I really must introduce you to a finer aftershave

LOOK. I get it. You show him with the other Yonko, to show all four of them in the most intimidating light. To show they are the most dangerous pirates in the entire world. We get it, yeah yeah yeah. But this is Red Haired Shanks.

Look at his wanted poster:

This man is fucking hot.

The World Government wants everyone to be afraid of this man, or at least see him as 'intimidating.' This, and on top of all the 'evil' imagery the Yonko get, I'm sorry to tell you WG, it's not working. In fact, the absolute opposite.

I want to suck the man's dick.

It can be revealed he's done some really dirty stuff to get where he is today, and I wouldn't even bat an eye. (He's a fucking pirate, no pirates are technically 'good guys' anyway.) My thirst is just too strong.

Everytime I see this image in particular:

I immediately see this:

Or this:

So nice try, but my thirst is god-like and I giggle like a love sicken school boy at his drunk antics.

Now I leave you here with images I go back and stare at very often, and just imagine being pounded by this man.

This has been my Shanks Church thirst post, thank you for your time.

Luffy wins… for once.

Little sketchy animation, a late contribution to Japanese Kiss Day.

Kin'emon gave the swordmen the best outfits, he plays favorites

I want to ask you about a saboace fanfic I had read before but can't remember the name if you can help me. When sabo ate the fruit he started to see ace at first as a dream then as a ghost, it happened that ace was like his soul was trapped in the fruit. It has some angst and fluffy vibes. Thanks in advance! 🙏🏻

Hmmm ill look into this it sounds familar to me too but i cant remember it either

As I remember, Ace was joking with sabo at first so sabo was very frightened at the beginning.

lol this is actually kind of a tough question to answer.

Textually I guess I'd say not especially? He has that one "are you a homo?" line to Griffith when they first meet, but it didn't seem particularly vicious, and I think the intent is to connect his wariness of Griffith and Griffith's fighting ability to his rape trauma, rather than to indicate that Guts is homophobic. I would assume that Berserk's medieval world has societal homophobia which Guts has probably absorbed, but it's not particularly relevant, and Guts is fairly chill in general so if eg Guts was straight and Griffith was gay and came out to him Guts would probably be taken aback but he'd come around fairly quickly.

It's also worth noting that Casca telling him Griffith slept with Gennon didn't make him think any less of Griffith. Granted it's not about Griffith's sexuality and Guts is aware of that, but yk, the point is Guts is fairly chill. I'd say it'd be similar to how Miura writes Guts' misogyny - he has some ingrained stupid assumptions but he can move past them quickly enough.

Oh and of course I should mention that Guts throwing the f-slur around is something that only happens in bad scanlations, which aren't relevant to my answer.

That said, answering this from a purely textual perspective feels awkward and reductive lol, mostly because there's so much subtext that points towards internalized homophobia in Guts (and Griffith's) case, to the point where it feels like a major theme of the story to me.

SO in my own reading of Berserk yeah Guts is homophobic but it's mainly turned inward and fuels his repression. Thanks to his csa trauma he views gay desire as inherently predatory and this is, subconsciously, part of why he leaves the Hawks, and a major reason for his revenge rampage, and yeah I'll elaborate on that a little lol.

Before he hears the Promrose Hall speech, after killing Adonis and getting a concussion, he has the dream about Zodd - who is also Donovan, as you can tell by the way he's depicted almost identically to how Donovan was in the nightmare after Griffith stabbed him - killing the child version of himself with a particularly phallic sword, and then Zodd/Donovan is also revealed to be himself. It's a depiction of how Guts sees himself as a monster like Donovan after killing Adonis, which is then tied to his homoerotic relationship with Griffith when it immediately leads to him feeling unworthy of Griffith's friendship. The connection isn't directly made in the story, but it's a pretty tiny leap to Guts suppressing his physical desire for Griffith because he sees it as monstrous.

(Especially when Griffith's story, which often parallels Guts', is even more easily read as about repression, imo)

And wrt revenge, I'm basically taking the Beast of Darkness's homoerotic vibes and running with them lol. Guts assaulting Casca to feel closer to Griffith, more phallic sword imagery, the true light that burns us referencing lingering, painful love, it all feels to me like Guts sublimating his "longing" into violence. I have a post that gets into that here a bit if you're interested. And a more headcanon-y post here where I get into what I like to think is Guts' post-Eclipse gay mindset a little lol.