Tag: replies

seisans
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “yk i think guts is supposed to seem…”

miura thinks his peak feminism moment was guts saying that women have it hard when he realised casca was on her period

lmao true. ty miura for your valuable contribution to the feminist movement, “boy periods probably suck, amirite?”

madchen
replied to your post “yk i think guts is supposed to seem chill and confident and generally…”

oh same they feel posturing to me but who knows what miura meant

this is the problem with berserk there are so many thing that cpuld be interpreted as valid through through a certain critical lens but its absolutely up in the air or no way it was deliberate on his part. casca reliance on men for her sense of self and integrity as a woman is a good example, but miura probably hust doesnt know that women can exist outside of men. lol.

yeah exactly. idk berserk is such a weird combination of Actually That Deep and just Miura being a shitty dude that it can be rly hard to figure out where to draw the line

Like with Guts’ behaviour, it would make sense if it was supposed to be seen as negative because, like, part of the point of Berserk is establishing that Guts swinging his sword by himself instead of being with people affects him negatively, but that’s just not the vibe I get from those moments lol. Your Casca example is perfect too, like her narrative would make more sense and fit the whole vibe of the pre-Eclipse sequence if latching onto Guts in place of Griffith was meant to be seen as a mistake, but yeah I don’t think that’s purposeful.

I’d love to believe Miura’s just subtle and it’s all purposeful, but lol nothing about how he writes women and men and women interacting makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt.

kajel-jeten
replied to your post “miura: *has an absolute wealth of potential with casca’s backstory,…”

No, I want to believe he wouldn’t do that to such a beloved character

m2 but my faith levels aren’t high 😦

like idk it’s a given that the fetus is going to get a lot of focus unfortunately, the only question i guess is whether there’ll be any spotlight left over for actual interesting things that have something to do with casca’s actual character rather than a generalized motherhood thing

alumirust
replied to your post

“speaking about berserk playlists idk if you knew but there’s a band…”

Battle Beast also has a lot of Berserk-themed songs. They’re primarily power metal, but “Touch in the Night” is delightfully 80s (and about Griffith)

ok i actually listened to this one and i didn’t realize the singer is a woman?? also the 80s vibe is gr8, ty for the additional info! now i’m listening to more and i’m actually way more into their sound than i was expecting lol.

also ngl i had to read the lyrics twice before i realized it was about griffith fucking charlotte and not being in love with guts lmao

prettykitten123
replied to your post “chaoticgaygriffith:
having re-read some bits and pieces of the manga…”

The way I see it human Griffiths ambition to rule over a kingdom never truly came from him per say??? It derived from his destiny. It was his destiny, a fate he wasnt aware of, that was the driving force behind his every action, behind his every victory and the reason why it was possible for him to climb the rigid social ladder.

And I don’t think NeoGriffiths lack of humanity would be the cause behind Faconia’s fall(if it does fall)
As a human I dont
think Griffith wouldve been able to handle doing everything that
NeoGriffith did. Despite how strong Human Griffith was he was still
prone to stress, doubt and anxiety. As a human Griffith tried to be
everything that he managed to become as a godhand, perfect.

And him hiding behind his strength, charisma, and beauty did take its
toll on him as a human. Then add the stress of being the messiah to all
of humanity, old Griffith wouldnt be able to do it

tbh I never really saw fate as a reason in and of itself for any choices people make in Berserk. Everyone has their own reasons for doing whatever they do, those reasons just play perfectly into fate’s hands. At one point Flora equates fate and “encounters,” which I like because it’s basically like a perfect meld of fate and free will.

eg Guts was fated to be picked up off the side of the road by Gambino, which thoroughly shaped him as a person; Guts was fated to overhear Griffith’s Promrose Hall speech, and the reason he chose to leave was largely because of a bundle of issues Gambino left him with. So Guts and his choices make perfect sense with or without fate having a hand in his life, it just so happens that fate is there behind the scenes making sure he is shaped by the right people.

so for Griffith, God tells him that he basically shaped the entire world, and Griffith’s ancestry, in order to bring Griffith into the world with a perfect set of traits to become the next Godhand, but everything he thinks and feels and does still makes sense just as a person with his particular history. So I can’t really say he’s obsessed with his dream because it’s his destiny, he’s obsessed with his dream because he has a particularly obsessive personality and he happened to see it at the right time in his life or under the right circumstances to become fixated or w/e – because of destiny lol.

Idk it’s convoluted but you gave me an opening to explain my thoughts on fate in berserk and I took it lol.

anyway aside from that long fate tangent that’s barely related to what you said lol, ia that human Griffith wouldn’t be able to do what NeoGriffith does. For one thing he’d’ve been crushed by Ganeshka without his army of apostles. And even without that, even if he just became king of Midland the way he was planning, if Guts never left, ia that I could see a scenario where reality hits him square in the head, being king turns out to be not all its cracked up to be, he still finds his power too limited to do everything he wants to do, and he struggles a lot under the pressure.

a-girl-named-chester
replied to your post “princess-of-peachtrees
replied to your post “Ghost of You" by My…”

Lol u guys got me wanting playlist links someday XD

lol well I made this jokey griffith one a little while ago, but it hardly counts. maybe I’ll make a more serious playlist at some point, but all my music is on my harddrive instead of idk whatever streaming sites people use these days so it’d just be youtube links.

also i 2nd this i’d also enjoy playlist from @princess-of-peachtrees, or anyone else who likes putting them together for that matter

griff-guts
replied to your post “griff-guts
replied to your post “The character of Griffith was…”

yeah like i don’t wanna discredit that anons opinion but it’s literally just the appearance that is similar, personality wise oscar and griffith are vastly different. they both have an androgynous look, homoerotic/downright almost canonically gay relationships central to their characters, and seem to subvert conventional gender roles (tho oscar does this quite a lot more) but other than that they’re really nothing alike. oscar is objectively a much much much better person than griffith lol

yeah this makes sense. I’d heard that Griffith was based on Oscar from other people too but I didn’t know myself whether that was just character design or like, everything about them. also ty this only makes me want to read rov more lol.

griff-guts
replied to your post “The character of Griffith was inspired by Rose of Versailles’ heroine…”

im pretty sure miura said griffiths design was inspired by her. so not his actual character, just his appearance. rose of versailles doesn’t seem to have ties with berserk even half as much as devilman, though, and go nagai was listed as a huge inspiration for miura, but either way i guess it’s worth noting that both those works are pretty gay (which i doubt is a coincidence if they inspired berserk lol)

ty for the additional info!

also lol yeah the list of gay shit that inspired Miura is surprisingly (or not so surprisingly lbr) long. he’s also referenced guin saga and kaze to ki no uta as inspirations. and yeah it’s so clear the influence ryokira had on griffguts.

dendromancer
replied to your post “dendromancer
replied to your post “i will never be over how damn…”

that makes perfect sense. he has low self-esteem so he projects his feelings onto guts and kinda living the relationship vicariously.. i don’t think this was in any way good because he completely disregarded both guts and casca’s feelings tbh (and griffith’s). guts did the same thing, like you said, but i don’t think he did that to such a detrimental degree iirc. i still don’t see why cishets love him so much tbh. thanks for the detailed reply!

lol i’ll take any excuse to go on and on about something, ty for your reply + giving me an opening 🙂

Yeah I have a lot of mixed feelings about Judeau. I’m still fond of him and I kind of like that he fits the “tertiary friend who gives the protag wise advice” slot except that a lot of his advice is terrible and makes things worse because he has his own issues too. it gives him a nice little bit of dimension. But lol I still resent him a bit for being the resident het cheerleader, and he’s far from the super good bro who gives great advice that a lot of Berserk fandom treats him as.

dendromancer
replied to your post “i will never be over how damn suggestive it is that judeau, the…”

still wondering what’s judeau’s agenda tbh. like did he want guts to take casca away for her to be safe? this is completely true tho and one of the reasons why i dislike judeau is that he’s a gtsca shipper lol

There’s that hint before he dies that he’s in love with her, and there’s an indication that he has like… self-worth issues lol, with his “if I couldn’t be the best I’d fly in the wake of someone who was” reasoning for following Griffith, and comparing himself to Guts negatively when they were running from monsters in the Eclipse. I think it’s basically Judeau thinking he isn’t good enough for Casca and Guts would be, and seeing how hard leading the Hawks while they’re being hunted has been on her and wanting her to get away from that responsibility.

Which tbh is another indication that gtsca was a misguided mistake from the start, since Judeau’s reasoning for arranging their hookup in the first place is stupid and based on low self esteem.

There’s also shades of a parallel between Judeau trying to get Guts and Casca together and Guts trying to get Casca and Griffith together, and I will personally argue forever that Guts throwing Casca at Griffith was because he didn’t feel like he was good enough for Griffith, rather than not good enough for Casca. I mean, that is his entire reasoning behind his decision making at that point in the story, after all.

Thinking he’ll be worthy of Casca when he’s Griffith’s equal is a random quick aside spurred on by Judeau right before he leaves and imo framed as though Casca being in love with him would be a sign that he’s made it as Griffith’s friend and equal, rather than wanting to be Griffith’s friend and equal to get with Casca lol, which has never been a factor.

jyuanka
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his…”

also i think guts’s sword fixation has a lot to do with how much he humanizes the sword and dehumanizes himself. iirc miura makes a point about guts using the sword to protect others instead of fighting for its own sake, at which the sword is no longer a meaningful subject in itself but a means of protecting bonds he’s forged. the unhealthy part of it is, again, the way he objectifies himself through it (and one of berserk’s themes is human objectification)
it’s sort of a coping mechanism
backfiring on him. the sword is just an object; the unhealthy aspect of
it is that guts has been using it as a means of self-actualization for
his entire life. part of his development in the golden age is to derive
meaning and significance from his relationships with others, but he
never really addressed his issues so once the eclipse happens and
casca’s mental state is revealed he almost instantly reverts back to
that coping mechansim

Hmmm I think I pretty much agree with you. By objectifies himself through his sword do you mean like, when the Berserk armour takes over, when he becomes monstrous and consumed by rage even without it, etc? Because I definitely think there’s a strong theme of Guts becoming dehumanized through his sword, and the way you put it in contrast to Guts humanizing his sword (like considering it an extension of himself I assume?) is something I’ve never really thought of but it makes a lot of sense to me.

(lol I guess dehumanization is actually kind of a loaded term in Berserk where everything from monsters to gods are expressions of aspects of humanity, but ikwym and it’s definitely a theme regardless of semantics.)

craigslost
replied to your post “craigslost
replied to your post “ALSO like ok this visual reference…”

I JUST SAW UR OTHER POST LOL FUCK!!!! IF THE FALLING AND SHATTERING ISN’T A DIRECT REFERENCE ILL SHIT… holy fuck. i never really got the “gave away too much of the plot too early” reasoning behind the removal of the chapter but like THAT COMPARISON really puts it in new light and makes me genuinely hopeful

I’m so torn between being like lol this would never happen miura is not that good to me and being like, but what if tho

I mean ok I don’t think a fix Griffith quest is likely, that would be a little too impossibly good a thing to happen for Berserk lol. And Casca was traumatized while Griffith was like, literally and willingly transformed by magic and evil so it probably doesn’t work exactly the same way. (Someone should write this fic though omg, anything’s technically possible since it’s all magic anyway.) But exploring Griffith’s mental landscape? mayhaps? and again, tiny Griffith? theoretical potential to fix Griffith giving Guts some devastating Hope™ and ruining his stop obsessing over Griffith resolution?

i’ve always assumed the ‘gave away too much of the plot too early’ thing referred to griffith being essentially the avatar of humanity, but honestly knowing that in advance only improves everything.

undecimber-of-joy
replied to your post “The Brightest Thing – A Griffith Analysis”

I had a relatively busy day at the office but I couldn’t resist starting on this, and then I kept getting distracted in between work and taking short breaks, reading part after part and internally yelling. SO GOOD.
I’ll probably go back to reread it and leave comments if I can even /think/ coherently jdkdmdm.
Excellent work!

aaaaaaa thank you so much!! I’m v glad it entertained you during work ❤ I’d absolutely love to read any comments you think of/feel like writing, but no pressure or anything 🙂

@a-girl-named-chester said:

Uhhhhhg why couldn’t
they have just communicated with each other?? This meta has me really
intrigued and hopeful (though not overly optimistic) again that the
endgame is SOME sort of resolution of this intense dynamic they have. It
was a pleasure and a painful thing to read. Great job 

Right??? why couldn’t they have just communicated with each other could be the tagline of Berserk lol. And I’m also hopeful that this is all going to come back at some point, maybe soon. At the very least I really, really want both Guts and Griffith to finally realize what actually happened between them lol, and that their feelings had been mutual love the whole time. Like, that’s a revelation that has to happen, right? Thank you so much for the feedback, I’m v glad you enjoyed reading it!

madchen
replied to your post “madchen
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta…”

i was thinking in line of “swinging his sword is an u healthy coping mechanism and way to avoid confronting his true feelings and casca being called one here incites comparison to that, casca weaponizing herself aside”

yeah i think ultimately that’s what it is for the most part. even now, his journey to take casca to elfhelm and get her healed has had ominious forboding overtones and imo guts like… metaphorically chaining the beast up in his subconscious is reminiscent of avoiding his issues thru this side quest, rather than confronting and dealing with them.

like his rpg group is a positive influence and this is undoubtedly better than his black swordsman rampage, but like… he’s still closed off from them, still doesn’t talk about his past or only v dispassionately when questioned by warlocks lol, etc. saving casca (and sleeping with her way back when) isn’t so much helping him deal with his problems as it’s helping him avoid them.

just like telling casca about gambino and donovan was a positive thing and a step in the right direction, but not an instant fix.

madchen
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his…”

and yea swords have always represented male power to a phallic degree even pre freudian analysis framework (broken swords symbolize impotence on the flip side) but the visualzzzz in berserk especially in the golden age is good. like griffs sword breaking and then guts shattering later at the eclipse. or the uh unfortunate realization that guts symbolically “castrating griffith” is both metaphorical and probably literal foreshadowing to what happens to griff a few chapters later.

yeah v v true, and ngl along the same lines i have a few (less than positive) Thoughts on Guts holding a broken sword while Femto rapes Casca.

@griff-guts said: oh mannnnn there’s a lot to say about
the broken sword thing lmao i might write a post about it….. same with
guts and griff symbols being a hawk (or white bird in general lol) and a
dog because there’s a LOT of medieval shit to do with that too…..
anyway for the sword thing a sword being broken basically amounts to an
“oh shit” moment where the person loses all ability to control their
situation, and acts of desperation ensue. it has a lot to do with fate
and human control being

ultimately helpless up against fate.

ohhh man I’d love to read a whole post on this sometime! this all seems extremely in line with Berserk and lol I kind of regret never taking any literature classes more advanced than 101 in uni.

madchen
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his…”

oh i like this take i think its something ive and most readers have been aware of but no ones said it yet. brings another perspective to the “boy and an oversized sword” thing at the end of the gutsca chapter ouch.

ooh good point.

lol for a sec i was like, ‘uh oh wait does that mean miura was actually trying to say that a relationship with casca could replace guts’ emotional reliance on his sword?’ then i remembered the context of their relationship, the fact that casca becoming a sword for other people is a negative way of dealing with her own shit, the way guts emphatically does not start prioritizing casca over swinging his sword as we soon see when he shoos her away to fight wyald by himself, etc, and yeah.

the sword comparison overall feels more in line with saying a relationship casca is a form of emotional support, like swinging his sword, rather than better or more fulfilling than swinging his sword.

griff-guts
replied to your post “i want to like, write a longish meta about how guts’ “dream” ie his…”

also the motif of broken swords/swords being worn blunt is a really interesting one that i don’t see many people talking about, especially if you look at the theme in relation to arthurian/medieval ideas about swords and what they represent… griffiths sword breaking when guts left is especially interesting to me tbh.

oh man you’re right that all the broken swords get more interesting when paired w/ the theme of like, swinging a sword to cope lol. ngl I kind of get stuck on phallic symbols when it comes to broken swords but there’s more to it than that.

+ do you feel up to elaborating on arthurian ideas about what swords represent? because I know nothing about this stuff and I’m v intrigued.

a-girl-named-chester
replied to your photo

Omfg I just noticed Judeau in there! I miss that loser. That’s a great touch considering his last actions.

lol yeah, i kinda miss him too and it’s been nice seeing him (and the rest of the hawks too) in some of casca’s memories including this. tbh i found the whole sequence with judeau and casca during the eclipse to be really touching and probably the time when i felt saddest for casca in particular – i thought miura did a fantastic job with those chapters and casca’s emotional reaction to the horror, and trying to keep a brave face even while judeau is dying beside her, etc.

it was nice to see a shout out to that, and tbh also a bunch of other Hawks dying horrifically. idk after so many of Guts’ Eclipse memories focusing exclusively on monster rape it felt refreshing to see that Casca’s friends all being horribly killed around her was also something that fucked her up.

@yesgabsstuff yeah from an ignoring-Miura’s-authorial-intent pure character perspective I think I’d lean towards internalized homophobia as the strongest reason behind Griffith’s self-loathing there. (Also tbf this was before any torture actually started happening, besides the King whipping him.)

When you think about it, it’s likely that his only experience with attraction to and sex with men was w/ Gennon, the pedophilic rapist, and it would make perfect sense for me to see Griffith as horrified of his own attraction to Guts being similar in any way. And there’s a good chance he’d see same sex attraction as intrinsically predatory bc of his own personal history.

Also, this is slightly an aside but like wrt his feelings for Guts being pure or not like, I really don’t give a fuck personally about Griffith accepting the possibility of killing Guts and within Berserk I hardly feel like it’s even that terrible lol, both Casca and Serpico have gone a step further and actively tried to kill Guts and we’re supposed to like them just fine. “If I can’t have him,” does give it an extra layer of possessiveness, but part of the point of the torture chamber scene is that Griffith realizes that and knows it was a fucked up irrational reaction and not actually what he wants.

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “kissing-monsters
replied to your post “kissing-monsters
replied to…”

I honestly feel like I never took as much advantage of the social aspect of LJ then as I should have either, it’d actually be so much better it have it now even when I feel much more grown up about Talking To Cool People (like you!)

Yeah mte! It’s like, finally I can have fun and enjoy social interaction online just as everyone moves to the worst possible platform for it lol.

seisans
replied to your post “i forgot how useless the notes page is, i fucked up by titling all…”

i hate it so much, it’s like, “a BUNCH of people liked your post!” like, i’m sure they did!!! tell me WHO, and no i do not recognise them by their icons

right?? it doesn’t help that the lists of notes on the actual post itself is truncated now too. like tumblr really doesn’t want me to know who actually enjoys the shit i post apparently. and sometimes i want to go to someone’s reblog and check the tags or smthn and now that’s extra hard. i hope xkit fixes this soon.

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “kissing-monsters
replied to your post “i forgot how useless the…”

I miss Livejournal to this very day ha.

same lol. technically i think tumblr is better for me because i was too shy to do more than lurk on livejournal, but I still miss the communities and comment threads and public vs private posting and the fact that posts couldn’t be reblogged and completely removed from context etc etc etc

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “i forgot how useless the notes page is, i fucked up by titling all…”

tumblr seems to want to actively discourage easy communication discussion and community and friendships sometimes tbh

lol it really does. i know there’s at least one site trying to combine tumblr’s reblogging system with communities and comment threads etc which would be nice, but that’s still in beta mode and who knows if it’ll ever actually get popular