#this is the gayest fucking shit i've written here so far

[schleckermaul]

( 🍭 five senses ) 👂🫱👃! ovo — @archaictold

my muse describes the way your muse sounds!

   ' ZHILAN SOUNDS LIKE AN INSCRIPTION. that's a bit cliché ... it's the first thing that came to mind. maybe because i've spent so many hours listening to him write already. ' break thinks, ponders, swinging his legs. ' there were archives in pandora headquarters ... files on illegal contractors, contracts with chains, those types of things. i didn't do a lot of paperwork myself, ' accompanied by a small smile, ' but i was down there a lot. you'd often find agents scribbling down copies of a file they needed. '

   ' that's what zhilan sounds like. a basement filled with paper and ink, the air dusty with knowledge. a single candle to light what you're writing. a steady and calm flame ... slow. solitary, but not lonely. he thinks about what he says before he says it. sometimes he'll miss a letter, or forget a word, because his mind already skipped past it, and he'll fix the mistake, cut a piece of paper, glue it over. start again. '

   ' there's no lies in his writing. when he gets embarrassed, you can tell from his stutter. when he's happy, you can hear his smile ... it's expressive, eloquent. '

my muse describes the way your muse feels!

   ' ah, that's. ' break pauses. for a long moment. he hadn't seen shelly's face when they'd met her memory, but he'd heard her voice, felt the gentleness of her touch. and it's not that zhilan feels like that, but with a fresh reminder of his promise, his purpose ...

   ' he's very. he's ... maybe he's a continuation. ' scratching just underneath his right eye, he smiles nervously the second after. ' i already ... i thought i'd found my conclusion. for a long time. even before i died. because i knew i was going to die. it's wishful thinking. i'm not ... i know myself. when he's— zhilan feels like there's still things to be done. ' even if that's just a trip to the theatre, or visiting that starry trail together. even if it's picking out groceries, something break's never had to do in his entire life. ' he feels new, sometimes, but also ... like he's been here a long time. like the story was waiting for him to be introduced. '

   ' i don't think the core reaches me here ... i'm far from home. i've left the page. zhilan is a scholar— maybe he could write more. '

my muse describes the way your muse smells!

   ' ink would be the easy answer, no? or paper. i don't think that's it, though ... maybe it's because the methods of writing have changed. he does smell like ink, sometimes, but that's the stains on the edges of his sleeves. ' break can tell as much when zhilan brushes his hair into place, but he's not gonna mention that.

   ' it's more ... mh, in the mornings, he smells like the paint he applies ... i think right here, ' tracing around his own eye, ' it's not something i'm familiar with. it's almost earthy. often, he'll smell like summer air. like your clothing would, after you've spent a day in the sun, with no clouds in the sky. other times, he smells like the warm earth after a summer shower. warm ... is a good word, i think. '

[bthump]

hello! you are very welcome to ignore this (lol) but i've fallen into a bit of a hole regarding berserk (a manga i have never read) and have spent the last 2 or so days reading all of your meta on griffith (which is very good and compelling!) i'm sending this ask because while i've been able to piece together the plot enough to read your meta, i come up quite short wrt understanding the moonlight boy situation. would you be able to expand on that, and how he relates to griffith?if so thank you!!

also (sorry this is the same person asking about the moonlight baby again) is the moonlight baby separate from the fetus? i've been thinking of them as one entity which maybe is why i've been confused...?

No problem! Thanks for checking out my meta even though you haven't read it and welcome to the hell hole that is Berserk lol. Btw if you don't want to read the manga for whatever reason, which is totally fair lol, you could check out the 90s anime which covers the best and gayest arc pretty accurately, with a little less (though not none) sexual violence, and less graphic rape + sex when it's still there. Though no worries if you're not interested.

So wrt the moonlight boy, basically, ok. I'll take you through the relevant events to its existence step by step lol, it's kind of ridiculous and hard to explain.

So Casca and Guts fuck, then Femto rapes her during the Eclipse. Turns out that Casca was pregnant from fucking Guts and Femto like, corrupted the 4 day old zygote cells with his demon jizz and turned it into a demon fetus. Casca promptly miscarried it and between the Eclipse and Griffith's rebirth it's been zooming around, using magic to save Casca and occasionally haunting Guts during the Black Swordsman arc.

(Sidenote, Miura wrote the Black Swordsman arc before thinking of any of this, so back then it wasn't written as a demon fetus but as a pathetic looking demonic reminder of Guts' own weakness and inner darkness, imo. Not super relevant, but it if you read it eventually the Black Swordsman arc make more sense if you keep that in mind.)

Anyway, now comes Griffith's rebirth. There's a whole lot of weird shit going on here, but the basics are that there's an apostle that looks like a big walking behelit, and he made a sacrifice for "a wish" which is granted when he brings NGriff into the world. He does this by casually eating the fetus as he happens to walk by it, which then grows into NGriff and hatches from the egg-shaped apostle.

So now NGriff exists and was formed out of that demon fetus flesh. He goes to see Guts on the Hill of Swords to test to see whether he still has emotions, and uh oh his heart has started bthumping while watching Guts fight Zodd. He dismisses that as lingering feelings caused by the demon fetus he incorporated into his body.

Then Casca is endangered by falling rocks and Griffith saves her life suddenly, and then flies away on Zodd and contemplates that, connecting it to the fetus in his mind. Personally I interpret this as the fetus affecting Griffith when he saves Casca, but not making his heart flutter at the sight of Guts.

Guts takes Casca to go on a journey to Elfhelm and meets his rpg group along the way and now on full moons they keep seeing a mysterious kid who Casca is drawn to, and who disappears by morning. This is moonlight boy. At one point Schierke speculates that it's Danann the Elf King taking the form of a child to check up on them and help guide them. There are also strong hints that it's Guts and Casca's kid, so that was always an easy assumption to make.

The most common take in fandom as far as I could tell was that it was the soul of the demon fetus escaping Griffith during the full moon to hang out with Casca, because the full moon gives magic users an extra burst of power.

Plot happens, yadda yadda yadda, not too long ago we got a chapter that is somewhat indicative of NGriff physically transforming into moonlight boy lol, though still vague enough to keep me hoping that that wasn't going to be the case.

Finally here we are, with this final chapter werebaby Griffith is confirmed. The amount of Griffith's feelings that are the fetus' feelings vs his own is unconfirmed, but the final page is strongly suggestive of Griffith's real feelings.

SO! tl;dr, Moonlight Boy IS the fetus, and every full moon Griffith transforms into it and goes to hang out with Guts and Casca, and the vague dream-like memories of this make him cry when he demorphs and wakes up.

I'm sorry you couldn't just enjoy Berserk meta without learning about this lol.