Honestly I really don’t get it. When I hate a character I just like, don’t reblog stuff about them just to say ‘i want them to die’ or w/e. You’ll notice there’s not a whole lot of isidro content on my blog for instance lol. like I don’t reblog pics of him to say he sucks, and the urge other people have to do that w/ Griffith is honestly bizarre to me. I mean if you hate him because of the Eclipse rape, then… why do you want pictures and fanart of him on your blog.
I feel like for some people at least it’s due to fear that other people are going to treat them the way they treat Griffith fans lol and call them out if they don’t pre-emptively mention how much they really truly hate him every time his name comes up.
Also maybe sometimes there’s an aspect of like, genuine concern over how Miura has been depicting him as the protagonist of his own narrative rather than a flat-out antagonist, and depicting Guts’ residual mixed feelings and “longing” for him, etc, and they’re overcompensating because they feel like the canon isn’t condemning him hard enough.
But idk I’m sure there are a hundred varied reasons people have for doing what they do lol, and idk I don’t want to blanket judge. Like I always say that there are good reasons to have a visceral dislike of him lol. But I wish they’d keep it to their own original posts instead of reblogging other people’s stuff just to be negative, like ngl it’s the number one reason why I rarely post Griffith related things in the Berserk tag.
That is so nice to hear, thank you, I’m glad you think so!
This is more headcanon territory than meta but here’s what I think:
tbh…
pre-NeoGriffith, I’d say no. I think Guts had pretty thoroughly
repressed his attraction to Griffith during the Golden Age. He’s got
sexual hangups in general, and with men in particular, and if he thinks
about Griffith naked more often than the average dude then it’s just
because he’s remembering how awesome and awe-inspiring he is, ofc. His
heart’s getting fluttery cause Griffith’s just so cool and dazzling. He
wants Griffith to look at him because he just wants totally platonic
attention.
I
mean lbr during the Golden Age Guts has been doing this for three
years, yk, the crush thing where he’s staring at him from afar, or
watching the door every time he’s in a room where other Hawks may be as
well, hoping Griffith shows up and comes to sit by him. but because of
heteronormativity and his sexual trauma he’s unable to translate
those feelings into attraction.
like to get a little graphically
detailed for a sec, I tend to imagine that when Guts jerks off during
this period his mind is generally blank or he’s just thinking about
mundane things and focusing mainly on the physical sensation. if naked
Griffith shows up now and then, it’s just cause his mind’s wandering
aimlessly, nothing to worry about.
I think if he had another
couple days with post-torture Griffith he would’ve started to re-examine
this period of his life and realize what they could’ve had. He got
through the revelations that Griffith isn’t a god, and Griffith has
extremely intense life-destroying feelings for him. Like, recognizing
the nature of his own feelings was the next logical step there.
You could maybe even argue that having sex with Casca might’ve helped
that along, giving him a positive association with sex to draw on, like a
stepping stone.
And I am definitely reading into things here, but yk, that’s what I do lol, so consider:
You
are having a breakdown because you overheard Casca tell me to leave. It
has finally really truly hit me that I broke your heart when I left.
This is an extreme example of the emotions between us. How do I act on
those emotions? It’ll come to me… come on… there’s got to be some way to
translate these intense emotions into a positive course of action here…
But yk instead the Eclipse happened.
So he spends the next 2 years thinking of Griffith either like this:
or like this
And sexual attraction is pretty much out of his mind for a while.
But then NeoGriffith shows up and Guts practically has a sexual awakening.
(i will never in my life get tired of posting this page)
After
the Hill of Swords, it’s honestly really really easy for me to read
between the lines and basically assume that Guts is jerking off to
Griffith after waking up from sex dreams about him semi-regularly, then
killing ghosts with extra vehemence bc he’s feeling weird and guilty and
lonely.
I mean
You’re
right, the Beast of Darkness gets really, really suggestive. It’s hard
at this point to argue that Guts would be completely unaware of his
feelings.
His subconscious is here calling Griffith more precious
than Casca, mocking him for “longing” for him, using very loaded romantic phrasing, etc etc, and Guts is
having a conversation with that part of himself, so he’s got to be
aware.
But what I could see is Guts associating that
attraction with his ~inner darkness~ and trying to ignore it.
Considering that “forgot my urge to kill” bit (and yk the whole Golden
Age) I’d ofc argue that his attraction is far from intrinsic to his
inner darkness, but yk, the BoD is using it to tempt him to go chase
down and kill Griffith here, and it’s probably safe to assume that some
if not all of his fantasies are violent, considering. He’d probably
prefer those too, because non-violent fantasies make him sad and
regretful and lonely when he much prefers to feel rage.
So
like basically he’s twisting his sexual feelings into violence to make
them easier to deal with the way he does with all his other feelings,
lumps them in with revenge as his bad “obsession” he’s trying to let go
of, and tries to ignore them.
But it’s never going to completely
work because the core of those feelings is still real love and longing
for human Griffith. That true light he wants to crush.
Ooh
also you can say that this is another reason he’s so determined to force
Casca’s sanity back – surely if he’s got a girlfriend those
inconvenient feelings will go away. (After all, he managed to distract
himself from Griffith by having sex with her last time.)
ANYWAY
like I said this is all headcanon lol. I think it fits with what we see
in the story, but yk, it’s just one possibility of where Guts’ mind
might be at.
These lines are only 4 pages apart.
I’ve been thinking of running away as like… something Berserk contextualizes as immature and negative. Rosine running away to her land of the elves and eventually regretting it when she flies home to die. Guts running away so his malice could burn inside him. This dude:
Griffith’s sacrifice:
yadda yadda yadda.
And I’ve been kind of reluctantly expecting Falconia to follow suit as an immature, ultimately negative escape from the realities of the world.
But, in addition to Godo’s first statement up there, there are also lines like Casca’s as Guts fights Wyald:
“Why does he… always have to fight…? It’s alright… to just run away sometimes…”
So there’s a distinction to be made between running away so you can fuck shit up and express your anger (Guts’ revenge campaign, apostles making a sacrifice in despair and turning into monsters) vs running away from war and hatred and violence. Maybe running to a peaceful place where the monsters help humanity.
Like, maybe it is an important distinction that Rosine’s land of the elves was essentially a place where she could reenact the violence done to her on other people and call it a game, while Falconia is… just a sweet place to live lol. A kingdom where the violence suffered and perpetuated by its more monstrous inhabitants has no place anymore.
As a cis woman my opinion is not all that valuable here lol, and it’s under a cut because reading that opinion should probably be an opt-in experience and easy to scroll past
Basically I think that’s a legit and interesting take, though maybe not entirely compatible with canon. Not because Casca couldn’t be trans – I could definitely see that and I think it’s a logical reading of the character – but more because like, if Griffith knew and acted on that knowledge it would change the subsequent nightmare sequence w/ Casca as a housewife.
Also like if there’s an aspect there of Griffith knowing on some level
that Casca’s a man but deliberately withholding that “validation” until
this point when he needs something from him (idk if that was what you
meant to imply but the word ‘weaponizing’ makes me wonder) then I do
disagree with that.
But there’s no reason to assume Griffith was deliberately misgendering him either if his knowledge is subconscious and/or more recently acquired.
(And to be clear on that by misgendering I’m not talking about like Griffith using she/her pronouns bc if this isn’t an AU then Casca has obviously not socially transitioned. I’m more talking about ordering him to sleep with Guts four years ago, or complimenting the dress, things like that.)
Also funnily enough your take is basically the exact opposite of mine in that I emphasize the sense of oppressive heteronormativity and Griffith’s repression in this scene, while you go in the opposite direction with a sense of both characters’ gender and sexuality being validated. But it’s not like my preferred interpretation has anything to do with authorial intent lol, so yours is just as legit and worth consideration.
Plus a nice side effect of losing that undertone of repression is that it makes Griffith’s horror re: a life with Casca even more thoroughly centred around Guts’ absence. Also adds another layer to Casca’s decision not to leave with Guts but to stay with Griffith, if there’s an implicit understanding that he can be himself with Griffith while Guts still regards him as a woman.
Hmm idk if I have much else to say, especially since I’m like, trying to avoid a lot of the inevitable problematic implications inherent to Casca’s narrative, Berserk being what it is. Idk just like reading Griffith as a gay man is rife with issues, reading Casca as a trans man opens up another can of worms, one that I don’t think anyone needs my pov on. But ty for your interest in my thoughts, hope this was the kind of response you were looking for.
As far as I’m concerned the only thing worse than Casca like, having healing sex with Guts and being his narrative reward would be Casca joining Griffith, so I’m very much not on board with you there.
But I do agree that I would absolutely love it if Casca ended up as like, a secondary antagonist to Guts. That’s probably my ideal development for her tbh, and I don’t think she needs to join Griffith to conflict with him. They could conflict if Casca wants revenge and Guts has mixed feelings about that for a multitude of reasons, they could conflict if Casca just lashes tf out because it’s time for her to express some serious narrative-shaking rage, they could conflict if Casca goes apostle, they could conflict if Casca wants revenge against Guts too for how he treated her (ok unlikely, but god I wish lol), they could conflict if Casca kills or sacrifices someone in the rpg group or the moonlight boy maybe, etc etc etc.
So basically a big giant NO to Casca joining Griffith, but a big giant YES to Casca and Guts becoming enemies.
I doubt very much Miura intended for the reader to be critical of their behaviour, but honestly so much surrounding post-Eclipse Casca skeeves me out wrt ableism and the way she’s so infantalized and objectified (like literally, treated as an unthinking object to be protected rather than a person), both by other characters and by the narrative itself, that I def don’t think you’re overreacting.
It’s something I blame Miura for more than Farnese bc I really don’t think we’re intended to see her as insensitive. and imo Farnese comes across better than anyone else when it comes to treating Casca as a person with feelings. like eg the scene where she loses her temper and then apologizes to her directly – as opposed to say, Guts, who yelled at her all the time back when he interacted with her but never apologized to her. Or as opposed to the rest of the rpg group who tend to treat her like a prop or an extension of Guts or Farnese imo.
But yeah imo there are still a lot of instances of people, including Farnese, talking about Casca and thinking about Casca as if her only value is to motivate Farnese, and the narrative doesn’t really condemn that line of thinking, it’s just part of the general portrayal of post-Eclipse Casca, and it sucks.
lol i wonder if ppl twist the statement that he’s writing Berserk without including the values of good and evil/clearly defined ally and enemy characters to just mean the same thing as the typical “griffith looks nice but he’s pure evil and his allies are fooled by him, guts looks mean but he’s secretly a hero” bs
or they think Miura was just talking about like, silat lol.
but on the off-chance you wanted a somewhat serious answer, i’d say the swords = dicks thing is p dependant on context, and in this instance it’s less a direct sexual metaphor and more a demonstration of Guts big dick energy lol. The same way Guts’ sword always breaks other dudes’ swords, it’s a masculine power thing that shows how outclassed Serpico is in terms of raw force
and to veer a bit more freudian, just for fun, it may tie in a little to how he’s somewhat emasculated by Farnese. Particularly in comparison to Guts’ main relationship with a woman in which he is (currently trying to be) the big strong manly protector. mb made a little more plausible in that i think this is right after farnese took off with casca, which could encourage a reader to compare the two relationships.
I actually never considered it quite like that before but ia, that’s also a big problem and another reason the Eclipse rape is a failure of writing. Especially considering how Femto’s particular villainy emphasizes/is an expression of some of that gay-coding. And a result of it too for that matter – he makes the sacrifice because of his feelings for Guts. And yeah you can interpret that as “he should’ve embraced those feelings and not tried to escape them,” but the fact remains that his extremely homoerotic feelings basically drove him to evil lol.
So yeah as well as readers not being able to sympathize with him, it makes his feelings for Guts kind of forboding. Which tbh is the kind of thing that wouldn’t bother me at all if there was like, any positive + textually gay content to mitigate it lol, like I’m not going to pretend I don’t fucking love that Griffith makes the sacrifice to escape his feelings and talk about how amazing his narrative is every day, but yk, in the context of the rest of the predatory gay content of the story it’s not something I’d praise from this particular angle.
guts and griffith: kissing passionately, flowers bordering the frame of the shot, griffiths hand is up guts shirt
berserk fans: ok see this is CLEARLY a reference to the way ancient roman soldiers were told to use physical intimacy to strengthen the Brotherly Bond among comrades. this is actually some pretty smart stuff miura is doing he’s using the historical allusion to suggest that like rome griffiths kingdom will fall after he’s killed by his former ally guts (an allusion to caesar). genius
yeah absolutely. ignoring every ounce of subtext, the only characters who demonstrate textual same sex attraction are child predators and groups of heretics having hedonistic and like fuckin baby eating orgies before dying horribly.
As for the subtext, I like to interpret it in as positive a way as possible (ie Guts and Griffith’s relationship and lives are totally fucked up because they fail to recognize and act on the attraction between them, largely because of their past traumas), but as much as I think it fits the story perfectly and is the neatest and most resonant reading of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, it’s still only subtext, and possibly accidental, so that doesn’t really mitigate any of the actual homophobia inherent to the story.
And then ofc you have the evil gay subtext, yk like Femto staring at Guts during the Eclipse rape and the Beast of Darkness talking about Guts’ longing for Griffith and Guts assaulting Casca to feel closer to him. Hard to defend that lmao. I mean I can still read it as inoffensively as possible (the negative part comes when they redirect their feelings from each other to a heterosexual outlet, eg) but yk, that’s just me wanting to enjoy the story, that’s not a nuance I’m gonna give Miura credit for.
And also because this is all subtext it’s very nebulous and v open to interpretation.
Like for instance, another less forgiving interpretation of the subtext might be that Miura intended for Griffith and Guts’ relationship to be positive inasmuch as it is platonic, and for the implications of sexual attraction to be something negative that should have been overcome. I feel like that’s a much less valid interpretation, because it’s pretty contradictory overall, but yk there are still some pretty fucked up implications you can pick up in the subtext, and the context of all textual same-sex attraction being evil doesn’t exactly help that.
Oh also I suppose one can argue that in Berserk every expression of sexual desire is negative whether it’s hetero or not, give or take the second half of the gtsca sex scene (and i can still argue it’s negative), and therefore the fact that all textual same-sex desire is evil is more neutral in berserk than it would be in other stories. but we live in a world where predatory heterosexual desire isn’t a damaging stereotype in and of itself but predatory same-sex desire is, so it’s not actually neutral regardless, bc of real world context.
Tho that fact does make Berserk more fun for me to read at least.
At the end of the day basically I choose to read the subtext in as
positive a way as possible and it works for me and entertains me a whole
lot, but that doesn’t make the homophobic implications go away. but enh
I’ve kind of made my peace with enjoying a very offensive work lol.
If Miura ever did draw that art, the probability of a bunch of fans reacting with immediate denial is 100%. like, the gay things i’ve seen people twist themselves into knots to deny, man they could have graphic sex on page and I’d still be able to find a bunch of people calling it platonic, or explaining that they were just trying to out manipulate each other or it was gay chicken gone too far or something lmao.
Wish i could say the probability of Miura drawing it is higher tho 😡 come on Miura you clearly love homoeroticism, go back to your naked waterfight and sexually suggestive duel roots
Yeah that’s a good point tbh. maybe the most fundamental fandom divide comes down to whether you blame griffith or miura for the eclipse rape lol. or yk, more expansively, whether you’re the type of person who responds to fiction as though the characters are real people with agency or as though they’re constructs
and that’s not meant to be judgemental, there’s nothing wrong with engaging w/ fiction the first way, it’s fun and lends itself well to fandom pursuits like fanfic. it just doesn’t lend itself to analysis or critique, so things can get awk when they criticize a character for doing offensive things but don’t really engage with how those offensive things are presented by the narrative.
(and this is a v common thing in fandom in general ime, not just berserk fandom)
like, is griffith problematic because he magically turned into a demon and raped casca, or is berserk problematic because he’s a gay coded lipstick wearing sexually predatory antagonist whose motivation for raping casca is strongly implied to be at least partly jealousy
i never check the reddit unless i’m linked there (usually for raws/translations) and i try not to read the comments when i do visit. and skull knight just has a generally like, stuffy and unpleasant atmosphere lol. i’ve been known to go there to check translation info, but yeah i have no interest in even lurking to read discussions let alone participating
in general when it comes to fandoms, especially fandoms with tension between different interpretations or ships or whatever, i tend to just find a niche i like and stay there
As a rough pattern it probably holds true, though I know plenty of exceptions, and there are a lot of women who like gtsca ime. there might even be more women into gtsca than there are griffguts fans, though i’m v sure there’s a higher concentration of women on the griffguts side of things.
i feel like there are a million thinkpieces on the internet about why women are into THIS part of fandom while men are into THIS part of fandom lol, and idk if I have any valuable input myself on that. yk, like women are into transformative fandom (fic) while men are into the collecting side of fandom (which includes facts and stats and stuff not just collectibles), or like women are into slash because of [insert one of a million different explanations i’ve seen], yadda yadda yadda.
it’s always worth exploring possibilities, but i also kind of dislike theorizing that tries to explain demographic splits in fandom with one or two neat little theories lol, like all people into X fictional thing have Y trait but all people into this other fictional thing have Z trait.
I mean whatever demographic split there is could be nothing more than the fact that most men into berserk are straight and therefore less likely to enjoy the very gay elements of the story, while women may be more evenly divided between the two ships because of differing taste/ship preferences/dedication to explicit canon/irl politics lol/whether the Eclipse ruined Griffith as a character for them/ability and desire to pick up on subtext/ability and desire to compartmentalize away misogyny/etc etc etc.
So idk I guess basically I don’t disagree but I also don’t think I have anything worth adding.
Thank you! I’m glad you found something to enjoy in my meta despite different ship preferences, esp since I like to think a lot of what I have to say about them is applicable even if you go the platonic friends route in your interpretation.
When it comes to NGriff’s unfrozen heart, I definitely go with option B. I completely believe Griffith was lying to himself about his feelings, as he is wont to do lol, like you said – definitely related to his “take all the sad and frightening things and cast them into the fire” method of dealing with his feelings, ie pretending they don’t exist.
I’m going to link a previous post on this topic bc I feel like I said most of what I have to say about it already. But in short I definitely don’t think the fetus is responsible for Griffith’s heart beating while he watches Guts fight Zodd, though it may be responsible for Griffith saving Casca from falling rocks.
As for the moonlight kid, I’m not sure what to make of him. It’s suggested he’s the soul of Guts and Casca’s kid, what with the family imagery in that one chapter. Conversely it’s suggested he might be associated with Dannan, and therefore possibly taking the form of what that child would look like for the sake of… well I want to suggest manipulating them, bc I have high hopes that Danann is gonna turn out to be shady and using them for her own ends.
I do have a hard time with the popular theory that Moonlight Kid is part of NeoGriffith and like, escapes during the full moon to hang out with the rpg group bc the idea sounds very silly to me.
And on a personal level I hate him lmao. I just… I hate most cutesy fictional children, I vastly prefer Black Swordsman Guts to family man Guts lol, I don’t like that the kid’s role is to prevent Guts from succumbing to the armour because I want Guts to succumb to the armour, at least for long enough to shake things up and have consequences. I don’t like that Casca has strong maternal feelings for him despite not even having a personality right now, bc it’s so gender essentialist. Not in a surprising way, just in an annoying way. I don’t like the way he’s used to tease the audience about the possibility of Guts eventually settling down with a family. And I don’t like the implication that he briefly like, possessed NeoGriffith to make him save Casca lol, because again, it strikes me as really silly.
My biggest hope and dream involving Moonlight Boy is that he’s either a) secretly bad news because he’s a trick of Danann’s, or b) going to be what Casca sacrifices to become an apostle if she opens the behelit.
I don’t think you’re the same person but I’m combining these asks into one post because it’s basically the same subject and sentiment lol
honestly yeah the relationship really just brings out the worst in both characters imo (rampant misogyny and general laddish unlikeability in Guts; dependency, victimization, and narrative passivity in Casca), and it seems so, so unnecessary to me.
Like they are the epitome of pasted on romance. The relationship that drives the narrative, provides the most tension and intrigue and character development is Guts and Griffith’s. Guts and Casca’s romance drives nothing, develops nothing, and the intrigue and tension comes from… how Griffith figures into it (eg as the person they’re both rebounding from, as the object of their early rivalry, as the person Guts is trying to get over post-Eclipse by focusing on Casca. like literally every single one of their scenes where they grow closer is a conversation about Griffith lol).
Plus Guts rescuing her and then escorting her to Elfhelm is not dependent on his romantic relationship with her at all – he’d do the same for any of his former comrades. She could be replaced with Gaston and absolutely zero things would change except Guts probably wouldn’t’ve sexually assaulted him.
The romance brings nothing unique to the characters, it adds nothing, all it does is diminish everyone involved, extremely literally in the case of Miura adding it so he could write Casca out of half the story in the most grotesque way possible and give Guts motivation he absolutely didn’t need and which diminishes his actual personal trauma which is what should’ve been motivating him.
It’s so frustrating! I swear I could write another 4 part essay about all the ways Guts and Casca’s romance actively makes Berserk objectively (yes i’m saying objectively, idgaf some things are universally bad regardless of personal taste, like most things to do with the Eclipse) worse lmao
And the thought of an AU where Casca also survived the Eclipse without the bullshit and got her own plot-driving complementary storyline as an active character with a goal is so depressing because it could’ve been amazing.
UGH i hate how entirely plausible this all is because it makes everything that’s already terrible even more tragic 😦 … and running with it being a possibility, it’d give guts a really bad association with his very thoroughly thwarted near-attempt at being purposefully affectionate towards griffith, possssibly even an acceptance of his own gayness. i know this is all just wild speculation but, jesus. ughhhhhhhhh it hurts.
oh man i kinda want to explore that now
like i always say the eclipse puts everyone’s potential character development on hold/cuts it down in its tracks, imagine if it also slammed the door shut on guts’ potential realization that he’s not straight
i mean it’s all there – the parallels to casca realizing she was in love with griffith when she stopped seeing him as a god, the realization that he fucked up because griffith was in love with him, guts taking this away from griffith’s sacrifice:
Like ending up burying a burgeoning realization about himself and his feelings fits right in here
(idt i ever posted it but i remember thinking once that guts’ post-eclipse character development would work so well if there was an element of him coming to terms with his sexuality. i think i was thinking about a hypothetical “what would change about the story of Berserk if all the subtext was intentional and going somewhere” angle lol. i bet that half baked thought is in my drafts somewhere.)
a whooooooole lot of ragequitting and calling miura a sjw-pandering hack/evil fetishizing homophobe/rape apologist on one side of the fandom, wild celebration on the other side
might depend how it goes canon too lol. like, guts and neogriffith improbably living happily ever after somehow? definitely the above
guts and griffith admitting to themselves and/or each other that they were/are still in love before one or both die in the final confrontation? i could see the majority of the berserk fandom hmphing and going “ugh fine” (or insisting it’s still platonic love or that he still loved casca more) instead of ragequitting or hating miura.
and probably a combination of the two if there was a kiss or something to demonstrate the non-platonicness of it lol
As a flashback after the grim Black Swordsman arc, the Golden Age is a devastating combination of vain hope and inevitable tragedy. Guts and Griffith’s narratives centre around the conflict between their dreams and their relationship with each other: their dreams are self-destructive ways of coping with deep-seated issues while their relationship has the potential to heal and emotionally strengthen them. The bleakness of the first arc is brought about because neither man recognizes the significance of their relationship until it is too late – they turn to their dreams instead of each other, which leads them directly to the Eclipse.
This is the intro to my essay for the Berserk fanzine Memory Fragments, about the conflict between Guts and Griffith’s relationship and their dreams.
The zine can be pre-ordered here until September 24, and it’s very worth checking out, both for the writing and the gorgeous art.
i have some more asks but i’m about to leave for work so i’ll answer them tomorrow. just a heads up
i love that regular old human griffith is an absolutely horrible, cruel, borderline evil person according to griffith’s standards, and according to guts’ standards he’s never done anything wrong in his life ever except keep assassinations a secret from the rest of the hawks
and according to my standards for fictional characters human griffith is basically a saint lol
legit. guts sleeping on his back and griffith clinging and using his chest as a pillow is perf.
i think they’d also naturally fall into sleeping on their sides w/ guts as the big spoon (and griffith holding onto his arm like a stuffed animal), and falling asleep facing each other a lot too tbh, complete with holding hands.
i’ve always thought it looked like guts wanted to kiss him here too lmao … and like … ha i know it’s completely impossible but look at griffs face tho. he’s like “NOW?? now guts? really?” then the behelit opens cause griffs just “OH /NOW/ YOU’RE GAY?”
hmm lol it’s likely total crap but it’s quite an interesting thing to ponder. cause imo miura is/was preettttyyy clear in his portrayal of expressional intent�� i don’t want to allow myself to believe this but to me it rly looks like that lmao
this is hot on the heels of guts fully
accepting his role in griffith’s (insert everything here) … i can only
imagine what would’ve happened if guts had an opportunity to say
something to him. he is probably at a loss for words, and all that
emotional buildup is trying to escape through his eyes lol .. god, griff
has no idea why guts is so emotional right here now that i think of it
🤔🤔🤔 guts showing emotions for him during this breakdown is a very
plausible thing to push him over the edge 😮
i like it lol i think i’ll keep it
good content
ok for real the way i see griffith’s moment of despair being guts’ touch is that it’s griffith’s final moment of understanding that he is never gonna get unfucked by his feelings. he desperately, desperately needs guts and there’s no possibility of living without him anymore. if guts left, griffith would mentally waste away like in his nightmare, if guts stayed griffith would exist entirely for his presence.
so like the way griffith shifted from wanting to strangle guts to holding his hand in the torture chamber when guts started crying for him, when guts touches him with that emotion on his face griffith is like, fuck i can’t hate him, i can’t separate myself, and the behelit opens.
i mean more powerfully than i’ve written lol, but that’s like, the gist imo.
so basically i completely agree.
ALSO wrt the possibility of Guts wanting to kiss him, I’m just gonna say:
idk Guts what did you do last time someone attempted suicide in front of you?
parallels everywhere.
i’m just gonna say recently when i was collecting panels of guts looking at griffith for my stupid joke post i thought about that exact panel and how it looks really fucking weird and how guts is way too close to griffith’s face and how i didn’t understand why or what he was even planning to do at that point
the thought of a kiss never occurred to me somehow but you know what? tbh.
alternatively THIS was the moment where guts was going to stop pretending that he wasn’t the reason all this happened to griffith and start apologising for it like he should have long ago. but unfortunately before that could happen griffith had his breakdown and, well, you know
press his forehead against the hawk mask and break down and cry while throwing out vague but heartfelt apologies
is the image that popped into my head
also wonder if guts would’ve transitioned to ‘i’m sorry’s if the torturer hadn’t interrupted them while they were holding hands and provided a handy distraction from his burgeoning guilt.
i was just about to say basically the same thing @chaoticgaygriffith did here lol … he needs that constant reminder of why he SHOULD hate griffith because he’s still so emotionally invested in him and it’s too easy for him to slide into pining and sadness over him. and guts has never seen the griffith /he/ knew do anything awful, so i imagine he has a really hard time accepting that femto=griffith, but lbr so do i, griffith was not cruel and miura is an asshole
yeah i mean considering neogriffith’s effect on him:
I feel like it’s pretty heavily suggested that part of why Guts is able to drop the revenge quest to take Casca to Elfhelm is because NeoGriffith showing up all hot and non demonic threw a bucket of cold water onto his rage boner and replaced it with a regular boner.
Like I will never, ever, ever get over how fucking sad Guts is about NeoGriffith ditching him lmfao, idk how anyone can look at that panel and think Guts feels nothing but hate for him now.
And yeah like Guts also separates human Griffith from Femto in his mind, like when he tells Rickert “that’s not the Griffith you know anymore” while remembering Femto. Which is another reason NGriff’s human appearance fucks him up, because it makes it harder for Guts to separate NGriff from human Griff.
@xiyyh said:
all of this! i agree.
guts saying/doing ANYTHING at this moment could’ve pushed him over the
edge imo. also just, ugh, griffith conversely loving and hating him
because of his dependence on guts for stability. not only stability tho
he’s fucking in love with him lol. so yeah griffith coming to terms with
his absolute need for guts (whether he likes it or not, & he does
not) during the same moment of guts realizing how bad he fucked up,
re-igniting griffith’s value in his own mind, hhhhhhh
and these parallels! my god. somehow berserk is constantly mirroring itself, it’s endlessly fascinating and infuriating
ALSO WRT your tags; lol i agree and i
don’t understand how anyone could read it any other way if i’m being
completely fucking honest
ty! it’s so good isn’t it, like the fact that griffith’s moment of pure despair was guts touching him is beyond amazing and so fun to think about. i just want to second what you said here.
but yeah, strong agree here. I do kind of wonder what Miura wanted to portray – like I definitely think it very much comes across in the story that he added their relationship entirely for the sake of fridging Casca to motivate Guts more (the fact that he admitted it is icing on the cake lol). But he also didn’t shove it in as a badly written last-minute true love story, he was very deliberate in showing that there were flaws there from the start, like Judeau pulling the strings, both rebounding from Griffith, both using sex as a distraction from their negative feelings, the jealousy during the rescue mission, Griffith still taking priority to Guts (and this holds true until after the Hill of Swords confrontation), Casca becoming Guts’ “sword,” their hookup helping enable Guts’ denial so he doesn’t realize he shouldn’t’ve left the Hawks until it’s too late, etc.
So idk bc to elicit the correct reaction from his readers during the Eclipse he had to make them invested in their relationship and Guts’ feelings for Casca, but he also doesn’t do a damn thing to make Guts feelings for Casca matter or affect his decisions or anything. So imo it ends up feeling awkwardly pasted on when we’re supposed to believe they have strong feelings for each other, and the rest of the time it feels deliberately portrayed as negative.
(Like I’ve pointed out before, but a good example of this is the way Guts decides he screwed up before and wants to stay with Griffith this time while talking with Judeau, before consulting with Casca. It would’ve been so easy to have him decide while talking to Casca, showing that what she chooses to do also affects his decision, but nope. Too bad for Casca if she really wanted to leave with Guts, Guts is sticking with Griffith now.)
I do not, but this is a good question and one I’m also curious about. I can say that the anime replaced it with “love” (whether the word itself changed or the translation, idk) so it wouldn’t surprise me if it sounds just as suggestive in japanese as in english, or more so.
@chaoticgaygriffith no pressure to answer this, but do you have any insight on the word? (i’m sure you know exactly the page we’re talking about but just in case, chapter 49)
And actually while I’m wondering about this I’ve always been curious, is it the same word Ganeshka uses on this page? (chapter 282)
the word used is 飢餓感 (きがかん／kigakan) which can mean either hunger literally or hunger as in a strong desire/wish for something
and seeing as how griffith was listing emotions here, moreso than physical sensations (although some emotions–like pain, or you could say even all of them ig–are at the same time physical sensations), i would argue that he meant the latter
though it’s probably unclear on purpose, or it’s like clever wordplay of sorts since he’s literally in pain and starved and also additionally emotionally in pain and starved
and no sadly it’s not the same word ganishka used (he used 飢え渇く／うえかわく／uekawaku) but i don’t think that means there’s no parallel to be drawn here
tyvm for the response! sounds like it basically has the same connotation of saying you feel hunger while thinking about someone in english.
i def don’t think he meant literal hunger since he’s listing feelings specifically for guts, but i like the idea that it could be deliberate wordplay (along with pain) to yk compare the torture to being without guts/his feelings for guts. which would be very fitting imo.
i’ve always thought it looked like guts wanted to kiss him here too lmao … and like … ha i know it’s completely impossible but look at griffs face tho. he’s like “NOW?? now guts? really?” then the behelit opens cause griffs just “OH /NOW/ YOU’RE GAY?”
hmm lol it’s likely total crap but it’s quite an interesting thing to ponder. cause imo miura is/was preettttyyy clear in his portrayal of expressional intent�� i don’t want to allow myself to believe this but to me it rly looks like that lmao
this is hot on the heels of guts fully
accepting his role in griffith’s (insert everything here) … i can only
imagine what would’ve happened if guts had an opportunity to say
something to him. he is probably at a loss for words, and all that
emotional buildup is trying to escape through his eyes lol .. god, griff
has no idea why guts is so emotional right here now that i think of it
🤔🤔🤔 guts showing emotions for him during this breakdown is a very
plausible thing to push him over the edge 😮
i like it lol i think i’ll keep it
good content
ok for real the way i see griffith’s moment of despair being guts’ touch is that it’s griffith’s final moment of understanding that he is never gonna get unfucked by his feelings. he desperately, desperately needs guts and there’s no possibility of living without him anymore. if guts left, griffith would mentally waste away like in his nightmare, if guts stayed griffith would exist entirely for his presence.
so like the way griffith shifted from wanting to strangle guts to holding his hand in the torture chamber when guts started crying for him, when guts touches him with that emotion on his face griffith is like, fuck i can’t hate him, i can’t separate myself, and the behelit opens.
i mean more powerfully than i’ve written lol, but that’s like, the gist imo.
so basically i completely agree.
ALSO wrt the possibility of Guts wanting to kiss him, I’m just gonna say:
idk Guts what did you do last time someone attempted suicide in front of you?
thank you! and yeah ikwym, it makes me wonder what people who got into the movies first take away from them characterization-wise.
like obviously griffith is completely different lol, transformed into a two dimensional conniving ambitious dude who happens to be in love with Guts. But also like you mention, how does guts and casca’s relationship come across? I feel like it’d be even more boring, like i consider guts’ flashback to be like the lone highlight of their interactions together, and without that it’s just… so rote. Same w/ the anime on that point actually.
idk i think the ovas are a pretty decent hook to get people into the story, but anyone who stops there instead of reading the manga is seriously missing out.
you're the only one 