#evilogist

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as much as i am a pessimist and have decided for my own peace of mind that berserk is going to end in a terribly boring and tired way, i can't help feeling some hope because of that nefarious behelit. if it's casca's, i hope she sacrifices moonlight baby (...and griffith by proxy?) and becomes a murderous apostle; if it's guts's i hope he sacrifices griffith. the former is the best thing for casca's character; the latter is hilarious because void is going to decide then and there that gay people are no longer allowed as members of the godhand due to the now unprecedented event of an angel of the godhand becoming the sacrifice. slan is probably going to have a lot of fun with it.

anyway, two questions:

do you think there is something with the backgrounds of the "sacrificial dimensions" as it were, as regards the traits of the characters making the sacrifices, that gives us an insight into them? i sort of thought that the "sea of heads" during the eclipse was just what the eclipse looked like, but considering that the background was different when void became a godhand, then that's clearly not the case. i just thought it was interesting that, in the eclipse for griffith (who is haunted by the "ghosts" of the people who died for his dream), the background manifests as a multitude of faces. i don't really expect there's much to comment, considering how small the glimpses we get of the backgrounds are, but still.

...and considering it's been some time since you posted the big gay analyses, is there anything you would change and/or add to them now, after so many years of picking apart berserk? not that they're not already, you know, great.

thanks!! 💖

Griffith as a sacrifice could be so interesting lol, I'd love to see it.

Question 1: yeah I actually did think that when we saw the flashback to the other Eclipse! I have no idea what Void's tentacle vibes could mean lol, but Griffith's face background absolutely makes sense as a manifestation of his guilt. Like imagine if he recognized old dead friends in some of those faces...

Question 2: idk... I have actually gone back and tweaked them a little over the years, in terms of phrasing clarity and stuff, but I haven't really revisited them for a while. I feel like the Guts essay is structured a little awkwardly, especially the 3rd part, but idk if I'd want to change that. An addition that would've been nice to fit into it at the time would be a more in-depth analysis of Guts' childhood and how issues stemming from that childhood inform aspects of his relationship with Griffith and eventually sabotage it, but I touched on that a little bit in the 4th part iirc, and I've gotten into it pretty thoroughly in other posts by now.

And I think the Griffith essay is pretty complete actually, I don't think there's anything I'd want to add to it. If I could wave a magic wand and change it I'd want it to be more concise lol, but I had so much to say that idk if it even can be trimmed down without losing any of my points or making it too utilitarian to read.

Thanks for the ask! lol I hope we don't have to be pessimistic for the future, but yeah it's always best to brace yourself for the worst. Hopefully we'll all be pleasantly surprised that way.

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The whole "Guts is strong because he goes against fate, Griffith is weak because he accepted it" argument never makes any sense to me, mostly because Berserk isn't really resolved (nor do I believe it even purports to be—I think it's left deliberately ambiguous) on the matter of fate vs. free will. Like, there were many times when either Guts or Skull Knight meant to "oppose fate" but actually just helped it along (eg., Skull Knight trying to kill Femto which led to the World Tree's existence; Guts and the entire fiasco in Albion/Griffith's rebirth; Guts still carrying that one behelit; etc.) There's a whole debate on "the fish leaps/but then the fish's desire to leap itself might be decided by fate" (the IoE saying that, while it didn't control Griffith's actions, the environment and culture and time into which he was born ultimately shaped who he is and how he thinks and, therefore, his actions.)

Sometimes it feels like some people jumped a few pages of the manga or skimmed it.

Yeah absolutely!

I definitely feel that every time Guts has insisted on his own free will it's been ironic because he's following fate's plan by doing so. Like in chapter 142 when he dismisses Skull Knight's discussion of fate saying everything he's doing has been by his own choice, but the mock Eclipse goes just as planned and Guts helps Griffith's resurrection by going to the Tower of Conviction, Casca not dying ensures Griffith's resurrection, etc.

Like sure Guts talks a big game about doing things by his own will, but he doesn't actually defy fate in any way, at least not yet.

It reminds me of scenes like this one in chapter 118:

Guts dismissing the evil spirits taunting him about his similarities to Femto, insisting he's human and he's nothing like them, but there's an ominous shot of the behelit in there belying his words. Guts denies that he's anything like the monsters and ghosts he's fighting in order to ignore how he's becoming more and more monstrous, and I think insisting he's not beholden to fate is also just denial.

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will you be creating a pillowfort/bluesky for the berserk content, if things go south here? 🫠

I would like to! If tumblr dies, I'll end up wherever most of fandom goes, and I'll figure things out there. Maybe I can write longform meta on like, neocities or dreamwidth and link it on a microblogging platform lol

I also have an old backup of this blog on wordpress, and I'm looking into trying to update it, though I'm not sure I'll be able to. Wordpress doesn't seem to recognize that I've updated bthump since I imported it there however many years ago :/

Anyway in case tumblr suddenly goes down without warning, right now I'm marley-manson at pillowfort and bluesky, and marley_manson at dreamwidth. I'll let people know where my next internet home is going to be from those accounts.