Tag: theme: fandom

what would you say to someone arguing that griffith sacrificing guts is proof that in the end he cared more about his dream than he did about guts + that fact he had to sacrifice the hawks too means guts wasn’t that important to him after all?

I’d say that argument is directly and unambiguously contradicted over and over again in the story, including by Griffith himself.

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And like, literally the last thing Griffith thinks before sacrificing Guts is that Guts is more important than his dream. That’s why he’s sacrificing him. “You’re the only one who made me forget my dream.”

The main point of the Golden Age is to hammer home the concept that Guts is more important to Griffith than the dream, and it does it over and over and over lol. Everything revolves around that fact. And the sacrifice is a really clever (imo) culmination of that theme, not a weird last-minute contradiction of it.

Also I might try to add a quick explanation of my reading of the dream, ie it’s a defense mechanism/way for Griffith to escape his feelings, both guilt and the feelings for Guts that make him vulnerable and essentially destroyed his life, “the life of the person you loved the most and hated the most! you gave it to us so that you could bury your fragile human heart!” all that jazz. Which explains why Griffith chooses his dream over Guts even though he cares about Guts more (because he cares about him more). But idk if I could manage that without writing an essay, or more likely, linking one I’ve already written lol.

Wrt the second bit, idk what the fact that he had to sacrifice the other Hawks too has to do with it, it’s pretty clear to me that Godhand sacrifices are bigger and more epic than apostle sacrifices, but Guts still gets the spotlight even though there’s 30-40 others in the group. He’s the one Griffith’s last thoughts are directed to, he’s the one Slan singles out as a particularly excellent sacrifice, he’s the one Zodd directed his “prophecy” to and even makes sure to save so he can be sacrificed later (when he threw him a sword during the battle of Doldrey), while Rosine and the Count and Wyald killed a bunch of Hawks before the Eclipse without causing any issues. He’s the one Skull Knight singles out to give a warning to. 

I like that the rest of the Hawks are included because it proves that Griffith does in fact care very much about all of them. I mean Casca’s flashback already proved that, but yk, it never hurts to underline Griffith’s capacity for caring about others, because Griffith himself downplays it as much as possible lol, to say nothing about the fandom. But I don’t think it detracts from Guts as the most important sacrifice either. He’s still above and beyond. He’s the one who caused Griffith’s behelit-opening despair, and he’s the one Griffith sacrifices to escape that despair.

Idk man, the sacrifice is like half the reason I ship griffguts, so I definitely don’t think it downplays or diminishes Griffith’s feelings for Guts in any way, imo it emphasizes how they’re front and centre as Griffith’s number one priority and central motivation in an immensely satisfying way.

What do you think of ppl who say griffith has a god complex?

I think they don’t understand Griffith at all and probably willfully ignore a huge amount of his story.

A god complex is an unshakable belief characterized by consistently inflated feelings of personal ability, privilege, or infallibility.

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I mean I’ve talked about my take on Griffith enough that I could collect it all into a book at this point lmao, but in essence no he is full of self loathing and guilt and exists by living in denial and trying to bury it.

He portrays an image of utter confidence and security, maintains it well enough that he buys his own con to an extent, but even that confident self-assured image isn’t god-complexy. His assessment of his own abilities is realistic. He knows he’s good, he has confidence in his abilities, but he also knows when he’s outclassed.

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He doesn’t think by default he’s one of the people he believes are fated to change the world, he just hopes he is. He wants to see how far he can go, and not for the sake of being important, but in service to a greater goal which is fueled by disgust at the state of the world and his own sense of guilt.

He doesn’t have a falsely inflated perception of himself, if anything his self-image is much more negative than it should be.

You see any other mercenaries in Berserk who feel guilty for the enemy soldiers their underlings kill?

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And like, eg, Griffith feels ashamed about assassinating people while Guts thinks he should be telling the rest of the Hawks all about it and has absolutely zero problem with burning a room full of nobles and royalty alive.

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And as Casca lays out here

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his confidence isn’t an ingrained personality trait, it’s something he manufactured and wears like armour, which is why sometimes it shatters and reveals the exact opposite – the guilt, the self-loathing, the insecurity – underneath.

Idk it seems like the same type of Berserk fan who calls Griffith a sociopath or a narcissist or a control freak or whatever. Like… no. That’s a wild misreading of his character, and honestly the story isn’t exactly subtle about his giant heap of issues that drive him so idk why so many people refuse to see it.

Like, re-read chapter 17 and this time look at the pictures of him self-harming too, bc that adds a little necessary context to statements like:

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Like, this is so far from subtle that people just choose not to understand it lol.

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(This isn’t directed at you anon, just yk, the fans you’re talking about.)

a dilemma:

i’ve finished the ‘why guts leaving the hawks was a mistake post’ unless i want to add in a whole nother layer about how guts’ “dream” of fighting stronger and stronger enemies is also portrayed as terrible

on the one hand i don’t think it’s necessary to understand the point, on the other hand it’s still very relevant and probably the first thing ppl would think of as a counterpoint (what about guts’ dream though!) so it feels like I should nip that in the bud

on the third hand fully explaining that would make an already overly long post even longer

maybe i should write it separately and link to it?

ngl i feel like i’m creating this whole like, web of “My Berserk” lol where to fully understand my perspective you have to read fucking everything i’ve ever written, because i have premises resting on premises resting on premises and they’re all opposing takes to what general berserk fandom tends to think. like i feel like a lot of this should be self-explanatory but it’s not for some reason so I have to go through it all.

it’s like eg i’m over here going on and on about how griffith’s driving motivation is guilt and his narrative is about being torn between that and his affirming relationship with guts,  while elsewhere in berserk fandom the default position is that griffith’s driving motivation is “evil lust for power.”

and it’s rly weird because like, i genuinely think i’m right about my take on berserk, but sometimes it feels like i’m inventing my own berserk because even the absolute most basic resting premises of my reading are at odds with the majority of fandom. It’s like, unnervingly insular lol. same is true for this, like i’m writing out ‘why guts leaving was a mistake’ so i have something to link to bc i feel like it’s an absolutely necessary thing to recognize to understand my reading of berserk, but it’s a niche opinion, and that feels so strange to me.

ok this kind of just devolved into me musing outloud lol. idk.

bscully:

bthump:

ALSO speaking of ppl trying to kill Guts

fandom needs to give Casca more credit for her earnest, premeditated murder attempt here. Like Griffith’s was a split-second decision to make a move that had a risk of potentially killing Guts, while still aiming only to wound, and it’s taken as proof that he’s been evil all along. Casca’s straight up aiming to kill here, but no one takes her seriously.

Which is partly Miura’s fault for not taking Casca seriously as a threat to Guts, but the intent is here I’m js and I like it because it’s dark and fucked up and shows Casca’s very own interesting inner darkness. I don’t want to just condemn her for it bc I’m into Casca’s violent rage, but I hate how she gets infantalized both by Guts not even bothering to draw his sword and by fandom treating this less like a murder attempt and more like a cute hissy fit.

She went full force on him taking out all her anger on him because she EXPECTED him to dodge her attacks, and also EXPECTED not to hurt him as a result. And that’s also why she was so shook when she did:

I mean: If she REALLY had the SERIOUS intention to kill him she wouldn’t have cared about him getting hurt like this. I think she intended to use Guts more as a punching bag to let out her frustration on (Remember, she prevented Guts from drawing his sword)

She did hate him and the situation with the hawks made her frustration even worse. And part of that hate was because she cared so much about both Griffith and Guts.

She’s also the third best fighter in the Hawks who we’re told can take on ten men at a time. We’re certainly not shown it here, which is one of my issues with this scene, but her threat to Guts should be more significant and dangerous than any other non-monstrous threat, aside from Griffith and Boscogne.

Yes, she was shocked when she did stab him, but that doesn’t change the fact that she was actively trying to and from what we’re told about her skills she had a decent shot at it.

Guts’ running commentary tells us “she’s serious,” she’s really trying to kill him, so Guts at least, based on her fighting style, believes she’s aiming to kill, and I see no reason to doubt him. Her shock and the way she immediately ends the assault when she lands a hit tells us that obviously she’s not committed to killing Guts and she was just irrationally lashing out in anger, and it throws some freezing water on her rage, but nothing about her attack to that point was half-hearted or feigned.

And from what I could tell she didn’t prevent him from drawing his sword at all – she tells him to draw his sword twice, she aimed at his neck, and he barely deflected with his blade still partly in its hilt. He eventually does draw his sword to defend himself.

I’m not saying she’s evil lol, especially in the world of Berserk mercenaries where friends fighting each other seems to be par for the course, based on Judeau’s reaction to Guts and Griffith’s fight and also Casca’s knife-throwing when they’re in the cave being treated as comedy and not drama, but it’s still a very dark, very fucked up outlet for her rage that shocks and does endanger Guts, and it’s a disservice to Casca’s character that it’s not given any weight on either a narrative or a fan reaction level, imo.

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So anyway I stand by semi-seriously describing it as a premeditated murder attempt even if she didn’t follow through, because Casca’s hardcore and her skills shouldn’t be dismissed, despite Miura’s writing often doing just that. It’s not a cold “I want you to die,” it’s an emotional “I am going to fucking kill you,” but it’s also not spur of the moment since she lead Guts to this clearing specifically to hack at him with a sword.

Also I’m not trying to say she hates Guts or anything? My point is only that her anger manifests in legit trying to kill people, and I love that as a dark and intense character note, but it’s unfortunately downplayed and brushed off which disappoints me.

kissing-monsters
replied to your post “the berserk episode synopses on wikipedia are killing me cut for petty…”

It’s… so confusing though, a close friend of mine watched the series based partially on my rec and him wanting to see it for ages and he misunderstood… basically… everything??? HOW DOES BERSERK FANDOM OUTSIDE TUMBLR FUNCTION???

honestly same, I really don’t get it. Like I can see general homophobia making ppl desperately want to downplay the gay vibes leading to as little emphasis on Guts and Griffith’s relationship, and especially Guts’ (extremely and wholly positive) feelings for Griffith as possible. Like describing Guts’ decision to leave the Hawks as “he does not want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream anymore” is technically accurate, and yet completely downplays the fact that the reason he doesn’t want to be caught up in Griffith’s dream is because Griffith is “dazzling” and he wants Griffith to “look at [him]” and he wants to feel like his equal and be regarded as a True Friend. In the terrible episode description it’s instead framed like Guts is pissed off about having to assassinate people lol.

And idk I think it might also be partially this weird desperate need to have a Hero and a Villain and have Guts prevail over the villain and ride off into the sunset with the Rescued Love Interest, because a lot of people are frankly boring and like boring stories and can’t conceive of good stories outside those basic parameters. So they twist the narrative in their head until it fits that shape, despite Guts and Casca not having anything like a traditional true love romance and Miura saying he only had Casca survive the Eclipse to keep Guts focused on revenge, despite Griffith not being a pure evil villain even after the Eclipse and certainly not before (like Miura’s directly talked about NGriff’s moral ambiguity and the way he’s not a traditional evil antagonist), despite the clearly complicated emotions that still exist between Guts and Griffith/Femto/NGriff, etc.

At my most generous I think part of the reason people choose to believe Griffith was evil all along is because Femto’s defining act is rape and people are uncomfortable seeing any good in a character who eventually becomes a rapist, tho personally the fact that he magically transforms into a demon first kind of mitigates that for me lol. (And, and I’ve ranted about this before but still, it’s also a double standard when so many of the same people go out of their way to excuse Guts when he sexually assaults Casca.)

But still idk it’s weird. Like, eg there’s so much you have to ignore to believe that Guts leaving the Hawks was fine and dandy and a good choice and Griffith was just a dick who overreacted. Pages and pages of Guts fretting about it, Casca yelling it at him, Guts regretting leaving, Guts realizing he was wrong in thinking Griffith looked down on him, Guts comparing abandoning Casca to abandoning Griffith multiple times, Guts determined not to make the same mistake again, etc etc. You can support Guts’ choice and blame Griffith all you want, but the narrative clearly does not, and it’s honestly baffling how ppl can ignore that when it’s not only discussed many times in direct words, but the whole story revolves around the fact that Guts made a mistake when he left.

Like what do you think the Golden Age is about if it’s not about a stupid misunderstanding between 2 dudes who both rly like each other and fail to realize their feelings are reciprocated and overreact and make dumb decisions because of that misunderstanding? I don’t understand what most Berserk fans see, it genuinely feels like we’re reading 2 different stories lol.

farneseapologist
replied to your post “griffith represents the realistic reaction. a lot of people who read…”

THANK YOU i think in particular the part abt the sacrificed person being who you most love *and* hate in that moment gets ignored, like the fact that in the canon examples the person(s) you love the most has betrayed you or ruined your life etc etc is glossed over??
it’s very easy to say
“well, *i* wouldnt do it” and pat your back smugly for being a good and
moral person if you can’t imagine ever facing that level of betrayal
from your loved ones

yeah it’s an important part of the whole equation. maybe it’s not the case in every single sacrifice, but it seems to generally hold true and it makes sense because in Berserk fate basically arranges circumstances for the highest possibility of someone saying “yes.” Except with Theresia, the sacrifice is always the reason for the behelit owner’s despair. It’s, ‘cut this out of your life and you will never feel despair like this again.’

idk I guess it’s less obvious with Guts and Griffith because Guts like, didn’t just try to kill him or anything, the betrayal Griffith perceives from him is a lot more subtle and blameless. More of a, I destroyed my dream because I’m in love with you and you’re going to leave me again, kind of thing. He says, “you’re the only one who made me forget my dream,” like an accusation. But I mean Guts himself acknowledges that he’s the one who drove Griffith to despair while he’s riding after him, so Guts being the source of Griffith’s pain is pretty explicitly part of the Eclipse.

So like yeah, even if you wouldn’t sacrifice someone you love who is totally innocent under any circumstances, let’s be real most of the people who say they’d never sacrifice someone aren’t thinking of a cheating spouse, or a son who just tried to kill them, or someone they love whose perceived rejection lead to a year of torture.

griffith represents the realistic reaction. a lot of people who read berserk dont want to admit it, but most if not all of us wouldn’t be able to struggle. we would give in to what we were led to believe was our fate. people like to believe they’re special, and if you’re coerced in your darkest hour to think so- a lot of us would do anything. that’s also along w/ many reasons why ppl hate griffith. bc characters reflect the uncomfortable reality of what people will commonly do

Yeah I pretty much agree with you. Whenever I see someone who’s like, “I would never ever sacrifice someone I cared about no matter what,” I’m like, well that seems like a v high and untested opinion of yourself.

Idk maybe they’re just a lot more idealistic than me and believe the majority of people wouldn’t choose to sacrifice someone in a moment of pure despair, or maybe they genuinely are that self-sacrificing lol, but I’m with you – I’d say most people would. Especially in the world of Berserk, where behelits generally end up with people who have extremely strong values/desires/drives that make them more likely to sacrifice one thing for the sake of another thing. Add the fact that every apostle we see (except Count Slug’s second attempt) sacrificed someone/thing they both loved and hated in that moment, and the fact that moments of despair are tailored by fate to each individual – to be their worst moment, playing on their specific fears and insecurities etc, and yeah, I’d say just about everyone would make the sacrifice under those conditions.

And tbh one thing I love about Griffith’s narrative is that I actually find it really relatable/understandable. I think Miura did an amazing job of showing us what Griffith values, what he prioritizes, what he believes, what he feels, and how his life has driven him to the point of the Eclipse. When he says, “I sacrifice,” it’s so good because it’s been completely built up to. We got to really see all the elements that come together at that moment to make him choose the sacrifice, and it’s absolutely a realistic decision for his particular character. And personally one of my favourite things about fiction is that feeling of understanding why someone does something terrible, or evil, or stupid, or self-destructive, etc etc. I find it very cathartic, and Berserk is perfect for that.

Like it’s fair if ppl find the same thing uncomfortable or off-putting. A story about relatable/realistic people making bad choices for understandable reasons is definitely not for everyone, but that’s absolutely what Berserk is, at least the Golden Age, and misreading it as the story of an evil dude doing evil things because he’s evil doesn’t change that.

madchen
replied to your post “Guts is different from Griffith. Guts fights the beast in him every…”

“guts had a harder life than griffith” uuuuuuuuuu why cant people read lmfao

ikr

idk i think it boils down to the fact that we’re with Guts more, we see his traumas and hard times in detail, while we’re generally told about Griffith’s rather than shown, and with him we only see the after effects.

but like any way you slice it i feel like a year of constant torture and permanent loss of the use of your limbs and ability to speak is worse than Guts’ eclipse trauma, which largely revolves around stuff that happens to other people (dead friends, traumatized girlfriend). Yeah Guts lost a limb but he got a canon to replace it, and it’s his choice to go out and shoot monsters with that canon instead of taking Godo’s sage advice and chilling out with the friends he has left.

wingsfreedom replied to your post “It really bums me that people are hung up on all bad things Griffith…”

I often feel fans of righteous characters are more problematic and scary than fans of villains. They have this tendency to see villains in the worst possible light because it makes the good characters look even better. And some of them just prefer villains that’re totally evil, they find such good vs evil narrative more satisfying, it’s simple, black and white, no debate, no ambiguity, pure feel good story.

lol i completely agree.

under a cut bc i went on a long barely relevant rant about The Discourse lmao

i keep trying to turn this into an organized essay about how much i hate tumblr discourse, villaincourse in this case, but tbh i just don’t have the stamina to dig into that subject properly lol. so just like, suffice to say, hating obviously flawed and/or villainous characters and their fans while loving less obviously flawed and/or heroic characters, and calling that a moral position to take, is really fucked up and just demonstrates such a total inability to actually engage critically with fiction that idk how ppl take fans like that seriously.

and when i say “inability to engage with fiction critically” i mean they take things at such face value it’s ridiculous. The narrative says this character is good, therefore they’re good. The narrative says this character is bad, therefore they’re bad. This generally fails to take into account things like rampant gay coding of villains, heroes demonstrating mainstream conservative ideals, “loveable misogynist” protags who often still get the pure cinnamon roll treatment, the fact that pretty much all mainstream media is going to be unprogressive at its core because it’s literally “mainstream,” american exceptionalism propaganda everywhere, women reduced to love interest roles, women objectified by the camera, lack of diversity, assumption of a straight white man as the audience, assumption that anyone other than a straight white man is harder to identify with, villains who are “evil” because they take resistance against the privileged class too far, stories where the heroes and villains do the same thing but when the heroes do it it’s justified or excusable and when the villains do it it’s a sign that they’re evil, stories where ugly = bad and beauty = good, stories where ugliness is foreignness (to britain/north america/majority white countries) and beauty is white, the way there hasn’t been a blockbuster film with a textually non-straight main character ever, mental illness symptoms as signs of evil, monsters as unknowable other, etc etc etc etc

anyway all that shit has v little to do with berserk (tho some def applies), i just had to get some of it out of my system lol.

my basic point is just that, to bring this back and use an example from Berserk, if someone can’t see that eg it’s fucked up that Griffith is not only a gay coded and textually feminine antagonist, but gets even more gender non conforming looking when he becomes Femto, and it’s fucked up that the protagonist sexually assaults his girlfriend and we’re still meant to root for him, etc, then they absolutely do not have the necessary skill set to call other people out for problematic taste in fictional characters with any authority.

If you can’t or refuse to see the ways the thing you like is problematic, the last thing you should be doing is calling fans of other things problematic. Log, eye, etc. Tbh even if you can critique your own faves you shouldn’t be pointing fingers imo – you can’t know exactly why someone likes the thing they like, whether they’re aware it’s problematic (maybe more aware than you), whether they’re able to compartmentalize that fact and why, and those are all things you need to know before declaring a group of fans Bad for what fictional entertainment they like.

tl;dr

everything is problematic. golden retriever cinnamon roll characters are problematic, your favourite blockbuster is problematic, hollywood is problematic, anime is problematic, cartoons are problematic, magic fantasy oppression parallels are problematic, guts is problematic, griffith is problematic, casca is problematic, tumblr demanding that women be arbiters of morality is ironically problematic (misogynist) as fuck, etc etc. at least ime villain fans tend to be a little more aware on average that what they like is problematic, as opposed to people who think it’s intrinsically more moral to like heroes.

It really bums me that people are hung up on all bad things Griffith and don’t extend the same courtesy to Guts, like your fave is trash as well. I just don’t really get it? Are they mad because they expected better from Griffith and his actions disappointed them or smth but Guts was supposed to be edgy since we saw him do those things in Black Swordsman arc?

I wrote what basically amounts to a response to this a little while ago (focused on why ppl hate Griffith more than Guts), so rather than just re-writing that I’ll link it. (tw for discussion of rape)

But like, in addition to that, ikr?

I mean one of the central premises of Berserk is that everyone is capable of great evil and humanity is kind of a hot mess, and that’s exemplified in both Guts and Griffith. Like just like Griffith always had the potential for Femto in him, Guts has the Beast of Darkness, and both manifest in violence and rape. Guts is absolutely no better than Griffith, and I’d personally say he’s worse considering that he assaults his traumatized, infantalized, sort-of-girlfriend twice without transforming into an embodiment of evil first.

like look at this

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In Berserk the behelit helps certain chosen ones gain power, but you don’t exactly need it to be evil, and part of the point of Guts’ narrative is that at times he’s getting pretty close to indistinguishable from a monster, behelit or no, magic armour or no.

But he’s the protag, fans identify with him, and while Griffith’s fucked up acts lead up to a magical transformation into a monster, Guts’ fucked up acts seem likely to be leading to redemption and growth. There’s nothing intrinsic in Guts and Griffith’s characters that leads one to monsterism and one to self improvement, it’s not like one has more good qualities and the other has more evil qualities – it’s literally just circumstance and the fact that Berserk’s God chose Griffith as his jesus figure, not Guts. But it affects how readers see them and respond to them.

I mean ffs we see Guts do worse things than several apostles. Right now, based on what we see them do in the manga, fuckin Zodd is a “purer” character than Guts lmao. The idea of mixing fandom purity politics and Berserk of all things, which at the end of the day amounts to getting judgy based on which sexually abusive character someone likes more, is incredible to me.

I like how Muria did everything in his power to prove that Griffith is not some kind of “evil heartless monster” antagonist type, but people end up misinterpreted him anyway. What a shame! Do you know why?

Yeah it’s really unfortunate bc he’s such an interesting complex character and I wish more people appreciated that. Tho I have a few ideas on why so many Berserk fans ignore most of the text and write Griffith off as evil from the start.

I mean obviously the biggest one is that Femto’s defining act of evil is rape. And tbh I put the blame pretty squrely on Miura for that one lol, like, I can’t actually blame anyone for being unable to feel sympathy for or enjoy the complexities of a character who later turns into a monster and rapes another major character.

Like the problem with using sexual assault as your major illustrative example of the ~darkness in the hearts of men~ or whatever is that it’s pretty damn common for people to have experienced it themselves, or know someone who has, and therefore reactions to a depiction of rape are inevitably a lot more visceral than reactions to say, murder or torture. Even if Griffith is depicted as a sympathetic, three dimensional, very interesting character throughout the Golden Age, I can’t blame anyone for not giving a fuck and just hating him anyway because his evil alter ego’s first act was rape. People ignoring your good writing is a price you pay as a creator for using rape as shock value and cheap drama.

(Plus when you add his badly written night with Charlotte to the mix, like, again, I can’t blame anyone for going “fuck this guy” and not caring about his depth of character. Like I don’t think the night with Charlotte is meant to be read as rape because there are zero indications that we’re supposed to think it’s skeevy or even potentially morally dubious once Charlotte gets into it – to me it reads like a badly written bodice-ripper type scene where the woman just has to get turned on and then she forgets propriety and enjoys herself – but again, that’s on Miura and his sometimes shitty writing.)

However, that said, from what I’ve seen the vast majority of Griffith haters still love Guts, who also sexually assaults the very same character (except Guts hadn’t even just been magically transformed first, and the first time he sexually assaulted her was long before the hound ever made an appearance), so like, when so many people condemn one character and excuse another for the same thing, there’s obviously something else at work.

So putting aside the rape, I think there are a lot of other factors as to why Griffith is so hated while very few of his haters extend that ire to Guts as well.

Like, for starters, Griffith is gay, or at the very least, gay coded and feminine in appearance and clearly in love with the protagonist, which definitely makes a lot of straight cis dude fans uncomfortable and a lot less likely to be able to empathize with him, judging by the offensive nicknames they tend to use for him.

But then there’s also just the way Griffith lies to himself, which, if you tend to take things at face value in a story, is going to give you a serious misunderstanding of his character. Eg, a lot of fans think that when he tells Casca he doesn’t feel guilty for the deaths of the people who follow him he’s being genuinely truthful and sociopathic lol, ignoring the fact that he’s self-harming grotesquely during that conversation, among other hints that he’s deluding himself. Lots of people take character dialogue as ultimate truth, missing other context clues that are often more revealing.

And then there’s the fact that he ends up betraying the protagonist and becoming an antagonist, and a lot of people just aren’t interested in moral grey stories so they project black and white values onto it. So since Griffith/Femto/NeoGriff is the antagonist, everything he’s done must have been evil and he must’ve been solely motivated by selfish desire for power, and they’ll twist the story to find support for that. Like I’ve seen people who take Griffith’s “I will choose the place that you die” as evidence that he’s been planning to sacrifice everyone for power from the very start lol, even though that makes zero sense, just because they need Griffith to have been villainous all along or the story doesn’t fit their moral framework.

Like, while Berserk takes a general moral stance that a person’s actions shape them, a lot of people believe that a person’s actions reveal their true, innate nature deep down. So, to them, Griffith sacrificing the Band isn’t an act that turns him into a monster, it’s an act that reveals he’s always been a monster and now the veneer of humanity has been removed. Yk, the kind of fans who say that if Griffith was a good person he wouldn’t’ve sacrificed his friends, because no good person would ever do that, as though Good and Evil are qualities a person is born with. Which I consider to be an extremely boring way of looking at fiction, and a troubling way of viewing morality, and totally at odds with what Miura’s attempting to say, but people will always bring their own philosophy to the table.

Similarly I think that, at least for some people, this is why Guts’ frankly evil actions get totally downplayed or written off – because he’s the protagonist so he has to be A Good Person. Therefore he had to have been possessed by an evil spirit when he assaulted Casca (despite the fact that the first time was in Godo’s spirit-repelling cave and most people forget that even happened, and the second time was in broad daylight without a ghost in sight or any visual indication that Guts was anything other than himself.) Or they say it’s okay because Guts stopped before actually penetrating her, and he’s had a hard life, and cut him a little slack and let him get back together with Casca bc he’s a good person and he deserves to be happy blah blah horrifying blah.

idk I’m definitely not accusing everyone who hates Griffith and flattens his character of being a hypocrite lol, like I said, there are plenty of possible reasons to view him as evil, and some are totally reasonable. But yk there is kind of a double standard at work when people love Guts and hate Griffith and I think it’s worth looking at why that might be.

Maybe this sound weird but what do you think of the people who say “I love Griffith because he’s super evil >:)” ?? Like I get why people hate Griffith but I think those Griffith “fans” miss out the whole point..

I think I pretty much agree – idk if I’ve really seen Griffith fans like this myself, but yk I’m sure they’re around.

tbh I feel like a lot of villain fans do this to avoid The Discourse about the ~evils of woobifying~ etc and I understand that. Fandom is fucking weird about moral purity rn and treating fictional characters as if they’re real people, and it’s hard in a lot of fandoms to talk about liking a villain without constantly putting a “BTW I’M NOT APOLOGIZING FOR THEM THEY’RE VERY EVIL AND BAD I JUST ENJOY VILLAINS” disclaimer up every time. So I sympathize w/ that urge. Fandom makes it hard to just enjoy characters without holding them up as either pure as the driven snow or irredeemably evil from birth.

But if they’re genuine about loving Griffith entirely because he’s oh so evil, then of all the antagonists to love Griffith makes v little sense to me bc before he becomes a demon he’s like… fine. He’s not a great person but he’s not a bad person, he has noble intentions, flaws and virtues, he’s a v good well-rounded character. I know a lot of people think Griffith was moustache-twirling evil all along but yk, they’re objectively wrong so lol.

Then after he becomes a demon he’s a petty evil dick for all of two appearances, one of which is a gratuitously depicted, grimdark-drama-for-the-sake-of-drama rape scene, and if that scene is what makes you love Griffith/Femto I’m definitely like gonna side-eye you. And I mean I don’t see anything wrong with liking Femto – I like Femto lol bc his pettiness mixed with inability to kill Guts is extremely amusing to me, plus his makeup is on point (and I love all gnc villains out of spite), but it’s very much despite the rape, not because of it.

And then as NeoGriff he comes back seemingly neutral, fulfilling the subconscious desires of humanity and committing no great acts of evil again. So yeah if you like super evil dark villains Griffith/Femto/NeoGriff is an odd choice to me.

Oh and as an aside I could kind of get liking him for his evil villainry if you liked him as Griffith and then felt personally betrayed when he sacrificed everyone. Like that was gr8 writing and feeling rly pissed off and then impressed by how mad you are, making you like him as a character bc of the emotional ride he took you on, makes sense to me. But I feel like that’s not really what you’re referring to.

So I guess tl;dr my answer boils down to it sounds p silly to me but I guess it depends on their exact reasons lol.

i honestly can’t comprehend the concept of sitting down to read berserk and not coming out of it shipping guts/griffith, at least in the sense of being heavily invested in their intense, eroticized relationship

i mean yeah ok it takes all kinds, there are people out there who watched xena and thought her and gabrielle had a sisterly bond, apparently there are people who watched hannibal and thought hannibal being head over heels in love with will was an elaborate fakeout bc they think he’s incapable of emotions or smthn, but like, man, idk

idk how that works. idk how you read a story that’s like:

– these two dudes hate each other. the reason is because one sacrificed the other in a ceremony where to escape unbearable emotional pain you have to sacrifice a person you love so much it’s like they’re a part of you, and your illustrative example for this concept is a husband and wife.
– let’s introduce their relationship with the textual suggestion that one is sexually attracted to the other. and just to make it even the other can mention how pretty and beautiful he is multiple times.
– oh now here’s 70 chapters to demonstrate the fact that these dudes care more about each other than anything else in the world. we’ll state that outright too.
– 90% of the purpose of this arc is to show how meaningful and deep and intense and life-altering this relationship is.
– now one guy is supposed to be emotionless but oops turns out when he looks at the dude he loved more than anything his heart starts fluttering.
– now this other guy is supposed to be consumed by hate but oops the dude he hates looks just like the dude he loved more than anything again and his resolve crumbles.
– now they’ll have totally separate narratives for a while but just look at this foundation of solid bedrock their relationship is built on, informing every pointed moment of emotional ambiguity, every reminder of the past, and every hint of potential foreshadowing.

and come away from it thinking ‘man i can’t wait til guts cuts off griffith’s head and rides off into the sunset with casca as his narrative reward’

bersrrk:

bthump:

bersrrk:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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