Ty I’m glad you think so 😀 and lmao you and me both, Void/Skull Knight is legit.
I think Void is definitely going to play a big role in the endgame of Berserk – I’m p sure MIura’s said he’ll be important and he’s got shifty fuck written all over him. I think he absolutely knows more than he’s letting on and if I were to guess I’d say he has plans of his own that will become relevant. Also I think he’s using the rest of the Godhand, including NGriff, as pawns. I don’t have any real reason for this other than his caginess and the fact that he seems to know more than them, but I still like the idea.
Also I have a whole theory in the first half of this post about how he could affect the plot but that’s mostly just wild guessing and hopeful theorizing lol.
@mastermistressofdesire had a post about this that I loved (i think in answer to an ask) but I can’t find it now bc I suck at tag organization 😦
But basically I agree with most of what you’re saying, I feel like NeoGriff’s half of the story with the Neo Band of the Hawk and Rickert calling him out is perfect set-up for a reveal that he has more emotions than we can see. Idk if I’d say he’s denying the Eclipse by rebuilding the Band, but I could see it being a denial of him having changed – “You of all people should have known – this is the man I am. Nothing has changed.”
mmod in her post on the subject mentioned that NGriff forming a new Band of the Hawk and inviting Rickert along seems like an indication that he wants approval/vindication from the last remaining member of the Hawks. And Rickert pointing out the differences in the insignias and saying Griffith was his leader, not the “Falcon of Light,” while NeoGriffith’s only response is to quietly agree, seems really important.
Like it’s the only time we’ve seen NGriff at a loss for words and at a disadvantage. And it’s when Rickert says he’s not his Griffith. I could easily see NGriff having some identity issues after this scene. (Especially after seeing Ganeshka ascend to a higher plane and totally lose his sense of identity.)
I do kind of wonder about NGriff’s capacity for guilt. It’s all in question bc we’ve seen his heart beating but since then we haven’t had any insight into his internal thoughts, so he’s feeling something but we don’t know what. Whether part of it is regret or guilt, idk. Guilt was such an important aspect of original Griff’s character that it wouldn’t surprise me if that returned in some form, if his emotions in general have.
(Also while searching for that post by mmod I found a different conversation with her that’s p relevant to this ask too, if you’re interested.)
Not bothering me at all, I love talking about this stuff! (As may be a little obvious considering how long I ramble on in response to your asks lol.) And yeah, Casca needs to be saved from Berserk tbh.
yk I’ve seen that theory but I think it’s really, really unlikely that Femto let them go because he knew about the demon baby and the whole resurrection thing, unless Miura plans to retcon stuff.
Like first of all his actions during the Eclipse indicated that he fully wanted Guts and Casca dead. He attacked Skull Knight when he showed up to save them, and Guts was so mutilated what with his missing limb etc that without Puck’s healing powder he probably would’ve died anyway.
Then you have Femto nearly killing Guts in the Black Swordsman arc and apparently believing he did when he slammed him against a wall (”it seems i have unintentionally granted your wish, count”). Guts was necessary for the mock Eclipse (two sacrifices needed to pull all the spirit residue together into a malicious destructive force) so if he could predict the future he wouldn’t try to kill him.
I mean granted Miura writes on the fly so i’m sure he wasn’t thinking about details re Griffith’s resurrection that early, but still.
I mean just look at the scene where Femto lets them go:
Reach followed by Guts closeup followed by … followed by escape followed by Femto awkwardly lowering his hand lol.
Like if it was a Casca closeup I could maybe see an argument that Femto got a message from God telling him to let them go, or something, because of the fetus, but it’s Guts he looks at before hesitating. The dude he does stupid self destructive, impulsive shit for.
Plus the other Godhand didn’t predict this. Void’s a silent wildcard, but I personally think his suggetive silent closeup
is an indication that he’s seen something like this happen before.
I definitely think Guts and Casca’s survival was fated to happen (lotta weird coincidences that all add up to them facilitating NeoGriffith’s resurrection), but I don’t think Femto is in on the plan.
I think this basically sums up how fate works in Berserk:
Femto can do whatever he wants and it’s going to make whatever is meant to happen, happen.
So imo Femto let them go for personal (Guts related) reasons.
Yeah I think Griffith + Femto is morally grey if you combine them into one entity (which… I guess is just saying Griffith is morally grey lol since Femto is his dark side unleashed or w/e). I’m v curious about how NeoGriff fits in. One theory I have is that if Femto is Griffith with all the “good” parts of his humanity stripped away, then maybe NeoGriff has the “evil” parts stripped away too, and all that’s left is like, a heart full of neutrality (and whatever feelings made him call off Zodd and save Casca from rocks), making him the perfect fulfiller of humanity’s desires.
bc you’re right, he hasn’t done anything malicious. He’s been darkly pragmatic in eg sending apostles after Flora, but that’s not really any different than Guts and Griffith assassinating the queen from his point of view.
Ofc NeoGriff could just be Femto in a human suit who’s gotten better at concealing his petty side, who knows?
Also wrt Femto negating Griffith’s good deeds, ia – I think especially the rape is meant to be a v direct contrast to Griffith saving her from attempted rape the first time. The movie even uses the same Casca point of view shot to make the connection painfully clear. Though I don’t necessarily think that’s deliberate on Femto’s part (tho it could be) so much as the narrative drawing a strong contrast between Griffith and Femto. Griffith was Casca’s saviour, Femto then destroyed her, that kind of thing. Femto was a part of Griffith, but always tempered by Griffith’s ideals and morals, so stripping that part of him away is shown by negating his good deeds.
There’s also the way he literally replaces the nobleman who tried to rape Casca – he says, “do you think you’re chosen by God?” to him when he saves her. Now it turns out Femto literally has been chosen by God. Coupled with Berserk’s cynical take on religion, God being the Idea of Evil, etc, you get the sense that divine right isn’t any better or more noble than the class system enabling predators.
But again NeoGriff is all about that divine right and he hasn’t done anything malicious yet so the ultimate message might end up being more complicated than that.
(also i just want to be clear that theorizing about why miura had femto rape casca during the eclipse isn’t me saying i think it was a good writing choice. it makes sense in context of berserk’s themes, but that’s bc casca’s character is defined by rape and rape attempts from beginning to end, which sucks)
@madchen these details are v important and can’t be overlooked.
Good point about Griffith’s armour design, I’d never really thought about it like that but it makes perfect sense for the aesthetics over practicality aspect to tie into his untouchability and existence as humanity’s “desired.” And yeah ia it is a little depressing.
to answer your question, tbh yes. Well the human emotions part at least, I think that’s just about inevitable.
I mean when you structure your story around two dudes and their epic (b)romance that fell apart not because they didn’t love each other but because they didn’t realize they were loved by the other, and then reveal that one dude who’s supposed to be an emotionless demon now still has feelings, that has to be significant.
He can blame it on a fetus all he wants but let’s be real here – you don’t write a character arc about how Griffith’s feelings for Guts were so powerful they eclipsed his dream, ruined his life, and he eventually turned into a demon partly in an attempt to free himself from those feelings, and then reveal that he still feels something for Guts after all that…. only for these feelings to be a total coincidence unrelated to the feelings that propelled the plot of the story for 82 chapters.
Redemption though, idk. I guess it depends how you define it. My ideal ending, that I think is definitely possible, is NeoGriff irrationally sacrificing his dream/himself again for Guts’ sake – whether that’s to save his life somehow or being emotionally unable to kill him in a duel, or whatever. So if you count that as a little bit of redemption, I could see it.
I could also see NeoGriff’s net effect on the world of Berserk being positive overall, with the difficult moral quandary of: is world peace or w/e worth the saviour of mankind being basically a literal monster? Though I don’t really think NeoGriffith potentially doing more good than evil qualifies as redemption myself.
Basically I don’t think NeoGriff will ever express remorse for the sacrifice or his actions as Femto, so if that’s a required part of redemption then no, I don’t think he’s going to get redeemed at all. But I do think he’s going to be complicated a lot, by his divine position as saviour and/or by his residual human feelings.
@bthump I do think that there is so much to look at via the “predatory gays trope” and the way it’s handled in the text especially in regard to Casca. The text seems on the one hand to be dealing very forthrightly with toxic masculinity and homophobia and it having destructive consequences while at the same time sort of reinforcing the idea that “not normal” desires or even just difficulties that are as the result of trauma do ultimately lead you satisfy those desires with violence in a way? Idk
Yeah I definitely didn’t get as into it as I could’ve.
In my final gay berserk post I do get into the depiction of trauma in Berserk a bit and how it affects the characters/plot so I discuss this kind of thing a little there. So stay tuned for that, it might be of some interest.
Idk if I’d call Berserk “forthright” when it comes to homophobia, since any potential depiction of it (say internalized homophobia and repression on Guts or Griffith’s parts) is left in subtext. It’s more forthright on misogyny, but even then the textual depiction of it tends to be 2 dimensional hot takes like rape threats and “boy it sure sucks to be a woman in a society that sees them as lesser, also periods.”
lol I’ve been kind of kicking this response around for a while and not really coming up with anything useful to say. idk like Berserk + misogyny/homophobia/etc is the most difficult subject of all. If you ever wrote an analysis of it I’d be v into reading it though.
I think ultimately my take boils down to feeling like the bad by far outweighs the good, even if some of what Miura did is purposeful commentary. So like say, the way Guts and Griff are both victims of sexual predators (who use their societal position to facilitate their predatory behaviour, ie Gennon using his wealth and power to collect a harem and Donovan telling Guts it happens all the time in mercenary camps), and the way both of their ~dark sides~ manifest in sexual assault while evidencing homoerotic desire they couldn’t act on. Maybe it’s a deliberate point that societal violence begets violence and internalized homophobia fucks you up. But even if that’s what Miura’s trying to say (and I do think it’s def a stretch) it’s still so offensively depicted (eroticization of assault, Casca’s fridging, no positive gay characters to compensate for all the predatory homoeroticism, etc) that it doesn’t really make it much better to me.
But then at the same time author intention doesn’t necessarily matter when it comes to what the reader gets out of a text. Like, in that 4th part of my gay meta I mentioned I basically throw author intention out the window and say ‘here’s what I get from it and why i prefer this take to whatever miura may have intended.’
so idk basically i think various opinions on this subject are worthwile regardless of the author and how he fucks up bc his own offensive biases etc get in the way, and if you have more thoughts on his at any point I’m interested!
In this post I’m going to discuss how Casca’s narrative role as a love interest overlaps with her narrative role as a substitute for Griffith, how those roles ultimately serve the main story that is the love/hate relationship between Guts and Griffith, and how Miura utilizes her an emotional/sexual conduit between the two while also conveniently no-homoing them. Plus some additional straightforward stuff on Guts and his crush on Griffith here and there.
Advance warning: this is long. Looooooong. Also be warned that I do touch on the hound and the Eclipse, but only in one section of this post.
I also want to make clear upfront that I love Casca but I dislike the Guts/Casca romance subplot, for many reasons including my general dislike of most het, Guts’ awful treatment of her, and the sense I get that she’s been inserted as a buffer between Guts and Griffith, but mostly because I think the romance was added almost entirely to set up the destruction of Casca as a character for the sake of Guts’ manpain.
So yeah going in you should be aware that this is Guts/Casca negative. I don’t consider their romantic feelings for each other a valuable part of Berserk, and I spend a lot of time calling the legitimacy of those feelings into question.
Ok that said, let’s get into it.
We’ll go back to the Golden Age eventually but I’m going to jump ahead first and start at chapter 130, during Guts’ night of self-reflection after he returns to Godo’s cave and finds Casca missing.
It took me a long time to actually read this because i read it in chunks determined by when i needed to take a break to wallow in feels for a little while.
because hell yes.
all of this.
I mean this is the perfectly worded summary of almost all the griffguts and casca thoughts i have ever had. As well as the hound and judeau (he’s fast becoming a pet peeve of mine tbh)
And those panel comparisons of the waterfall scene are brilliant. I’d never thought of that before. On My first time with that scene it had immediately struck me as odd that Guts sudden attraction to Casca seemed to stem after She had effectively taken Griffith’s role in the Hawks. But I hadn’t quite noticed the visual parallels and now my mind is blown and it all makes perfect sense.
Also like the one time after ‘getting together’ Guts seems to be admiring Casca for something beyond ‘wanna sex you thousand times’ (which honestly doesn’t qualify to me) is when she pulls together the hawks after being dragged to the other dimension. Very similar to how Griffith pulls them together when they first encounter Zodd.
“Keeping calm in a situation like this. She truly is amazing.”
Now remember Keeping- Calm- in- a- situation- like- this is pretty much asignature Griffith move, especially according to Guts. To the point that instances of non-calmness garner a comment from Guts
. “ Strange for a cool-headed guy like you.”
“No way he’d lose his cool over something like this.”
“He’s calm in the heat of battle, has perfect judgement and knows when to take decisive action, it really is amazing.”
Contrasted especially with the fact that Guts has in the past called out Casca for being Hot-headed and impulsive, has In fact, used that to spur her on and slightly manipulate her on occasion. All so in A period where it is decidedly emphasised that he is in no way attracted to Casca.
It’s almost like attraction is a result of the trait and not the individual.
There’s more on judeau coming up sometime. most probably. like dude was shippily watching griffguts when they were having that first water fight. Like okay so you like this girl who likes this other guy who is kind of involved in a fulfilling mutual relationship.
In this scenario which kinda fuckall logic do you use to decide the best course of action is to undermine said fullfilling relationship by convincing guy 2 to be with the girl YOU like?
Like the one arrangement which would take the most effort and would leave everyone involved hurt and heartbroken and/or confused as hell and unfulfilled? THAT’S what you decide to do?
Oh and that pause before heap of iron. Let’s go give him a hunk of….iron? You sure? Is that the first word that popped into everyone’s heads on reading these words?
Not a word which rhymes with seat and is euphemism for a certain body part?
I’m glad you read and enjoyed it despite it being a long haul 😀
Ooh good point about Guts seeming to like Casca more the more she resembles Griffith. ty for this addition, I didn’t really think of it like that. The leader of the Hawks thing sure, but not the way she leads similarly to Griffith. Nice.
re: Judeau it is totally convoluted.
tbh I was actually going to include a bit on Judeau’s crush as a
potential parallel for Guts’ feelings for Griffith but I cut it bc my point boiled down to “it’s probably meant to
be a parallel for Guts secretly having a crush on Casca while trying to
hook her up with Griffith, but fuck the author’s probable intentions it
kind of works the other way too” which is not very strong as arguments
go.
But since I got that ask about how he maybe feels unworthy of
her I’m feeling the potential gay parallel more. Guts feels unworthy of
Griffith, and before he leaves he encourages Casca to take the place she
wanted that she feels he stole out from under her, at Griffith’s side,
helping him achieve his dream. He feels she’s more worthy to be at
Griffith’s side because she has a dream.
Like yeah Guts says he wants to be like Griffith so he can be better for Casca but that came out of left field with zero prior evidence and tbh I reject it as either a conclusion that’s purposefully artificial bc Judeau led Guts there or just bad writing. Griffith is the one he’s been feeling unworthy of for 20 chapters.
“let’s give him
…
a heap of raw iron”
for real, i mean there are a lot of less suggestive ways to phrase that but here we are.
Actually yeah I could see that. Judeau is self depricating at times (”If I couldn’t be the best at something, I’d fly in the wake of one who seems the best.”), and at the very end he compares himself unfavourably to Guts:
He might see Guts as more worthy because he is the best at something, ie swinging a sword. Kind of like, if Casca can’t have Griffith, she should get the second best dude in the Hawks, which isn’t Judeau (in Judeau’s opinion).
Also he seems to understand implicitly when Guts says, “the one who has her eye is Griffith. That’s why right now I’m no good for her like this.” So he gets feeling unworthy and considers it a good reason not to pursue someone.
So I mean I do think that Miura shoved a lot of last minute romance in lol, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he came up with Judeau’s thing around the same time he came up with G*tsca, so not exactly from the beginning but somewhere along the way. But there’s some evidence for your suggestion imo.
I couldn’t find the raws, so I turned to the new anime
What the Hound says is:
「この女は、グリフィスを渇望続けるための生贄さ。」
Kono onna wa Gurifisu wo kogare tsuzukeru tame no ikenie sa.
Now, I had to google this line to check which kanji was used because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing lol
The verb
焦がれる (kogareru) means “to yearn for; to be in love with”
But the kanji used here is 渇望, which is generally read as “katsubou”, and I’m not familiar with this other reading. Might be one of those things where mangaka use kanji and furigana to convey a complex meaning
And 渇望 (katsubou) … means “craving; longing; thirsting” so ……. yep
The new anime translated it as “pining,” which I also enjoyed
Well damn for all the flaws of the new anime de-gaying it definitely isn’t one of them, omg.
Thank you for checking this out and sharing the info this is fantastic! I don’t think there’s any doubt then that the romantic overtones are there.
In this post I’m going to discuss how Casca’s narrative role as a love interest overlaps with her narrative role as a substitute for Griffith, how those roles ultimately serve the main story that is the love/hate relationship between Guts and Griffith, and how Miura utilizes her an emotional/sexual conduit between the two while also conveniently no-homoing them. Plus some additional straightforward stuff on Guts and his crush on Griffith here and there.
Advance warning: this is long. Looooooong. Also be warned that I do touch on the hound and the Eclipse, but only in one section of this post.
I also want to make clear upfront that I love Casca but I dislike the Guts/Casca romance subplot, for many reasons including my general dislike of most het, Guts’ awful treatment of her, and the sense I get that she’s been inserted as a buffer between Guts and Griffith, but mostly because I think the romance was added almost entirely to set up the destruction of Casca as a character for the sake of Guts’ manpain.
So yeah going in you should be aware that this is Guts/Casca negative. I don’t consider their romantic feelings for each other a valuable part of Berserk, and I spend a lot of time calling the legitimacy of those feelings into question.
Ok that said, let’s get into it.
We’ll go back to the Golden Age eventually but I’m going to jump ahead first and start at chapter 130, during Guts’ night of self-reflection after he returns to Godo’s cave and finds Casca missing.
In this post I’m going to discuss how Casca’s narrative role as a love interest overlaps with her narrative role as a substitute for Griffith, how those roles ultimately serve the main story that is the love/hate relationship between Guts and Griffith, and how Miura utilizes her as an emotional/sexual conduit between the two while also conveniently no-homoing them. Plus some additional straightforward stuff on Guts and his crush on Griffith here and there.
Advance warning: this is long. Looooooong. Also be warned that I do touch on the hound and the Eclipse, but only in one section of this post.
I also want to make clear upfront that I love Casca but I dislike the Guts/Casca romance subplot, for many reasons including my general dislike of most het, Guts’ awful treatment of her, and the sense I get that she’s been inserted as a buffer between Guts and Griffith, but mostly because I think the romance was added almost entirely to set up the destruction of Casca as a character for the sake of Guts’ manpain.
So yeah going in you should be aware that this is Guts/Casca negative. I don’t consider their romantic feelings for each other a valuable part of Berserk, and I spend a lot of time calling the legitimacy of those feelings into question. If that sounds like it’ll piss you off but you still want more Guts/Griffith content, you can totally just skip to part 4 without missing any necessary information for that part.
Ok that said, let’s get into it.
We’ll go back to the Golden Age eventually but I’m going to jump ahead first and start at chapter 130, during Guts’ night of self-reflection after he returns to Godo’s cave and finds Casca missing.
Guts is basically having an internal debate about whether or not his revenge rampage was worth abandoning Casca. He eventually emphatically concludes that it was in fact not worth it and he fucked right up when he draws this connection:
Again again again again. I’m starting here because it’s one of the most clear and straightforward examples of Guts viewing Casca as a replacement for Griffith. The connection is drawn explicitly – he considers abandoning Casca to be the equivalent of abandoning Griffith and drawing that parallel is what motivates him to save her.
But despite wanting to start atoning for past mistakes, he still intends to abandon her in a cave again after he gets her back.
“Actually, I only half mean it.”
Cue this #iconic page:
Now I talk about this page all the damn time because of how off the charts gay it is, but more importantly right now is that it draws a strong contrast between Casca and Griffith. It begins with “Just as I got her back… no, in the middle of swinging my sword to get her back…”
In the middle of getting her back… he… saw him. By framing Griffith’s appearance as an interruption that rips his attention away from rescuing Casca, Guts expresses the feeling that he’s torn between them. And of course he is, we see this throughout the rest of the manga, in his internal struggle not to toss Casca aside (or worse) and run after Griffith to, “give him… a heap of raw iron.”
We also see this inner conflict during NeoGriffith’s appearance when this happens:
But as of right now, Griffith has won the fight for Guts’ attention.
Guts’ half truth, as far as I can tell, is that he’s going to help make the damn cave a little homier and then take off again after Griffith.
As we saw in chapter 130 he decided to dedicate himself to getting Casca back, and we can assume that he fully intended to give up his revenge quest at that point. Godo tore him a new one over abandoning her to fight monsters, Guts realized he’s been being a dick, and he’s figured that maybe staying and helping take care of Casca is a better way of dealing with his issues than going back on a rampage, especially since last time he saw Femto he couldn’t even come close to touching him.
But then Skull Knight tells him the Godhand are going to be around, there’s going to be another version of the Eclipse, and we see Guts conflicted again:
Anyway Isidro ultimately saves Casca, she and Guts are reunited, and Griffith appears. Maybe Guts’ original plan was to stay with Casca and forget revenge, but now Griffith is reachable, he’s on the same plane of existence, and to top it all off, he’s hot again!
And no I’m not joking, I absolutely think that Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith is, for the first time since Promrose Hall, being clearly visually conveyed again. I already posted that iconic page in which Guts pictures Griffith’s ass and gets distracted from revenge, but there’s more where that came from.
Griffith’s sexiness is genuinely an important plot and thematic point lol, but it’s Guts eyes we’re shown that through, and holy shit does his gaze get a lot of attention in this scene. And why? Because Griffith’s reachable again. When he’s monstrous and demonic he’s out of reach on a whole nother plane of existence and shown as distant and untouchable:
When he’s incarnated as a physical being again he’s said to be “the desired,” he’s so beautiful no one can shut up about it, and imo Guts’ temptation to pursue him now that he’s “where [his] sword can reach,” is tied to the sexual temptation on display here.
Basically, while he’s certainly not intending to pursue Griffith so he can literally fuck him, there are blatant sexual undertones to his desire for revenge that ramp up hard and fast real soon, and they start with Griffith’s sexy as fuck rebirth.
And to elaborate on how the depiction of Griffith is a huge contrast here to the depiction of Casca:
Casca is shown at her least sexualized. She’s wrapped in a shapeless cloak and mirroring Erika, depicted as utterly childlike.
And this is Griffith:
Griffith is the temptation, he’s the one Guts wants to pursue, and Casca is the responsibility, and this is shown loud and clear through Griffith’s intense desirability and Guts’ enthrallment at the sight of him vs Casca’s desexualized childishness.
As for the Hill of Swords reunion
“More like someone out of a fairytale.”
Not overly relevant but it’s a fun detail that “He was so pretty” is on Guts’ face while “someone out of a fairytale” is on Griffith’s image.
That sound – like Griffith’s apparent acknowledgement, at long last, is a physical blow. Love it.
But of course then Griffith’s like, I came to see you to test my capacity for emotion, and it looks like this whole emotionless demon thing was a success. And this is Guts’ reaction – not rage, or at least, not solely rage, but so much hurt too:
Look at those sad eyebrows man. This scene thoroughly shows us how emotionally conflicted and confused Guts is. He’s angry, he’s hurt, he’s full of longing both for revenge and for “the way he he used to be,” and after everything he still wants acknowledgement, he still wants Griffith to look at him.
“I’ll not betray my dream. That is all.”
And it’s now that Guts finally attacks. So far he’s let Rickert hold him back, then shoved him away only to scream “you don’t feel anything?!” instead of rushing him. But when NeoGriff tells Guts in no uncertain terms that his dream is not only more important, but his sole priority, Guts snaps.
I do think it’s really easy to read this scene as Guts looking for a hint that Griffith still cares about him, along with the hope that he feels regret for what he’s done. Guts had a lot of misconceptions about Griffith’s feelings, but by the time of the Eclipse he’d realized that Griffith loved him – he’d left to seek something (love and respect and affection, friendship and equality) he already had and, in leaving, lost it.
Scroll back up to that first picture I posted, he says it right there: “Did I lose something before I even noticed it again?! Without even realizing I’d thrown it from the palm of my hand!” There’s a small part of him that was still hoping, now that Griffith is un-demonized, that his heart and his love had returned with his human body, that it’s not lost forever. But in declaring that he’s free, NeoGriffith shoots that hope down.
Anyway big fight, cave collapses, Griffith’s heart starts doing shit unbeknownst to Guts, he mysteriously saves Casca and takes off, and Guts
says he won’t abandon Casca again and decides to escort her to Elfhelm, with his dickish reluctance handily pointed out by Decent Person Puck lol.
Now look at this shit:
“Weren’t those Godo’s parting words?” Says Guts to Rickert to convince him to stay with Erika.
“You should have known. This is the man I am.”
Don’t abandon what you can’t replace. He finally learned that lesson when he compared abandoning Casca to abandoning Griffith. He frames his choice to stay with Casca as making up for it. Guts once deserted Griffith, now Griffith has deserted him, so he’s promising not to desert Casca. Given that Guts’ mind is solely on deserting and being deserted by Griffith, as opposed to that time when he left Casca in a cave for two years and she wandered off, “I won’t desert you anymore. This time… I won’t lose you,” is given a double meaning of applying to Casca while also referencing losing Griffith.
But what’s with that interlude up there of Guts remembering Griffith saving Casca? The man Guts “knows” NeoGriffith is, the man who dgaf about anything except his dream, isn’t the man who would randomly decide to save Casca from falling rocks. Guts is shown thinking about that apparent contradiction immediately before “I won’t leave you behind. I won’t… desert you anymore.”
Taken all together, to me this scene comes across as so utterly Griffith centric that it makes Casca feel like an afterthought, conveniently there so Guts can take some form of action in response to his extremely Griffith-centred emotions.
Guts charlie brown walks away because Griffith “deserted” him. Guts draws a comparison between abandoning Griffith and abandoning Casca, and being abandoned by NeoGriffith and refusing to abandon Casca. Guts remembers NeoGriffith saying he knows what kind of man he is right before recalling him saving Casca.
Then he declares he won’t desert her again – and I have to wonder if part of what gives him the willpower to take a break from his revenge quest despite NeoGriffith residing so temptingly in his plane of existence now is the ambiguity of NeoGriffith’s actions here, casting “the kind of man” he is now into doubt and deflating Guts’ rage boner the same way he says seeing NeoGriffith looking “so human… the way he used to be” makes him forget his “urge to kill.” It hardly seems like a stretch given how much of Guts’ decision here is explicitly shown to be about Griffith.
So far, post-Eclipse, Casca’s been treated as a prop for Guts’ internal conflict between revenge and not being a dick – a symbol of his lingering humanity. She exists to be put into peril so Guts can decide to save her and then waver between her and Griffith. She’s the poster girl for failing to pass the sexy lamp test. It’s real depressing, and it’s about to get worse.
Enter Beast of Darkness.
Now we’re at the really bad shit, but also the actual most explicit verbal suggestion of Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith, so it’s impossible to skip in a post on the topic. Plus there’s no point pretending that Casca isn’t done incredibly dirty by both the narrative and Guts.
It’s important to understand that the Hound is Guts. It’s not an evil malicious spirit trying to manipulate and possess Guts (which I have seen suggested before), it’s simply Guts’ dark emotions given substance. Just on the off chance this statement requires support for you, here’s a post on the subject. This scene is pretty much Guts arguing with his id.
And the way it’s framed with “dreams of him?” “let’s go to him” coming first on the image of an eager, excited puppy, followed by the teeth and “heap of raw iron” feels so deliberate to me. Guts wants violent revenge but it’s a feeling complicated by the fact that he loved Griffith, that he once strove to be his equal, to be considered his friend, and now he strives to kill him.
Like Guts facing Femto in the Black Swordsman arc, like Guts pleading for a shred of regret from NeoGriffith, there’s still an element of Guts wanting Griffith’s acknowledgement here.
More direct comparisons between Casca and Griffith and how Guts feels about them. Who’s more precious, your love interest or your arch nemesis?
And I’m not here to say that Guts doesn’t care for Casca and only cares about Griffith. As this scene shows, he’s torn between them, but he’s chosen Casca now, and he’s trying to get his doubts and his rage and his suppressed attraction to Griffith that’s now coming to the surface, coloured by hate, to shut the fuck up. But these are his own doubts.
“The wound Griffith left, because you want to keep feeling the pain he caused you?” Okay, certainly an eyebrow raising description here but all right, this is about Guts’ motivation to kill Griffith. The Hound is suggesting he values Casca only as fuel for his rage. Which certainly seems like a relevant suggestion after Guts’ “I’d forgotten my urge to kill. And that… can’t be.” His rage needs fuel. So while that’s surely not all there is to his feelings for Casca, the Hound isn’t making shit up. Again, this is essentially Guts internally debating what his true motivations are.
Longing. Hell of a word choice. Granted I can’t double check the translation with others because I’m incapable of tracking down old raws (tho I did a cursory search on skullknight.net to see if anyone had criticized the translation of this scene and didn’t find anything) but this is such a boldly romanticized choice of phrasing that I feel it’s safe to assume the undertones are there in the original Japanese. You don’t accidentally describe someone’s urge to kill a dude as “longing” for him. That’s a blatantly deliberate double entendre.
And on top of that it fits right in with the Hound’s first eager, excited words to Guts in this scene. Again, it’s an illustration that Guts’ vengeful feelings are complex, and intertwined with his original feelings for Griffith.
And then the Hound tells Guts to rape Casca so he can get closer to Griffith and I throw up my hands.
There’s so much innuendo and homoeroticism in the lead up to this (including earlier, w/ Griffith’s sexy rebirth scene and the reunion on the Hill of Swords, ft Guts thinking about Griffith’s ass), and then this scene just doubles down as hard as possible. “Let’s give him… a heap of raw iron,” “because you want to keep feeling the pain he caused you,” “she’s a sacrifice so you can continue longing for Griffith,” “you’ll get closer and closer to Griffith.”
The innuendo in this scene makes it one of the most homoerotic scenes in the manga.
Like, tl;dr Guts’ vengeful pursuit of Griffith is tied so thoroughly to sex in this
nightmare that tbh I have a hard time calling this subtext.
And while it is absolutely homophobic for one of the gayest scenes in the manga to basically tie Guts’ desire for Griffith to his desire for revenge and a suggestion to rape and kill Casca, it’s also worth noting that this isn’t exactly Guts’ desire for revenge being given a dark sexual element.
This is the Beast of Darkness using Guts’ pre-existing desire for Griffith to try to tempt him into sticking a sword in him. Still fucked up, obviously, but it’s at least deeper and more interesting than the alternative.
The earlier parallels I described, Guts comparing leaving Griffith and leaving Casca, etc, draw an emotional connection between Guts and Griffith through Casca as, essentially, a bridge. Guts is assuaging his desire to go back and fix his mistakes by replacing Griffith with Casca and refusing to leave her. Casca has become an outlet for Guts’ feelings about missed opportunities with Griffith.
This chapter draws a very direct sexual connection between Guts and Griffith through Casca as a bridge. By raping the woman Femto raped, Guts can get closer to him.
And it is, of course, not the first time the manga has done this. Femto’s unwavering stare into Guts’ eye(s) during the Eclipse rape scene isn’t subtle, though I don’t intend to go into it in detail as this is about Guts’ sexual desire, not Griffith/Femto’s. I feel like the stare (the fucking stare omg) speaks for itself.
I mention this only to make the point that there’s an established precedent for Casca bearing the brunt of these dudes’ repressed feelings for each other, whether it’s genuinely intended to be interpreted as repressed sexual desire or whether it’s meant to be platonic spite/longing to get closer and closer to Griffith no homo. It’s not fair, it’s bad writing on several levels, it’s both misogynist and homophobic, but there you go.
Ultimately my main takeaway here is that Berserk would be about 500x less fucked up and offensive if Guts and Griffith just cut out the middlewoman and fucked each other.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s go back to the Golden Age.
So far I’ve done my best to show that, post-Eclipse, Guts’ relationship with Casca largely revolves around his feelings for Griffith, both regretful and vengeful, and the fucked-up sexual component of his relationship with her also relates to the sexual component of his relationship with Griffith. So what about pre-Eclipse? Does the same principle hold true then, back when Casca was an actual character and not just a plot device and projection screen for Guts?
And I would argue that it does. It’s less in-your-face about it, but tbh not by a whole lot.
Casca and Guts start off as romantic rivals for Griffith’s affection. Only Casca is aware of this, since Guts’ attraction to Griffith is subconscious and repressed imo, but that’s their early dynamic. Their first emotionally intimate scene together, when they finally stop hating each other and start to bond as friends, is when Casca tells Guts her backstory, which happens to be almost entirely about Griffith.
The Casca chapters end with Casca crying about Griffith having fallen in love with Guts and not her (”Why… why did it have to be you?”), but all Guts manages to get out of Casca’s story is that she’s into Griffith, so after he decides to leave he starts trying to be a good bro and set them up. Finally, right before Guts leaves, Judeau introduces him to the concept of hooking up with Casca.
During the course of this conversation Guts does a kind of 180:
to
“The one who has her eye… is Griffith. That’s why… right now… I’m no good for her… like this.”
This is presented like part of Guts’ motivation for becoming Griffith’s equal is to be worthy of Casca, but we’ve seen his thought process for wanting to be Griffith’s equal, and Casca has never figured into it. He’d completely written her off before this chat with Judeau, as we see at the start, and he certainly never seemed to be consciously aware of the possibility of getting with her.
He’s been trying to set her up with Griffith for several chapters – pushing her into his arms, mentioning her dress to him, suggesting she ask him to dance, carrying her down to see him after Doldrey, saying “good luck with Griffith,” to her as he heads out, and now telling Judeau he expects them to get together.
There are three possible explanations for this behaviour:
1. Guts just wants to be a good bro and help his friends be happy together. 2. Guts is sublimating his unconscious desire for Casca into trying to hook her up with Griffith. 3. Guts is sublimating his unconscious desire for Griffith into trying to hook him up with Casca.
I think maybe Miura wants us to think it’s #2. Hence Guts’ awkward sweatdrop when Judeau brings her up, hence Guts complimenting her dress before mentioning it to Griffith, hence Guts carrying her down to him bridal style after Doldrey, hence Guts swiveling from “Less a woman I see her as… a comrade,” to “That’s why… right now… I’m no good for her… like this,” within seconds.
Yk, he’s subconsciously attracted to her now and acts on that attraction by trying to hook her up with Griffith to make her happy, but once Judeau tells him that’s not an option, he can admit that he’s attracted to her.
(And, just to throw something out there, once we establish that Berserk has subtextual, repressed sexual desire in this love triangle it only adds more validation to the other combinations. Even if we are genuinely meant to read Guts as unknowingly attracted to Casca, it puts unknowing attraction on the table. Who else might he be unknowingly attracted to? Casca also apparently took some time to recognize her feelings for Griffith as potentially romantic. Lots of subconscious desire wrapped up in this love triangle, I’m js. But lol I digress.)
That said, I’m here to argue that, whatever Miura’s intentions may be (and hell they may be exactly this), it comes across as option #3.
I’ve already gone through the first part of the Golden Age to highlight how Guts looks at him and how visuals suggest attraction. After Promrose, that fades away because Guts no longer views Griffith as reachable, rather, he puts him on a pedestal. Enter Casca, right at the point where Guts is deciding what to do with the “fact” that Griffith doesn’t give a fuck about him.
Suddenly he gets invested in setting Griffith up with Casca, who he views as more worthy of Griffith because she has a dream (be Griffith’s sword) and he doesn’t.
This is when Guts starts pushing them together. He’s encouraging Casca to take his place at Griffith’s side, whether he realizes the implications of that or not – at the very least he knows that Casca believes Griffith feels things for him she wishes he felt for her, even if Guts doesn’t believe that Griffith truly values him.
“Until that day. The day you showed up…”
What’s interesting to me is that Guts recognizes that Casca wants to fuck Griffith lmao. He’s hooking them up romantically, even though Casca never directly says she’s in love with Griffith, and only alludes to her feelings in terms of being pissed off at Guts for stealing Griffith away from her side.
Guts doesn’t believe he himself is close to Griffith after overhearing the Promrose speech, but he seems to realize that Casca is jealous of him, manages to interpret that (correctly) as Casca wanting to bone Griffith, and yet still doesn’t realize that Griffith’s feelings for him may be a lot more significant than he thinks. Feels like repression at work to me.
Guts wants Casca to take his perceived place at Griffith’s side, except Casca’s theoretically able to do so romantically bc she’s a woman, so there’s plenty of heteronormativity at work too, though whether that’s coming from Miura or Guts I can’t say.
So yeah after Judeau explains the plot of Berserk to him and keeps nudging him towards Casca, Guts agrees that maybe he could hook up with her… but only if he becomes Griffith’s equal first.
So the other way of looking at this is that, rather than suddenly changing Guts’ entire motivation out of nowhere from “become Griffith’s equal to be his friend” to “become Griffith’s equal to get with Casca,” and generally being bizarrely terrible writing, this instead neatly situates a future relationship with Casca, in which she sees him as just as good for her as Griffith, as proof that he’s on the road to achieving his goal of becoming Griffith’s equal.
Which holds true later on – Guts and Casca’s relationship is not an endgame for Guts, it’s not his goal, it’s another step. He still intends to go back out and keep pursuing his own dream. He’s still motivated by wanting to be Griffith’s equal.
So yeah, Judeau’s like, whatever, I tried, Guts ducks out, and shit proceeds to go down.
Fast forward a year.
Guts comes back. Casca, interestingly, has taken over Griffith’s most notable narrative role as leader of the Hawks. Everyone sits down around the campfire.
Rickert tries to explain things to Guts:
Look what Judeau does! He’s telling Rickert to shut up.
Judeau is… weirdly invested in Guts and Casca getting together. Setting them up is largely his motivation in the latter half of the Golden Age, as far as I can tell.
After this moment he changes the subject to:
Subtle, Judeau.
I think it’s telling that Guts never comes up with the idea of hooking up with Casca on his own. He’s led to it by resident shipper on board Judeau, every time. The same dude trying to avoid any mention of Griffith’s feelings for Guts now. Why? Because he wants Guts and Casca to leave together after they rescue Griffith, and he has a feeling Guts won’t want to if he figures out how Griffith actually feels about him.
Hey here’s something interesting about this scene:
This is when Guts first starts trying to fix his mistakes by substituting Casca for Griffith, imo.
Casca attacks him while screaming that he ruined Griffith by leaving. As the point finally hits home, so does the point of Casca’s sword as Guts, shocked, lets her stab him.
Before Guts can really draw a useful conclusion from Casca’s diatribe, she offers a distraction from the subject at hand by trying to kill herself while bequeathing Griffith to him.
“I couldn’t be a woman. Or something invaluable. To keep on protecting the almost broken dream of someone who might not even be alive…“
Guts didn’t save the last Hawk leader who had a self destructive breakdown after dueling him.
Presented with another person who seems to need him, who is desperate and lost and needs comfort, this time he does something.
And what really makes me believe this is actually, for real the correct reading of this scene – that, to Guts, Casca is a substitution for Griffith here – is that Casca is doing the exact. Same. Thing.
Griffith is (seemingly) unreachable, (seemingly) emotionally and romantically unavailable, but Guts and Casca aren’t.
And they kiss for the first time right after Casca tells Guts how Griffith felt about him, right after Guts lets Casca stab him because of it, right after the memory of Griffith kneeling in the snow, and the beginnings of
the realization that by leaving he lost what he set out to earn, hit him, right after Casca tells him that Griffith is his responsibility now. It’s hard not to take that as Guts using Casca as a substitution for Griffith, giving her what he’s now very slowly beginning to realize he should’ve given Griffith.
Guts and Casca getting together here is two people obsessed with the same person trying to offer the other what they couldn’t offer him: comfort. And sex.
Once again a scene that looks like it’s going to be about Casca and
Guts, that should be if this was a typical romance, turns out to revolve
around Griffith.
And on the subject of Guts leaving Griffith in the snow instead of
kneeling down and kissing him the way he responds to Casca much later, how about Griffith going out and getting
self-destructively laid while thinking about Guts after the duel?
Thematically there’s a very well-defined empty space where Griffith and
Guts connecting romantically would’ve fit, is what I’m saying, but they
didn’t. They both sought out other sexual connections to compensate for the
loss of each other.
Finally, here’s the straightforward account of how Guts and Casca are feeling three days later with Griffith’s imminent return to their lives. Casca confesses to Guts that she’s still jealous of Charlotte, Guts gets pissy, but then thinks:
I hate that you’re still hung up on Griffith but I’d be a huge hypocrite if I got mad because I’m even more hung up on Griffith.
Which pretty much sums it up.
And I think I can stop there. There’s a lot more to say in the lead-in to the Eclipse about Guts’ intense feelings for Griffith, but when it comes to sexual attraction specifically, and how Casca figures into it, I think I’ll call it a day.
I hope I’ve made a decent case for Guts’ feelings for Casca, both positive and hugely fucked up, being largely built out of redirected feelings for Griffith. Whatever the reasons for this – actual authorial intent, intended redirection of Guts’s platonic bro feelings but adding sex bc Casca’s a woman so it’s obligatory without realizing how gay that looks, me totally reading into a half-assed het subplot created for the sake of more Eclipse drama, whatever – this is earnestly how Guts’ relationship with Casca reads to me.
In the final part I’m going to conclude this epic adventure in homoeroticism with what is essentially a “why I ship them,” going into why I think it makes perfect sense, from both a character and a thematic perspective, for Guts to be sexually attracted to Griffith. Stay tuned.
shout out to @mastermistressofdesire bc we’ve had a few conversations about this subject and some of your ideas really helped me coalesce these thoughts. Ty!
so if i wanted to prove that “let’s give him… a heap of raw iron” is one of the more sexually suggestive lines in berserk, would i have to provide evidence in the form of an entire freudian analysis of the sword imagery or could i just be like, “guts gave slan an orgasm by stabbing her” and call it a day
Guts’ whole thing is having the biggest sword that breaks all the other swords and if that’s not a perfect starting point for freudian analysis then idk what is
Okay, onto the Golden Age. This part is going to go up to Promrose Hall, because that’s when Guts’ image of Griffith shifts dramatically. But from their first meeting til then, Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith is like, painfully clear to me.
This is largely focused on visual chemistry and erotic shots of Griffith specifically from Guts’ point of view, because there’s a lot in these first few chapters – it’s the main lens through which we’re introduced to their relationship and chemistry up close, rather than through the vague implication of their dynamic and how it ended which we saw last arc. I’ve limited myself to contextually relevant moments and really blatant shots that go above and beyond just showing that Griffith is objectively attractive, to showing that Guts feels the attraction. If I took every image of Griffith looking pretty while Guts looks at him I’d be posting half the Golden Age here.
There’s also going to be some step by step analysis of Guts’ giant boner for Griffith and how their relationship screams romance, but (hopefully) less overly detailed than chapter 7 was.
So, Guts kills Basuzo while Griffith watches intently. We know immediately that he’s the god we saw a few chapters ago because of his helmet, so we’re primed to be excited to find out how they’re going to meet and become close. We can already see that Griffith is interested in Guts, so how will Guts feel back?
Yeah ia a time skip seems really likely. If I had to guess I’d say maybe 10-15 years?
If it’s like, a century then Guts would come back to Griffith running an empire as an immortal god-king, all the characters we know like Rickert and Charlotte and Silat etc would probably be dead, and I think it would change the tone of the story too much. Like yeah it’s an epic story, but at its core it’s about relatable characters, and if you start kiling those characters off for no reason other than to add to the epic-ness then it throws the balance off.
I could maybe see 50ish years, making Rickert an old wise mentor like Godo lol, and maybe aging Sonia so that she reminds Schierke of Flora? Could be interesting. But overall I’d probably prefer less time, that still seems like too much.
10-15 years gives Griffith some time to start acquiring his Gaiseric-esque empire, it’s enough time for the new fantasy reality of the world to change how things work and function, it’s enough time to Rickert to grow up and do whatever he’s doing up in the mountains with Silat and co (resistance movement sounds good tbh), enough time to make everyone sad (like say if Farnese’s parents died in the interim or something, or Isidro had a family waiting but not anymore), but it’s not so much time that the world Guts returns to is unrecognizable and without familiar touchstones.
Also just to be self indulgent for a sec, several decades is too long for NeoGriff to be chill and serene and doing his thing without Guts despite his unfrozen heart imo. It makes the whole beating heart that he blames on the fetus thing seem irrelevant if he can easily function for that long regardless. But a decade or so sounds like a perfect range of time for NGriff to start out serene, throwing himself into his empire etc and pretending he doesn’t care at all about Guts, only for the cracks to begin showing just as Guts is set to return.
Of course if he is able to put Guts out of his mind for 50 years until he’s standing in front of him, unaged, and then he has an emotional response, I’d still be okay with that. It’s just a little less fun to me.
Lol I’m glad he doesn’t hate Griffith, it always sucks when your friends hate the characters you like. But yeah I definitely agree that his theory doesn’t really make sense. Though at the moment I only have manga related reasons because I haven’t watched the entire anime in years and years.
tbh the main thing I’d want to say in response is that if Griffith was evil all along and secretly planning to sacrifice his friends from the start then Berserk is a really boring story.
Like in what way is a story about a sinister dude manipulating his friends for power more interesting than a story about a dude with good intentions being driven to the point where he feels like sacrificing his friends is the correct moral choice?
Or how is a story about a dude whose bff turned out to be a lying dick all along better than a story about two dudes who love each other (platonically if he doesn’t ship it) accidentally ruining their relationship through a complex character-based misunderstanding and being torn apart in an epic way?
Berserk is great because its characters are complex and interesting and have a ton of layers, and interpreting Griffith as evil all along just makes it shallow and boring.
Though if you want concrete evidence that Griffith isn’t evil I’d point out stuff like Griffith asking Guts “do you think I’m cruel?” and Guts being the one to reassure him that killing people is nbd and his dream is worth it. And Griffith risking his life (and, consequently, his dream) for no reason to save Guts from Zodd. I mean I guess if you think Griffith somehow knows what the behelit is you could argue that he knew he’d survive, but lol.
There’s Griffith ignoring the nobles to rescue Guts and Casca, which is also a risk to his dream because he’s supposed to be sucking up to them.
There’s Griffith self harming while denying his feelings of guilt, which is the most obvious indication that he has extreme feelings of guilt I’ve ever seen (especially in combination with the aforementioned “do you think I’m cruel?”)
There’s Griffith reaching to grab Guts as he falls during the first few minutes of the Eclipse, even despite Guts being the source of his despair.
tbh the problem is that if his premise is “Griffith knew he needed sacrifices so he valued his friends lives only so he could sacrifice them later,” those examples still might not convince him. You could show him this bit from the manga (idk if it’s repeated at all in the anime):
Griffith’s sacrifice canonically wouldn’t work if he didn’t feel genuine love for them, and if he’s been planning to sacrifice them the whole time then he obviously doesn’t really love them. For him to be able to sacrifice Guts and Casca etc he has to care about them so much it’s like they’re part of him.
Also there’s always the fact that the Godhand had to take him on a guilt trip and convince him that he has to sacrifice his friends for the sake of thousands of people who already died for his dream, which would hardly be necessary if he already knew how the behelit worked and wanted to sacrifice everyone anyway.
(oh and btw if he’s thinking Griffith’s “I will choose the place where you die” line is an indication that he’s evil and knows about the sacrifice, the better explanation for that is that it’s a reference to Griffith’s guilt for leading people, like that one kid, to their deaths. he’s owning that fact, because as a mercenary leader it’s p much true – people die in the battles he fights on the road to his dream. by stating it up front he’s denying and repressing his feelings of guilt. It also sets up the mentality that leads to him making the choice to sacrifice, and it’s foreshadowing. But it doesn’t mean Griffith literally knows he’s going to sacrifice Guts in a magic ritual – it means he’s already mentally prepared to sacrifice his followers in battle for his dream.
Mental preparation that, as we saw in flashback, came with a dose of self-harm and sacrificing himself as well in a way by sleeping with a predatory pedophile, so, hardly an indication of evil.)
Okay, onto the Golden Age. This part is going to go up to Promrose Hall, because that’s when Guts’ image of Griffith shifts dramatically. But from their first meeting til then, Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith is like, painfully clear to me.
This is largely focused on visual chemistry and eroticized shots of Griffith specifically from Guts’ point of view, because there’s a lot in these first few chapters – it’s the main lens through which we’re introduced to their relationship and chemistry up close, rather than through the vague implication of their dynamic and how it ended which we saw last arc. I’ve limited myself to contextually relevant moments and really blatant shots that go above and beyond just showing that Griffith is objectively attractive, to showing that Guts feels the attraction. If I took every image of Griffith looking pretty while Guts looks at him I’d be posting half the Golden Age here.
There’s also going to be some step by step analysis of Guts’ giant boner for Griffith and how their relationship screams romance, but (hopefully) less overly detailed than chapter 7 was.
So, Guts kills Basuzo while Griffith watches intently. We know immediately that he’s the god we saw a few chapters ago because of his helmet, so we’re primed to be excited to find out how they’re going to meet and become close. We can already see that Griffith is interested in Guts, so how will Guts feel back?
It’s a bit anticlimactic actually – Guts kills Corkus’ crew, then Guts fights Casca, and finally Griffith, bored, shows up and perfunctorily stabs him.
But then Griffith takes off his helmet and Guts is treated to two and a half pages worth of sexy hair reveal, complete with two panels of tantalizing teasing first:
Note that this isn’t to tease a reveal, say, that he’s the same demon Guts was
really pissed off at in the Black Swordsman arc, and it’s not to tease his human appearance for the sake of the audience – we already know exactly who he is thanks to the helmet that keeps getting centre stage in panels, and people calling him “Griffith,” and we’ve already seen his face and hair in Guts’ flashback and while he’s lounging in the grass. This slow, sensual reveal is for Guts and only Guts. It illustrates and sets the tone for his first glimpse of Griffith, not ours.
And lbr everything about this screams love interest. The tantalizingly slow reveal, complete with long hair blowing in the wind, and two full pages worth of Guts looking at him. Guts’ first sight of Griffith illustrates exactly what he told us: he’s beautiful, noble, and larger than life. And there’s no skimping on the beauty part of that.
Then when Guts wakes up three days later and remembers he’s been stabbed the image of Griffith he first flashes to isn’t a helmeted soldier stabbing him, it’s Griffith letting his hair down.
This is what made the biggest impression on him. The sexy hair blowing in the wind.
The look on Guts’ face is a lot more complicated than “grr I’m mad bc I got stabbed.” He looks like Griffith blew his mind a little. Look how bright Griffith is too compared to the shadows over Guts’ hair and face, look at the light reflected in Guts’ eyes – it’s a nice visual set up for Guts’ later admiration of him, but right now Guts has nothing to go on but the fact that Griffith stabbed him and is also hot, so the fact that he’s shining in his mind already is more than a little suggestive.
Now comes the first duel, and man. Let’s just take a moment to look at the way the characters draw attention to the fact that things are getting pretty gay. “Because I want you, Guts.” “Are you a homo?” [gay silence.]
I can think of three reasons to have your characters come out and say, “hey that sounds gay. Are you gay?” when your story isn’t textually a gay romance. One is to follow it up with reassurance that nah it’s ok, they’re totally straight and we’re just acknowledging that yk we can see why you may think it’s gay, dear reader, and shutting that down. Two is ‘ha ha gay jokes are funny.’ And three is to plant the idea in the reader’s head and help contextualize what we’re seeing without actually confirming one way or the other.
This isn’t a one. It’s not shut down, it’s left hanging. And while it’s a lightly humourous moment due to the awkwardness, it’s not really a joke, especially because this is likely meant to reference Guts’ rape trauma, and all the gay content in the manga is played for drama, not comedy, both text and subtext. This feels like a very solid three to me.
And look at how Griffith is looking at him right before Guts asks if he’s gay. Like, no wonder the question is brought up. This is top tier visual chemistry right here. So it’s certainly worth noting that the homoeroticism inherent in intense, sultry gazes like this is acknowledged and commented on right from the start, because we’re going to be seeing a lot of intense, sultry gazes.
And speaking of Guts’ trauma, at the start of this chapter Guts wakes up from a nightmare about it, implied to be caused by the fact that there’s a naked person lying on top of him (in that his monstrous attacker melds into the form of the person on top of him as he wakes up). His panic subsides when he realizes that person is a woman, and therefore doesn’t feel like a threat to him.
Later on when he has sex with Casca he references this moment, saying to her, “When you first saved my life. For some reason… at that time… [your touch] was fine. But only with you.” I assume this is meant to be taken as romantic, an early sign that they’re ~right for each other. But it’s a re-write of what actually happened, which is that Guts was on the verge of panicking until he realized she wasn’t a man. “A woman…?”
“Only with you” is also factually incorrect.
Guts and Griffith’s exchange here before they start fighting is loaded with both sexual innuendo and direct statements. “I want you, Guts.” “Are you a homo?” “You can have what you want, my sword or my ass.”*** “I don’t dislike doing things by force.”
The duel is full of visual innuendo, and tbh I was going to avoid getting into sword imagery because while phallic symbols are an extremely well-worn literary device they’re still the lowest common denominator of gay subtext, but the stage is set so perfectly, through sexually charged dialogue and intense gazes from Griffith, for us to read the duel as a substitute for sex that the innuendo is lent a lot of extra weight for this scene.
Behold:
To summarize: Griffith gives Guts bedroom eyes, says he wants him, Guts awkwardly asks if he’s gay, Griffith doesn’t answer, Guts says Griffith can fuck him if he wins, there’s rapey undertones to the whole thing given Guts’ offer of like sex slavery and Griffith’s “doing things by force” line, the duel involves Guts neutralizing Griffith’s threatening sword by biting it, Griffith wins by dislocating Guts’ arm ie destroying his site of phallic physical power ie symbolic unmanning (and like I said, normally I wouldn’t pull out the freudian analysis but this scene fucking begs for it) which fits right in with the sexual stakes of the duel, and then Griffith does this:
And Guts is fucking dazzled. Guts looks like Griffith just swept him off his feet. That’s not disgust, or fear, or rage, or hate, or bitterness, or resentment, or humiliation, that is the Guts who describes Griffith as “beautiful, noble, and larger-than-life.”
Like what I’m saying is that, if Casca being able to touch Guts this early without him freaking out is considered romantic, what’s Griffith being able to grab Guts like this and declare that he belongs to him after literally winning his ass in a homoerotic fight considered?
Ok that’s that on the fucking gay duel. Moving on.
Imo the first really blatant instance of Guts feeling sexual attraction to Griffith as conveyed through visuals is here:
It’s not just Guts’ pov shot of Griffith’s ass – that’s pretty neutral by itself – it’s the over-the-shoulder wet and sensual look beside it, background fading to black as Griffith takes his full attention. It’s totally unnecessary and conveys zero information other than that Griffith is wet and sexy and Guts needs to take a second to focus on that fact.
For reference, there’s another very similar depiction of Griffith later on (combining the nakedness and the over the shoulder profile into one image) from another character’s point of view:
I’m not comparing Guts to Gennon at all, but I am saying that Miura is consistent in using this type of image of Griffith to portray someone’s sexual attraction to him.
Here have one more particularly iconic instance of naked back, ass, and sensual over the shoulder profile:
There is nothing not blatantly eroticized about this. And remember: this isn’t even Guts looking at NeoGriffith and NeoGriffith looking seductive, this is Guts remembering seeing a glimpse of him after he hatched on a distant hill lmao, this is Guts’ goddamn imagination, and it’s almost identical to Gennon’s memory (naked Griff with flowy hair, light, left, dude imagining him, dark, right) except that Griffith’s blushing sex face is given much more erotic detail in a second panel. Like, I can’t. This page is a QED by itself.
Plus Guts’ awkward sweat drop in the panel immediately after the naked ass shot lol.
Notice these are p much the same expressions we saw when he asked if Griffith was gay.
Which
a) tells us the homoerotic vibe here is almost certainly intentional, as if that
wasn’t obvious and b) makes it really, really easy to read this as
repression at work. Guts looks at Griffith’s naked body, zeroes in on
how hot he is, then gets uncomfortable.
And, as another aside, I just want to note that there’s no reason for their first playful and friendly bonding experience to happen while Griffith is naked. It tells us nothing about him except that he’s not self conscious (unless you think he’s trying to seduce Guts), it adds nothing thematically or symbolically or tonally beyond the homoeroticism. His nakedness doesn’t do any of the things nakedness usually does in a story like make him seem vulnerable, it doesn’t make him seem particularly human or down-to-earth (hell his most dazzling moment yet has him naked with the sun at his back telling Guts he’s gonna get his own kingdom while Guts looks up at him in awe).
The most Griffith’s nakedness here accomplishes is the above image of Guts springing an awkward boner while walking in on him, and making a bunch of Guts’ flashbacks to Griffith = Guts picturing him naked.
Thanks for that, Miura.
So now we flash forward to our first sight of them three years later:
Griffith during the battle:
Griffith as the other army retreats:
Our first look at older Griffith, unhelmeted is at the bottom of a page. The pose he’s in, drawing his helmet up, gives off cutie pulling hair behind their ears vibes, at least imho. He’s even got that under-eye blush for extra appeal here. It’s very pointedly at-odds with the helmeted conqueror of a battlefield we just saw; his beauty is deliberately emphasized in juxtaposition to his role as the leader of the “grim reapers of the battlefield.”
The next page reveals:
It’s Guts’ view of him. Our first glimpse of Griffith after three years have passed is intended to emphasize his surprisingly un-grim-reaper-like prettiness with a reveal that it’s from Guts’ perspective as he quietly watches him. After this we abruptly shift to a victory procession a few minutes later, making this brief moment stand out a little bit more. (And correspondingly our first glimpse of Guts’ face after three years is while he’s focused on Griffith.)
Then later this chapter we have Griffith looking ridiculously hot when he interrupts Guts and Casca’s argument.
Knowing what we learn later about Casca feeling jealous of Guts and the whole love triangle scenario, showing him here with that extra sensual lighting as they both turn to look at him – Guts and Casca in shadow, Griffith in the light – handily serves as a visual set-up for the concept of Guts and Casca as romantic rivals for Griffith. He’s shown here as an object of desire to them to an almost ridiculous extent, like, look at that picture.
Now I’m skipping ahead to the post-Zodd staircase scene, aka the most romantic goddamn moment in the manga.
“Tell me… do I need a reason each time… I put myself in harm’s way… for your sake?”
In that one panel where we see Griffith from Guts’ shocked point of view, Griffith is drawn more beautifully than any of the surrounding pages in the chapter. Sultry eyes, gentle breeze blowing a few leaves around and his hair back with a few sexy strands in his face, background faded away again. Hell, I’d say it’s the prettiest image of a person Miura’s drawn so far lol, including all the women. It’s not just indicative of Griffith’s attraction to Guts (yk the bedroom eyes), it’s indicative of Guts’ perspective, how he sees him, especially considering Guts’ taken-aback, dazzled expression in the panel following.
This is what Guts sees when, pressed for an explanation for his “hot-headed”ness from Guts, Griffith declares that he risked his life for him for no reason at all.
This moment is pretty objectively romantic.
To compare, here’s Charlotte looking at him in the next chapter when Griffith approaches to charm her and add to her burgeoning crush during the hunt:
Clearly showing us Charlotte’s attraction, still with the romantic floating leaves in the breeze, plain background, and extra pretty, sensual eyes. It’s romanticized using the same visual tools, but this is less sexually charged, by far. It’s bland in comparison.
And I mean later on Guts places that image in the damn moon in a moment of contemplation right before he dedicates himself to him in return:
(btw if you need a citation for “himself” rather than “his sword,” Guts’ sword is an extension of himself and his life, this is explicitly stated in chapter 48 but it’s also an obvious metaphor throughout the story. Not that it rly matters, the meaning is clear imo, but yk I’m trying to be as thorough as I can and cover all my bases.)
Ok that’s about it for part 2. We’ve gone through the particularly relevant moments that signify sexual attraction with a clear contextual reason to do so, up to around Promrose Hall. You’re gonna have to buckle in for the next part because it’s looooooong and it’s largely about how Casca and the hetero subplot figure into this.
But I’m going to play you out with a few shots of Griffith from Guts’ perspective that I couldn’t find room for and are much less contextually relevant, and yet still ott attractive, because it’s fun, and like I said, this kind of point of view image does actually stop appearing after Promrose Hall, so I think it’s worth depicting how Guts sees Griffith before and after he becomes a distant figure to him. Enjoy the sultry gazes:
But after accidentally killing a kid during an overenthusiastic assassination and then overhearing the Promrose Hall speech, Guts sees himself like this:
And views Griffith like this:
And subsequent images of him from Guts point of view just look less deliberately eroticized now that Guts has placed Griffith on a pedestal high above him, rather than seeing him as someone within reach:
He’s still beautiful, but these images convey other information first and foremost – Griffith’s pride, his delight, his vulnerability, his rage. There’s a distinct lack of the sultry vibe we used to see all the time.
This is of course just the largely subjective impression I got while re-reading from (the first) chapter 12 to the second duel, but hopefully others see it too.
*** This is the one translation I’m using that isn’t the Dark Horse version bc I’ve heard on the grapevine that it’s more literally accurate and also it’s just so good lbr.
Thesis statement of this goddamn thesis: Guts is sexually attracted to Griffith.
Now, this is long. This is the shortest part of a four-part series, and this isn’t a short post. And basically my intention is to show why I find it so incredibly easy to read Guts as attracted to Griffith, and explain how this reading adds layers of meaning that fit neatly within Berserk’s themes and enrich the story. I’m not going to speculate on Miura’s motives for adding a ton of gay subtext, like, it could be anything from trying to be as gay as possible without pissing off his publishers to it all being totally coincidental and meaningless with an alternate explanation for every point I have, or anywhere in between.
My point is only that Berserk readily lends itself to gay readings, with a focus on Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith (as I feel like it tends to be neglected in favour of interpretations that Griffith has a one-sided crush.)
Part one covers the Black Swordsman stuff and the way Guts and Griffith’s relationship is revealed to the audience, part two covers the first several chapters of the Golden Age with a focus on visuals and how Guts sees Griffith, part three tackles Casca’s role in the story, and part four is more of an overview on why I think reading Berserk through a gay lens works so well.
So here we go.
Part One – Our Introduction to the Concept of Guts and Griffith
We’re introduced to Guts and Griffith’s relationship near the end of the Black Swordsman arc. Before the appearance of the Godhand we know that Guts is really fucking angry, we know he’s monster slaying because he’s out for revenge, we know he’s looking for a group called “the Godhand,” and thanks to Puck spelling some stuff out we know that he’s also sad and deeply afraid that he’s fighting a losing battle.
The comparison to Vargas hints that maybe he lost some loved ones, plus an eye and a limb to an apostle which is close enough to the truth to be decent foreshadowing.
But it’s not until the Godhand show up as the Count’s about to die that we learn what’s really going on with Guts. The information is given to us surprisingly straightforwardly, and the way the information is revealed to us is pretty telling.
The first six chapters have been teasing the mystery of what happened to Guts to piss him off so much, from the way we kick off in media res, to hints about his issues and trauma (eg the aforementioned Vargas comparison, the way he lets the possessed corpse of the kid stab him, etc), to Puck directly asking what the hell happened to him outloud for the benefit of the audience. We start to get our answer in chapter 7.
Thesis statement of this goddamn thesis: Guts is sexually attracted to Griffith.
Now, this is long. This is the shortest part of a four-part series, and this isn’t a short post. And basically my intention is to show why I find it so incredibly easy to read Guts as attracted to Griffith, and explain how this reading adds layers of meaning that fit neatly within Berserk’s themes and enrich the story. I’m not going to speculate on Miura’s motives for adding a ton of gay subtext, like, it could be anything from trying to be as gay as possible without pissing off his publishers to it all being totally coincidental and meaningless with an alternate explanation for every point I have, or anywhere in between.
My point is only that Berserk readily lends itself to gay readings, with a focus on Guts’ sexual attraction to Griffith (as I feel like it tends to be neglected in favour of interpretations that Griffith has a one-sided crush.)
Part one covers the Black Swordsman stuff and the way Guts and Griffith’s relationship is revealed to the audience, part two covers the first several chapters of the Golden Age with a focus on visuals and how Guts sees Griffith, part three tackles Casca’s role in the story, and part four is more of an overview on why I think reading Berserk through a gay lens works so well.
So here we go.
Part One – Our Introduction to the Concept of Guts and Griffith
We’re introduced to Guts and Griffith’s relationship near the end of the Black Swordsman arc. Before the appearance of the Godhand we know that Guts is really fucking angry, we know he’s monster slaying because he’s out for revenge, we know he’s looking for a group called “the Godhand,” and thanks to Puck spelling some stuff out we know that he’s also sad and deeply afraid that he’s fighting a losing battle.
The comparison to Vargas hints that maybe he lost some loved ones, plus an eye and a limb to an apostle which is close enough to the truth to be decent foreshadowing.
But it’s not until the Godhand show up as the Count’s about to die that we learn what’s really going on with Guts. The information is given to us surprisingly straightforwardly, and the way the information is revealed to us is pretty telling.
The first six chapters have been teasing the mystery of what happened to Guts to piss him off so much, from the way we kick off in media res, to hints about his issues and trauma (eg the aforementioned Vargas comparison, the way he lets the possessed corpse of the kid stab him, etc), to Puck directly asking what the hell happened to him outloud for the benefit of the audience. We start to get our answer in chapter 7.
The Godhand that Guts has been searching for shows up, Femto front and centre, and Guts’ rage is directed right at him. When Guts screams “Griffith!” at him we see Puck asking “Griffith? Who’s Griffith?”
My point with this is just to emphasize that the driving hook of the Black Swordsman arc is the build-up of the mystery and what makes Guts tick, the tension pretty much entirely coming from the audience wondering why Guts is so obsessed with revenge, and the reveal of the sacrifice is the climax of this arc.
And our example of a sacrifice, which we are explicitly told is also what happened between Guts and Griffith? A husband and wife.
In fact, the sacrifice that serves the main purpose of setting us up for Guts’ story is the only sacrifice of a romantic partner we ever see – the rest are all parent/child, weirdly abstract a la Eggman sacrificing “the world,” and ofc Guts and Griffith’s undefined, suggestive thing.
The details of this sequence make the parallels stand out even more.
First of all, before we learn much of anything, we see Guts’ reaction to Griffith/Femto. The rage we expect:
Guts taken aback and offended, which is less expected:
And then begging for attention when Femto turns away from him to address the matter at hand, which should definitely come as a surprise for a first time reader:
The audience is expecting rage and violence, and what we get is neediness. Guts, more than anything, wants Femto’s attention.
Guts is finally spurred into action when Femto directly says he doesn’t give a fuck:
(Something, btw, that Guts is still brooding about a chapter later lmao:
like, this arc couldn’t be more blatant about Guts wanting Griffith/Femto’s attention.)
But even now the focus is on the potential for more revealed backstory, not on Guts’ attempt at turning talk into action.
Throughout this arc the audience is lead to expect a dramatic, action-packed, and revealing confrontation between Guts and the object of his ire. By the time we get to the climax, Guts can barely stand, we discover the guy he’s mad at is a god he can’t even touch, and his feelings are a lot more complex and vulnerable than just rage and fear of failure. The focus is taken away from possible action and given to hints of backstory. When Guts is standing with sword in hand, advancing on Femto, these are the moments that pique our interest:
Guts makes a very impressive stand considering how fucked up his body is but he can’t even touch Femto before getting telekinesised against a wall. A fight is out of the question – Guts’ willpower, and what spurs him on and makes him fight through the pain, are what the audience is meant to be interested in.
After Guts is magically thrown against a wall we get more hints. The Count tries to offer Guts as an offering. Slan tells him, The boy is merely your enemy. As a sacrificial offering for the Invocation of Doom, not just any lump of flesh and blood will do. It must be someone important to you, part of your soul… someone so close to you that it’s almost like giving up a part of you.
Femto points at Theresia.
That should be more than enough, right? We’ve learned like, everything we need to know. Griffith/Femto is responsible for the brand of sacrifice on Guts’ neck, therefore he sacrificed Guts at some point, therefore they were close friends or maybe related, but Griffith betrayed Guts for demonic power, now Guts is real mad and Griffith has become a monster, as you do.
But we don’t stop there.
Now, in fairness, this does pad out the chapter and give us more build-up to the Count’s decision wrt Theresia. Miura obviously needed something to make the pacing work. And hey Ubik likes to fuck with potential sacrificers and make them feel like shit, so it makes sense for him to start telling everyone the Count’s backstory for funsies. But it’s here that the implications really ramp up, which tells us what the real point of this sad backstory is.
It’s during this story that Guts wakes up:
We get some pissed off reaction shots from him as they all watch the drama:
On the image of monster Count eating his wife:
And in the panels immediately following:
Here’s when Femto is most explicitly compared to the Count. That thoughtful over-the-shoulder look in reaction to Ubik’s words – The life of the person you loved the most and hated the most! – tells us everything we need to know. Especially since Femto’s been absent for the last few pages of Godhand reactions and this is our first image of him (aside from one long shot of the back of his head) since Ubik started telling the story, despite getting several reaction shots from the rest of the Godhand. This panel feels significant, and it exists to tell us that Ubik’s words fully apply to him as well.
And, while this is pretty obvious I’ll note it just in case, it’s only after Ubik’s story is over that Guts is like, “oh yeah,” and asks Puck to heal him so he can hold a sword, so those reaction shots are all about Guts reliving painful memories and not about his injuries or getting Puck’s attention.
Basically, the Count being told to sacrifice Theresia tells us what a sacrifice is and who it applies to, but the Count and his wife are our window into Guts and Griffith’s turbulent past, as we can clearly see by how they react to it, and how the narrative and visuals frame the story in relation to them.
And, if you already know the plot of Berserk, you should also be able to see some parallels here – “a family, the very picture of happiness.”
When it comes to infidelity, I actually don’t think that jealousy was Griffith’s main source of despair, but boy do these many panels of Griffith watching Guts and Casca and looking upset between the rescue and the Eclipse demonstrate that it was a factor. Eg:
Part of the point of the Count’s backstory is to show that it’s not lust for power that leads to someone making a sacrifice, or at least, not necessarily – the Count wanted to bury his human heart. He felt betrayed; his wife was the direct cause of his suicidal despair, and he was desperate to escape that despair.
As Guts was the direct cause of Griffith’s despair. The behelit only opens when Guts touches Griffith again – not after losing his dream, not after losing the use of his limbs or his tongue, not even after believing he was losing Guts again too – but the touch of Guts’ hand.
Guts eventually recognizes how Griffith’s feelings for him caused his despair as well.
All things considered, the Count’s sacrifice is certainly closer to Guts’ story than any other sacrifice we’ve seen, making it pretty fitting as our first introduction to Guts and Griffith’s epic love/hate relationship.
Plus as a bonus:
Griffith has been described as half of Guts as well in the same sacrificial context:
Just fyi.
This whole first arc has been building up to a climactic reveal about Guts’ past and the reason for his revenge quest, from pacing and emphasis to Puck, the audience expy, straightforwardly asking, “what happened between those two?” And the answer we’re given is that something similar to the Count’s backstory happened.
So now the apparent answer to Puck’s question is, “oh, well, I guess they were like in love, but then some shit went down, maybe Guts betrayed Griffith? Idk, Guts must’ve done something that made Griffith fall into pure despair and decide to sacrifice him to become a demon. So Guts is pissed off because Griffith branded him and now he has to fight ghosts all the time. Cool.“
And really, does anything in the following 344 chapters disabuse you of that notion? Sure it’s a lot more complex, there’s a lot of additional factors, but that’s the bare bones of it in a nutshell.
So then the next chapter opens on our very first glimpse of Guts and original flavour Griffith together. Early days, Guts is his 15 year old self pre 3 year flash forward. Still sullen lol. Griffith gives his keys that set the world in motion speech which, while illuminating thematically, is paced to set up this particular, emotionally revealing moment:
With the additional context of the parallel we’ve just seen between the Count and his wife, how does this come across? I mean come on, from Griffith’s side we have the statement that Guts stands alone as closer to him than anyone else has ever been, already – he’s the first and only person Griffith has ever felt comfortable voicing his internal thoughts to, his deep desire to know who he is at his core and what he’s capable of.
From Guts side we have “At that time he shone before me as something beautiful, noble, and larger than life.”
This reads as the beginning of a romance as far as I’m concerned, and not a one-sided one. Griffith’s quote tells us they have a uniquely close and emotionally intimate relationship, Guts’ quote tells us it’s a relationship that encompasses admiration/awe and thinking about how “beautiful” the other is.
The best illustration Miura came up with to introduce us to the nature of their epic love/hate relationship is a happy marriage broken by betrayal. And it’s not just because Griffith is in love with Guts (which hopefully we can all agree is fairly obvious), because, even beyond Guts’ neediness when confronted by Femto and the many suggestions of his complex not-just-rage emotions, I mean the first thing we see after 20 pages worth of that married couple parallel is Guts calling Griffith beautiful.
And boy do the first seventeen chapters of their relationship demonstrate that Guts is calling him beautiful for a reason.
I’m pretty sure it’s griffguts. But, what do I know?
more than me probs, ty! 🙂
so what’s the most popular guts/griffith tag
griffguts? or smthn else
eating some espresso ice cream rn bc i finished that fucking gay meta and i deserve a reward
without you i’m nothing suddenly popped into my head for no reason and shit it’s such a good griffguts song
I’m unclean, a libertine And every time you vent your spleen I seem to lose the power of speech You’re slipping slowly from my reach You grow me like an evergreen You’ve never seen the lonely me at all I… Take the plan, spin it sideways. I… Fall. Without you, I’m nothing. Without you, I’m nothing. Without you, I’m nothing. Take the plan, spin it sideways. Without you, I’m nothing at all.
welp i’ve written almost 10k words about guts being gay for griffith and i still have one more part to write
this is Too Much
idt this is anything more than coincidence but that tree looks like the branches in the sky circa Falconia and combined with Griffith’s words it’s making me feel feelings
you're the only one 