to separate moments like Casca asking Guts if she looks okay in a dress from Miura deliberately making Casca more feminine as she becomes a love interest.
And that sucks, and is itself deeply misogynist, so I can’t with anyone saying that people who are disappointed at seeing Casca put into a dress (as she herself protests) in the most recent chapter are misogynist lol.
Like we’re not even deriding a real woman putting on a dress, we’re deriding a male writer putting a female character in a dress explicitly to make a reunion feel more romantic. Because who cares that she’s a mercenary who doesn’t feel comfortable in dresses, as a love interest she needs to be appropriately feminine to complement Guts’ rugged masculinity. Gag.
I mean personally I’m actually reserving judgement on this scene in particular because I think(/hope/pray/oh my god do i pray) this is going to end up being sinister and not actually romantic lol. But god if it is played straight, fuckin yikes.
There’s nothing progressive or worth celebrating about a dude writing a romance between a man and a woman and consistently and overtly making sure the woman’s masculine traits are offset by heaping on more femininity.
Oh man I’ve been harping on about Casca using the behelit for a while now, and that’s still my hope.
I think it’s actually relatively plausible as of the most recent chapter (I laid out a theory here) but what I’m less certain about is whether she’ll actually make a sacrifice and go apostle. That’s what I’m gunning for, but I think there’s also a good chance that either a) she’ll be talked down thru the power of love and friendship and I’ll be very disappointed, or b) Skull Knight will put his plan into action before she even gets a chance to decide and “conveniently” cut things short.
Never even considered Charlotte as a possibility. I think it’s unlikely since first she’d have to get the behelit, and her and Guts’ storylines haven’t intersected since the rescue mission. Plus her sacrifice would inevitably have to be NGriff, and NGriff being a sacrifice would be super interesting but if anyone’s gonna sacrifice him I want it to be Guts.
guts gets so deep sometimes and i love it bc its usually only in reference to griffith and it exposes how thoughtful he really is…. in some of their conversations guts does most of the talking and griffith just listens enraptured bc he loves guts sm
bonus if guts eventually reaches out while talking to tuck a loose strand of hair behind griffs ear… dare i say uh gay?
it’s so true. guts is actually really self-reflective for like… a manly dude protag imo lol, he contemplates his emotions a lot, and pretty much always wrt griffith. like that monologue to judeau and corkus about how dazzling he is? guts having second thoughts after leaving griffith and wondering if he’s leaving something irreplacable behind? guts dedicating his sword to him on that rooftop? 15 yr old guts thinking about how ridic it is for griffith to try getting his own kingdom but deciding that ‘for now…’? guts having an existential crisis during the 100 man fight? the campfire of dreams convo? etc etc etc.
i’m trying to think of examples where he’s sitting around sorting thru his feelings and griffith isn’t involved. and my memory for moments that don’t relate to griffith is admittedly bad, but i can hardly think of anything. maybe some of his cynical religious commentary during the conviction arc. he’s got a few about casca, eg montage monologue about how hard it’s been to travel with her, thinking about how “this shell of who you used to be” reminds him of the good old days, thinking it’s better for farnese to “save” her because guts would only hurt her… but griffith tends to pop up in most of his contemplative moments, including the casca related ones.
also yes. guts gently tucking a strand of hair behind griffith’s ear = high tier content. actually can i just take a sec and be like
this could’ve happened if the king hadn’t interrupted their moment. they got the romantic breeze blowing and everything.
no these are really good!!! i think itd take forced/necessary contact and intimacy for guts to realize his feelings ™ and yes hard agree to wanting to feel protected and reciprocate that feeling.
i like to think once he realizes this in
a better situation hed want to be alone with griffith more and like.
insist griffith come walk with him away from everyone else or something
and is really gruff about why when griffith asks and all bc hes too shy
to admit that he just wanted to spend time alone with him… fucked up.
they sit at the edge of a lake and hold hands and griff puts his head on
guts shoulder.
ty! and yess this is so good and sweet.
tbh in any kind of Guts didn’t hear the Promrose Hall speech AU I could see this.
also this kind of makes me wonder how much time they do spend alone together in those 3 years, bc i could see it being a lot tbh. they’re always going off on their own during important moments – from the first duel where griffith took him out to a scenic hill and made sure no one would interfere, to the waterfight, guts trying to visit griffith while he’s recovering, the staircase zodd convo, that flashback we see during the black swordsman arc where griffith says guts is the first person he’s ever spoken to like this, tombstone of flame’s vulnerable conversation, guts ‘it’s just the two of us’ in the wagon when he tries to get griffith to take off the mask… they just seem really comfortable being alone together.
and i could just see them sitting somewhere like, watching a sunset, hands held, head on shoulder, or having a philosophical yet romantic conversation while watching the stars, or w/e
guts choice to leave to prove himself worthy of griffith (thru adventures and physical feats in battle) is classic high medieval knight errant stuff. all he needs to do is slay a dragon and present its head to griffith in offering and then he’s got chivalric courting down pat
this is so good to know
and it’s now canon that he’d present griffith with zodd’s head
ajd;fsk;ej;ekd i’m so bad at creative thinking lol. but honestly this is a Good topic, I’ll give it a shot.
so ok ummm guts is Into the idea of being with someone he can fight alongside, and i personally think that he’s got a real Thing for being rescued/taken care of/basically given attention and proof that he’s loved. And he’d want to reciprocate in return. (”For your sake, huh? For now… I’ll wield my sword… for his sake.”)
So like, a scenario where he fell off the cliff with Griffith instead of Casca and then they fight the 100 men together, back to back, then basically collapse on each other when it’s over. an excuse for bros to cuddle. and then one kisses the other and guts opens his eyes and realizes he’s hard and has some things to work out for himself.
or maybe a bandaging each others wounds after a fight scenario that gets rly physically intimate.
ty for asking this was fun to think about! if you have Thoughts as well I’m also v interested. also yeah i def see guts wanting to take things v slow once he figures out what he actually wants lol.
im gay and am now thinking about how much guts wants to probably “court” griffith and treat him good 😦
this is the realest thing i’ve ever seen
(and was that not basically the point of leaving for a dream lol. it’s like an old school greek epic courtship trial thing. i must become the best swordsman ever so i’ll be worthy of griffith.)
also i’m too lazy to c/p but for real @ your 2nd comment, like, it’s seriously the epitome of everything i hate most about fictional het. brash asshole dude and vulnerable woman he must protect. it’s even worse than most bc casca is theoretically a badass, but she’s always conveniently depowered so guts can swoop in and protect her. and that’s not even mentioning yk the sexual assault. like they are both so diminished as characters when they’re interacting as love interests, it’s the worst.
hooo boy ok long story short, it’s a coping mechanism. I personally think it’s likely it started out as childish whimsy, and when people started dying to achieve it (he became a mercenary leader when he was still a kid) it became an absolutely necessary goal because those deaths would only be justified if he achieved it.
I also think it’s possible that it just straight up started out as a coping mechanism, a dream of a paradise where he has the power to make whatever changes he wants to the world, to fix whatever plagued him as a child – poverty, nobles abusing their power, lives being bought and sold, whatever. Either way, the guilt as motivation came afterwards, and then consumed him.
It’s all there in his monologue to Casca in the river. I think Miura actually did a great job of fleshing his dream out, but it is largely between the lines, rarely outright stated.
like here we learn that people dying for money, on the whims of those more powerful than them, bothers him:
Here we find out that he has let himself be bought and sold for the sake of saving as many lives as he could, showing us that he has a personal stake in why people’s lives being treated as commodities and subject to the whims of nobility bothers him:
Here we find out that he feels like he has to achieve his dream for the sake of the dead:
Here we see the kingdom directly depicted as an escape from the darkness of the real world:
Here we find out that he wanted to do something, change something, with the power of the throne (the monster is war):
And knowing what we know about Griffith’s feelings of guilt, his disgust at nobility, and what Falconia ends up looking like, it’s reasonable to conclude that he wanted to have the power to carve out a place where people aren’t exploited by those more powerful than them.
And, as an aside, it’s largely talked about in a selfish and dark way because Griffith himself denies this deeper meaning. It’s personal, it’s vulnerable, it doesn’t fit the image of the perfect leader of the Hawks, and therefore we only see glimpses of how he really feels in his more vulnerable moments. He frames it to himself as just something he wants just for the sake of wanting something, because it’s noble to have a goal, but we’re shown enough glimpses through that misleading and shallow explanation to figure out the truth – that it’s a coping mechanism born out of guilt with a side of a deep-seated desire for a safe place where people are treated equally.
If you want the long version, I wrote this a little while ago:
someone keep men away from casca
like i know hes a gruff guy but this
isnt sweet or romantic its weird and their whole relationship was
pathetic
mood
but honestly tho guts isn’t even a gruff asshole in general (during the golden age b4 he went black swordsman), just mainly with casca.
like not to be so obviously on my gay shit but his interactions with griffith are always respectful, tender, protective, thoughtful, etc. I think he calls him an idiot twice, once while telling him to save his own life, once to diffuse tension in an attempt to reassure him. whereas even after he and casca bond he still belittles and insults her (remember when he went on a misogynist tirade about how women suck to ~inspire her~ to keep going on their trek back to the hawks and we were supposed to think it was sweet lmfao) and treats her as an accessory.
like to compare:
he finds griffith after being tortured for a year, weak, helpless, not at all what he was expecting, no longer the strong independant man guts respected, and he cries over him and cradles him and then goes on a rampage to rescue him. he deliberately takes pains to treat him the same as he used to, talks with him like nothing’s changed, and decides to forgo his “dream” to stay and take care of him.
he finds casca after she was traumatized into insanity, helpless, not at all the person he was expecting, no longer the strong independent woman guts respected, and he yells at her to snap out of it, forcefully grabs her twice after she flinched from his first attempt to touch her until she literally bites him to get away, terrifies her, then leaves her in a cave for two years.
(and this is a dude who has been raped and couldn’t stand to be touched for years afterwards, you’d think he’d have a bit of empathy, and yet)
When guts invites casca to go with him he doesnt have a dream yet at that point, he was just chillin at godo’s the whole year training, when he invites casca to go with him, he invites her to the journey of searching a purpose to live. They could search for that dream… together.. at least that’s what i think
yk that does sound pretty nice and a lot more inspiring and romantic, but guts invites casca after a long monologue explaining that he found his dream – fighting stronger and stronger enemies and becoming the best.
and moreover, this is how he invites her (after, i want to add, grabbing her tit while she’s yelling at him, but I don’t want to post an image of that bc it’s awful):
you should come with me as long as you don’t get in the way of what i want to do, because i want to have more sex.
shit you know what else would’ve been a really good moral grey moment if it was focused on? griffith having the bandits he hired to kidnap foss’ daughter killed.
like, he had to do that because they would’ve been a risky loose end otherwise, it genuinely was part of the path to his dream, and he left their money on their corpses out of guilt, but that is like, a perfect symbol of treating lives as commodities.
but it wasn’t even the focus of griffith asking guts if he’s cruel! the focus was on getting guts to help him kill people, not essentially hiring people to die for him, which we know is the source of like all his guilt. miura even mitigated that for some reason by having the bandits go ‘ho ho ho we’re shitty people who will totally blackmail griffith at some point’ before guts kills them lol.
but yk even griffith just being a mercenary leader is an interesting moral grey. the path to his dream, paved with corpses of people he hired to fight and die for him.
god it’s so good! he wants to have his own kingdom to change the inherently predatory social order that he himself uses as a tool to get his kingdom.
this kind of moral dilemma is what i’m about.
It sucks that Casca is reduced to support for other people’s dreams at the same time Guts is absolutely determined to achieve a dream so he can be Griffith’s equal.
Like Guts inviting her along. It kind of randomly occurred to me that he would never have in a million years invited Griffith along on the road to his dream lol, because that would’ve defeated the entire purpose. Guts adopted Griffith’s view of equality as having an obsessive dream. Guts hugely respects Griffith’s dream and would never try to sway him or stand in his way. Guts wants to be like Griffith in that way and feel as though he has something as respectable to shoot for himself.
Casca? Guts never even begins to conceive of her as a potential equal.
Casca tries to kill herself because the strain of supporting the dream of someone who doesn’t love her and might not even be alive is too much, and instead of say, encouraging her to find a dream and live for herself, since it’s working so great for him and at this point Guts genuinely believes that having your own dream is the pinnacle of existence, Guts encourages her to come along on his journey and support his dream instead.
And while Berserk is overall kind of like, dream-negative lol, bc the whole achieving a dream to be Griffith’s equal thing was misguided from the start, Guts’ priorities are still all about Griffith – leaving to be his equal, or realizing that it was misguided and choosing to stay, both for Griffith.
And I mean, I like that Berserk blatantly devalues het romance compared to homoerotic + thematically resonant relationships between dudes, obviously lol, but it pisses me off that Casca’s character gets fucked over and over and over again because of it, because her character revolves around that devalued romance.
Like, basically the concept of pursuing a dream to feel like your bff’s equal is depicted as negative, but Guts inviting Casca along on his dream journey is never questioned by the narrative – it’s just assumed that Casca, as the romantic object of affection, defaults to playing support while the men are obsessed with the idea of equality and power dynamics. I’d like to believe this is also intentionally shown to be negative, but like, I don’t really think it is, I don’t think Miura really questioned this.
god please dont be a weak foreshadowing of neo griffiths birth
yeah like neogriffith hasn’t brought either of them woe, especially considering that he’s the catalyst that led to the whole boring journey of personal growth taking casca to elfhelm thing, so if it is it’s terrible foreshadowing
unless skull knight was referring to ngriff dumping guts and making him sad lol
speaking for myself I’m very done w/ reactions to rape in berserk that take away entire characters so I hope this doesn’t happen. losing casca for 20 years was enough, I don’t want to lose charlotte too from just hearing about it lol.
and ngl the last thing I want to see is Miura depicting Charlotte learning about Femto raping Casca. Learning NGriff is actually a demon now has potential, adding Charlotte trying to deal with her fiance/husband/whatever having raped someone is way too real and I don’t trust Miura an iota with that kind of character conflict considering how he’s handled the fallout of the eclipse rape so far.
Like I think it’s a little ridiculous that the Count got a chance to make two sacrifices, and it’s probably a case of early installment weirdness bc I don’t think that actually makes sense wrt what we know about how sacrifices work (like what was going to happen if the Count did sacrifice Theresia? He’s already one of the more powerful apostles we’ve seen)
But I do think it’s definitely meaningful that the Count falls into despair, and not just an accidental contradiction lol. The further on we go the more depth apostles get, from pure evil snakeman to three dimensional count who still has loved ones to sympathetic rosine to zodd and irvine getting the same thematic inner beast vs man stuff guts gets.
Not to mention Femto letting Guts escape, and lbr I know we’re all hoping this is going to come full circle wrt NeoGriffith.
This is about Falconia, bodies and lives being bought and sold, the natural order of the world, etc.
tw for csa (no graphic panels but still disturbing enough for a cut imo)
The Conviction Arc shows us in broadstrokes the world humanity’s collective unconscious wants to overturn through starving crowds, dungeons filled with tortured ‘heretics,’ rampant plague and the desire for a saviour, and nobles terrorizing peasants using god as an excuse, but this is the up close and personal version. Lives and bodies as commodities, weak trampled by the strong, poor ruled by the rich, and everyone accepting it as the way things are.
Our three main protagonists during the Golden Age all have very personal formative trauma that revolves around being bought and sold as a matter of course.
And Griffith’s dream, as someone wracked with guilt for lives lost in his battles, someone who has sold himself to a rich and powerful predator to save some of those lives, is to overturn this natural order of things.
And he does. Falconia is a place where children aren’t sold as sex slaves, where the powerful do not oppress the weak, where the rich don’t exploit the poor, where everyone is treated equally and with dignity, where Guts, Griffith, and Casca could’ve all had happy childhoods.
One of the important aspects of this theme re: societal power dynamics and exploitation is that these evil actions
are excused away. This is true of like, just about every abuser of power and
rapist in Berserk. Some think it’s okay because someone more powerful than
them told them they’re allowed (torturer, Wyald/probably the rest of
the apostles, Mozgus’ torturers, Mozgus and the inquisition in general
passing the buck onto God, Donovan because Gambino allowed it, etc),
some think it’s okay because that’s just the way things are (Donovan
again, Adon, Rosine’s got some of this, etc), some think it’s okay because
they’re powerful enough to do anything they want (implied with Gennon,
Ganeshka,
the Godhand, a lot of apostles, Casca’s attempted rapist nobleman), and finally some think it’s okay because the world wronged them (Gambino, apostles like Rosine again and Eggman, Jill’s dad, the baby eating heretics lmao, one could argue the King, Mozgus’ torturers again, etc).
Again, it all comes back to the “reason of the world,” the natural order of things that NeoGriff overturns. In the ordinary world these people with power can do whatever they want and justify it to themselves. In NeoGriffith’s world, they don’t. Apostles, our prime example of powerful preying on weak because they’re allowed to, no longer prey on humans, simply because of NeoGriffith’s existence.
It seems safe to assume nobles no longer exploit people either, if nobility is even still a thing in Falconia. Like granted, I’m taking some of this as read based on what we’re told Falconia is, but I feel like the apostles (and the explicit focus on equality) are a good representative example of the point of Falconia, which is to essentially fix everything we see wrong with the world in the Conviction arc and, like I laid out above, in our protagonists’ lives.
The fact is that Falconia isn’t just a utopia on a distant macro level, where the readers can look at it and go, hm seems nice I guess but w/e. On a micro level it’s a place where these horrible things that happened to the characters we personally love and care about wouldn’t’ve happened. I, at least, am emotionally invested in that utopia because of this, yk?
But here’s where I get critical of the portrayal:
Femto and the Eclipse rape is the epitome of the harmful power structure. Like, Femto hits every branch on his way down this tree lol. During his transformation he met God, God absolved him of his guilt and responsibility by telling him he can do whatever the fuck he wants and it’ll be the right thing. He’s taking the place of the nobleman he saved Casca from and exemplifying existing power structures of strong preying on weak, and it’s petty revenge.
One can easily argue that the Eclipse rape is a distillation of every abusive power structure in Berserk.
So okay, you have Falconia, a utopia that exists to eschew these power structures and create a place of equality where no one is exploited, created by a dude whose defining act is the epitome of these abusive power structures.
And frankly it’s fucking pointless. This feels like the shallowest of shallow hot takes lol. Like, oooh what if this wonderful place where all the horrible things that traumatized our favourite characters are no longer an accepted given was created by an evil demon rapist???
Like… okay? And then what? The Eclipse rape has nothing to do with the social structure of Falconia, NGriff seems to have completely delivered on his/humanity’s dream regardless, he is now the higher power making the calls and he hasn’t told everyone to do whatever they want no matter who it hurts. From what we’ve seen he’s done the exact opposite, existing as a tempering influence on the apostles who no longer prey on those weaker than them, ending the Holy See’s reign of terror, ending wars in general, and uniting people in their differences.
So it’s just like, an arbitrary evil act which creates an artificial sense of moral greyness. It has no deep meaning. I mean I suppose Miura could address it in the future – I’ve mentioned that I think it could theoretically be really interesting for Casca to visit Falconia and see the dream she devoted her life to having come to fruition because of her rapist. But even so, that doesn’t have any like… deeper intrigue. That’s interesting for Casca’s character, not as an examination of moral relativity or w/e.
Similarly, if NeoGriffith turns out to be more human than he looks he could reflect on this contradiction in a potentially interesting way.
But I can’t think of a way to make it an interesting examination of morality. It’s boring at its core imo. I mean you could argue that it’s still worthwhile on that personal character level, but let’s be real here – no amount of potentially interesting character stuff in Casca’s future is worth removing her from the story for 20 years, and anything w/ NeoGriffith would be a retread of human Griffith’s guilt issues and frankly I don’t see it happening anyway lol.
So yeah ultimately this whole egalitarian utopia created by a rapist demon thing just does not work for me at all. There’s no reason the creator of this paradise /had/ to be a symbol of this abusive power structure it exists to destroy, again, that’s just an arbitrary happenstance, not a pre-requisite to utopia building, so it doesn’t say anything about the nature of Falconia. It doesn’t say anything about utopias in general, it doesn’t say anything about those power structures that we don’t already know (ie they bad, equality good).
It’s like, fake deep tbqh.
The actual interesting and morally grey aspect of Falconia is the way world peace was achieved by setting a bunch of fantasy monsters loose on humanity, and that has nothing to do with the Eclipse rape. Like, that’s literally all you need for the moral complexity. We have world peace and a growing utopia that everyone is welcome to join, but the price is monsters everywhere, and this could not have happened without those monsters to unite humanity in fear. Is the world better or worse than it used to be?
And NGriff being a rapist, or his demon alter ego being a rapist, or whatever the deal is there, adds nothing to that question, rather, it distracts from it and devalues the actual moral ambiguity.
In fact, it makes me wonder whether Miura regrets going with rape as his way of demonstrating Femto’s evil. Because it’s been such a non-issue to the whole theme of power structures, utopias, equality, etc, that it feels like Miura is sweeping it under the rug lol – it’s less of an attempt at dark irony and more the elephant in the room. I can’t even say with confidence that Femto was intended to be a symbol of exploitative power structures, despite how obvious it seems, because it just… hasn’t impacted the themes of the story at all.
Well I would love to see a terrifyingly vicious Casca. I don’t think it would rly make sense for her to have ptsd flashbacks as a fighting aid (then again what about Casca’s trauma does make sense? bc yeah that did happen once in canon lol so like w/e) but yk just generally channeling three years worth of repressed rage into violence would be extremely satisfying.
in the tradition of everyone telling you about music and berserk the mountain goats whole album transcendental youth has many gutscore songs on it? see “amy aka spent gladiator” and “spent gladiator 2” theyre perfect pre the band of the hawk and post eclipse guts, respectively.
i’ve listened to a lot of their individual songs but never an album, ty i’ll have to sit down and check it out! And I did just listen to the two songs you mentioned and omg yeah they are extremely painfully Guts.
I’d never heard it before now, but yeah I get what you mean. Some of the lines def give me kind of a Griffith right before he starts the transformation into Femto vibe.
i have another big post in my drafts that’s like, half examination of what falconia means in the context of the world of berserk and half ‘here’s another reason the eclipse rape is terrible writing that adds nothing and significantly detracts from most aspects of the story’ and let me tell you it makes it extremely frustrating to talk about the story post-eclipse sometimes
you either feel like you’re ignoring the elephant in the room or you have to spend half your post addressing it. like, fuck off miura, you hoisted yourself by your own dumb edgelord petard and it’s innocent readers like me getting stuck navigating your bad decision making. i resent it.
these people just think that everything griffith is doing is all part of some evil master plan to end the world or ruin humanity or whatever even though hes never had any motivation of incentive to do such
that being said, it
definitely puts more of a stake in how they view guts fight lol? even if
they are ignoring literally everything else the story has told us and
rational common sense that a sudden reveal in the plot that griffith is
actually Evil (like. evil in the big bad villain way) would be
satisfying.
you mean wouldn’t be satisfying, right? bc yeah v true lol
it wouldn’t even be a reveal (we all saw the eclipse), it would just be a bizarre, tonally fucked up back and forth… weird thing. well, moreso than griffith’s narrative already is lol
like we get moments like this during the millenium falcon arc:
it’s just not framed as a tense bad vibey moment w/ an evil dude manipulating a bunch of poor innocent people so he can get a kingdom, it’s framed as ‘lol fuck you noble assholes, griffith’s back and this time he’s getting his utopia, high five’
like do other people basically read a scene like this with sinister horror movie music playing in the background?
i mean i completely get if (general) you can’t ignore the eclipse rape in your perception of the story, but i feel like if you can’t do that, then your berserk is fundamentally at odds with miura’s berserk, since he has diligently ignored it throughout the entirety of neogriffith’s narrative, without a single fuck given for the kind of awkward tonal pall it casts over everything.
i wonder what it’s like to read neogriffith’s narrative thru the lens of guts = good griffith = evil
bc one notable thing about how miura has been writing griffith’s side of the story since he was resurrected is that ngriff is treated as the protagonist – a distant, unemotional protagonist to be sure, we’re never in his head or anything, but still a protagonist
like that’s how the story is structured and beated. griffith’s allies are all interesting and sympathetic and three dimensional; griffith’s triumphs are treated as such, his enemy gets a chapter of sympathetic backstory but is undoubtedly the antagonist. griffith striding in and intimidating ganeshka into turning his army away is good, ganeshka leveling up and becoming an eldrich horror is bad, the human soldiers going “oh shit the war demons are all monsters what the fuck” is a tense moment and sonia telling them to stfu and just get along relieves that tension, etc.
like it’s no coincidence that we see flora’s assassination as part of guts’ side of the story, because it’s a darker moment and seeing it thru guts’ eyes allows miura to depict it as such. if we saw it thru griffith’s narrative it would’ve looked more akin to griffith and guts assassinating the queen back in the golden age.
and also it makes the second time their narratives intersect, on the docks when guts and zodd team up to fight ganeshka, very… interesting as a contrast to the fight outside flora’s house. enemies to reluctant allies.
anyway yeah basically i feel like ngriff’s millenium falcon narrative would read like, in a very bizarre way if you’re not going along with treating him as a protagonist during it. like, tonally it would be nonsensical and probably very frustrating.
i love the detail of guts’ eye dripping blood here
it’s a symbol of despair that’s rly effective in illustrating guts’ feelings here (moreso than the run imho lol) despite not actually having any literal correlation to his emotions – yk bc it’s reminiscent of griffith crying blood after the behelit opened – and it’s gr8 that it comes right after that last memory of griffith.
it’s like a little mirror. each the source of the others’ despair.
you're the only one 