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berserk 🩸

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love their similar smiles<3

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🌸🪱🪽

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I read the eclipse 🥲 drawing this was therapy. Imma have to draw Casca too cause I love her

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Sorry for the dumb ask, but in your opinion, will guts take griffith somewhere else to live without the hawks or stay in the band and form some kind of raider group if the eclipse had not happened? I think I've seen many fics where guts leave with griffith and I don't quite get the reason why this is such a popular idea(not that I don't like it, I just don't really understand why). Didn't he state something like the band is where he truly belonged to and that leaving the band was a mistake? And frankly it must be pretty difficult for guts to take care of someone severely disabled by himself.

I don't read a whole lot of fic myself so I don't really know what the popular tropes are for this subgenre of griffguts, but in fairness to anyone writing fic where Guts and Griffith live by themselves, it does largely fit as a continuation of the final couple chapters before the Eclipse, at least emotionally.

Like, the Band is breaking up, so even though Guts wants to stay with the Hawks that's not really an option unless something convinces them to stay together under new leadership. Casca doesn't want to lead, and maybe Guts would step up - but the Hawks don't necessarily trust him anymore since he left. Plus idk if he's great leader material anyway lol.

One possibility is that he can take the Raiders specifically and either start a new mercenary band, or join up with someone else's, since they're all enthusiastic about staying with Guts. I could definitely see that working if a writer wanted to go that direction, but it wouldn't be the easiest thing to be a mercenary and take care of Griffith.

To be fair, Gambino's band had women with them and Gambino was provided for after he lost his leg, so it's definitely not impossible to have a contingent of non-combatants and ensure that Griffith is taken care of (Judeau also suggested a band of thieves could manage as well) but it is a logistical issue for both the characters and the fic writer. Plus you can make the watsonian argument that Midland's king never stops pursuing Griffith and a mercenary band with a notably super powerful mercenary, tortured hanger-on, and/or Black female mercenary, would be something he'd have people looking for, so they'd have to lie low.

And just emotionally, I think Guts leaving all the Hawks and starting a new life with Griffith does fit the melancholy end of an era vibe of those chapters better than a sort of Hawks 2.0.

But you make a good point too that it'd be hard to take care of Griffith by himself in like, a random village somewhere, even if Guts could get work as a guard or something. It seems unlikely that Griffith could manage without round the clock care, and Guts doesn't really have a skill he can use to work from home. It's possible he could make enough money to hire someone to help out... but honestly it's a little hard for me to imagine Guts entrusting Griffith's care to a stranger lol.

Actually maybe one possibility is that Guts goes back to Godo's place with Griffith, and learns blacksmithing. That actually does seem like it'd be an ideal place to hide from Midland for a while and have some trusted people to help care for Griffith, and he could pretty easily make a living while taking care of Griffith that way. Idk if anyone's written that, but hey, free idea if anyone wants it.

So yeah, idk, there are some logistics to sort through any way you slice it. Ultimately I think it does make sense from a fic writer's perspective to just have them living together somewhere so the writer can focus on their relationship instead of Guts' work as a mercenary and their position within a mercenary band, and other Hawks or OCs, etc. It might not be the most perfectly logical scenario, but if it serves the purpose of the fic by letting the story revolve around griffguts without other distractions, then that's the most important thing. But it would be cool to see other possibilities explored too.

Thanks for the ask!

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And they say romance is dead

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Thank you so much for your answer woah! I loved it , I wasn't expecting it to be so thorough!!!

What would you think the opposite would be, then? If Guts had realized his feelings sooner (honestly tho... i dont wven think he has now haha) , would anything have changed? I think maybe he still would have gone his way, maybe with more conviction or even wishing to protect griffith from himself? I don't believe his self worth would have been helped by this very much. Maybe if he knew he was also wanted back, or if he didn't overhear THE speech...

I don't know. I'm struggling way more to come up with something on his side that isn't just the pure frustrating angst of him closing off and avoiding the thought

Thanks, lol I have a tendency to be long winded sometimes so I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!

Yeah it's hard to imagine Guts accepting his feelings if he realized them like, at any point, without knowing they were reciprocated. Even without the Promrose Hall speech, I feel like there's no way those feelings wouldn't contribute to his own self-loathing. We've already seen him think of himself as a monster after killing Adonis, and honestly monsters as a whole are contextualized through Guts' point of view as parallels to Donovan, and his concussed vision after killing Adonis was especially reminiscent of his Donovan nightmare.

So basically it's hard for me to imagine Guts not having a lot of internalized homophobia to work through because of his csa trauma.

And again like, I think things could work out if he discovered his feelings at the same time as learning Griffith reciprocated - say an impulsive kiss that Griffith returns - but if he's left alone in his head to ruminate about it I just can't really see that going anywhere good.

Maybe it could've changed things, though? Like say he figures out he has a crush sometime before the assassinations and Promrose Hall, and starts avoiding Griffith, and gets closed off and surly and maybe more impulsively self-destructive in battle, and Griffith confronts him and it all comes out? (Of course, then you're dealing with whatever Griffith's reaction to that would be, and it might not necessarily be positive lol... but yk, it could be!) Or maybe Casca confronts him and it comes out, like a role reversed version of their conversation in the cave, and Casca is... maybe not supportive lol, but begrudgingly sympathetic, and that helps? Or maybe she angrily tells Guts that Griffith absolutely feels the same way, and starts finally moving on lol.

Idk, I'm not super creative, I tend to be a little reductionist and strict in how I see the characters. So I'm not necessarily saying it would be automatically OOC for Guts not to have internalized homophobia, especially since in the manga it's all iffy subtext. But just based on how I tend to see the characters, yeah I imagine Guts being pretty miserable about it.

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GUTS vs. FEMTO

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and the blade goes snicker snack-!

(that moomin comic, you know the one)

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griffith

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Sorry if you've already answered something like this before, but do you have any thoughts on how Charlotte’s story might end? That blind ‘love’ of hers doesn’t seem to be leading anywhere good. I really liked Charlotte in GA but ever since she reunited with NeoGriffith, it feels like she’s living in some blissed-out drug trip, not even questioning how he suddenly got his tendons and tongue back. Like… what’s even going on with her? Thanks

Charlotte is hard for me to speculate on because I don't feel like Miura really imbued her with much personality lol. She has two traits: afraid(/shy) and in love with Griffith. Sometimes she overcomes her fear because of her love of Griffith. That's really about it. Honestly, Anna is a more compelling, multi-faceted character to me lmao.

That said, I don't really agree with your take on her in the Millenium Falcon arc. I don't think it's like, a flaw with either the story or her character that we don't get to see a scene where she asks Griffith what the deal is. It's pretty easy to infer that they probably talked about the fact that he's healed and has magical powers now off-screen.

There are ways seeing that conversation could potentially shed light on their relationship, but only if Miura wanted to use a conversation like that to introduce something new or surprising to it. Since Miura didn't introduce anything new, then it makes sense to assume that Charlotte thinks Griffith is the divinely touched religious figure everyone else does. To me she doesn't seem particularly blind or ignorant or spaced out, she just accepts the whole messiah thing like most of Midland.

But yeah, while I don't think it's contradictory or strange, it's also not that interesting lol.

I doubt Miura had any plans to make Charlotte more complex or interesting either, so idk. Best case scenario I think is she continues maturing as time passes and she comes into her own as a ruler and if Griffith is killed then she mourns but continues ruling without him. But if I was gonna place a bet lol I'd guess that she dies near the climax trying to help Griffith, or something like that.

It's possible that she learns something that makes her realize she's in a sham marriage. Maybe she learns about the Eclipse, or, probably more relevant to her lol, that he killed multiple members of her family, or that he doesn't love her and is only using her to achieve his dream. But I don't really know what that would look like, because again, we know nothing about Charlotte except that she's timid and in love with Griffith. It's not the kind of emotional drama we've spent any time building up, so I don't know if it would be like, effectively compelling.

Anyway yeah, thanks for the ask!

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The Godhand's specification that the thing you sacrifice to join them must be as dear to you as a part of your own soul indicates, even to my only basic knowledge of the story, that every single Hawk being given the brand of sacrifice means they were all as dear to him as a part of his soul.