#(and yeah i think griffith raping casca was about her and guts. like 'fuck you for making him okay with leaving me' type of vibe. even
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hey i have a question about berserk. i read it all the way until the eclipse chapter and then maybe 1 or 2 after that. i stopped reading because i found casca’s rape so horrific and the chapters afterward seemed to discard her as broken. i was wondering what you think of the rest of the story? i’ve thought about continuing but not sure if it’s worth it / if there will be more brutal rape scenes.
its been a very long time since i read berserk in its entirety so my thoughts probably wont be as informed or articulated as i would like them to be.
i think the eclipse is as bad as it gets. not to say theres never any like sexual assault or anything after that but theres never another explicit rape scene like that. im never gonna give someone shit for disliking the sexual violence in berserk, thats a valid feeling, but it IS kind of crucial to the story and themes. to me berserk is first and foremost an examination of abuses of power and the trauma associated with that. guts, casca, and griffith were all victims of some kind of sexual violence in their childhood/young adulthood, always by someone they know with some kind of power over them. eventually griffith would become a perpetrator of sexual violence himself. the bulk of berserk is about processing trauma and learning to trust other people again and i dont think you really get to that stuff until after the golden age. i wouldnt say casca gets discarded, guts' main motivation for a lot of the story going forward is trying to help heal casca and she DOES get better but thats not until later. theres a lot to be said about her treatment in the story and i think its valid to be critical of it. personally there isnt much i would change about her place in the plot bc it would make it a much much different story. i really love the rest of the story. golden age is unparalleled for its character work but the next two arcs after it are soooo fucking cool theyre my favorite so yeah personally i would recommend continuing.
also one thing i will say about the rape scene in the manga is i do think it was unnecessarily explicit and kind of tactless. i muuuch prefer how its done in the 97 anime
i hope this answer was remotely satisfactory
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Idk I too want better for Casca but I really dislike the hype for Casca potentially becoming an apostle, these users put it far better than i would:
https://www.tumblr.com/deripmaver/723418827650727936/why-i-am-a-hater-of-the-apostle-casca
https://www.tumblr.com/deripmaver/723493450382802944/im-so-happy-to-find-another-casca-apostle-hater https://
I skimmed these posts to see whether there were any points made that I felt like "responding" to, and there's a few.
First, Casca being a good person has nothing to do with anything except people not wanting her to become a monster, which I obviously don't vibe with because I think the concept of a good person becoming a monster fucks hard, which is one reason I like Berserk a whole lot. And I think a potential Moonbaby sacrifice would fit perfectly with one of the "good person" sacrifice examples they give: the 'person you loved the most and hated the most' sacrifice motivation, since it's intertwined with Griffith in some metaphysical way and it could be a two for the price of one deal. It's almost too on the nose.
Second, I don't think it necessitates Casca joining Griffith. Griffith seems to be out of the Godhand now, incarnated on the physical realm, presumably no longer presiding over sacrifices, and my favourite worldbuilding pet theory is actually that the godhand and Griffith will be at odds. Something's gotta threaten the godhand's existence since something wiped out the last cycle that we saw in Skull Knight's memory, and an incarnate fifth that appears right on schedule seems like just the thing.
Third, Casca's apostle trauma is, if anything, a sign in favour of her becoming an apostle since like, everyone in Berserk is at least tempted to symbolically become their abuser/rapist/nemesis as part of gaining power, eg:
Why can't Casca get in on the interesting and complicated moral and emotional greys here? This is good shit, I want it for Casca. I want her to be tempted to become what she fears, to escape her own sense of powerlessness through abandoning her morals. It's just a more direct version of Guts wanting to become a monster since that's rooted in rape trauma and both the narrative and Guts himself equates monsters to both his rapist and abuser.
I didn't see them mention the fact that apostles are compelled to love Griffith which to me seems like one of the best arguments against it (though again, I skimmed so maybe I missed it), but Ganishka resisted that, and Casca has a long history of repressing her love for Griffith so I think it could actually be a neat, and overcomeable extension of her human feelings.
Another big and better argument against it, particularly after the last couple chapters, is that Miura clearly just did not give a shit about Casca lol. And I mean I already knew that, one reason I thought the apostle Casca theory held water is that it would be a way for Miura to avoid writing Casca's trauma realistically and instead veer into one big dramatic moment followed by fantastical metaphor while keeping her a less nuanced plot point, albeit a more active and fun one than she had been so far. Instead his way of avoiding writing Casca's trauma realistically was to have her faint any time she thinks about it and then take away her personality AGAIN. So yeah, unfortunately I just don't think Miura wanted Casca to be badass and actively affect the plot. Idk if he ever knew what to do with her after deciding not to kill her off just to motivate Guts post-Eclipse.
Finally I just don't know if there's really time for that anymore. My vision was an Empire Strikes Back style end of second act downturn. Casca becomes a monster and sets a new arc in motion, Guts falls into despair and succumbs to the armour, shit gets real and interesting again for a while. Instead Guts' second act downturn is being mad that Griffith is still a god lol. She could definitely still go apostle at the climax of the story, and you better believe I'm still rooting for that, but idk if it'd be as satisfying lol. But I guess we'll see.
Anyway yeah you're free to disagree with any of my hot takes, but you're not gonna convince me Casca shouldn't become an apostle, because my reasoning ultimately boils down to "I would enjoy it." I would certainly enjoy it a hell of a lot more than fainting damsel in distress Casca which is what we're dealing with right now lol. If your reasoning boils down to "I would not enjoy it" then I probably won't convince you either, and that's fine. We'll find out what's going to happen eventually.
And finally I want to err on the side of caution and make it clear that I have no interest in arguing with the user you linked, and I hope you're not planning to be like, some kind of anonymous go-between linking posts back and forth. I used the linked posts as a bouncing off point to explain some of my reasoning, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
#character: casca#theme: speculation#theme: behelit#theme: sacrifice#theme: inner monster#ask#anonymous#theme: revenge#a#b#also at the end of the day there is still the question of 'who the hell else is gonna use the behelit?'#guts has his armour he's spoken for in terms of manifesting inner darknesses#anyone else would need their motivation to be both established and executed between now and then which feels intrinsically#unsatisfying to me and a waste of a lot of time we could've been spending on foreshadowing#the exception being serpico who has motivation if farnese dies lol which lbr would suck. and who would he sacrifice?#casca is the only character with a thoroughly established reason to despair plus 3 potential readily available sacrifices#(moonbaby griffith and farnese) plus heaps of ominous foreshadowing surrounding her#plus hey she just got an animal motif to utilize
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i swear you and bthump are the best people to go to when to comes to berserk stuff
you guys just have such a great grasp on the story and really expose the ridiculousness of the western fanbase
The sad thing is, I can't even be proud of that because 90% of it is literally just reading the story (and interviews) without jumping through 15 hoops trying to explain to myself that everything characters (or Miura) said or did means the opposite of what they said or did.
Being in Western Berserk fandom is wild, it's like.....
Griffith: When I think about the dream and Guts, he is definitely more appealing. In fact he just made me forget my dream completely.
Fans: He's saying that Guts is only a tool to him and he's only important because he's the best way to the dream.
Griffith: Do you think responding to royalty repeatedly trying to murder me by killing them first makes me a horrible person?
Guts: LOL what, who even cares about murder, it's fine, you're fine, what a silly question honestly.
Fans: Look at that fucking asshole Griffith what a sociopath. Poor Guts is such a kind-hearted gentleman.
Casca: WTF Griffith you let him do whatever he wants and don't even punish him when he does crazy things
Fans: Griffith's so abusive to Guts.
Griffith:
loses the most important person to him - eclipse doesn't trigger.
falls into a deep depression - eclipse doesn't trigger.
massively self-destructs - eclipse doesn't trigger.
has a post-sex mental breakdown - eclipse doesn't trigger
gets tortured for a year to the point where his body barely functions and his tongue is being used as a torturer's necklace - eclipse doesn't trigger.
gets treated like a pile of baggage and a burden by the people he literally prostituted himself to support - eclipse doesn't trigger.
overhears that the most important person to him is leaving AGAIN - freaks out, but eclipse doesn't trigger.
hallucinates a nightmare of being a doll kept as a pseudo husband by the subordinate who always had a crush on him - eclipse doesn't trigger
literally tries to kill himself - eclipse still doesn't trigger
confronted by his completely hopeless feelings about a guy who keeps abandoning him - eclipse triggers, offered a sacrifice, just kinda sits there
has his mind invaded by demon lords who use every doubt, insecurity, guilt pang and self-hating thought he ever had against him - still doesn't accept the sacrifice.
reminded that if he stops he's wasted all the lives that he's been living to justify accidentally ending - bursts into tears, falls to his knees and repeatedly apologizes but still doesnt' accept the sacrifice
has the specific words of the one person he loves most used against him by making it sound like that person would approve of him accepting the sacrifice - cracks but still hesitates
told that the sacrifices will forgive him since that's what they're there for anyway - accepts the sacrifice
Fans: He literally doesnt care, he would have said yes ANY TIME, like if the Godhand waltzed up to him when he was literally sitting on the throne, he would've been like, FUCK YEAH GIMME THE POWER, KILL EVERYONE! because only cares about himself and power.
The Actual Worldbuilding: Sacrifices only work if you love the sacrifice so much that losing them is like losing a piece of yourself.
Fans: Obviously you don't need to care about people to sacrifice them because Griffith sacrificed the Hawks, who he didn't care about.
M E A N W H I L E
Guts: Ignores the eclipse as it butchers his friends in order to repeatedly try to save Griffith. Then jumps down and wanders around trying to save literally anyone.
Fans (AND THE DARK HORSE SYNOPSES): Guts' primary concern during the Eclipse was saving Casca, he made a beeline for her like, tunnel vision whoa.
S O M E T I M E L A T E R
Guts' subconscious: Why don't you just abandon her? Better yet, rape and murder her so you can be more like Griffith and be closer to him and twirl yourself around him like a vine.
Guts: [LITERALLY SEXUALLY ASSAULTS HER WHILE FANTASIZING ABOUT MURDERING HER SO HE CAN BE CLOSER TO GRIFFITH]
Fans: Guts loves Casca more than anything in the world, shes all he cares about.
Guts: When I see him I'll .......
Puck: Man, when Guts thinks about this Hawk guy, he gets so mad, but also his feelings are super complicated.
Guts: When I saw Griffith there, I totally lost my desire to kill him.
Also Guts: What do you mean you don't feel anything, come on feel something [poke poke poke] Hey wait where are you going?!
Guts: This sucks just as much as when I left the Hawks, except this time I'm the one getting dumped. :/
Also Guts: Anyway I should drop Casca on Elfhelm and then find Griffith and.........................
Berserk Guidebook: Guts' feelings about Griffith include bitter hatred and an unending stream of other complicated feelings.
Also Guts: Anyway so, when I see him I'll .......
Fans: Guts just hates Griffith so much and nothing else. It's just hate. He wants Griffith dead so much like its even more extreme than the normal wanting someone dead. SO much deathlust, and NOTHING ELSE.
Guts: /swings at Griffith and misses
Casca: /gets kidnapped
Guts: I couldn't hit him even a little, and my sword let me down, I have nothing to believe in or strive for anymore.
Fans: Look at him he's so broken up about Casca.
I literally feel like I'm in fucking bizarro land when I read your average western berserk fan's commentary it is WILD.
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How about a list of your favorite villains across media?
Wouldn't really know how to rank them but I can try :P
Eggman: funnily enough, it was Colors that made me realize "huh, he's actually a pretty good villain" lmao, so thanks Colors! Full of himself, iconic style, charismatic, he will destroy an ancient civilization site to take down his enemy and then build a circus in the same game (some of the games do a bang up job of displaying his personality without words!), proof that you can be both goofy and a serious threat.
Dahlia Hawthorne: absolutely my fave AA villain <3 she's petty and not even the final murderer, yet under her "cute girl who's secretly a bitch" façade lies an actual, scary demon, who doesn't even let death stop her from spreading her utter malice. Not even after Mia beautifully lays down how she's actually a miserable pathetic creature (which she is), does her creepy factor diminish.
Annie Wilkes: yeah an odd choice maybe, but Misery is one of my favorite books and Annie has so much presence and I was legit scared of her while reading. It's almost funny how she's essentially a parody of over-the-top entitled fans, and oh boy things did not get better since the '80s :)
Griffith: what can you say about this complex, tragic piece of shit? You can see him in many ways, you can blame him or forgive him depending on how much you believe in the effects of fate, he's mostly rememebered as "that asshole who raped Casca into insanity" but the arc he went through to get to that low point is only one of the many reasons the Golden Age arc is iconic. I like to see him as a stunted manchild who longed for human contact but his only way to get it was through control :)
Azula: nowadays I think she'd be treated more sympathetically due to her being a 14 yo girl raised by a monstruous dictator, but still, she starts off as a genuinely scary threat compared to the sympathetic Zuko, and her plan to take over the Earth Kingdom is actually clever ("don't flatter yourself, you were never even a player", fucking destroyed), but by the end of Book 3 you feel nothing but pity for the scared little girl with mommy issues she actually is.
Blue Diamond: she's always been my favorite of the Diamonds, and not just because she's beautiful :P she comes off as the "nice" Diamond, especially when juxtaposed to Yellow, and she has a soothing yet intimidating aura around her. But she's actually deeply selfish and callous, literally dragging everyone in her grief - her power immobilizes you with sheer sadness, it's almost scary - and she said she loved Pink a lot but she wasn't above abusing her. I find her fascinating. (I also like Yellow a lot for the opposite reasons: she has more redeeming qualities than one might think).
Beatrice Horseman: does she count? I'll count her. I hated her guts ever since S2E1, where she calls Bojack to outright tell him "you were born broken and there's nothing you can do about it", but then S4 comes around and man, does it recontexualize all the evil she did to Bojack. Not to the point of forgiving her (although Bojack's last moment of compassion gets me), but the entire situation, from her own childhood trauma to how she coped with it, is devastating, an excellent portrayal of the cycle of abuse.
Weil: at the cost of repeating myself, he's just a spiteful monster with zero redeeming qualities (dude manipulates two babies to do his evil bidding and it doesn't even scratch the surface), fully convinced that it's his own humanity who makes him such a monster, and you want him dead so badly
(shout out to Copy X, who is more minor than Weil but I like his concept a lot and I find him pathetic in a good way, super underrated and good thing he wasn't the real X turned evil)
Dracula: started off as a homage to horror movies, became a nearly Berserk-esque figure of a dark lord fated to die at the hands of his old friend's descendants and be brought back by humanity's darkest desires. You almost feel sorry for him and how he's nearly forced to be a monster... if it wasn't for his utter selfishness and petty spite against God that were there long before he became an avatar of Chaos.
Isaac: obviously :P minor villain that he is, he's an absolute delight, both an over the top petty asshole of a simp whose motivation is simply "make Hector suffer", and a tragic victim who did not deserve to see his whole life shatter in the span of a few minutes. Again, you'd feel very badly about him, and then you remember how he dangled Rosaly's head in front of Hector. Also Liam O'Brien <3
#dr. eggman#dahlia hawthorne#annie wilkes#griffith berserk#azula#blue diamond#beatrice horseman#dr. weil#dracula castlevania#isaac laforeze
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@spectorcorp
shakes you like a little jar of beans for the plot
HUOH. Ok so basically the plot of berserk is that Guts, a guy with a massive slab of iron for a sword and a gun arm, is tracking down this guy Griffith for sacrificing him and all his friends to ascend to godhood. And Guts is hunting things called apostles along the way, which are basically huge fuck off big demons who were once humans who achieved demonhood by also sacrificing people.
The story starts off with a arc set in the present explaining all of this and Guts’s current deal, and then after that goes into a very long flashback arc going into Guts’s entire life up to that point and explaining everything about what happened with him and Griffith. Then the story takes a tonal shift from bleak and grim story about Guts torture murdering demons to a found family type tale with Guts also struggling to choose between revenge and moving on with his life and caring for his girlfriend Casca, the only other survivor of Griffiths sacrifice.
Under this readmore im gonna explain all the stuff that needs to be content warned about in berserk, so warning for detailed discussion of CSA, pedophilia, and rape, as well as mentions of homophobia and racism. yeah.
Berserk has a shitton of rape scenes and its often handled really insensitively. Specifically rape is often depicted happening on screen, theres alot of throwaway scenes of women about to be raped because “grimdark medieval setting”, some throwaway scenes of it outright actually happening, and in the flashback arc specifically there is onscreen CSA. it is not at all romanticized and is depicted as a incredibly awful and traumatic event but yeah, it pretty much shows it happening. And at the end of the flashback arc Casca is brutally raped on screen for several pages, this is something that gets alot of criticism from the fans and again, its not at all romanticized and the point is how horrific it is but. its a questionable choice to include that at best. Im somebody who gets super bothered by stuff like this and was able to get through it but i did end up having to take breaks from reading.
it also important to note though that berserk is also weirdly incredibly sympathetic towards suvivors, Guts is a CSA survivor and his trauma and how it effects him is depicted so well and realistically. Casca’s situation is a little less great, she goes catatonic and is kinda reduced to a non character for over 100 chapters, but she has recently recovered and her situation is treated with respect for the most part (aside from her kinda being reduced to comic relief, but her trauma is never diminished and she’s never looked down on for reacting to it like this in universe)
Also i think i should bring up that berserk seems like it has a racism problem. Theres like three named black characters and one was a rapist, one was kind of a ‘big silent stoic who is also nice though’ stereotype, and the others Casca. Similarly almost every gay or gay coded man in this story is either a pedophile or a rapist or both (and im being generous with that almost. i see Guts as bi-coded but theres not really any irrefutable canon evidence of this)
Im so sorry for the essay Sundown but Berserk is kinda important to me but it also has a ton of problems and i feel like i gotta warn people as clearly as possible but also like, not make it sound like its just unambiguously shit. 100% ok if you think its shit after hearing all that though. It did start in 1989 and seems to have gotten way better with EVERYTHING in the most recent chapters but again, yeah, understandable if you dont wanna wade through all of that
#IN SUMMARY Berserks all about a dude recovering from extreme trauma and also#its at times incredibly insensitive#its also SUPER gorey and violent#i like summarizing it as 'a power fantasy that reads like it was written by somebody with trauma they havent unpacked yet'#ALSO if it seems like i overexplained the plot thats because#alot of people drop berserk because either they started reading it and the first arcs are too dark and horrific and everything seems too-#bleak or they#really like all the dark and horrific bleak stuff but then halfway through guts gets a little rpg style adventuring party and-#-theres a gaggle of kids here and theyre all making jokes and shit and they cant stand it#also i explained the golden age arc because when i first read berserk i tried to skip it but its very good and important to read and not-#boring. alot of people think its the best arc#(theyre wrong the best arc is black swordsman)#thanks for giving me the chance to go off about berserk. im sorry.
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http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/158821156544/rant-on-yangs-nonexistent-recovery-arc
I wanna preface this before I begin: I really do think yang needed more screentime this Volume. She got shafted in Volume 1 and 2 and here it was a souring experience to see her sidelined. Now I am not blaming Jaune: That guy had about a third of the screen time to himself than Yang. If I were to blame someone in the series, I’d blame Blake for hogging an entire episode to herself or Tyrian for taking up ending time that could have been used for Yang. But my honest opinion? I’m optimistic: If the writers show that Yang ahsn’t gotten over the PTSD in latter Volumes I will actually be very happy. Nothing is more insulting than underplaying the lasting effects of a mental illness, making it seem easy to get over. I didn’t get that vibe from Yang considering she had to be depressed for around nine months considering it was fall when we saw her after Beacon, it was winter after that and a minimum of six months have passed since that point. It’s entirely possible for Yang to recover in that span of time, especially if Volume 4 was told out of order.
I am saying this now to put what I am about do in context: I am a Yang fan, my main complaint with V4 was that she got too little screentime and I have an aversion to mental illnesses being downplayed. By all rights, I should agree with @Dudebblade right?
Well...
IF YOU WERE TO USE THE SAME TECHNIQUES SHOWN IN RWBY ON A PTSD VICTIM, YOU WOULD BE CALLED OUT ON YOUR INSENSITIVITY!
This isn highly hypocritical as Dudeblade has in the past said that Taiyang was wrong for breaking down after Summer’s death....his team leader...and the mother of his second daughter and caretaker of his first...after losing Raven, his first love and mother of Yang...all in about four years time...leaving him a single widower of two, a job meant for to people at minimum. It’s hard raising a kid I know, I’ve been hearing my mom state the hardships for years. And quite frankly, I wasn’t that hard of a kid I didn’t go around challenging demonic wolves or attacking bars and as much as I love my mom, Taiyang is a better parent than both of them and suffered even more than her. And Dudeblade calls this insensitive but not a widower. Yeah, he’s not allowed to talk.
I don’t give a shit if the arc was “Too hard” to write. You set yourself up to make a recovery arc. You should deliver. If it wasn’t as easy as you thought it was, then you should tough it out, and do it. Otherwise you failed to deliver on something that you promised.
You promised to be my friend and then betrayed me three times. Again, Hypocriticial.
It’s like if the RWBY writers promised that there would be LGBT representation, but refuses to point them out… Oh wait… That’s actually what’s happening right now.
You now, I have an LGBT friend named @mageknight14 and he’s just as sick of this as I am. I am starting to think they SHOULDN’T have an LGBT character if you keep bitching. You don’t hear me bitching for Asperger’s representation even though Autism is synonomous with “Brain damamged” in the world and the closest thing I have to a representitive is Sheldon Cooper.
Alright, something I’m going to have to do, is to compare this show’s PTSD recovery arc, with another show’s recovery arc. Not to be a dick or anything, but the only other well-known show that did a PTSD recovery arc well, was Legend of Korra.
Not to compare RWBY to a show that has had an entire team of writers, professional animators, a previous series that was well-received, and an epic premise to undermine it or anything, but hey. Miles did say that the Season three of LoK missed the line by an inch, and found it “Meh” (Yep. Bringing that one back.)
Oh so people’s personal opinion is something you are allowed to judge them on? Okay then, you like Raven ergo anything you have to say about parental characters ever is disregarded. And unlike you who has stated their opinion as fact, Miles stated his opinion as ONLY that. And if you’re gonna pull that, how about I start comparing your DB chronicals to Miles’ writing? Let’s see: Pandering to LGBT demographic with Tifa and Yang, crappy reasoning for not using Goku or Superman which hasn’t been addressed, under usage of the Villians, under suage of Vegeta, directly copying and pasting Godzilla Vs. Gamera ect. Doesn’t feel to good huh? Maybe next time you could learn some empathy?
Hey, if Miles wants to criticize a show, and claim that “missing the mark by an inch” makes the finale “Meh”, then I can say that missing an entire plot by a light year is INFURIATING.
And I can point out the bullshit in your crap without an inch of regret or remorse. Funny how that works.
It’s almost as if it was the most insulting piece of shit that I have had to watch since reading poorly written fanfics that were clearly meant to troll people.
You emna like basic pandering, random and lazy fourth wall breaks, expecting us that Deadpool would be friends with you, under using 90% of your cast, making some deity look after you and making Yang and Guts look similar when they share like three basic things together? Or how about yang remembering Carolina ahs Pyrrha’s voice but the snarky AI in her suit that sounds like her father? Nope, nothing to see there. Also, TYang knows RT but doesn’t know a single person from RvB because...plot?
I’m getting off-topic here. Legend of Korra Book 4 handled PTSD with an ENORMOUS amount of seriousness, respect, and time. Not only was this a case of a timeskip being used in a manner that was actually the right way of using it, but they showed that Korra was struggling. While she could always blame it on the mercury poisoning, it showed that Korra wasn’t merely “moping” (I will never let that line go), it showed that she was terrified. She wanted to get better, but she had to go at her own pace.
Yeah and tehw riters of Korra had a shit ton more experience, payment and less pressure considering they could coast off of the original’s success. Which they kind of did seeing as I have heard a shit ton of non-LGBT people call bull on Korrasami.
Okay then, I will never let anything yousay go then as well. Have fun with that: My specialty is turning one’s words against them.
In fact, she had to be the one to decide to get the mercury out of her system. She wasn’t guilt-tripped into doing it, she did it because she was ready. It had nothing to do with someone calling her a burden. It was because it was at that moment, that she had recovered. There’s a reason why this episode stands out from most. It was because, through the help of Toph, Korra managed to overcome her fears and doubts, and remove the mercury herself.
Okay...is Yang Korra? No? Then they will NOT handle this situation the same way. Unless they are carbon copies of each other or at least have the same basic experiences, your point DOES NOT stand. And since you just expect us to take your wrd for it after insulting Taiyang, Miles and later on you will use Shane and Monty to attack RT, I have no good will.
Hm, let’s go through this again shall we?
Terrified...Guess that Adam dream or the PTSD flash never happened...
Choose to get the Mercury out of her system...Not how the body works...And taiyang didn’t stitch it on neither did Yang have to deal with her fault at letting her sister be in danger. Yeah, If Taiyang is a bad father for breaking down, Yang is a worse sister because she broke down longer, with no one to help Ruby, over less pain and had support all unlike taiyang.
And is RWBY over yet? ... No? Then I’d bet you’ll be eating your words sooner than latter.
RWBY just rushed it. Yang wasn’t given time to actually decide to put the arm on, her father heavily implied that she was a burden, she overheard it, and felt guilty (Seriously, how did she hear that? Is she some kind of rare half-breed or something?).
Like all children are: it’s a fact of life get use to it. Whether or not the child or parent think that way, iyt is a fact. Just as well: We only have your word on that. You, who have proven you are projecting your own parental problems onto Taiyang. yeah, you are the definition of Unreliable Narrator.
But hey, let’s take a look at Berserk. Let’s see what would happen if we were to use RWBY’s techniques on Casca.
Hey, Casca! I know you got assaulted by the man you used to love romantically and everything, and that he violated you in ways that we probably couldn’t even begin to comprehend, but how about you get over it?
- And now, I have been bifurcated by Guts for saying something like that. Why? Because Casca from Berserk has PTSD! She’s not going to magically get better by getting some heals or shit like that! She has PTS FUCKING D!
You either treat it with respect, or don’t set yourself up to write it out to begin with.
Pardonnez-moi, mais vous n'avez aucune idée de ce que vous dites.
Okay then, let’s use your method of parenting on Guts shall we?
HEY GUTS! DUDEBLADE SAID YOU’RE A TERRIBLE FATHER FOR BREAKING DOWN AFTER TEH ECLIPSE AND CASCA’S RAPE, THAT YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU, THAT YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD AGAIN AND THAT YOU ARE WORSE THAN YOUR OWN FATHER AND GRIFFITH!
Oh look, he’s pretty pissed. Hope you enjoy having a crossbow shoved up your neither regions.
Also: Is Yang and Casca the same person? Have they faced the same troubles? Do they even share one event in the past? NO. So how about you stop using stupid examples and I might stop Guts from shoving his sword up your uretha?
Then Tai said, “Looks like you lost some brain cells along with that arm of yours.”
Keep in mind that both Port and Oobleck were shocked at this. It shows that Tai crossed a line there, and in all honesty, if Yang hadn’t laughed, they would have been scared shitless for Yang’s mental health. Something that they didn’t really consider. These are supposed to be her teachers and parents, but they don’t do anything to actually help Yang get better mentally.
Not to mention that Miles and Kerry said that writing the PTSD recovery arc was “too hard.” is rather insulting considering NOTHING HAPPENED!
I don’t give a shit about that. I don’t give a single shit if it was “Too hard.” or not. You have to do it in a respectful manner, or you become one of the most insensitive people ever. to the point where I think that this becomes appropriate:
Oh so you’re insensitive for telling one joke but not for directly insulting someone when they are trying to help you? Because Yang did EXACTLY that! remember this line?
“I lost a part of me, it’s gone and it’s never coming back. You can’t possibly understand how that feels.”
She says this to man who lost both of his lovers, lost his team, nearly lost his kids twice with one comatose and the other depressed and hurting him for trying to help, had to wake up every day for six months wondering if his brother in law, daughter and friends were all dead. It’s like bitching about a hangnail in front of Guts: Not comparable in the slightest. If I were Taiyang I would have walked up to her, got in her face and recounted everything that I have lost to her and make her see just how much she actually lost.
Not enough? How about Ruby, her younger sister who lost more than her, was comatose for it and preserved still? Or Qrow, who lives with misfortune over his head 24/7? By far: Yang is the BEST one off so by your logic, she has no right to complain and neither do you!
Yeah. People who treat PTSD as insensitively as the writers did should be fired from breathing.
... You are telling them to die over a fictional character...
You know what is even more insulting dudeblade? Using suicide baiting right in front of a formerly suicidal person. Fuck you in every sense of the word.
Before anyone says any bullshit about how Red vs. Blue had the character ripping on each other, so that this is “okay.” - I’d like to point out that in the scene where Doc’s split personality O’Mally, roasts Grif for having to take care of his sister because his father left, and his mother was in the circus.
Nobody really laughed. And when Doc snapped out of it, he apologized. None of the Reds or Blues ever hit that close to home, and when it did happen, they treated it seriously. It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a punchline, it was an actual serious thing.
Yes itw as a joke. It’s called Black humor and the narrative treated it as afailed attempt at Doc’s peace which was the real punchline. And the same guy also insulted his own sister several times throughout the BGC.
And what about getting shot by a tank, being told you’re worthless, being said you won’ta mount to anything, being forced off to die several times and take the blame for everything? That’s the entirety of the BGC’s thing.
And it was treated seriously as a way to break the ice and unlike Grif, YANG WAS OKAY WITH IT. And unlike Doc, Taiyang KNOWS YANG. HE RAISED HER! How convenient for you to not mention these factors huh?
The really infuriating part was the fact that it started off so well. Yang nearly had a panic attack when she dropped the glass, she was having nightmares about Adam, she openly said that she felt as if “A part of her was missing, and it wasn’t coming back.”, she had gotten used to using only one arm- It was going so well!
At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the current writing team for RWBY would be unable to write a respectful, and realistic PTSD Recovery arc to save their lives.
The writing’s become shit since they booted Monty’s wife, Sheena and Shane off the team.
I’m sure they REALLY appreciate it.
(Growls deeply)
You wanna know what is really fucking sick, as in, I can NEVER forgive, that I have deemed people horrible for, that has truly made me hate them?
Using a person’s death or mental illness for their own gain, usually attacking friends and family with it.
Like you have done with Monty and Shane.
I hoep you’re happy because you have crossed so many lines. I hope you’re happy being hateful and pessimistic because you know what? You are no better than those people at Yang Haters Haven for threatening Ben and Chad’s lives. In fact, you are WORSE than them. You are essentially digging up Monty’s corpse to beat his friends, his grieving friends who shared so much with, with it. Congratulations, you are what you hate. Except they can always say “I never used a dead man for my own gains.”
I have no respect for you, no hope for you, no kindness for you.
You are worse than most people in the rwde tag and that is saying a lot considering their suicide baiting and death threats.
Enjoy the fucking hole you dug for yourself, I’ll be sure to fill it up and put you out of your misery never.
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Do you think there is fanservice in Berserk? For example?
Yeah lol there's tons of it. Casca's sure not wearing these pants because they're comfortable, this is yeast infection territory here:
There's bathing scenes, eroticized rape scenes, gratuitous sex scenes, every woman's tits defy gravity, every woman has an hourglass figure, the Eclipse rape is 90% fanservice which, if you want a concrete reason beyond 'just look at it,' you can note how Casca's scars vanish for maximum sexiness. The story opens on Guts fucking a hot blonde chick and then killing her when she turns into a monster lmao. etc etc.
I'm assuming we're talking about the sexy women kind of fanservice for straight men, which is def the majority of the sexy fanservice in Berserk, but Griffith also gets fanservicey at times to be fair, eg the 'forgot my urge to kill' scene. There's also Puck's ass everywhere, and like, Miura has said that he wrote Serpico and Roderick to cater to women lol.
There's also other kinds of nerdy fanservice, like overlong implausibly cool fight scenes. Or like Casca cutting her hair and putting on a fighter's outfit after waking up, in a way intended to evoke that 'yay she's back' reaction, or the Golden Age scenes we saw while journeying through her mind. Scenes that exist mainly to make the audience go 'I remember that thing, nice reference.' Or like, the volume cover where Griffith looks like Ryo Devilman.
And like not all fanservice is automatically bad. I think even the unrealistically sexy women category can have a useful tonal impact on a story lol, like sometimes it adds to the cheesiness and that's okay and makes it more fun. Especially when it goes both ways, and we get naked Griffith every few chapters too.
Berserk gets really inappropriate with it sometimes (sexy rape we're meant to take seriously being the worst offender lbr, alongside the occasional creepy Schierke scene), and other times it just feels wrong tonally (eg Casca crying about Guts fighting monsters while her tits are not only out but with eye-catchingly bright and shiny nipples during the Wyald fight) but overall it's just part of the vibe imo. Especially through like the first half or so of the manga it has that 80s movie cheesiness and I kinda dig it personally.
And to be really fair Berserk falls into that 'not as bad as it could be' category where Miura pulled back from fanservice in favour of realism at times, which gives it a fairly decent balance imo, yk, for what it is and the audience it's aimed at. Like Casca's lack of titty armour, Farnese's unsexy and practical traveling clothes, that kind of thing. Compared to a lot of manga aimed at straight dudes Berserk can come across as downright modest. But that says more about the genre's baseline as a whole than it does about Berserk lol.
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„So to use the Charlotte sex scene as an example, the biggest reason I read it as consensual (if psychologically fucked up to an extent) is because that's the narrative function of the sex. A rape scene would have a different impact on the story.“ But with that logic, couldn’t it be argued that narratively this scene was meant to foreshadow Cascas rape by showing that Griffith is willing to overstep boundaries? Same with the wagon scene (I disagree with you that this wasn’t rapey)? Here’s the fact of the matter: There’s two instances that show Griffith overstepping a line of consent with women, closely followed by him raping one. All of these instances are linked to his feelings towards Guts (hatred, love, jealousy, power, control etc.). Your reasoning in how you interpret things is understandable, but with the same logic you could also argue that the narrative function of that scene with Charlotte was to establish a certain character trait of Griffith that disregards women’s consent.
Response to this post.
I get how you could make that argument wrt the Charlotte scene, and I do think it's meant to illustrate Griffith's ~inner darkness~ to some extent, mainly because of the intense eye-close-ups that tend to show up when Griffith is acting Femto-y. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with not regarding it as a rape scene though - that's basically what I meant when I said that it's meant to be psychologically fucked up lol, though I was being vague because it was beside the main point of that post. But yeah like, Griffith is acting very single-mindedly and heedless of potential consequences the way he does when in pursuing-a-goal mode, and part of the reason for Charlotte's initial protest is to remind the audience that this is a very stupid "improper" thing, and Griffith disregarding that is irrational behaviour with a certain amount of darkness behind it.
But look at it this way: the ova rewrites that scene slightly to show Griffith turning to leave until Charlotte starts crying on him, and stopping his advances when Charlotte protests until Charlotte herself moves his hand back to her tit lol. And the darker aspects have the exact same impact on the narrative, but the rest of it makes a lot more sense for both Charlotte and Griffith's narratives.
Like, Griffith disregarding Charlotte's protest isn't a significant aspect of the scene. You could definitely argue it functions as Eclipse foreshadowing, but is that theoretical foreshadowing worth depicting a rape victim as uncomplicatedly happy about her victimization with nary a narrative hint that she was victimized? It's ofc possible to depict a victim of rape who doesn't see themselves as a victim - Berserk even does it with Griffith and Gennon. But in that case there are clear context clues that show the narrative understanding that rape took place, not least of which is Griffith washing himself the next morning and calling himself dirty. We get nothing like that in Charlotte's case.
Plus in terms of Griffith's character, if we're already meant to view him as a rapist then it just totally destroys the vibe imo. The year of torture is classic tragic outcome. It's disproportionate punishment for a flaw that evokes feelings of pity in the reader and causes self-reflective enlightenment for the victim that comes too late to act upon. That flaw is Griffith valuing the dream over his friendship with Guts and not realizing how important Guts is until it's too late, which we know because Griffith gets a whole inner monologue about it. If the narrative goes "oh also Griffith is a rapist but that's not relevant to his tragic punishment" thennnn that's a little awkward lol.
And on top of that I would strongly argue that the Golden Age virtually exists to make you empathize with Griffith, root for his friendship with Guts, and eventually feel a little despair and betrayal yourself when Griffith makes the sacrifice. It's such a good story because even knowing it inevitably ends in tragedy, sacrifice, and demonhood, it gets you invested in these characters and their relationship and makes you want it to succeed despite what we know. And a huge part of Griffith's tragedy is that he views himself as worse than he is because of his guilt-complex, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when that attitude is part of his reasoning for becoming a demon. If Griffith already committed the demon-defining act Femto commits, his entire narrative falls flatter than a crepe.
Granted this is my own interpretation of the story, I know a lot of fans see Griffith as pure evil all along and enjoy it that way lol. But this is why I think Berserk is a good story, and the basic thrust of that story is incompatible with Griffith just kinda casually being a rapist pre-demonhood lol. From my point of view, if we view him as having raped Charlotte, the story is no longer about how the road to hell is paved with good intentions and an idealistic generally good guy ends-justifies-the-meansing himself into becoming a demon. It's about a shitty dude leveling up. And I just don't find that story compelling. If I thought that's what Berserk was about, I wouldn't be a fan.
(It's possible Miura intended him to have raped Charlotte, but also doesn't see it as a character-breaking moment that should cause a reader to lose sympathy for him or like, a big deal that ought to be addressed in some way, but I have a little more faith in Miura's writing than that. And it's inconsistent with every other use of rape in the story.)
SO yeah, tl;dr if we were meant to view the Charlotte sex scene as rape, then Berserk just kinda sucks as a story imo.
And I don't think that argument fits the wagon scene at all, because Griffith pretty pointedly stops when Casca tells him to stop. That's one of the big reasons I see it as a contrast to the Eclipse, highlighting Griffith's weakness, desperation, and vulnerability. I don't think we're meant to read this scene as Griffith overstepping a boundary, because if that was the case, Miura would not have shown Casca asserting a boundary followed by Griffith respecting it. He could have easily had the scene continue with Casca throwing Griffith off of her, or physically removing herself some other way, if we were meant to see Griffith as an attempted rapist here, rather than telling Griffith to stop and then holding him comfortingly and deciding to stay and take care of him out of pity.
Anyway yeah lol, this got a bit long but I wanted to be thorough because I do have a lot of reasons for believing the Charlotte sex scene isn't meant to be viewed as rape, and I didn't get into it thoroughly in the last post because again, it wasn't really the point. But I think it's worth explaining.
If you have a very different perspective on the story and/or Griffith's character and function in the narrative, then we may just completely disagree, and that's fine. But yeah, based on what I get from Berserk's characters, tone, and themes, Griffith raping someone as a human is incompatible with the whole of the story.
#ask#anonymous#a#b#theme: critique#character: griffith#arc: ga#answering this asap because it's directly relevant to a recent post and i wanted to
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I see folks giving Griffith a lot of heat for killing the band and forcing himself on Casca, which he did for a resurrection and nothing else (the entirety of the Egg-Apostle arc is dedicated to this). He isn’t a human being at that point, so why are people so upset? Let’s not pretend that Guts and Casca are innocents. You want to hate Griffith? Sure, but why do you like Guts, a man who was a direct facilitator in the genocide of thousands in a village just to kill one Apostle, on the basis of morality of all the concepts? Why are you all fine with Casca and the Band fighting evil battles for pedophile kings just so they could get money? Band of Hawk were hired militia, thugs basically, who warred for whoever hired them. However, everyone acts as if Griffith murdered their mother and dog.
If you want to play the morality card, you better use it for everyone, or no one. This double-standard’s something I’ve always deeply despised about fandoms, or do you all just want to self-insert into Guts and Casca’s place for validations or “r*pe victim” trauma or something? I’m a childhood rape-survivor, too. All three of these characters are not winning any morality medals anytime soon. At least, Griffith’s actually a well written character who had reasons to do what he did. The other two? Not really.
Enh I mean I disagree with the statement that Griffith raped Casca to facilitate his resurrection - I think he raped her because he was feeling petty and it happened to facilitate his resurrection because of fate. His actions during the Eclipse suggest this - trying to kill Skull Knight, raising his hand to kill them as they escape before lowering it after looking at Guts specifically, rather than Casca, as well as the stupid fetus fusing with him being a hindrance to him and therefore not likely something he planned.
That said he was still transformed into an evil demon at the time lol so logically it doesn't make sense to hate Griffith for it. But yk, I can't exactly blame people despite that. I think it's understandable to have a strong, visceral, emotional reaction to a main character raping another main character regardless of logical circumstances. The scene was written to elicit a big negative emotional reaction, and that's what it got. The Hawks mercenarying is not written to elicit a negative emotional reaction, and it doesn't get one. I think that's fair, and I don't think people should have to apply real-world moral standards to a fictional work, especially without regard to narrative framing.
That said it's very true that fandom often demonstrates double standards with how they hate Griffith but jump to excuse Guts for assaulting Casca himself, and also the way they express their feelings is annoying as fuck at best and offensive way too often lol. Like at the end of the day it's a fictional story and harassing and haranguing real people over it is always going to be an obnoxious overreaction. So yeah like, it sucks lol and I totally feel your frustration at the rest of fandom. I don't necessarily agree with the details of your argument but I definitely agree with the sentiment.
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If you were in charge of an adaption of the Black Swordsman, Conviction, and so on arcs and you could make whatever additions or cuts you wanted, what stuff would be added or cut?
Thanks for the ask!
Immediate thought: Cut Moonbaby. Change the fetus into some kind of fucked up puppy looking thing which just exists to symbolize Guts' own pathetic inner darkness as a more objective counterpoint to the Beast of Darkness (which is what I think the fetus' original role was before Miura went ham with the baby shit). During the Conviction arc it doesn't save Casca a bunch of times, rather Casca is endangered less often and escapes from the occasional danger in ways that don't require magic.
No werebaby plot, if the Casca kidnapping turns out to be vital in some way and not something easily changeable into something else then Griffith shows up to kidnap her for other made up reasons, like, say, he needs someone with the brand of sacrifice to do some kind of magic thing, or something. If the Casca kidnapping plot turns out to be little more than an excuse to get Guts to Falconia then Guts just goes to Falconia to try to fight Griffith once Casca turns out to not be a good distraction.
Oh and of course there's no ambiguity wrt Griffith's feelings - we see inside his head at the Hill of Swords, he's going 'oh shit my heart's fluttering again,' and that's the last we get of NGriff's point of view. I feel like that would make his subsequent placidity with occasional hints of emotion even more fun.
I'd adapt the Black Swordsman arc very faithfully otherwise, including opening with the demon sex scene because I don't care, I think it's a fantastic opener, it would set that Verhoeven-esque tone I love perfectly. Guts blows her head off with a quip, cut to credits, cut back to Guts' more somber and haunted glance back at the corpse as he walks away, boom, perfect Berserk opening.
Also with the start of the Millenium Falcon arc I'd reframe Farnese as the point of view character and put Guts at a bit more of a mysterious distance, to mimic how his followers see him, and also to kind of underline his emotional ambiguity. I think canonically he's repressing his complicated feelings, and I think making his feelings kind of unknown but hinting that he's not taking Casca to Elfhelm solely for love would convey that complicated feelings vibe more overtly. Plus Griffith parallels. Make the last time we're in Guts' head for a whole arc like, the scene where he assaults Casca (which I would keep, if we're keeping the Eclipse rape) and we'd leave him on a very dark note and also suggest that he may have a strong emotional reaction to his own actions there, without showing exactly what that reaction is beyond hiring a babysitter lol. It would help fix the impression in canon that Guts just doesn't even have much of a reaction to it.
Oh and if we're centering Farnese more then I think she should have a longer arc of reconciling her religious black and white thinking with her new perspective, rather than a single fucking montage lol. This should be a process throughout the whole Millenium Falcon arc, so I guess I'd add some scenes where she still acts like a spoiled brat, maybe it takes her longer to treat Casca with decency and she has a revelation about protecting her that changes her attitude, still treating Serpico like a servant in an obnoxious way, either denying responsibility or being overly consumed by catholic-y guilt at points, etc. The whole point should be watching her slowly grow, not 180ing her personality.
Also Isidro goes home after the troll shit. Old Village Dude shows him the error of his ways. And consequently Puck is fun again.
Anyway yeah I think that's it. This was fun, ty!
If you're interested I've written a long answer to a similar question that includes the Golden Age here.
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There are several scenes in Berserk where I have no idea what Miura's intention was but specifically in vol 12 when caska is healing Griffith's wounds and he tries to sleep with her I guess? I do not understand the reason why he did that. After that Caska is crying and shaking and we are also made to understand that her heart is beating fast. Is it because she is scared or is it something else? The scene that follows confuses me even more, Guts appears and notices that Caska is obviously upset so he asks her and she replies that nothing happened. Guts assumes that it has something to do with Griffith and he's screaming and it looks like he's going to face Griffith about something. Is he worried about Griffith or is he mad because he thinks he did something to Caska?
I've discussed the wagon scene in a lot of depth a few times if you're interested: there’s this, and I go into even more detail partway through this post.
but my short answer is that it's Griffith's reaction to Wyald's devastating attempt to drive him to despair. Wyald points out he's fucked for life, can't live on his own, dependent - so what he's doing in the wagon is essentially offering himself to Casca to tempt her to stay with him because he fears being left to die, and because he views his own worth in terms of what he can do for people, and that's about all he has left that Casca might value. And it fits his pattern of transactional sex.
As for the subsequent scene, I haven’t discussed it much so here’s my take:
Casca's little panic attack afterwards mirrors her heart beating hard when she freezes up in the torture chamber while they're rescuing Griffith. It's a reaction to Griffith's vulnerability, and the new reality that he's no longer the strong person she could once rely on for comfort. She also shakes as she contemplates that fact to herself while bandaging Griffith's hand in the wagon, which is why she spills the soup.
Wagon:
Torture chamber:
Wagon again:
I assume she's also upset because her plans have now changed and she's decided she can't go with Guts and she has to stay with Griffith because he needs her, and she has very mixed feelings about that because she wanted to leave with Guts. I think she also does want to stay with Griffith, like it's not just an obligation here, but it's definitely a difficult, painful decision, and it makes sense that it would make her emotional and sad. She’s essentially about to break up with Guts here.
And to me Guts' reaction strikes me as worry for Griffith. Casca was just with him, now Casca is out crying against the side of the wagon, and Griffith is, well, in the state he's in. If I were Guts I'd be wondering if he somehow managed to kill himself, or died of his gaping wounds (despite the manga minimizing the lethal harm that would cause lol), or went catatonic or something.
Honestly I'm a little curious what the original Japanese lines there are actually, because "Did something happen with Griffith?" and "No, that's not it!" does sound like there's a silent assumption happening but I'm not sure what it could be lol. Even if you believe that Griffith tried to rape Casca like a lot of fans do it's nonsensical to expect Guts to leap to that conclusion. Like honestly the way Guts shakes Casca when asking what happened and then starts storming away
gives me the impression that he's concerned about Griffith and he's on the verge of blaming Casca for something because she was supposed to be taking care of him.
I could almost buy Guts wondering if something sexual happened, given his jealousy earlier during the rescue and the general weirdness between them with Griffith back in the picture, but I just don’t see how Guts would leap there from nothing but seeing Casca crying. Unless he thinks Casca put the moves on Griffith and Griffith turned her down lol.
So yeah, it just seems like the most straightforward explanation is that Guts is worried that something happened to Griffith while Casca was supposed to be taking care of him.
Thanks for the ask!
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How would you write an AU where Casca still retains her sanity after the Eclipse r*pe?
I feel like in that scenario you'd kind of have to give her a dual protagonist role at the very least. Like if I could write anything I just wouldn't have her dramatically raped and she could die or live and remain a secondary character, but if you're going to make the focal point of the climax of an arc her dramatic rape, well, now a big chunk of the story ought to be about her in the aftermath in order to even come close to justifying it.
Ugh though the big problem is that Casca's reaction should also be rage and lashing out imo, but Guts already has the market on that cornered, and unless we're changing like 80% of his characterization lol it'll just feel redundant.
So idk, I guess Casca could get the more mature personal healing arc where she makes new friends and does things that fulfill her and help her grow and come to terms with her trauma (becoming a hero or something, whatever), while Guts acts out on her behalf and ends up looking even more dysfunctional by comparison, essentially making them foils of each other. Not my preferred gendered dynamics at work, but it's hard to work around Guts' whole character there lol, and it could still be fun and interesting depending on how it's done.
Or, come to think of it, maybe you could even have a short arc where they're both v strict parallels who lash out in anger and go on apostle hunting sprees (say Casca gets a magic weapon or something, whatever), and then they start developing in opposite directions as Casca matures and Guts does not. I wouldn't really suggest Guts growing past his anger while Casca does not because that would require Guts moving on from Griffith and losing the homoeroticism, which is a sacrifice I'm unwilling to make, even if the trade off is Casca being a fucked up mess lol.
Ooh wait to get more specific - say Guts has the behelit and Casca gets the armour, and her arc is learning to control it by reaching a place of yk, emotional well-being where anger stops being a temptation, while Guts' arc ends with becoming an apostle a la the ghosts taunting him with the prospect of becoming like Griffith in chapter 118. I do feel that in an AU with no Millenium Falcon arc for Guts, him eventually using a behelit to become an apostle much like Zodd could be a fitting tragic end. He'd need a whole arc to establish despair and a sacrifice (could be Griff though) but yk, I feel like it's telegraphed at the end of the Black Swordsman arc so it's not inherently ooc, it's just not the direction Miura ended up taking. But in an AU it could work.
SO yeah, I guess I'd say give them the twin protagonist treatment where their respective responses to the trauma act as foils to highlight healthy/unhealthy ways of coping.
Thanks for the ask!
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Guts attempting to, you know, Casca felt unnecessary, especially because female characters (Casca included) are subjected to this way too often and it feels out of character for Guts to do that.
yeah ia
My biggest problem with Guts sexually assaulting Casca, I think, is that I do kind of think that within the context of the Eclipse rape happening it's necessary. The point is to show that Guts is succumbing to his own inner darkness and it's not any better than Femto or the other monsters Guts fights. And I do think Miura needed to show that.
The problem comes back to the Eclipse rape lol. Maybe you can argue that it makes sense that Griffith's inner darkness is expressed through sexual violence when he turns into a monster, or maybe you see it as pure lazy, gratuitous shorthand for evil (we all know which side I fall under, but tbf I do think you can read depth into it if you try).
But regardless, Guts' parallel assault of Casca is 100% gratuitous and unjustified, characterization-wise.
Like I complain a lot about how Miura defaults to rape to illustrate humanity's evil blah blah blah, and that's true in the case of boring one dimensional enemies like trolls and bandits, but honestly one thing I do like about Berserk is that inner darknesses are actually expressed in a lot of different thematically-relevant ways.
Snake man ate people and was a dick nobleman who exemplified treating people as commodities. Slug was obsessed with killing heretics out of revenge and obsession with the circumstancs of his sacrifice and probably fear of his daughter's corruption and potentially self-hatred as well. Zodd roams battlefields looking for someone strong enough to fight him. Wyald's a rapey dick who likes to have a good time, but also a strong illustration of the power of fear. Rosine's narrative had some cruelty of childhood innocence elements as well as just wanting an escape to a paradise. Eggman was lonely and isolated and othered and turned others into monsters like him because of it. Mozgus is obsessd with righteousness. etc etc etc.
Griffith's inner darkness, pre-Femto, was illustrated in his willingness to do anything to achieve his dream, self-harm, happiness when a kid gets killed, smiling and pretending to be invulnerable, talking himself into risking Guts' life during the second duel, downplaying the emotional toll the Hawks' deaths take, repressing his feelings w/ Charlotte, etc.
Guts' inner darkness is illustrated in his willingness to do anything to kill a monster, self-harm, using fighting as a way to repress his feelings, torturing enemies, downplaying the emotional toll the deaths of children take on him, telling a kid to kill herself, etc.
Until suddenly out of nowhere his evil jimminy cricket is telling him to rape and kill Casca, and he loses his shit and almost does.
Getting possessed and strangling Casca, now that made perfect sense for Guts. I could easily see him physically harming her, lashing out and nearly killing her in a bloodlust, all that. But Guts' inner darkness had nothing to do with sex before this, except mmmmmaybe, arguably, in the same way it did with Griffith, ie emotional repression ("don't think about those things, all you need right now is to feel alive,") and even then emotional repression has nothing to do with the sexual assault scene in question.
Not only that, but Guts doesn't even get a reaction lol. He had a flashback and emotional breakdown after consensually fucking Casca, but sexually assaulting her warrants nothing, apparently. Like if you need just one thing to point to to show that it's gratuitous as hell, there you go.
The only reason Guts tried to rape her is because Femto did - spelled out directly in black and white text on the page even - so once again something that objectively sucks as a writing choice in Berserk is all because of the Eclipse rape lol, and could've been a whole lot better if Femto did something other than rape Casca to prove what a bad dude he is.
(Actually the one thing that makes Guts assaulting Casca make some semblance of sense is if you assume Guts is redirecting his desire to fuck Griffith at her, because of the aforementioned emotional repression context, because of like, everything about how the beast of darkness frames it as a way to get closer and closer to Griffith lol, and because of Casca's role as a weird intermediary between them. Still sucks if it happens to be a deliberate writing choice though because a) you can't hinge something as huge for a character as committing sexual assault on gay subtext and b) you also definitely should not. Plus the way it’s portrayed is still completely ooc for Guts.)
#i intended to just write 'yeah ia' but then i wanted to talk a lot more about it i guess lol#so thanks for the opportunity#anon#ask#a#b#theme: misogyny#scene: beast assault#theme: inner monster#theme: heteronormativity#theme: critique#character: guts#scene: eclipse rape
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I wanted to touch on the whole gutsca thing with someone (I know zero people in this fandom so you're my lucky pick!). Am I alone in feeling like their first time together came out of no where? My meta with Guts is that he was not at all comfortable with sex at that time of his life (this instance being his first time [outside of the rape he experienced as a child]). His choice of words too, "here I go", translated to me like someone only doing what they felt was expected of them rather than something he was yearning for. He clearly wasn't even ready given how rough he was and how he regressed and attacked her. This moment seemed very forced and almost rang to me like Kentaro's declaration of "no homo though". I would be curious to know how Kentaro felt about homosexuality (bisexuality, etc) and if he ever addressed the ever blatant gay tension and romantic-non-platonic-love blossoming between Guts and Griffith pre-eclipse. I do get the sense that this may be a case of severe queer baiting or perhaps a PSA against gay love altogether ("falling for a man will literally destroy you and send you and everyone you love to hell" type of message); but I'm a very jaded person so I hope to be proven wrong. Sigh, my point being Gutsca seems pretty dang forced and empty of true development. I buy them more as besties than anything romantic. Especially since both he and Casca are actually in love with Griffith (what a fucking triangle!). Does anyone in fandom have any opinions on the sad possibility of this whole beautiful and ultimately tragic love between Griffith and Guts actually being a fucked up anti-gay PSA? Are there any interviews with Kentaro shooting this theory down so I can stop being sad and bitter about it? What are your thoughts?
Thanks for sending this, I'm definitely down to talk about it! I hope you connect with more people in the fandom but don’t worry about sending random asks even if you do lol.
Anyway you’re definitely not alone. I have a lot of thoughts on Guts and Casca's hook up, and they're all pretty much "it feels really forced and not particularly romantic but I think you can argue that that's deliberate" lol. For instance I discuss in a lot of detail here how various aspects of the scene indicate that Guts and Casca having sex is shown to be a case of both of them rebounding from Griffith and sort of giving to each other what they were unable or failed to give to him.
And I talk a lot about how Judeau essentially orchestrates it all and what that suggests about Guts and Casca's relationship here.
And lol sorry for all the links but also this post is about how their relationship feels one-sided to an extent and is used to illuminate a lot of Guts' flaws, using Judeau as a comparison point.
Oh shit and also one more lol, here's a comparison between the sex scene and Griffith's with Charlotte that suggests that both start as ways for the dudes to repress their feelings.
(Don't feel obligated to read all those posts if you don't want, you should get the gist of what I'm saying w/ those descriptions.)
But yeah basically I do think that Guts and Casca getting together felt forced and awkward. At best it might be intended to be seen that way, as two friends hooking up awkwardly in an emotionally intense moment but probably doomed to failure because neither of them are ready for a relationship with the other, or particularly interested in one deep down, once they finished "licking wounds." At worst it’s just bad writing lol. But again like I think there are good arguments for the former.
I also totally agree that their relationship has a strong vibe of doing what's expected. Like for real, at least to me both Guts and Casca read so easily as gay and repressed lol. Casca talks about her feelings for Griffith in terms of “he was a boy she was a girl can I make it any more obvious”
and I can’t help but see it as Casca like, wow I have strong feelings towards Griffith, he’s a man and I’m a woman, so clearly these feelings must be romantic, there’s no other option. Then when she has sex with Guts she keeps contextualizing it essentially as repayment for Guts saving her, like she owes him. “I too want a wound I can say you gave me.” “Not just being given to... maybe I can give something as well.” Which just doesn’t make her desire for him look all that genuine lol.
And then you have Guts. The way he tells Casca that from the start only her touch was okay with him after he has sex with her, referencing the scene when he wakes up with her on top of him and starts to panic before realizing she’s a woman, is soooo suggestive of repression to me. Like, first off because it’s incorrect, he was also okay with Griffith going in for a face-grab after winning a duel Guts had been projecting his rape trauma all over, which seems like a pretty conspicuous omission. And secondly because the reason he was okay with Casca’s touch specifically is solely because she’s a woman, not because she’s special or because they have a magic romantic connection - it’s because she’s not a man. To me that just screams that Guts was open to sex with Casca because she’s the only woman he knows, and he’s afraid of the idea of physical intimacy with men, regardless of what he might actually want deep down.
So yeah that’s basically how I feel about Guts and Casca’s relationship, strong agree with you.
When it comes to Miura’s intent, I can tell you that Miura was asked about the subtext in an interview once, back in 2000, and he responded with something along the lines of ‘two men can have passionate feelings for each other without it being romantic.’ The interview is here, but this is a paraphrase the translator mentioned in the comments.
Other than that I’ve never seen him address it directly, but on the flipside he has cited several textually gay stories as inspiration (off the top of my head: Kaze to Ki no Uta, Devilman, Guin Saga, mangaka Moto Hagio in general), and he has straightforwardly said that the (magical intersex) central character of his other work, Duranki, was intended to have romances with both male and female love interests. Also people tell me there are strong griffguts vibes with the main, presumably canon or intended-to-be-canon ship there. So there’s that lol.
As for the no homo aspect and the potential homophobia in the griffguts subtext... I can’t deny I’ve also considered the idea that it’s a deliberate anti-gay PSA (though I haven’t seen anyone else address the idea as far as I remember, and I’ve only briefly mentioned it offhandedly). Like, Guts and Griffith’s relationship turns bad because they’re both too invested in each other, maybe the barely-subtextual desire is meant to look like a sinister twisting of pure platonic feelings that ruins everything, if Griffith hadn’t loved him the Eclipse never would have happened, etc.
But honestly I don’t think that reading holds up compared to a much more positive reading of their feelings, in which it’s their failure to understand them and act on them, thanks largely to formative childhood trauma and self-hatred, that leads to tragedy.
I don’t know what Miura intended, and there certainly are aspects of the story that are homophobic regardless of his intent, even if my best-faith reading is entirely correct, like the only textual gay attraction being pedophiles and over the top heretic orgies lol, or yk, Guts and Griffith both assaulting the same woman while looking at/thinking about the other in a very sexually charged way.
But the reading of their relationship where it’s positive and good for both of them, even including sexual desire, and only gets fucked up because they both incorrectly think their feelings are unrequited is legitimately so weirdly strong, much stronger than a reading where the sexual nature of their feelings is what fucks everything up, so I’m pretty happy just rolling with that take.
And as much as Casca can be seen and may very well be intended as a no homo, it’s also very easy for me to read her relationships with both as less of a hopeful opportunity for positive heterosexual romance and more of a “here’s how repressing your feelings thru attempts at heterosexuality fucks you up” PSA lol. Griffith and Charlotte too, for that matter. It’s definitely a stretch to think that’s intended, but whether it’s intended or not it’s an easy sell for me and I’m fine with not really worrying too much about possible authorial intent there.
Finally, I also want to link this post that goes pretty thoroughly into why I interpret griffguts as very positive rather than as a cautionary tale or predatory gay lust etc
And also have this shorter post about Femto on the same subject too, why not
Oh and maybe this thing where I split hairs about Guts’ lust for Griffith and desire for revenge to make a point that the homoeroticism isn’t necessarily being equated with violence by the narrative lol
#ask#a#b#anonymous#theme: repression#theme: homoeroticism#interviews#ship: griffguts#ship: gtsca#theme: homophobia#theme: heteronormativity
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Do you think there is anything Griffith could do at this point to stop Guts from his revenge quest? It's highly unlikely that it would happen in the context of the story, but I'm just curious if there could be another way. Would Guts be capable to forget Griffith at this point?
lol ngl I legit think that NGriff showing up and just saying “Hey so turns out I actually failed my feelings test on the Hill of Swords, I’m still in love with you after all, wanna join the Hawks again?” would do it. Guts would spend 2 seconds wondering if he’s fucking with his head and then Griffith would Look at him and Guts would be like, “yeah.”
Or yk, just “I realized I still want you, Guts.” boom, friendship ended with revenge, now Griffith is my best friend again.
I actually completely think that Guts’ revenge campaign was like, half-assed at best, not something he’s ever been genuinely committed to, and pretty much just a way to get Griffith’s attention again. I have some posts that get into that point further, but basically it’s in the way Guts can’t finish his “when I see him again I’ll-” thought most of the time, it’s in how he still sees Femto/NGriff as a True Light, it’s in how he forgets his urge to kill, it’s in how the moments that really upset Guts post-Eclipse are when he sees Femto and NGriff again and they say “lol idc about you anymore,” how Guts fucking moped about Griffith abandoning him after the Hill of Swords, like, this is not a dude who is actually committed to killing this guy.
Like Guts is not ideologically or morally opposed to NGriff. He doesn’t care about Falconia or Fantasia, he’s not out to protect people from evil overlord Griffith or w/e lol. And he’s not even avenging Casca and the rest of the Hawks - he tells himself he is, but in chapter 130 he pretty much admits to himself that he’s just lashing out.
Guts wants 2 things in his life: to kill shit when he’s mad and for Griffith to look at him, and his revenge campaign was his attempt to get both.
SO BASICALLY YEAH I think Griffith admitting Guts still has his attention would completely derail the revenge thing.
I mean to be perfectly fair I think to make it work in fic or something Guts would still have like, a lot of inner conflict lol. You could make a p good argument that the “get Griffith’s positive attention” ship has sailed thanks to the eclipse rape as well as NGriff saying he has no regrets (tho considering how easily Miura ignores it when it comes to eg the aforementioned Guts moping when NGriff takes off it’s also easy to argue the opposite imo), and now the only attention Guts wants is for Griff to look into his eyes as Guts stabs him or w/e. Personally if I was writing this scenario I’d take an extra step and make Guts go beast of darkness and do something unforgiveable like murder Isidro before this happens so he can go “fuck it I’m a monster too now we might as well be monsters together.” Just because I think it would be easier to justify as in character lol. Miura seems to ignore the eclipse rape half the time while writing the post-eclipse story but fandom doesn’t really so, yeah.
But yeah idk it’s not a hard sell for me that if Griffith admitted he’s still hung up on Guts then Guts’ urge to kill him would disappear, never to be seen again.
BUT ALL THAT SAID re: that last bit, no I don’t think Guts could actually get over Griffith and forget him. My answer so far is only shifting Guts’ obsession back to wanting to be Griffith’s bff/fuck him, because I don’t think there’s a single thing Griffith could do to make Guts like, lose interest in him and move on.
He’s been obsessing over a single glance across a vast plain since he got on the boat. Maybe if he’d never laid eyes on him again after Griffith’s “I am over you, and that, my friend, is what they call closure” moment on the Hill of Swords he’d have had a tiny chance of moving on eventually, but imo Griffith looking at him intently is a one hit KO for Guts’ chances of getting over him. Like idk maybe if he encountered Griffith one more time only for Griffith to reiterate being totally over him for real and then they never saw each other again and also Casca ran away with Farnese and he never saw her again either eventually Guts would fuck Serpico and start to move on? But even then he’d still know Griffith is out there in the world doing stuff ~where his sword can reach~ and he’d probably hear about him occasionally since he’s now ruler of remaining civilization so...
Mmmaybe if NGriff went back to being Femto on the astral plane out of sight and out of mind and inhuman and unreachable? Or if he, like, died and Guts could maybe finally start to mourn the human version of him since he’s fully gone now? Even then it would take years and years and a lot of positive influences around him imo, and I still wouldn’t bet on Guts moving on lol, he’d be more likely to go back to aimlessly fighting monsters to cope with his feelings til something killed him.
#ty for the ask! it's an interesting question#ask#b#a#character: guts#theme: revenge#theme: true light#Anonymous#ship: griffguts#headcanons#character thoughts
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Do you have any idea why Gennon felt "burned" by Griffith after their one night together. Is it just that this ~transcendent experience with Griff had seared itself into his mind and that the absence of him made him become obsessed with capturing that again? I mean, was Griffith really that good in bed? Or do you think Griff left on bad terms and that made Gennon decide "fuck it, I'm going to have to kidnap him" instead?
I have probably a more pretentious answer to this than you were expecting lol
imo it’s an instance of this obsession people in Berserk have with Griffith, that they get because they don’t see him as fully real and human but rather see him as an idealized symbol of something.
For a character-based reason, I mean I guess you could probably boil it down to Griffith being really really good at projecting a certain image that people want to cling to. He projects this image of a perfect infallible leader, which makes some people want to follow him and some people want to do anything to be his friend and some people want to, idk, conquer him or drag him down I guess I’ll say, which is sometimes sexual and sometimes not (eg Gennon, Julius). it wasn’t anything that happened that night that we didn’t get to see, it’s just how Griffith is.
He’s “the desired.” And speaking of that NGriff description, I don’t think that there’s a metaphysical magical reason for human Griffith to attract this kind of attention, I think he’s just got a certain type of charisma that really hooks people. NeoGriffith is a magical enhanced version of this ordinary human trait, partially existing as a meta commentary on that trait - yk, what it means to repress your emotions so hard to embody an appealing image for people - but human Griffith is just human.
And uh bear with me but I have more to say about it beyond your question so.
I also think Gennon’s obsession with capturing Griffith is particularly a parallel to Guts’ obsession with wanting to be Griffith’s equal - both become relevant in the story at around the same time, both are a result of viewing Griffith as an ideal to attain, that idealization is kind of illustrated similarly
there’s a great little moment that hints at Guts’ obsession being comparable but much more devastating
also, kind of a stretch but:
The point of this comparison isn’t to demonize Guts or compare his actions to rape or anything but just to show that Guts’ idealized image of Griffith post-Promrose speech is a very negative thing.
And like, for the record Charlotte also gets some parallels to Gennon
and there’s the torturer, and then NeoGriff’s got a hoard of monsters lusting after him, and even most of the Hawks. It’s more that Gennon shows one possible and very negative endpoint of idealizing someone and stripping them of their humanity, and there are echoes of this in Griffith’s other relationships because it’s kind of Griffith’s thing, and Guts’ Big Mistake.
And in general there is an overarching theme in Berserk of the dangers of putting people on a pedestal, and seeing them as like... a symbol of something meaningful to you. It’s most pronounced with Griffith’s storyline since his whole thing is becoming a messiah figure in some very dark ways, but you also see it with the King’s relationship to Charlotte and how he sees her as his “warmth,” and Guts’ relationship to regressed Casca as his last “feeble flame,” and potentially the whole people as torches in the dark thing in the Conviction arc.
Like arguably that’s the major distinction you can make between positive and negative relationships in Berserk - which are based on a real connection and which are based on an idealized image? And some relationships shift from one to the other, like Guts and Griffith’s shifting after Promrose Hall (and back again briefly in like chapter 71), and Guts and Casca’s shifting after the Eclipse.
Anyway yeah that’s my answer lol, it’s all about the themes dude. Gennon’s obsessed with Griffith partly because Griffith inspires that kind of obsession in most people he meets, and partly because it’s a good, dark, illustrative parallel.
#Anonymous#ask#character: griffith#theme: guts leaving#theme: details#theme: parallels#a#b#theme: kid's toy
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