Tag: convo

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

@yesgabsstuff​ said:
Ditto for a conversation with Casca except that it ends with her taking the implement of self harm out of his hands and saying;
“You’re totally full of shit but I guess it’s time to put you to bed.”

awww. this is all
so perfect tbh. i’d seriously read 200k words of berserk as just a low key, realistic group of
traumatized and mentally ill people trying to support each other and get by and often failing and fucking up but
sometimes succeeding.

(i mean that’s basically what it is already but yk, take away the monsters and you’re still left with so much good character stuff and making it quietly realistic + modern adds a certain tone that agrees with me more than i would’ve expected. though i wouldn’t necessarily want to follow the plot of berserk to a tee lol. keep the themes, maybe explore different directions)

It’s weird. I think my age at this point has turned almost into optimism. What I mean is that Casca kind of barreling in and trying to get him to feel better and not knowing how because she can’t handle him being sad and Griffith kind of pulling it together in response to that is more realistic I think than what I just made up. It’s like I imagined what they would be with another five years under their belts and some solid self awareness. To her credit, Casca is the closest to being that person out of the three of them, but still. She’s always the Mom Friend regardless.

TO BE FAIR we are talking about an AU where they have some psychological knowledge and therapy experience, so it makes sense that they’d make better decisions occasionally haha.

in fact this really is the perfect setting to do like, a Berserk re-do where they’re all dealing with the exact same shit except actually learning coping methods and therefore not ruining everything all the time.

They can still ruin some things. just like, not irreversibly maybe.

About that Psych Grad Student AU of yours

mastermistressofdesire:

@yesgabsstuff @bthump

I found something for Corkus to do!

You know expanding on the psych, group therapy angle, I’d really
like for it to be like this unofficial support group Griffith put together
while still in school because a lot of kids in the neighbourhood could not
afford therapy, but is now working towards getting a degree and making it like
a professional deal, maybe even join a bigger set up or really expand upon the
project. And it’s sort of become a safe space for all these kids and over the years,
some of the older ones like Judeau, Pippin, Corkus have all stayed together and
become like this group of people who at this point just support each other as
friends and actually even help to guide the newer ones who join. (Corkus has
his own brand of tough love which surprisingly works on some of the most
withdrawn kids so they sort of let him be).

And everyone of course, completely loves Griffith because this
guy literally gave a lot of them life. 

Griffith however has in recent times started to develop a very
non-disclosure, sterile clinical style of counselling, where he’ll hear
everyone out, non-judgmentally, of course but not really give any personal
inputs. And he’s pretty good at this.( Psych students would be rolling their
eyes here- but there’s like these two schools of thought regarding counselling
among psychologists, one that the psychologist should not bring any personality
to the table, as the therapy isn’t about them, they should merely be a mirror
in which their clients can find themselves, an emotionless but rational and
non-maleficent screen and the other is that the psychologist should interact
with the client as their authentic selves, to be better able to build trust, a
sense of reality and connection and extend human support to the client.)

However, this wasn’t always the case and when he was younger,
and didn’t really know much about psychology or therapy. Griffith would reach
out pretty much how any concerned person would, he was just a lot better at it
intrinsically

Unfortunately, as with any group of people dealing with
participants from such sad and messed up personal situations, among the many
happy recoveries there are also some things which couldn’t be fixed. Over the
years there have been those who relapsed, ran away or most commonly committed
suicide, mostly during the early years of the Group when Griffith was still
doing the stuff pretty much solo and he has a huge case of unresolved guilt
associated with these cases. Because in retrospect sometimes he keeps wondering
if it was something he had unthinkingly or unknowingly said and simply the fact
that he had taken responsibility for these people and that  maybe what was his
amateurish incompetence and over involvement had ultimately failed them.

Casca however turns out to be one of his early
successful ‘cases’ and he helps her recover from and infact directly stops
her from being sexually assaulted. And he really helps her kind of regain her
sense of control over herself .Casca completely hero-worships him. This goes
on till final year of high school by when Casca has become somewhat of a support
counsellor herself but then things suddenly turn ugly when this kid who’d
recently joined them commits suicide, and this is the one of the youngest kids ever that Griffith had
taken in and he’s completely shaken by this incident.

This also starts his goal toward working his ass off and getting that actual degree and scholarship. So he applies to a lot of Universities, and gets accepted into a great one except Gennon is the Dean. Go figure. 

So Casca witnesses an incident and she’s pretty shaken about it but later when she asks Griffith why he wont just leave, he tells her it’s not important in the grand scheme of things and right now the degree is the most important thing for him because he refuses to take risks with the lives of people who trust him with their lives. Plus it’s kind of his dream to have his own sort of therepeutic set up .

and so it goes, and also like when Griffith first meets Guts, he asks him to join in on their meetings and Guts takes offense and says he doesn’t need it.

In the beginning Guts resents Griffith slightly because he looks like he’s so untouched by the things which everyone else is suffering from. He seems normal and happy and well-adjusted and Guts can’t relate to that and sometimes just wants to drag him down to his level.

But as the years go by it becomes what he loves the most about Griffith, that he can just waltz in and make Guts smile despite himself. And Guts becomes exceedingly protective of him because he feels like he wants to protect a little bit of that  ‘ innocence’. 

Later he  hears about Casca’s story and —

haha this is getting real long but yeah canon typical things. but they will talk because it’s what they do for a living in this au. and things will be better.

Ooh I love this idea too, long but worth reading. tbh I’ve heard a lot about those two schools of thought you mentioned from a friend who’s a therapist and that’s a really clever and in-character way of applying it imo.

also i’ll add this here bc it’s all related to the same au:

@yesgabsstuff said: I feel like you could even keep the
whole Gennon situation in if you wanted? Like you have a student that
was on the waiting list for the group and he didn’t get the treatment he
needed in time due to a lack of funding and he ends up killing himself?
Grad student Griffith would totally blame himself and give into the
advances of a spooky doner
Patron of the department for a grant to be sent their way.

If you wanted. I would because it was important character development.

Yeah I think it’s pretty necessary. both this and @mastermistressofdesire‘s idea up there totally work for me.

The only thing I want to suggest is an original motivation for Griffith to decide to start this whole helping other people cope with trauma thing. Bc I mean canon Griffith didn’t necessarily have much of an original pre-gennon motivation for the castle dream but that was a rly simple + childish dream whereas this is more complex and I think should be rooted in something. Building off of the whole apparently orphan kid in a back-alley thing maybe he grew up in orphanages/foster homes and witnessed and/or experienced abuse and couldn’t do anything about it, and this is his way of taking back that sense of control and “making up for it” as he might think to himself?

Which kind of maybe is moving the dead kid motivation ahead a little, but idk.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

@madchen said:
im so angry bc i was
gonna say something poignant abt griffith and sexuality but then i
forgot wait i just remembered it-i hc griffith as gay and its so… i dont
know, him repressing his feelings and desires and attraction to other
men before guts comes along fits in pretty well with his character i
think. its hard to think abt w griffith just bc of the persona and
facade he puts out there but i like gay characters and thinking about
their gayness /shrugs 

so like i actually have an essay sitting in my drafts that i started writing as a tongue in cheek joke on the premise “compulsory heterosexuality is the true villain of berserk” bc it seemed like a subject i could have fun bullshitting with. then i never posted it bc like halfway thru it got 2real and the tone was all weird

anyway the point is griffith’s narrative is waaaay too easy to read as repressing his sexuality considering his dream is represented by a heterosexual marriage and being in love with his best friend is the obstacle he overcomes to turn into an emotionless shell of himself.

sooo yeah i could definitely see it. plus from a characterization standpoint his whole thing is emotional repression. Also turns out Berserk gets even more depressing when you look at it from that angle, even if it is totally unintentional.

madchen said:
oh also i definitely
think that if griffith ever did feel comfortable enough to relinquish
some control guts would probably be exceedingly tender and gentle with
it and griff reaction to that is probably up in the air? i wonder how he
would ever feel about guts calling him beautiful/praising how he looks
bc i agree w your objectification trauma hypothesis and its been made
exceedingly clear that guts loves griffith well beyond his physical
appearance?

I totally agree. Idk I guess I’d err on the side of thinking that Griffith would probably never be entirely comfortable with being praised for his appearance but he wouldn’t necessarily have flashbacks either? So I’d say his reaction would be somewhere in between total acceptance and imminent breakdown. But if it was like a fic or smthn i could easily be convinced either way.

That essay sounds like a gem.

the first half is rly basic and obvious, like, here are all the times Charlotte’s existence fucked up their relationship/lives and resulted in Griffith and Guts overemphasizing Griffith’s heteronormative marriage/king/castle dream and delegitimizing their relationship, haha see what I did there?

then this happened:

I’m also going to point out that it’s not Guts and Casca getting
together that fucks Griffith up after he’s rescued – he’s not happy
about it obviously, but he can see what’s up and he’s not finding his
behelit and summoning the Godhand yet – but rather it’s Casca telling
Guts to leave while she stays, followed by Griffith’s vision of himself
seemingly as Casca’s romantic partner, kid in tow, no Guts to be seen.

Like
– just look at this fucking horrific vision here. Griffith is
essentially helpless and trapped, unable to move or speak. He’s part of a
family unit, wife and child, with the man he loves far away somewhere
and the kid named after him. It’s picturesque – Casca transformed into a
perfect housewife, reminiscing fondly about the old days but preferring
the quiet (gender role conforming) family life. Griffith looks good and is dressed up. Casca
leans in to kiss him and then spoon feeds him while he thinks that “this
peace and quiet… isn’t so bad.”

Then he wakes up, tries to kill himself, summons the Godhand, and becomes an evil demon.

And the thing is, that evil demon isn’t freedom, it’s just leveling up
in repression, emotionlessly playing the part of the ideal
boyfriend to a tee and entering into a loveless marriage while betraying
nothing of his inner feelings, maybe not even to himself. Seeing
the man he loves again and telling him he’s insignificant. And achieving his dream as easily as if it was handed to him on a silver
platter, because his dream is literally the externalized desires of society.

and i was like, oops that’s actually not very funny. (well the last sentence kind of is in a reachy way but yk)

Do you think Griffith felt offend when Rickert rejected him? Maybe a little shocked too. I think his desire to know Rickert motives of that slap because he wanted to understand *why*. But Rickert answer end up hurt his ego even more, I think. What’s your thoughts on that?

mastermistressofdesire:

I mean if this was human Griffith, Hell Yeah.

Neo-Griffith is honestly really hard for me to understand. Like what’s going on in that mind of his, it’s so difficult to tell.

I’m not really sure about offended because he didn’t seem angry to me just dissapointed and slightly deflated but I do think he was shocked, much like most of us didn’t see that slap coming.

However I don’t think that Rickert’s refusal came as a complete surprise to Griffith, he’d already considered the possibility, he’d already said “It’s possible you may hate me after knowing the truth…”

But it’s interesting that he didn’t say probable. That’s most probably Griffith’s personal desires warping the truth of the facts around him. Griffith wants to go back to that stage in his life when he had it all figured out, and the Band of the Hawk was by his side. He wants to think that Rickert may chose to join him because he Wants Rickert to join him. All his actions with the Neo Band of the Hawk reflect his desire. He’s trying to rebuild what he’s lost. But They are empty replacements, and so to have Rickert back , a real part of the past he’s trying to recreate is important to him.

It reminds me of two lines from the Manga which have been recurrent themes

“Don’t abandon what you can’t replace”

“Even if you painstakingly put something back together piece by piece it will never be the same.”

They were said with respect to Guts but I feel are highly applicable to Griffith right now too. And is I feel one of the many parallels between them that we get.

So in conclusion, yes the slap was definitely a harsh reality check for Griffith. Which is precisely why he’s playing it cool and saying it doesn’t matter. But yes he’s shaken and contemplative now.

When he first saw Rickert in Falconia, You could see the enthusiasm in Griffith’s body language. It was self delusional yes. But he dropped everything and practically ran to him. He’d obviously been looking forward to seeing him.

Also I think he’d taken it for granted that the fact that Rickert came at all meant he had already decided to accept. I mean most people don’t come all that way, braving monsters and climbing a million stairs just to deliver a well deserved slap.

He opens the conversation grandiosely,  many words and poetry. Exposition and greeting. He’s already expecting things to go up from here, they have been for sometime after all. Nothing has changed he wants to believe that. Then the refusal comes and all that comes out for the rest of the interaction is a muted ‘so it is’ because I think he’s coming to come to terms with the fact that truly? Everything has changed.


@bthump Because you always have the best neo-griffith thoughts. 🙂

oh my gooood i got to the bolded bit and started practically rubbing my hands together in glee at your insight. this whole answer is amazing.

The exploration of identity with NeoGriffith has the potential to be so so good. The way it does seem like he wants Rickert to join him because having a former Hawk accept the NeoBand would be a kind of validation that he needs on some level.

The way Rickert phrases his refusal is one of my favourite moments because of the emphasis he places on how it’s not his Band, and Griffith isn’t his Griffith, and the small differences between insignias matter. And all Griffith can do is passively agree. Now that you’ve drawn the comparison between the NeoBand and those significant lines about forcing back what was and abandoning irreplacable things I am dying to see where that leads even more.

Also it occurs to me that this is the first scene we see where NeoGriff is taken aback and not in control – the way Rickert slaps him, the way he has no response to Rickert’s speech – since the very first scene where his heart started beating and he saved Casca and went ‘wtf’ to himself. Add the fact that he apparently didn’t see the slap coming despite his magic powers of being essentially untouchable, and I think it’s a fair guess that his beating heart and surviving emotions are throwing him off his game again here. (Which incidentally is another solid sign that it’s not the fetus screwing with him bc i doubt very much the fetus gives a fuck about Rickert.)

ty for tagging me! I don’t think there was really much to add to your answer so this is mostly me nodding vigorously and flailing a little lol.

griffithhell:

bthump:

griffithhell:

bthump:

image

I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.

It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.

Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.

Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.

But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.

The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”

I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”

Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.

In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.

And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.

So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.

(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)

I could be wrong, but I feel like this might be, in part, a response to my rant, and I just want to say that I do agree with you on this. The reason I spend so much time talking about Griffith’s guilt is because a large portion of the fandom doesn’t seem to understand that what he did wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him–to put it simply. But of course his reasons for sacrificing the BotH can’t be boiled down to one emotion, be it guilt or whatever else.

Like you mentioned, part of the appeal of becoming one of the God Hand is you get your emotions stripped away. And Griffith is someone who, I feel, feels things very strongly, but constantly tries to deny that to himself and others. Because he wants to believe that his emotions don’t control him. “Just a pebble in my path” and all that.

Except he couldn’t with Guts. Not only was his obsession with Guts obvious, but it literally ruined his life once, and could have very well ruined it again, and again, and again. He would have “let it happen,” so to speak, it was an obvious weakness. And Guts seemed indecisive to the point where it was clear that he would keep unintentionally playing with Griffith’s heart till it destroyed him.

Griffith hated Guts for leaving him, but he also hated himself for how much it affected him, so the God Hand’s offer was attractive in more than one way.

Like you, I don’t think he regretted his decision. I just don’t think it was an easy decision to make, because that would defeat the point of sacrificing something to gain something else.

Sorry, I’m bad at wording things properly, and always seem to leave out something important, plus I didn’t add anything new to this post but tl;dr I agree with you. And I also apologise if this post had nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier this week, it just reminded me of a lot of points that were brought up.

Actually funnily enough I had a post like this sitting in my drafts for like two weeks but it sounded stilted so I never posted it. Then reading a few things (including I think your post) inspired me to re-write it and focus it better. So not exactly a response but more like, hmm I see a few people talking about the Eclipse sacrifice so now’s a good time to talk about this one aspect of it that I think is awesome that I haven’t seen mentioned. So I’ll add a belated thanks for the inspiration 🙂

But yeah I pretty much agree with you. I’ve gone on at length before about Griffith’s guilt-based motivation and I totally agree that it was not an easy decision (i mean there’s a reason the godhand had to pull out all the psychological stops to manipulate him, and one thing I totally believe is that if Guts had been beside him the whole time he couldn’t’ve done it). Like the idea that he was rubbing his hands with glee and eager to jump on the opportunity as soon as a few magic weirdoes showed up to offer him the chance to exchange everyone he loves for a castle is ridiculous lol, and I’ve seen that belief way too often too. As much as there’s a reason most of the Band went, “oh shit” when they heard the Godhand’s offer, there’s also a reason Guts didn’t believe it until like 10 minutes after Griffith agreed lol, and it’s not because he’s a naive dumbass, it’s because he knew Griffith genuinely cared and he believed in him.

“wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him”
that’s a really good way of putting it

I’m always glad when you give us all an opportunity to think and talk about something new, which is pretty much always, so thank you for that!

Also, that thing you said about Guts knowing Griffith well enough to know that he wouldn’t do something like that under normal circumstances kind of reminded me of the scene where Griffith asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel. And I feel like there’s more to be said here, but I’ll just leave it at that.

omg nice connection. Honestly if Guts’ Most Significant Moment That Changed Everything was overhearing Griffith’s speech, then imo Griffith’s MSMTCE was Guts’ non-reply to “do you think I’m cruel?” It keeps coming back to that.

griffithhell:

bthump:

image

I think a part of Griffith’s motivation for making the sacrifice is actually Guts’ death tbh.

It’s mostly the guilt trip, but I do think getting to sacrifice Guts along with the rest is a feature, not a bug for him.

Here’s the thing: Griffith is ridiculously in love with Guts. Before the year of torture he was willing to risk his life (and all-consuming dream) for him, Guts made him irrational, Guts leaving him drove him to self-destructive despair, Guts was the only one he shared the dark underbelly of his dream with, etc etc. Like by all metrics, Griffith’s love for Guts was already pretty epic.

Then add a year of torture during which Guts is the only thought that occupies his mind and keeps him sane. Guts is like lightning in his mind and now the dream, which had driven every aspect of his life previously, is dull. Many of his thoughts towards Guts are negative (”sorrow,” and “malice” are some of the words he associates with him eg,) and when he first sees Guts again his immediate reaction is to strangle him.

But all it takes to move his hand from Guts’ throat to Guts’ hand is Guts expressing emotion towards him by crying over him. Like, Guts takes him on a seriously extreme emotional roller coaster.

The moment that finally unlocks the behelit and calls the Godhand down isn’t when he lets go of his dream and it’s not when he thinks Guts is going to leave him again and it’s not when he tries to kill himself. It’s when Guts touches him again after all that. “Never again with you.”

I’ve talked about how I love that before but I’ve never rly said why, and really it’s because I think it shows that what finally truly sends Griffith into despair is knowing how utterly emotionally fucked up he is for Guts. To split hairs, it’s not because he thought Guts would leave him, it’s because he knew that if Guts left it would destroy him. It’s because of how Guts gained “such a strong hold over [him].”

Because he’s irrational, because he’s weak, because Guts overtook the dream by a mile in the last year of torture, because if Guts leaves him Griffith will basically become an empty shell (as we could surmise from Griffith’s vision/dream/hallucination of a future with Casca), because Griffith is so wholly and utterly emotionally dependent on Guts, because even after Guts’ touch makes him feel so much despair the Godhand shows up he reaches to save Guts from falling – that’s what made Guts the person Griffith “loved and hated the most,” to quote the Godhand on a parallel situation.

In that last glimpse Guts sees of Griffith, he’s smiling. I interpret his expression as tender – I’d say there’s love in his eyes – but not regretful or agonized or horrified at himself or the circumstances that caused him to make a choice like this. This is me taking this concept and running with it but I think if it was anyone else in the Band he’d laid eyes on in that moment, he wouldn’t be smiling. He’d probably be unable to look them in the eye, he’d feel ashamed, he’d feel, if not regret, then at least inner conflict and emotional turmoil. But when he sees Guts, he looks serene in his choice.

And I think this is because, like the other sacrifices we see (Count’s wife, Rosine’s abusive parents, Eggman’s world that shunned him, Ganeshka’s assassinating son) Griffith sacrificed Guts because at least part of him wanted Guts gone. Guts was the source of the final nail in the coffin of despair, and Griffith was at the point where a part of him hated Guts because, ironically, he loved Guts so much.

So yeah I don’t think Griffith chose to sacrifice Guts out of malice or jealousy/possessiveness or betrayal exactly, but because he loved him to the point where he couldn’t function without him, and I think he resented (to put it mildly) that dependence. Believing Guts would leave him was his final wake-up call to how lost he was without Guts. So when the Godhand offered him an escape from his despair and a way to cut it off at the source, he agreed.

(Which is not to diminish the driving force of guilt behind his choice, but I don’t think his complicated yet overwhelmingly powerful feelings towards Guts can be disregarded either.)

I could be wrong, but I feel like this might be, in part, a response to my rant, and I just want to say that I do agree with you on this. The reason I spend so much time talking about Griffith’s guilt is because a large portion of the fandom doesn’t seem to understand that what he did wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him–to put it simply. But of course his reasons for sacrificing the BotH can’t be boiled down to one emotion, be it guilt or whatever else.

Like you mentioned, part of the appeal of becoming one of the God Hand is you get your emotions stripped away. And Griffith is someone who, I feel, feels things very strongly, but constantly tries to deny that to himself and others. Because he wants to believe that his emotions don’t control him. “Just a pebble in my path” and all that.

Except he couldn’t with Guts. Not only was his obsession with Guts obvious, but it literally ruined his life once, and could have very well ruined it again, and again, and again. He would have “let it happen,” so to speak, it was an obvious weakness. And Guts seemed indecisive to the point where it was clear that he would keep unintentionally playing with Griffith’s heart till it destroyed him.

Griffith hated Guts for leaving him, but he also hated himself for how much it affected him, so the God Hand’s offer was attractive in more than one way.

Like you, I don’t think he regretted his decision. I just don’t think it was an easy decision to make, because that would defeat the point of sacrificing something to gain something else.

Sorry, I’m bad at wording things properly, and always seem to leave out something important, plus I didn’t add anything new to this post but tl;dr I agree with you. And I also apologise if this post had nothing to do with what I was talking about earlier this week, it just reminded me of a lot of points that were brought up.

Actually funnily enough I had a post like this sitting in my drafts for like two weeks but it sounded stilted so I never posted it. Then reading a few things (including I think your post) inspired me to re-write it and focus it better. So not exactly a response but more like, hmm I see a few people talking about the Eclipse sacrifice so now’s a good time to talk about this one aspect of it that I think is awesome that I haven’t seen mentioned. So I’ll add a belated thanks for the inspiration 🙂

But yeah I pretty much agree with you. I’ve gone on at length before about Griffith’s guilt-based motivation and I totally agree that it was not an easy decision (i mean there’s a reason the godhand had to pull out all the psychological stops to manipulate him, and one thing I totally believe is that if Guts had been beside him the whole time he couldn’t’ve done it). Like the idea that he was rubbing his hands with glee and eager to jump on the opportunity as soon as a few magic weirdoes showed up to offer him the chance to exchange everyone he loves for a castle is ridiculous lol, and I’ve seen that belief way too often too. As much as there’s a reason most of the Band went, “oh shit” when they heard the Godhand’s offer, there’s also a reason Guts didn’t believe it until like 10 minutes after Griffith agreed lol, and it’s not because he’s a naive dumbass, it’s because he knew Griffith genuinely cared and he believed in him.

“wasn’t him succumbing to his evil/showing his true nature/what have you, but him letting his weakness get the best of him”
that’s a really good way of putting it

mastermistressofdesire:

gyodragon:

I took a final look at it and whispered, not the berserk tag. Sorry, but I’m not brave enough.

Is this a reimagination of the falling off the cliff before the battle of doldrey scene or post torture arc?

Good question – but now that you mention it omg a reimagining of the whole cliff debacle with Griffith in place of Casca would be amazing. Casca would step up, take command, and own the battlefield. Griffith could have a debilitating fever and share some of his past while his temp is 103 and he’s out of it after like a fever nightmare about the inevitable battle of Doldrey. Guts would get possessively protective the way he does. Casca could show up in the nick of time to save Griffith from passing out and being killed by the enemy while Guts does his 100 man slayer thing (convincing Griffith to leave his side the same way he convinced Casca, ie, you have a dream and also you’re a burden rn so get lost, which I could see Griff either seeing through and brushing off or having a v bad delayed reaction to) – it would just be wall-to-wall Good Shit.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

@mastermistressofdesire said:
I kinda second the ending with both of them dead at the end. Nothing else would be quite as fitting.

ikr there’s something so satisfying to me about the idea. maybe bc they have this whole fated enemies vibe.

 Grand fated tragedy is one of the things which makes Berserk so tantalizing to me. I mean to be completely honest I was pretty dissapointed to hear Kentaro Miura’s little quip about not wanting to end Berserk as a complete tragedy because that’s kind of what we’ve been on board for, for a very long time.

 I want an ending which wrecks me, gives me that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and yet feels completely intellectually satisfying. The kind of thing which leaves behind a little bit of a void which you then seek desperately to fill with your thoughts and others’.

I want none of that happily ever after, riding off into the sunset to raise his child with Casca bullshit. Like no.

That’s not an ending I mind in itself. I mean I love happily ever afters too. But not in Berserk. Here it would simply be disappointing. On so many levels.

 I don’t want to leave this series with an “Aww. That’s cute, I guess” feeling. Because that’s honestly too freaking mediocre to be anywhere near satisfying.

As to why both need to die together. 

A) Sheer poetry.

B) As long as Griffith is alive, Berserk can not have a conclusion. It can end yes but not with any level of satisfaction or closure.

C) If Griffith dies and Guts lives— a. Guts is doomed to more of an eternity pining after Griffith, which he’s already been doing for the last 30 volumes and would be no conclusion

b. Guts loses all motivation for existing, has nothing pushing him onward and has an emotional cave in, again kind of a terrible conclusion.

c. Guts gets over Griffith and resolves to spend the rest of his life being the perfect family man with all his new—Hahahahahahahhha. AS IF.

P.S.- Casca should definitely not die. She’s been absent from the narrative too long to justify bringing her back just to kill her off or take away her voice again.

@bthump

i just want to second like, all of this

i could see griffith living as a satisfying conclusion depending on how it’s framed – like say a final image of neogriff visually isolated and alone (esp if he still rules the world or w/e) if we learn that he really is still emotionally fucked up over guts – but I still think the most satisfying to me is both dead.

and yeah casca dying would just be… redundant and bad, not even touching on the misogyny. It’s not even that she deserves a nice life, it’s that after everything w/ her character being destroyed I think the most satisfying conclusion for her is a hopeful future.

and tbh i think no matter what i’d prefer if guts dies. after all this business with him being “the struggler” and defying death all his life over and over i think his death could be really powerful and meaningful. being born from a corpse and then defying fate trying to kill you and then living a chill happy family life for 50 years and dying of old age just doesn’t keep that epic vibe going.

mastermistressofdesire:

baawri:

Britney Spears on Sabrina the Teenage Witch

This was actually what I took away from the fountain speech between Charlotte and Griffith the first time I watched it. Honestly the ‘Omg he’s such an asshole for not considering them friends’ was new to me until I saw others talking about it.

I once remember saying I can make everything about Berserk.

@bthump  I remember you once saying something similar.

i love that this is on a britney spears gifset lmao, your talent for making anything about Berserk is impressive.

but yeah strong agree, like, Griffith doesn’t call them friends but they don’t treat him like a friend, they treat him like a leader and figurehead. even guts does when it comes down to it.

the scene between Guts and Griffith that comes right before the Promrose Hall speech was Griffith asking Guts to assassinate Julius for him, which I find really telling. Griffith words it carefully, very pointedly not giving him an order but simply making it a request – it was Griffith treating Guts like an equal and friend and co-conspirator. And Guts’ response was, “just order me to do it.”

Which yk makes sense and is a perfectly reasonable and kind of amusing and dry response, but it’s another thing Griffith could and probably did take as a mild rejection (especially if he’s looking back on their relationship after everything goes south). It was easily interpretable as Guts saying “I’m doing this because I’m your soldier, not for you.”

abyssalsunshine:

bthump:

bersrrk:

bthump:

bersrrk:

I’ve been wondering Like is there people out there who like…don’t think of Griffith and femto as the same person you know like how some dipshits are like “oh no anakin didn’t slaughter the younglings that was darth Vader darth Vader killed anakin from a certain point of view actually” is there people who think Griffith didn’t rape casca and slaughter the entirety of the band of hawk?
That it was his fucking alter ego countess boochie flagrante

tbf unlike anakin griffith literally got an explicitly described evil injection (”a fissure in your heart will open into which evil will surge), a new body created out of the same negativity as the idea of evil, and was explicitly shown losing his capacity to feel as the Band died and he was transforming so like…

yeah i feel it’s pretty well-established canon that femto is different than griffith.

whether you’d say griffith’s dark side + extra evil + new name – ability to feel empathy and other positive emotions = technically a new person or not doesn’t really matter imo, he’s definitely shown to be magically transformed enough physically and mentally for me to be able to draw a pretty solid line between femto and griffith regardless.

I mean they don’t put it down to magic but anakin DOES actually change when he becomes a sith it’s actually shown through out the series that being apart of the dark side does change a person at least physically (I think anyway maybe that was just a theory I read..)

I know there’s a big difference between pre and post eclipse Griffith my main point here is that it was /still/ Griffith who did those things regardless of how much he changed unlike some ppl may say

I used darth Vader as a comparison mainly because I assumed it would be the most well known case

I can actually think of two characters who would probably make a better comparison for numerous reasons but since their from a series of Irish children’s novels I assumed no one would have any idea wtf I was talking about

if that’s the case than fair enough, i’ve only seen the prequels once. i guess he did get yellow eyes somehow come to think of it lol.

I mean I guess this makes this a case of semantics then? As far as I’m concerned once a character goes through a magical fantasy transformation that includes changing the way he thinks it just makes more sense for me to consider them basically different people. If that’s stated somewhere in the movies to be the case between Anakin and Darth Vader and I’ve just forgotten then I’d consider them different too.

to me saying that it was still Griffith who did those things despite changing is like saying Guts tried to slaughter his friends while wearing the berserker armour imo. Sure, it’s technically accurate, but does that mean I should hate Guts because a magical element let the part of him that wants to indiscriminately slaughter innocent people reign free? We’re shown and told in both instances that these magical fantasy processes change the way a character feels and thinks and reacts, the only difference is that Griffith was entirely subsumed by his magic evil alter ego while Guts keeps coming back bc he has a witch and a magic kid on his side. but both Femto and the Berserk armour are manifestations of a character’s dark-side augmented by magic and suppressing their light-side/humanity, so they seem pretty comparable to me.

So what do you mean when you say Griffith still did those things regardless of how much he changed? If you agree that he changed first then we’re pretty much on the same page as far as I can tell. But when that change involves an irreversible physical transformation including new name change and literal “rebirth” as he hatches from an egg, I can understand why lots of people frame that change as a new person.

Like at the core we’re talking about fantasy situations that are not applicable to real life so it really just boils down to what you make of them I guess.

To me, the answer is yes and no. In a sense, Femto is Griffith. But not quite. I’d like to think that both Femto and Neo-Griffith are a part of Griffith that makes Griffith *Griffith* (if that makes sense) and vice versa. After all, whatever Femto and Neo-Griffith did is the result of Griffith’s actions and ambition (and that causality thing when you look at it in bigger perspective). It’s like, faces—masks. The best comparison I can think of is how ancient pantheons have many facades of themselves that manifest into different forms altogether. Take Parvati, a Hindu goddess, for example. Shes a benevolent goddess who is known for her nurturing personality, but she can turn into Durga, the Goddess of death and destruction when she is consumed by dark wrath (which is why she is associated with Guts by Dhaiva in the manga). Is she still the same Goddess? Well, yes and no. And I think that kinda answer is also fitting when talking about whether Griffith/Femto is the same person/creature or not. Especially given his current godlike status IMHO.

I love this goddess comparison! Makes perfect sense to me.

And yeah I pretty much agree with you – imo Femto is Griffith’s dark side stripped of all… positivity and light, yk, and given god-like power.

So Griffith always contained Femto within him but mediated and restrained by humanity and his own conscience and love and guilt etc etc. And according to the world of Berserk this is pretty much true of everyone – everyone’s got their inner darkness. The fantasy world magic just allows it to come out and overwhelm everything else.

Guts has his hellhound which is explicitly compared to Femto in one chapter while he’s being taunted by demons, apostles become apostles by giving themselves over to their dark sides, etc.

eta: anyway yeah tl;dr to sum up I don’t think I or anyone really considers Femto an entirely separate person, like the godhand just killed Griffith and replaced him with someone entirely different and totally unrelated. I think it just comes down to what you think constitutes “a different person” in a fantasy world where rebirth is a feature.

bersrrk:

bthump:

bersrrk:

I’ve been wondering Like is there people out there who like…don’t think of Griffith and femto as the same person you know like how some dipshits are like “oh no anakin didn’t slaughter the younglings that was darth Vader darth Vader killed anakin from a certain point of view actually” is there people who think Griffith didn’t rape casca and slaughter the entirety of the band of hawk?
That it was his fucking alter ego countess boochie flagrante

tbf unlike anakin griffith literally got an explicitly described evil injection (”a fissure in your heart will open into which evil will surge), a new body created out of the same negativity as the idea of evil, and was explicitly shown losing his capacity to feel as the Band died and he was transforming so like…

yeah i feel it’s pretty well-established canon that femto is different than griffith.

whether you’d say griffith’s dark side + extra evil + new name – ability to feel empathy and other positive emotions = technically a new person or not doesn’t really matter imo, he’s definitely shown to be magically transformed enough physically and mentally for me to be able to draw a pretty solid line between femto and griffith regardless.

I mean they don’t put it down to magic but anakin DOES actually change when he becomes a sith it’s actually shown through out the series that being apart of the dark side does change a person at least physically (I think anyway maybe that was just a theory I read..)

I know there’s a big difference between pre and post eclipse Griffith my main point here is that it was /still/ Griffith who did those things regardless of how much he changed unlike some ppl may say

I used darth Vader as a comparison mainly because I assumed it would be the most well known case

I can actually think of two characters who would probably make a better comparison for numerous reasons but since their from a series of Irish children’s novels I assumed no one would have any idea wtf I was talking about

if that’s the case than fair enough, i’ve only seen the prequels once. i guess he did get yellow eyes somehow come to think of it lol.

I mean I guess this makes this a case of semantics then? As far as I’m concerned once a character goes through a magical fantasy transformation that includes changing the way he thinks it just makes more sense for me to consider them basically different people. If that’s stated somewhere in the movies to be the case between Anakin and Darth Vader and I’ve just forgotten then I’d consider them different too.

to me saying that it was still Griffith who did those things despite changing is like saying Guts tried to slaughter his friends while wearing the berserker armour imo. Sure, it’s technically accurate, but does that mean I should hate Guts because a magical element let the part of him that wants to indiscriminately slaughter innocent people reign free? We’re shown and told in both instances that these magical fantasy processes change the way a character feels and thinks and reacts, the only difference is that Griffith was entirely subsumed by his magic evil alter ego while Guts keeps coming back bc he has a witch and a magic kid on his side. but both Femto and the Berserk armour are manifestations of a character’s dark-side augmented by magic and suppressing their light-side/humanity, so they seem pretty comparable to me.

So what do you mean when you say Griffith still did those things regardless of how much he changed? If you agree that he changed first then we’re pretty much on the same page as far as I can tell. But when that change involves an irreversible physical transformation including new name change and literal “rebirth” as he hatches from an egg, I can understand why lots of people frame that change as a new person.

Like at the core we’re talking about fantasy situations that are not applicable to real life so it really just boils down to what you make of them I guess.

mastermistressofdesire:

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

@yesgabsstuff said: I totally
agree that this is a child’s idea and I guess that’s what makes it so
upsetting to me? That its emotionally stupid and an intellectual
failure? Idk man.

tbh the idea that griffith stumbled into his dream and worked backwards to justify it feels a little absurdist to me, which i love, especially in conjunction with Berserk’s take on fate/meaning, ie, humans literally create it out of a desperate need and it fucks them over.

but yeah there is something inherently upsetting in the idea that everything that went down in berserk is ultimately because of something stupid and childish. it’s the kind of upsetting i dig though haha.

tho now that I think about it wrt his higher aspirations (equality, nobles suck, etc) we know he had them before the kid died because of how he saved Casca, so I do think those were always part of his motivation for becoming king, but… I tend to think they’re a little childish at heart too, for Griffith. More born out of obstinacy, with actual philosophy and reasoning applied later.

Yeah, I mean there was no way I think that he could back down from how he was feeling. The idea that there would be an intellectual framework to hang his feelings on, even if it was contradictory and self aggrandizing must have felt like a relief.

Oh hell yeah.

I think that’s what fills everyone around him with that sense of wonder. The fact that it isn’t a well thought out dream. The fact that anyone who would sit down and analyse the ‘i want a kingdom’ statement with respect to where Griffith started from would find it absurd.

But that analysis would come from maturity belying cynicism – from knowing that the world is an unfair place filled with unfair people. And Griffith’s dream existing despite that seems to undermine this belief. Because a dream like that could only exist in a fair world with fair people and it retroactively gives the people who hear about it, and hear Griffith’s absolute conviction to make it  a reality, a sense of hope. A sense that the world will change around that dream to contain it, create a warp of the fair world in the unfair world and hard past each of them is trying to escape from.

And honestly I think that’s what drew them to him. It wasn’t just Griffith being a manipulative person or exceptionally charismatic. Though obviously that is there.

It’s because Griffith gives them hope.

And bleaker the world is, the harder we cling to what gives us hope.

And I always personally thought that Griffith’s whole point about ‘giving back’ to those who gathered around him was a little backwards. In his mind, they were drawn to him for an inexplicable reason and fought his wars for him and now he has to ‘pay them back’ by giving them victory.

Where as it seems more like they joined him for the hope he gave them. Stayed and fought to continue to cling to that hope and gave back in terms of their loyalty to him.

@bthump

this is perfect and i have nothing i can add so i’m just gonna underline it with manga panels

oh wait i lied i do have something to add, wrt your last two paragraphs:

ouch.

freewilllife:

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

Well I had the urge to talk about Griffith’s motivation to be king again. tbh I’ve said a lot of this stuff in various scattered posts and conversations, but I want to have it all laid out nicely in one place. And I’m using a meme question as a springboard.

Does your character have a story goal and a believable motivation to achieve that goal?

For
human Griffith I actually find his motivation for wanting to become
king one of the most interesting aspects of his story. One thing I really dig about
the way fate works in Berserk is that despite it sitting there and
pulling strings to manipulate everything, characterization and character
decisions never feel arbitrary to me.

To be honest it can kind of seem
like Griffith has no real motivation for wanting to be king and it’s
just an urge placed there by fate, but I think everything the reader
needs to know is right here:

image

It’s
not really that he has no original motivation, it’s that his original
motivation is fucking stupid lol. It started out as an extremely
childish “I want that” desire, possibly with a side of contrariness since he was a commoner, and because he was a child, and tenacious,
he decided to go out and get it.

Then, before he had a chance to
re-evaluate his baby dream and whether it’s a worthwhile goal, he started getting people killed for it and his resulting
(repressed) guilt lead to him doubling down on his dream, hard.

At least since
the dead kid and Gennon I’d say his motivation has been 90% “I have to
achieve this to justify the fact that a bunch of people are dead because
of it.“

image
image

This
is more of an extrapolation, but imo Griffith’s mind is working
backwards to how you’d expect – it’s not that he wants to achieve the
dream because it’s some great, all-important and shining thing in his
mind. The dream becomes great, all-important and shining because
building it up in his head is partly how he justifies all the awful
guilt-inducing shit he does to achieve it. All these people died for his
dream, therefore his dream must be special and important and worth dying for.

He says he wants to know his place in the grand scheme of things, whether he’s one of the “keys” that move the world. And to me, in conjunction with what we know of his motivation (childish ambition, followed by mounting guilt spurring him onwards), that sounds like a desperate desire to know whether all those deaths were worth it. If his destiny is to become king, then he’s justified and doesn’t need to feel guilty and can continue suppressing his guilt. If it isn’t, then it was all a waste and he has to actually deal with his inner “reality” of being a child on top of a pointless mountain of bodies.

It’s rly lucky for him that it turns out it is his destiny lmao.

I generally agree with this; particularly on the point of how he makes decisions. I see him as someone who makes an emotional decision and then his considerable intellect steps in to cover his ass so that the choice isn’t as destructive as it could be. I think however, that while his initial desire is born out of a childish desire for something out of his reach, that he earnestly believed that he could make things better as a king due to his common birth.

He has this very real emotional need it would seem to be special and to be the person to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” in contrast to uninspired others. This could be covering up any number of emotional wounds inside him, and I think that this is as close as we get to Griffith articulating the same emotional emptiness that Guts does.

All of that pathology aside I think his natural distaste for injustice and his intelligence took these emotional needs and made them into a desire to be the philosopher King; better than a blood noble could ever be because he could actually understand people’s struggle and he would deserve to be there. I think his problem comes is that he’s using the master’s tools to take down the master’s house. He must use violence, he must look at himself as superior to others, he must cut off his human feelings in order to achieve this goal. It is literally divine right rather than what his idea of “merit” that has put him on that throne next to Charlotte. It’s terribly sad.

I totally agree! tbh I avoided going into this bc i wanted to keep the focus on guilt and childishness, but, especially in NeoGriffith’s chapters, there’s a lot of stuff about overturning the “natural order” of inequality and oppression and war etc.

Ooh plus Casca’s line while she’s telling Guts her story about how when the nobleman attacked her she thought it was just the natural order of things, until Griffith threw her a sword and rearranged her world.

And then the Eclipse is basically a mirror of that flashback scene with Femto taking the nobleman’s place and finishing what he started, so it’s a visceral, grotesque and symbolic depiction of becoming a manifestation of that “order” in his attempt to overturn it. Including the fact that he actually is chosen by God lol like he accused the nobleman of believing.

Ofc now that you’ve mentioned the master’s house quote I kinda want to wonder if it’s all eventually going to come crashing down because Griffith became what he was trying to overturn. idk.

idk the point is I solidly agree with your addition and i want it on my blog lol.

ALSO


I think that this is as close as we get to Griffith articulating the same emotional emptiness that Guts does. 

wonderful point, nothing to add but I love this.

You know regarding the origins of his dream, I’m kind of wondering if Griffith was a child who grew up with books?

Like we definitely get to know that he loves reading and we also know that there most probably wasn’t a strong parental or mentoring influence in his early life yet he has all these lofty ideals and philosophies sorted out at a very young age.

And as someone who sort of grew up with books, i feel there may be a possibility that that might tie into the I want  kingdom dream.

Griffith always struck me as a romantic stuck between the cogwheels of pragmatism. And that’s the thing about books, they make you dream big, think of things bigger than yourself, philosophies, emphasize the importance of having a goal and going on an adventure. The only lives worth living it seems are those you’d like to hear a story about. All these rags to riches fairy tales.

And inevitably the protagonists are kings and princes, wizards and knights, extra ordinary people who own extraordinary things.

And I wonder if he didn’t just want to be the most extraordinary person he could be possessing the most extraordinary thing he had seen till then.

To Griffith s dream: It was definitely a childish decision at first. I mean he was around 10 years…I think it would feel more unreal to me if he had fleshed out, what he wanted to do.

But it was also a fist step to overcome the “old system”. For him a commoner it would have been impossible to fulfill his wish…to have that kind of dream and to strife to attain it…That was pretty strange for most people.

Later he really added like @yesgabsstuff mentioned “social justice” to his dream. It s like creating a paint. You append more and more layers to the picture.

Guilt was also a layer…a reason to reach his goal, but I don t think it was 90 % of it. At least not when Guts met him. He was so excited of his dream, his fate ect…when he helped him up, that I can t think of it as main cause at first.

Later…when he used more and more underhanded methods…that most likely changed. I think that was also a reason why his dream disappeared, when Guts left. To deal with the whole guilt all alone…That was surely a reason why he broke.

@mastermistressofdesire this makes a lot of sense to me tbh. A lot of people compare Griffith to a fairytale or storybook hero, but he does it himself too when talking about how the kid who died admired him. Logistically he had to learn to read at some point, most likely while he was still a kid.

@freewilllife love your painting comparison. & tbh I do emphasize Griffith’s guilt A Lot, maybe more than makes sense for him as a realistic character, but since it’s what gets centre stage during the most revealing explorations of Griffith’s psyche (the river with Casca and the Godhand’s exploration of his conscious realm) I tend to view it as like… foundational, underlying just about every other aspect of Griffith’s pursuit of his dream. Plus I just dig the idea that it’s a huge emotional burden Griffith got stuck with through his own childlike stupidity and painted over to look like this spectacular shining thing, able to convince himself of its grandiosity because it’s easier than facing his own guilt. But that definitely edges into projecting my own interests onto the narrative.

Oh and also speaking of facing his own guilt good point about how that’s likely part of the reason he broke, i totally agree! I wrote a long ass thing a while ago about how Griffith took Guts leaving him as a rejection and condemnation of all the aspects of himself that make him feel guilty and insecure, which is imo part of the reason his reaction was so self-destructive.

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

Well I had the urge to talk about Griffith’s motivation to be king again. tbh I’ve said a lot of this stuff in various scattered posts and conversations, but I want to have it all laid out nicely in one place. And I’m using a meme question as a springboard.

Does your character have a story goal and a believable motivation to achieve that goal?

For
human Griffith I actually find his motivation for wanting to become
king one of the most interesting aspects of his story. One thing I really dig about
the way fate works in Berserk is that despite it sitting there and
pulling strings to manipulate everything, characterization and character
decisions never feel arbitrary to me.

To be honest it can kind of seem
like Griffith has no real motivation for wanting to be king and it’s
just an urge placed there by fate, but I think everything the reader
needs to know is right here:

image

It’s
not really that he has no original motivation, it’s that his original
motivation is fucking stupid lol. It started out as an extremely
childish “I want that” desire, possibly with a side of contrariness since he was a commoner, and because he was a child, and tenacious,
he decided to go out and get it.

Then, before he had a chance to
re-evaluate his baby dream and whether it’s a worthwhile goal, he started getting people killed for it and his resulting
(repressed) guilt lead to him doubling down on his dream, hard.

At least since
the dead kid and Gennon I’d say his motivation has been 90% “I have to
achieve this to justify the fact that a bunch of people are dead because
of it.“

image
image

This
is more of an extrapolation, but imo Griffith’s mind is working
backwards to how you’d expect – it’s not that he wants to achieve the
dream because it’s some great, all-important and shining thing in his
mind. The dream becomes great, all-important and shining because
building it up in his head is partly how he justifies all the awful
guilt-inducing shit he does to achieve it. All these people died for his
dream, therefore his dream must be special and important and worth dying for.

He says he wants to know his place in the grand scheme of things, whether he’s one of the “keys” that move the world. And to me, in conjunction with what we know of his motivation (childish ambition, followed by mounting guilt spurring him onwards), that sounds like a desperate desire to know whether all those deaths were worth it. If his destiny is to become king, then he’s justified and doesn’t need to feel guilty and can continue suppressing his guilt. If it isn’t, then it was all a waste and he has to actually deal with his inner “reality” of being a child on top of a pointless mountain of bodies.

It’s rly lucky for him that it turns out it is his destiny lmao.

I generally agree with this; particularly on the point of how he makes decisions. I see him as someone who makes an emotional decision and then his considerable intellect steps in to cover his ass so that the choice isn’t as destructive as it could be. I think however, that while his initial desire is born out of a childish desire for something out of his reach, that he earnestly believed that he could make things better as a king due to his common birth.

He has this very real emotional need it would seem to be special and to be the person to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” in contrast to uninspired others. This could be covering up any number of emotional wounds inside him, and I think that this is as close as we get to Griffith articulating the same emotional emptiness that Guts does.

All of that pathology aside I think his natural distaste for injustice and his intelligence took these emotional needs and made them into a desire to be the philosopher King; better than a blood noble could ever be because he could actually understand people’s struggle and he would deserve to be there. I think his problem comes is that he’s using the master’s tools to take down the master’s house. He must use violence, he must look at himself as superior to others, he must cut off his human feelings in order to achieve this goal. It is literally divine right rather than what his idea of “merit” that has put him on that throne next to Charlotte. It’s terribly sad.

I totally agree! tbh I avoided going into this bc i wanted to keep the focus on guilt and childishness, but, especially in NeoGriffith’s chapters, there’s a lot of stuff about overturning the “natural order” of inequality and oppression and war etc.

Ooh plus Casca’s line while she’s telling Guts her story about how when the nobleman attacked her she thought it was just the natural order of things, until Griffith threw her a sword and rearranged her world.

And then the Eclipse is basically a mirror of that flashback scene with Femto taking the nobleman’s place and finishing what he started, so it’s a visceral, grotesque and symbolic depiction of becoming a manifestation of that “order” in his attempt to overturn it. Including the fact that he actually is chosen by God lol like he accused the nobleman of believing.

Ofc now that you’ve mentioned the master’s house quote I kinda want to wonder if it’s all eventually going to come crashing down because Griffith became what he was trying to overturn. idk.

idk the point is I solidly agree with your addition and i want it on my blog lol.

ALSO


I think that this is as close as we get to Griffith articulating the same emotional emptiness that Guts does. 

wonderful point, nothing to add but I love this.

freewilllife:

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The fact that Guts decides to pursue an equal
relationship with Griffith after hearing the speech is what singles his
relationship with Griffith out as unique. Everyone else in Griffith’s life is content to
either look up at or down on him.

Even the Princess, his future wife,
just marvels at the speech while literally looking up at him, rather than showing any desire to find a
dream herself and become “worthy” of calling herself his equal.
Because Guts is the only one who wants to genuinely connect with
Griffith – who wants to stand beside him by achieving something of his own – Guts is Griffith’s only “true” relationship, the only
relationship he has based on real affection and genuine desire for the
person, and not just what he represents, either as a symbol of hope and achievement (for the Hawks), a symbol of security and happiness (for Charlotte) or a symbol of corruption and loss of power (for those plotting against him).

Which just makes it so wonderfully ironic that Guts is the only one who made Griffith forget his dream.

Yes. Though we have to add that Guts perceives Griffith still as someone “different from a normal human being”.

His perplexed reaction that Griffith has weaknesses, when he comes back…or that he could be the reason for that.

I think it is more like…Guts  wasn t aware that he didn t had to climb the mountain, but maybe just had to look at Griffith differently.

tbh i spent a good chunk of my golden age re-read pondering how guts and casca relate to griffith in different, opposing ways, and never coming to any proper conclusions

but i find it interesting that guts does see griffith as different, and godlike, and perfect (at least after overhearing the speech) while casca sees him as a vulnerable, real person with insecurities and issues of his own, and keeps trying to tell guts that.

and yet casca is the one who showers him with worship while guts treats him with irreverence, disobeying his orders, insisting they go and hang out with him after casca muses over how “distant” he is after a battle, questioning him, letting loose and acting playful around him, deliberately placing himself to protect griffith at the battle of doldrey, “he’s the only person i can’t stand looking down on me,” etc.

i have a vague idea that the discrepency between how guts thinks of him vs how guts treats him is at least partially bc guts planned to uproot his life and abandon his friends to get on griffith’s level, which lbr is a bad decision to make if you don’t believe griffith is on a level somewhere way above you, so he subconsciously ignores and deflects all indications that griffith is just a flawed person in his singleminded focus on his own “dream.”

which is similar to what i perceive griffith does wrt his own dream. like, if the castle is what shines in griffith’s mind, then griffith is what shines in guts’ mind. and i feel like griffith also has to subconsciously convince himself that his dream is worth pursuing despite the negative consequences. ~parallels

and omg yes @ your last sentence. i rly think the golden age was all about false perceptions, yk?

mastermistressofdesire:

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Scrolling thru my blog past this art and suddenly hit by a huge amount of love for Casca. If I could rescue one character from their shitty writing (in anything, not just Berserk) it would be her.

The more I think about it the more appealing the thought of her waking up and absolutely wrecking everything is. Like I know this doesn’t make sense because the same dude is still the writer, but there’s something viscerally satisfying to imagining her getting her mind back, gaining some impressive amount of power (Behelit, elf powerup, whatever), and metaphorically flipping the table and completely changing the trajectory of the plot as a pseudo-meta response to being locked away as a non-entity for 2 decades, and playing support for two dudes before that. I want her to cause something to happen that’s as epic and active and hardcore as her being a childlike waif for so long is passive and shitty and awful.

Idk I guess I’m mad about it so I want to see Casca angry – effectively angry.

Like all this thematic stuff about inner beasts becoming literal beasts ft Griffith and Guts, and the character I most want to see lose themselves to rage is Casca. Even if it’s depicted as a negative I would be fistpumping.

Those years of being locked away in your own head need to count for something.
I’m a little sick of Casca’s romantic ‘feminisation’ arc which took place simultaneously to the Gatsca mini arc.

It’s almost as if, by virtue of realising her feminity and ‘gentleness’ Casca suddenly started getting more positive attention and began to be written as more likeable.

Like as long as she was the head strong commander who called Guts out on his shit and kept everyone in line she was the ‘salty bitch’ and suddenly she’s trembling and blushing and holding onto Guts’ cape and she’s everyone’s ‘waifu’ .

I don’t have a problem with the softness. I have a problem with how this is treated differently in the narrative than how she originally was portrayed. And one is positive and the other was rather unflattering.

omg strong agree

it was like as soon as casca became a love interest she started fretting about whether her muscles weren’t womanly, judeau talks about how she had to give up being a woman (lol jesus) as a mercinary, when she takes the healing powder to guts he also fondly thinks about how she’s “showing a soft side,” and then during the sex scene you have her getting self conscious of her scars and guts having to tell her he thinks she’s womanly enough.

like it’s run of the mill sexist stuff but still so annoying and unnecessary. i wouldn’t even dislike casca being self conscious when sex enters the picture because like, fine, she’s inexperienced, she’s different than most women in that she’s a strong mercinary, i could understand that affecting her self-image, but combined with the running commentary from judeau, plus like how you said, the way she seems to get consistently weaker and clingier and blushier, just doesn’t sit well with me.

(which isn’t to say she doesn’t still have some great moments after getting love interested up, but it’s like she has to be damseled extra hard to compensate.)

plus just in general what I love most about her seems to be more her informed attributes and a few moments of awesomeness (punching a wounded man in the stomach because she doesn’t like him, terrifying corkus, wholly commanding the respect and adoration of the Hawks, being called the 3rd best fighter in the Band who can take on ten strong men at once even if we never get to see that in action, taking command and leading the Hawks when Midland turns on them and at the start of the Eclipse, etc) so when she returns as a full character I’d just, really love to see that badass side in full epic action finally, without being weakened by her period or a drug or exhaustion, or up against an extra powerful enemy Guts needs to save her from, etc etc.

dicks-out-for-griffith:

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dicks-out-for-griffith:

@bthump

I think you have mentioned a few times how you would like to see people exploring NeoGriffith’s mind in a similar manner to Casca’s. And I would like to add, maybe this is the reason why he is said to dread a witch more than a whole army (or something similar).

The first thing he does after being reborn is to make sure he doesn’t feel any emotions any longer – especially towards Guts. And even if he believes the reason why his heart was bthumping was the demon kid, we already saw him hesitating to harm Guts during the Eclipse – even though he was bereft of any humanity, a physical body and his heart was frozen. Or at least this is how I saw the scene.

Because this is certainty to me:

While this is hesitation:

This scene was even better in the movies.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at – while trying to tell himself he is free, he must have had a reason – doubt – to visit Guts and prove it, which only proved the opposite.

And I think, what if the reason he seems to dread witches is, that he is aware he has a weakness, after all – somewhere deep inside, spot, a place, a feeling or a memory, which once brought back to life might mean his downfall – and only magical beings like them can enter his subconscious and trigger such a change.

And another meta about this so called “Age of Darkness“, which is related to this post – what if actually making him weak again is what would cause it – similar to the Eclipse. Because we all know how he handles, when being hurt and desperate.

I want this so much.

Gr8 point about how he was specifically going after Flora – and you know, the fact that Flora got killed but her protege got away has got to lead to Schierke doing something that Griffith feared Flora would do, right?

And we’ve seen Schierke do a lot of psychic exploration, with Guts and now Casca. So I’m down with this theory.

Plus like, the concept of someone getting inside NeoGriffith’s head and altering him again – unlocking latent emotions properly, or whatever – is so good. Dude’s been through weird magic processes that alter his mind twice now, so third time’s a charm.

Also interesting thought about the Age of Darkness – I’ve been assuming it’s the whole high fantasy thing, but we really don’t know for sure, do we?

Semi-relatedly, I’ve had a thought before that while NeoGriff is the messiah/saviour of humanity/dude who grants humanity’s subconscious desires and has the power to save or damn everyone according to the lost chapter, etc, does that hold completely true if the theory that he’s incomplete (because 2 of his sacrifices escaped) is true?

Like is there a scenario where he goes against what humanity wants deep down because his remaining emotions get the better of him once again? Idk this feels like it would fit well with your (rly cool tbh) idea of a weakened/hurt NeoGriff lashing out irrationally and starting an actual Age of Darkness, so I thought I’d throw it in.

Thanks for tagging me in this!

Also interesting thought about the Age of Darkness – I’ve been assuming
it’s the whole high fantasy thing, but we really don’t know for sure, do
we?

I think it is made to seem this way – the Age of Darkness being the new world he created, because even if Falconia is a paradise, the rest of the world isn’t.

But he is also said (like you mentioned) to fulfil humanity’s deepest desires and this new fantasy world is hinted to be what they have always longed for (hinted or straight away said to be like this, I really need to reread the manga.) And to me it seems (in case the Lost Chapter is still relevant), that if he was given the choice to either save or damn humanity, he headed towards “save“, which is why Falconia is the way it is – an utopia.

But if he was to be weakened or hurt again, he might as well change his mind and wreck everything or something equally sinister. If he can unleash people’s deepest desires, I think unleashing their deepest fears/nightmares should be possible too. And that he is incomplete might play the most important role in his change of heart. Hell, that he is incomplete might even be a part of the plan for all we know.

We know the Godhand is manipulative – we saw the games they played with him during the Eclipse, so maybe his reincarnation is an incomplete messiah, who believes to have himself fully in control, while actually not, might be actually planned. Maybe not even by them, but by the IoE itself.

What I mean to say is, while Skully and the others like to believe they exist outside of the Law of causality, this belief might as well be a part of the ultimate plan – so things like the crack in the world can happen, so Guts believes he is determining his fate, while actually moving the way he is supposed to with a Behelit in his freaking purse.

I mean those are only theories, but if the Age of Darkness is such a huge “event”, they it might as well be unavoidable. If someone can influence everything so much, that Griffith is born the way he is supposed to be, they can as well make sure Femto is reborn incomplete, if that’s needed.

man fate in berserk gives me a headache. But this is another point that I’ve been thinking about actually – the fact that Femto is totally beholden to fate, not outside of it or controlling it or even necessarily entirely aware of his role in it.

Because it was totally fate’s plan (or however tf you’d phrase it) that Casca and Guts survive the eclipse. SK even points it out – Rickert just happens to show up after they escape with a bag of magical healing elf dust and Guts just happens to know the dude who lives in the elf cave where he dumps Casca and it just so happens that 2 surviving sacrifices were needed to trigger the mock eclipse that brought Griffith back into the mortal realm etc.

But Femto’s not in on it lol. That panel up there proves it. If Miura wanted to show us that Femto chose to let them survive so the demon fetus could crawl out of Casca and go on its merry way before getting eaten by an egg and turning into Griffith or whatever the fuck, then we would’ve seen a close-up of Casca from Femto’s point of view before he lowered his hand. (Also he wouldn’t’ve raised his hand in the first place if he wanted them to escape, but w/e.) But Miura wanted to show us that Griffith’s Guts-related irrationality is acting up, so ofc we get a close-up of Guts.

So yeah basically I think you’re right about how fate/the IoE/whatever has plans and Femto/NeoGriff is another pawn.

everytime i try to imagine an ending for berserk i cant come up with anything solid because miura completely subverted the good/evil trope. like you got an antag whos actually the messiah and acting out god and humanitys will/desires while the protag isnt fighting for any greater good but merely for revenge. if guts ends up killing griffith then what the hell happens? does god die too and the wheel of fate get broken? what would exactly constituite a satisfactory ending for this story to you?

dicks-out-for-griffith:

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Same, this is a real problem for me because I like trying to predict things, but I just can’t with Berserk lol.

I feel like he could swing an ending where somehow the Idea of Evil/Fate in general is like… defeated by humanity, who, thanks to whatever, would now rather struggle in an uncaring universe than blame all their problems on God. But I feel like that’s kind of unlikely because, idk, it just feels a little too big of a metaphysical change and too positive of a take on humanity for Berserk.

Honestly for me if Griffith does something irrational because he (not the damn fetus that’s a red herring as far as I’m concerned) still feels those pesky life-ruining emotions for Guts, and in turn Guts demonstrates his mixed-feelings towards Griffith in a powerful way, I’ll consider myself satisfied. Basically I’m thinking a 3rd duel (assuming Guts’ brand of sacrifice, which removes him a little from fate according to Skull Knight, means he can potentially hurt Griffith) where emotions are at their peak.

I’ve also vaguely considered an ending where Guts lets Griffith stab him, because he has a bad habit of doing that when he’s feeling conflicted about killing someone, or when he’s confronted with something that makes him feel guilty (in this case, the memories of human Griffith and their first two duels). In this scenario Griffith would be shocked because he expected Guts to block or w/e a la that time Casca stabbed him, and maybe have a breakdown beside his corpse.

I have a whole long speculative post here too but I can’t commit myself to one perfect ending lol, there’s so many possibilities. At the end of the day I just want that heavy emotional GutsGriff drama.

Another perfect ending i have thought of is Griffith dying by someone else’s hand. And Guts arriving there too late, wanting to actually fight Griffith himself, but once he gets there, Griffith is already gone – probably even turned back to his broken state before the eclipse. And all that’s left of him is his body. Guts sees it and cannot handle it – he didn’t even have the chance to put all that happened behind himself and seeing Griffith so destroyed makes him completely break down, eventually let the Beast take over completely to not feel the pain any longer. He eventually gets killed by Casca or Serpico. Happy ending!

Nice! And with this inspiration, I just want to throw out: what if Casca does it? Say she goes apostle or gets a power up and is pissed off and leaves to avenge herself. And you have Guts going after her, not sure whether he wants to help Casca, or stop her to save her soul from the ravages of revenge, or stop her because he wants to kill Griffith himself, or stop her because he still doesn’t fully want Griffith to die. But he’s too late.

Gambino vs Griffith

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.

Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.

Keep reading

So I remember saying that I had many thoughts on this but going back an examining them I found that pretty much all of that was mostly just me agreeing with the things you had already gone over in your post.

One thing though, Guts visualising Griffith in the moon is kind of a very interesting image for me. Because we have two other strong instances of similar imagery. The night Guts kills Gambino and at the end of Run he makes from Godo’s cave post-eclipse. In both cases he’s down, flat on his back, exhausted, doubting everything he’s ever known, not having any particular desire to go on.

And just then he looks up at the moon, and slowly pulls himself up again.

The presence of the moon almost seems to galvanise his actions and light up the way for him. Guts in that moment, seeing Griffith’s face in the moon and dedicating his current life path to him kinda seems like a symbolic extension of this fact.

Actually It’s interesting how Griffith is visualised in Guts head as to do with sources of lights, On the stairs of promrose hall he appears like a beacon, visualised as light at the end of the tunnel, as an inferno, as the moon, campfires, “Dazzling”, “burns so bright”.

Guts is one of the maybe only characters who has never compared Griffith to inanimate things or commodities- Never a doll, painting, statue, fine wine, idol or sculpture.

Fires are quite alive.

Nice! I’ve been checking out the moon imagery as I read and scratching my head ngl. I feel like the full moon represents fulfillment of some kind. Magic is at its strongest, moonlight kid shows up, Guts finds the will to keep going, Guts dedicates his sword to Griffith, etc.

Conversely, the eclipse is technically a new moon, and non-full moons appear prominently occasionally during signficant moments like Guts and Griffith’s last assassination together, Sonia’s chapter on loneliness, Rosine flying back home and dying, Ganeshka leveling up to Eldrich Abomination status (”on a night when you can’t see the moon”), etc

But idk it’s not completely consistent or anything and it’s nothing I can draw conclusions from.

Also gooooood point about Griffith as a source of light to Guts I don’t have anything to add to that, but it’s perfect.

Gambino vs Griffith

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

Time to finally lay out my thoughts on these parallels and contrasts between Gambino, Griffith and Femto/NeoGriff.

Ok so starting with Human Golden Age 100% Certified Organic Griffith, even tho the parallels start off strong in the Black Swordsman arc, whatever, we’ll go chronologically.

Keep reading

I love all of this. And can I say that the whole thing with his flashback and Casca and him saying sorry to Gambino broke my heart? It hurt so much that he felt any guilt about it. If I remember correctly Casca at first says something like;
“And he assaulted you?”
And Guts is like;
“No. Yes? I killed him. I killed my father.”
That whole thing just broke my heart and the fact that we know that it’s what they have in common that tears them apart hurts to think about. I wonder if Guts reminded Griffith of anyone?

Oh maaan yeah that exchange is so good and sad. Verbatim (bc I have the page handy and I absolutely love this dialogue) it’s:

“Gambino assaulted you… so you killed him?”
“No! Gambino was different! I never meant to kill him! He took me in when I was a baby and almost dead. He taught me the sword. So why…?! Why’d he sell me out to that pig-bastard?”

which is just so heartbreaking. Then it’s a page later that he tells her how he accidentally killed him and finishes with, “I’m sorry… Gambino. Father…”

And good question. You have to wonder, with Griffith’s love at first sight thing, what it was about Guts that had him so entranced from the start. He talks about his tenacious ‘throwing himself into danger and then fighting to survive’ fighting style, but it does make you wonder if that’s all there is to it. If Griffith had slowly grown to love Guts i think i could fully understand why, but dude was fixated and risking his life for him from the very beginning.

do you think there’s any parallels between guts and griffith’s relationship and farneze and serpico’s?

mastermistressofdesire:

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mastermistressofdesire:

Oh yeah.

Oh hell yeah.

There’s definitely some moments between Farnese and Serpico  which personally appear to me as echoes of golden age dynamics between Guts and Griffith, the wording in some cases seeming similar enough to almost  seem like an intentional parallel.

But the parallels are also not extremely consistent ,especially in the frequent exchanging of the respective roles within the dynamic between Farnese and Serpico. In some cases it’s almost more of a twisting around of the original than a parallel. Taking into account that despite the similarities that I will go into in a moment, these are four very distinct characters.

The instance which immediately comes to mind when you say parallel is the instance when Farnese asks Serpico if he hates her. It’s very similar to Griffth’s- “You must think me vile.” moment.

There’s some other Farnese- Griffith parallels.

1. Using Control over specific people to deal with their feelings of loneliness or helplessness. Referring to Serpico/ Guts as property is a big part of this ,as is the fact that despite saying it neither of them actually mean it.

2. Farnese/Griffith starting as the commander, owner.

3.Self-flagellation

4. Guts love.

5.There’s actually some deeper things which I will come back to most probably.

6. A slight similarity in visual design.

7. Oh and them being turned on by very fucked up things and having some rather strange interpretations of sexuality and ending up in bizarre sexual situations.

the Guts-Serpico parallels come from them both being the concerned right  hand men to these slightly volatile people.

there’s Griffith and Serpico parallels in this sort of veiled intensity and ruthlessness behind a calm facade. not to mention similar fighting styles.

And the fact that both of them are very single mindedly focussed on their goals which if interfered with make them prone to homicide. With Griffth it was the castle ( or so he thought) with serpico it’s protecting Farnese (or so he thinks)

and the Guts and Farnese parallel in that both of them start with being unsure of what their place is in the world and start to try the road to discovering themselves .

With Farnese/Griffith parallels I could also see a potential argument that they both rely on extreme adherence to a conviction as a defense mechanism. With Farnese it was her religion, with Griffith it’s his dream. I wonder if seeing the origins of how Farnese found her conviction could actually shed light on how Griffith came to hold the dream above all else tbh. yk, fear and wanting to become what’s feared. but that’s just un-backed-up speculation.

(also for point 7: what “very fucked up things” are you referring to that turn Griffith on? is that more of a Femto reference or am I completely forgetting something?)

Actually that Farnese/ Griffith parallel makes perfect sense. It seems very fitting and plausible.

Oh yeah,regarding point 7, I think I discussed this with someone before and came to the conclusion that it could be a very subjective interpretation I made of a certain translation of the manga and at this point I don’t remember if it was the Darkhorse translation or another one but the conclusion hit me so hard at the time- it kind of stuck.

It’s actually during the Golden age arc, during the Griffith-Charlotte scene, in the version I read Griffith asks Charlotte if she’s scared and when she doesn’t reply verbally he says- “Sad things…scary things…if these things can arouse you then-” and trails off in true Griffith fashion.

but of course he’s saying it with that distracted stare which Griffith uses when he’s actually talking to himself .

And idk really, my first reaction was- okay that’s…ouch.

And I later thought about it and realised it might not necessarily be the right interpretation. But it was warped enough to be an idea i forgot to let go of.

And then when we’re talking about Grifith and sex, it’s hard not to touch upon the Gennon angle. And it’s not that I think Griffith was in any was aroused by that interaction, I just think that from what we know that was most probably Griffith’s first sexual experience and somehow the connection between fear, unpleasantness, sorrow and sexuality may have been made then and stuck.

It would explain the nature of Griffith’s later sexual encounters a little too. The fact that he sees these things as innately linked. And sex for Griffith is intrinsically associated with otherwise unpleasant emotions.

The first experience colouring future interactions aspect is brought up with Guts as well , with him choking Casca as they made love.

There’s actually also a connection I feel between sex and vulnerability, giving up or letting go . Any sort of extreme emotional ‘leak’ has always been followed up with a sexual encounter in Griffith’s narrative. Whether it was the death of the boy soldier, Guts leaving then the ultimate emotional out pour of the eclipse.

ooooh, yk even if that is based on a mistranslation (bc yeah the dark horse version is just ‘cast all those sad and frightening things into the fire’ p much) it totally integrates into both berserk’s take on sexuality and internal darkness and it really does fit griffith as a character.

it could basically function the same way as the actual translation, ie as a description of emotional denial, except where ‘cast them into the fire’ suggests burying feelings and ignoring them, your take suggests taking those negative feelings and transforming them into something useful. which is so eclipse.

so like even if that’s relegated to headcanon, I love it and imo it really works.

trulyhumblenarcissist:

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@trulyhumblenarcissist yeah I’m thinking this is getting too long so I’m going to reply as a new post and just link the previous thread.

also maybe read mores this time just in case we keep going on at length back and forth like before

Continua a leggere

Well, as for Farnese and Casca I do like their relationship and in theory those two are perfectly suited for each other (if we want to analyse their characterizations, but I also think they’re hot together even without complicate reasoning 😂 ). But… I generally feel involved with things that have more background. Farnese somehow showed interest in Guts, that is NOT LOVE obviously and that still perplexes me. I don’t particularly like love triangles and thier pallid imitations just because the plot needs more “spicy things”. The thought of Farnese and Guts doesn’t make sense and is also undermining for Farnese’s growth. Guts is a symbol, a sparkle that Farnese needed in order to break free from her old life. He can’t be anything more, but still, in one of the latest chapters, Farnese got angry at Casca because of Guts’ “man pain” for her. I don’t get this, just like I don’t get Roderick’s permanence. As for Serpico, I agree that he’s really dependant on Farnese, but they grew up like that, like plants in the dark intertwining each other in their desperate seek for light. Serpico had the only purpose of protecting Farnese, because he didn’t knew anything else. Lately he’s showing more emotions and his journey with Guts’ party is giving him a life filled with new experiences. So… I guess he’s changing too, even if we don’t see clearly what he feels (Farnese’s growing process is central right now so it gets a much detailed description). I don’t know, I’m probably biased because I love Farnese and Serpico together in all their creepiness 😂
This leads me to the second main point… I love Griffith’s side a lot too, but Guts’ quest is getting duller and some plot points don’t really make sense to me. Random characters popping out, pirates, sirens, useless brothers, useless and excessive comedy…
So, what I’d like to see? Roderick and Magnifico vanishing into thin air, Casca regaining her sanity, but choosing to be free, thus separating herself from the group, maybe with Farnese and Serpico. Guts needs to master his power, so Shierke is fundamental (I like her tbh). I also want a time skip due to the influx of Elfhem. I wonder if Griffith is still subjected to the aging process and if he can have “normal” children. I want his wedding with charlotte also…
I really want SOMETHING to happen, just like you also said.

PS: making a new post is great idea!

Yeah ikwym I love Farnesca in theory but to be really invested in a ship I need to see them interact (while both are mentally aware). I’m hoping we’ll get some good stuff when Casca comes back.

And wrt Farnese’s crush on Guts, I actually liked seeing it compared to Casca’s crush on Griffith in the lastest chapter. I don’t really mind it, as long as it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere and is acknowledged as a flaw. Bc yeah to Farnese he really is like a symbol, the same way Griffith was for Casca. tbh I’d like to see their relationship without the unrequited crush, as just a platonic friendship with mutual respect. Maybe in the future we’ll get that.

I do love seeing the subtle hints of how Serpico’s changing too. The way he seems to admire Guts’ bullheaded take on life as opposed to his own go with the flow thing, the way he’s not just protecting Farnese anymore but also sticking his neck out for everyone else in the group, including Guts in some pretty awesome moments, etc. I wouldn’t want Serpico and Farnese to separate tbh, because ia I do like their weird dynamic, but I love seeing both of them develop, together and separately, and I’d love to see more of how that’s reflected in their dynamic with each other too.

I would love Casca regaining her mind and just walking away and doing her own thing ngl. Especially taking Farnese and Serpico with her – idk if Farnese and Schierke would want to separate but I do love the idea of the group splitting up and both doing plot-relevant things, but Casca and Farnese getting a chance to grow as people away from Guts.

And yes, I could totally see a time skip happening and I mostly want it. My one problem with a time skip is I don’t want Sonia to grow up while Schierke remains a kid bc I low-key ship them, but enh, I still want to see what Falconia (and Rickert, and Griffith, and Silat, and Charlotte etc) are all doing a decade from now, so it’d be worth it.

@trulyhumblenarcissist yeah I’m thinking this is getting too long so I’m going to reply as a new post and just link the previous thread.

also maybe read mores this time just in case we keep going on at length back and forth like before

I pretty much agree with you about Farnese. I liked her even more my scond time through the manga too, she’s surprisingly complex and interesting and I’ve been really enjoying her growth as a character.

Yeah I don’t ship her with Roderick particularly. The idea of Farnese getting married and settling down doesn’t really work for me, I think she’s way more interesting adventuring and continuing to learn new skills and more confidence. I pretty much only ship her with Casca and that’s a pipe dream lol.

I do really enjoy her dynamic with Serpico, though only platonically because I can’t get past the secret incest thing. I don’t necessarily think it’s a super healthy dynamic, Serpico especially is a little too dependent on Farnese for like, his own sense of self, it seems. Yk, like he pretty much only exists in relation to her. But I like slightly fucked up relationships so I dig it. And as they continue on I could see them being happy with their dynamic as is, despite being a little messed up, or growing a little and becoming less emotionally reliant on each other but still remaining a close duo.

As far as recent Berserk goes, I really love Griffith’s side of things, the Ganeshka plot, Rickert, etc. But ngl I am a little bored by Guts’ side. Now that we’re digging into Casca’s psyche I’m intrigued (and nervous) but yeah, the Sea God stuff, Isma, Magnifico and Puck’s comedy sideplot, etc, aren’t super entertaining to me. I’m kind of just waiting for Something to Happen and drive the plot along as soon as Casca returns.

But I think that’s partly because we’re in the midst of it right now and waiting for every new chapter. In hindsight I bet it’ll flow better and maybe feel like a nice break in the drama before shit goes down. Like Berserk doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom all the time, but I do enjoy the doom and gloom a lot, yk? The tragedy, the harsh choices, the fucked up character backstories, the total lack of happy romance, etc, are all big positives to me.

Is there anything that you’re hoping will happen soon?