consider: Berserk Armour vs Femto designs

versus

I just rly like how Femto’s exoskeleton can be drawn to either emphasize
Griffith’s face underneath the helmet or obscure it. It’s such a
good way to either depict Femto as a godlike otherworldly demon or a
petty asshole who can taunt Guts but can’t bring himself to kill him – or
like the bottom pic where after several epic godlike shots from
Ganeshka’s awed point of view, we see his face when he’s doing something
much more Griffith-esque: predicting what Skull Knight will do based on
logic and tactics rather than magic knowledge of fate.

Guts’
armour is more literal – when his face is hidden beneath the helmet,
he’s lost himself to his darkness. Femto’s is symbolic as his helmet
doesn’t change, only the angle we see him from changes, but imo it’s
really well-utilized to emphasize or de-emphasize whatever remains of
Griffith. And I think it’s definitely a trend – not 100% the case in
every panel, but overall when we see Femto’s whole face, it tends to be
in moments of weakness or pettiness, in moments where he’s demonstrating human feelings, however twisted they’ve become, and when either his eyes or his
mouth or both are obscured, it tends to emphasize his distance from
Guts, his godliness, his monstrosity.

Also, and tbf this I’m
less sure about bc I can’t remember every moment where Guts thinks about
Femto, but in general I think it holds true: Guts tends to picture
Femto with face partially or entirely obscured when he’s feeling the distance/difference between them and/or murderous rage

and face very visible in moments that emphasize Guts’ similarity to him, and danger of becoming him

idk i just think it’s neat

phydia63
replied to your post “phydia63
replied to your post “There are two important parallels…”

Miura was cockocking them with plot armour and miscommunication tropes. Let them fuck Miura you coward!

ikkkkkkkkr

the golden age is straight up a slow burn mutually requited pining story except instead of eventually figuring their shit out they ruin everything forever

they love each other and they can’t see that they’re loved in return and if miura just let them fuck everyone would’ve lived happily ever after

There are two important parallels during the waterfall scene, when Guts and Casca fight, then fuck.

The first is this parallel to Guts and Griffith’s second duel.

Casca is the new leader of the Hawks, taking over Griffith’s role. She
challenges and fights Guts when he returns, in a mirror of Griffith
challenging and fighting him before he leaves. Then she falls to her
knees and has a self-destructive
breakdown. The last time the leader of the Hawks had a breakdown after
fighting him, Guts walked away. The scenario has presented itself again,
and this time Guts makes a different choice, one that might have
changed everything a year ago: he comforts her.

Sex with Casca is Guts subconsciously (from a character perspective) or symbolically (from a narrative perspective) trying to fix past mistakes, imo.

Throughout the fight by the waterfall, Casca is screaming at him that he broke Griffith by leaving, that it’s his fault. This scene is all about Griffith and their feelings towards him. For Guts, it’s the beginning of his eventual revelation that leaving was a mistake because Griffith didn’t look down on him after all – because Griffith’s “no good without” him.

The fact that Guts lets Casca stab him as she screams this tells us that her words hit home and he feels guilty, even as he denies it. It’s a pattern of behaviour for Guts that we’ve seen before and will see again, eg, when he let the zombie child stab him in the second chapter because he blamed himself for her death, and then denied feeling responsible to Puck afterwards (”If you’re always worried about crushing the ants beneath you… you won’t be able to walk.”)

He represses that guilt and doesn’t manage to acknowledge his mistake until about five minutes before the Eclipse, unfortunately, but this is how we know he feels it regardless, and this is how we know it’s informing his choices now – specifically, his choice to comfort, kiss, and have sex with Casca.

Guts’ denial of guilt while clearly feeling it is reminiscent of another character too:

This is the second parallel, to Casca finding Griffith in the river.

Casca eventually yanks her sword out of Guts, admits to him that she’s romantically in love with Griffith, proceeds to list all the ways Griffith is wholly unavailable (he needs to marry Charlotte, Guts took the place she wanted at Griffith’s side, and now he may not even be alive), bequeaths Griffith to Guts, and tries to kill herself. Griffith Griffith Griffith – the lead-in to sex revolves around him. Guts thinking about how he abandoned him in the snow, Casca thinking about how Griffith doesn’t need her, and Guts beginning to realize that Griffith needed him.

So Guts saves her from her suicide attempt, then comforts her through sex.

And Casca does the same in return:

She couldn’t comfort Griffith, she couldn’t be Griffith’s “woman,” she couldn’t be be something indispensable to Griffith’s dream, but she can comfort Guts, she can have sex with Guts, she can help Guts achieve his dream.

The situations requiring her comfort are even v similar – Guts has just had a flashback to his rape, and Griffith was calling himself “unclean” after selling himself to a pedophilic rapist. Griffith buries his feelings and refuses to be comforted, but Guts pours his heart out to Casca and lets her hold him.

My point is that Guts and Casca having sex is not about the other for either of them – it’s about their respective relationships to Griffith. Guts is presented with a similar scenario to the morning he left the Hawks, and after being told by Casca that he fucked up then and broke Griffith, he chooses a different course of action this time, and comforts and has sex with Casca. Casca is presented with a similar scenario to finding Griffith in the river after Gennon, but instead of being shut out she’s able to comfort the man in emotional turmoil this time.

tl;dr they’re both on the rebound from Griffith here, giving to each other what they didn’t or couldn’t give to him, and there are deliberate visual and situational parallels to illustrate this.

this is the equivalent of an ice cold shower

and it doesn’t even help all that much

good-ol-fashion-robrae:

bthump:

good-ol-fashion-robrae:

jillresia:

good-ol-fashion-robrae:

jillresia:

good-ol-fashion-robrae:

@phydia63 I agree that Casca would be sex repulsed. I don’t want her to have sex again either, that wouldn’t be right. I’m just saying that she wouldn’t be terrified of men, and that she would be happy to see Guts again. If she ever tries to have sex again, Miura should do what he’s been doing for her and what he did for Guts: Have her freak out at the bad memories and stop the act from happening.

Edit: If Casca was going to be afraid of men, she wouldn’t have had sex with Guts in the first place after the multiple times people try to rape her in the Golden Age.

The Beast of Darkness is a part of Guts, but you have to keep in mind that Guts was already unstable. And by that I mean up until he met Griffith, Casca, and the others, he was a violent person and couldn’t trust others for a lot of good reasons. So being betrayed by someone he thought he could trust, AGAIN (referencing Gambino here), losing the girl he loved, then fighting and losing to Griffith on the Hill of Swords gives a very good reason for the Beast of Darkness to exist.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not to trying to apologize for Guts biting Casca, but my point is that he was already fucked up and getting possessed after failing to kill Griffith creates more forgivable circumstances than if Guts had just seen Casca naked and attempted to rape her.

That’s the main issue I have when people cite Guts “assaulting” Casca as a reason they shouldn’t be together/try to argue that Guts is a terrible person. They twist it into something its not and fail to grasp the deeper meaning of the situation.

“Griffguts shippers are nasty and trivialize rape but heres a bunch of paragraphs why guts and casca NEED TO FUCK even tho he assaulted her twice. He wasnt in his right mind so its forgivable, much unlike when griffith was physically and mentally tortured for a solid year and then psychically manipulated by the devil”

Literally the second line is me saying they should haven’t sex

right right, sorry i used vague wording. in my friendgroup “fuck” is a word that refers to any kind of romantic or sexual attachment between people. what you really said is that casca should be happy to see a man who pinned her down and forced himself on her twice when she was at the weakest shed ever been. if casca doesnt enjoy the company of a man who abandoned her in a cave for two years and then tied her up and dragged her around like a dog when he did return it just wont make senze

I just got done arguing with someone that he doesn’t pin her down and attempt (emphasis on attempt) to rape her because Guts is a rapist.

Guts was under the influence of the Beast, which was brought about by him getting possessed by Demons. Read the whole argument here.

And as far as the cave goes, what was he supposed to do? Casca was insane and branded, and the Skull Knight told him that as long as the sun was down, Demons would be coming for them. The only logical thing to do was put her in a safe place where she wouldn’t get attacked by demons while she couldn’t defend herself.

I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. You’re yet another one of those people who thinks that Guts almost (emphasis on almost) raping Casca while he’s inner beast goads him for failing to kill Griffith and immediately feeling guilt for almost (emphasis on almost) forcing himself on her is the same thing as him sadistically raping her for the sheer pleasure of it.

Getting real tired of waking up to see people trying to start shit on my dash.

Guts sexually assaulted Casca. Say it’s not as bad as Femto sexually assaulting her all you want, create a big scale of totally-excusable to horrific incidences of fictional rape if you want, the fact remains that Guts sexually assaulted her and now she’s afraid of him, and that’s the case regardless of what Femto did, so I don’t know why you insist on comparing them to try to justify Guts’ actions.

Also what Guts was “supposed to do,” which was pointed out to him by Godo and Erica and Rickert, was stay with Casca in the cave and turn it into a home, and deal with his feelings instead of going on a pointless rampage of revenge.

I’m glad you linked that post you wrote because I don’t want to reblog it to refute it, since I don’t put images of sexual assault on my blog without a readmore. So, refution for the linked post:

You are wrong. Between Guts’ brief possession when he strangles Casca and the sexual assault, time has passed. There’s a montage and everything while he drags Casca around from fight to fight.

When Guts does assault Casca, it’s broad daylight, not a ghost in sight, and he is not possessed by a damn thing.

The
brief possession is not a prelude to another possession, the purpose it serves is to show us how weak Guts
is growing in willpower and resolve (Puck is pretty much narrating this
fact for us), which leads to him giving in to his own worst instincts
later on. Additionally, Guts himself questions whether he was really compelled to do something he didn’t want to do.

The visuals indicate that he was possessed, but his own doubt indicates
that he doubts himself, that he thinks he himself is capable of harming
Casca regardless – which fits nicely with the flash of the Beast we see in the
possession scene. It’s a perfect, straight forward set-up for Guts’ own internal weakness and
inability to keep his own darkness at bay during the assault scene in the following chapter.

I see you’ve acknowledged that the Beast of Darkness is part of Guts in other posts, so I’m not sure why you keep insisting that being under its influence absolves Guts lol – it literally means he’s giving in to his own worst instincts. You posted the picture of Guts-as-the-Beast assaulting her like it means it wasn’t Guts, while acknowledging elsewhere that the Beast IS part of Guts, so what do you think that image proves exactly? It’s symbolic of what’s going on in Guts’ mind as he pins Casca down, forcibly kisses her (right after a gangrape attempt), and bites her tit.

Also
lmao at phrasing it as “Guts is trying to rescue her from insanity.”
The narrative ominously foreshadows that it’s less a rescue and more
Guts forcing her to confront trauma before she’s ready, knowing
full-well that he’s doing what he himself wants, not necessarily what
she wants:

So consider that before asserting that Guts is a clear cut white knight only doing what’s best for Casca.

(incidentally
pointing out that Guts isn’t constantly trying to rape her and even
averted his eyes from her tits and therefore he never could assault her
is the most bizarre logic I’ve ever seen, and if you take that to its
logical conclusion then Griffith/Femto couldn’t possibly rape Casca bc he saved her
from rape once. So maybe check your own ridiculous arguments before
throwing out insults next time.)

@phydia63 bc you tagged me in the first post that got drama attached to it and this is in part a response to some of it lol. and there wasn’t really much i could add to your first response anyway 🙂

The whole point of this post and the one I linked was refuting people who say “Guts raped Casca”. That didn’t happen. The only reason the Beast of Darkness was able to influence his thoughts more than usual is because of the Incubis in this scene:

Giving him nightmares of killing Casca. Then he immediately refuses the thought:

Yes, you are correct that when he assaults her there aren’t any demons in sight and it’s midday, but an external demon isn’t always the source of turmoil. The Beast of Darkness, from as early on as the Lost Children arc, before Farnese captures Guts, is trying to convince Guts to go rabbid and kill everyone and everything in an an attempt to get to Griffith.

Maybe you thought I mean a demon was possessing him during the day, but that’s not what I meant. Guts has had trouble with the Beast influencing him for a very long time, and after the fight with Griffith and the hill of swords encounter, it’s more understandable to see why Guts acts the way he does.

That’s not the same as defending him. Obviously he needs to come clean with Casca if she can’t remember what happened. But it’s hard to see the Beast as a part of Guts when Guts is adamantly horrified by what he almost (emphasis on almost because most people think that he did rape her) did. I’m pretty sure I brought this up before, but the Beast is a direct result of the events of the eclipse. It’s a symptom of Guts’ trauma, the violent, angry part of him that has always existed given form by demons and encouraging him to become demon himself.

Yes, you are also right when citing Godo telling Guts to have saved Casca by staying with her and making it a home instead of leaving her behind. I will admit that what I said was wrong, at least in part.

But Guts has also been very emotional and hasn’t ever thought things through. He left the original Band of the Hawk because he didn’t want to be trapped in Griffith’s dream, even though he was content and happy there. He calls himself stupid for doing so, in fact.

He’s not a genius, and he’s never had a real family or anyone to show him how to help others. He did what he did best, which was leave and kill things. It’s kind of stupid to assume that Guts would do the smart thing when he’s consistently done dumb things over the course of the manga. After all, in battle he’s not some master tactician, he just goes in with brute strength and a large sword, trading blows with the demons.

THE WHOLE POINT OF THESE POSTS IS THIS:

People are taking what happened, massively oversimplifying it and turning it into a situation that just simply didn’t happen, and then trying to insist that they are right when they are getting the events of the story wrong. I didn’t say anywhere that Guts was a white knight (more than once in this thread I’ve been bringing up Guts’ flaws).

I’m sick of people, especially shippers, try and take the events that happened, ignore what happens in canon, then pretend that Guts is some evil serial rapist when that’s just not the case, at all.

I’m glad to finally meet someone who’s actually read the manga and had an intelligent argument.

The others you responded to have also read the manga, are very intelligent, and are probably just fatigued as fuck by this repetitive argument we see all the time in fandom and have no more energy to grace you with a decent argument when you’re the one picking fights.

I’m not fatigued because I usually manage to avoid these arguments lol, so here’s the thing: I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and rather than going back to evidence of this vs evidence of that in the manga, I’m just going to explain my perspective, in the hopes that you’ll understand where I (and possibly, though I can’t speak for them, others you’ve responded to) am coming from. But I have to go to work soon so this is probably going to be the end of my part in this conversation, just a heads up.

Guts has committed sexual assault twice. That’s just a fact. Note that sexual assault is not just penetrative rape, but also includes rape attempts and non-consensual non-penetrative sexual contact. To many of us it’s still extremely abhorrent, unsympathetic, and unforgiveable, and splitting hairs between penetrative rape and “pinned her down and forcibly kissed her right after she was sexually assaulted and bit her breast” is unnecessary, because in either case we don’t care to excuse the perpetrator’s actions.

Were Guts’ actions as bad as Femto’s, or any number of other characters who have committed sexual assault? I honestly don’t really give a fuck, I still hold Guts responsible for his actions (as the Beast of Darkness is part of him and essentially a metaphor for Guts lashing out due to trauma), and consider him a non-viable romantic partner for Casca because of them, and that is a perfectly reasonable opinion as far as I’m concerned. No one is obligated to forgive anyone, let alone a fictional character lol, and he doesn’t need anyone to go to bat for him when people express disgust with some of the events in Berserk, because he’s not real.

My point here is to say who cares if people are simplifying it. Guts committed sexual assault, and no one is obligated to split hairs and try to justify it, excuse it, or sympathize with his regret.

The main reason I myself can still enjoy Berserk despite Miura’s unfortunate tendency to depict the darkness of humanity through sexual assault 9 times out of 10 is because I compartmentalize. I write it off as Miura’s big flaw, and therefore I’m fully capable of still enjoying Guts, and Griffith, as characters. I love Guts, flaws, idiocy, heroism, darkness and light and all, and I love the same in Griffith. But any potential romance between Guts and Casca now is something I would find immensely uncomfortable and would certainly detract from my enjoyment of Berserk, and that is also a perfectly reasonable opinion based on what we’re shown in the manga.

Incidentally this would also be the case if I thought a romance between NeoGriffith and Casca was at all a possibility. I feel like that should go without saying, but as you condemn people for liking Griffith yet not excusing Guts, I feel like it’s worth mentioning. I don’t excuse either of Casca’s assailants, I don’t ship her with either of them, but I still like them both as characters, because they are still both interesting and mostly well-written characters, and there’s no contradiction there. I don’t have to excuse or justify Guts’ actions or Griffith’s actions to continue to enjoy them as characters, because they are fictional.

It seems clear to me that we’re coming at this from very different perspectives and ways of relating to media, reasons for liking characters, and particularly the way rape/assault is depicted in media, and we’re probably not going to come to an agreement here.

But I’d like to ask you to consider that everyone has their own perspectives on fiction, how they read and relate to it, and there’s nothing contradictory about not shipping G/C because of sexual assault yet still enjoying Guts as a character, or Guts and Griffith as characters or even as a ship. It’s fiction, we take what we can enjoy from it and leave the rest. If fictional sexual assault was an automatic deal-breaker for enjoying characters most of us wouldn’t be Berserk fans at all – we don’t need to forgive Guts’ actions, we can just enjoy the elements of the story we like despite them.

Finally, I just want to point out that ime most non Guts/Casca fans wouldn’t ship G/C anyway due to a number of factors, but tend to point out the sexual assault when others call them immoral, or rape apologists, etc for liking Griffith or shipping Guts/Griffith. G/C shippers don’t have a higher horse here, is the point, and splitting hairs to argue that Guts’ actions should be forgiven while saying that anyone who likes Griffith is a rape apologist is somewhat hypocritical.

(ps I do want to make clear that wrt Guts’ possession, the fact that you brought it up as a partial reason for his later assault on Casca made me assume you meant he was at least somewhat possessed in both instances (the second time by the Beast), and I have seen lots of other people argue that, so my bad there. Though I do think the possession was a symptom of his lack of resolve and inability to control his own inner darkness, not a cause of it.)

you know what doesn’t get enough attention in fandom?

they’re literally across a huge ass ballroom from each other, and guts is outside and barely visible when they exchange tender smiles.

it’s like this:

but this is what he actually saw:

casca knowing what’s what

also speaking of comparing the torture chamber and griffith becoming femto:

idk seems like a fitting illustration of how by sacrificing guts, ie the light within him, a fissure opens up into which evil surges. even if it’s coincidental

[Insert Ganeshka’s backstory of isolation and fear here.]

eh? eh?

ok honestly I’m just throwing shit at the wall but Ganeshka’s lonely freakout really really intrigues me, that plus the talk of light and dark reminds me both of Griffith in the torture chamber and Griffith as he’s transforming into Femto, and while yeah NeoGriff’s “within darkness that true light is discovered” bit is much more metaphysical (yk more to do with the fact that Griffith had to become Femto to become the saviour of humanity, probably), the fact that it’s in response to Ganeshka’s total loss of himself and everyone around him, the fact that the light Ganeshka longs for has shifted from something he considers his enemy to the only connection he has in an unknowable lonely world just… resonates man. I love it.

“You can see. Because he who bears the light exists in the deepest shadow.” Ganeshka can see NeoGriffith’s true form because he’s the only one on the same plane of existence of him, and that plane is defined by despair – despair opens the behelit that makes him an apostle, despair in the face of an inevitable loss sends him into that reincarnation thing to become a god, and his brief existence as a god is defined by existential terror and isolation. In a way he and NeoGriff are both made out of the same stuff the Idea of Evil is made out of. that’s the “darkness” imo.

And despair is the darkness of the torture chamber (give or take the lightning blazing within him that is Guts) and it’s what Griffith succumbs to when he sinks into darkness and becomes Femto.

Also

while the “light” referred to might more literally be Griffith-as-godly-saviour, bringer of peace to humanity or whatever, I’m thinking it works as a symbol of that longing for connection.

like idk the way I take Berserk’s use of light and darkness as symbols is, essentially, darkness is the despair that opens the behelit and light is what you sacrifice. darkness – the swirling negative emotions that make up the idea of evil. light – connection, love, joy, family, peace, brotherhood yadda yadda yadda. or at least the potential for those things.

Griffith/Femto appears right after Ganeshka’s backstory of being unable to connect with anyone around him because of his paranoia – loneliness and fear. He gives Ganeshka that brief sense of connection before his death as the light envelops him.

I’m basically just thinking outloud in a disorganized way here bc tbqh I have such a hard time sussing out what “It’s within darkness that true light is discovered” means in the overall context of Berserk. Like, other than Griffith going ‘lol I’m evil but also saving the world.’ that’s too reductive. But I think longing (darkness) for connection (light) maybe works for me? thanks to Ganeshka’s whole thing being isolation.

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

yesgabsstuff:

mastermistressofdesire:

buhserk:

i was thinking about griffith’s parents earlier, what they might’ve been like, what happened to them, etc. and i thought about griffith’s mother and nearly burst into tears

I’ve thought about this too like.

Damn who was that lady.

Also i had this dream like she was a single lady and stuff and then she got sick and she had these really assholish lovers and thats were griffith gets his….

And griffith saw her getting murdered or something and ran away proper.

My thoughts are not very coherent about this.

@jillresia @griffithsgaymom @yesgabsstuff @bthump any ideas?

I always assumed he was some kind of out of wedlock birth and that his mother was very young. I kinda feel like she had some kind of job that was “respectable” before getting pregnant and after that had to hustle for her money either by prostitution or thieving. (Probably some combination of the two.)

I mean what would be more distracting and seemingly harmless than a very pretty young woman with a baby? She could pick a lot of pockets that way. I feel like he ended up wanting to help in some way when he got older but I feel like she didn’t let him get too involved in the worst of it. She had some holdovers from her old life, maybe even a book or two and she tried to cobble together some education for him. (This may have led to her putting her trust in people she shouldn’t have and Griffith suffered for it. He never wanted to see her sad so he never told her.)

I feel like she used to get into self destructive moods too but never let herself take it as far as Griffith would grow to. Despite her best efforts to hide these feelings, Griffith still internalized the idea that it was his job to keep her happy.

He gets his looks from her. She died young. I feel she probably died from disease rather than violence because I think that really solidified his desire to never live in poverty again. She always told Griffith that his father was someone important (which might go a long way to explaining his absence regardless of what kind of person his father actually was.)

I could see his father being anyone really. A part of me wonders if his father actually was wealthy or possibly even noble because it would be easier for someone like that to abandon their child. I could also see him equally being a product of love or of violence. It’s like this huge blank slate.

Also who were Guts’ biological parents? It always makes me sad to think that but for fate he could have been raised by someone who loved him.

i have few ideas of my own but i love all these. esp griffith’s mom being a part time thief, i really dig that for some reason.

i guess one thing i can add is that i really dig the idea of griffith’s parents having been in love, and both common, before dying young

it’s a good contrast to griffith’s dream of a marriage of convenience with charlotte. and maybe his mother waxing poetic about his dead father griffith never knew, hearing about love but only ever seeing the sad aftermath, is part of why he’s kind of disconnected from the concept

I totally agree about the blankness there making them both more mythic. The romantic in me wonders if Griffith’s father died in the war? Like his parents intended to marry but he was conscripted before they could and she found out she was pregnant after he died. I wonder if his father was actually someone like Guts.

i kind of like the idea of his father being guts-like, at least in a born soldier (or some other trade), happy just doing his thing kind of way. it wouldn’t really make a difference to griffith as a character necessarily or inform his relationship w/ guts in any way as he never knew him, but it adds a level to griffith’s choice between guts + dream, and how by choosing his dream he throws away part of his humanity and changes into something else.

relatedly i was thinking about griffith’s mother being a dreamer who longed for more, but what if she was actually relatively content? at least before dad dying. idk i’m liking the idea of his parents being symbolic of what griffith throws away in pursuit of his dream.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

gamerweeb:

bthump:

Forgot to mention this when it comes to Griffith + Casca parallels (Guts leaves for a year/two years to pursue a dumb dream, abandoning someone who needs him, then he comes back, realizes he may have fucked up, and rescues them):

Im glad im not alone on this. Its so weird that casca was guts’s last chance to make the right choice but he still messed up in some way.

Ooh yk when you put it like that, what I find striking is that he did make the right choice, pre-Eclipse. He realized he shouldn’t’ve left and decided to stay with Griffith despite getting told multiple times to leave by Casca and Judeau.

It was Casca telling him to leave that fucked Griffith up lol, not Guts wanting to leave or being reluctant to stay.

Whereas with Casca he makes the same mistake again, and directly compares leaving Casca alone in a cave to leaving Griffith, but when he gets Casca back he’s his own worst enemy when it comes to sticking to his resolution to stay with her.

First he plans to leave her in the cave again anyway

and when it caves in he knows he’s not just gonna abandon her in a field somewhere but he’s reluctant af to postpone his revenge quest for her

and then when he decides taking her to Elfhelm is the thing to do he does it still fully intending to return to his revenge quest eventually. (Plus, yk, the fucked up Beast of Darkness shit that happens before he gathers some extra babysitters.)

I don’t really have a point other than Guts taking one step forward with Griffith and ending up like five steps back when the situation is repeated with Casca.

And I mean yeah a lot of shit went down in the interim and he has a pretty good reason to be obsessed with revenge, but the comparison between leaving Griffith and leaving Casca is made over and over by both Guts and the narrative so when you sit down and actually compare them it’s striking that Guts is still like, struggling to rise to the level of caring about someone over his “dream” (fighting stronger and stronger enemies/vengeful rampage) that he’d already reached once with Griffith right before the Eclipse.

I just noticed the parallel with Guts putting his cloak around both of them.

It’s so … quaint.

Also you’re absolutely right. While he sort of makes the decision to stay in both cases. In Griffith’s case it was a final decision he came to after going over his ‘this is where I belong after all’ and consciously admitting to himself that his dream side quest was stupid and unnecessary anyway. And he sticks by that realisation even after Judeau and Casca’s speeches. Casca telling him to leave wasn’t significant because it made Guts’ reconsider his decision, if I remember correctly we aren’t even shown Guts’ face in that panel- it’s significant for Griffith to hear and believe .

If anything Guts had already made the subconscious decision to stay waay before the raiders ran to him.

In the tent/wagon with Griffith he talks about the future once Griffith heals. “ We’ll be able to see that soon enough” he says we.WE.

Whereas with Casca his decision to stay always seems to be in lieu of there either being no other choice or in response to someone else’s prodding. Staying with Casca seems to be a means to an end where he can leave her in a safe and wholesome place and state and move on with a clear mind.

The only time there seems to be a real resolve behind his decision to stay is when he’s directly substituting the situation with already having failed at it with Griffith.

Even his “even if you put something back together piece by piece it may never be the same.” Dialogue ties in with this. He says this after his Griffith fueled Casca endeavor has sort of failed.

And yeah.

After Casca tells him “if you’re Griffith’s friend and equal… you have to. Even if it’s alone… you have to go” we get the “why do I always see these things… after they’re done and gone?” line. It seems p clear to me that that Guts is referring to his realization that he had his “dream” in the palm of his hand and threw it away by leaving to pursue it, ie he broke Griffith’s heart by leaving, though granted it’s not the plainest of statements.

But anyway yeah to me that sounds like Guts is absolutely unwavering in his resolve that he’s going to stay and he thinks leaving in the first place was a great big fuck up.

tbh I do wonder what Guts is thinking will happen when Casca gets her mind back, considering his brooding about the warnings he got. “She went to pieces because she can’t fully cope with it. What will she do if she does get her sanity back?” Like is he hoping she’ll join the trail of revenge with him? Is he planning to just play it by ear – take her with him if she wants to go, leave her in elfhelm if she wants to chill somewhere safe, etc? Cross his fingers and hope she doesn’t do something drastic?

I was kind of wondering if he’s hoping that getting her back the way she was will be enough motivation for him to take Godo’s advice and stay with the “irreplaceable things” instead of going back for revenge, but like I said, even on the ship he was still doing his “when this journey’s over, I’ll [not actually be able to finish this sentence]” thing, so I don’t think there’s much indication of that.

idk i’m just thinking outloud. it all comes back to griffith’s pull being like, the strongest force exerted on him lol, for both good and bad. devote himself to griffith, or leave to become griffith’s equal, or stay with griffith, or ditch casca to chase griffith, or stay with casca while comparing the situation to one with griffith, gritting his teeth, and anticipating being able to chase griffith again.

i wonder if it’s not so much that he’ll overcome the pull of griffith on him as the nature of it will shift again, from revenge to maybe realizing that his desire isn’t actually for revenge, but still to be griffith’s equal. maybe he’ll actually untangle some of his feelings at some point, considering things like “the instant I saw him… I forgot my urge to kill.”

characteristics of ur fav berserk characters? (or all of them? whatever u want :)

Guts: tbh… his tenacity – his
attitude that you have to see things through to the end, and how in most
stories this would be shown to be a virtue, but in Berserk while it is
often shown as admirable, it’s also one of his biggest flaws at times.
It’s there in touching moments, like when teenage Guts risks his life to
take a flower to a hill, and it’s also there when he vows revenge and
abandons Casca and Rickert to go off on a two-year monster hunting
spree. It’s there when he insists on getting Casca magically healed
despite Skull Knight’s warnings and his own musing that things could
turn out very bad if her sanity is forced back. It’s there when he
becomes obsessed with becoming Griffith’s equal, explicitly ignoring all
evidence that Griffith already cares for him. It’s there every time he
refuses to die.

The closest Guts came to abandoning a course
of action once he’d decided on it is when he switched from his “dream”
to realizing he wants to stay with Griffith, right before the Eclipse,
and that would’ve been the best thing Guts could’ve done, if he’d had
the chance. Switching from revenge to helping Casca is close too (and
pretty explicitly paralleled to leaving Griff vs returning and staying),
but he’s doing it with the thought in his head that it’s temporary
(”when this journey ends, I’ll…” [pictures Griffith]), and his
tenacity is still there in how he’s not letting doubts and warnings
deter him from fixing Casca, so it’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

Idk man I love Guts’ doggedness, both as a virtue and a flaw.

My
favourite Guts moment though, now that’s difficult. I’ll go with one of
the best early moments, during the Black Swordsman arc, for the sake of
making things easy. It’s my first favourite moment, at least:

Like
half his bones are broken, he couldn’t do more than crawl on his
stomach and beg for attention before this when faced with the object of
his revenge obsession, but he stands up and marches up the stairs with
his sword when Femto says he’s beneath his notice. I love him.

Griffith:
Griffith is one of my all-time favourite characters period so narrowing
it down to one thing is hard, but I think if I had to settle on one it
would be his emotional repression? The way he doesn’t realize he’s in
love with Guts until it’s too late, the way he refuses to acknowledge
his feelings of guilt and self-loathing, the way he comes so close to
getting more emotionally healthy and open with Guts at his side but then
Guts leaves without a word and everything falls to pieces, the way he
falls back on the fact that he “won” Guts in a duel and fights for him
again because he can’t articulate why he can’t stand the thought
of Guts leaving, the way he self-sabotages himself into a dungeon
because he’s so unfamiliar with his own emotions that he can’t deal with
his feelings after Guts leaves, etc.

Funnily enough, in contrast
to that, I think my favourite Griffith moment (lbr my favourite Berserk
moment) is probably his moment of greatest self-awareness:

But like the reason this monologue is so effective is because
he’s so emotionally repressed, and it took him a year of nothing but
torture and self reflection for him to recognize his feelings. It makes
this moment really, really shine.

Casca: I love that
she genuinely commands respect among the Hawks. It’s one of the few
really satisfying aspects of her character role and her treatment by
other characters to me – from Corkus getting scared and apologizing when
she threatens him, to Griffith giving her the most important job in his
capture Doldrey ploy, to the Hawks stepping back so she can take out
Adon herself and cheering her on, to being able to rally the Hawks as
their leader in the most panic-inducing circumstances, etc etc.

I think my all-time favourite Casca moment is this:

God she deserves this moment of glory.

Farnese: I love
her “you just have to become a storm yourself” thing. The way her
reaction to fear is to join the thing that frightens her and become the
frightening thing. I loved it when it lead to her doing terrible things
like burning people alive and I loved it when it lead to her doing great
things like joining Guts and learning to defend herself and Casca and
becoming a witch.

My favourite Farnese moment is a pretty obvious one but what can I say it’s so good:

Fighting
off a demon tiger taking out whole crowds with a swipe of its paw, with
a candlestick, at a fancy ball, man, how can you not love her?

Serpico:
I like the contrast between his chill and diplomatic
go-with-the-flow-ness vs how solid and immovable he is when it comes to
protecting the people he loves, and how what ties those contrasts
together is a willingness to be hurt for their sakes, from dueling
people to a draw to avoid feelings of resentment towards Farnese, to
standing between her and Berserker Guts.

My favourite Serpico moment is:

Putting
himself in danger while defusing a tense situation with that chill
diplomacy. And not even for Farnese, but for Guts this time.

I want to take a minute to explain my take on the Hound.

Basically he’s Guts’ equivalent to Griffith’s Femto, ie, the ~dark side~ of Guts, made out of swirling negative emotions like rage and fear and hatred etc. It’s likely due to the reality-warping brand on his neck that the Hound is given more form and will than most people’s dark sides, becoming more of a presence to Guts.

We know the Hound isn’t an external evil spirit trying to manipulate Guts or possess him because we see it in Godo’s spirit-repelling cave where Guts is guaranteed to be safe from mean external forces like ghosts.

Like, the nature of the Hound is basically spelled out in its first physical appearance:

This establishes that the Hound is a manifestation of Guts’ “malice” (among other negative emotions, like the fear Guts mentions). Godo says to Guts – “you ran away so that your own malice could burn within you.” That’s the dark flame Guts is referencing up there, which is essentially the Hound.

This also establishes that the Hound is real – it’s not just a metaphor for the audience’s sake, it’s a physical presence that Guts senses. It’s a part of Guts given ghostly form. When he argues with it he’s arguing with himself.

It’s explicitly compared to Femto a few chapters earlier, when the concept is shown to us, before it explicitly appears as an entity.

What Skull Knight means by “or else…” becomes clear on the following page where he finds Rosine’s behelit.

Reminding the audience that there are ways for men to become beasts.

We cut to Guts walking through a forest being taunted by all those asshole spirits, digging into his deep insecurities, locating sites of his self-loathing and using it to fuck with his mind.

They’re essentially voicing his thoughts for him.

Pointing out his inner darkness, similarly to how the spirit that possessed Farnese pointed out that she gets off on torture. They’re not making shit up here, what they say digs deep and fucks with people’s heads because it’s based on truth.

Here they explicitly compare the Hound to Femto.

And finally Guts’ response after they take off:

He’s completely right, and as we can figure out from the ominous shot of the behelit and the fact that this is Guts reaffirming his stupid self destructive revenge crusade, this isn’t the greatest attitude.

He is what he is, and the more he pursues revenge and soaks himself in blood etc the stronger the Hound part of him gets.

And just in case more evidence that the Hound is a part of Guts and not an external force is needed, there’s this:

“This… is my…”

After the armour transforms into the shape of the Hound, rather than Skull Knight’s Skull Knight:

Guts’ armour is Guts getting the power of his dark side that apostles get, without having to sacrifice a loved one first. If he became an apostle his monstrous form would look a lot like the Hound. If Griffith was in Guts’ place, his armour would look a lot like Femto.

Anyway yeah in short the Hound = Guts.

Tombstone of Flame 2 is the best chapter and I love how it shows both extremes of Griffith’s character.

1st half:

badass

smugly kills a room full of asshole aristocrats including a queen

cool guys don’t look at flaming towers

gives minister foss a panic attack by looking at him

neatly tied up his loose ends, cooly predicting everything and completely in control

taller than the other dude on screen with him and depicted as powerful in comparison

griffith at the peak of his triumph and power

2nd half:

looks regretful and unhappy about killing the bandits he hired

leaves their money as a pointless show of compensation for his guilt

feels guilty for dragging guts into it

needs reassurance

looks like he’s gonna cry

falsely believes guts is gonna stick around, failing entirely to predict him

shorter than the other dude on screen with him, depicted as weak in comparison

griffith at peak emotional vulnerability (so far)

Change- Part 1

chaoticgaygriffith:

bthump:

mastermistressofdesire:

The potentially mammoth, post- torture mental state speculation for Griffith is finally (partly )here

Also since most of these panels were never animated in any form, they might be kinda insightful to a lot of people who either haven’t got around reading the manga or skimmed through it.

For me, as someone who was introduced to Berserk by the movie trilogy ( yeah yeah i know) there was this gap between Griffith putting his hand on Guts’ in the dungeon and Griffith asking (screaming at) him to stay away in the river-Right before the start of the Eclipse- which i was never quite able to bridge until I finally (after finishing the ‘97 anime) read the manga.

I went in with the belief that they were trying to go with a “so he was tortured and traumatised and is now emotionally unstable, erratic, and kind of unhinged” kinda explanation there but really-

It actually seems to have almost nothing to have to do with that.

The interesting thing here is that Griffith came out of the torture with a mostly sane mind.

It’s what came after that slowly, systematically and fundamentally broke every feature of his identity and emotional core.

This is one of my favorite pages of the manga. And honestly I don’t think one needs any explanation for what is going on, the art itself does a pretty amazing job of explaining and expressing everything.

But this is the start of my reason for naming this article “Change”

Because This is the stripping away of the First layer defense mechanism Griffith had built- The displaced Anger.

Ruminating about every unpleasant thing that had happened, was happening to Griffith during the year spent under the tower, Griffith’s reaction to having to acknowledge his pain was to displace his misery onto Guts and hold him responsible. It was a cognitive exercise, maybe one designed to keep him holding onto his sanity using the emotions he could still feel- pain and anger. Because as he himself says “ and now all those great many things I felt affection for, i feel…I am no more capable, it seems like a feeling which existed in a dream. I don’t feel it anymore.”

But of course actually meeting Guts strips that away. His tears blow Griffith’s cognitive exercise to smithereens.

He changes from “I hate you for doing this to me.” to

“How can I hate you?”

But there’s hidden hope there. There’s an implicit- how can I hate you when you cared enough to come back, when you look like you genuinely care.

There’s more of that continuing sentiment here. Guts is in Berserk mode over Griffith and Griffith can see that. Even though he does seem a little bit surprised and thoughtful about it.

“He does care. He did.”

“He cares. He cares. He care— Oh.”

I’m not saying anything, the expression in that single eye conveys everything. The vulnerability and confusion.

Griffith realises that in the time he was shut away things have happened that he is no more a part of, no more privy too. That there may be more to Guts motivations here too.

It’s the first glaring difference between who he used to be and who he is now.

(And no he isn’t happy about it, of course. But I don’t think this is the beginning of his ‘grudge’ against Casca or Guts. Because of later panels I will talk about)

I think this is the point he starts trying to shut off the emotional vulnerability window he’d kept open for a little while here.

Because now more than ever he wants desperately to feel like himself again. And the him he wants to be again was not vulnerable, was not left out, and most of all was….

…Useful.

Ok ill be honest, I cried a little at this smile. Griffith gets his opportunity to save the day again. Guts is looking at him again with awe and admiration. The way it was before. This is good. It’s not all different. He’s free now. He’s back!

Those other things don’t matter now.

He’s home.

The interesting thing here is that you never again see that expression of open confusion and hurt on his face again. Even in the successive instances of him witnessing Guts and Casca’s new intimacy, he looks on either dispassionately or with a hint of pensiveness. There’s no big reactions anymore.

He’s decided to not let it matter.

It’s like slowly slipping back into himself. A peasant girl giving her regards, an almost familiar feeling. He’s starting to feel like himself again. Its different of course. But not in all bad ways. There’s still hope. There’s love and he’s finally starting to learn how wonderful that is.

There’s that little content smile on his face. He’s happy.

He can’t walk or speak or move. But he’s truly happy to be here. To be able to trust . To at least finally be free to admit to himself that his dream had changed. And that he was with the very person the dream had changed to in whatever capacity.

Also he turns slightly towards Casca before smiling off into the distance. There’s no ill will there at all. He seems pretty content with her presence too actually.

It’s distant.

The pressure is off. It’s liberating.

And the peaceful moment doesn’t last. Once again people have started dying for him. Its’ the same cycle all over again. He looks as disgusted as everyone else when he sees wyalds macabre procession. But this time he can’t get up and fight it off.

Once again he notices Casca’s concern, but there’s no reaction there. Just pensiveness. I think the empty speech bubble means he wants to ask though.

He was wrong.

This doesn’t feel like home.

Lying on his side away from the battle instead of the vanguard. Useless. Damaged. Those are his men fighting. The familiar sound of battle, of horses. He wants to be out their in it’s midst. Bring them victory again.

This is familiar but out of reach.

It may be home but he doesn’t belong anymore.

@bthump @yesgabsstuff @craigslost @chaoticgaygriffith @ou-no-tame @buhserk I think some of you guys had expressed interest in this, i just don’t remember exactly who. I hope you don’t mind.

Id also love to hear your interpretation of these panels. I kinda had to cut this much shorter than intended because I thought it was getting too long.

Totally agreed! I think it’s up in the air whether Griffith could’ve been okay if Wyald hadn’t put his helplessness into stark relief so quickly, or whether it was inevitable that the happiness from being rescued and out of the dungeon would wear off and he’d get miserable anyway, but I do think that Wyald showing up and fucking everyone’s morale up so soon after being rescued is a huge part of the reason he fell into behelit-summoning despair.

And personally I do think that his attitude that we can see before everything gets fucked up, his smiles, the way he basically says goodbye to his dream seemingly content to a degree, does mean that if it weren’t for fate and the behelit etc he could’ve eventually come to terms with being disabled and physically dependent, at least if Guts stuck around.

I think his misery would have caught up with him eventually because, while the Hawks were pretty supportive at first, when they realised how useless he was now they all started thinking about themselves and their ambitions and goals in life. And while it was Wyald dangling Griffith naked, emaciated, damaged, and completely vulnerable in front of them that made them realise that way more quickly then they otherwise would have, they still would have realised it eventually on their own. And there’s no reason to believe they would have felt more compelled to stay in that scenario, what with their relationship with Griffith having still been an imbalanced one, where they had worshipped him and followed him as someone more capable than themselves and destined to succeed. He was no longer than person. Most of them had no particular relationship with him beyond the one I just described. They were going to have to find ambition and success somewhere else.

With most of the Hawks leaving and/or subtly showing their discontent, Guts’ unrelenting love and support would have meant a lot, but Griffith doesn’t do well with pity and exaggerated affection in order to comfort, and Guts is infamously bad at hiding his real intentions. He would have treated Griffith with a new gentleness, his loving gestures genuine but a constant reminder that things were drastically different now*. And on top of no longer being able to fight and being only somewhat able to help them plan fights, I think Griffith would miss all the things he used to do with Guts that he was no longer able to. Their late night talks, mischievous adventures, friendly (and sexually charged) duels … those are the things that I feel would kill him at night, when he’s alone with his thoughts, despite Guts’ warm and firm embrace. While possible, but it would take a lot for him to get over the fact that he was the one who robbed all of them of the very future he had promised them, the future he had killed so many of them for … and at the same time robbed himself of the chance to experience the simple life fully with the man he loves. You know what I mean, like ……. if he couldn’t have his dream, why couldn’t he at least have that.

*Not that Guts would treat him THAT differently, but I think Griffith is sensitive to those sorts of subtle changes in behaviour, and the intentions behind them. And it’s kind of ironic that Guts’ new, more open affection would have actually (imo) helped them grow closer together while at the same time being a painful reminder of how things have changed.

Of course, I agree that over time they would get better. I imagine Guts talking to Griffith at night before they go to sleep, trying to fill the silence but also accidentally working through his emotions verbally lol. Griffith listening intently. Focusing on Guts’ feelings in all this would help, I think. Occupy his mind so he doesn’t get drowned in his own guilt and sorrow… and yeah.

Okay so get this

farnesca:

One particularly warm evening Casca shows up at Farnese’s house, spirits her away when her parents aren’t looking and takes her for a drive in her beat up old truck. Farnese was honestly pretty confused about the whole thing but it was Casca so she was down, even though that rowdy girl didn’t give her time to change out of her pjs. Anyway, they drive for a while and Casca’s oddly silent, like she usually isn’t all that talkative but rn she’s just staring out at the road and the trees around them and just not saying anything. She’s got a real determined look but there’s still a light blush coloring her face, which Farnese notices. She doesn’t say anything immediately being caught up in the moment, but after a while she shakes off her trepidation and speaks up.

“So…what’s your angle?” She asks lightly, accompanied by a fidget in her seat to mask the wavering of her voice.

Casca just shakes her head, resting her elbow on the door and pressing a hand to her face. “No angle,” She says firmly, accompanied by a slight smirk and a squint. “I just figured you’d probably want out of that stuffy house. It smells like old people and you know it.”

Holding back a laugh, Farnese just raises an eyebrow, pressing her lips into a thin line. “Your truck smells like cows and dirt.”

“Yeah yeah, princess.” Waving a hand to ward off Farnese (who was poorly trying to hide how much she unironically liked being called princess), Casca falls silent again for a while before heaving a sigh and looking out the window, peering through the trees to their left. Outside it was reaching dusk, the sky turning shades of deep pink and orange, the sun low enough to look at without hurting your eyes. She didn’t have much daylight left. Working up some courage, Casca turns back to Farnese and speaks in a burst. “You wanna do something crazy?”

Letting out the laugh at that, Farnese pulls at her seat belt and leans forward to get a better look at Casca’s face. “Casca, I’ve already done two crazy things tonight, come outside at 8 o’clock at night and get in your raggedy-ass truck. What more do you want from me?“

“You’re insulting my girl now, you’re on thin ice, bitch!” Breaking out into her own fit of laughter, Casca pulls off temporarily onto a side road and lets the excitement play itself out. After a couple minutes of fun, she lets out a breath of finality and rests her arm on the steering wheel, about to give another snarky comment before pausing to admire the angelic form in the seat next to her. At that very angle, the low-hanging sun cut through Farnese’s hair like butter, giving her a golden glow that caught Casca entirely off-guard. “So, do y-” Her voice cracking, Casca quickly clears her throat and looks out the windshield, her lips pursed. “So. I’m being serious – do you wanna do something crazy, Farnese?” Punctuating her question by tapping on the dashboard, she twitches as Farnese snorts and starts laughing yet again.

“I-I, I’m s-orry, I just- I just can’t,” Grinning, Farnese kicks her legs as much as the confined space will allow and narrows her eyes at a very confused Casca. “I just can’t take you seriously when you look at me like that.” Sitting up straight and biting the middle of her lip, she flicks her eyes down and back up and nods, her eyebrows and shoulders bouncing in tandem. “Sure, let’s go do something fucking crazy.”

—

Driving down the dirt roads she knows by heart, Casca feels a sickening warmth building in her body as they get closer and closer to her destination. As she pulls onto the glorified path that’ll lead them there, the warmth takes over her everything, her stomach clenching like a vice grip and her mind careening through space and time. Throwing the truck into park and turning off the lights, she closes her eyes for a brief moment and then turns to Farnese, leaning towards her briefly before kicking open her stuck door. “We’re here,” She whispers in a low, ominous tone, slamming the door back shut and shoving her hands into her pockets.

“Well we’re out in the boonies, aren’t we.” Farnese thinks out loud, slipping out of the truck and looking around with her hands on her hips.

Taking off at a steady pace down a walking trail, Casca shrugs. “We live in the midwest, it’s all the boonies, Farnese.” Pausing to let the girl catch up, she leans against a tree and looks down, a genuine smile on her face. “Yes…”

A little further down the trail is a natural picture frame focusing on a modest pond. Flicking her tongue out to wet her lips, Casca trots a bit further down to get a better look. There were several similar bodies of water in the area, all of which she’s very familiar with, but this was definitely the cleanest, and in her opinion, the prettiest. The sun is just peeking through the canopies of the trees across the pond and casting soft rusty images on the water. Tossing a nearby pebble into the pond, Casa smirks as the sun catches each ripple and tosses back the light.

“Swimming?” Resting a hand on Casca’s shoulder, Farnese uses her as a counterbalance and places her other hand on her knee, leaning down to get a better look at the water. “Swimming is the ‘crazy thing’? I can swim any time I want to, y’know.”

Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment, Casca viciously fights her urge to falter or hesitate, trying to push every single negative scenario she’s considered out of her head. Everything rests on this one moment, and by God she’s determined to be stronger than her anxiety just this once. “Yeah, you can,” She murmurs, stepping back from Farnese and walking towards the water. “But,” She continues, her fingers sliding under the edge of her shirt. “You can’t just swim with me any time you want,” Pulling her shirt up and off, she tosses it to the side and tousels her hair, raising and eyebrow and tilting her head as she lets Farnese behold her in all her braless glory. “Now can you?”

FUCK. GAY. FUCK. GAY.

Her face immediately building a shade of dark crimson, Farnese stumbles over her words, stammering and helplessly waving her arms as her knees lock up and she sways like a reed in the wind. “I-eh-uh-I-I-ugmh?” Blinking, she knits up her eyebrows and gulps down her emotion (it’s a very big gulp), and Weakly smiles, the edges of her mouth moving like they’re attached to strings and a crazy puppeteer is controlling her every movement. “W-w…well, I, I uhm…I suppo…se…” Starting to trail off, she smacks her own cheeks and shapes up, mimicking Casca’s now very strained caricature of an expression. “No, I suppose I…can’t.”

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKSHITWHATTHEFUCKDIDIDOHOLYFUCKINGSHITOHMYGODJESUSWHAT

Suffering, Casca unbuttons her pants and steps out of them at world record speed and leaps into the pond from the tiny cliff overlooking it, poking the top of her head out of the water and staring at a frozen Farnese with a face so heated it could boil the water around her. “Well, uh, are you gonna come in or what?”

Freaking out for a second and letting out an eep of surprise, Farnese looks down into the water and processes that Casca must’ve moved while she was momentarily incapacitated and running on autopilot. “Y-yeAh I, am.” Stumbling around on the shore, she pulls at the fabric of her night dress and mutters expletives at it, turning around in a full circle before her trembling limbs are able to move out of it. Balling it up and throwing it to the side, she nods and moves to step in the pond, instead letting out a screech as she falls off the cliff and plummets three feet before splashing into the water.

Wading over to her, Casca reaches under and pulls Farnese up, shaking her head and smiling wide. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re a mess Farnese.”

As Casca holds her limp form up by the arm, Farnese coughs out water and looks up at her through stuck together bangs, her mouth hanging open as pond water drips out. “Uh. Huh.” She mumbles weakly, getting her legs underneath herself and gripping onto Casca’s shoulders for support.

Tilting her head, Casca does what she can to fix Farnese’s soaked hair, preening it and getting it back out of her eyes. Her heartbeat from before coming back full-force, she takes a lock of golden hair in her fingers and smooths it back behind Farnese’s ear, using the motion to get away with cupping her cheek in her hand. “So, you…” Not able to get out any more than that, Casca trails off and narrows her eyes, slowly travelling them downward and admiring the pictures the waning daylight paints on Farnese’s damp body. Bringing her eyes gradually back up, she’s startled by the saucers staring back at her.

Her eyes wide open and her lips parted, Farnese is fixed on Casca’s face, the thudding in her chest sharing a rhythm with the other girl’s. Leaning in, Farnese closes her eyes tight and brings her mouth within a hair’s breadth of Casca’s. “Just fucking kiss me you idiot.” She quickly murmurs with a tone of desperation against Casca’s lips, her arms pinned between them as Casca heeds the request and bundles her up in the world’s tightest hug, their lips coming together to form the world’s most passionate kiss.

Breaking apart for a moment, Farnese opens her eyes wide again, breathing in Casca’s air like it’s a drug. With the body tremors appropriate of an addiction she didn’t know (or at least wouldn’t admit to) having, she shakily unclasps her fancy lace bra and leaves it to float. Continuing to stare, trance-like, at Casca’s face she leaps out of the water, wrapping her legs around Casca’s body and pressing her hands firmly on the other girl’s face as she goes back in to break the world record for the world’s most passionate kiss.

Holding Farnese up by reflex, Casca takes everything she gives her and multiplies it back. Taking a moment to step back into her head while she lets her body do its thing, she mentally looks up and thanks whatever deities might be out there, desperately thanking them for letting something go terribly right for once in a very long time.

—

credit to @fullmetalnyuu

Change- Part 1

mastermistressofdesire:

The potentially mammoth, post- torture mental state speculation for Griffith is finally (partly )here

Also since most of these panels were never animated in any form, they might be kinda insightful to a lot of people who either haven’t got around reading the manga or skimmed through it.

For me, as someone who was introduced to Berserk by the movie trilogy ( yeah yeah i know) there was this gap between Griffith putting his hand on Guts’ in the dungeon and Griffith asking (screaming at) him to stay away in the river-Right before the start of the Eclipse- which i was never quite able to bridge until I finally (after finishing the ‘97 anime) read the manga.

I went in with the belief that they were trying to go with a “so he was tortured and traumatised and is now emotionally unstable, erratic, and kind of unhinged” kinda explanation there but really-

It actually seems to have almost nothing to have to do with that.

The interesting thing here is that Griffith came out of the torture with a mostly sane mind.

It’s what came after that slowly, systematically and fundamentally broke every feature of his identity and emotional core.

This is one of my favorite pages of the manga. And honestly I don’t think one needs any explanation for what is going on, the art itself does a pretty amazing job of explaining and expressing everything.

But this is the start of my reason for naming this article “Change”

Because This is the stripping away of the First layer defense mechanism Griffith had built- The displaced Anger.

Ruminating about every unpleasant thing that had happened, was happening to Griffith during the year spent under the tower, Griffith’s reaction to having to acknowledge his pain was to displace his misery onto Guts and hold him responsible. It was a cognitive exercise, maybe one designed to keep him holding onto his sanity using the emotions he could still feel- pain and anger. Because as he himself says “ and now all those great many things I felt affection for, i feel…I am no more capable, it seems like a feeling which existed in a dream. I don’t feel it anymore.”

But of course actually meeting Guts strips that away. His tears blow Griffith’s cognitive exercise to smithereens.

He changes from “I hate you for doing this to me.” to

“How can I hate you?”

But there’s hidden hope there. There’s an implicit- how can I hate you when you cared enough to come back, when you look like you genuinely care.

There’s more of that continuing sentiment here. Guts is in Berserk mode over Griffith and Griffith can see that. Even though he does seem a little bit surprised and thoughtful about it.

“He does care. He did.”

“He cares. He cares. He care— Oh.”

I’m not saying anything, the expression in that single eye conveys everything. The vulnerability and confusion.

Griffith realises that in the time he was shut away things have happened that he is no more a part of, no more privy too. That there may be more to Guts motivations here too.

It’s the first glaring difference between who he used to be and who he is now.

(And no he isn’t happy about it, of course. But I don’t think this is the beginning of his ‘grudge’ against Casca or Guts. Because of later panels I will talk about)

I think this is the point he starts trying to shut off the emotional vulnerability window he’d kept open for a little while here.

Because now more than ever he wants desperately to feel like himself again. And the him he wants to be again was not vulnerable, was not left out, and most of all was….

…Useful.

Ok ill be honest, I cried a little at this smile. Griffith gets his opportunity to save the day again. Guts is looking at him again with awe and admiration. The way it was before. This is good. It’s not all different. He’s free now. He’s back!

Those other things don’t matter now.

He’s home.

The interesting thing here is that you never again see that expression of open confusion and hurt on his face again. Even in the successive instances of him witnessing Guts and Casca’s new intimacy, he looks on either dispassionately or with a hint of pensiveness. There’s no big reactions anymore.

He’s decided to not let it matter.

It’s like slowly slipping back into himself. A peasant girl giving her regards, an almost familiar feeling. He’s starting to feel like himself again. Its different of course. But not in all bad ways. There’s still hope. There’s love and he’s finally starting to learn how wonderful that is.

There’s that little content smile on his face. He’s happy.

He can’t walk or speak or move. But he’s truly happy to be here. To be able to trust . To at least finally be free to admit to himself that his dream had changed. And that he was with the very person the dream had changed to in whatever capacity.

Also he turns slightly towards Casca before smiling off into the distance. There’s no ill will there at all. He seems pretty content with her presence too actually.

It’s distant.

The pressure is off. It’s liberating.

And the peaceful moment doesn’t last. Once again people have started dying for him. Its’ the same cycle all over again. He looks as disgusted as everyone else when he sees wyalds macabre procession. But this time he can’t get up and fight it off.

Once again he notices Casca’s concern, but there’s no reaction there. Just pensiveness. I think the empty speech bubble means he wants to ask though.

He was wrong.

This doesn’t feel like home.

Lying on his side away from the battle instead of the vanguard. Useless. Damaged. Those are his men fighting. The familiar sound of battle, of horses. He wants to be out their in it’s midst. Bring them victory again.

This is familiar but out of reach.

It may be home but he doesn’t belong anymore.

@bthump @yesgabsstuff @craigslost @chaoticgaygriffith @ou-no-tame @buhserk I think some of you guys had expressed interest in this, i just don’t remember exactly who. I hope you don’t mind.

Id also love to hear your interpretation of these panels. I kinda had to cut this much shorter than intended because I thought it was getting too long.

Totally agreed! I think it’s up in the air whether Griffith could’ve been okay if Wyald hadn’t put his helplessness into stark relief so quickly, or whether it was inevitable that the happiness from being rescued and out of the dungeon would wear off and he’d get miserable anyway, but I do think that Wyald showing up and fucking everyone’s morale up so soon after being rescued is a huge part of the reason he fell into behelit-summoning despair.

And personally I do think that his attitude that we can see before everything gets fucked up, his smiles, the way he basically says goodbye to his dream seemingly content to a degree, does mean that if it weren’t for fate and the behelit etc he could’ve eventually come to terms with being disabled and physically dependent, at least if Guts stuck around.

chaoticgaygriffith:

bthump:

chaoticgaygriffith:

Guts leaves because Griffith can’t express how he feels. Griffith has sex with Charlotte in an attempt to seize his dream, having lost Guts, (of course this act of striving for his dream is represented by heterosexual sex) and ends up trapped in a dungeon.

@bthump Didn’t wanna do this on your post but this part caught my eyes … To be honest I’ve never thought of Griffith having sex with Charlotte as him trying to quickly seize his dream because, surely he must have known what the consequences would be? He didn’t do a good job sneaking in or sneaking out, he didn’t even try to make sure they’re not caught together. Had he impregnated her he probably would have had to marry her, but the king would still hate his guts, which goes against what he was initially trying to do, that is, charm his way into the royal family. When he was caught, he didn’t seem particularly perturbed. It almost seemed like an act of defiance because he got discovered so easily and didn’t even care. That led me to believe that the sex with Charlotte was more an act of self-harm and self-sabotage than anything else. Thoughts?

Oh yeah my thoughts on Griffith sleeping with Charlotte are that it’s way more complex than I went into here. But I do think that Griffith’s like, conscious intention is pursuing his dream. I definitely think he’s subconsciously self-sabotaging, but I think a lot of his surface-level motivation is like, he cares about 2 things in the world: Guts and becoming king, and Guts just abandoned him, so he’s throwing himself into the other like he’s trying to prove it’s more important to him.

Tho btw I went into mainly the self-sabotage/self-harm aspect pretty in depth here if you’re interested. obvious warning for het applies but there aren’t any pics at least lol. though i didn’t even really say anything about Griffith’s behaviour, it’s mostly drawing parallels, so good points about how careless he is, and his non-reaction to getting caught.

Also I’ve never actually thought about the possibility of Griffith impregnating her actually tbh, that’s an interesting thought. Idk what would happen realistically in a medieval setting but I feel like it would make sense if they found out Charlotte was pregnant without knowing who (assuming she didn’t say it was Griffith) the King might theoretically be more willing to marry her off to anyone who’d keep quiet about it and raise the kid as his own, giving Griffith an in. So I could maybe see that being a possibility in his mind going in.

Tbh that does make a lot of sense. The reason my mind never quite went there, though, is because even though in that scene Griffith is in no state of mind to be strategising, the fact that having sex with the princess is a bad idea should be simple enough to occur even to someone who’s going through what he is. So my line of thought was less along the lines of, Guts left so he’s trying to quickly seize the other thing he cares about, and more like, Guts left so he’s throwing everything into the fire. Because, I get Griffith is pretty cool in a pinch, and probably, you know, didn’t want to give those guards the satisfaction of seeing him break down or whatever, but like I mentioned his reaction to getting caught was so ……… almost nonexistent. In a way, it looked like he’d given up. And of course that can be explained quite well in your scenario, but I just can’t help but feel like, even though everything is crumbling around him, his reaction to his last chance of achieving his dream being crushed right in front of him should have been a tad more explosive. (And as I’m typing this I keep thinking, but he cares about Guts more so now that he’s gone who the fuck gives a shit, but that keeps bringing me back to my original theory of him destroying everything while he’s on a roll.)

Though, having read your post on Heterosexuality as the Main Villain of Berserk, I can’t stop thinking about this one thing you said along the lines of, “sex with Charlotte represents his dream.” This is where I feel my theory falls apart because, you’re so right about that, and with that fact in my mind him having sex with Charlotte to ruin the prospects of achieving his dream seems contradictory. Just in a writing sense.

But yeah, I haven’t read the post you linked me to yet (I’m about to), so I’m super sorry if you’ve answered some of my questions there.

Nah I’m like, almost completely on board with you. I think the only way I might see it differently is that I see Griffith as like… very intellectually detached from his own emotions? He feels emotions very strongly but I don’t think he’s very capable of identifying them, maybe bc he’s so emotionally repressed. So I think he absolutely is directly sabotaging himself, he just wouldn’t think to frame his actions that way, and instead hides behind a veneer of “this totally makes sense as a thing I should be doing” to himself, even though it’s a clear lie that wouldn’t hold up to a second of self-examination.

I often see Griffith as operating under like, a duality of lying to himself to justify emotional outbursts, thinking one thing and feeling another. Like when he ripped up his arms in the river, I don’t think he was only lying to Casca, I think he genuinely believed that he didn’t feel guilt and was instead acting on pure logic lol, and he genuinely believed he was totally fine when he forced himself back under control and put a hand on Casca’s shoulder. Or like, when he saved Guts from Zodd, I don’t think he was thinking at all, and because he had no possible logical justification he just refused to think about it, or come up with any answer better than “um no reason.”

So like eg if instead of guards he’d run into Casca the next morning, a la the morning after Gennon, she could say something like, “holy shit are you so fucked up that Guts left that you’re trying to get yourself killed?” and Griffith’s response would be, “um no winning Charlotte’s affection is part of the path to my dream, I don’t care at all that Guts left, ~~the dead kid~~ Guts leaving right before this was just a coincidence obviously, I’m fine nbd.” But at this point his justification is so weak it’s more along the lines of his “no reason” to Guts.

So I think like, his non reaction to the guards, plus the way he goaded the king into whipping him shortly after, is because emotionally he’s past the point of despair and this is what he wanted to happen, even if he didn’t consciously recognize it.

Idk I guess I just can’t rly see him admitting to himself, at least not until later when he’s doing some soul searching in that dungeon, that fucking Charlotte is self-destruction I guess, even if that’s clearly what it is. It strikes me as too self aware and honest for him lol.

But like, idk this is basically just my headcanon lol, not rly meta or anything, and I kinda just took the opportunity you provided to talk about it. I don’t think there’s any objectively right answer bc there’s no real way to know what he’s thinking, and based on his behaviour it does make sense for him to be aware of the consequences and accepting of them. So your take also makes sense and is also less convoluted than mine. I’m just rly into Griffith’s ability to deny shit to himself lol.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

Well this originally started out as a jokey take on how compulsory heterosexuality is the True Villain of Berserk, but then I was like, shit this actually works surprisingly well and is kind of depressing. So now I’m doing it more seriously. This isn’t meant to be some grand unifying theory of Berserk lol, it’s not even close to airtight or anything, the story just happens to lend itself weirdly well to this particular reading.

So here’s how Griffith’s narrative works as an almost certainly accidental, yet imo somewhat relatable, metaphor for being closeted and repressed:

Keep reading

I always thought that it’s interesting that he seems to be on the precipice between childhood and adolescence (10/11) when he revived the Egg of the King in the first place.
Like you said, this is hardly a perfect metaphor but that would be around the time where he might start to notice that a) he had some kind of feelings for men b) be old enough to understand that they are not compatible with his goals/not accepted by the culture he lives it.

The situation for Guts, for example, is absolutely complicated by his experience as a CSA survivor in that I’m not sure he has a way to think of these kinds of things outside of acts of violence. The kind of implicit homophobia of this culture does nothing to dissuade him from this. Griffith has at least grown up in a similar environment and am;has probably “seen some shit”; if not suffered in a similar way by the time he has the Behelit, as well as his later experience with Gennon. What better pressure cooker to make someone utterly terrified of themselves and be willing to go to extreme lengths to repress those feelings?

I feel like there’s a really interesting character analysis waiting to happen w/ both Guts and Griffith and their relationships to same-sex desire (especially taking the official translation as a source, not one of the scanlations where Guts throws around homophobic slurs every other page. Which I mention bc those scanlations seem to be the reason a lot of Berserk fans think Guts is canonically a giant homophobe lmao).

It could be way more rooted in the actual text and authorial intention than this was bc the fact is that both Guts and Griff had non-consensual same-sex experiences at young ages that explicitly took a severe emotional toll on them, neither of them read as straight as far as I’m concerned, and you cannot tell me that it’s an accident that both of them were raped by men, they’re introduced to each other through Guts directly asking Griffith if he’s gay and wants to fuck him, and then the rest of the story is about their incredibly homoerotic relationship and how emotional repression ruins everything.

So anyway yeah you have some good points worth expanding on imo.

All of this was pretty damn excellent.

Thankyou for writing this.

I think the reading with being closeted is awfully fitting and tbh I feel that even if at age 20, Kentaro Miura wasn’t aware he was writing very gay-coded characters, after every single interviewer asked him about it and in the year 2017, he cannot still be unaware. And he’s made absolutely no tonal changes to accommodate for the fact? ( I think. Honestly i’ve been a little bummed out by the lack of griffguts feels in the most recent, post style- change chapters).

That’s just supposition though. Like I do feel that some of the inherent sexism has greatly improved over the years. And most of those issues which saw in Casca’s treatment have become slightly better with the newer characters. Just like giving credit where credit is due.

I mean it would be a greeeeat stretch to expect the same from the inherent homophobia. Like I don’t expect i AT ALL. But I think there may be at least some awareness about it.

But inspite of this the reading really makes sense.

Also you know -from how nightmarish that brief domestic dream felt, despite it seeming so superficially pleasant and ‘normal’. There was this deafening sense of -This in not you. This is not her. This is uncomfortable.

And actually for the longest time, I’d read a lot of theories about how the way Griffith saw Casca in his dream showed that he’d actually always viewed her as this hetero-normative, submissive, potential wife figure. But I don’t think so. I think the entire sequence was about how wrong it all felt. Inclusive of Casca.

It wasn’t a dream at all. I think it was always supposed to be a nightmare, his final attempt to revert from accepting his reality a la his undeniable love for Guts with what should have been the heteronormative ideal, and the knowledge that this wasn’t his reality which forced him back into a space where he had no option but acceptance.

And then being faced with the consequences he has had to face for that reality. His body, the broken arm.

And like there’s also the added fact that immediately post this realisation he attempts to commit suicide. which is sadly a pretty common consequence.

Oh nooo man I kind of glossed over a lot of stuff so that post is a bit disjointed and one of the things I glossed over was how the domestic nightmare vision actually fits into the whole narrative I plucked out beyond being disturbing and feeling relevant, but the way you have it framed here, as Griffith trying to deny his feelings for Guts and insinuate himself into the heternormative ideal (again: “this peace and quiet… isn’t so bad”), failing, and then trying to kill himself… ouch. That’s painful, but it works.

Especially with the fact that his godhand-summoning despair is brought on by Guts’ touch soon after.

also there’s at least one GriffGuts moment in recent chapters that I dug, even though it doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, which was that while Farnese and Schierke are checking out Casca’s memory of the cave with Guts Farnese says straight up that she senses “jealousy…?” I mean sure we already knew that but it’s nice to reiterate it.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

a concept

AU where Guts never overheard Griffith’s speech to Charlotte, nothing went wrong, Griffith eventually married Charlotte and became king, managed the whole famine and plague situation competently and is beloved, started hooking up with Guts on the side, Casca became the highest-ranked general in Midland, Gaston’s got his shop, everyone’s living their best lives

And then Ganeshka and his unstoppable demon army shows up, and regular old human king Griffith doesn’t have apostles on his side

So Griffith tries to stop Ganeshka but it’s unquestionably hopeless ofc

Anyway this is ultimately a What If Griffith became king and fulfilled his dream all according to plan but 3 years later had to flee his kingdom (or get knocked out and hauled away over Guts’ shoulder depending on how reluctant he is) as it’s about to be taken over by a demon emperor kinda thing. Or maybe he chooses to flee because Guts is determined to stay and die with him if he stays. Because I like the idea of Griffith being forced to pick Guts’ life over dying for his dream.

Either way bam suddenly he’s back to where he was when he was 12 with a group of rag tag friends roaming the countryside trying to survive and he’s gotta deal with that.

This is an excellent concept.

I really love this.
Also seeing as Griffith’s and Guts relationship in this version has Been allowed to run it’s natural course and I’d really like to see how that would play out.
I actually think, since Griffith and Guts hooked up, Griffith sometimes wishes he could just run away from the kingly stuff once in a while to be with Guts.

What if he isn’t actually averse to running away after the initial clashes against Vanishes prove that it’s futile.
But I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t actually.
Maybe because the guilt for his soldiers hasn’t quite gone yet and he rationalises that he can’t surrender something so much blood had once been spilled for, PLUS since Guts’ is known for his “finish what you started” attitude- Griffith feels that Guts will not respect him anymore if he runs away.

Guts for his part, thinks Griffiths decision is non negotiable, so he’s just determined to save him from as much damage as he can. Guts refuses to come in the way of what Griffith wants. And he reasons that’s well, it’s always been in his nature to fight rather than flee. And if he has to die, nothing better than now, when he’s found somebody who looks at him and CARES.

PLUS since Guts’ is known for his “finish what you started” attitude-
Griffith feels that Guts will not respect him anymore if he runs away.

oooh nice, gr8 point i didn’t consider at all.

also ironic if they both die bc they think that’s what the other wants lol, but that’s so them. maybe casca could intervene w/ some sense + save their asses as per usual.

Like with all the Casca thoughts which have been accumulating.

You Know this bit-
“ Maybe Casca could intervene w/ some sense + save their asses as per usual.”

This is OUR version of Casca. This is our take on what she could have been if the narrative didn’t constantly screw up her characterisation.
Because this action and characteristics makes sense to us, seems like a reasonable expectation and we or rather I (I’ll only speak for myself here for now) would like to believe it to be true- because I really want to like her.

And of course this is us talking about AUs anyway. So we will fill it with what seems reasonable.

But really I can’t help but think how cannon never explored this possibility. In canon Casca never saved their asses or talked sense into them. She made the connections. Yes. She had the information necessary to. Yes. She had the opportunity to. Also yes.

But canon didn’t care about making us like Casca as anything more than either a worthy (and projected as slightly annoying) rival or a love interest.

We’re never made to empathise with any particular or specific actions she takes or roles she plays. It seems like There’s no particularly thing Casca has done in the entire goddamn narrative which defines her. Like HER. Not someone else.

So when we say ‘as per usual’ we’re really just comparing with different versions we have been forced to create on our own.

There’s unfortunately no as per usual we can compare with in the source material.

Which is so frustrating.

Lol yeah this is true and I was kind of thinking when I wrote it that I should’ve said like she always tried to do, and might’ve done if anyone actually listened to her. (Like “just talk to each other!” can you imagine if judeau shut the hell up and they were like, actually yeah casca has a point let’s try words before swords). But I went with less accurate pithiness instead lol.

Also like… I do pretty much agree with you – the narrative is so bad about defining Casca in relation to the men in her life rather than as herself independently that I’ve come to hope it’s her central character flaw that will one day be explored as unlikely as that is lmao, but in fairness despite doing things for Griffith’s sake or for Guts’ sake, she does show a lot of character as she does them.

Taking command of the Hawks, leading the charge to infiltrate Doldrey, rallying the troops in dire situations, jealousy, pettiness, bravery, practicality (one moment I love for her, even if it is just to give Guts a moment of ‘wow she’s so cool’ (ugh), is when she tells the Hawks to stop freaking out at the start of the Eclipse because it’s not going to change the fact that shit just got really weird, so they might as well hold formation and stay calm), foolhardiness due to insecurity (going to battle on her period lol), perseverence even after almost giving up, loyalty ofc and her attempt to navigate between loyalty and what she feels is a betrayal of it albeit a timely and necessary one (even if the ‘betrayal’ is fucking guts, like, the feelings there are still complex despite the shitty plot imo), etc.

I hate almost all of Casca’s narrative and ofc it’s steeped in Miura’s misogyny, and she has a few character moments that are total offensive bs (acting cuter when she warms up to guts, maybe my place is at this man’s side, her non-reaction to Wyald’s attempted rape which just underscores that whole awful thing as pure shock value and titilation, etc) but there are also lots of moments she has that I think are revealing, endearing, and interesting. Like misogyny is one of Miura’s big flaws but shallow characterization sure isn’t and imo while his flaws are seriously on display in Casca’s character his strengths are still there.

So yeah like I don’t disagree with you bc her narrative absolutely sucks and I know that’s p much what you’re talking about, but your response did make me kind of want to talk up her likeability as a character a little lol. Like it’s not enough to make up for her awful narrative role, but it’s enough to make me want to explore her as a character and feel sympathy and empathy for her and relate to her in some ways, which is not a high bar but tbh it’s more than a lot of designated-love-interest-female-characters have.

It’s funny that while typing out the previous bit, I was wondering if I should add in the bits I did like about Casca which made me want more of her in the first place- and I was about to talk about her ‘ keep calm’ situation- but I decided against it because I was afraid i’d meander off course and forget to finish my point.

So yeah I do agree with you.

Looking back I think a lot of the fact of why these personally didn’t leave as much of an impact on me-and in a way i feel they weren’t even supposed to narratively-is because Casca’s contemporaries were Guts and Griffith who were both built to be larger than life. While Casca was supposed to be more realistic as an individual.

And most probably the fact that Casca was never intended as a main character to begin with has something to do with that as well. She just got a hike in the importance hierarchy when Miura realised he could use her for the drama amping during the Eclipse and to explain the demon baby he’d introduced in the black swordsman arc but now didn’t know what to do with. ( This is taken from his interview)

So really in comparision to the characters she was created to act as a contemporary to, Casca stands out remarkably actually. In a story starring Casca judeau, pippin, corkus and Rickert – Casca would definitely be the protagonist, the best fighter, the best leader, insightful- complete freaking boss.

So this isn’t something I could say is specific to only her Gender but rather, because of Miura’s decision to use her for manpain and thereby increase her importance (which IS specific to her gendered treatment)- so when you suddenly change the comparision from the B characters to the two A characters, who the author has spent a great deal of effort carefully crafting, ofcourse it wont be an even match.

And even if I realise this, as a reader Casca is still presented to me as an MC, so naturally I’ll tend to compare her with the other MC’s. And in that light somehow a few of the scenes I find the most impressive about her…seem almost like echoes.

Her leadership achievements almost seem like an echo of Griffith’s at times.

Hell even Guts aforementioned appreciation seems to allude to this.

“ Every element has been pre-calculated in his mind, even being outnumbered he’s calm and has perfect judgement. He is amazing. He really is.”

“ Even at a time like this she’s calm. She really is amazing.”

Infact okay, this isn’t really related but a lot of what Guts seems to find attractive in Casca apart from you know…seems to be characteristics she shares with Griffith.

Like you could say the interaction between Guts and Casca’s started for proper during the Bonfire of dreams part. Where Guts compliments her on having a dream and then proceeds to say. “Yeah. You’re pretty impressive. You and Griffith both.” Then when he says – “You sound like some refined princess.” Again remember who else speaks poetically about things that matter to them?

Then during the ball. Guts says he finds her strength and skill attractive. And then I remember- who else really awed Guts with their strength and skill.

And , we’ve talked about this before but he finally kissed Casca when she said she couldn’t live off dreams anymore and visibly needed someone’s presence- moments after Guts was left frozen and helpless when Casca told him that Griffith couldn’t live off only his dreams and he needed Guts there with him.

And I’m digressing again but I think this is also a point we made before?

How so many of my Griffguts arguments have the cost of further puppetfying Casca. And I don’t like it.

Yeah I think point was-IDK anymore,

So yeah I like Casca but I wish there was more.

I think another thing which has struck me is that I don’t have ANY of these issues with the newer female characters? Like I personally never felt this kind of dissapointment reading Farnese or Luca?

So did the misogyny get better or did I just get desensitised?

Oh damn that comparison between Casca and Griffith is so good. We’ve def talked about it before a bit and I probably will again but you really hit the nail on the head with those details. I didn’t even consider some of those comparisons you caught, nice.

And yeah like I totally agree with you, Casca’s story is so utterly disappointing and she gets the serious short end of the stick compared to Guts and Griffith. Like she is literally, textually, talked about in actual words-on-the-page as an emotional and physical connection between Guts and Griffith and there isn’t a thing in the story that contradicts that, and a whole lot that supports it. It’s a genuinely accurate statement on her narrative significance. Even if you take Guts’ journey to heal her at total face value she’s still reduced to a distraction from Griffith and mindless morality pet.

Which is super fucked up lol, and we’ve talked about that before too. Idk basically I don’t blame anyone for being uncomfortable as fuck with her or finding her character offputting because of how she’s constantly reduced.

For my part I want to like, transplant her into a different story lol. It’s like I can feel how much I’d love her if she was the protagonist of her own story. Like that “what if Casca became the Black Swordsman after the Eclipse” AU I was chatting w/ ppl about a while ago is The Ideal omg. Every time I remember that idea I swoon a little lol. So I stubbornly maintain my love for her in spite of how unfair the narrative is to her.

And yeah ia, no other woman’s narrative is even close to as awful. Even like, Nina, the annoying blonde in the conviction arc, had a better story arc lol. It still pisses me off that almost every female character in Berserk is in love with a dude and most of them are motivated by that love, but at least most of them also have other interests and roles and development outside of that, while Casca never did.

Here’s hoping that’ll change when she wakes up I guess.

chaoticgaygriffith:

farmint:

comradecalliope:

@farmint it’s hard to tell but I’m 98% sure he’s blushing here

baby boy… baby… this scene is like a few chapters before guts leaves too i am dying

There are actually a lot of scenes in the manga where Griffith has these small lines directly under his eyes while talking to Guts and I can’t tell if Miura just sucks at drawing people who are blushing or if it’s meant to be some bottom eyelid shading or w/e.

charlotte’s gormless awed blush is drawn similarly so i think it’s meant to be a blush

and casca gets the heated emotions (or feverish) under-the-eye blush thing a lot

so i say panels like this are def griff subtly blushing

(plus gets gets in on it too sometimes esp while he’s planning to leave, like here when griff asks him if he’s all right pre battle of doldrey:

anyway i just went thru a bunch of golden age chapters at random looking for this and it’s everywhere, another tool to add a layer of subtle emotion to complicated expressions that i kind of dig actually after looking for it purposefully for a while

also idk what prompted this but @farmint

neogriff has a bona fide sex blush in this iconic panel if blushing griffith is what you’re looking for (more than the undereye thing) and neogriff counts

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

mastermistressofdesire:

dicks-out-for-griffith:

mastermistressofdesire:

strangemonochromes:

Berserk (ベルセルク) // Kentaro Miura

Casca babe. I still don’t know why the fuck you would say that.
It makes zero sense.

Tbh at this point I felt things were happening, only because they had to happen, even if it made no sense to anyone to act like this. Like Casca saying this, as if it still mattered what Griffith saw as a equal. Like Guts acting as if not realizing how severe Griffith’s injuries were and saying he will swing that sword again. Like the Band throwing a fucking tantrum how their future is ruined, while Griffith was 5 steps away and probably listening. Like even Guts and Casca having this talk there, as if he wasn’t sleeping nearby… the amount of moments, where everyone was being inconsiderate was so huge, that it felt kind of…. forced to me 😮 Either this or at this point they had all stopped seeing Griffith as a person already.

And tbh, there was no going back from there on in my opinion, even if he had never been offered to sacrifice them, even if he had accepted living in a broken body, he wouldn’t have accepted being their mascot.

Yeah,
I completely agree actually.

Like of course at this point Miura was trying to take the plot to the eclipse so maybe everything doesn’t make sense from character consistency point of view.

But really if we leave that aside this arc really was evidence that both of what Wyald said and what we knew of Griffith’s apprehensions were almost completely justified.

Like it really just came across as if nobody actually gave a shit about griffith as a fucking human being. And it was upsetting because all this while, we were thinking how Griffith was wrong and being pessimistic and he should maybe stop distancing himself so much. But then griffith was absolutely right all along.

It really just seemed like everyone was waiting for griffith because of the usefulness he’d have to their lives. The moment it became clear that he wouldn’t be able to do that, they immediately ran to Guts to leave with him instead.

Like notice how no one else even tries to visit him after that, I mean yeah okay, you were throwing around words like love before, but okay.

yes , they most probably wouldn’t have abandoned him but that would most probably be because such a thing would be ‘distasteful’ rather than anything else. I mean you might be right about the fact that they’ve already stopped seeing him as a person at this point.

And honestly even with Casca, like this really rubbed me the wrong way- but she has this little bit of internal monologue where she says “Yes now it’s my turn to fulfill this duty. ” And that sense of duty is repeated when she tells Guts that she can’t leave with him.
And wow. So it’s DUTY now ? Like a couple of chapters ago you were wondering why he’d chose Charlotte to bed instead of you and were being jealous of the fact. And now it’s only your sense of duty holding you back. Like honestly I thought you loved this person?
Wow for consistency.

I mean I remember Griffith saying in the lake, while hurting himself that the only thing he can do for his men is to keep winning.

And really he was right.

That’s all they want from him and that’s all that he’s good for in their eyes.

tbh this never bothered me from a writing perspective because it felt very realistic to me

it’s not good and it doesn’t reflect well on the hawks, but it seems consistent because none of them ever gave a fuck about griffith as a person except guts and casca. judeau practically flat out said it during his first chat with guts, when he said everyone followed griffith for his charisma but he couldn’t really say what kind of a man he is.

and it’s partially griffith’s fault for distancing himself. you can’t expect people to care about you as a person if they only know you as a flawless leader. but it’s also definitely dickish of the hawks – but the kind of dickish that doesn’t seem out of place imo, especially in berserk’s shitty world where if you’re accepting that half the men casca runs into want to rape her, ableism doesn’t seem like a stretch.

also in fairness, only corkus made a scene when casca announced the news, and that’s pretty in character for him, and there was only like, maybe a couple hours between that and the eclipse, during most of which griffith was asleep, so there wasn’t much opportunity for people to visit him, or even sort out their feelings beyond abject disappointment that their hopes are dashed.

i actually love casca and judeau telling guts to leave while he’s trying to say he wants to stay, because they are treating griffith as an inevitable burden someone has to deal with, and guts is the only one who isn’t. judeau has his, i’ll take some hawks, start a thieves gang and take care of him, because it’s the least i could do for all he’s done for us. plus being ‘self sacrificing’ for casca’s sake lol.

casca’s feelings are more complex but they also work for me – because she wanted to leave with guts after rescuing griffith and try to move on from her feelings for griffith, and now he needs her, and she’s someone who wants to be needed, so it’s like just as she had hope that she could move on she’s back to square one. also tbh her attitude strikes me as more evidence that she never really loved Griffith, just admired him.

and they both expect guts to view him as a burden so they encourage him to leave – because according to those rules of the battlefield judeau likes to cite so much, he’s no longer a hawk so griffith isn’t his responsibility.

and guts partially wants to stay out of guilt probably, but based on his actions at the start of the eclipse it seems clear that he, more than anyone else in the hawks, still just genuinely likes griffith and wants to be with him in some capacity. he’s the one who speaks out when the godhand says griffith is one of them, he supports and holds him until they’re forcibly separated and then he climbs up to griffith to try to save him, and he refuses to believe griffith sacrificed everyone for quite a while.

idk basically it’s harsh and depressing but it works for me largely bc i never got the sense that anyone except guts genuinely liked griffith as a person, even casca. well charlotte i guess, but w/e. even she believed he’d recover when she wanted to stay with him.

Hmm yeah.

Of course it makes a lot of sense from the writing perspective. And from character perspectives. And everything makes sense with everything else because that’s just how Berserk is. It’s brilliant.
And all that is precisely the reason I love it so much.

I don’t think my issue was with character consistency actually, like tbh I don’t have an issue at all, -that’s what makes for good story telling and that’s what I’m here for.

I have zero issues with the Hawks not giving a fuck about Griffith. Because it makes sense. And because realistically that’s how people are.

Same with Casca.

I think what I had a not very objective, reaction to^ up there was the fact that the fact that the Hawks or Casca may be didn’t give a fuck is very rarely recognised

Which makes for very one dimensional analysis. And THAT is frustrating.

The thing with Casca is I have very mixed feelings about her in general and that just spills onto every time I mention her so. Yeah.

And like hey I liked griffith so sometimes there’s an emotional ‘why you do this?’, but intellectually yes, makes sense, sign me the fuck up, sweet angst God yes.

Like the fact everyone is equal parts nice and low-key assholeish is amazing?

But sometimes people are not nice to someone you like (Even if that makes perfect sense to you )and you are like ‘hey!’

yeah i know what you mean. casca is such a difficult character in some ways for me bc i love her in theory but i feel like i’m constantly mentally compensating for the way miura writes her.

like eg i’d infinitely prefer if instead of casca switching gears bc now she loves guts instead of griffith, she was telling guts to leave because she believes she’s being self-sacrificing but deep down she wants griffith to herself and she still isn’t over her jealousy of guts. i don’t feel that’s the case, that’s not the vibe i get from this scene at all, but man i’d be into that, and i kind of headcanon it that way.

like i like petty jealous casca whose “love” for griffith is a flaw (and a defense mechanism she uses to avoid self-examination) she needs to overcome to come into her own as a person. i don’t like casca just switching from griffith to guts and this being treated by the narrative as a touching and significant development for her lol. same like, i like casca as a badass responsible and respected military leader, i don’t like casca as someone who “had to give up being a woman” (wtf does that even mean lol) and is conflicted about that, it sucks.

enjoying casca as a character to me is like navigating a minefield of miura’s shitty misogyny lol. there’s lots i love and it’s worth the effort of downplaying the shitty aspects of her writing imo, but man i wish i didn’t have to.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

just based on guts’ first look at them, who would you guess is the love interest?

casca:

griffith:

Yes yes yes.
This
Exactly.
I’ma little slightly not well I am excited right now so this might not make sense.
But.
They do this visual chemistry thing, the angles Griffith gets, the way his eyes are drawn, how they stand together, the light breeze running through their hair. How they fit together in the frame, bodies turned in.
And you do this for 10 volumes almost with these characters and then suddenly do the same with Guts and Casca for one damn chapter and now we’re supposed to have that superimpose 50 chapters of the same thing with a different set of characters. Like chemistry.
Where was this.

It’s like buying a bag of m & ms and finding Cheetos inside
Like I don’t hate the Cheetos. But that’s not what I signed up or paid emotional investment for .

This makes perfect sense and ia, when it comes to visual language Griffith is pretty straightforwardly romanticized and eroticized from Guts’ perspective.

like look at Guts’ point of view shot right here

first thing he thinks of when he wakes up after sensing a naked woman in bed with him:

griffith looking vulnerable and in need of rescue with his hair splayed out

this which is even more eroticized than those first panels

actually don’t quote me on this bc i’d have to re-read to make a real judgement call here, but I think these kinds of shots (from Guts’ perspective specifically) actually peter out after the Promrose Hall speech?

which, if so, makes it even more likely to me that it’s purposeful bc that’s when his view of Griffith shifts from him being a guy he likes who likes him back to being a distant goal.

though Griffith remains beautiful, noble, larger than life, dazzling, pretty, etc just to throw a few words guts has used to describe him, in Guts’ mind:

and then all bets are off once guts starts thinking about neogriff.

(the waters get a little muddier once miura starts drawing griffith like a wet dream every time he’s in a panel but honestly this shot of guts thinking about him goes above and beyond to a ridiculous extent)

oh also i was gonna say that it blows that casca gets super diminished and girlier once she ends up slotted into the love interest role, like judeau even comments on it ffs.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

I mentioned a while ago that the first time I feel we got a real visual* glimpse of Guts’ hound-esque inner darkness chronologically was during the rescue mission.

The way he cuts out the torturer’s tongue is very reminiscent of his tendency to torture apostles before killing them imo (which probably has its origins in the way he killed Donovan), and then he just rampages through the castle like a demonic one-man army, very black swordsman ish.

Look at this imagery like:

(i love Casca’s ‘holy shit dude’ expression)

Plus you got Charlotte saying he scares her, and the Wyald fight is when everyone starts comparing Guts to a monster and saying he’s inhuman.

So I was thinking – why? Why would we get this before the Eclipse, before he starts killing ghosts and infusing his sword with Essence of Darkness, before the brand + killing monsters make him literally superhuman? Why do we get our first look at monster slaying, revenge-obsessed, black swordsman Guts a day and only a day before the main event, the point of which is to make him revenge-obsessed, even takes place?

And I want to suggest that it’s because this is it – this is Guts’ revenge spree. It’s not one revenge spree that ends, followed immediately by another unrelated revenge spree. It’s the same rage. He killed the torturer like he kills apostles, then he fought an actual apostle to defend Griffith, then the Eclipse happened and he declared war.

It’s all intimately connected in Guts’ mind and emotions:

He started off on a vengeful rampage for Griffith in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt, and he continued on a vengeful rampage against Femto/NeoGriffith, also in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt.

We know this because as he’s running towards Griffith in the torture chamber Guts thinks about how it’s his fault that Griffith is there without actually coming to a proper conclusion (if that’s the case… then I –) – and he reaches that conclusion (was I the one who brought all this upon you?) right as he’s running towards Griffith at the site of the Eclipse. Guts’ guilt is strongly associated with his rage this way. Guilt followed by external target followed by lashing out.

Idk, there’s just such a through line to me from Casca telling him it’s his fault to the Eclipse. The most significant moments of Guts’ internal thoughts are given to him processing this information and finally concluding that he fucked up right before the Eclipse begins. The Eclipse didn’t then erase his feelings of guilt, it just let him continue to repress those feelings and gave him acceptable targets to lash out at instead of dealing with his feelings.

Now this is a bold statement, but I think that in a way, rampage part 1, kill half the soldiers of Midland, and rampage part 2, kill demons, are both about Guts avenging Griffith – the latter only in part ofc, because the rest of the Hawks need to be avenged too now.

Because the thing is, I think he still sees Griffith as a victim. After finally acknowledging that Griffith did sacrifice everyone, he still looks back at him wistfully. He thinks of Griffith while flashing back to the lost Hawks after the Eclipse. He tells Rickert that NeoGriffith isn’t the Griffith he knows (incidentally something Rickert repeats to NeoGriffith later, which NGriff acknowledges). He flashes back to Griffith in the snow a lot. To Guts, Griffith isn’t his friend who turned out to be a dick, Griffith is his friend who basically committed fantasy murder/suicide after being tortured for a year because Guts broke him by leaving.

His feelings towards Femto/NeoGriff are complicated and fucked up as all hell, but while his feelings for Griffith feed into his complicated feelings for Femto/NeoGriff, his hatred for F/NG doesn’t retroactively affect his feelings towards human Griffith. They’ve remained pretty solidly longing, guilt, love, regret. He’s not thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and feeling rage at what he would go on to do a year later, he’s thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and trying to find a way to atone for it. Griffith is still explicitly part of the “campfire from those days still [burning in his] chest.”

Idk basically I just wanted to say that a part of Guts’ fuel for his revenge rampage was feeling responsible for Griffith’s pain and not being able to save Griffith from it, both the first time against Midland and the second time against the Godhand, and I chose a very long drawn-out way to do that.

* I specify visual glimpse bc i think there’s a solid argument that it’s there when he kills Donovan, based on the way he taunts him and tortures him briefly first, but we don’t have any of the ragey demonic imagery associated with Guts’ darkness there – he just looks like a kid. So I feel like it works as a point of origin for a lot of Guts’ dark vengeful urges (Donovan is the first monster he killed), but he wasn’t anywhere close to losing himself to darkness then.

Honestly I don’t think there’s anything I have to add here which you haven’t already said. But I’ll just leave this here,

From Schierke’s trip into Guts Mindscape, where at the pit of the fire which drives Guts forward, There is a chant of Griffith’s name and a confused roil of affection and rage which comes with it. And though Friend and enemy overlap, they haven’t quite superimposed yet, they are still distinct entities.

And really you’ve said this before but I definitely agree that a part of his current motivation to fix things comes from his guilt of being unable to ‘fix’ what he had with Griffith. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have done it for Casca on her own too, but that Guttural fear, the panicked “Did I Do it AGAIN?!” that comes from a place of Guilt. A place quite firmly occupied by Griffith.

The “This time, I was the one left behind.” goes to show that Guts now wholeheartedly sees himself leaving the first time around as an act of abandonment, there’s no allusion to leaving to pursue his own dream because really even back then- :”Now I realise, this was what I’d been seeking this whole time.”

What I also like about this is that Guts seems to treat it as Griffith sort of “Paying him back’ for that offense. So he’s kind of subconsciously seeing Neo-Griffith as a very human, emotionally motivated figure with remnants of the ‘original’ Griffith’s emotional experiences and for once Guts might just really be on to something.

Also Interestingly, as mentioned before i guess, ever since the Eclipse all of Gut’s memories of Griffith have morphed into images of him standing with his back towards Guts or at a distance and the imagery is really interesting to me here. Because it could signify so much.

We know that the image of Griffith’s back, kneeling in the snow has sort of become a haunting image for Guts. What if the turned back everywhere else is an extension of this, the fact that all his memories are tinged with the same regret or guilt.

Secondly it could be simply a perceived distance and further unreachability, because the past is literally an unachievable objective. And specifically that shot he has of the entire original band during the ‘companions’ speech. Griffith is walking away in the background there, it’s almost as if Guts realises that even during what he considered his happiest memories he was already losing Griffith.

Oh and the “Campfire from those days still burns in my heart” spread?

First of all. Ahhem.

Second of all once again you compare in importance a woman you literally have an appendage of yours inside in that particular shot with this other guy who actually looms much larger. An more encompassing. With his presence literally symbolically wrapped around you for emotional warmth.

Also Under his cover but behind his back and I really wonder if that has significance too.

And then again maybe simply because he doesn’t know what face to give him. Is it the face of a friend, an enemy, something else all together? Guts doesn’t really know yet.

@yesgabsstuff @bthump

lol i was almost going to make my original post like twice as long by going on to guts’ decision to stick with casca this time and how it’s framed as him trying to make up for abandoning griffith etc. but then i was like, this is already rly long.

also good point about Guts interpreting Griffith rejection as payback – ia, i don’t think Guts is exactly wrong about that lol.

I’ve been reading Guts’ memories of Griffith’s back (bc yeah I noticed that too, he’s always facing away) as, I guess, recognition that that relationship has been destroyed. Whenever Guts remembers leaving Griffith he’s looking back at him kneeling in the snow, which tbh strikes me as symbolic rather than literal because Guts never looked back. It’s a visual representation of Guts’ acknowledgement that he left Griffith behind. And I think Guts’ other memories of Griffith with his back to him are similar – an acknowlegement that Guts ruined everything and now he’s back to chasing Griffith. I might say more on that in a separate post actually.

and lol the campfire from those days spread is so damn blatant in its acknowledgement of the fact that guts and casca hooked up not only while they were both in love with griffith but, tbh, because of it. at least that’s what i get when i look at a picture of 2 ppl fucking while wrapped in the symbolic flowing cape of the dude they were both acknowledgedly obsessed with plus like you said, it’s with griffith facing away. Which, to me, adds the sense of them trying to fill a hole left by his loss.

Which is why it makes perfect sense to show us this image at this point in the narrative while Guts is contemplating revenge and rescuing Casca because he’s shifting from trying to fill that hole by chasing Griffith/Femto down and “[giving] him a heap of raw iron” to trying to fill it with Casca again (tho he doesn’t actually solidify that choice until NeoGriffith ditches him).

And I think it’s going to be a mistake – we see that Guts leaving revenge behind is good, but his desperation to get Casca back is not so good and will probably have consequences. And I think we’re supposed to understand that he’s doing it for the wrong reasons – if he wanted Casca sane again for her sake he’d be giving her time and a safe place to recover, or just to live. He wants Casca sane again for his own sake bc a) he can’t let go of the past and she represents the Hawks, b) he’s trying to make up for leaving Griffith and c) he’s still trying to fill the Griffith-shaped hole in his heart.

And then again maybe simply because he doesn’t know what face to give
him. Is it the face of a friend, an enemy, something else all together?
Guts doesn’t really know yet.

Also I love this idea.

I mentioned a while ago that the first time I feel we got a real visual* glimpse of Guts’ hound-esque inner darkness chronologically was during the rescue mission.

The way he cuts out the torturer’s tongue is very reminiscent of his tendency to torture apostles before killing them imo (which probably has its origins in the way he killed Donovan), and then he just rampages through the castle like a demonic one-man army, very black swordsman ish.

Look at this imagery like:

(i love Casca’s ‘holy shit dude’ expression)

Plus you got Charlotte saying he scares her, and the Wyald fight is when everyone starts comparing Guts to a monster and saying he’s inhuman.

So I was thinking – why? Why would we get this before the Eclipse, before he starts killing ghosts and infusing his sword with Essence of Darkness, before the brand + killing monsters make him literally superhuman? Why do we get our first look at monster slaying, revenge-obsessed, black swordsman Guts a day and only a day before the main event, the point of which is to make him revenge-obsessed, even takes place?

And I want to suggest that it’s because this is it – this is Guts’ revenge spree. It’s not one revenge spree that ends, followed immediately by another unrelated revenge spree. It’s the same rage. He killed the torturer like he kills apostles, then he fought an actual apostle to defend Griffith, then the Eclipse happened and he declared war.

It’s all intimately connected in Guts’ mind and emotions:

He started off on a vengeful rampage for Griffith in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt, and he continued on a vengeful rampage against Femto/NeoGriffith, also in part as a way of externalizing his own feelings of guilt.

We know this because as he’s running towards Griffith in the torture chamber Guts thinks about how it’s his fault that Griffith is there without actually coming to a proper conclusion (if that’s the case… then I –) – and he reaches that conclusion (was I the one who brought all this upon you?) right as he’s running towards Griffith at the site of the Eclipse. Guts’ guilt is strongly associated with his rage this way. Guilt followed by external target followed by lashing out.

Idk, there’s just such a through line to me from Casca telling him it’s his fault to the Eclipse. The most significant moments of Guts’ internal thoughts are given to him processing this information and finally concluding that he fucked up right before the Eclipse begins. The Eclipse didn’t then erase his feelings of guilt, it just let him continue to repress those feelings and gave him acceptable targets to lash out at instead of dealing with his feelings.

Now this is a bold statement, but I think that in a way, rampage part 1, kill half the soldiers of Midland, and rampage part 2, kill demons, are both about Guts avenging Griffith – the latter only in part ofc, because the rest of the Hawks need to be avenged too now.

Because the thing is, I think he still sees Griffith as a victim. After finally acknowledging that Griffith did sacrifice everyone, he still looks back at him wistfully. He thinks of Griffith while flashing back to the lost Hawks after the Eclipse. He tells Rickert that NeoGriffith isn’t the Griffith he knows (incidentally something Rickert repeats to NeoGriffith later, which NGriff acknowledges). He flashes back to Griffith in the snow a lot. To Guts, Griffith isn’t his friend who turned out to be a dick, Griffith is his friend who basically committed fantasy murder/suicide after being tortured for a year because Guts broke him by leaving.

His feelings towards Femto/NeoGriff are complicated and fucked up as all hell, but while his feelings for Griffith feed into his complicated feelings for Femto/NeoGriff, his hatred for F/NG doesn’t retroactively affect his feelings towards human Griffith. They’ve remained pretty solidly longing, guilt, love, regret. He’s not thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and feeling rage at what he would go on to do a year later, he’s thinking of Griffith kneeling in the snow and trying to find a way to atone for it. Griffith is still explicitly part of the “campfire from those days still [burning in his] chest.”

Idk basically I just wanted to say that a part of Guts’ fuel for his revenge rampage was feeling responsible for Griffith’s pain and not being able to save Griffith from it, both the first time against Midland and the second time against the Godhand, and I chose a very long drawn-out way to do that.

* I specify visual glimpse bc i think there’s a solid argument that it’s there when he kills Donovan, based on the way he taunts him and tortures him briefly first, but we don’t have any of the ragey demonic imagery associated with Guts’ darkness there – he just looks like a kid. So I feel like it works as a point of origin for a lot of Guts’ dark vengeful urges (Donovan is the first monster he killed), but he wasn’t anywhere close to losing himself to darkness then.

Minor character time! Jill 16, Zodd 17, Theresia 14, Slan 16, Locus 20 (Relationship with NeoGriffith), Void 10, Anna 7, Corkus 4, Pippin 15, and not a minor character but she didn’t get any yet so Casca 6, 11, and 19

omg lol, ty let’s give this a shot

Anger headcanon – Jill

Jill, being inspired by Guts but deciding to stay in her shitty town for whatever reason, channels her anger at all the awful people she’s surrounded by into teaching herself the sword. Maybe finds someone less terrible to teach her the stuff she can’t learn herself. When Griffith breaks the world half her town gets eaten and she takes off to become an adventurer.

Soft spot headcanon – Zodd

He has a soft spot for anyone who manages to survive more than 5 minutes against him. Especially Guts who he practically has a crush on and won’t let anyone else kill unless he absolutely has to.

Dancing headcanon – Theresia

hmmm okay – Theresia is out now, seeing the world for the first time, fueled by rage and revenge, but not so consumed by it that she can’t feel the wonder of experiencing the world properly finally after only seeing it from her window. She’s wandering from place to place learning to fight from anyone who will teach her something. One day she finds herself in a small town during some spring festival. There’s dancing in the streets, and she gets pulled into it. She doesn’t know how to dance but she has a great time moving from partner to partner and just going with it and letting loose for an afternoon. Afterwards it’s one of her fondest memories.

Anger headcanon – Slan

Omg okay I just thought of this bc of you putting the words Slan and Anger together, but hey what if the thing that turned her into a member of the Godhand wasn’t sex-related like we all assume from the fact that her tits are out in Berserk?

I’m not gonna build a whole narrative here but hell maybe she was an epic, prideful queen or something who lost a war, and decided to sacrifice all her loyal beloved subjects and become a god rather than accept her loss. Also for added camp drama the kingdom she lost to’s queen is her ex girlfriend. She was the main sacrifice. Now there’s a headcanon you can hang your hat on.

Relationship with NeoGriffith headcanon – Locus

Locus takes the noble knight thing waaaay too seriously. Also while the rest of the apostles are all in love with Griffith by default, Locus would be in love with him anyway. He’s got this whole loyal devoted knight/sexy king thing built up in his head.

Physical appearance headcanon

– Void

Dude looks like… that… because of a) how he was tortured (the hooks and stuff) and b) bc he’s a sage (nerd) and really wants to emphasize his brain over his looks. Superlong scarecrow skeleton arms are so he can pull his cloak out to the sides and flap it like wings and fly away.

Kissing headcanon – Anna

NICE. Okay her first kiss with Charlotte is initiated by Charlotte after she sobs in Anna’s arms about how she’s pretty sure her husband is a soul-less void and also gay af. Charlotte reaches out tentatively, says, “you’ll always love me, right?” and kisses her.

Anna spends about 2 seconds going ‘holy shit holy shit holy shit’ and then loses all decorum, takes control of the kiss, carries her to the bed, and immediately undertakes the job of making Charlotte forget all about her demon husband, with rousing success.

Driving headcanon

– Corkus

lmao THE WORST. Never get into a car with his man. He will scream at everyone, he will honk obnoxiously during traffic jams, he will tailgate, he will pass on a solid yellow line, he considers going the speed limit a form of losing.

Singing headcanon – Pippin

He has the best bass voice. He doesn’t sing often but get a few drinks into him and everyone shuts up to listen to him.

Hugging headcanon

– Casca

This is how she wants to comfort and be comforted. Casca is a huggy person, she will hug you without thinking if it looks like you need it. To get Farnesca for a sec Farnese loves nothing more than being wrapped in Casca’s strong comforting arms in a vulnerable moment.

Wardrobe headcanon

– Casca

Vastly prefers men’s clothes. Even if she got over her awkwardness with feeling out of place in a dress, men’s clothes are just more practical, easier to move in, and a whole lot better for combat. (Farnese agrees and they make a rly striking pair – Casca more casual while Farnese gets dandy-ish)

Favorite photograph headcanon

– Casca

I’d have to say her favourite memory is something really simple. Just, one of many very similar nights, hanging out around the fire, the rest of the hawk commanders are there. Actually yk that official (i think? if it’s fanart someone tell me who to credit) artwork?

This.

griffithhell:

bthump:

griffithhell:

bthump:

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.

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.

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:

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.“

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.

dicks-out-for-griffith:

bthump:

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.