Do you ever think about how miura pulled the magic healing cock trope but with pussy lol? Like guts had sex with casca once and his csa trauma disappeared just like that

yeah that is such a huge issue i have with like, everything post eclipse.

i mean i feel like, idk there are a few moments that suggest that rather than just fixing guts’ trauma and then immediately replacing it with eclipse trauma, it’s more that the eclipse echoed his childhood trauma and compounded it. i feel like that might’ve been miura’s intent even. eg:

And it absolutely was his clear intent during the Black Swordsman arc. But I feel like Miura let this just kind of, like, fall to the wayside, and totally failed to follow through on this idea through actual characterization, instead deciding to completely downplay Guts’ actual personal trauma.

Like there are so many moments that by rights should’ve referenced Guts’ csa trauma that glaringly ignored it. A big one I’m thinking of is when Guts assaults Casca. Like come on, he had a violent flashback during consensual sex with her and you’re telling me it’s not even on his mind after nearly raping her? Or maybe yk at some point during that arc right after the Eclipse that was all about child abuse and Guts becoming a monster. Or maybe during the actual Eclipse itself. At least show us that paralyzing fear that was strongly implied during the Black Swordsman arc instead of boring one dimensional outrage.

So yeah basically idk, I p much agree. It sucks.

adelth
replied to your post “You mentioned something before about Muria’s “shit writing sometimes”…”

Hi, I ended up here because you linked the post recently. So, about Charlotte. It’s not a thing I like or totally understand the cultural reasons for, but you see a lot of women/bottoms saying “no/don’t” in Japanese porn that’s framed as consensual. I gather it’s a “good girls always say no” thing? It’s still really uncomfortable and problematic, but the scene with Charlotte reads like it’s complying to an established (although ugly and misogynist) standard to me.
I agree about all the ways the trio’s
characters were gutted by the eclipse though. I don’t even really
disagree about Charlotte, I just think Miura was riding the wheel, not
inventing it.

Yeah I have like, a vague awareness of that as a cliche in Japanese porn/erotica, tho it crops up in more than its fair share of english media too, and I feel like that no means yes trope is an unfortunately p universal form of misogyny/rape culture. And yeah def agree that it’s what’s informing that scene.

Yeah, the backstories
were what made me hopeful that there was a more cohesive idea being
explored. Now I mostly hope he just leaves it alone and doesn’t go
there.

The book was was Blade of Tyshalle by Matthew Stover. It’s:
-the second book in a series
-a masterful culmination of themes explored in the first book
-maybe my favorite book ever?
-choke-full of things that should not work but do
-seriously dark and violent, but worth reading if you can stomach it

I looked it up and ngl the premise of that series sounds pretty intriguing. idk if I’ll check it out but it’s going on a list of books to maybe look into next time I’m bored, so ty.

And yeah ikwym, I feel like in a different story the Golden Age narrative culminating in Griffith transforming into a version of himself that embodies his inner darkness and that being shown through rape could’ve worked like, thematically. It just like, would’ve had to be different in almost every way lol. like about Casca’s trauma rather than Guts’, and half the narrative could not centre NGriff as a protagonist afterwards, and Casca should be a full character and have at least as much narrative significance as Guts, and the depiction would actually have to be tasteful and centred in Casca’s pov since the theme in question is trauma and the rapists throughout the Golden Age are all one dimensional caricatures – like they’re not the focus, the victims are.

But idk this is the mess we got, and I’m with you, at this point I’m just hoping Miura doesn’t make it worse.

adelth
replied to your post “adelth
replied to your post “sobadpink
replied to your post “When…”

Well, not like I can argue that sexual violence is handled well in Berserk. Tangential, but I once read a book where shit was a motif. Like, literally shit. And that sounds super gross but the author knew what he was doing and it served a very intentional literary purpose. I would have (quietly) been okay if Miura was doing something similar, but it really does seem like he just breaks out the rape card whenever he needs to up the stakes.

imo the really annoying thing about rape in berserk is that sometimes it actually is well done but most of the time it’s… just not lol. Like I think Guts and Griffith and Casca’s (with a few caveats) backstories all work really well, depicted in varying degrees of graphic but for the most part effectively so, they inform the characters and their current values and motivations, and thematically their backstories potentially inform like, the entire story.

Which imo just makes it worse that so much of the rape we see in Berserk is so badly done and gratuitous. Like as a theme I think it could’ve been strong and effective, and like, sometimes it is, but overall there’s way more bad than good. So yeah I p much completely agree with you.

and lol I’m kinda curious now, what book was that?

adelth
replied to your post “sobadpink
replied to your post “When do you think berserk will end?…”

I guess I’ve always assumed the Eclipse rape was there to give us a reason to hate Griffith. Like, in another setting committing murder would be “crossing the line” into villainy. In a story where all the dewy-eyed still-innocent major characters are also hired killers, escalation is bound to get awkward. Given how sympathetic Griffith’s storyline otherwise is, it feels like a effort to say “no really, this is supposed to be morally complicated, stop rooting for him.”

Yeah I don’t think you’re wrong about that. Though more than anything I think it’s meant to give Guts specifically a reason to hate him lol, because the way Miura wrote the sacrifice and Guts’ reaction to it

sacrificing him wasn’t nearly enough.

I mean personally I think the sacrifice could’ve still worked fine on its own if Guts had actually like, demonstrated some extreme feelings of betrayal, which I feel like he should’ve, because the sacrifice is meant to be an echo of his childhood trauma of being sold imo, and I feel like Miura kind of dropped that in favour of the more immediate shock value.

Like it wouldn’t’ve been enough to get me to hate him, but I’m kind of an exception lol, I feel like Guts expressing heartbreak and betrayal that echoes like, the scene where Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan, probably would’ve worked okay for most fans to make them at least very angry at Griffith/Femto.

Buuuuut you’re right that like, he is really sympathetic otherwise and Guts wanting to chase him down and kill him while he’s orchestrating world peace and ruling a utopia might make Guts seem less sympathetic without that visceral show of evil during the Eclipse to “justify” it. But then the Eclipse rape goes so far in the other direction that it completely fucks up the balance too. So idk.

I guess if I was writing it and I felt like the Eclipse needed something extra to prove that Femto is evil, which is fair since he’s supposed to be Griffith’s inner darkness with an additional boost of humanity’s evil in general, and you probably do want to demonstrate some of that, I’d opt for like, torture + maybe some magical mind torture or something if Casca needs to be driven insane, because that’s the kind of ott fantasy evil that none of the Berserk readership will have personally experienced. Rape as a gratuitous demonstration of evil has a whoooole lot of baggage that makes writing that character as a morally ambiguous antagonist later on extremely terrible imo.

Like idk I feel like rape as an establishing villain moment + future moral ambiguity is just wholly incompatible. And this isn’t even getting into the actual depiction of the rape scene which I consider to be just about as bad and offensive as possible.

tl;dr basically ia, I think the purpose was to immediately show how evil Femto is and make the readers and Guts hate him, and I mean it worked I guess lol, but I still think it was a bad decision and Miura should’ve done something else.

sobadpink
replied to your post

“When do you think berserk will end? In 5 years? 10? 50? 100?”

Yeah I definitely think we just got to the beginning of the last third of the story… hopefully not the halfway point

lol imagine if we’re only halfway through now… tho ngl that would be nice for my impossible “Casca levels up and becomes a secondary antagonist making Griffith, Guts, and Casca three enemies with their own intwined but opposing goals” hope.

It’s actually pretty crazy for how many
people HATE Griffith like he’s the most evil villain ever when all he’s
done was for the “greater good” for the rest of humanity (and monsters
too I guess.)
Though the only absolutely evil thing he did was rape Casca, which was
actually completely pointless and horrible. The story would’ve been
better if it never happened tbh

this is one reason I have such a problem, from like, a story construction standpoint (never mind the pile of other problems I have with it), with the Eclipse rape. It’s sooooooo irrelevant to the rest of Griffith’s narrative. Obviously I understand why it makes people hate him, regardless of the magical fantasy logistics of transforming into an evil demon first, or how badly written it is, or its significance (or lackthereof) to his narrative as a whole, yk, whatever, it’s reasonable to have a strong negative emotional response to it regardless.

But it has nothing to do with his dream, with NeoGriffith’s entire narrative, it was not necessary to create Falconia, it amounts to nothing more than a v shallow show of evil that does nothing to complicate the moral quandaries of Griffith’s dream/Falconia because it was entirely unnecessary and gratuitous. It doesn’t even tell us anything about NeoGriffith as an individual running a utopia because he transformed again and we don’t know how similar or different he is to Femto lol. Miura completely downplays it to the point where I kinda suspect he knows he completely hamstrung his attempt to write an interesting morally grey villain as soon as it left the gate, and now it’s like he’s doing a weird juggling act where the Eclipse rape is Guts’ whole motivation but also it simultaneously has zero bearing on the framing of NeoGriffith’s story.

Like I’ve mentioned this before but how fucking weird and awkward is it that we as readers have no idea whether Rickert even knows about the Eclipse rape, when the whole narrative point of his digression to Falconia was his choice to judge and reject NeoGriffith. Rickert delivers his judgement – essentially as an audience stand-in – and the Eclipse rape doesn’t factor into it at all. That’s the definition of gratuitous lol. And that’s just one example of Miura turning it into this awkward elephant in the room.

(I have a more meta-y take on this here too for anyone interested)

This is a bit nitpicky i guess but does it bother you too how cutesy is casca’s mercenary outfit (thigh boots, sword with a heart hilt, short mantle, pink shirts in the 97 anime)? Like considering how he deals with her feminine side particularly in regards to appareances it makes me go “mmmh”

yeah a bit lol, the heart hilt especially kind of bothers me. like where did she get that and why? was it custom made? would casca really want a sword with decorative hearts on it? (I could headcanon my own explanation, like maybe she stole it off a nobleman who kept it basically for decoration rather than actually using it, back when the Hawks were thieves. But yk I’m not giving Miura credit for that.)

tbh in general I find it kind of hard to criticize her golden age outfit in the context of like, 90% of fantasy female warriors’ outfits lol, bc in all fairness it’s p realistic and practical comparatively. her breastplate doesn’t have sculpted boobs, her boots don’t have heels any more than the dudes’ do (and to be fair I feel like i’ve heard that the thigh highs were an actual practical riding thing – tho ofc none of the dudes wear them, soooo enh), she doesn’t have half her chest exposed for the sake of cleavage (except of course for the many, many pages where her clothes are torn lol), and she like, wears pants.

but on the other hand it’s sad the bar is that low because lbr Casca wearing decent clothes doesn’t prevent Miura from drawing her ridiculously for the sake of fanservice anyway

like no it’s not technically an upskirt shot, but damn it’s hard to tell the difference with that long skirt-looking tunic and ultra tight pants. kind of unfortunately undermines the power angle imo.

and her pants get even tighter after she has sex with guts ime, there are a few panels like this one later on:

so yeah, i guess like, it is kind of nitpicky, but it’s the kind of nitpicky i agree with lol. I mean I wouldn’t write a big long post to criticize Casca’s outfit bc for the most part it’s much better than i’d expect, but it’s def not perfect.

I was thinking, if the demon child appears during the black swordsman arc and miura said he came up with g*tsca only until later in the story, then what was it originally supposed to be? Straight-up guts and femto’s child lol?

tbh I actually love it in the Black Swordsman arc bc I don’t think it was meant to be anything particularly significant, like, plot-wise (tho lmao i wish, but it’s probably only a coincidence that it looked kind of like a fetus lol)

I think it was just supposed to be a recurring demon that represents like, the self destructiveness and futility of Guts’ revenge rampage. like a proto beast of darkness but instead of being scary and cool it’s just sad and pathetic. the twisted remains of yourself after you’ve been consumed by revenge.

which i say mainly because of that one image where guts sees it with vargas’ face. but also if you re-read its early appearances with that in mind it fits very nicely with the rest of the black swordsman arc’s themes and the way it unnerves guts more than anything else he sees, and the way it appears when he’s feeling self-doubt and fear of failure, makes a lot of sense.

also his chapter 2 nightmare where it chases him works super well with that in mind. This nightmare is later echoed by his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s a monstrous representation of donovan chasing him, which is echoed again after Guts kills Adonis and sees himself as that monster. It’s very neatly cyclical – chronologically, it goes Guts’ own personal monster followed by Guts’ fear of becoming a monster followed by Guts well on his way to becoming that monster. And I just love that the fetus thing isn’t a cool monster, it’s just pathetic, which is perfect in the Black Swordsman arc where Guts is paralleled to Vargas.

relatedly it’s really off-putting to re-read the scenes where it appears after miura retconned it into being his weird demon kid lol. Totally fucks up that interpretation. Like you can maybe read it as a reminder of Guts abandoning Casca/his repressed guilt over it, but I have no idea how that’s supposed to work with the nightmare, or the direct comparison to Vargas, etc.

Maybe it still kind of works as a symbol of Guts becoming a monster in that the fetus is is all demony because it was corrupted by Femto or w/e, but like… considering all its later appearances are helpful and protective rather than sinister, it really doesn’t work for me. It’s a big mess.

freewilllife:

bthump:

@freewilllife I’m c/ping this bc that post is really long to reblog imo lol

I half-wonder if this is an issue with Miura writing some of Berserk
while depressed lol, considering how utterly cynical the Conviction arc
is.

I think this is the case.Depending on the real life issues of the author…and yes I think it somehow is fitting…

Because
sometimes a relationship even an unequal one is better than being
alone, however it can turn out worse if the dependent state doesn´t
develop…

Somehow I think ( I know what a thought…most
Griffith/Guts fans do know that I suppose) that Griffith and Guts had a
dependency on each other that could have turned into a nice
relationship, but fate and their own insufficient communication skills
prevented it.

Guts wished to be the equal of Griffith…he
wished to acquire it…The way he chose was…It would have not been bad if
he had somehow come to another realisation than committing murder is his
“dream” ( That is just my priority maybe?).

Casca on the other
hand wished to maintain an unequal relationship at all cost…she wished
to be near Griffith, later Guts. It is depicted as if Casca only wished
to be Griffith´s sword since she wished to stay in his shadow…Whereas
Guts wished to obtain an own dream in order to be his equal…

Yeah there’s something to be said for Guts and Casca’s (and Charlotte’s) respective reactions to hearing Griffith’s dream speech. Even if it was a stupid speech and Guts’ decision was misguided, he’s still the only one who was like, well I’d better go out and achieve something so I can be his bff.

And it’s also very telling that Guts invited Casca along on his dream adventure – it shows that Guts is not thinking of her as an equal, he’s thinking of her as support for him, the way she was support for Griffith, rather than someone who could achieve her own dream and become an equal w/ him and Griffith.

(This probably says more about how Miura sees romantic (het) relationships as opposed to All-Important Bonds Between Men, but yk.)

Like imo the whole notion of dreams + equals is stupid as fuck, but it’s what Guts is basing his life around at that point and Casca just doesn’t figure in as a potential equal as far as he’s concerned.

Also of course I completely agree that Guts and Griffith’s relationship could’ve been exactly what they both needed, and could’ve been (and was for a time) a hugely positive influence on both of them, but fate and their own issues interfered and ruined it. Like I don’t think they were ever not equals – regardless of their stupid arbitrary standards, their feelings for each other made them equals, and I s2g the water fight is symbolic of that fact.

Like, not literally but symbolically, Griffith won the first fight, Guts won the second – the waterfight. So when Guts won a third – the second duel – it fucked up the balance and resulted in Griffith losing everything, and demonstrated that Guts was leaving based on a false premise.

(also lmao yeah the dream Guts landed on is kind of hilarious in how terrible it is. i love that you describe it as ‘committing murder’ bc it’s not exactly far off)

Like I don’t think they were ever not equals – regardless of their
stupid arbitrary standards, their feelings for each other made them
equals, and I s2g the water fight is symbolic of that fact.

Yeah…When you express it like this. I mean that would mean that equal, mutual relationships would just be possible between men…I don´t mean that you said that, but the narrative seems to point to such a belief. Or maybe men are supposed to have “a woman”, but the “real relationship” is just with their comrade(s)?

Since Casca is treated by both men as a woman, a mutual, equal relationship doesn´t seem to be possible….I don´t know what that is supposed to mean…As if the sex would determine a persons every character and dreams…

Yeah honestly that is the vibe I get from Berserk. I mean honestly that’s the vibe I get from a lot of media in general. I mean, that’s the vibe I get from society lmao. Relationships between men and women are for sex and for the dude’s self-esteem and sense of completion as a man, relationships between men are the meaningful ones with nuance and intrigue and significance, that reflect upon them as individuals. And relationships between women barely exist.

Obviously there are exceptions, but let’s be real here, this is just how relationships are portrayed in media most of the time due to misogyny, and Berserk is… well the main relationships are no exception. To Miura’s credit some of the side relationships between women are interesting + significant (eg Jill and Rosine, Nina and Luca, can’t really say Farnese and Casca yet but there’s potential there), and Farnese and Serpico have an interesting relationship by these standards. Though the fact that it’s non-romantic is probably related.

I just finished rereading the golden age and man I still have trouble reconciling griffith with femto. Bc like yeah femto is obv not the same as griffith he’s griffith filled with evilness but he still displays human emotions. Like his obsession and anger towards guts his jealousy towards casca seemingly residual tender feelings for guts what with him not killing guts at the end of the eclipse and more. He’s like griffith’s dark side personified and I have a hard time believing that griffith 2/2

2/2 could harbor such cruelty inside. It makes me question my reading of his character sometimes tbh

lol finally got it, ty for trying again!

and yeah I think I get what you mean.

Partly what I do is just kind of like… take the rape as read? Like fine, Miura is of the belief that people’s inner darkness comes out through sexual violence 90% of the time. We see that in Griff, Guts, most apostles, Slan, and even Farnese. It’s something he wants to like… “explore” is a very generous word lol, but let’s go with that, explore as a more generalized statement on humanity, rather than as an individual judgement on any of these characters.

I don’t want to go through the scene and find the panel lol, but Slan even gets that line during the Eclipse rape, “this is what it means to be evil. This is what it means to be human.” Or something along those lines. Miura just like, chose rape as his central illustration of the worst aspects of humanity. So it’s not really the particular cruelty Griffith harbours in him, but rather the cruelty all of humanity does.

So I just kind of nod along lol, even while I think it’s gratuitous and poorly done most of the time. It’s sort of built into the fabric of the story unfortunately.

On a characterization level… enh.

I guess I can sort of reconcile it as long as I have that authorially-provided nudge of “evil = rape by default” lol. If I just accept that and go along with it, then yeah ok, Griffith turns into a demon filled with all of humanity’s evil, and expresses his negative emotions by spitefully raping Casca. Fine, whatever. That’s what humans in Miura’s Berserk do when they become monsters.

And I mean I do think that Griffith has some cruelty in him, so there may also be a difference in how we see his character too. It’s not really a big stretch for me to believe that an evil demon version of Griffith would want to spitefully lash out at Guts and even Casca, because human Griffith’s feelings towards them were pretty complicated – well complicated wrt Guts, we didn’t really get any insight into his feelings towards Casca other than a sense of fondness + protectiveness and some jealousy at the end, and maybe some resentment at the thought of her taking care of him.

Like, it’s enough for me to believe that the evil demon version would want them to suffer.

I could definitely see a part of Griffith enjoying the fuck out of being able to say this to Guts. The part that resented him for how much he loved him, that tried to strangle him in the torture chamber. Even just the part of him that frowned for a second when Guts asked why he risked his life to save him from Zodd. It’s just that as a human that part is swallowed up by overwhelming love and yk, generally being an actually good person who doesn’t want to hurt people, but ends up doing it a lot anyway and burying the guilt.

(And I will argue forever that human Griffith is pretty much the most morally upstanding character in Berserk by most standards lmao, which is part of what makes his narrative through “I sacrifice” so good.)

Anyway yeah, idk basically I think I get what you’re saying and I half agree but also I find it fairly easy to just kind of roll with it because Berserk’s gonna Berserk lol. Like, take Griffith, magically enhance this part of him:

remove/freeze this part:

and have him written by a dude who thinks rape is the best way to illustrate the darkness of humanity, and I can see how Griffith could become Femto. His lingering feelings for Guts could be enough to make him hesitate to kill him, but not so much that he doesn’t want him to suffer. Also I kind of assume that Femto retains some feelings for Guts because Guts survived the sacrifice, but that doesn’t mean he has lingering morals or anything like that. So I can kind of reconcile him wanting to hurt Guts in his Evil Demon In Berserk way, but also failing to follow through and kill him.

Like imo it’s Griffith’s Guts related irrationality coming back to fuck him up lol, rather than guilt or morality.

Idk does this make sense/address what you’re saying? I focused mainly on the eclipse rape because that’s what I jump to when talking about Griffith as a human vs Femto’s evil lol, hopefully that’s also what you meant.

Serpico and even at times Farnese treats Casca as Farnese confidence booster. Like she gives Farnese purpose or doesn’t make her feel useless. Do you think we should be more critical about their behavior or am I overreacting?

I doubt very much Miura intended for the reader to be critical of their behaviour, but honestly so much surrounding post-Eclipse Casca skeeves me out wrt ableism and the way she’s so infantalized and objectified (like literally, treated as an unthinking object to be protected rather than a person), both by other characters and by the narrative itself, that I def don’t think you’re overreacting.

It’s something I blame Miura for more than Farnese bc I really don’t think we’re intended to see her as insensitive. and imo Farnese comes across better than anyone else when it comes to treating Casca as a person with feelings. like eg the scene where she loses her temper and then apologizes to her directly – as opposed to say, Guts, who yelled at her all the time back when he interacted with her but never apologized to her. Or as opposed to the rest of the rpg group who tend to treat her like a prop or an extension of Guts or Farnese imo.

But yeah imo there are still a lot of instances of people, including Farnese, talking about Casca and thinking about Casca as if her only value is to motivate Farnese, and the narrative doesn’t really condemn that line of thinking, it’s just part of the general portrayal of post-Eclipse Casca, and it sucks.

for the is berserk homophobic thing. a saw someone describe griffiths storyline as ‘it makes the readers unable to sympathize with the gay-coded character who experiences every pain a human being can experience’

I actually never considered it quite like that before but ia, that’s also a big problem and another reason the Eclipse rape is a failure of writing. Especially considering how Femto’s particular villainy emphasizes/is an expression of some of that gay-coding. And a result of it too for that matter – he makes the sacrifice because of his feelings for Guts. And yeah you can interpret that as “he should’ve embraced those feelings and not tried to escape them,” but the fact remains that his extremely homoerotic feelings basically drove him to evil lol.

So yeah as well as readers not being able to sympathize with him, it makes his feelings for Guts kind of forboding. Which tbh is the kind of thing that wouldn’t bother me at all if there was like, any positive + textually gay content to mitigate it lol, like I’m not going to pretend I don’t fucking love that Griffith makes the sacrifice to escape his feelings and talk about how amazing his narrative is every day, but yk, in the context of the rest of the predatory gay content of the story it’s not something I’d praise from this particular angle.

do you think that berserk is homophobic?

yeah absolutely. ignoring every ounce of subtext, the only characters who demonstrate textual same sex attraction are child predators and groups of heretics having hedonistic and like fuckin baby eating orgies before dying horribly.

As for the subtext, I like to interpret it in as positive a way as possible (ie Guts and Griffith’s relationship and lives are totally fucked up because they fail to recognize and act on the attraction between them, largely because of their past traumas), but as much as I think it fits the story perfectly and is the neatest and most resonant reading of Guts and Griffith’s relationship, it’s still only subtext, and possibly accidental, so that doesn’t really mitigate any of the actual homophobia inherent to the story.

And then ofc you have the evil gay subtext, yk like Femto staring at Guts during the Eclipse rape and the Beast of Darkness talking about Guts’ longing for Griffith and Guts assaulting Casca to feel closer to him. Hard to defend that lmao. I mean I can still read it as inoffensively as possible (the negative part comes when they redirect their feelings from each other to a heterosexual outlet, eg) but yk, that’s just me wanting to enjoy the story, that’s not a nuance I’m gonna give Miura credit for.

And also because this is all subtext it’s very nebulous and v open to interpretation.

Like for instance, another less forgiving interpretation of the subtext might be that Miura intended for Griffith and Guts’ relationship to be positive inasmuch as it is platonic, and for the implications of sexual attraction to be something negative that should have been overcome. I feel like that’s a much less valid interpretation, because it’s pretty contradictory overall, but yk there are still some pretty fucked up implications you can pick up in the subtext, and the context of all textual same-sex attraction being evil doesn’t exactly help that.

Oh also I suppose one can argue that in Berserk every expression of sexual desire is negative whether it’s hetero or not, give or take the second half of the gtsca sex scene (and i can still argue it’s negative), and therefore the fact that all textual same-sex desire is evil is more neutral in berserk than it would be in other stories. but we live in a world where predatory heterosexual desire isn’t a damaging stereotype in and of itself but predatory same-sex desire is, so it’s not actually neutral regardless, bc of real world context.

Tho that fact does make Berserk more fun for me to read at least.

At the end of the day basically I choose to read the subtext in as
positive a way as possible and it works for me and entertains me a whole
lot, but that doesn’t make the homophobic implications go away. but enh
I’ve kind of made my peace with enjoying a very offensive work lol.

honestly i wouldnt even say straight vs gay fan opinions let alone male vs female fans. weird thing about berserk fandom is that bros and ppl who consier themselves sj almost have same opinions(only they show their griff hate w/o homophobic slurs i guess) the opinion division starts with blaming miura on certain things and separating femto and griffith and griff sympathy lol

Yeah that’s a good point tbh. maybe the most fundamental fandom divide comes down to whether you blame griffith or miura for the eclipse rape lol. or yk, more expansively, whether you’re the type of person who responds to fiction as though the characters are real people with agency or as though they’re constructs

and that’s not meant to be judgemental, there’s nothing wrong with engaging w/ fiction the first way, it’s fun and lends itself well to fandom pursuits like fanfic. it just doesn’t lend itself to analysis or critique, so things can get awk when they criticize a character for doing offensive things but don’t really engage with how those offensive things are presented by the narrative.

(and this is a v common thing in fandom in general ime, not just berserk fandom)

like, is griffith problematic because he magically turned into a demon and raped casca, or is berserk problematic because he’s a gay coded lipstick wearing sexually predatory antagonist whose motivation for raping casca is strongly implied to be at least partly jealousy

I remember reading Berserk for the first time and being totally unimpressed with Guts n Casca’s relationship. Then I really entered the fandom and it turns out a lot of people really like them together??? I thought “Did you guys read the same manga as me?” Lmao. I’m never gonna forgive Miura for forcing that shit into the story

I don’t think you’re the same person but I’m combining these asks into one post because it’s basically the same subject and sentiment lol

honestly yeah the relationship really just brings out the worst in both characters imo (rampant misogyny and general laddish unlikeability in Guts; dependency, victimization, and narrative passivity in Casca), and it seems so, so unnecessary to me.

Like they are the epitome of pasted on romance. The relationship that drives the narrative, provides the most tension and intrigue and character development is Guts and Griffith’s. Guts and Casca’s romance drives nothing, develops nothing, and the intrigue and tension comes from… how Griffith figures into it (eg as the person they’re both rebounding from, as the object of their early rivalry, as the person Guts is trying to get over post-Eclipse by focusing on Casca. like literally every single one of their scenes where they grow closer is a conversation about Griffith lol).

Plus Guts rescuing her and then escorting her to Elfhelm is not dependent on his romantic relationship with her at all – he’d do the same for any of his former comrades. She could be replaced with Gaston and absolutely zero things would change except Guts probably wouldn’t’ve sexually assaulted him.

The romance brings nothing unique to the characters, it adds nothing, all it does is diminish everyone involved, extremely literally in the case of Miura adding it so he could write Casca out of half the story in the most grotesque way possible and give Guts motivation he absolutely didn’t need and which diminishes his actual personal trauma which is what should’ve been motivating him.

It’s so frustrating! I swear I could write another 4 part essay about all the ways Guts and Casca’s romance actively makes Berserk objectively (yes i’m saying objectively, idgaf some things are universally bad regardless of personal taste, like most things to do with the Eclipse) worse lmao

And the thought of an AU where Casca also survived the Eclipse without the bullshit and got her own plot-driving complementary storyline as an active character with a goal is so depressing because it could’ve been amazing.

The fact that ppl view gtsca as this epic love story truly baffles me. Nvmd that he’s treated her like shit, miura admittedly shoehorned it into the story to give guts more manpain. It has like 3 chapters of forced build-up (judeau lit had to push them together) and it’s implied that they’re both using e/o as an alternative to griffith. And indeed, as soon he reenters the picture, it starts to fall apart. And it lasted like, what, one week? But sure, they’re totally the loves of e/o’s lives lol

four days actually lol

but yeah, strong agree here. I do kind of wonder what Miura wanted to portray – like I definitely think it very much comes across in the story that he added their relationship entirely for the sake of fridging Casca to motivate Guts more (the fact that he admitted it is icing on the cake lol). But he also didn’t shove it in as a badly written last-minute true love story, he was very deliberate in showing that there were flaws there from the start, like Judeau pulling the strings, both rebounding from Griffith, both using sex as a distraction from their negative feelings, the jealousy during the rescue mission, Griffith still taking priority to Guts (and this holds true until after the Hill of Swords confrontation), Casca becoming Guts’ “sword,” their hookup helping enable Guts’ denial so he doesn’t realize he shouldn’t’ve left the Hawks until it’s too late, etc.

So idk bc to elicit the correct reaction from his readers during the Eclipse he had to make them invested in their relationship and Guts’ feelings for Casca, but he also doesn’t do a damn thing to make Guts feelings for Casca matter or affect his decisions or anything. So imo it ends up feeling awkwardly pasted on when we’re supposed to believe they have strong feelings for each other, and the rest of the time it feels deliberately portrayed as negative.

(Like I’ve pointed out before, but a good example of this is the way Guts decides he screwed up before and wants to stay with Griffith this time while talking with Judeau, before consulting with Casca. It would’ve been so easy to have him decide while talking to Casca, showing that what she chooses to do also affects his decision, but nope. Too bad for Casca if she really wanted to leave with Guts, Guts is sticking with Griffith now.)

I’m re-reading berserk and…jfc miura really is obsessed with sexualizing casca. I’ve lost count of how many times i’ve seen her naked or semi-naked at this point. Seriously though the way he treats her character is sick

God it’s just the fucking worst isn’t it? And it’s so constant, both pre and post Eclipse, and so shitty, and often straight up tonally jarring lmao.

I actually recently wrote out a whole rant about how the depiction of Casca during the Eclipse isn’t just incredibly offensive but straight up objectively, qualitatively bad writing and bad art, but then I never posted it bc I got uncomfortably specific lol. But man, and it’s not just the Eclipse either, it’s everywhere.

Actually can I just (not cut for anything particularly triggering, just me going on a brief rant anyway lol. also tits)

imagine drawing this. You’re an artist and writer, you’re trying to depict a thematically resonant, significant moment that’s also very sad and emotionally touching, and this is how you choose to do it. Look at those metallic looking nipples. Do you think Miura even knows that nipples usually aren’t hard?

Why does he want the het male portion of his audience to be turned on during a sad moment that takes place after an attempted rape?

Or, conversely, why are so many men so awful that it doesn’t even occur to Miura or the majority of his audience that the image accompanying this sad text is inappropriately eroticized? That a mostly naked woman with those ridiculously (and kind of racistly lbr) bright, eye-catching nipples and gravity-defying tits actively fucks with the emotional tone you’re theoretically trying to convey? Because it’s just default to them: woman = naked and sexy as often as possible no matter what the context is.

Honestly it’s infuriating, and this example is nowhere near as fucked up as the Eclipse, or even the way Miura continues to eroticize Casca’s body when she’s traumatized and regressed to like mental infancy, etc.

Imo berserk stopped being interesting when guts trauma stopped being adressed. For mb the first time in a dark shonen,its shown sexual abuse can happen even to the machoman protag, and how sexual trauma affects him and his relationships.how it makes him weak, afraid,desperate to form a deep bond wt smo and vulnerable to guenine demonstration of luv. Its so rare to have this characterisation in média,more so with a viril protag! 1/2

And then guts have sex wt casca and that stops. Now hes just a strong
character,never defeated, afraid only of himself bc ooh theres a scary
monster inside him teehee,like every shonen.He wants to defeat his evil
former bff with lingering sentiments (naruto?). His vulnerabilities, his
dependance on smo else opinion,his loneliness and lack of meaning of
his existence,which were rare traits in protag?disappeared. GA was how
life conditions impacted real ppl,now bersek is just a shonen wt rape
2/2

Yeaaaaah I agree with a lot of this. I’ve ranted about it before but I can always go on more about how much it bugs me that Guts’ personal trauma is basically ignored during and after the Eclipse in favour of switching to being angry about someone else’s trauma (someone who didn’t even get her own reaction to it, at least not for 20 years).

Cause yeah like ia, Guts’ trauma – and not just the csa trauma but also the more overarching abuse from Gambino as he was growing up – is so vital to his entire character in the first two arcs. It informs everything about him from his insecurities, to the way he fights, to the reason he stayed with the Hawks and the reason he left the Hawks, etc. In the Black Swordsman arc, the reason he’s so angry is because Griffith sacrificing him wasn’t just a betrayal, but a replay of that childhood trauma. The ghosts haunting him and claiming him are an echo of Gambino calling him cursed and selling him to someone else. It all fits together perfectly and it’s so good.

And it is a relatively unique backstory when it comes to badass manly man action hero protagonists. I mean to be nitpicky Berserk is a seinen, not a shonen, but the csa backstories seem to be more inspired by classic shojo, based on some of the influences Miura cites (like Kaze to Ki no Uta), and combining those elements with typical seinen action stuff, especially since imo Miura did it very thoughtfully and very well up til the end of the Golden Age, does create a unique and v interesting story.

And then during and after the Eclipse Guts’ trauma is basically dropped, and he does feel more generic to me – more typically cool and badass, much less interestingly vulnerable. Like eg, his very personal, actual fear-for-himself during the Black Swordsman arc was a really compelling element! And the only post-Eclipse instance I can think of where he was shown to be genuinely afraid for his own life and well-being, rather than afraid of his own potential to do harm or afraid for the people he’s trying to protect, is when Slan shows up in the troll cave. And because there was a sexualized threat there I do think that was a deliberate reference to Guts’ own trauma. But it was one scene over a hundred chapters ago that didn’t really have any emotional resonance (unlike, say, the early Golden Age Zodd encounter which changed everything, or the Wyald encounter which imo shed a lot of light on Guts’ dream), and was far from overt.

So like I unfortunately also get the impression that Miura has largely dropped Guts’ personal trauma as a significant factor of his character and story in favour of the far more common and boring fridged girlfriend backstory.

But! I also still have hope that that’s not the case. I feel like Guts’ post Eclipse monster hunting rampage was largely a way to avoid dealing with his complicated feelings, and I feel the same way about Guts’ fix Casca quest. Like, maybe it’s not Miura dropping Guts’ personal trauma to focus on manpain – maybe it’s Guts deliberately cultivating rage to avoid confronting his more difficult feelings like fear and loneliness and longing etc.

Avoidance is kind of his thing, after all.

This may be (is probably) wishful thinking, but it does give me hope
that if the fix Casca quest goes pear shaped (eg Casca uses the behelit,
or something), Guts’ issues – his childhood, guilt, all his mixed feelings regarding Griffith, etc – will come back front and centre. We
have all the ominous foreshadowing about the Beast of Darkness and the
armour,

and if something makes him go wild and succumb to it it would be nice if it wasn’t just like a one-off bad event but rather a cumulation of everything he’s (I hope) been spending the last 3 years trying to distract himself from.

And then at some point after that he can be pulled back from the armour and yk, actually grow as a person by confronting his issues rather than hitting stuff with a sword, now armed with the knowledge that avoiding stuff just makes them fuck you up harder when your avoidance strategies fail you.

ofc that said, even if that is the case I think Miura’s fucked up w/ pacing. It’s been 250 chapters since the Eclipse, there’s a reason I feel like this is a vain hope even if it does make perfect sense to me as an explanation lol. Plus like… some details do seem to not be pointing in that direction. Like:

Are we meant to regard his choice to take Casca to Elfhelm to be immersing himself in sorrow? Because that is absolutely not the vibe I’m getting, but the dichotemy between chase Griffith for revenge = avoidance vs stick with Casca = positive healing is so explicitly drawn here that maybe Miura’s just half-assing the positive healing to the point where it looks like avoidance lmao. Like that is my genuine fear, is that everything from chapter 130 on is actually meant to be seen as Guts dealing with his shit lol.

But idk like there are still intriguing elements that may be evocative of Guts’ deeper issues, back even to his childhood, that pop up now and then, that I can point to as evidence that they may still be actually dealt with in the future. Like the aforementioned Slan scene, the way he’s still drawn to Griffith as his “true light,” the fact that the Beast of Darkness is personified as a dog

uhhh the self-destructiveness of the armour (the way he doesn’t feel pain and it knits his broken bones together etc) as a metaphor for the way fighting is basically a form of self-harm for him… idk like none of these things are addressed, but they’re there to be picked up on and therefore will hopefully cumulate in something more interesting eventually.

ok yk what

if half of the g*tsca sex scene is meant to be a positive step towards guts getting over his trauma, and ignoring my personal feelings by all rights it absolutely should be, because the central point of berserk is that interpersonal relationships are positive ways to heal from trauma and guts having a flashback and then talking it through in front of Casca b4 having comfort sex seems like it fits right into that theme

so yeah if that is meant to be a positive emotionally healing experience, then i simply do not understand why it… changes literally nothing.

guts’ dream is a distraction, swinging his sword is his way of not thinking about his issues, and after this he goes right back to harping on about his dream and insisting he’s gonna keep fighting stronger and stronger enemies.

during the wyald fight he refuses to let casca help and refuses to run because he feels like he’s got a score to settle with monsters as a concept, and therefore he has to beat wyald all by himself (”by my own sword”), which is also an indication that he’s still mired in his issues, obsessed with his dream, lashing out to assuage his personal pain.

and he finally, finally chooses to let go of his dream for someone else’s sake when it’s Griffith who needs him, not Casca.

having sex with Casca after the flashback should be Guts’ turning point. When Casca asks him to stay his answer should be yes, or at least be ambiguous enough to show that he’s seriously considering it. that he’s beginning to recognize that relationships > dreams and the Hawks are his family. He suggests that Casca come along, but makes it very clear that his dream gets first priority when he does. “Whether bein’ with you will get in the way of what I want to do… or the opposite… I can’t tell now.”

rather than considering staying when Casca asks, he immediately says he wants “to draw a line, keep things separate.” And ofc Griffith ends up being the turning point. Casca telling him Griffith destroyed himself because of him, thinking about Griffith’s emotional vulnerability during the rescue mission, finding Griffith after a year of torture and now dependant – these are all what lead to Guts wavering and wondering if leaving was a mistake. Not Casca yelling that he’s a selfish idiot who only cares about himself and dreams, but Casca yelling that Griffith ended up in a torture chamber because of him.

Miura even shows us Guts choosing to stay with Griffith before even consulting Casca.

Like he could’ve split the difference, had Casca tell Guts she can’t leave with him because she needs to take care of Griffith and have Guts make up his mind then, showing that his relationships with Casca and Griffith are at least equal in importance, but nope. Guts wants to stay with Griffith regardless of what Casca decides. It’s before they talk again that he reaches his conclusion that he fucked up and the Hawks were his home all along:

their relationship could not be more of an afterthought to Miura here. it’s so painfully clear that he added it just to destroy her character and motivate Guts, because where there should be a shitload of thematic resonance and character development in their relationship, there’s none. it’s absolutely unnecessary, it affects nothing at all except the eclipse rape, to such an extent that it’s awkward, because it would’ve been so easy and straightforward to tie it into existing themes and make their relationship matter, and Miura just didn’t bother.

Like if I shipped them I’d be mad lol, I’d feel ripped off. Instead I’m just weirded out by how badly written this one subplot is in the midst of the otherwise pretty outstanding Golden Age.

I really hate Schierke as a character like… her crush on guts is so yawn to me because like everyone has one at this point and it’s just causing her to be selfish and childish like wanting to keep the ability to control the armour/beast and help guts to herself rather than teach the rest of the group to help is stupid and I feel goes against everything she’s been taught about being a witch and kind of working for the world seperate from the world and also with farnese even though I like her1/2

2/2 I just feel like any kind of character development she could have
had was just quickly glazed over like she went from someone who got off
on watching people get burnt to death and wanting to torture serpico for
‘fun’ or whatever to this simpering woman who’s working on bettering
herself way too fast I wish her journey was explored more and not just
kind of put as if she met guts and suddenly all her problems were solved
and she’s just perfectly good other than a little weak and scared now

Idk I agree with most of this but I think you’re being a little harsh.

Like it’s been a while since I re-read any of the later chapters but I never really got the impression that Schierke was keeping her ability to help Guts to herself, more that she’s just… the only person in the RPG group proficient enough w/ magic to help keep the armour at bay. Like Farnese is still a beginner and no one else knows any magic, so there’s nothing they can really do. (Also I’m kind of loling at calling Schierke childish, like, she is a child.)

But otherwise I pretty much agree, there’s nothing I particularly like about Schierke and her crush is annoying and offputting.

Also wrt Farnese, describing her as “simpering” makes no sense at all. The word means coquettish in an affected, ingratiating way, and that is basically the opposite of Farnese’s character lol, both as an enemy and as an ally.

But other than that I mean yeah I do agree that her character development was not well written. I like both antagonist Farnese and ally Farnese but it’s hard to see them as the same character, because Miura really like, did not show how one became the other lol.

It might be believable that after having her religious faith shattered she’d latch onto Guts as something new to believe in, as an emotional crutch, but it’s never depicted that way really – deciding to follow Guts has been 100% positive for her, while religion was 100% negative and evil, even though they’re both presumably filling the same emotional niche for her. (And if they’re not basically the same drive pointed at different objects of belief, God vs Guts, then Farnese’s sudden switch from religion to Guts is actually super weird and nonsensical, so either way it’s not well done.)

Like, her black and white, us vs them, pure vs impure, etc, thinking should still have been an issue, at least at the start of her time with the rpg group, even if the subjects of that thinking have changed. Or if Miura wanted that type of thinking shattered with her religious faith, she should have had difficulty adjusting to seeing the world in shades of grey. Her related buried guilt and self-doubt should also not have just conveniently disappeared, aside from one vague attempt at an apology for burning witches alive to Flora lol.

(Man now that I mention it it would’ve been fantastic to see Farnese struggling with letting go of her pure vs impure thinking and more slowly accepting that everyone is greyscale, and finding self-acceptance in that too. What a missed opportunity.)

Something else that would’ve been good is showing that Farnese dedicating herself to taking care of Casca, learning magic, etc, is a continuation of her tendency to like, violently throw herself into things. “become the storm yourself,” that life philosophy. Like if she was overeager to an off-putting, borderline unhealthy extent. Or if she wholeheartedly devoted herself to taking care of Casca because of her guilt issues, but again in a not-wholly-positive, overcompensating way.

I think this is a basic problem with Guts’ entire side of the narrative actually lol. It’s too damn good. Everyone is bettered by hanging out with him, plain and simple. Not even two steps forward, one step back – everyone just happily grows as a person on his stupid journey. Farnese replacing God with Guts causes no problems for her or anyone else, because Guts is just a good person to build your entire life around, when imo there should be some critique there wrt the concept of building your life around anything or anyone. The problem isn’t what you’re worshipping, it’s that you’re worshipping, but idk if Miura sees it that way.

Tho I still have hope that this apparent sense that Guts is just the fucking bees knees who changes everyone around him for the better could be subverted. I mean we’re about to get the payoff of his whole quest, and he’s just been compared to Griffith again specifically wrt how Farnese feels about him vs how Casca felt about Griffith, which is promising. Like, Golden Age Griffith was the same wrt everyone around him growing and being happy bc of his ~conviction~ and the feeling that they’re all going places, it’s something Guts comments on when he first meets the Hawks lol, and we all know how that turned out.

But even if that is the case it doesn’t really fix the 150ish chapters of Farnese’s super quick, super positive character growth lol. Idk it’s a disappointment to me too. I still like “both” Farneses, but I really feel like Miura half-assed the hell out of her development.

anyway ty for the asks and sorry for being a bit nitpicky, i mostly agree with you, just my contrary streak kicks in if i think some crit is unfair lol.

Idk why, but for some reason I feel like Isidro might use the behelit. I have no evidence to back this up, but I think it’d be a cool twist. His character has kind of just been “there” for me. I don’t really feel anything towards him. I guess I kind of just want Miura to make me interested in him lmao. I know Casca is probs gonna use it, but still. A part of me just wants Isidro to step it up, if that makes sense. This isn’t really a question but I’m curious about your thoughts on Isidro

Well that would be one way to make Isidro interesting to me lol. bc same, I really don’t care about him at all. I’m mostly just kind of annoyed whenever he’s on the page lol, I’ve never been much of a fan of kid characters in general and Isidro really has nothing going for him imo.

I think like… idk my prediction is that his mermaid crush is going to die and he’s going to grow up a little because of it, but it’s not a concept I’m all that into lol, it just seems like a logical direction for the story to go. It would be a lot more fun to see Isidro go villainous lol, and he does have that whole “ambition” thing going on. I think the natural end to his storyline would actually be giving up adventuring and settling down though, after his whole conversation with that old dude during the troll fight.

Miura did (sigh) mention Isidro/Schierke as an obvious potential relationship, which is super uninteresting to me but also I don’t really care about either of them so yk, whatever. My biggest hope is just that Isidro doesn’t suck up too much screen time lol, and there’s no focus on any potential romance there – if it happens let it be a random aside in the epilogue or smthn.

me: tbh guts’ sad wistfulness and his inability to hate griffith for sacrificing him to the point where femto had to do something ridiculously ott just to piss him off was a terrible writing choice and completely flattens guts as a character post-eclipse while contradicting like half of the black swordsman arc

also me:

love

this

tragic

romance

sad thing about black swordsman arc is that i liked what miura was going for in the first place (guts motives for revenge, evil fetus being a metaphor) also they were actually ~deeper~ than emasculating guts. miura making g*tsca happen for the drama ruined it. also it made berserk kinda mediocre lol

Yeah I really feel like the Eclipse just, hugely cheapened just about everything that was interesting about Guts in the Black Swordsman arc by putting all the focus on a) how someone else’s pain affects Guts and b) like you said, the suggested emasculation of Guts watching someone else give his girlfriend an orgasm. And that might be seen as an uncharitable take on the scene lol but Casca’s arousal seriously is the central visual focus, and it’s what the rape scene builds up to, and it remains all about Guts’ feelings, and it’s so simultaneously offensive and just… cheap and boring.

It straight up mystifies me how Miura decided to add g*tsca for more Eclipse drama (ie the rape scene) and somehow didn’t realize that not only does the Eclipse not require any additional drama, but it overwrites the actual drama the Eclipse should’ve had as a personally traumatizing event to Guts. It’s just so frustrating lmao.

Wrt the fetus you can kind of tilt your head and still see it as a symbol for the futility of revenge – in hindsight now it’s more like a haunting reminder of Guts abandoning Casca – but it doesn’t work nearly as well because in the BS arc it’s visually depicted as a representation of like, Guts’ own inner demon – the pathetic monstrousness left when revenge consumes the rest of you.

So you have things like Guts’ nightmare where it’s chasing him which is echoed in his chapter 13 nightmare where it’s Donovan chasing him, and then echoed again in his vision after killing Adonis where it’s Zodd/Donovan/himself. How’s that supposed to work thematically if the fetus is a symbol of a relationship/his humanity lmao? Or the vision Guts had of the fetus with Vargas’ face?

And I mean I love the Beast of Darkness bc i’m easy for evil dark sides lol, but honestly the vibe the fetus had in the BS arc was better, because of that patheticness. It wasn’t cool, it wasn’t powerful, it was just sad, like the Vargas parallels.

Anyway ty for this ask and giving me an opportunity to complain some more, I’m glad you agree.

what would you like to change in berserk? actually im asking how the story would work without using rape as a plot device but also in general (characterization, plot etc.)

Ooh this is an interesting question, ty!

I wouldn’t change either Guts or Griffith’s backstories tbh, I think they’re actually pretty well done, and important to their characters and narratives without being the be all end all. Well, I’d like to make Gennon less of an evil gay stereotype and Donovan less of a scary black man stereotype but yk, other than those details the existence of rape in their backstories isn’t something I’d change.

With Casca… tough call. Her story is all about gendered violence to the point where if you got rid of the rape attempts you’d have to come up with a whole new story for her. But it’s still a shallower and less well-rounded depiction of abuse than either guts or griffith’s backstories, bc it’s so emphatically gendered, like, rather than informing her personality or her choices it’s just framed as being a woman.

So actually I guess for Casca what I’d change is (actually pretty obviously lol) her motivations. She’s not in love with Griffith, she idealizes his dream because she knows he wants to dismantle those power structures that fuck her over and create a place where those w/ power can’t easily abuse their power over others. She hates Guts not because she’s jealous of him (tho she could still be jealous of his emotional closeness with Griffith, like she’d still admire Griffith here even if she’s not in love with him and I like that rival dynamic), but because she recognizes that he could end up destroying Griffith’s dream.

Also I think we can still cut out most of the rape threats she gets while still showing that she has something to fight against. Maybe keep Adon being a gross dick (in all fairness he kind of mirrors Gennon towards Griffith which kind of shows how they’re fighting for the same dream – ie a world where those kinds of dudes are shut down) but have Casca just fighting for her life rather than against rape attempts as she runs from the 100 man fight.

So nothing really changes much until Guts comes back from his vacation. And now Casca is genuinely, genuinely angry and hateful towards him, because he did exactly what she’s been afraid he was going to do – destroyed Griffith’s dream, and her hope for a better future.

Which means they don’t have sex lol, Casca was never into Guts, they began a friendship towards the end of the war but nothing more. And now that Guts has come back Casca is actively hostile to him, though after Guts lets her stab him she probably forgives him a bit bc it’s not like he intended to destroy absolutely everything, and he’s clearly fucked up about it.

Also no suicide attempt.

So their dynamic during the rescue mission is resentful allies, like a throwback to their first three years knowing each other.

Wyald still happens but no attempted rape w/ Casca obviously.

Now when it comes to the Eclipse, I want it to be all about Guts, and I want it to hit the audience over the head with parallels to his childhood. It’s the Eclipse, it doesn’t need to be subtle. Rather than looking wistful when Griffith sacrifices everyone, I want Guts to look betrayed, I want him to look just as sad and horrified as he did when he was 11 and Gambino told him he sold him to Donovan.

Agh I’d hate to lose the creepy silent monster vibe from Femto, but something like a cold, “you’re still alive?” would be v fitting w/ the “you should have died” parallels. Tho idk I’m torn on that.

And ok I said I want it to be all about Guts but I can’t just kill off Casca. But if she’s gonna live the Eclipse needs some serious personal meaning for her too. So maybe her reaction to being sacrificed, knowing it’s for the dream she’s dedicated her life to and in theory she should be willing to give her life for it, and trying to reconcile that with the horrificness of the situation and her desperate desire to survive anyway. So she survives long enough for Femto to show up, because she’s not the third best fighter in the Hawks for nothing, and then…

torture? Femto has monsters hold Guts down and tortures Casca in a way reminiscent of a kid pulling the wings off a fly. She loses an arm, Guts keeps his because he’s too busy being utterly terrified and possibly flashbacking to hack his own arm off in a rage.

Like, one thing about the Eclipse rape, is that if Miura had to have it as a way of emotionally affecting Guts, how the fuck did he manage to draw like two chapters of awful awful shit with Guts being held down by monsters that he’d just watched rape Casca, and completely fail to allude to Guts’ own rape trauma? How. Hooooow it’s mind boggling. It’s absurd.

But you don’t even need the graphic rape for that, like hell, Miura has absolutely adequately set up the correlation between giant monsters Guts is compelled to fight and his own childhood trauma imo to justify Guts having a very emotional traumatic reaction to just being held down and made helpless by monsters after being essentially given to them.

There’s Black Swordsman Guts in a nutshell, and this is exactly what was implied to have caused him to go full traumatized amoral asshole. Before g*tsca was a gleam in Miura’s eye all he had were those parallels to Guts’ childhood trauma – Guts being given away to monsters by someone he trusted – and that’s all he needed.

So anyway, because Casca lives, she has her own reaction to being casually tortured by Femto before being rescued, which is also a replay of her childhood trauma but without the agency of killing her attacker herself with a sword. So her reaction could very well be similar to Guts’ – a desire to kill monsters and get revenge. Maybe she’s lost her idealism wrt the dream, and she’s more cynical now – a better world is impossible, best you can do is survive this one.

She and Guts go their separate ways because they’re barely friends, let alone lovers, and remember 2 brands = big ghost problems.

After this the narrative splits 3 ways between NGriff, Guts, and Casca.

I’m reaching the limits of my creativity lol. So I’m just gonna suggest that Guts gets the behelit, Casca gets the armour and the rpg group, Casca gets the moving on arc and hooks up with Farnese while maybe finding a happy medium between changing the world and lashing out against the world, and Guts succumbs to his inner darkness and gets a highly emotional confrontation with Griffith. Since he has the behelit maybe he uses it upon realizing that Griffith’s heart is still beating for him, bc the emotional conflict is just too much, and sacrifices Griffith to become a Zodd-esque apostle wandering battlefields and fighting for no reason, basically returned to his pre-Griffith state.

It’s probably shorter than 355 chapters too lbr. I’d say NGriff creates Falconia right before the confrontation with Guts, so yk he achieves his dream b4 ironically getting sacrificed. Otherwise his story doesn’t change much. Maybe stronger suggestions that he’s not as unemotional as he looks, to build up to a guts confrontation better.

Like… I’m not a very creative or good writer lol but I feel this general outline could be written in a very good and satisfying way by someone with talent, like Miura.

i love griffith, guts and griffguts, but sometimes i feel super guilty about it bc of what griffith and guts have done to casca. i can’t even read fluffy stuff with them bc it just feels off mark given canon :/

I mean, that’s like… I was gonna say ‘fair’ but it’s not rly fair to you lol, you shouldn’t feel guilty about liking a good super interesting relationship just bc the mangaka thinks gratuitious rape and rape attempts are gr8 ways to illustrate evil. It makes sense to feel that way, but yk, it sucks.

So like I know it’s easy to say “idc bc it’s fiction” and that probably doesn’t help you because you already know it’s fiction. But I do think it’s good to bear in mind that the only person who has any say in what happens to Casca in the story is Miura, so you shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying some elements of his story just because he likes to go full grimdark at other times.

Also like, while I personally am fine with just saying “it’s fiction so idgaf, I’ll take what I like and dismiss what I don’t,” it doesn’t work for everyone, but an extra like… point that might help you reconcile liking characters who do terrible things is that these two terrible things in particular are bad and genuinely offensive writing lol.

Like it’s probably easier to say “fuck the Eclipse rape idc” when you see it as hugely gratuitous, offensively depicted, contradictory in some ways to earlier canon***, wholly unnecessary, thematically muddy, and kind of disturbingly downplayed in the future for the sake of depicting NeoGriffith as a morally ambiguous hero of his own story (and Miura has straight up said that NGriff is supposed to be morally ambiguous and heroic depending on your pov lol).

Guts sexually assaulting Casca is also unnecessary (trying to murder her seems like it would be a sufficient illustration of darkness), super misogynist in that we’re still supposed to support Guts afterwards and sympathize with him and his guilt moreso than Casca, not to mention homophobic since it’s all about his (super suggestively described by the hound) feelings for Griffith.

So yk, these things may be canon but they suck and if dismissing them makes me enjoy the story more that seems like the best course of action.

And finally, if none of that helps at all, it’s worth taking into account that these are Griffith and Guts’ magical evil alter egos at work. Canonically Femto is the worst aspects of Griffith, magnified by literal evil, with the rest of him burned or shattered away. The last thing Griffith did as a character was sacrifice the Hawks. Everything else has just been a magically augmented part of him.

Guts’ Beast of Darkness similarly is part of Guts, not all of him, and it’s also given strength by Guts’ existence on the interstice, thanks to the Brand. That’s why Flora’s magic seal of protection on the brand helped like, metaphorically chain it up in Guts’ subconscious.

One of Berserk’s main thematic points is that everyone has an inner darkness in them, it’s part of being human, so it’s not that Guts and Griffith are singled out as extra evil.

As pure unmagical humans, Guts and Griffith are just interesting complicated people, neither saints nor demons, with an intense relationship, and imo there’s plenty of room for fluffy content between them pre-Eclipse, or in an AU. I mean canon has them bond during a naked waterfight lol, you know there are a ton of cute off-screen moments between them just waiting to be depicted in fanworks.

(With the caveat that Miura’s misogyny sometimes still shows through, eg Griffith’s night with Charlotte which is narratively treated as consensual even though she says “no” first (typical bodice ripper shit), or Guts sexually assaulting Casca by grabbing her boob to distract her during an argument which is treated as cute rather than fucked up. But yk, welcome to Berserk. Miura sucks.)

***eg in v brief one thing that bothers me is that in the Black Swordsman arc
it was strongly implied that Guts’ reaction to whatever made him so
angry at Griffith/Femto was paralyzing fear, whereas during the Eclipse
all we see is violent rage

i know i’ve been talking about casca a lot recently but I just kind of want to outline the biggest issue with her narrative imo:

Griffith throwing her a sword instead of personally killing the nobleman for her was presumably an important aspect of her character development. It’s why she decided to become a mercenary (”you know how to fight already”), it’s the beginning of the sense of pride and accomplishment she feels when she fights to survive.

She is personally invested in her life as a mercenary, in being able to defend herself and fight for her survival, and in rising up with Griffith as well, carving out a new path.

To Casca, Griffith represents an end to the way of life she thought was only natural – starving and being caught in between skirmishes in her village, being exploited by those with more power.

He threw her a sword – Griffith represents her personal empowerment. Rather than someone else saving her, it’s her ability to save herself if she only has access to the right tools.

Casca knows he wants a kingdom, and she has a personal stake in seeing that kingdom come into existence. This isn’t really directly said anywhere, but we know she knows he plans to marry Charlotte to get to the throne, and we know she admires his dream, and we “know” she values her hard-won freedom to fight against people who would oppress her.

This is extremely good shit when you look at it through that perspective – Casca admiring Griffith’s conviction and having a personal stake in the realization of his dream. Seeing Griffith’s vulnerabilities as well, and deciding to be his sword, to help strengthen him so she can see his dream become a reality, because it’s one she shares, and hell, even because on a personal level she loves him in whatever way – not because he saved her but because he enabled her to save herself. That’s fine as an addition.

BUT NOPE

“My dream… had… already ended.”

Like, in this chapter, she’s literally like, ‘yo remember when I said I wanted to be Griffith’s sword? I was lying, I just want to fuck him, and since you’re the only one he wants to fuck and Charlotte’s the only one he has to fuck I’m gonna kill myself.”

Her dream isn’t to fight to survive, it’s not to help Griffith cut away his own path and carve out a place where a young poor girl from a downtrodden village who narrowly escaped becoming a slave could become a celebrated general. Her dream is to fuck Griffith.

Her monologue at the start of chapter 46 starts with how she couldn’t tear her eyes from Guts as he walked away from the Band, and how that freaked her out because she was afraid it meant her feelings for Griffith were a lie. “Afraid of all that, I lived with the intent of sacrificing myself for my unrequited feelings for Griffith.”

Literally, she led the Hawks for that year not even out of duty to them or loyalty to them or Griffith or the dream – just because of her romantic feelings for Griffith.

And that’s why she’s able to drop Griffith’s dream like a hot potato when she focuses on her romantic feelings for Guts instead and he invites her to leave the Hawks and come support his dream instead. She was never actually invested in Griffith’s dream, or her life as a mercenary, or even the Hawks as a family. When Guts left he eventually realizes it was a mistake because the Hawks were his family, the place where he belonged.

When Casca decides to leave with him, there’s no acknowledgement of that for her – no sense that she’s choosing to leave a family. It’s just taken as read that that’s what she should do because she’s in love with Guts and that is what motivates her.

And like, Guts’ dream is literally just “I want to fight whoever the fuck. I just want to kill a lot of people and get better and better at it.” Unlike Griffith’s it’s not noble, it doesn’t make the world a better place, it’s not based on any kind of ideals that can make Casca’s life better. But despite that Casca’s like, sounds great, where do I sign up to cheer you on from the sidelines?

(And we know if she went along with him she would end up on the sidelines rather than fighting alongside him, because that’s exactly what happens soon after with Wyald.

“I’m takin’ him one on one.”
“No matter what… I’ve gotta settle the score with him. With them.”)

And this is essentially why Casca’s narrative is misogynist as fuck. Not just because of her romantic feelings, but because of the way Casca having actual values and personal desires that aren’t romance-related was a fucking bait and switch lmao.

She was set up as someone who gave a shit about something, only for that to have been a lie all along because she only gives a shit about hooking up with either Griffith or Guts.

Honestly the more I think about it the more it boggles my mind how awful this is lol. Like chapters 45/46 aren’t even Casca accepting that Griffith’s dream ain’t happening anymore and finding consolation in having a new “place” in Guts’ heart or w/e. It’s straight up about Casca not just being in love with Griffith, but revealing that it’s been her sole motivation all along.

And like, lbr I choose to ignore this entirely because it’s so bad and so stupid and so flat and dumb and terrible, but man – it’s all there outlined clearly in straightforward dialogue

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.

You’re acting like Casca is being forced to stay with the Hawks , when she could’ve leave anytime she wanted. Victimizing her when she was an equal warrior like the rest of the Hawks until Guts came along, even Corkus said no one could beat her when they assaulted Guts and tried to take his silver coins. She was amongst the best warrior Griffith had they all respected her. Both Guts and Griffith hurt her more especially Griffith since she’s more familiar with him since she knows him longer.

…what is this a response to? Where did I suggest Casca was forced to stay with the Hawks?

The closest thing I can come up with is my tags on this post, which are referring to the fact that Casca is upset because she wants to leave with Guts and now feels like she can’t because of Griffith, and I think that’s pathetic writing that could be vastly improved if Casca was motivated by something other than men.

I mean if we’re talking about Casca’s term as leader of the Hawks, the text insists over and over again that she’s basically forced to lead them bc of her sense of duty and bc everyone just turned to her as their replacement for Griffith – Judeau tells Guts multiple times that leading the Hawks is terrible for her, we see that it drives her to suicide, and when the Hawks learn that Griffith isn’t going to recover they want Casca to keep leading them and Judeau tells them to stfu because they’re asking too much of her.

And I think Miura choosing to emphasize the toll leading takes on Casca emotionally is a shitty writing choice, especially compared to Griffith’s issues with leadership which are all about guilt, vs Casca’s which are all about how difficult it is.

Also like, are you saying I’m victimizing her by pointing out how often she needs to be rescued because she’s always conveniently feverish/on the verge of exhaustion/suicidal/up against someone so strong someone else has to step in/etc? There’s a well-known piece of writing advice: “show, don’t tell.” We’re told that Casca is the third best fighter in the Hawks who can defeat ten men. We’re shown Guts or Griffith rescuing her (or Guts easily defeating her) way, way more often than we’re ever shown her actual fighting skills.

This is a deliberate choice on Miura’s part, to shove Casca into the role of victim as often as possible despite what we’re told of her skills. I’m not dumping on a real woman who has a lot of bad luck lmao, I’m dumping on Miura’s misogynist writing.

Casca was a full character for about 90 chapters, in which she had to be rescued, let’s see… I count eight times: nobleman, guts, ch 15-21 (which could be counted as like 4 separate rescues but i’m being generous here), silat, suicide attempt, wyald, judeau during the eclipse (could be 2 separate times but let’s call it one), skull knight at the eclipse.

Compare it to the number of times we see Casca defeat her enemies
herself in those 90 chapters: Adon at Doldrey, the nobleman (after Griffith throws her a
sword), a few attempted rapists as she’s running from the 100 man fight
(before Judeau and co show up and get the rest for her), and one of the
Bakiraka assassins.

(I counted the nobleman in both categories lol bc Griff threw her a
sword and chopped off his ear first to interrupt the rape attempt, but
Casca finished him off and was also a kid so she gets points for that.
Just fyi.)

Or compare that to Guts, who is a full character throughout the whole 300+ chapters of story, and had to be rescued once when Griffith rode back for him after their first raid, once when Griff leapt in to save him from Zodd, a monster neither of them could actually defeat and it was actually fate that saved their asses, and once when Skull Knight showed up at the Eclipse. Oh, I suppose there was one time Gambino killed an enemy on the battlefield for him when he was like six. And Skull Knight didn’t save him from Slan, but he did save him from the subsequent cave collapse, so let’s be fair and count that too.

Versus an uncountable number of times he defeated his enemies himself.

Or compare it to human Griffith who is a character for about as long as Casca, and has to be rescued once after he’s tortured to the point of helplessness. Maybe twice if you include Zodd killing Wyald while Wyald’s holding him. And even after he’s physically helpless he manages to save the group once himself.

My point being that Miura chooses what to write, and he chose to write a ridiculous amount of situations where Casca needs to be rescued. He chose to make her a victim many many times even though she’s theoretically a highly accomplished warrior, and then he went all in and turned that into her entire character in the 250 chapters post-Golden Age, and I am absolutely gonna criticize that choice.

Finally, I often cite the way the Hawks fully respect and admire Casca as one of my favourite things about her character, and I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that she wasn’t hurt by Griffith and Guts lol, so i’m not sure why you brought those things up.

Don’t you think that Casca is a little boring and overrated? The character who only purpose is revolve around male characters and be their love interest -especially if those men have special bond- is annoying, but people think so highly of her when she’s not really that complex, interesting and independent character, especially when her sole role only is rubbing the salt on Guts’ wonds. ://

Kind of yes, kind of no lol.

I find Casca a very frustrating character because I think she had plenty of potential to be interesting, and we see brief flashes of that in canon, but Miura fucked her over at every turn, flattening her, making sure every aspect of her character revolved around men somehow, etc. Personally that potential is more than enough for me to love her, because I’m easy when it comes to angry women with swords lol, but that’s just me and my ability to ignore what I don’t like about canon.

For example, when she brought Guts up to that cliff by the waterfall so she could take her anger out on him by trying to murder him. The narrative never really acknowledges how utterly fucked up that was, it’s played off as Casca being a hysterical woman, but man in theory that is a very interesting, super dark character note.

Casca’s lack of independence is actually interesting to me too as a major character flaw. But again, it’s something that the narrative… doesn’t necessarily acknowledge, but rather seems to treat as the default role of a woman.

Like Miura’s misogyny is never more blatant than when it comes to how he writes Casca, and it sucks, but despite that he’s still a really good character writer, and that still shines through even with Casca. She has relatable moments, she has awesome moments, she has strong dialogue, moments that make me feel empathy, and interesting traits. I mean the most heart-wrenching part of the Eclipse imo was when we saw it through her point of view as she fought with Judeau. Miura’s writing still makes me feel real feelings for her, and I can’t not love a character I feel for lol, even if that writing fails her enormously in many other ways.

Like it blows that her motivation for joining the Hawks and becoming an incredible swordsman was being in love with Griffith, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s an incredible swordsman who can lead an army and it’s cool and badass. Like, it seriously blows that she’s almost 100% motivated by men – either being in love with them or fighting against their misogynist violence – but I can still read moments like her capture of Doldrey, or the way she can take command of the Hawks in moments of panic, and want to cheer for her. It blows that she’s always being depowered somehow so she can be rescued, but I can still read dialogue like “they say she can defeat ten strong men at once” and go ‘yeah that’s my girl’ lol.

BUT ALL THAT SAID like, I can completely understand being exasperated by her character too. Like, I personally can kind of… ignore how badly she’s often written and just take the parts I like and form my opinion based on that. But that’s not something anyone should be required to do, and her writing fucking sucks let’s be real.

No one should feel like they have to like her when she pretty much exists as an example of Miura’s misogyny, and when she is forced into the love interest role for the sole purposes of a) no homoing Guts and Griffith and b) getting horrifically and off-the-charts offensively fridged for Guts’ manpain. One of my pet peeves is people calling fans misogynist for disliking fictional women, cause like, the thing is she’s not real and hating her as a poorly written and often offensive fictional construct isn’t the same as hating a real woman, so yk, I support you lol.

Plus yeah I do think she’s often overrated in lots of fandom – a good chunk of Berserk fandom doesn’t acknowledge the enormous flaws in her writing, and does consider her to be genuinely a well-written ~strong female character~ lol. So yeah in that case I think she’s overrated. Though it might be more accurate to say Miura’s writing is overrated.

idk tl;dr I like Casca but her writing is so deeply flawed that I completely get disliking her.

freewilllife
replied to your post “ugggggh tumblr still refusing to show me like half my notifications so…”

In a way it shows that the mangaka is not able to imagine that there are women who don t consider it a true sacrifice if there aren t “feminine” and soft. Like I have barely seen a woman who is able to perform that “trick” 100 % of her time anyway.

yeah pretty much. it wouldn’t even bother me much if Miura didn’t keep framing Casca’s more feminine traits as a prelude to romance/establishing her as an acceptable love interest, while also having her ask for reassurance that she’s feminine enough for Guts multiple times. Like, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing a woman who has a combination of masculine and feminine traits, or even writing a woman who’s insecure about not being as feminine as other women, but lol I hate how Miura went about it.

also hey if femininity is a prerequisite for being guts’ love interest there’s no need to awkwardly feminize casca when griffith is right there being described as “prettier than me, and I’m a woman”/”so pretty i could hardly tell he was a man”/etc js lol

ugggggh tumblr still refusing to show me like half my notifications so i missed these til now, sry.

@madchen said:
whenever casca starts
acting out i think of that ten year study that concluded women only
express rage at the incompetence of others and at injustice

not that its That Deep
like u said… alovelyburn said that miura starts “chickifying cascas
character” once he decides to make her a love interest and it shows.
suddenly she starts crying more often, is passing out from endometriosis
and her anger is explicitly regarded as womanly as opposed to just

at some point I want to write out a full “it could be that deep” style analysis of Casca’s role in the story wrt the intersection of misogyny and heteronormativity. Like, I swear to god there’s a bizarrely coherent reading there even though there’s no possible way it was intentional on Miura’s part lmao.

But yeah as far as reasonable interpretations go it’s just sad facts that Miura uses Casca as like, a shallow way to examine misogyny, in how yk her whole life revolves around sexual violence, while simultaneously writing her romance v misogynistically as well, and it’s awkward af.

Like yeah Casca definitely got more feminine when she became Guts’ love interest, like to the point where Guts reassuring her that she’s “womanly” enough is a prelude to sex (jfc) and every one of their positive encounters before up to then shows her being nuturing/”soft”: bandaging his wound at Promrose, needing to be rescued bc of her period, tending to Guts’ wounds with the elf dust (w/ Judeau commentating that she’s softer now), wearing a dress while Guts reassures her that she looks good in it, being rescued by Guts again, etc.

But also ngl I get the sense that she was kind of doomed from the start with Judeau’s “our Casca gave up being a woman” line while talking about how she’s the 2nd best swordsman in the Hawks.

Like Casca was sadly never going to be a good portrayal of gender non-conformity because her lack of femininity was framed as an unfortunate sacrifice and something that should be rectified as soon as we met her.