Tag: b

what do you think of griffith smiling when he hears julius and adonis are dead? i see lots of ppl use it as proof that he was ~evil~ all along

Fucking love that moment lol.

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glorious.

Like, this is a moment of Griffith’s inner darkness shining through. It’s perfect because it comes right after his long dream speech to Charlotte, as he’s learning that he’s achieved a particularly horrible step on the path to his dream. His dream just caused an innocent kid to be killed, and he’s smiling about it.

It’s a very strong way to equate dreams to darkness early on – and it’s great foreshadowing for Guts’ own descent too. This speech that ends with Griffith smiling over the death of a child – that causes that smile – is the very thing that inspires Guts to leave to pursue his own dream! Which ends up being the Black Swordsman arc.

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Like compare Griffith’s evil smile to Black Swordsman Guts’ slasher smiles as he’s, yk, fighting “stronger and stronger opponents,” ie pursuing his own dream. Dreams are terrible all around for everyone and I love it.

This is also part of Griffith’s set up that’s very soon knocked down in a subversion of the reader’s expectations. Like I’ve talked about how Griffith’s narrative begins with an image and eventually peels that away to the truth – we start with Femto, then we get early larger-than-life knight in shining armour Griffith who would do anything for his dream, here w/ the assassination we get the darker aspects of that emphasized, and then only five chapters later we get our first full pull-back of the curtain style reveal of the real Griffith, in Casca’s flashback.

Compare Griffith smiling when a child dies on the path to his dream up there to:

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and

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It’s Griffith burying his guilt – getting much better at burying it through consistent practice lol – and demonstrating his willingness to do so in order to achieve his dream, which, ironically, he’s pursuing because of that guilt. It’s perfect.

I think I’ve phrased it before as like, after learning about Griffith’s dead child related guilt issues in Casca’s flashback shortly after, that smile when he finds out Adonis is dead can only mean one of two things:

either in the intervening years he’s changed so fundamentally that he no longer has those guilt issues, and therefore Casca’s flashback chapters are functionally meaningless and unnecessary to an almost comedic extent.

or it means he’s successfully buried his guilt so thoroughly in this moment as he’s pontificating to Charlotte about his dream that his reaction is pleased – he’s kind of like, becoming the mask, doing that good a job of convincing himself it’s all necessary for the sake of his dream.

And we see Griffith’s guilt issues crop up again in Tombstone of Flame
and again when Ubik’s convincing him to make the sacrifice, soooo we
know it’s not option one lol.

idk it’s a great example of the fucked up duality that comes from living in denial and eventually leads to choosing to become a monster because you already see yourself as one, basically, and it’s something I absolutely love about Griffith’s character.

tl;dr griffith isn’t evil, he’s interesting.

the end of this post also gets into my take on this scene, and it’s probably better said there lol.

also this post kind of illuminates more of my thinking wrt dark sides in berserk

do griffguts give each other like massages or back/shoulder rubs or the like? i think griffith loves rubbing guts big meaty shoulders especially and griffith turns into like a big puddle when guts gives him a back rub

Absolutely cosigning this. Also I wanna say that Guts is surprisingly good at giving massages. He thinks he’ll suck at it and initially protests when Griffith first crawls under his hands like a cat after a long day of fighting or w/e, but turns out he’s got a knack.

this is under a cut because i have an instinctive need to bury all mentions of rl politics. plus it’s discoursey and just generally kind of pointless lol. sorry anon that you won’t get a notification that this has been answered, but hopefully you’ll see it.

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lol
god see this is why I avoid most of fandom. i’m gonna respond to these even tho i’m preaching to the choir bc you’ve awoken my argumentative side.

The canon age difference
between Griffith and Charlotte is about one year. Griffith’s around 18, Charlotte is 17. Even if you go by the
ova guidebook which ages Griffith up to 21, it blows my mind to say that makes liking Griffith problematic while calling yourself a fan of Miura or Berserk,
considering there’s like, fanservice featuring Schierke later on. I mean man, drop the story entirely or don’t pretend you’re on a higher horse, one or the other.

Berserk
as a setting has completely normalized child soldiers so lol @ singling
out Griffith when he’s largely motivated specifically by not wanting
children to be exploited. Especially when we got a dude who makes a
habit of using children as hostages as a protagonist.

no idea
where they would’ve gotten genocide from, other than fandom’s absolute
love of diluting terms used to refer to devastating real life concepts and events into utter
meaninglessness. like I can only assume they don’t know what the word
genocide means. Or they’re considering either the Hawks or… witches, I
guess, to be a race of people? In which case Guts is also a genocidal
maniac for his war declaration against all apostles/demons/etc.

fascist seems
to be a result of a complete inability to reconcile the fact that
Griffith is explicitly the most politically progressive and generally
social justice-concerned person in canon with the fact that he turned
into an evil demon. that would be something to
criticize berserk/miura for if we’re gonna get into political analysis of the story. but
like, it’s just a canon fact that falconia is pointedly socially and
politically progressive lol, that’s literally its raison d’etre. there’s
nothing fascist about it, and it’s positioned as a contrast/answer to the
authoritarianism of the inquisition.

In a sense you could say it’s the ultimate democracy lol because Falconia was literally brought into existence and essentially given to Griffith by the magically augmented collective will of humanity.

white imperialist is plain
and simple giving Miura a ridiculous amount of credit for something he’s
not doing, or if he is doing, is doing extremely offensively.

Like
to be absolutely fair I guess one can argue that thru convenience of
magic Falconia is an imperialist power by default despite not expanding
thru invasion but thru taking in refugees, because it’s the only place
to live safely and the white-centric fantasy-christian holy see does
seem to have the most power there, compared to I guess the kushans who
are our only example of a non-white culture. But I mean look at how Miura portrayed that culture as an antagonistic force – yk, the scary demon emperor and his
unstoppable demon army (created thru the rape of imprisoned women) from
super stereotypical fantasy India.

He’s nuanced enough to show that Kushans aren’t a monolith, but he really went all out to establish Ganeshka and his army as the villains in this conflict, in some pretty racist ways.

And if they’re taking it as read that Miura is purposefully setting up Falconia as a fantasy parallel to white imperialism, that would make the story positioning Falconia/Fantasia as the utopia and Griffith as the saviour that “humanity” as a whole desires, and essentially willed into being, really fucked up. Also relatedly, the fact that Griffith destroying Ganeshka like, saved the world bc Ganeshka had transformed into a world-destroying monster.

It’s also worth addressing Miura’s choice to make a Kushan general the biggest advocate
of Falconia (Jarif). Or
his choice to portray Falconia as explicitly anti-racist and
multicultural, while not like, showing us any actually non-racist
alternative. Like, the alternative presented (thru Guts’ individualistic
“struggler” narrative) seems to be “fend for yourself in a shitty world
where the privileged exploit the vulnerable instead of trying to fix these
issues of power and exploitation on a cultural level.“ That seems like a message worth criticizing.

Like somewhere in this muddle Miura’s probably going for a critique of
catholicism/monotheism in general on Griffith’s side of the narrative, but if his intention is to make a
statement on how that intersects with white imperialism, he’s failed in
some p damn big ways lol. You can’t just say Griffith is a white imperialist without like, examining the actual story and its portrayal of Falconia.

Idk man I just can’t fathom
calling yourself a fan of Berserk while suggesting it’s problematic to
be a fan of Griffith in particular. Like my god, have you read this
manga? I’m genuinely more comfortable calling myself a Griffith fan than
a Berserk fan lol.

But I mean lbr people who say this kind of shit don’t actually consider the offensive implications or what these assertions suggest about the messages of the story itself, they’re just grasping for weapons to use against fans they don’t like.

Judeau seemed to notice that Griffith had a dark side.

yeah true. I’m not sure if this is a response to something I’ve said or just a statement you’re throwing out there lol, but yeah. Judeau suspected that Griffith (and quite likely Guts) assassinated the Queen

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He had a reaction to Griffith reaching up to strangle Guts here

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and from the beginning he was basically calling Griffith morally ambiguous while everyone else seemed to see him as pure hero:

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though that last one is probably more narrative convenience than nuance of Judeaus’ characterization, he’s got some real authorial voice going on here. But this line fits Judeau more than it would any of the other Hawks.

So in general yeah he does seem less idealistic and more aware of the practical side of how a peasant would go about rising to the throne, and maybe more observant and able to see the less idealized sides of Griffith than most other people.

Re: casca’s outfit. Lol i didn’t even notice those fanservice-y bits…miura why. Another small thing that bothers me is how he draws boobs/nipples. Bc apparently all women have gravity defying boobs and small perpetually hard metal plates like nipples. And men just don’t have nipples. Like having to look at casca’s hard racistly bright nipples in the bg while guts has a breakdown over his childhood trauma is so jarring

lol yeah strong agree.

like you can and should criticize how casca is objectified and drawn in a very sexualized way in moments that should not be sexy because it’s offensive in misogynist and racist ways, but you can also criticize it because it’s like, bad writing/bad art. it’s tonally awkward.

madchen
replied to your post “i am absolutely living for your hcs, do you have any thoughts on…”

imagining all these ending with like griffith and guts clinging and wrapped all intimately around each other and hoarsely whispering to the other after like frantic passionate sex and serpico just sort of sitting off to the side looking at his cuticles
like guts leaning over and pressed
against griffith post missionary while still inside him with his arms
wrapped around griffs back and cradling him and pressed into his neck…
griffith has his own arms wrapped around guts wide shoulders and his
legs hooked over his hips… serpico is reading like the bible from the
bedside table drawer lmao

this is so real and I can just picture it perfectly lol, i love it

This is a bit nitpicky i guess but does it bother you too how cutesy is casca’s mercenary outfit (thigh boots, sword with a heart hilt, short mantle, pink shirts in the 97 anime)? Like considering how he deals with her feminine side particularly in regards to appareances it makes me go “mmmh”

yeah a bit lol, the heart hilt especially kind of bothers me. like where did she get that and why? was it custom made? would casca really want a sword with decorative hearts on it? (I could headcanon my own explanation, like maybe she stole it off a nobleman who kept it basically for decoration rather than actually using it, back when the Hawks were thieves. But yk I’m not giving Miura credit for that.)

tbh in general I find it kind of hard to criticize her golden age outfit in the context of like, 90% of fantasy female warriors’ outfits lol, bc in all fairness it’s p realistic and practical comparatively. her breastplate doesn’t have sculpted boobs, her boots don’t have heels any more than the dudes’ do (and to be fair I feel like i’ve heard that the thigh highs were an actual practical riding thing – tho ofc none of the dudes wear them, soooo enh), she doesn’t have half her chest exposed for the sake of cleavage (except of course for the many, many pages where her clothes are torn lol), and she like, wears pants.

but on the other hand it’s sad the bar is that low because lbr Casca wearing decent clothes doesn’t prevent Miura from drawing her ridiculously for the sake of fanservice anyway

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like no it’s not technically an upskirt shot, but damn it’s hard to tell the difference with that long skirt-looking tunic and ultra tight pants. kind of unfortunately undermines the power angle imo.

and her pants get even tighter after she has sex with guts ime, there are a few panels like this one later on:

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so yeah, i guess like, it is kind of nitpicky, but it’s the kind of nitpicky i agree with lol. I mean I wouldn’t write a big long post to criticize Casca’s outfit bc for the most part it’s much better than i’d expect, but it’s def not perfect.

i am absolutely living for your hcs, do you have any thoughts on guts/serpico/griffith? the difference here is that griffith is the one that walks in on them instead of the other way around

ty!

griffith rehearsing his “join me in my utopian world plz I’m really over being enemies and I miss you” speech on the way to Elfhelm to confront Guts, walks into Guts’ tree house guest room mid-fuck, aaaaaand… I can’t make this end in a threesome lol.

w/ neogriffith as instigator you get that sexy hedonistic monsterfucking atmosphere to help things along, plus Guts potentially having already gotten to “fuck it I have nothing to lose” mode. here I’m p sure this would either lead to someone getting killed, or maybe another, angsty, bitter conversation that comprises the most awkward few minutes of Serpico’s already exceptionally awkward life.

like, Serpico sees him in the doorway, is like, wow finally met someone really hot on Skellig, hey Guts we’ve got a guest let’s invite him in wink wink. Guts turns to look and is like, “Griffith?!” and Serpico’s like, oh of course it’s the fated nemesis destroyer of worlds guy, idk what else I expected after getting involved with Guts.

(tho i don’t think NGriff is really Serpico’s type, but he’s pretty objectively hot and he’s definitely Guts’ type so I still say Serpico’s brain could immediately leap to threesome potential.)

ON THE OTHER HAND what if this was a golden age AU?

Serpico comes to Midland with Farnese and the Holy Iron Chain Knights, maybe in an attempt to unite kingdoms under the holy see to fight ganeshka’s giant army beginning to move west or whatever. Guts is still there because he hasn’t overheard the Promrose Hall speech, but he and Griffith aren’t fucking yet.

Serpico and Guts instantly dislike each other but lbr they’re both each others’ type and they both respect each others’ abilities too once they get to know each other more, and they end up working together quite a bit because Guts is nobility now and a high ranking captain in Midland’s royal army, so they get a sort of mild rivals -> lovers relationship arc.

Then Griffith walks in on them.

So Guts and Griffith still have an intense borderline romantic relationship full of barely repressed mutual pining, Guts getting together with Serpico has maybe been his wake-up call that he would also want more with Griffith, but at the same time he wouldn’t want to ruin their friendship lol and Griffith has his political het marriage so he’s kind of unattainable so he’s happy with Serpico. And now Griffith has to suddenly confront the fact that he wants to be in Serpico’s place.

So Griffith turns around to flee the immediate awkwardness and his own feelings, and Guts is like, shit better follow him and make sure he’s not freaked out by the fact that we’re hooking up, and… one thing leads to another, they end up making out against a wall, Guts wakes up after a few minutes and is like, damn I just abandoned Serpico mid-sex, I’d better go apologize, and Griffith is like, I’ll come with you.

But uh, more sensual and sexy and emotionally intimate. During sex Serpico realizes emphatically that he’s the third wheel but his apathy makes it easy for him to shrug and move on with only a little melancholy disappointment.

sorry lol, literally all of these are going to end in exclusive griffguts because I just can’t ot3 them. Serpico will find a good handsome soldier bf who prioritizes him afterwards tho.

To clarify I just meant mainly the cinematic beauty of it all; the way the song plays in the scene, the destruction of the Ziggurat(or Falconia in this case), and the final words between the two main characters.

ok I’ve watched a clip now and I see exactly what you mean lol. completely agree, that whole vibe would work perfectly. destruction + the love song + identity issues + the hands + the sense of futility… like, nice. and I’m immediately adding the song to my berserk playlist.

If Beserk doesn’t end like how Metropolis the anime ends I’ll be pretty disappointed. I’d send a link if you don’t know what I’m talking about but the Ask feature doesn’t allow for that

Unfortunately I haven’t seen it so I don’t really know what you mean exactly. I just read the wikipedia plot summary, but I’m not sure which elements of the ending you’re referring to, or if it’s a detail that might not even be mentioned in the summary.

But if you want to clarify, or if someone else wants to jump in and agree disagree if they know what you’re referring to specifically, plz do.

How about some Lokus/Griffth/Guts? Can you see it?

lol i feel like this is the hardest possible guts/griff/apostle configuration to make work. Unlike Zodd who wouldn’t care that much about being a third wheel, Locus seems pretty personally devoted to Griffith. Like I think I once chose Locus as the apostle most likely to hate Guts lol, I could just see him getting super jealous and uptight while pretending it’s nothing deeper than the fact that he doesn’t trust Guts.

Like he’s got both Guts and Griffith’s all encompassing ridiculously intense past relationship to contend with AND the fact that they are/were mortal enemies and Guts probably still wants to kill Griffith on some level, I feel like that’s a double whammy of things that would make Locus hate Guts.

(I mean I’m kind of making up the idea that he’d be the jealous type, but idk based on some details like his outrage when Rickert slapped Griffith, the way he, as a knight, didn’t find a lord he wanted to serve until Griffith which makes me figure he’d be extra loyal and devoted once he does join Griffith, his wistfulness about apostles having a place in Falconia, etc, yk on an emotional level he seems pretty invested in Griffith. Add a sexual relationship to that and I could see him being jealous.)

and again I guess in like a scenario where NGriff and Locus are already having sex and Guts walks in and gets a chance to join in and takes it because he’s kind of past the point of self denial, I could see it happening. but man I think the atmosphere in that room would be painfully awkward and tense lol. A lot of both of them pretending the other isn’t there except occasionally to glare at him when their hands accidentally brush.

sobadpink
replied to your post “Do you consider griffith a villain or just an…”

Berserk is great in that almost no character is decidedly “good” or “bad” and that really messes with the status quo and expectations

yeah ia, Miura’s pretty good at giving his characters interesting, understandable, and morally grey layers, and it’s pretty much why I like Berserk.

the moral greys are especially a good touch in a story where people can literally transform into monstrous representations of themselves lol, it seems like it would be so easy to go full black and white, good and evil and I’m glad he hasn’t.

How do you feel about griffith and casca’s relationship? Personally I liked their relationship before the eclipse and I find it heartbreaking in general. That flashback scene where they’re riding near a lake and casca is looking at griffith with the sun behind him really gets me for some reason

I also really liked their relationship tbh. I would’ve been happier about it if Casca hadn’t been secrely in love with him all along, but otoh that does add a metric ton of gay subtext thanks to the parallels so I can’t be too annoyed about that lol.

I talk about them quite a bit in this post (the first part is about their relationship in general, then it goes into the pre-eclipse stuff in more detail) if you’re interested in a more detailed take.

But yeah in general I think they have a pretty sweet relationship that’s kind of a sad missed opportunity, not for romance but for a more emotionally fulfilling friendship. I love how they’re both protective of each other, physically – like Casca stepping in front of Griffith, sword out, when they encounter Zodd, or like Griffith trying despite his complete inability to do something to help Casca when Wyald grabs her – and emotionally, with Casca trying to comfort Griffith in her flashback and Griffith stamping down his own feelings so he can be a strong comforting presence for Casca many times.

And overall I think they’re pretty dysfunctional lol but in an interesting and engaging way that shows they genuinely care about each other and just kind of suck as people. Yk like most relationships in Berserk.

(And yeah ia, that flashback is v touching and sad.)

This is of course all pre-eclipse, Femto is neither here nor there where their relationship is concerned lol.

The Queen of Midland married the King of Midland for political reasons, did her duty as a wife, but actually was having an affair with Julius and didn’t realize she loved Julius until he was gone, and had previously tried to rationalize her feelings for him. Maybe I’m reaching, but I see a parallel with Griffith, Guts and Charlotte (the Queen also looks like Griffith and Griffith kills her, Guts kills Julius, and Charlotte is the king’s daughter).

nice tbh, I could see this as a purposeful parallel – marrying someone for political gain while being in love with someone else – or at least consider it p telling that the Golden Age is full of people being in love with people they theoretically shouldn’t be, whether that’s actually true or whether their feelings conflict with their goals or whether it’s their own issues and insecurity talking lol.

Guts and Griffith are surrounded by like, echoes of their relationship from various angles and I could see this as one of them.

Do you consider griffith a villain or just an antagonist/deuteragonist?

I really don’t think Miura is taking the straightforward villain route with Griffith. He hasn’t been so far, what with framing him as the protagonist of his own story. He’s an antagonist to Guts, but yeah I don’t think villain is the word for him.

I’d classify Femto as a villain, tbf, but then I’d also classify the Beast of Darkness as a villain. I think that’s kind of the point of Berserk, that everyone has that dark villainous side and everyone has a heroic side, and some are more one than the other, whether they’re monsters or regular humans. And the key isn’t even to overcome that dark side, but to find a balance.

p much I think the conflict of Berserk is going to come down to the light vs the dark within the individual characters and within humanity as a whole, and NGriff as an individual is probably literally representative of humanity as a whole.

Back to that Zodd/Griffith/Guts question. Well if it’s more realistic that Zodd and Guts fight over Griffith as Griffith gets off watching than what would happen if you take into account the rest of the Apostle squad? I doubt Griffith will be able to get off for the whole time Guts brawls the apostles lol

my first thought was an au where guts is scott pilgrim, and i resent that bc i hated that movie lol.

all right tho the monster orgy vibe is good and if guts like, walked in on that i’d be all for him just joining in and taking his opportunity to fuck griffith. one of those, yeah okay this might as well happen kind of things.

tho i’m actually picturing this with nameless like, tentacle monster apostles rather than the hawk squad bc the named apostles have too much personality lol, if i start thinking about them i’ll just overthink this and start wondering how they’d get along with guts in a group sex context and it will be ridic.

so like now i’m feeling this as more of a slightly disturbing backdrop for guts/neogriffith. yk like mainly griffguts, but with some hr giger monsters getting in on it for atmosphere.

but if you have any ideas for how that encounter – guts + griffith + some or all of the apostle generals – would go i’m all ears.

bthump:

now i’m just going through and reading all the volume summaries and wooooow they are so bad lmao this is incredible

they read like they’re written by marge simpson trying to sound cool

also i’m in awe at how they can’t write the word ‘casca’ without attaching ‘his former lover’ to it

like damn every single cover lol.

“we promise you this is a heterosexual story potential readers, pinkie swear. you might not be able to tell from the story itself, but take our word for it, guts totally fucked a woman once.”

Reading the dark horse berserk translation for the first time and I’m cringing so hard at those ultra edgy backside cover descriptions (the vol.6 one also seems to imply that charlotte’s attraction to griffith is mutual? ew) and the pop culture references (“groovy”,”you shall not pass” etc.). Berserk truly attracts the worst crowd and it baffles me because it’s anything but a macho manga.

lol you know i’ve never actually read most of them, i always just skip past. tho i just checked out volume 6′s and yeah lol @ growing attraction between the king’s daughter and griffith. like it doesn’t really surprise me that the summaries are aimed at a straight dude demographic + emphasize the macho manly action/horror, but still, that’s p egregious.

but i gotta say, using the phrase ‘callow beauty’ to describe griffith is kinda interesting. i’m so used to seeing everything about him described as calculating and machiavellian that it’s almost refreshing to see a summary of part of berserk that paints griffith as earnest and naive lol, even if it’s completely inaccurate.

also i kind of assumed they’re translated from the japanese covers instead of dark horse writing their own summaries but maybe they are straight from dark horse if they’re including like lotr references lol. or maybe it’s just creative license with translating.

i just gotta ask, what do you think of a potential guts/ngriff/zodd threesome? (sidenote: do zodd’s uneven horns bother you too?)

lmao honestly I have a lot of ships that I can imagine being into threesomes but griffguts is not one of them, I think zodd would get murdered. like guts would fight him to the death before letting him touch griffith. and griffith would rather watch guts fight someone over him than get double teamed anyway.

like guts/ngriff/zodd = guts and zodd fighting while griffith jerks off imho

whether this is literal canon or modern au lol.

tho to be more fun if there is a scenario in which this happens – say guts is in falconia for whatever reasons, whether he’s straight up lost control of his life and gone beast of darkness and murdered all his friends and decided to join griffith or whether it’s part of a larger plan or something, and ngriff and zodd are already fucking on the regular and guts walks in on them or something and ngriff is like, ‘care to join us ;)’ – guts would start by immediately trying to compete with zodd over who can fuck him better.

zodd would win objectively but lbr he’d still end up so intensely third wheeled he’d get up and make himself a sandwich. and griffith probably orchestrated this scenario just to get guts to fuck him anyway.

tho also one more concept i can throw out, guts and zodd fighting/competing over griffith could turn sexual between them. i mean it would be a disservice to their canon interactions to ignore that there’s some chemistry there lmao

in which case griffith would immediately regret everything, kick zodd out, and give guts the most intense lay of his life.

also ia zodd’s asymmetrical one horn look does kind of bug me lol.

sobadpink
replied to your post “what do you think of the new band of the hawk? also what do you think…”

The best conflict is not Good vs. Evil, but rather Good vs. Good or Evil vs. Evil.

this is a good way of putting it tbh, and i def agree

with the caveat that my ideal conflict is [good vs evil] vs [good vs evil] ie 2 people struggling with their own inner darknesses/humanity while they’re in conflict with each other, and who complement/complete each other/pull each other towards the middle

mostly bc it describes a surprising amount of my favourite ships + character dynamics lol

what do you think of the new band of the hawk? also what do you think is going to happen with charlotte?

I like them a lot.

Also I think we’re meant to like them which I find v interesting and hopeful lol. Like from Raksas who is a huge dick but also very entertaining and fun to Grunbeld who has a whole backstory novel in which he’s 100% sympathetic protagonist from everything I’ve heard about it, they’re made to be likeable characters. Which is great because it makes it less likely we’re headed for some kind of boring Guts’ side vs Griffith’s side, Good vs Evil story lol.

Not that I’m too worried about any conflict between them being framed as simplistically as good vs evil, but still. 

My ideal plotline is probably Guts’ side and Griffith’s side teaming up against a greater antagonist, like those few chapters where Guts rode Zodd into battle against Ganeshka writ large, and the fact that Griffith’s side of the story isn’t framed as evil or even antagonistic but as protagonists of their own narrative makes that seem more possible.

Failing that, just like I love Guts getting monstrous without literally becoming a monster I love seeing apostles that are sympathetic and humane. Moreso than say, Rosine who is sympathetic but also yk, pretty damn fucked up regardless, apostles like eg Locus are just chill. Locus is like a famous knight who apparently exorcised his apostle bloodlusty urges by competing in tournaments before he joined Griffith, and since joining Griffith has been pretty dedicated to fostering peace between humans and between humans and apostles. Give or take possibly sending Raksas after Rickert (or possibly not, we don’t know yet) he hasn’t done a single negative thing that we know of. Same with Irvine, who seems to hunt animals, rather than people, and Grunbeld who has the aforementioned novel where he’s p much portrayed as heroic as far as I can tell, and Zodd who is compared to Guts the most when it comes to the whole man vs monster thing.

So yk even if they do ultimately end up fighting Guts, I feel like it’s not going to be a simple conflict where we’re meant to root for one side or the other. Tonally the fact that there’s a conflict at all would probably be depicted as negative.

as an aside, imo the biggest argument against that hope tbh is the new fast travel system which feels like nothing but set up for an eventual attack on Elfhelm, but yk what, I’ve also been arguing that Eflhelm is going to end up being manipulative assholes, so maybe it’ll all work out in my favour anyway. Like maybe they’ll show up just as the readers suddenly realize we want someone to kick Elfhelm’s ass.

Like Miura has talked about writing Griffith as a protagonist of his own story, and you don’t spend a hundred chapters on a narrative that follows those protagonist/heroic story beats just to suddenly make them evil no good antagonists again lol.

I feel like Guts and Griffith’s stories are going to end up being basically morally equivalent from different angles. Man vs inner monster; monster vs inner man lol. Human volition, monstrous strength, yadda yadda yadda.

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Like this is one of the strongest themes of the story lol, one brief scene where they team up cannot be the sole payoff, come on. Especially when it’s Guts and Griffith in conflict, rather than Guts and Zodd who don’t have that whole history of being ridiculously in love with each other.

Anyway like, the two sides don’t necessarily need to team up again, but conflict between Guts and Griffith’s narratives falls soundly on the monster side and it’s gonna be depicted as such, and therefore negative. like guts will be consumed by the armour when that happens and he’ll probably have killed or will kill one or more of his friends as well, that kind of negative.

When it comes to Charlotte though, I really have no idea lol. If I have any guess at all, it’s that she’s probably not going to do anything particularly significant. Like, thematically she’s got nothing going on that I can think of, she’s just kind of there being in love with Griffith and enabling his power grab, so I can’t really theorize about how she’ll fit into any future conflict.

I know a lot of people want her to learn about Femto/the Eclipse in the hopes that the rose coloured glasses break, because in a way i think she’s kind of representative of buying Griffith’s perfect image, but I doubt it. Even if she does like, see him transform into Femto or something lol, even if all of Falconia sees it, I don’t think it’ll change anything. They’ve seen him lead an army of monsters and speculated about whether he’s even human already, showing off a black outfit and bat wings is probably not going to make or break anything for him relationship or publicity-wise at this point.

I guess my biggest hope wrt Charlotte is just that she’ll get some screen time acting in some capacity as a leader. She’s got some inner strength at least, as we saw like, during the Griffith rescue mission a million years ago, let’s see her use it in some way as queen.

I was thinking, if the demon child appears during the black swordsman arc and miura said he came up with g*tsca only until later in the story, then what was it originally supposed to be? Straight-up guts and femto’s child lol?

tbh I actually love it in the Black Swordsman arc bc I don’t think it was meant to be anything particularly significant, like, plot-wise (tho lmao i wish, but it’s probably only a coincidence that it looked kind of like a fetus lol)

I think it was just supposed to be a recurring demon that represents like, the self destructiveness and futility of Guts’ revenge rampage. like a proto beast of darkness but instead of being scary and cool it’s just sad and pathetic. the twisted remains of yourself after you’ve been consumed by revenge.

which i say mainly because of that one image where guts sees it with vargas’ face. but also if you re-read its early appearances with that in mind it fits very nicely with the rest of the black swordsman arc’s themes and the way it unnerves guts more than anything else he sees, and the way it appears when he’s feeling self-doubt and fear of failure, makes a lot of sense.

also his chapter 2 nightmare where it chases him works super well with that in mind. This nightmare is later echoed by his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s a monstrous representation of donovan chasing him, which is echoed again after Guts kills Adonis and sees himself as that monster. It’s very neatly cyclical – chronologically, it goes Guts’ own personal monster followed by Guts’ fear of becoming a monster followed by Guts well on his way to becoming that monster. And I just love that the fetus thing isn’t a cool monster, it’s just pathetic, which is perfect in the Black Swordsman arc where Guts is paralleled to Vargas.

relatedly it’s really off-putting to re-read the scenes where it appears after miura retconned it into being his weird demon kid lol. Totally fucks up that interpretation. Like you can maybe read it as a reminder of Guts abandoning Casca/his repressed guilt over it, but I have no idea how that’s supposed to work with the nightmare, or the direct comparison to Vargas, etc.

Maybe it still kind of works as a symbol of Guts becoming a monster in that the fetus is is all demony because it was corrupted by Femto or w/e, but like… considering all its later appearances are helpful and protective rather than sinister, it really doesn’t work for me. It’s a big mess.

This is the quality shit we come here for! ��❤️ Neo-Griff offering his body to the beast of darkness as an apology or self destructive thing is also very human Griffith of him and would definitely be a sign his heart isn’t as frozen as he’d like it to be.

ty! and ooh yeah i love the idea of there being a self-destructive/self-harming aspect deep down to ngriff mb angling more for fucking than fighting in a confrontation w/ beast of darkness guts. also maybe an element of avoiding having to kill guts too. and also wanting the d. honestly ngriff letting guts fuck him is the most in character thing he could do l b r.

also lmao @ you and @madchen both coming to the same conclusion. i’ll cosign beast of darkness fucking femto/ngriff from behind.

Any thoughts on neo griffith/beast of darkness or guts/femto fucking? (Srry i watched venom today so i’m in a mosterfucking mode)

hell yeah

especially beast of darkness/neogriffith tbh, i am super into this concept. or even a role reversal au where guts was the one who became a godhand member or mb apostle.

and femto/guts also has its appeal. or femto/beast of darkness, monster4monster.

guess i’ll put this under a cut in respect to ppl who follow me more for meta than long posts about monsterfucking lol

side note to kick this off: i once had a shockingly coherent berserk dream where femto turned out to be a periodic temporary transformation, kinda like a werewolf, and he’d turn back into post-torture griffith after wreaking some evil havok, and griffith wouldn’t remember anything. and this led to guts having sex with griffith-as-femto (who was less hilarious petty ex a la black swordsman arc and more like, the kind of atmospheric scary horror movie monster who motionlessly watches you from across the street and appears in the bathroom mirror after you look away briefly lol) in order to distract him from like, leaving to go murder people. and guts framed this to himself as like penance for abandoning griffith but at the same time he was also into it because despite being terrifying femto was still a version of griffith who he loves and has been pining for for 4 years. it was a high quality dream tbh.

but anyway, like the way their relationship is depicted as so obsessive and singular i feel like there’s something v compelling in either of them becoming the extra evil embodiment of the worst aspects of themselves and the other still wanting him bc even that darkness is an aspect of the person he loves? like that’s p canon actually

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(not to mention how suggestive the beast of darkness gets)

like either of them, canon guts or au griffith where guts became a monster, hating the other for destroying everything and ruining his life but still high key “longing” for him.

relatedly, the canon mutual pining thing during the golden age but then the first time they act on their repressed sexual feelings is after one becomes a monster and consequently has lost that repression and has nothing stopping him from acting on his lust? and the other is like, oh no you’re a monster and i hate you now but also i’ve been lying to myself about not wanting this for 8 years and i’ll take what i can get.

doesn’t quite fit with actual canon (one can argue femto is even more repressed lol) but whatever, actual canon sux.

or both of them having succumbed to their inner darknesses but still finding that spark of light and their own humanity in each other is srsly good stuff.

like lbr neogriffith letting beast of darkness guts fuck him instead of fight him and predictably feeling all those not actually frozen feelings even tho it’s just like, a vague twisted echo of what their relationship could’ve been once… also good. maybe focusing on the physical to distract himself from/ignore his feelings to the point where he doesn’t notice he’s got tear tracks running down from the corners of his eyes afterwards. i mean what better time to get that payoff on ‘the crystalization of your last tear shed’ right?

also there’s a devilman spinoff/missing scene manga where akira lost his consciousness to the demon he melded with and ryo brought him back by kissing him. and i’m js

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the sex version would work v well in berserk. imagine guts waking up from a prolonged stretch of time as the beast of darkness while balls deep in neogriffith and just clinging to him like an anchor, at least until he comes and eventually regains the presence of mind to assess the situation lol.

what other angles are there? idk i feel like there’s a lot of room for playing around with the monster versions of these characters.

i mean i get why ppl often don’t want to even ship post-eclipse griffguts let alone their evil monster versions bc miura poisoned that well, but honestly idgaf personally, i’m not gonna let that stop me. ngriff/femto/beast of darkness all have so much potential here.

also sorry i focused more on feelings than physical specifics but that’s bc a) i’m better at talking about feelings and b) femto and the beast of darkness are anatomically pretty boring lbr lol. i mean femto especially is barely a monster physically, that’s like, all feelings lol.

murdersounds:

hhhhhhmmm lol … ancient but intriguing

i don’t want her to regret guts saving her per se, as far as current shit goes because she’s been thru enough … but … so many things in berserk are cyclical it could very well still apply. and tbh i want her to be angry about a lot of things that have happened

i’d love for her to get righteous revenge for turning her good, likeable and interesting character into a plot device for the sole conveyance of manpain for the past 20 years t b f h

i want a dark call back to that moment in the cave now, either as tragedy bc casca did not want to be saved by guts or by getting her sanity “forced” back (”shouldn’t’ve saved her”)

or

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as casca resoundingly and v seriously rejecting guts in favour of farnese