#character: void

Interviewer: The "Black Swordsman" arc has just begun. The axis will be, obviously, the story in which Guts' feud with the God Hand, who Griffith/Femto belongs to, being brought to a close. Let's think about the development leading to the finale. First of all, what is the goal of the God Hand now that it's composed of 5 members? It is naturally expected that if Guts can't find it out, he won't even be able to confront them. Before that, is the God Hand complete with the addition of Femto?

Miura: Hmm, for now the God Hand is supposed to be complete with Femto. I'm sorry but now is not a good time, as expected, to reveal their goal... Instead, I'll give you one hint. The keyword is "Void". You can imagine many things based on it.

Apparently this was from 1996, wow. I’d read this interview before, or at least this part of it, but I didn’t realize it was from that far back.

lol I’m going to copypaste and slightly clean up this theory I wrote out ages ago in part of a longer post, which is largely unsupported but I like it.

Okay so once every thousand years, after collecting five Godhand members, one of them incarnates. This has to have happened at least once or twice before for it to be a known thousand year routine, so Griffith isn’t the first. The Godhand also seem to be of differing ages - Void has ye olde speech patterns, while Ubik and Slan seem relatively more modern and defer to him. We can guess that Void came into being about 1000 years ago, as he seems to be the “sage in the tower” referenced by Mozgus, who prayed until, according to Judeau, five angels showed up and destroyed Gaiseric’s city.

Interestingly, according to Casca it was four angels. By highlighting the exact number of “angels” being unknown through that little disagreement, it makes that number a potentially relevant detail. I’m guessing Casca has the correct version.

The Godhand tend to be referred to as angels and this is an obvious reference to them. Which means that there was an entirely different set of Godhand members pre-Void, if he’s currently the oldest, but not the first.

So what happened to them?

Now I theorize that Gaiseric was originally a Godhand member who incarnated back onto Earth, the way Griffith did, taking an originally complete Godhand set back down to four and making room for someone else. He and his empire are explicitly compared to Griffith, he was said to have appeared out of nowhere to unite the nations, and Falconia is the new updated version of Gaiseric’s city. And we know Gaiseric is Skull Knight, who is now an enemy of the Godhand.

So Void destroyed Gaiseric’s “Falconia” by calling down the four angels left over after Gaiseric incarnated, and becoming one of them. Then those four members of the Godhand all somehow vanished, clearing room for four new Godhand members. My guess: Gaiseric/Skull Knight, still alive, and powerful due to being an incarnate Godhand, turned against them and killed them, after seemingly being betrayed by Void sacrificing his city (and maybe him too) to become one of them. Void escaped back to the astral plane or w/e. And this was fated to happen. Say the slate needs to be wiped clean every thousand years and the cycle begun anew, and the thousand-year incarnate is fate’s version of clearing house.

The thing NeoGriff did, cracking open the world, lets the Godhand into the material realm. This seems sinister - oh no what are they planning, now they can directly fuck shit up! But it also makes them vulnerable - Guts couldn’t touch any of them while they’re in the deep realm the Eclipse took place in, not even SK could, but when Slan showed up in Qliphoth, talking about how NeoGriffith’s existence is breaking down barriers between worlds, Guts was able to blow a hole through her. It didn’t kill her, but she definitely felt it lol.

SO! All that said, my guess is that Void, maybe to an extent knowing or guessing what’s fated to happen, and now vulnerable thanks to the merging of the worlds but also able to wield power in the human world, is going to try to take matters into his own hands and do what he can to survive. He’s the big bad (plus the other godhand members probably).

And maybe cue the classic “enemies teaming up to fight the bigger threat” plot lol.

I haven’t heard that theory. It seems kind of... random? Vid is just mentioned offhandedly as leader dude’s father and Skull Knight brings him up pretty neutrally, not like you would an arch-enemy. It doesn’t seem like set up for a surprise twist to me. But on the other hand I think he’s now the only named character who could theoretically be as old as Skull Knight, if “my father and I were granted many audiences with you,” suggests that this was back when Skull Knight was Gaiseric (tho idt that’s necessarily the case), so I can see why people would want to draw a connection. That and the monosyllable V name lol.

I’d love to see their history tbh, and yeah I hope it’s not just Void = Griffith, SK = Guts because that sounds boring af. Plus Skull Knight has strong parallels to both Griffith and Guts, so if his history with Void is in any way similar it would be cool if it was a remix rather than a repetition, where they both have aspects of both.

I mean there’s a theory of mine where Skull Knight was an earlier incarnated Godhand 1000 years ago, like Griffith, since Gaiseric was the previous ruler of what is now Falconia and has been compared to Griffith bc of it, and tbqh if Void sacrificed him along with the rest of his city to become the first of the next batch of Godhand members that would be like, rly interesting to me.

But that’s just a pipe dream lol. Not something I have evidence for other than Godhands incarnating once every thousand years, and Gaiseric appearing out of nowhere and building an empire with Falconia 1.0 as his central hub a thousand years ago, and Void looking shifty when Slan or Ubik talks about how unprecedented a sacrifice surviving is.

this is super difficult bc there are a multitude of good options and many I don’t even have the imagination to consider, but I’ll give it a shot. This is half serious theorizing, half hope.

OKAY here’s the thing: there are five godhand members. Once every thousand years one of them incarnates. This has to have happened at least once or twice before for it to be a known thousand year routine. The Godhand also seem to be of differing ages - Void has ye olde speech patterns, while Ubik and Slan seem relatively more modern. Who tf knows about Conrad, he’s probably second oldest. We can guess that Void came into being 1000 years ago, as he seems to be the “sage in the tower” referenced by Mozgus, who prayed until angels showed up and destroyed Gaiseric’s city.

Which means that there was an entirely different set of Godhand members pre-Void, if he’s currently the oldest, but not the first.

What happened to them?

Now I theorize that Gaiseric was originally a Godhand member who incarnated back onto Earth, the way Griffith did. He and his empire are explicitly compared to Griffith, he was said to have appeared out of nowhere to unite the nations, and Falconia is the new updated version of Gaiseric’s city. And we know Gaiseric is Skull Knight, who is now an enemy of the Godhand.

He’s also compared to Guts in many ways - Berserker armour, witch friend, hates the Godhand.

And time is a spiral.

So okay hear me out: Void destroyed Gaiseric’s “Falconia” by calling down the four angels and becoming one of them. Then those four members of the Godhand all vanished, clearing room for Void to start a new posse. My guess: Gaiseric/Skull Knight, still alive, and powerful between realms due to being an incarnate Godhand, turned against them and killed them. And this was fated to happen. Say the slate needs to be wiped clean every thousand years and the cycle begun anew, and the thousand-year incarnate is fate’s version of clearing house.

The thing NeoGriff did, cracking open the world? Lets the Godhand into the material realm. This seems sinister - oh no what are they planning, now they can directly fuck shit up! But it also makes them vulnerable - Guts couldn’t touch any of them while they’re in the deep realm the Eclipse took place in, not even SK could, but when Slan showed up in Qliphoth Guts was able to blow a hole through her. It didn’t kill her, but she definitely felt it lol.

And I believe Miura has said that Void is going to be very relevant.

SO! All that said, my guess is that Void, knowing what’s fated to happen, is going to try to take matters into his own hands and fuck shit up. He’s the big bad (plus the other godhand members probably)

And NeoGriff - for his own personal reasons, that ~just happen~ to fit into fate the way all characters and their personal motivations tend to do - is going to turn on the Godhand. Possibly in an attempt to seize more power for himself, maybe in self defense if Void tries coming for him (ironically then Void brings it on himself in trying to escape his fate.)

Cue classic enemies team up to defeat the bigger enemy plot.

So that’s the big picture theorizing.

On a more character focused level (and this is where the hardcore wishful thinking comes in):

Guts ends up going to Falconia. Either he’s consumed by revenge again because dark shit has gone down and backslid him, or he’s going for different reasons - maybe to save someone, maybe to find someone, maybe to talk, maybe to gather information, maybe to be in position for some magic plan that takes time, whatever.

He stays there for a while. I see two options: either he loses another duel or smthn and we get a fun, dark (and shorter presumably) Golden Age parallel full of scheming and conflicted feelings and hate and high emotions and Griffith slowly realizing he made a huge mistake because he’s too emotionally compromised for this but being in too deep to save himself.

Or Guts shows up, defeats Zodd in an epic showdown, tries to kill NGriff, and then instead of killing him back NGriff chains him up in his cellar and starts obsessively visiting him. In both scenarios Intriguing Kinda Gay Conversations happen.

If the former, Griffith is already plotting against the Godhand so he recruits Guts for that purpose. Maybe he covinces himself it’s sheer practicality because Guts, being branded, has a foot outside causality which helps against the Godhand or something more than his army of apostles would.

If it’s the latter, Void strikes first and Guts escapes and decides to focus on Void first as the bigger threat.

Blah blah blah, fighting happens, maybe more plot happens, Guts’ remaining rpg group shows up and Schierke probably helps metaphysically, Skull Knight dies/ascends to a higher plane of being at some point, whatever I don’t care about this.

Ending: I don’t particularly care about how the grandscale lore stuff concludes, but if they just continue the Godhand/incarnation Fated cycle, then there are indications that Fate and The Idea of Evil have different aspects to them and sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad, etc. It’s not solely an issue of “malevolent entity fucks humanity over because they’re into that.” If they do break the cycle by idk changing humanity’s perspective somehow - screw monotheism, whatever - humanity now controls its own destiny, that’s also fine.

I kind of dig when huge epic plots devolve at the very end into moments of intimate emotional catharsis, so epic shit can happen, but the true climax comes after. I think my preference would be Guts dying and Griffith breaking down and then spending a long near-immortal lifetime in mourning, but both dying together would also be gr10.

also i didn’t find a place to shoehorn this in but at some point guts and ngriff find themselves on equal footing and/or guts looks down on ngriff. well, that would be right at the climax lbr. so jot that down.

OR

fuck all of that, completely ignoring plot and lore shit and all logic and realistic expectation and not stealing the plots of old 90s shows, here’s my true ideal ending:

straight up Becoming Part II, Berserk edition. Schierke does a spell, returns Griffith’s lost humanity/non-evil parts to him and makes him complete again, they have a ~moment~ complete with first and last kiss because this is my ideal ending, then Guts kills him anyway to save the world or whatever but also dies because of reasons

She was scared of different things. 

She was scared of the way her brother looked at her out the corner of his eyes, like she was barely there, just a flicker of movement that drew his attention long enough only to be dismissed as nothing.  

She was scared of when she closed her eyes, and fell asleep. It wasn't the sleeping, it was the very concept of where her mind went, what happened to her body, if there was a separation there. 

She was scared of mirrors. She thought of Alice, falling through into another world, where everything was the same, or so it seemed. Maybe there was another Vanessa behind the mirror.

She had a copy of her in the same world. And then she died, and she felt like a dancer who had lost her partner, with no-one to guide her, she kept putting her feet wrong. She missed her twin, missed secret handshakes, missed linked pinkies and the mirror image of her to keep her company, always.

She didn't miss competition.