#theme: control

Yeah Guts definitely has issues that hurt Griffith in turn - though I'd argue against the whole ~possessive yandere~ characterization of Griffith in the first place. Griffith doesn't hurt Guts by being possessive of him (and the one time he acts possessive Guts takes it as a good heartening sign that Griffith cares about him at least a little bit lmao), Griffith hurts Guts by denying his own feelings and telling himself (and Charlotte) that he doesn't care.

And yeah Guts putting Griffith on a pedestal and abandoning him and the Hawks devastates Griffith enough that he ends up borderline suicidal afterwards.

They both have really organic, well-characterized reasons for believing what they do and hurting each other, both of them are very sympathetic and understandable, and that's what makes it a good tragedy.

[ID: Two flags made of 11 vertical stripes. The first, fourth, eighth, and eleventh stripes are thinner than the rest. From left to right, they are dark purplish grey, dark lavender, tan, brown, light brown, dark purplish grey, light brown, brown, tan, dark lavender, and dark purplish grey. The right flag has four thin dark purplish stripes going downward diagonally from the edge of the middle stripe, creating triangles. End ID]

[ID: A red line with dark red devil horns on either side outlined in red. Orange text outlined in red reads “Team Villains.” End ID]

scriperium

[PT: scriperium. End PT]

a gender related to being a narrator that controls the audience. they may figuratively control the audience (ex. manipulation) or literally control the audience (ex. mind control, puppeteering, etc.)

———⭐️———

pronunciation: skrIH-peer-ee-uhm

entomology: scriptor + imperium, from the latin words for narrator and control (thank you @xyrthemost for the name!)

———⭐️———

coined by me! requested by no one

made as revenge on @analogtoonz ! worth 6 points! (5 base + 1 revenge)

tagging @coinfight

When Casca and Guts are stranded after Adon causes them to fall off the cliff, and Casca is talking about her and Griffith’s intertwined backstory, she mentions multiple times the act of Griffith touching her shoulder and smiling at her, and how it either calmed her or made her sad because she knew that either way he was being strong for her and showing his care for her, regardless of how he felt at the time.

We know that Guts touching Griffith on the shoulder is what sets off the eclipse. A gesture meant to comfort and console. Guts does this with Griffith often, it’s sort of his way of giving him a hug and shows how much Guts cares for him and loves him, since he doesn’t tolerate being touched or touching anyone else in most scenarios. When Guts assassinates Yurius and he and Griffith finally take down the queen and members of her court, and Griffith asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel, Guts touches him on the shoulder and smiles after brushing the remark off. We also know that to Griffith, the answer he was given wasn’t exactly the one he was hoping for and it saddened him. A gesture typically meant to ease worries caused further sadness and distress, like the final touch of the shoulder that sets off the eclipse. I just think that’s a really beautiful and cool parallel between the relationships of Griffith and Casca, and Griffith and Guts. Griffith is the one who typically consoles Casca and the other hawks, whereas with Guts he is the one being consoled and being shown love through touch. I can imagine it being refreshing and new to be on the other side of that interaction. Idk if this matters at all and i haven’t slept in 24 hours so please forgive the lazy typing, i just wanted to share. Love your blog and your beautiful berserk ridden mind always and forever

Yeah! It's a really solid motif with some interesting implications! I actually have discussed these parallels a little in the fourth part of my Griffith essay here, if you're interested. Another really telling moment, imo, is when Casca puts her hand on Griffith's back in the wagon right before the Eclipse, in a visually similar sequence to Griffith placing his hand on Casca's shoulder in the river and telling her he's fine.

It seems like a way of highlighting the role reversal of power, both in Griffith's weakness after the torture when Casca is now the one who has to be strong and comfort him, and in his relationship with Guts in general, as in the Tombstone of Flame and lake scenes you pointed out. With Guts he's not powerless because of the torture, but because of his feelings for him, and consequently his emotional reliance on him - Guts makes him weak, emotionally and that's like a visual way of showing us imo.

You're not alone Anon, I also don't really see it, certainly not as a significant character trait. I think he's capable of manipulation, as we see to an extent in his courtship of Charlotte, or arguably, say, the way he handled the Battle of Doldrey by predicting what Gennon would do based on his obsession with him, but yk, when most of fandom calls Griffith manipulative I definitely get the impression that they think he's somehow Hannibal Lectering Guts and Cacsa into being loyal or w/e lol, which couldn't be more ridiculous.

He's definitely not manipulative in the way people usually use it to describe fictional characters, particuarly villainous ones. Like you said, he's no Johan. Griffith is tactical, and he's capable of reading people and acting appropriately. But yk, again like you said, he didn't really manipulate eg Foss. He read him, recognized that he was an enemy, and took steps to neutralize him as a threat by kidnapping his daughter and killing all his powerful allies.

Most of his success comes from being charismatic and being better at stuff than other people. And while he utilizes manipulation at times, he does so because he has no other choices, it's not his go-to first resort for getting his way or anything like that.

He's also notably quite adament that his followers follow him of their own free will (and even Guts proposed the duel and the stakes himself, remember, Griffith just went along with it) because he doesn't actually like the idea of having control over the lives of other people. Part of the way he keeps his guilt buried is by reminding himself that people follow him, or presumably fight him, of their own free will. Or like, he doesn't manipulate Guts into being his perfect soldier, Guts acts out and Griffith just plans around his idiocy lol. A lot of Griffith's character is about specifically not being controlling and letting people do what they want, moreso than most military leaders.

Wow, thank you so much, this is an awesome comment to get! I'm glad you enjoyed the Danann twist <3

Tbh give or take whether his presence is necessary to keep the apostles chill (I definitely ignored that possibility in the fic for the sake of convenience lol) to me it just fits Griffith's character.

I don't think Griffith was ever after power for its own sake, and I don't think he wanted to be king so he could rule over other people. In fact, I don't think he ever particularly wanted to command others, and I think it really wore on him as a human - giving people orders is something he feels guilty about, and one of his ways of repressing that guilt is by reassuring himself that they chose to follow him.

imo Griffith's dream was always to create a utopian kingdom as an escape from all the shit that traumatized our faves in the Golden Age: inequality, powerful people taking advantage of their power to hurt others, tyranny as Jarif sums up to Silat at one point, all that. Commanding others and eventually ruling it himself was more like a necessary evil.

And I don't think NeoGriffith has any guilt issues over that anymore, but I do think that his original goal hasn't changed, and he couldn't care less who's in charge of the kingdom, as long as the kingdom exists in the correct way.

And I also think there's something appropriate in NeoGriffith absconding and not even living there himself, but still knowing it'll always be out there as an escape. Because the kingdom was always a vague symbolic ideal, more than an actual place, something to believe in to repress his own fears, yk?

Somewhat, but not nearly as much as a lot of the fandom thinks.

Like instances of Griffith manipulating people:

most (but not quite all) of his courtship of Charlotte

many of his interactions with Midland’s conservative nobles since he’s polite and deferential to them in public while secretly hating and resenting them - but then that goes for just about everyone in the royal court, since that’s how pretty much everyone in high society in Berserk operates lol, so it feels unfair to single Griffith out as somehow notably manipulative in comparison, particularly since his plots against various nobles are all self-protection after they’ve tried to kill him first

in some ways the way he uses military tactics are arguably manipulative, like luring Gennon out of hiding, but yk you could also just as easily call that ‘tactical’

uhhhh that’s about all I can think of actually lol. So like, he can be manipulative, but I wouldn’t consider it one of his defining traits.

I feel like a lot of people, not just Berserk fans but in general, make the mistake of assuming the antagonist is always lying and plotting by default, which just isn’t a good way of understanding a character lol. If a character in a well-written piece of fiction is lying, there will be indications to show this. If their lies are meant to be a surprise twist, there should still be evidence and foreshadowing to set up the twist, or it’s a bad ass-pull of a twist.

So yeah with Griffith the reader is shown when he’s manipulating someone - for instance by having Griffith give his “I will get my own kingdom” speech early on, which tells us that when he behaves deferentially towards the nobility he’s feigning it (something Julius fumes about), or that when he starts courting Charlotte he has a motive to marry a princess for the throne (which Judeau also explains eventually).

But there’s no reason to assume that, for instance, he’s manipulating Guts into being loyal or w/e when he tells him he risked his life to save him just because. The explanation he gave perfectly explains his behaviour - irrational emotion is pretty much the only thing that explains his behaviour in the scene with Zodd. Or say, there’s no reason to assume manipulativeness in the pre-eclipse wagon scene with Casca when it makes sense as a sincere and depressing offer of sex that only gets Casca to decide to stay because it’s so pathetic.

Yeah I think this is a pretty common conception of Griffith tbh. I’m not sure exactly why you feel this way, but I’ve seen lots of people taking it as read that he’s like, power-obsessed, or a control freak, and that impacts how they see his character.

But I don’t see that at all tbh. I’m going to like, rly briefly summarize how I feel, bc I have a lot of long versions that expand on these points (eg here and here and ofc here if you want the nearly thesis length take lol) if you want more explanation.

Basically Griffith wants power for a reason. He doesn’t want power for the sake of power, he wants power to achieve a goal, a goal that he feels he needs to achieve because of guilt.

A significant aspect of Griffith’s narrative is about how being a leader, being responsible for lives, being distant from everyone who follows him so he can maintain an image, etc, is a burden that takes a huge emotional toll on him.

Griffith is kind of trapped in this paradigm of control and being controlled. He has to be in control for the sake of his dream, in control of himself, in control of others as a leader, but again like, a big point of his narrative is that it’s a burden on him, and at least subconsciously, he wants out. Being a leader who always has to portray the correct image isolates him, being responsible for lives lost fills him with guilt, and he’s stuck because his entire sense of worth revolves around achieving his dream.

And by being controlled I’m referring to the way fate absolves him of guilt, and how he learns it was his destiny and everything he’s ever done was puppeteered by God and he’s nothing more than a pawn, etc. This holds true even as Femto and NeoGriffith, kind of ironically - at his most powerful he is aware that he has no control at all. Like, most of NeoGriffith’s apparent powers seem to be just this intrinsic knowledge that whatever he wants to do is what he’s destined to do, and therefore he can’t be harmed or stopped or prevented from doing what he wants.

(There’s probably also something to be said about Griffith’s powerlessness post-torture, but idk that basically boils down to Griffith still being responsible for that mountain of corpses, but not having the power to follow through and justify it. control vs no power, vs say ngriff’s power but no control. idk this is too long already lol, vague musing on that is enough for now.)

Umm okay to get back to my point, basically imo Griffith is kind of pushed and pulled between the burden of having too much control and the paradoxical freedom of having no control, and his desire for an equal seems to me to be like, an escape from these two extremes. Someone whose life he doesn’t control, who pursues their own reason for being, who Griffith can’t order to their death, who Griffith doesn’t have to wear a mask for - and someone who would fight him if their dreams ever clashed. Valuable as a friend and as an enemy as someone independent of him, who he has no power over and who has no power over him - or who they each have an equal amount of emotional power over.

Lol okay this was all very theme-y rather than based on characterization. So as for like, actual depictions of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, you have moments like asking him to kill Julius rather than ordering him, the water fight, “it’s funny… you’re the first person I’ve ever spoken to like this” after explaining his thoughts on fate and wanting to know what he’s destined for, “do you think that I’m cruel?”, refusing to rein him in during battle to Casca’s consternation, reminiscing fondly on the duel he almost lost, risking his life and dream for Guts, basically his emotional dependence on him in general.

And wrt his tantrum when Guts leaves, often cited as Griffith’s control-freakiness at work lol, it’s actually another instance of Griffith wanting Guts as an equal, but compilcated by knowing that the reality of their relationship is that Griffith is Guts’ boss, and moreover, he won his loyalty in a fight. He has a breakdown because he sees Guts leaving as a rejection and a statement on their entire relationship - he thinks Guts only stayed with him because Griffith won that duel, and it horrifies him and affirms his belief that he’s cruel, but also narrows his options down to “let him go or win him in another duel” lol, when what he actually wants is for Guts to choose to stay because he wants to stay. (Again, I’ve written about this at great length here if you want more evidence for this reading.)

Man ia Guts’ love for Griffith is ignored way too much, but also yeah reducing Griffith’s love for Guts down to ~evil possessiveness~ is one of my pet peeves.

imo he’s possessive because he’s stunted emotionally (like most of Berserk’s cast lol), but that doesn’t mean he only loves Guts as an asset, it means he has v little ability to recognize and compartmentalize his emotions so he responds to extreme feelings generally pretty badly.

Like Guts is compared to Griffith’s dream a lot which to me is saying that when Griffith fell in love with Guts he’d never felt so strongly about anything else, other than his dream. (”I want you, Guts.” “Griffith’s never said a thing like that… not to anybody!”) And because his whole raison d’etre is seizing his dream, now that something else makes him feel the same amount of need and desire, he “must obtain” him. He has no other frame of reference for what he’s feeling lol.

But in actual action he’s not controlling. Guts does whatever the fuck he wants in battle and Griffith plans around it, eg. Griffith asks Guts to help him out with his assassinations, which the narrative specifically draws attention to, and Guts is the one who wants it to be an order. Griffith risks his life and dream for Guts multiple times and can never explain why. Griffith, according to Casca, doesn’t control Guts enough as a leader. Griffith self-consciously asks Guts if he thinks he’s cruel for asking him (or maybe ordering him after Guts’ response to Griffith phrasing it as a question for the first assassination) to help him with the bonfire assassinations. Griffith’s whole speech about friendship is about desiring an equal who he doesn’t own, and can’t control, and his monologue in the torture chamber is about realizing that Guts was that person.

I really love Griffith’s inner monologue during the second duel because it’s such a powerful emotional breakdown imo, and it feels so childish to me. It seems like he’s falling back on “you can’t leave, I own you” because he has nothing else, no other way to respond to the thought of being abandoned, no other way to contextualize what he’s feeling. He’s clinging to a sense of ownership bc it’s the only part of his relationship to/feelings for Guts he really understands, and it’s a defense against the uncontrollable messiness of his feelings - a way to repress his love and need and feelings of rejection and loss and self-loathing, and a way to repress his realization of “when did someone I was supposed to have in hand… instead gain such a strong hold over me?” - that ultimately fails.

It just feels so consistent with the childish aspects of Griffith’s character, and the part of him that represses his emotions until they seep out in horrifying ways (eg self harm, risky sex, thinking it’s better to risk killing Guts than to let him “reject” him, etc).