I'm-high-on-Bree's-Root

[imhighoncrack]

hii, a few infos about me. i'm highoncrack, italian, and i was born in 2011. i'm (obviously) a minor and still in school. i love reading and listening to music, and i'm also studying bass. i've done karate since i was six and i'm a brown belt. i speak italian (as it is, of course, my native language), a pretty good english (B1 level). my french though is ass

[awanqi]

I worked on a limited press run of The Poppy War series by R.F. Kuang, published by Subterranean Press. Featured here are the cover art and interior illustrations for The Poppy War.

I also did work for book 2, The Dragon Republic, and book 3, The Burning God! Those will be posted soon!

Sketches and other BTS content of my art are available on my Patreon!

[doorp]

maomao is not the bisexual representation the people asked for and honestly she is not the bisexual representation the people needed, I really dont know what that thing is but no one living or dead has the power to stop her. She showed the emperors concubines elicit porn. She met a woman with tits so huge that she completely ignored everything the woman was saying for a full minute to stare at them silently. She put her androgynous boytoy in a dress and made him dance. Grabbed his dong and called it a decent sized frog. And she did all of this while practicing medicine illegally. Feminism wins

[definitelynotmarch]

shin: *goes about how she's a more suitable concubine than lihua* maomao: yeah, no. not with those tits.

[boooklover]

“You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.”

Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

[mourningfictionalcharacters]

i got so hype about rereading the ember quartet only to remember that i have to deal with keenan’s bitch ass for nearly two books 😔

[caramelmiacchiato]

liking something that has no fandom

[wallywallywallyworld]

The people who say "Casca is not a character she's fridged for the sake of the plot" never engage with the VOLUME OF CHAPTERS of HER mindscape nor any of her character after her awakening. Casca experienced shell shock, which is more common in men. They become non verbal and child like and it last for years. The recovery process is gradual. Some people never recover. Casca is NOT that case. And its irritating when we have seen this covered in the manga but she's being stripped of her humanity and only described as tropes to delegitimize her character, her very human traits and personality.

Casca is no longer mentally regressed but still has lingering PTSD, but why wouldn't she? So does Guts and no one says his character is destroyed or ruined. After going to Hell and getting betrayed by the guy she risked her life to save, the scale of damage that does to a person mental health can not be over looked. HER ENTIRE GRASP ON REALITY SHATTERED.

Then fandom is reducing her to her regression in a dismissive manner while not interacting with her uprising arc. Casca contributed far too much as the hawks commander, tactically planing Griffith's rescue too then say "she's not a character" only based on the trauma she received after the eclipse.

How often do we see Ricket and all of his point of view? Or Erika? Why don't we see every reaction of theirs? Or Struggle? Why are they characters and Casca isn't? Why is Casca stripped of her character, but everyone else in the story maintains theirs? How is it possible for Casca to rationalize her current life for SEVERAL chapters just to be called a pl*t dev*ce. Yet every other character is spared from this.

The fandom is obviously overlooking Casca's development but blaming the writing they themselves ignored. "Where is Casca's point of view?" we have OVER A FULL VOLUME of just her perspective and we are still getting more. She's been back since 2018 and we have seen into her mind and emotions, 7 years have passed and we are still hearing "where's her perspective???? What about Casca's perspective???" After ALL this time is not because you want to see it but you just don't care.

[calugaritsa]

i love when i see a fairly progressive-leaning critical analysis of berserk i.e. "casca being psychologically vulnerable and cared for throughout most of the manga deconstructs the myth of the Strong Black Woman" and then i have to remind myself that the fanbase is actually 90% cishet dudes going "yeah guts is just like me fr cause he's shredded and stoic and so cool"

[imhighoncrack]

Caska defender 'till the day I die

[imhighoncrack]

rant.

I once saw an entire paragraph about how "Caska wanted it because she didn't resist Femto". ON WHAT LEVEL OF ILLITERACY SOMEONE MUST BE TO WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THIS. First of all, she was in a deep state of shock already due to seeing the intire Band of the Hawk butchered in front of her (Guts at the moment was further away and only noticed it later, thus he was able to keep some sort of lucidity) plus she was injured and got previously r4p3d by a pack of demons, she wasn't even able to stand and seeing Femto with Griffith's face only added to the confusion. Without forgetting that they were all basically in an alien, terrifying scenario. Second, She yelled NO multiple times and begged Griffith to stop, screaming at Guts to not watch her both out of shame and knowledge that Femto was only doing this to hurt him. And finally, Griffith became a superhuman being: it wasn't difficult for him to restrain her and stop her movements. These 15 years old boys who only read Berserk to seem cool, who excuse Griffith's actions (yes, there's a difference between understanding someone's motives, wrongdoings et cetera and saying that they did nothing wrong)

[sugar-grigri]

Casca will kill Griffith, not Guts.

I left the Berserk fandom for good when I saw that people thought Griffith's death would be the result of Guts' revenge.

While it will be Casca's

I'm going to be very blunt, but even though I deeply despise the depiction of her rape during the eclipse, one thing was well portrayed: Femto used her as a tool to hurt Guts. She was so dehumanized that Femto had only one obsession: torturing Guts' mind.

The last thing Casca says before losing her mind is to not look because she KNOWS that she is only a tool directed at Guts and that her own suffering is a weapon that is not intended for her.

That's why she becomes what she is, an empty doll.

Femto didn't even consider it a necessary sacrifice for his transformation; Guts’ suffering was, the deaths of Falcon's troop were.

Casca was a weapon

So if anyone should behead Griffith to remind him that she is part of this confrontation, it is her.

Femto raised awareness of the existence of others, because that is where the whole notion of sacrifice lies.

Casca did not even grasp the concept of sacrifice.

Casca, who fought her whole life to be worthy of the Falcon troop, was not considered a full member; she was just a body. She was not sacrificed; her existence was DESTROYED.

So when the spirit fades away, only the body remains

This Casca is exactly how Griffith envisioned her while triggering the eclipse. A body without reason

So when Casca, that body without a soul, sees Griffith again, she is obviously moved, more sad than afraid, because only one question remains: Did Griffith ever see me even once ?

Griffith wounds Casca while paradoxically saving her, because in the graveyard created by Rickert, he once again denies her role as the sacrificed and dead member of the Falcon Troop: he doesn't have the nerve to save her, he has the nerve not to consider her part of this graveyard.

The complexity of Guts' reaction is that, on the one hand, he had this dark side, where when he attacks Casca, his obsession with Griffith takes over, denying her existence once again. That's why Guts does it unconsciously and literally doesn't see her: because Casca doesn't exist at that moment.

But the beauty in the care with which he treats Casca lies in the fact that Guts is constantly mourning her loss, constantly lamenting the absence of the warrior, her courage, her strength.

That's why he's a dog dragging a coffin: it's not just to symbolize Casca's suffering, the coffin symbolizes above all that Guts buried Casca like all the other members of the band because his fight against Griffith is about that: reminding him that Casca exists and that she was sacrificed and is also DEAD to this day.

Yes, Guts, who constantly saves Casca and does everything he can to ensure her survival, is constantly reminding her that she has disappeared within herself.

And the darker it gets, the more darkness surrounds Casca and, paradoxically, the more she regains her legitimacy, because she exists in darkness like all the members of the Troupe lost in Eclipse.

So when she sees Guts again, it's as if she's picking up where she left off: she suffers

But finally, by existing

She suffers in full consciousness

Not as an empty body

This time it's her mind that has to take the blow

Because she is once again part of this fight

Guts blames his sword for failing him, but he forgets that the weapon has always been Casca, and he will not succeed.

When Griffith gains the upper hand in his fight against Guts, it is symbolically by holding Casca: because it takes two to have the advantage.

And Casca is the key.

Casca, whose existence was denied to the point of being deemed unworthy of sacrifice, gave birth to a fetus conceived through rape, which is the only means for her tormentor to materialize in this world that he should have left.

Her tormentor, who denied her existence, owes his material existence to her

And is now forced to see her

Casca is the key to preventing the merging of universes

[imhighoncrack]

How explaining to Tiktok Berserk fans that Caska didn't enjoy being r4ped by Griffith feels

[fallindomino]

guys i’m connecting the dots about sel’s demonia

major analysis ahead (this post got long lolol fair warning)

so in bloodmarked sel tells bree that after he realized that he was wrong about her being a goruschel, and how cruel of him it was to abuse his oath with nick to make nick feel his murderous intent towards bree, was when started to see how good and brave she was, and that was when he began to worry about losing his humanity.

then in the extra sel perspective in the paperback version of legendborn we get his perspective on that scene in the woods which basically confirms it, he says:

and in that same bloodmarked scene, he mentioned that he started feeling the effects of not fulfilling his oath to nick within the two weeks it took the regents to arrive at the lodge. there are several points where people say that sel fulfilling his oath to the other legendborn would help keep him from fully succumbing, and it likely did, but it goes deeper than that.

when bree asks why she was the only person he mesmered, sel says that he was raised not to trust himself. and this is the core of it, honestly. his shame about being a demon, a monster, how that nature made him treat bree initially, kept him from being honest with her. and his distrust of himself is what made him mesmer only her, because he didn’t trust himself around her, leading to william doing things like not letting sel carry bree inside jonas’ cabin.

when they were in the crossroads bar, william describes merlin oaths as “belief and intention combined,” that intention being to protect others, a very human thing to do. but at the core of merlin oaths is the belief that one day they will become a demon, insatiably hungry for human misery.

then in oathbound, when we hear from natasia’s pov, she doesn’t believe descent is inevitable, and was able to reverse it in herself. even besides that, she talks about how she doesn’t believe that increased desires, impulses and hungers are inherently immoral, and that balanced cambions who embrace their demonic nature come to embody that balance (valec is a good example of this that we see).

so sel doesn’t really descend because he’s a merlin or because he wasn’t serving his oath to nick, but because he was raised to believe that every aspect of his own demon nature was monstrous and must be fought against.

even using the word descend is like framing things the way the order would. sel was slowly exhibiting more demonic traits, and then consuming bree’s root heavily accelerated the process. his main problems were that he hated himself for it and fought against it happening.

so then, why do the tonics that worked for natasia not work on sel? there are some key differences between them, namely being natasia’s own acceptance of her demonic nature. sel still holds a wild amount of self-loathing, and could easily interpret his mother’s attempts to “cure” him as more proof of his existing beliefs about demonic tendencies, especially when they don’t work. but also, both of natasia’s charges are dead. martin, and faye, who she didn’t even know she was meant to protect.

sel spent a month trying to kill his king, and in doing so inflicted intentional cruelty on his bonded charge. tbh i don’t think there’s enough herbal tonics in the world to help someone get over that, even if they did help his emotional stability somewhat.

compared to how he reacts to bree at the end of bloodmarked, merely picking up on her negative emotions of guilt and heartache, he reacts much differently to her when they meet at the end of oathbound. he doesn’t mention her negative emotions at all, only that he would enjoy just looking at her and his iconic “please never make it easy” when she warns him against trying to consume her root again.

on the otherrrr hand his reaction to nick is interesting. after nick and bree try and fail to convince him that who he is now is not a problem, he mentions fear and rage, and then begins to taunt nick. he taunts nick for his assumed status as the sweet golden boy, but nick doesn’t respond in the way sel expects, showing sel more grace and understanding. “just like she knows the sun lives within you.” so sel changes strategies, trying to make him jealous about the fact that him and bree kissed. this too, doesn’t work, since nick already knows and all he wants is for both of them to be happy. this is all an example of what we know as “typical” demon behavior, trying to draw negative emotions out of someone, but it’s not effective on nick here.

all of this to say that sel has the most growth left to do out of the three of them when it comes to breaking away from the order’s ideologies. while i’m sure bree, nick, and sel will all have their own journey throughout book 4, they’re more intertwined than ever. i get the sense that bree and nick will both be critical to sel’s arc, wherever it goes, as the two people who see him in full. and i’m excited to see it too, because for all we’ve been told about merlins i feel like we don’t really understand them at all. AND he’s now a freaking shadow prince so who knows how that’s gonna play into things.

tldr; fuck the order they designed the whole merlin system to make merlins powerful and then make them hate themselves so they would be easy to control love u sel

[kdkdnfuiahuag]

i feel like we moved past the “wylan was rumoured to have had an affair with his tutor” thing way too quickly. he would have been 16 and i’m willing to bet that van eck did not hire a teenager to educate his son. wylan’s tutor was most likely an adult, pairing that with the power imbalance and authority that he would’ve had over him, this alleged “affair” was at best an adult taking advantage of a lonely, abused child

[imhighoncrack]

Sel's relationship with his body sure must be fucked up. Growing up to be only a shield because of the ways your body is superior to the average, seeing it never as your own property but only as the means and ways to your duty. Pushing it to inhuman limits, and then manically taking care of it to keep it in a good form, so that it can always be used

[imhighoncrack]

Sports kids will understand the struggle of waiting for your father who forgot to pick you up after practice at 8pm

[imhighoncrack]

I'm 100% sure Sel has a tragus piercing, or at least a lot more than what we're described because that boy sure must look like a hardware store