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alovelyburn · 2 months

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Crazy theory that I have is that Griffith is fully conscious and aware of what he’s doing as the Moon Child.

There’s really no solid evidence for it, but I like to believe that when the moon is up and he transforms into the child, he just kinda accepts it and goes to where Guts and Casca are to check up on them.

Lotta people see them as two separate personalities, and that’s probably the case, but I like the idea of it being the manifestation of Griffith’s humanity taking over and keeping track over his old loved ones.

I do think the nature of the moonkid is less clean-cut than a lot of people think. While the predominant theory in the west is obviously that these are two different personalities co-residing in a single body... the last time I checked, the Japanese fandom tended to refer to him more as though he's something Griffith is doing for some reason. Whether it's because he's allowing it or because Moonkid is literally a part of Griffith himself. There actually is more evidence for that than people like to acknowledge, though I wouldn't say anything definitive.

I'm not 100% sure where i stand on it, but i think... for me, even if it is literally just an aspect of Griffith, it does seem like an aspect his primary personality isn't fully in control of, since he refers to it as dreamlike.

Actually, it reminds me a lot of the way Casca refers to her memory of her time as "Elaine"/in her regressed state?

#ask #wechaoticblazebouquet #ariel talks about berserk

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alovelyburn · 2 months

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I'm sorry if you've mentioned this before, but what IS your favorite arc of Berserk? I know you've said it's not the Golden Age.

This is a harder question than it seems, lmao. I do love every arc, every single one.

But my favorite is Millenium Falcon. That's really where the big ideals and the scope of the story became most evident. Because in the end, the thing I love most about Berserk is the... underlying mythos and Miura's approach to things like philosophy and psychology and questions of predestination and morality.

#ask #anonymous #ariel talks about berserk

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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If Griffith gave Guts an answer he wanted to hear on the hill of swords how do you think he would have reacted? Do you think Guts would ever have ever forgiven him?

(Not quite as old as the other one but still way too old to be acceptable, sorry).

I think he would've been conflicted, and he would've been pissed off at himself for being conflicted, and he would've been pissed off at Griffith for making him conflicted. But he still would have forgiven him, because he couldn't not do it.

Or maybe "forgive" is the wrong word, because I'm sure he'd still be pissed off. Maybe "made up with" is better? I've pretty sure I've talked about it at greater length in the past but I'm genuinely feeling too lazy to go look it up, so I guess the somewhat concise logic is:

Even now, his current mission - his drive to destroy the apostles and drag himself up to Femto's level and theoretically kill him is all informed by Griffith's stupid speech - to this day he is trying to be the kind of person that Griffith (the original Griffith, but by extension the current one as well) could value and respect as an equal.

IMO, this is a huge part of the reason for his breakdown about being unable to hit Griffith. It's easy to assume that this is because he realized he can't kill the man he's been trying to kill, and I'm sure that is part of it. But another big issue for Guts is that he's been living to catch up with Griffith ever since Promrose, and he just realized that not only has he utterly failed to accomplish that, he's actually so far behind that catching him may be physically impossible.

The drive to earn a place next to him became a drive to fight him because of the changing circumstances around the relationship, but it's evident from say the Black Swordman arc or the Hill of Swords that Guts is still looking for that validation, and still looking for Griffith inside Femto/Neo.

Furthermore, for at least a fair stretch of time (leaving open room for the idea that this changed at some point, although I don't think it has), even his determination to take care of Casca was primarily attributed to his wanting to have her around to remind him of Griffith. Obviously this doesn't mean he doesn't care about her, it's just that what he actually wants, more than anything else, according to his own mind... is to hold onto, and become further/more deeply entangled with, Griffith.

Given all that, why wouldn't he make nice with Griffith if Griffith gave him any reason to think there was a point to doing so?

Obviously the argument is that he couldn't forgive the atrocities of the Eclipse, but the thing is, Guts is largely amoral - people love to attribute noble/selfless/moral qualities to him, but he routinely proves that he doesn't give a damn about anyone he doesn't have a personal connection to - he will literally just let them die if it's more convenient that way.

He's also proven that he has an internal hierarchy of significance - he does prioritize his current companions, for example, over strangers, but he prioritizes Casca over them, in turn. I think the Hawks as a whole were one massive "ingroup" - he cared about them, even the ones he didn't know very well, because they were Hawks, and that's all fine...

...but who does he consistently prioritize over everyone else, including all the Hawks and Casca?

Obviously, Griffith. He's the one Guts literally just ignored the Eclipse to try and save, the one he once abandoned Casca in a cave to chase, and the one he legitimately left her to burn to death to search out during Conviction.

My point is, whatever it is he's trying to achieve with Griffith is always going to be the most important thing in his life, and thus will take priority over other things in his life, even things he also feels strongly (but not as strongly) about. And what he tries to achieve with Griffith is heavily dependent on what he thinks he can achieve with Griffith.

One of my favorite Miura quotes is something to the effect that Guts and Griffith's relationship isn't stagnant and won't necessarily remain the same over the course of the story - that Guts remains the way he is as long as Griffith remains the way he is (and vice versa, presumably). He said at the time that he was looking forward to depicting the changes between them as the relationship evolved. Unfortunately he didn't get to it, of course, but it's still a relevant point... that the way Guts is toward Griffith can still change, if Griffith changes, too.

#anonymous #ask #ariel talks about berserk

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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Kinda random, but what would you think Guts would do if he, as he is now, were to somehow be brought back to Golden Age? Or even pre-eclipse, cause ik you did Griffith doing it in Guts' pov in The Painted Stage (which I very much love with all my being)

Sorry if this isn't the type of ask you like 😅

As part of my desperate attempt to catch up with my inbox and become a functioning fandom member again, I am starting from the older asks and moving forward instead of the other way around. Because I never reach the older stuff when I do it the usual way.

...what I'm saying is, this Ask is 80,000 years old. Apologies.

The problem is that it very much is the kind of Ask I like -in fact, I like that idea so much that I already have a whole story in some level of development where I wrestle a similar concept. I haven't gotten as far as I'd like because I can't figure out how it ends, and I'm incapable of writing something without an end goal in mind.

...self-indulgent babble.

But basically, I think a lot depends on the circumstances, but I imagine his primary reaction (given his personality) would be to laser focus on preventing the Eclipse from ever occurring, even if he doesn't know whether that's actually possible.

Now, if one were to ask this to say the mainstream fandom I think a lot of people would say "go kill Griffith," which in fairness is a pretty effective way of stopping the Eclipse. But I don't think he'd do that, at least not unless he were like, ON THE EDGE OF THE WATER WHILE THE ECLIPSE IS STARTING AND GRIFFITH ISN'T LISTENING TO HIM. Because I think if you put him in a place with the Griffith he knew - the one he struggles with his inability to face or forget - what he'd really want to do is "save" him.

Because I do think Guts still misses and longs for Griffith - as Miura once said, Griffith in his current form makes Guts feel lonely. Griffith is one of the people he lost in the Eclipse, in a very real way. And while either killing him or saving him would accomplish the goal of stopping the Eclipse, only saving him would prevent that from happening.

#ask #anoonymous #ariel talks about berserk

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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what do you mean when you say giorno inherited traits from both dio and jonathan

I'm quite out of practice with JoJo's, so forgive me if this doesn't make sense or seems odd in some way, but my perspective on Giorno was always that he has Jonathan's heart/much of his moral compass and Dio's... attitude and harshness. Because he is, in ways that other JoJos of his era were not, quick to kill, seemingly unrepentant about it, rather emotionally distant and harsh in a lot of ways, but at the same time he has (as Koichi once said I believe) the golden Joestar heart that keeps him from ever going too far or losing his compassion. It also inevitably pulls him back to the more moral path regardless of how far he drifts, but at the same time he is literally a career criminal right, like he doesn't have Jonathan's upstanding morality.

I always thought this was pretty purposeful, because Giorno echos Dio very strongly in many ways (his face for one thing but also there are posing callbacks, he uses the same battle call, etc) but Araki also went out of his way to reaffirm that he is Joestar-like, which differentiates him from some of his half-siblings from Stone Ocean for example.

#ask #megashadowdragon #ariel talks about jojos

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

#tumblr stuff

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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What's not to like about Berserk 1997? What are the disadvantages there?

I would have a much harder time listing things I did like about Berserk 1997, which is mainly that Casca wasn't whitewashed.

No, seriously I didn't enjoy it at all. It's very difficult to turn me off from Berserk stuff but I couldn't make it through the whole series. I don't care for the pacing, the art style, the minimal animations (I know this isnt their fault, its just budget), or the fact that they added strange things like Adon as a recurring villain or attempts at in-advance relationship building between Guts and Casca.

My biggest issue is kind of related to the last part there: it's accurate enough that the inaccuracies barely register to people as being present, and as a result those things sneak by and end up skewing interpretations in subtle ways. In that sense, the movies actually bother me less, even though they leave out more, because the absences and additions are so glaringly obvious.

I also think it's contributed to the impression some people have that the Golden Age is the beginning of the story (and thus the manga is poorly structured) rather than that the Golden Age is a flashback within the larger story (and thus it's structured just fine thanks). This completely changes the impression the story leaves. I've seen people say that reading it as intended "spoils" the Golden Age, which just makes me want to cry.

#ask #anonymous #ariel talks about berserk

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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i kinda like how that interview snippet pretty much just confirmed the whole "casca enjoyed it" thing. not because i dislike casca or anything, but the fans are in absolute shambles and clinging to their copium so hard... and it's so fucking funny. i wonder when will they finally wake up and realize that berserk is not quite what most of them think it is.

also, they claim it was mainly femto's actions that made casca's sanity shatter, but i disagree. it has a lot of factors, including the sight of her comrades (specially judeau) dying and getting devoured by apostles.

...a month later...

In fairness, I do think it's worth separating the people who are bothered because it's morally disturbing to them and the people who are mad because they don't like that Casca had feelings for Griffith and have been telling themselves that the speech where she admitted she was in love with him actually said that she wasn't.

It's kinda like the people who dislike the opening acolyte sex because they consider it cheating on Casca. You can make an argument that it was out of character (I'm mixed on this), but if so, that's not why. My point being, being disturbed by the suggestion that Casca enjoyed being raped is one thing, and being disturbed by feeling like the implication is that she was emotionally unfaithful to Guts is another thing.

There's also the group that's upset because they thought Miura was somehow above that kind of thing - this usually being the people who straight-facedly claim he didnt eroticize sexual assault, and I mean having that kind of copium pumped into your blood on an ongoing basis is kind of asking for hard reality checks.

As for what shattered her mind, I think it's strongly implied that the gang rape by apostles was the biggest trauma and Femto just kind of was the last straw. Because when she has traumatic flashbacks it's usually to that. Overall I think it was the cumulative experience of the Eclipse, though - the butchering, the sexual assault by who knows who many apostles, and then the final snap being Femto.

#ask #anonymous #talk about late responses #actually there are even earlier ones #i am terrible at this

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alovelyburn · 3 months

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How do you find time for fandom when working full time?

I don't, apparently.

[crying face here]

I could, though, I just also have other hobbies.

Basically it's just time management + I've never been a long sleeper + I'm fortunate in a few ways. For example, I telecommute for two of five weekdays, have a relatively short transportation time, and also my job is extremely generous with paid time off.

The bigger issue is obsession management, like right now I'm very distracted by an original world I'm building, and I do have sort of a tendency to hyperfixate.

#ask #anonymous #ariel talks about ariel

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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how it started:

how it's going:

#berserk #lmao

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

ᴛʜᴇ ɢʜᴏsᴛs ᴏғ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʟᴏsᴛ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ʙᴀᴄᴋ ᴛᴏ ʜᴀᴜɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ sʟᴇᴇᴘ.

ᴺᶦᵏᶦᵗᵃ ᴳᶦˡˡ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

#berserk #fanart #by op #muubani

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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There's not a lot going on in the world right now that isn't terribly depressing.

Here's hoping for a better 2024.

(Happy New Year's, peeps)

#this post is full of content

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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so who else gets irrationally afraid and embarrassed about their interests being known to people in real life

#the only thing that makes me worry about people irl knowing my interests #is that i work with a lot of very religious people #some of which i know are socially conservative #and my favorite thing is berserk #otherwise i wouldnt care #i talk about g/g being gay for each other with my mom all the time #she checks translations for me

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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griffith and guts - moment of glory

(lines by kentaro miura; colors by me)

#berserk #twenty-birds

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alovelyburn · 4 months

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Inferno ( Berserk ) by Anato Finnstark

#berserk #fanart

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alovelyburn · 5 months

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Harris killed that man. Harriton Splimby Bomberguy descended from the ether like an angel of the lord and he fucking vaporized that man.

There’s something so hilarious about Hbomberguy being the one making this video because in the video essayist community he’s basically a god, right? Every one of his videos is iconic. He only makes one a year and the arrival of each is basically a holiday and he chose the target of one of these yearly nukes to be. This fucking guy.

The coughing baby has been razed from the face of the earth. James Somerton is fucking gone. All his videos are no-comments. His twitter and patreon have been deleted.

and THEN todd in the shadows shows up and pisses on his grave.

#hbomberguy is a career assassin who uses his powers for good #i dont talk about youtube much but #gd man

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alovelyburn · 5 months

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A lot of Berserk’s use of SA criticisms often misuse certain words about how Berserk “glorifies” or “sexualizes” it’s use of SA when in actuality, they’re criticizing Berserk’s “repetition” of SA. I probably shouldn’t be one to have an opinion on this since I’m not a victim of SA, but personally, I didn’t find any of the SA scenes glorifying or sexualizing in any way, each and every one of them felt disgusting and rancid as they should be felt; and that’s where Berserk’s criticism of SA should come in: the over-reliance on SA for shock value.

But I will say this though, after the Astral World, I get the feeling that Kentaro Miura reflected back over his story and realized that his constant use of SA, while distasteful as it should be, told himself “I’ve done this too much, much more than I should have.” He’s already more than 2 decades on this title, everything he’s done is set in stone and published to his audience, so while the damage has been done, the only thing he can do forward is to not repeat the same mistakes he has.

Okay, I don't know whether you were the one who sent the previous ask as well, but i"m guessing you are.

This is going to be the last time I answer one of these for a while because I genuinely don't care enough about this topic to keep having the same conversation over and over.

I don't think Berserk glorifies rape, but I absolutely think it sexualizes rape, and I don't just mean during the Eclipse. I am not misusing the word. I know what the word means. I meant what I said.

I also think it overuses rape in the first half or so of the series. I think both things. I'm not mistaking one for the other, I just think both.

Also re: the other Ask (and if that wasn't you maybe the other person will see it), I've read the interview. I am aware of why he did it. Knowing why he did it does not necessitate thinking he did it well. And to be clear, I'm not saying it was inherently wrong to put the rape in there to begin with - that would be a completely different conversation than whether it was sexualized and looked like pages out of a porn book, which it was, and it did.

That's it, that's my last reply on this topic for at least a few months, I am tired.

P.S. I agree about the last paragraph, though.

#ask #anonymous #ariel talks about berserk

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