@yesgabsstuff said:
The poor man.
Seriously like he’s stuck in this hell of idealizing people that hurt
him. Even as an adult he’s not able to really see Gambino as both his
father and the person who was responsible for his rape. The Eclipse
always felt like a similar rape by proxy situation to me. 

Totally, like… the way Miura writes as far as I can tell from interviews is that he doesn’t plan stuff out much, but as he goes he’s very good at recalling what he’s already written and picking up threads and using older material to enrich newer material. So while I don’t think Casca’s rape was planned from the beginning, I do think it might be purposeful that it mirrors Guts’ original trauma in that Gambino is Guts’ rapist by proxy, and Guts is Femto’s victim by proxy.

Which, disclaimer, I think is v misogynist bs and an immense disservice to Casca, but she 100% is there as a bridge between Griffith/Femto and Guts. Like if Femto’s laser stare at Guts isn’t enough then the Hound explicitly spelling it out by telling Guts to assault her to be closer to Griffith p much cinches it.

I feel like he does the same splitting
thing with Griffith after the speech. It’s very indicative of having
lived in an abusive, invalidating environment that he holds a monster
and man “who did his best” almost as two separate people in his memory.
Also, having to get up the next day as though his rape never happened is
pretty much the ultimate in invalidation. His survival as a child
certainly required him to have this idealized view of Gambino but it
takes a long time to grow out of that. He
does it to a less extreme extent with Casca too.

Oooh this is a great insight – the fact that Guts can’t reconcile the “dark” and “light” parts of a person also feels incredibly thematically relevant. In Griffith/Femto’s case they are literally almost separate people, and Guts draws a distinction between them, when, eg, he tells Rickert “that’s not the Griffith you knew.” But when it comes to Gambino, Guts is just unable to accept the fact that he betrayed him in such a horrific way. He denies it for years at first, and then when Gambino himself tells him that he sold him, it’s like he chooses to focus on the guilt of killing him and represses the fact of his betrayal.

With Griffith and the speech, it explains why, rather than realizing that the speech doesn’t invalidate the fact that Griffith still risked his life for him for no reason, it takes over his perception of Griffith to such a huge extent that he denies everything that belies it (eg do i need a reason, do you think i’m cruel, etc) as irrelevant, until it finally becomes impossible for him to dismiss all those moments. Guts is just not good at reconciling disparate parts of a person.

And with Casca it makes sense that he treats her current state as an aberration that needs to be fixed so she can return to being the person in his memories, and adds a layer to the ominous foreshadowing that he’s rushing her to ill effect when she’s dealing with the trauma in her own way on her own time.

I feel like I know Guts a little better now actually. Like, he’s still not bad at understanding people, but these are where his blind spots are.

And like Griffith
assuming he’s being abandoned because he’s “dirty” and fundamentally
unlovable? It’s both of their trauma reactions that caused all of this
to happen. (I’m not implying that any of what happened after he left was
Guts’ fault, just that his reaction triggered another.) 

Ok now this is something I was actually thinking about earlier today when I was talking about how totally purposeful the gay subtext is. I didn’t go into it because it’s a weaker point and I’m not sure I have a full grasp on it, but this comment actually fills in a gap for me and makes this point more solid to me.

Because yes! Their respective traumas inform and deepen the meaning of both of their “breakups.” I’ve written an essay before on Griffith’s issues with feeling “dirty” and how that’s a direct line from Gennon to thinking Guts is walking away from him in disgust. And ofc the eclipse is a mirror of Guts’ initial trauma, Griffith is a parallel to Gambino particularly at the bitter end of his mortal life, and Guts’ inability to understand that the Hawks were his home and Griffith loved him is, like you were saying up above, the same type of thinking Guts used to deny that Gambino sold him, and probably started there.

So I don’t think it’s a huge stretch to suggest that part of the point of all the sexual trauma in these characters’ pasts is to inform some of their bad decisions in the present.

I mentioned the gay subtext and this is a little beside the actual point, but the fact that Miura heaped it on and verbally suggested it when they meet, both characters have sexual trauma, and everything bad happens because they misunderstand each other due to, one can make a solid argument for, that trauma and split up… well it seems like a pretty good depiction of how trauma can fuck up your life and future potential relationships.

I mean at its core Berserk is a story about reacting to trauma. It’s right there in the title. So it never feels irrelevant to tie things back to it imo.