prettykitten123
replied to your post

“I was just thinking that, during Griffith and Guts’ fight when…”

If I was Casca I would’ve just said “he’s leaving because of what you said at the Promrose hall. Goddamn. Now can you two please talk it out because there have obviously been some miscommunication”

Like Casca understands those two perfect and knew why Guts was leaving
When she went to get
Griffith she could’ve literally told him “Guts is leaving. He’s going
because of what you said at the Promrose hall, may be you should pull
him aside and talk to him privately”

Knowing Casca that’s probably something that she did say but Griffith didn’t act upon it because of emotions. Damn emotions

mercenaries gonna mercenary i guess

to be fair I think Casca telling Griffith why Guts wanted to leave would be kind of a betrayal of trust. Guts’ reasons are pretty personal. (ON THE OTHER HAND she had no problem telling Guts all about Griffith’s incredibly personal issues, so lmao that’s kind of an inadequate excuse.)

And tbh I feel like she got Griffith to show up to keep Guts from leaving because she thought they’d be able to talk it out. Honestly I think you’re basically right lol, it’s kind of just plot convenience that she doesn’t tell Griffith why Guts was planning to leave. There’s no real reason for her to hold back.

I definitely don’t think she told Griffith though, based on his inner monologue before the duel and like… idk just from everything I feel I understand about Griffith’s narrative and inner conflicts it makes the most sense for him to take Guts leaving as a rejection. If he knew Guts was leaving because he admired him his reaction would still probably be negative, he might even still just default to challenging Guts to another duel to avoid examining how he actually feels lmao, but I think his thoughts would be very different and I don’t think he’d have a huge breakdown after if that was the case.

griff-guts
replied to your post

“I mean I genuinely do think (human, obviously) Griffith is by far a…”

lmao i think about this all the time. also audience leniency and sympathy towards guts moral failings is amplified due to him being the narrative point of view and protagonist for the majority of chapters, and in comparison to starkly standard evil characters like apostles, femto, etc he SEEMS to be a good guy, even though realistically he isn’t. the grey morality of berserk extends to literally everyone even guts. it’s like really no coincidence that miura draws guts visually similar to
femto and the apostles
often lol. i mean i can’t insert examples or whatever bc this is just a
rambling reply but i’m sure you’ve seen the comparison posts of guts in
berserker armour or just in battle to femto. it’s like….. so not subtle
that he’s an asshole and not presented as a shining example of perfect
morality yet bc the fandom can’t read and he’s their macho straight guy
testosterone hero he gets a pass for doing bad stuff lol

yeah absolutely lol, like most of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he gets pretty damn indistinguishable from demons/monsters even without a magical transformation. Like yeah definitely visually, but tbh it’s also directly stated a lot lol. Like ngl this is actually one of my fave (well, non griffguts) lines:

And then once we’re in NeoGriffith’s narrative and meeting the cool apostles, a lot of them seem way better than Guts by any moral standard lol. Grunebeld, Zodd, Irvine.

Like the dock fight really directly compares Guts and Zodd and both of them balancing humanity/reason and bloodlust.

Idk I love this aspect of Berserk basically lol, I’m all about dark monstery protags. And it’s dumb that so many people want to see Guts as an admirable beacon of virtue because that’s like the opposite of the point.

griffithsgaymom:

life changing to think that griffith would actually enjoy being seen as desirable and sexy and attractive for once as long as its guts looking at him

murdersounds:

bthump:

xiyyh
replied to your photoset “murdersounds: expository yelling at the count from puck, though it…”

mmmmmh really tho i don’t think griffith was fragile, not before he was broken at least

oh no you gave me an opening to talk about griffith. tbh it depends what you mean by fragile, like I might not even be disagreeing with you at all, but I have Strong Opinions on Griffith being a hot mess all his life and I can’t not take the opportunity to talk about them lol.

Basically overall I feel like this kinda sums it up:

I don’t think Griffith was fragile exactly – when Casca says he made himself strong, it’s not just a facade, he genuinely has the confidence to take 5,000 men and conquer an undefeatable fortress guarded by an army of 30,000, burn a queen to death while looking her in the eye, etc. Griffith is badass, and the fact that he basically deliberately chose to be as hardcore as he could to achieve a goal makes him extra badass imo. So if it’s a case of faking it til you make it he’s definitely made it.

But he makes himself that way by not just hiding but denying his vulnerabilities. Casca says Griffith had to make himself strong the first time after telling Guts about how he pretty much had a breakdown in front of her before smiling and telling her he’s fine.

imo Griffith is a giant self-loathing mess of guilt issues that he just almost never ever reveals or admits to himself, and while he uses his dream to help bury his weaknesses, Guts brings them out. It’s like, the dream is his emotional crutch, how he denies his guilt and self-loathing by telling himself it’s all necessary. But then Guts becomes an alternative to that – by the time they’re assassinating queens together Griffith wants Guts’ to assuage his guilt by telling him he’s good more than he wants to prove he’s doing the right thing by succeeding in his goal lol

And imo his emotional reliance on Guts starts as early as when he first met him, but we see the self-hate that he needs to build his defenses against even before that, during Casca’s flashback.

Oh also I say all this but I feel like Puck’s statement here is kind of a more universal statement on humanity than specifically calling the Count extra fragile. Everyone’s got issues, and got defense mechanisms to help deal with their issues, and everyone’s heart is fragile when they lose that armour.

Tho I def think Griffith has more than his fair share of issues.

(i promote this big griffith meta thing at every possible opportunity lol but it’s extra fitting for this topic so if anyone feels like reading this exact same point but in a whooooole lot more words, i got you covered)

oh!! absolutely, you’re right on all of this, i didn’t want to get too wordy on a reply to my own post then spiral into an incomprehensible analysis before dinner, but i know both of my statements were flawed. i got too thinky and offered no explanation to back up because i was in a rush 😭

i didn’t want to discredit the amount of strength it took to hold himself together more than anything else. i don’t know how he made it as far as he did honestly, knowing how thin that veneer was that kept him from shattering. i imagine he was mythologizing himself just to survive. the ~concept~ of griffith was his alone to bear. he’s ABSOLUTELY fragile. and i wouldn’t call it strength per se (in opposition to this fragility idea) but perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of it.

maybe i was thinking in a … “could i possibly deal with this?” kind of mindset. i couldn’t, for sure. i’d have to be an extraordinary actor, at worst (as you mentioned, fake it till you are it, basically). even with his mountain of issues and posturing he somehow managed to pull through (until it was too much, obviously) and it’s very admirable (to me, a very fragile person, lol), and very, very sad. i feel like the guilt alone would’ve killed me. but i know he’s a master of compartmentalization and appearing strong to anyone looking up to him (maybe aside from guts, who i think he was fairly comfortable being honest with, maybe because guts treated him like a real person and not an idea/ideal, among other things.)

i’m sure you’ll agree with some of this! and i absolutely do subscribe to and understand these things you’ve pointed out, i’m just … very clumsy at cobbling together my thoughts together coherently or in order sometimes 🤧 i very much appreciate your deep analyses 💖 i could think and talk about this stuff all day, but i digress, because somehow it’s 4am???

Oh yeah I absolutely agree with all of this! and like yeah I didn’t think one off the cuff sentence encompassed all your thoughts, it’s why i was like idek if I disagree with you bc the word “fragile” is so nebulous, but yk genuinely if someone says something about Griffith to me I’m immediately like LET ME TELL YOU WHAT I THINK lol. And ty for your response, this is all so good!

Like everything you’re saying is something I really, really love about Griffith. it’s a contrast that highlights both sides – the severity of how he cracks in those vulnerable moments, like the self-harm, up to burning his life down around himself when Guts left, really shows how fucking impressive it is that he goes from back-alley peasant to nearly royalty while containing all of that in him. And his sheer self-control and the perfection of the image he portrays shows how intense the dark negative feelings are when they do break through.

Like eg Casca’s flashback makes the scene where he tells Gennon he gives zero fucks about him before killing him that much more powerful, because we know some of what he’s holding back.

Like I wouldn’t really say he’s admirable because his way of dealing with his issues by completely ignoring them is not great and causes many problems to put it mildly lol, but it’s impressive and pretty awesome, and like I would also crumble immediately in Griffith’s shoes lol. So I can see why Casca watches him bury his breakdown behind a smile and calls it strength and decides she wants to be his sword.

also

perhaps living up to the mythologized idea of himself was easier to
focus on than unpacking even the smallest bit of mental baggage. i’m
sure he would’ve unraveled if he’d started honestly addressing any of
it.

yesss i love this. I never really thought of it like this but yeah the idea that he’s focusing on being this ideal image of himself not just because he has to to achieve his goal, but because it’s practically a distraction from looking at the darker, guilt-ridden, fucked up real him buried underneath.

and that makes the “do you think I’m cruel” conversation that much more heartbreaking, because it was Griffith opening himself up to starting to address some of it, maybe able to with Guts as emotional support, but instead he gets shut down.

murdersounds:

eclipse foreshadowing

murdersounds:

he almost breaks here
lips don’t do that if you aren’t about to cry

i wonder if had it been guts that hugged him here, (even though this was before they met) would he have cried? i almost think he would’ve … he feels safe being vulnerable around guts, he trusts him. griffith could’ve used a nice healthy emotional release with his friend instead of shutting it off and trying to look strong. guts is the only one allowed to see him weak, ever.

murdersounds:

well! this revelation sure fucked up my morning

griffiths-huggybox:

bthump:

i actually kinda like how unconcerned griffith is. he’s just like, welp what can you do casca, naked man + naked woman = acceptable, naked man + naked man = bad, that’s just the natural way of things and I got way too much internalized homophobia to fight it. (“warming a man is a woman’s duty, he said.”)

lol i seriously cannot read griffith’s narrative as anything but dream/heteronormativity vs guts/living ur gay truth.

like i’ve seen this scene described as just tone-setting casual ye olde sexism, but it feels too significant for that. it just fits their whole messed up love triangle dynamic so perfectly, it’s like, an ideal establishing action that just sums it all up.

I was actually a bit pissed when I found that out, but it’s one of those things that’s infuriating at first and then it makes sense later. It had nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with knowing that people would want Guts killed. No one would dare do anything to Guts while Casca was there. Griffith doing it himself would cause a lot of raised eyebrows for sure and he was shrewd enough to know that.

She’s right to be angry though, but Griffith doing it himself/leaving Guts alone would have been a bad idea.

this explanation has never occured to me but it does make a lot of sense logically.

but then i have to ask, why wouldn’t griffith/miura give that as the explanation then? there’s no in-story or out of story reason to keep it secret that i can think of, and it would make more sense for griffith to use that as his reasoning since it would presumably piss casca off less. plus i guess in the same vein griffith could’ve theoretically asked some dude to cuddle with guts while casca stood guard, but it had to be casca herself.

so tbh while it works as an explanation, I don’t think this is what Miura was intending. I def think it’s supposed to be basically an introduction to the way Casca’s narrative is all about misogyny and being a woman.

(I don’t think Miura necessarily intended the internalized homophobia thing btw, it just fits so well and reading it that way improves the story imho, and I can’t help but see it everywhere throughout lol)

chaoticgaygriffith:

i feel like the most relaxed we’ve ever seen griffith is his water fight with guts … and a few other moments that he had with him alone. in all of those his personality was very playful, curious. many, including myself, remember griffith by his tenacity and intensity, hard work and ambition, but i honestly think that’s just him trying really hard to fulfil the “promise” he’s sort of unintentionally made as a little kid. he carries such a heavy burden that i feel like we have to remember we’re not seeing his actual beliefs and values. we’re seeing the beliefs and values he’s been using to justify his actions for years. we’re seeing him under stressful, unhealthy conditions. hell, we’re seeing him around snooty nobles he has no choice but to try to impress

i’m not saying his “actual” personality is completely different from what we’re seeing, but i am saying that we don’t really know him at his best. and that is, to me personally, as important as knowing him at his worst. which one of those qualifies as the “real personality” is of course debatable and i don’t really have a set opinion on that

I’ve just been having feelings about Casca lately that are probs 90% projection. We’ve talked about this before I think the most likely explanation of Casca’s character arc revolving around feelings about the men around her (that therefore must be romantic) is misogyny. But it’s also shitty and #relatable because despite being in an atypically profession for women Casca is a Good Girl. And as someone who was raised to be that way you are pretty much trained to be this way by your parents.

And once we bring in the after effects of multiple traumas and possible
closeted feelings it gets even more complicated because I really did
just throw myself into my relationships, both platonic and romantic. So
basically it’s not good writing but it’s all weird and complicated for
me as someone who relates more and more to her as I get older.

Makes me wish we got more pre-Hawks backstory for Casca, what her family life was like, yk, other than her parents selling her lol, to have more of a foundation for her character.

but like this is legit. idk projecting on media is a time-honoured tradition, and if it makes it more entertaining or meaningful or understandable or w/e then it’s probably the best thing to do lol.

I don’t identify with Casca rly myself (I mean tbqh I almost never relate much to fictional characters on a personal level lol, I have kind of a disconnect there) but it absolutely makes her narrative more interesting to me if eg I read her desire to “give something” to the men in her life sexually as a result of trauma and being rescued/feeling like she owes them, rather than Miura just being a misogynist who thinks its romantic.

like idk exactly where to draw the line between ‘good writing’ and ‘bad but makes a surprising amount of sense if you look at it in a certain way writing’ anyway lol.

(btw I think I saw that you replied to one of my posts a couple times around when you sent these but they don’t show up on my activity page bc tumblr is broken so idk lol)

seisans
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “@madchen said:
whenever i see people…”

oh i do actually think casca’s not gonna forgive guts though! say what you will about miura but at the end of the day he’s a brilliant writer, and i feel like whether or not he understands women and casca as a character, he knows what would make for a really bad story. guts and casca having a happily ever after would be the most boring shit ever, i don’t think he would do that
but i DO think that all the little
nuances of casca that make her so relatable to women and maybe
especially wlw were just kind of accidental. no man understands women
like that

ohh yeah i see what you mean then by Miura only ever accidentally writing women well. bc like I do think he sometimes does pretty good with writing women as interesting well rounded characters, but boy when he gets into gendered stuff specifically, yk that kind of men are like this and women are like this shit, or the experience of being a woman in a misogynistic world stuff, etc, it’s absolutely super basic at best and usually just Bad as we see over and over with Casca, among other examples.

So yeah when it comes to like, eg expectations of a nuanced and thoughtful portrayal of Casca’s reaction to her extremely gendered trauma I have basement level expectations, and it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if Miura thought Casca being in love with Guts and/or forgiving him was a reasonable emotional response as a woman-driven-by-her-emotions-for-men.

But yeah, characterization aside, narratively it would just not be good writing, and lbr we’ve had a ton of foreshadowing and it’s not pointing towards Guts and Casca getting a happily ever after. At least not any time soon. And I’m just gonna keep my fingers crossed that whatever actually happens effectively nips the romantic potential in the bud.

@madchen said:
whenever i see people
gush about casca as like a strong female character its like… what the
fuck are yall talking about she literally is there to throw hysterical
fits and then gets fridged 😦

also you put into
words what is eternally frustrating to me abt casca ie miura is a pretty
decent writer when it comes to portraying human fault in his characters
so cascas writing comes off almost like a deliberate comment on her
places as a woman constantly bound to two men and being miserable and
directionless bc of it.
i mean miuras female characters in
general like dude… please i know its “””dark fantasy”” but not every
woman has to be under constant threat of depowering and rape or be frail
and helpless before she meets guts or w/e

and then our
“”powerful women”” are bland and matronly or sexualized femme fatales
snooze. this turned into a rant basically cascas writing is my kill
switch

yeeeep.

and yeah like agh that’s basically what i mean when i say her lack of independence is interesting to me in theory, like… i genuinely believe it could be intended as an actual flaw and commentary on misogyny, like I’m torn on that. bc Miura does use Casca to give us his hot takes on misogyny a lot, and it really, really feels to me like he wrote g*tsca as a highly flawed relationship on purpose, and ffs she’s compared to his sword right after they fuck, that cannot be intended as a good thing, right?

but his writing of Casca is just so genuinely bad and misogynist so often that it’s just as likely that he just plain sucks at writing a hetero romance that isn’t super sexist.

honestly it almost feels ridiculous to complain about the misogyny in berserk, because duh lmao, but sometimes I just get caught up in how frustrating it is, esp bc Miura is such a good writer in other ways. Like I’d say Farnese is the best written woman in Berserk and even she goes from sexy sadomasochist to caretaker with almost nothing in between, with a side of being into Guts the same way Casca was into Griffith.

Griffith has been described by the Godhand as kinsman. He is put in a womb and then becomes a bird that leaves its nest. He is often seen in a fetal position. I see this as Griffith becoming part of a family means Griffith can grow and start over.

Seems like a fair take. I mean becoming Femto was very much shown as a rebirth – you could definitely say he was reborn into a new family, the godhand, to begin a new life. I always particularly loved this panel as an illustration for this ngl:

the very image of a newly hatched (evil) baby bird right there.

But yeah like, the chapter where the hand begins to unfold to reveal Femto is called “quickening” and the next chapter is “birth.” There’s no doubt it’s def a monstrous gestation thing.

Makes me wonder about NeoGriffith’s similar birth tbh. It gets a series of chapters titled “birth ceremony,” he hatches from an egg there too, rapidly grows from fetus to adult, etc.

Though we don’t know enough about NeoGriffith to conclude whether it means there’s significant differences between him and Femto/it’s another new start in a way. But I mean the parallels and contrasts between the Eclipse and the Conviction Arc’s shadow Eclipse were hammered through the reader’s head for a reason right? There’s got to be something to it.

yesgabsstuff replied to your post “griff-guts replied to your post “huh, i just noticed that the…”

Also the placement of the panels where Guts is angrily swinging his sword around at the same time Griffith is being given peerage has a lot of fodder for that as well. Griffith is kissing a noble’s sword when the one he really wants to be kissing is being kept on the outside of his dream by design…..

YES lmao, this reminds me of this half joke half serious post i wrote a while ago

https://bthump.tumblr.com/post/172009797586/chapter-one-serves-to-re-establish-the-characters

but yeah there’s no way that imagery is accidental. i mean ignore the phallic symbolism if u want, but those swords are deliberately being contrasted, + it foreshadows guts and griffith’s mutual self-imposed isolation from each other thru their dreams as symbolized by those swords right there

madchen
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “ok…”

the implications of this make me sad but like its good in the content way
theres the assumption
that griffith knows that guts finds him physically/sexually attractive
(which gets worse when you tie in his feminine features and the
internalized homophobia) but the jump from him wanting guts to stay
around and offering his body just ends in static…

griffith drops 2 his knees and offers to suck guts off if he promises he wont leave just yet

it’s like, the combination of most plausible and most depressing way for them to turn/try to turn their relationship sexual

and i feel like guts would have to be the one who recognizes that griffith has fucked up attitudes towards sex bc i rly don’t think griffith is self aware enough to recognize that this is terrible lol, at least not without a serious wake-up call. but idk if guts has enough like… social awareness. it’s like griffith has the social awareness and guts has the self awareness and while in some circumstances that could work out really well, in this circumstance it’s the opposite of what they need.

agh this is such a disaster scenario. and like if griffith did offer then and there during a fraught moment as he’s freaked out about guts leaving, guts would absolutely be like ‘no what the fuck’ and griffith would then ofc take it as a rejection/condemnation.

but at least it might be enough to convince guts that griffith needs him a lot more than he believes? it’s a starting point at least.

also yeah the point about griffith knowing guts finds him attractive is so 😦 like we were talking a bit before about guts’ internalized homophobia + griffith’s femininity vs masculinity, but yeah it would be sad and interesting to explore how griffith feels about that too.

madchen
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “ok heres a question that could warrant…”

lmaoo im the same i like ships that are on “the friends to enemies to its complicated and cant be explained in a trope” sid so fluff is a relief. griffiths issues with sex and intimacy have me fucked beyond his rape i think crossing that line with guts would lead to a contradiction with his sex=transaction viewpoint
like i can see him
trying to seduce guts when they have a disagreement because some part of
him thinks that trading his body/objectifying himself (?) is a viable
option to get what he wants or come to a compromise. as opposed to an
thing he does with a person he loves because he loves him and he wants
to do it. guts of course freaks out which only makes griffith more
hysterical etc

aaaaaaaaa yeah this is so real and now i’m depressed. i tried to add something but i just ended up re-stating what you said lol.

but also this has me immediately thinking of an au w/ griffith learning that guts intends to leave in a situation less immediate than the canon one but still incredibly emotionally intense for him, and leaping to offering sex. especially if he learns, unlike canon, that guts wants to leave to be his friend/equal, and therefore doesn’t necessarily see it as a rejection, but as a problem that could be fixed by offering himself.

and of course griffith does want sex for its own sake, as an expression of love and intimacy and pleasure etc, but it just isn’t how he thinks of it or frames it to himself. when it comes to sex w/ guts the transaction concept is more like an excuse to experience something he wants but can’t really admit he wants due to a) trauma and/or b) the way it runs counter to his dream.

ugh this is so angsty and good.

ok heres a question that could warrant headcanon and possibly meta/character analysis… how do you see progression of physical relationship (in thinking more like comfortability with touching rather than explicitly sexual stuff lol) with griff and guts when they enter a relationship for the first time? like i think theyre pretty physical and intimate to an extent as friends but theyd probably be like… fucking shy about it at first…

yesgabsstuff:

bthump:

Yeah like, in canon they are surprisingly physical with each other. Or at least it surprises me on re-read how many of their significant relationship moments not just include but revolve around and specifically highlight physical touch.

Like from Griffith grabbing Guts’ face like he’s going to pull him into a kiss after defeating him in a physical fight to Griffith’s “if you touch me now…” moment of reality-breaking despair, touch is portrayed as a really significant component of their relationship.

Actually to get on my meta shit real quick, check out their first interactions. First Griffith shoving Casca at Guts, explicitly because she’s the only woman around and only a woman can cuddle naked with a dude (and damn if her first appearance doesn’t define her role in the story to a tee). Next, they duel with swords. Extensions of themselves, but not their actual physical bodies. Then they lose their swords and end up physically grappling with each other, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m wracking my brain and I’m pretty sure this is the only time we’ve ever seen either of them fight without weapons.

Which leads to this:

Their first meeting has the sense of an inevitable, physical pull between them imo, and that is a constant of their relationship.

And their mutual desire for physical contact can only be satisfied when they have the pretense of guys being dudes to fall back on lol. A fight, in this case. In other cases it’s saving each others’ lives, and supporting each other while injured mainly, and sometimes casual friendly touches, like Guts’ hand on Griffith’s shoulder which gains significance during Griffith’s torture chamber monologue.

When they don’t have that pretense available, when sex inevitably comes into the equation, that’s when Casca or Charlotte comes between them as outlets for those decidedly non platonic feelings, as The Designated Socially (and psychologically thanks to trauma) Acceptable Woman.

(I’d elaborate on that but like, I talk about Casca as an emotional and physical bridge between them a lot and have at least one giant thorough post about it. And Charlotte is just obvious. I figure we’re all on the same page here.)

Idk it’s not like they touch in every scene they’re in or anything, more that most of their intensely emotional and narratively significant scenes either involve touch in significant ways, or the very pointed absence of it (eg Guts reaching out towards Griffith as he transforms before pulling his hand away and turning to fight apostles. Or, yk, Griffith straight up thinking about Guts at the exact moment of penetration during the Charlotte sex scene, which I still can’t believe happened. Stuff like that lol).

So while I think them being physically drawn to each other and wanting to touch is v in character, and I can easily imagine them brushing shoulders, casually grabbing arms or w/e to get the others’ attention, back and shoulder pats, arm wrestling, play fighting, etc etc, and I think there’s plenty of indication that they probably find excuses to touch a lot, more importantly I think the narrative is telling us that physical touch is a significant aspect of their expression of feelings for each other regardless of how often they might actually get touchy feely.

ANYWAY i’m realizing that i have like fifty million things to say on this topic so I’m going to write more posts later. For now I’ll get into the headcanony stuff.

So basically I think that they absolutely would get v awkward and kind of shy about touch after acknowledging that their feelings are sexual. Suddenly they realize why they want to touch each other so much, they both have hangups about it even assuming they navigate the whole sexuality issue smoothly, and it would probably take a little while to adjust even if everything goes perfectly.

But I don’t think it would take very long, because the facts are that they really like being in physical contact with each other, and even if they got awkward for a while and second guessed things like shoulder pats or w/e a lot lol, they are ultimately used to touching and it’s pretty natural to them. It’s how they express their emotional closeness, and it would become even moreso once they accepted the sexual aspect of their feelings.

If this is in the canon universe I could see trying to keep their hands off each other being more of a problem lol. I feel like if they did get together, just about everyone would figure it out pretty quickly. They are absolutely the couple who sits in each others’ laps, leans against each other, casually wraps their arms around each other, etc, and it would be hard for them to refrain in general day to day interactions i m h o.

Also they’d be adorable as fuck.

Tho also for the sake of angst I could see things going much less than smoothly wrt the sexuality angle, particularly with Guts, and if one of them realized their feelings aren’t platonic first I could definitely see him physically withdrawing and specifically avoiding contact, whether it’s Guts or Griffith, though maybe especially if it’s Guts, and subtly making the other feel kind of neglected/rejected. But they’d get through that eventually.

You’re totally right about touch being integral to their pull towards each other. I noticed but I’m not sure that I had ever laid out each piece of their story together out like this. It’s like it happens before they can remember who they’re supposed to be and that’s very sweet, especially Guts.

I feel like it would be very difficult for both of them to get back there once they explicitly acknowledge the sexual element of their interest in each other. Griffith, because he’s doing that classic closeted thing of on some level knowing he likes Guts but telling himself these small moments are enough. And Guts, because he has on a visceral level not processed his trauma.

Griffith hasn’t either and once he a Guts theoretically cross that line, the way he had described his own rape to himself may fall apart for him. Like even though it was clear to us and to Casca that he had experienced an act of violence, he may very well have compartemtalized it away. Once he knows what sex is supposed to be, he has to see it for what it is and to see his own vulnerability at the time more clearly. The time between the ages of 13/14 and twenty is a long time and it would be hard to see himself as a child I think. So it’s possible he may withdraw abruptly too, even if Guts was more open.

Have you noticed that in the movie Griffith doesn’t have the single wound on the shoulder but multiple scratch ones? I dunno if they got Miura to suggest it or if they took some liberties, but it always bothered me how in the manga he had that weird wound: it didn’t look like his scratching from the Casca flashback at all.

lulalin:

bthump:

Okay, this is totally overkill, I know, but your ask has motivated me to just lay it all out, so ty!

Yeah, I can see why people look at this image and see it as one huge raised scar. It’s fairly ambiguous looking, and it’s the visual interpretation the anime went with, which reinforces this common perception:

But look at this:

You can see when he traces it that the “outline” of that “wound” fits his two fingers exactly. It’s not one scar, it’s two self-inflicted parallel scratch marks.

They’re not in the same place as the river scratches, there are only two instead of four, and they’re also older and therefore either mostly healed scabs or scars which he’s tracing instead of tearing open in that moment, which is why they’re not the same as the bleeding open wounds we see in chapter 17, but they are definitely two separate marks, not the edges of one giant scar.

Tbh I think Miura put them on his shoulder instead of his arms this time mainly for dramatic effect so Griffith is more curled in on himself when he traces them.

imo the movie is closer to the spirit of the manga in making them scratch marks and showing Griffith seemingly tempted to add to them. It’s still a little weird considering their placement further back, and idk what they expected new audiences to think since they cut out every relevant aspect of those marks being there, ie his backstory and the night Guts and Griffith assassinate the Queen and co. But whatever, it’s close enough for me.

And to just briefly explain those scratch marks a bit further, basically, as much as it looks a bit like a big scar in the manga, like you said, it really makes no sense for it to be.

If Guts’ sword had hit him in the second duel he’d either have a gaping wound or a discoloured bruise later that day, not a scar, and if he got it somewhere else that we never get to see then he has absolutely no narrative reason to trace it and cry while thinking about Guts. It would be nonsensical and meaningless for him to trace some random mysterious scar that has no relevance in this highly emotionally charged moment.

On the other hand we know he has a history of self-harming by scratching himself, and we’ve seen him viciously scratch himself under circumstances very similar to Tombstone of Flame Part 2 – the moment Griffith flashed back to just as we see his bare shoulder with those marks on it for the first time in that first image up there: “You believe that, don’t you?”

Griffith has done something he considers “dirty” for the sake of his dream, asks someone else what they think of him (”Am I dirty?” // “Do you think that I’m cruel?”), both Casca and Guts inadvertantly reinforce his belief that he’s dirty/cruel with their responses (”N- why… why were you alone with him before?” and “Ain’t that part of the path to your dream?”), and in the river in front of Casca he self harms while talking himself through the necessity of dirtying himself for his dream, so it feels safe to assume that sometime shortly following his conversation with Guts in Tombstone of Flame he also self harmed while telling himself it’s necessary to be cruel for his dream.

Now that Guts has left in what Griffith believes is a rejection of the “cruelty” and “dirtiness” that he let Guts in to see, he traces those old scratch marks and tries to convince himself again that it’s worth it for his dream. And the point of this moment is that he can’t convince himself this time. Instead he just curls up and sobs, because in the face of Guts’ apparent rejection, it’s not worth it.

Like I said lol, this is overkill as a response to your ask, but like I saw an excuse to explain my take on this moment in its own post, instead of buried in a much longer post, so I took it.

Great analysis, I would like to add a couple of points, if you don’t mind.

Guts didn’t want to hurt Griffith during the duel, he stops his sword before it hits him: he doesn’t have cut hair, nor clothes. No signs of bleeding whatsoever too (he didn’t change his clothes when he got to Charlotte, so he would’ve been soaked with blood).

And since Miura is very precise with what he draws, we can clearly see the hypothetical sword wound would’ve gone from his neck to his shoulder, not from his back to his collar bone:

The way the scar it’s drawn still bothered me, so I searched for it in the other chapters, and in chapter 39 it looks the same, while in chapter 40’s cover it looks like two separate scratch marks:

So either Miura changed his mind about its origin or he noticed people didn’t understand what it was supposed to be.

I’d like to think the movie got the “corrected” version, but we’ve seen they took some liberties with stuff such as Griffith’s tortured face, so who knows. I prefer the scratching as an explanation for that wound.

ty for the addition!

yeah i really wish Miura would’ve made it say, three scratch marks instead of two for the sake of clarity, but oh well.

I could even mb see an argument that maybe it’s meant to be ambiguous and deliberately looks reminiscent of a scar, maybe to emphasize that Griffith came away from that duel wounded emotionally, if not physically. Buuuut that’s a huge stretch and almost certainly not intended lol.

griff-guts:

hawkmaiden:

griff-guts:

hawkmaiden:

griff-guts:

imagine shipping guts with casca…. like griffith is literally right there and deeply in love with guts. what’s wrong with u.

Ummmm I don’t think neo griff even likes guts anymore tho’ ;;

i mean if that’s ur opinion then cool but neogriff is still very much obsessed with guts and that’s faxx @hawkmaiden

Does he? I haven’t read it that far! I thought he hates guts now or does he still love him?

well i mean…. he hesitated to kill guts at the end of the eclipse, purposefully spared him numerous times, had a very bitchy ex boyfriend type talk with him during guardians of desire, likes to stare at him intensely from a distance, and most importantly the whole hill of swords reunion scene is quite poignant at spelling out the fact that griffith still has feelings for guts, though he denies it (ie. when guts is in danger griffiths should-be-dead heart starts beating in fear, and he tells zodd to stop attacking guts.) there’s LOTS of other evidence but i don’t have the post space currently to send screenshots and such in a reblog, so that’s the gist of it. i would say he “hates” guts in that he still feels betrayed that guts left him, plus frustrated at the heavy influence his feelings for guts has/had over his decisions, but he still obviously feels something for guts – worry, longing, loneliness, etc. if need be, i can explain deeper, but i would also really recommend reading further so you can see these things for yourself and not have me spoil it for you!

@viperethics does this answer your question as well??

prettykitten123
replied to your post “prettykitten123
replied to your post “chaoticgaygriffith:

…”

I think Griffith is gay, even though I feel like he doesn’t know it(maybe after a while he came to realize it, especially after Guts left him) as for Guts his sexuality is a mystery to me. I know he definitely likes men(even though he probably definitely doesnt understand that or acknowledge it) attraction to women is debatable.
The way I see it we
cant really pinpoint what Guts’ sexuality is or his thoughts on women.
Griffith was the first to give Guts something that he never had and I
feel like his affection for Griffith is dominantly based on this. No one
else in the manga, both men and women, have yet to give Guts what
Griffith gave him thus why no one has yet to win over his affections.

ia tbh

for me I think Griffith is variable, like i could see him being either super repressed about being gay thanks to a) his dream revolving around marrying a woman and b) gennon being the only textually gay dude in berserk (thx miura) and griffith being taken advantage of at probably the age where he’d be just starting to realize he had feelings of attraction to men, like, that seems extremely likely to fuck him up.

But I could also see him accepting that he’s attracted to men – I mean he reads a lot, he seems fairly worldly, maybe gennon isn’t his only exposure to same-sex attraction, etc – but also not thinking it’s important because it’s incompatible with his dream.

Either way though I definitely can’t see him as anything but gay.

Wrt Guts I see him as gay too. He could be bi easily enough, but it’s just so easy for me to see his short-lived relationship with Casca as repression at work lol. Like saying she was the only person who could touch him back in the day, which was textually because she’s a woman (and also wrong bc Griffith also could) feels really suggestive of this to me. And of course the way their relationship screams rebound from their feelings for Griffith for both of them. And post eclipse, the only times he thinks of Casca sexually are when Griffith is also somehow involved, a la

And of course the entire Beast of Darkness debacle.

But yeah sexualities aside, since I mean it still could go either way from gay to bi, so w/e, that’s a really good point about Griffith being the only person in the manga who’s given Guts what he’s so desperately wanted – ie affection and attention and respect from someone Guts respects. It’s Griffith who he wants to look at him. Not Casca, not any of his rpg group or any of the other Hawks, just Griffith. It’s Griffith whose respect he feels like he needs to earn, no one else’s. It’s Griffith who he needs to feel equal to, no one else. It’s Griffith who he’s been obsessed with, no one else.

It’s why their relationship is still so extra lol, it’s shown as singular in the story, whether Miura meant that to be sexual or not.

So yeah idk, good comment basically, I just wanted to ramble on the subject lol.

freewilllife:

bthump:

ninjabelle:

bthump:

strangemonochromes:

Berserk (ベルセルク) // Kentaro Miura

ok anime aside, anyone know if there’s any proof that these are guts’ thoughts, like in the original japanese wording or smthn? because they read so griffith to me in phrasing, and also if these are guts’ lines then it kills a lot of my sympathy for him lol.

like kinda turns it from guts leaving without a word bc he didn’t think griffith would care, to guts leaving without a word despite knowing he was causing some amount of emotional damage, bc he’s thinking w/e griffith will get over it. like, surprise dude, he did not get over it. or, to be more cutting, he did in fact eventually stand up and start walking, and that was a bad time for everyone.

(on the other hand if i was adapting this and if it is genuinely ambiguous, i’d rly want to have both vas say these lines lol. i mean maybe it’s not completely a bad thing for guts to not be super sympathetic in his choice to leave. understandable, yes, but a mistake is a mistake and if guts gets these lines that’s just kind of underscoring it.)

honestly I never even doubted that these were 100% guts’ words, I mean now that you’re bringing it up I guess maybe they could be griffith’s (the like stumbling on a rock, a small thing part aka him lying to himself about how much it impacts him) but that makes zero sense to me considering in this very moment he’s just sitting there utterly defeated (like… even more so mentally than physically) so him internally monologuing this deeply feels really out of place. (i always considered him so completely shocked there everything else was just static to him. like he hears no sounds. doesn’t even feel the cold. can’t think. it’s just guts walking further and further away booooo) but you’re right about it killing a bit of the guts sympathy tho because yeah, why leave at all if you’re aware you’re already important enough to cause griff at least SOME form of pain. I mean isn’t that what he wanted all along like why willingly walk away if you’re semi-aware you already mean enough to someone to cause them a minor breakdown. (lol understatement of the century ~~but then again guts at this point knew nothing of the true depth of griff’s feelings~~)

and this brings up another issue, if these are guts thoughts, and we then assume he was aware he was at least ‘a rock on griff’s road’ yet still left, can we then also safely assume that whatever he was aware of that griff felt for him, was not enough for him, like this whole scene always read to me as guts leaving because he wanted MORE (like yeah i know that’s the whole plot but hear me out) and steeling his resolve to go by winning back his freedom because his eventual return as griffith’s equal would magically undo the hurt and anger griff might’ve felt over guts breaking from his hold. like he had to at the very least know damn well that griffith valued him greatly as a captain and treated him different than the rest of the band, casca deadass tells him that and the only thing that stands in the way of him accepting it personally is his inferiority complex or whatever you wanna call it.

I know guts is a self-unaware idiot esp. in the golden age but cmon dude, he saw the way griff was sitting there stunned before him after that strike, he saw how he was completely shocked he’d lost the duel and thus his hold on guts. take into consideration guts’ own represses feelings for griff and you can imagine his heart must’ve ached at seeing griff so completely shook up.

BUT HE STILL WALKS OFF, monologues the above complete bs of an excuse to himself to justify why it is somehow okay for him to leave and become worthy of being griffith’s equal (that in any case, he already more than was but hnngg berserk is not a happy love story unfortunately)

Its actually good if that kills some of the sympathy because yes this is what inevitably kicked off all events that led to the eclipse and yes it was partly guts fault and YES he should feel very fuckin sorry.

and since the whole plot of berserk is in essence based on the weight of choice and how much of it is really your own or set in stone by fate this is a really good example of a really realllly reallllllly bad one with unimaginable consequences.

tldr; those have to be guts’ lines and yes its cool if you resent him alil for them lmao because this page is the arguably the worst moment in the entire manga cause it kicks off the end of all good things era.

It’s funny bc I just assumed they were Griffith’s words when I read it, since I didn’t remember the scene in the anime at all at the time, and imo it feels like something Griffith would think. Tho I do get your point about Griffith being beyond internally monologuing to himself, and idk I’m kind of torn… like I don’t rly disagree, he is absolutely emotionally fucked here lol, but the way I see Griffith, if there’s anything that would be running through his head at this moment it would be, “it’s fine it’s nbd idc at all it’s nothing” all the while kneeling frozen in the snow while the rest of the hawks there shuffle their feet and glance at each other awkwardly.

But I’m like, all about Griffith denying his feelings to himself so it’s an aspect of his character I mmmmay exaggerate a bit lmao.

But yeah wrt it being from Guts’ pov, I agree with everything you said, and like… yeah it rly does work. tbh I don’t think you’re wrong about anything there, there’s a lot of evidence that Guts at least knows Griffith has strong feelings for him and was devastated when he walked away. But omg I just… can’t handle that lmao.

Like, I need to see Guts as completely blinded by his inadequacy issues because otherwise I feel actual anger towards him and honestly I almost never get angry at fictional characters, I’m generally way more detached than that, so this is a very weird feeling lmao.

Like, it really does shift my attitude towards Guts leaving from seeing it as a
very innocent mistake since he never in a million years believed leaving would genuinely hurt griffith, to really actually
assigning him some serious blame bc he knew it would hurt griffith and
the only mistake there was miscalculating how much.

And like, that’s not just low self esteem, that’s callousness, and it’s callousness that resulted in my fave being tortured for a year and then deciding to become a monster so like, i guess that’s probably why it pisses me off lol. fuck you guts.

So tbh I still want to cling to things like Guts’ complete lack of understanding and denial when he comes back, during Casca’s tirade and his chat with Rickert, and in the tunnels on the way to rescue Griffith, etc, as evidence that Guts’ mistake was being genuinely blind to Griffith’s feelings towards him no matter how obvious they are bc of his low self esteem and inadequacy issues, rather than like, knowing Griffith cared to an extent but miscalculating how easily he’d get over it. And like, “this says to me I’m still worth spillin blood over in your eyes,” also kind of makes me hope that he thought Griffith only gaf about him as a soldier.

idk it’s a lot more palatable to me as another mistake in a big pile of golden age mistakes that no one can really be blamed for because they all have serious issues fucking them and their relationships up, alongside things like griffith failing to recognize his feelings and making his speech to charlotte, and casca running to grab griffith to stop guts from leaving, and both of them choosing to fight rather than talk, etc. And idk maybe if I was unbiased it would still feel like another one of those mistakes bc it’s not like Guts’ issues aren’t contributing lol, but idk it feels like Guts walking away goes above and beyond.

And agggh yeah like that moment is given an above and beyond treatment in Guts’ memories and related guilt issues, so that’s still perfectly reasonable… lmao it feels weird to be the one wanting to defend Guts when I was just saying that narratively everything is his fault and tbh I always feel like most of the fandom lets him off the hook way too much lol.

tl;dr I think you’re most likely right but that makes me feel negative feelings :((( and yeah ok those negative feelings fit the story but still :(((

What if Guts just meant that Griffith would survive the humiliation that he has lost or to be more precisisely lost a very strong soldier?

@chaoticgaygriffith said:
I’m on the “definitely assumed they were Guts’ words” train, and that’s
why I was so frustrated with him lol and wanted to see way more guilt
from him. But I think he thought the damage would be more like, you
know, Griffith losing a good soldier, instead of losing the man he loves
& the only person he can be vulnerable with. Let me check the
original Japanese though, just in case!

(I’m combining these responses to avoid reblogging the same long post twice in a row lol.)

but yeah lol this… really makes a lot of sense and idk I think I’m blinded by feelings here bc I can’t believe I didn’t think of looking at it like this lmao.

tho now that you’ve suggested it i’m suddenly missing all the angst and guilt involved in @ninjabelle‘s interpretation l q l

tbh
i think i could go either way depending if i’m in the mood for angst or
if i want to feel sympathy for everyone lol, guts either walking away
thinking griffith will get over losing a fight and a soldier vs guts
walking away knowing griffith cares somewhat on a personal level but
thinking of that as just more evidence that he needs to leave because
those feelings mean he’s the guy who can eventually become his
friend/equal.

ninjabelle:

bthump:

strangemonochromes:

Berserk (ベルセルク) // Kentaro Miura

ok anime aside, anyone know if there’s any proof that these are guts’ thoughts, like in the original japanese wording or smthn? because they read so griffith to me in phrasing, and also if these are guts’ lines then it kills a lot of my sympathy for him lol.

like kinda turns it from guts leaving without a word bc he didn’t think griffith would care, to guts leaving without a word despite knowing he was causing some amount of emotional damage, bc he’s thinking w/e griffith will get over it. like, surprise dude, he did not get over it. or, to be more cutting, he did in fact eventually stand up and start walking, and that was a bad time for everyone.

(on the other hand if i was adapting this and if it is genuinely ambiguous, i’d rly want to have both vas say these lines lol. i mean maybe it’s not completely a bad thing for guts to not be super sympathetic in his choice to leave. understandable, yes, but a mistake is a mistake and if guts gets these lines that’s just kind of underscoring it.)

honestly I never even doubted that these were 100% guts’ words, I mean now that you’re bringing it up I guess maybe they could be griffith’s (the like stumbling on a rock, a small thing part aka him lying to himself about how much it impacts him) but that makes zero sense to me considering in this very moment he’s just sitting there utterly defeated (like… even more so mentally than physically) so him internally monologuing this deeply feels really out of place. (i always considered him so completely shocked there everything else was just static to him. like he hears no sounds. doesn’t even feel the cold. can’t think. it’s just guts walking further and further away booooo) but you’re right about it killing a bit of the guts sympathy tho because yeah, why leave at all if you’re aware you’re already important enough to cause griff at least SOME form of pain. I mean isn’t that what he wanted all along like why willingly walk away if you’re semi-aware you already mean enough to someone to cause them a minor breakdown. (lol understatement of the century ~~but then again guts at this point knew nothing of the true depth of griff’s feelings~~)

and this brings up another issue, if these are guts thoughts, and we then assume he was aware he was at least ‘a rock on griff’s road’ yet still left, can we then also safely assume that whatever he was aware of that griff felt for him, was not enough for him, like this whole scene always read to me as guts leaving because he wanted MORE (like yeah i know that’s the whole plot but hear me out) and steeling his resolve to go by winning back his freedom because his eventual return as griffith’s equal would magically undo the hurt and anger griff might’ve felt over guts breaking from his hold. like he had to at the very least know damn well that griffith valued him greatly as a captain and treated him different than the rest of the band, casca deadass tells him that and the only thing that stands in the way of him accepting it personally is his inferiority complex or whatever you wanna call it.

I know guts is a self-unaware idiot esp. in the golden age but cmon dude, he saw the way griff was sitting there stunned before him after that strike, he saw how he was completely shocked he’d lost the duel and thus his hold on guts. take into consideration guts’ own represses feelings for griff and you can imagine his heart must’ve ached at seeing griff so completely shook up.

BUT HE STILL WALKS OFF, monologues the above complete bs of an excuse to himself to justify why it is somehow okay for him to leave and become worthy of being griffith’s equal (that in any case, he already more than was but hnngg berserk is not a happy love story unfortunately)

Its actually good if that kills some of the sympathy because yes this is what inevitably kicked off all events that led to the eclipse and yes it was partly guts fault and YES he should feel very fuckin sorry.

and since the whole plot of berserk is in essence based on the weight of choice and how much of it is really your own or set in stone by fate this is a really good example of a really realllly reallllllly bad one with unimaginable consequences.

tldr; those have to be guts’ lines and yes its cool if you resent him alil for them lmao because this page is the arguably the worst moment in the entire manga cause it kicks off the end of all good things era.

It’s funny bc I just assumed they were Griffith’s words when I read it, since I didn’t remember the scene in the anime at all at the time, and imo it feels like something Griffith would think. Tho I do get your point about Griffith being beyond internally monologuing to himself, and idk I’m kind of torn… like I don’t rly disagree, he is absolutely emotionally fucked here lol, but the way I see Griffith, if there’s anything that would be running through his head at this moment it would be, “it’s fine it’s nbd idc at all it’s nothing” all the while kneeling frozen in the snow while the rest of the hawks there shuffle their feet and glance at each other awkwardly.

But I’m like, all about Griffith denying his feelings to himself so it’s an aspect of his character I mmmmay exaggerate a bit lmao.

But yeah wrt it being from Guts’ pov, I agree with everything you said, and like… yeah it rly does work. tbh I don’t think you’re wrong about anything there, there’s a lot of evidence that Guts at least knows Griffith has strong feelings for him and was devastated when he walked away. But omg I just… can’t handle that lmao.

Like, I need to see Guts as completely blinded by his inadequacy issues because otherwise I feel actual anger towards him and honestly I almost never get angry at fictional characters, I’m generally way more detached than that, so this is a very weird feeling lmao.

Like, it really does shift my attitude towards Guts leaving from seeing it as a
very innocent mistake since he never in a million years believed leaving would genuinely hurt griffith, to really actually
assigning him some serious blame bc he knew it would hurt griffith and
the only mistake there was miscalculating how much.

And like, that’s not just low self esteem, that’s callousness, and it’s callousness that resulted in my fave being tortured for a year and then deciding to become a monster so like, i guess that’s probably why it pisses me off lol. fuck you guts.

So tbh I still want to cling to things like Guts’ complete lack of understanding and denial when he comes back, during Casca’s tirade and his chat with Rickert, and in the tunnels on the way to rescue Griffith, etc, as evidence that Guts’ mistake was being genuinely blind to Griffith’s feelings towards him no matter how obvious they are bc of his low self esteem and inadequacy issues, rather than like, knowing Griffith cared to an extent but miscalculating how easily he’d get over it. And like, “this says to me I’m still worth spillin blood over in your eyes,” also kind of makes me hope that he thought Griffith only gaf about him as a soldier.

idk it’s a lot more palatable to me as another mistake in a big pile of golden age mistakes that no one can really be blamed for because they all have serious issues fucking them and their relationships up, alongside things like griffith failing to recognize his feelings and making his speech to charlotte, and casca running to grab griffith to stop guts from leaving, and both of them choosing to fight rather than talk, etc. And idk maybe if I was unbiased it would still feel like another one of those mistakes bc it’s not like Guts’ issues aren’t contributing lol, but idk it feels like Guts walking away goes above and beyond.

And agggh yeah like that moment is given an above and beyond treatment in Guts’ memories and related guilt issues, so that’s still perfectly reasonable… lmao it feels weird to be the one wanting to defend Guts when I was just saying that narratively everything is his fault and tbh I always feel like most of the fandom lets him off the hook way too much lol.

tl;dr I think you’re most likely right but that makes me feel negative feelings :((( and yeah ok those negative feelings fit the story but still :(((

guts biting Griffith’s sword was a gay metaphor and then him breaking Griffith’s sword was another gay metaphor for guts “rejection” – or the perceived rejection from Griffith’s side

yeah i’ll def cosign this lol

i mean the sword blowjob was the farthest thing from subtle and while i think the second duel’s sword-breaking is largely about like… powerlessness moreso than clear sexual connotations like the first duel, it’s powerlessness in the face of griffith’s emotions for guts and his rejection by him, “how long ago did someone I was supposed to have in hand instead gain such a strong hold on me,” etc, so yeah. Totally a gay metaphor for griffith’s perceived rejection by guts.

(also i think you could argue that there are still some sexual connotations in the 2nd duel, it just feels like a little more of a stretch than w/ the hugely blatant first duel lol. but i mean, berserk equating wounds to sex not long after, guts breaking griffith’s sword before it hits him and then not even touching griffith with his own sword, right over top the scratch markes he gave himself which he traces after fucking charlotte later… lmfao fuck freudian imagery is such a fun rabbit hole, someone stop me.)

madchen
replied to your post “though actually while i’m on this subject, I do kind of have a big…”

i think berserk is walking that “revenge will destroy you” route and im not against a kind of emotional catharsis here but that would ideally be between guts and griffith and like that kind of reconciliation (given thats the angle were taking here) would leave an awful taste in my mouth bc of the eclipse rape lol.

tbh this is why i hope berserk isn’t so much going for a ‘revenge is bad and futile’ thing as it’s going for a ‘guts getting revenge in this particular case is bad and futile because it’s not his right to get revenge for the eclipse and also he wants revenge for the wrong reasons, ie bc it’s an easy outlet for his very complex feelings, but casca’s the hawk representative who never abandoned the band and also the person who suffered most so she’s the one who should get revenge.’

kind of suggested in part here at least:

and yea youre right about the
railroading thing ughhgh that really gets me (im a broken record but it
reminds me of vriska and like that shit gets me). it feels pretty hallow
when you have to acknowledge this in the context of the whole story
especially bc griffiths helplessness to the waters of fate and destiny
isnt emphasized as overtly tragic as it really is. which is a valid
storytelling choice ic it just, again, gets me.
also femto is the consequence of guts actions and its clearly framed that way idk what people get out of insisting otherwise.

yeah i feel you, griffith’s narrative is so sad to me, but a lot of what’s tragic about it isn’t in your face.

and yeah it’s like, you can say guts didn’t deserve to experience the eclipse, which is obviously true bc v few people deserve that shit, and def not for making a mistake based on low self esteem lol, but narratively it’s the consequence of his actions bc berserk is a very dark story. guts is the main character who actively made a choice which set all the tragedy dominos falling. it’s even ironically fitting – his choice to “abandon” the hawks and griffith resulted in losing everyone permanently.

like i think ppl equate saying the eclipse/femto/griffith’s breakdown/etc is a consequence of guts’ actions to saying either a) guts deserved to suffer and/or b) if this happened in real life it would be right to blame guts for everything lol, neither of which are statements that necessarily follow the first one, and are clearly untrue. but fiction operates by different rules than reality.

mastermistressofdesire:

bthump:

ninjabelle:

God, I was in physical pain reading this chapter.
My heart just breaks for Rickert.
The Griffith he followed, whose dream he shared and who he adored- who he wanted to save- that’s not the man who stands in front of him now, in this gorgeous prosperous city that was build on the corpses and dreams of hundreds upon hundreds of men.
I always wondered if Rickert would feel like he shouldn’t have survived, if he ever found out the truth of what happened during the eclipse and met Griffith again. And this chapter kind of confirmed it for me. But unlike Guts he cannot drown in hatred and stake his life on revenge. All he could do, and all he had to console him was build that hill of swords. I can’t even imagine how lonely and helpless he must have felt, being the only survivor left with no answers and a thousand questions.
But even so, the Griffith he faced this chapter cannot answer him, not really. I know I happily lost my shit and joked along with all of the ‘Rickert’s balls of steel and impending doom’ crap over the bitchsmack panel when it came out as a spoiler, but seeing it in the context of the chapter as a whole- wow. It took my breath away for a plethora of other reasons.
People say he’s brave as hell for daring the slap the almighty Griffith but honestly I don’t think he even had time to work up courage, and it just happened on this spur of instinct- of way overdue hurt and that hurts me because jesus, Rickert deserves better dammit.
Griffith’s reaction was on point though- I didn’t expect him to immediately chop Rickert’s head off or anything, but it’s impossible to read him nowadays. Is it just apathy? Like always? Does he even feel anything at all when Rickert rejects his new self- his pretty new kingdom? I can’t tell- I want to believe, but, alas. It’s Berserk. It kills. And I’m done.

Totally agreed about Rickert, I don’t often think about his survivor’s guilt but it’s a huge part of his character and it was rly satisfying to see him get to express some of his feelings about everything, directly to Griffith.

As for Griffith, his reaction is the most intriguing part of the scene to me ngl.

Like overall I think NeoGriffith is automatically interesting because of what Miura doesn’t show us? The last time we saw into his head was

like the first and only thing we find out about his internal life is that he’s not as unemotional as he appears, and every scene w/ NeoGriffith afterwards where his emotions are conspicuously hidden from us just adds to my sense that inevitably we’re heading towards a big revelation about his feelings specifically.

The scene with Rickert is especially interesting because it’s the first time we see NeoGriffith at a loss.

Like this is his only response to Rickert’s tirade, and it’s an acknowledgement of the difference between, well, who he is now and who he used to be, essentially.

Ngriff’s got nothing. And that is so damn interesting to me lol.

“Don’t throw away what you can’t replace,” is something Guts reminds Rickert right after the Reunion on the Hill of Swords and right before Guts does this:

NGriff starts putting a new Band of the Hawk together like he’s trying to replace the old one, and he’s invited Rickert to join. I got this idea from @mastermistressofdesire a while ago lol and it’s so perfect, like, basically NGriff invited Rickert along because deep down he wants validation from one of the original Hawks. It would be proof that “nothing has changed.” That he has successfully replaced the original Band.

But Rickert rejected him, and it seems like it throws him off. He’s supposed to be literally untouchable, but Rickert was able to slap him. He has nothing to say to Rickert in response other than to quietly agree that the Hawk symbol is different now. And his face is hidden from us while watching Rickert leave both times:

Like this ties in with this theory/hope of mine that NeoGriffith’s thing is going to end up being identity/isolation. As the absolute with no equal, as someone who has undergone huge changes and denies it (”this is the man I am.”), as a parallel to ascended Ganeshka, because he failed his own test and his heart started beating when he saw Guts and the first thing he did was deny to himself that it had anything to do with his feelings for Guts, and a few other little details, like eg this page at the end of a chapter all about sonia feeling lonely and isolated as the only person who sees the world the way she does:

Like c’mon Miura, all this suggestive emotional ambiguity has to be there for something.

Mmm all of this.

I personally subscribe to the idea that neo-griffith has a lot of damn emotions.

A glitch in the matrix.

Which he is now trying to cover up.

However without doubt he has intact memories of everything, as much as he has leftover resentment from the pain that letting himself fall in love eventually led to, he also remembers that his happiest memories have to do with the time he spent with the Hawks and specifically Guts.

In a way I see him trying to recreate that situation, rebuilding the good while clinically removing the parts he thinks were problematic – Guts and his own emotions.

So inhuman god with frozen heart or not all he’s ultimately trying to do is chase after the memories of happiness.

How utterly, devastatingly human.

@bthump

Do you noticed neo Griffith is far more beautiful than human Griffith?

ninjabelle:

bthump:

Yeah he rly is drawn in a v extra overly beautiful way. Though I think this is more Miura’s art style changing, rather than an in-universe change, mostly because of this:

I think NGriff is probably more perfect looking than human Griff, like if you took human Griffith on the best looking day of his life and gave him that perfection all the time, but I don’t think any of his features or anything have changed, even if Miura draws them slightly different – like curlier hair eg.

ok lemme just hijack this post real quick cause the way i always read griff getting ‘more beautiful post eclipse’ was to show us that distance, to make him just that much more unavailable, i.e. he’s looking the way he did through the eyes of his followers when placed on that pedestal of absolute leader/the man who’s gonna bring them all glory, and later how he looks to guts himself (beautiful as always but very much more distant) once he started to feel like they were not equals after the fountain speech etc. etc.

because to me golden age griff as seen through guts’ eyes was always muuuch more human looking, less composed in his expressions, more open because he felt he could show that side to guts because ‘i’ve never talked to anyone like this before’ and ‘…only you’ and so on. He looks this ethereal now because it makes him unavailable visually, (e.g. wow that dude’s so perfect a lowly peasant such as i could NEVER–) and since we see him through guts’ eyes during a couple of the most powerful post eclipse scenes (honestly hill of swords is like the only one im talking about here but let’s pretend i care as much about other scenes too lmao) that unreal, unattainable beautiful look is the look that sticks, because griffith looks just as gorg. through others eyes, (like charlotte, or rickerts when they meet again) but it’s only when guts looks at him that the difference is so jarring, because TLDR; when guts looked at him before we saw a man, and now we see a god.

(or… like.. none of this and miura just evolved and his new skillz finally enable him to draw griff the way he always wanted to. ~~(BUT I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT THERE COULD BE A STYLISTIC CHANGE THIS OBVIOUS THAT DOES NOT HAVE SOME DEEP GRIFFGUTS ROOTS SOMEWHERE IN THERE.~~)

✌

ia with all of this!

and like, even if ngriff isn’t meant to be overtly physically different looking from regular griffith in any concrete way, he’s still always described as like a painting, like someone out of a fairytale, “more griffith,” etc.

I’ve framed it before as NeoGriffith becoming like the embodiment of the impression human Griffith used to leave people with, and the way you put that through Guts’ eyes specifically really makes a lot of sense to me.

NeoGriffith is totally like, an encapsulation of what Guts saw when he was looking up at him on the stairs to Promrose Hall, when he stopped seeing Griffith as just a man and he became this distant figure. And that just makes it extra depressing.

ninjabelle:

God, I was in physical pain reading this chapter.
My heart just breaks for Rickert.
The Griffith he followed, whose dream he shared and who he adored- who he wanted to save- that’s not the man who stands in front of him now, in this gorgeous prosperous city that was build on the corpses and dreams of hundreds upon hundreds of men.
I always wondered if Rickert would feel like he shouldn’t have survived, if he ever found out the truth of what happened during the eclipse and met Griffith again. And this chapter kind of confirmed it for me. But unlike Guts he cannot drown in hatred and stake his life on revenge. All he could do, and all he had to console him was build that hill of swords. I can’t even imagine how lonely and helpless he must have felt, being the only survivor left with no answers and a thousand questions.
But even so, the Griffith he faced this chapter cannot answer him, not really. I know I happily lost my shit and joked along with all of the ‘Rickert’s balls of steel and impending doom’ crap over the bitchsmack panel when it came out as a spoiler, but seeing it in the context of the chapter as a whole- wow. It took my breath away for a plethora of other reasons.
People say he’s brave as hell for daring the slap the almighty Griffith but honestly I don’t think he even had time to work up courage, and it just happened on this spur of instinct- of way overdue hurt and that hurts me because jesus, Rickert deserves better dammit.
Griffith’s reaction was on point though- I didn’t expect him to immediately chop Rickert’s head off or anything, but it’s impossible to read him nowadays. Is it just apathy? Like always? Does he even feel anything at all when Rickert rejects his new self- his pretty new kingdom? I can’t tell- I want to believe, but, alas. It’s Berserk. It kills. And I’m done.

Totally agreed about Rickert, I don’t often think about his survivor’s guilt but it’s a huge part of his character and it was rly satisfying to see him get to express some of his feelings about everything, directly to Griffith.

As for Griffith, his reaction is the most intriguing part of the scene to me ngl.

Like overall I think NeoGriffith is automatically interesting because of what Miura doesn’t show us? The last time we saw into his head was

like the first and only thing we find out about his internal life is that he’s not as unemotional as he appears, and every scene w/ NeoGriffith afterwards where his emotions are conspicuously hidden from us just adds to my sense that inevitably we’re heading towards a big revelation about his feelings specifically.

The scene with Rickert is especially interesting because it’s the first time we see NeoGriffith at a loss.

Like this is his only response to Rickert’s tirade, and it’s an acknowledgement of the difference between, well, who he is now and who he used to be, essentially.

Ngriff’s got nothing. And that is so damn interesting to me lol.

“Don’t throw away what you can’t replace,” is something Guts reminds Rickert right after the Reunion on the Hill of Swords and right before Guts does this:

NGriff starts putting a new Band of the Hawk together like he’s trying to replace the old one, and he’s invited Rickert to join. I got this idea from @mastermistressofdesire a while ago lol and it’s so perfect, like, basically NGriff invited Rickert along because deep down he wants validation from one of the original Hawks. It would be proof that “nothing has changed.” That he has successfully replaced the original Band.

But Rickert rejected him, and it seems like it throws him off. He’s supposed to be literally untouchable, but Rickert was able to slap him. He has nothing to say to Rickert in response other than to quietly agree that the Hawk symbol is different now. And his face is hidden from us while watching Rickert leave both times:

Like this ties in with this theory/hope of mine that NeoGriffith’s thing is going to end up being identity/isolation. As the absolute with no equal, as someone who has undergone huge changes and denies it (”this is the man I am.”), as a parallel to ascended Ganeshka, because he failed his own test and his heart started beating when he saw Guts and the first thing he did was deny to himself that it had anything to do with his feelings for Guts, and a few other little details, like eg this page at the end of a chapter all about sonia feeling lonely and isolated as the only person who sees the world the way she does:

Like c’mon Miura, all this suggestive emotional ambiguity has to be there for something.

please extrapolate on griffith being a sub and why lmao?

chaoticgaygriffith:

bthump:

lmao yeah ok i’m in the mood for this

so like, tbh I actually think griffguts would be p vanilla in general, and that post was kind of a joke about how thrilled Griffith was to cede control of his life over to god/fate. BUT if he was into bdsm he would definitely be a sub and not a dom imo

yk some ppl like being responsible for other ppl, like giving orders, like
being in control, so they work to be in that position of power in their
personal and professional lives, but Griffith is def not one of them lol. for Griffith, being in control is a necessary requirement of his dream, and it’s p much canon that he wants a reprieve from it.

so if god is the one who ends up taking the reins in the tragic version of
berserk, in the happy version then obviously Guts is the one who gives Griffith a break from responsibility every night and adds some balance
to his life.

also to maintain this pretentious not-actually-meta take lmao, Griffith’s narrative is basically about wanting to be absolved from
his feelings of guilt. the tragedy of his narrative is that he could’ve
had that through a relationship with Guts, through Guts telling him he
isn’t cruel, through Guts seeing all the things he hates about himself
and loving him anyway, but instead he got it through fate claiming
control over his life and god telling him he’s the chosen one whose
whole existence was dictated since before he was even born.

so i’m js, Griffith relinquishing control to Guts some nights + praise kink = ~thematically resonant~ sex lol

but like to actually go at this from a real character standpoint, imo Griffith’s got way too many self loathing issues to want to hurt/dominate anyone
when he doesn’t have to, and again like, having power is a burden to him. if he
had to dom it would be a chore with a lot of potential to backfire and
add to his self loathing, x1000 if it was someone he loved, ie, Guts.
like, it’s just canon that he doesn’t want to order Guts around lol.

And he’s insecure about whether Guts sees him as cruel, he wants Guts to want him rather than keeping Guts by force, etc, so I think even just consensually domming Guts would light his self loathing up bc it would be like a reenactment of what he fears/hates about himself. Whereas subbing to Guts (w/ the right atmosphere ofc, ie full of praise and tenderness, not like, sadism and degredation) would reassure him that Guts wants him.

To be more detailed, I
think in particular he’d like being tied up and knowing he couldn’t
escape – so struggling and testing his restraints. that visceral feeling
of control being taken away would be good for getting him in the
right head space. Knowing he’s not in control, that he’s ceded control
to someone else for a while, would be a huge part of what he likes about
it.

(I mean considering how extreme Griffith’s issues w/ guilt and responsibility are I think it’s maybe a little silly to think bondage would be theraputically relaxing for him lol, but yk, it still ~feels right~)

And again, praise kink man. Lots of “you’re so good”s and “I
love you like this” etc. Not so much with a focus on looks, but more
just existing? And letting Guts see him so vulnerable and open, and being praised for it, etc.

I
could see him being into pain. Not like as a punishment thing, but as a
way of grounding himself in the physical and distracting himself from
his thoughts by focusing on something. Imo that’s why he self harms. But
I don’t think it would really be like, a healthy thing lol, considering
his self-harming behaviour, and I don’t think Guts would be willing to hurt him
anyway. Instead he’d rather try to overwhelm Griffith with pleasure to drown out his
thoughts. orgasm control and edging, anyone?

Specifically with Guts, he’d be really, really into
being manhandled and rough, fast, desperate sex. The sense that Guts
can’t help but fuck him because he wants him so much. Unfortunately for Griffith, Guts would absolutely not be able to do that lol. At least not for a long time.

Actually
to focus on Guts for a bit, I think he’d be kind of a terrible dom.
Like, i’m ngl, at its core I feel like griffguts is bottom4bottom,
sub4sub lmao, but then there’s like a million mitigating factors, like trauma, and canon shifting power dynamics – like eg if Guts has heard the
promrose hall speech, he would never in a million years sub to Griffith,
while if he hasn’t he’d be more than happy to be ordered to suck his
dick or w/e.

buuut I think if we’re going the bdsm route then
overall Guts would be more comfortable domming than Griffith would be,
and Griffith would want to sub more than Guts would, so there you go.

What
Guts would be into, wrt domming Griffith, would be praising him, would
be feeling powerful, would be knowing Griffith trusts him, and would be
knowing Griffith well enough to be able to drive him wild without being
told what to do lol. And ofc the whole power exchange thing with Griffith being a leader/king/whatever in day to day life but Guts knowing Griffith lets him take control when they’re alone would really satisfy Guts on that deep level where he wants Griffith’s attention/regard imo.

Also imo Guts is more service top if anything,
so it would take a while for him to get to the point where he feels
confident in doing things to Griffith without Griffith’s input and Griffith assuring him he’s into it, but he’d get there eventually. Which would be important bc if Griffith was telling him what to do the whole time he was tied up it would defeat the purpose.

Ok I think this response is long enough lol.

all of this basically … like, what a lot of people don’t know is that kink is more often about dealing with trauma/stress through these kinds of dynamics rather than about just being horny and wanting to be spanked. relinquishing control to someone else is the CORE of subbing, and if that someone else is the only person griffith could allow himself to be vulnerable with? whew!

he’d love being tied up and blindfolded. he and guts would basically have very long, very sensual sessions intended to help griffith relax and temporarily remove the weight on his shoulders. guts would LOVE doing that, since he’s, as you said, all about pleasing others. yes, it would take him a while to get used to being in control instead of doing whatever griffith asks him to, but if he knew it helped griffith, and if he knew it meant that griffith trusts him more than anyone and that he’s the only one griffith lets in like this … that would give him the push he needs.

so yeah, when i’m talking about dom/sub stuff wrt griffguts it’s never like the full kinky bdsm that people tend to imagine, it’s just a type of dynamic which, if acted out properly, can be very healthy for the both of them, and their relationship. their sex is still very sensual, loving, and passionate. those two honestly couldn’t have it any other way lol. after all, for both of them their primary need is to be loved.

griffithsgaymom:

bthump:

griffithsgaymom:

sub space griffith. sub space griffith. please help me.

idk but i’m feeling this

mb bc he’s the kind of intense character w/ so much going on in his head and so much self control that the contrast just makes it like, extra good?

YEA thats it. its such a sharp detour from his usually headspace i imagine and probably very hard to achieve but like if he gets there, its good

andguts would love it ofc bc he loves seeing how much trust griffith has in him to let himself go like that. its so different from the griffith who walks around with a straight back and tense shoulders, who obviously has a million different things on his mind, carrying the burden of overthinking around like a sack of bricks lol

even not fully going the bdsm route guts would love to help griffith relax by like, rubbing his shoulders or even feet and calves. once he understand how severely anxious griffith is all the time at least. and then gets to watch him melt back into the cushions at his touch. loves it.