#CASCA IS JUST OUT HERE SAYING IT

[container-of-apple-juice]

“I tried to convince myself that Griffith wanted you solely for the strength you would add to The Hawks… but I see the way Griffith treats you differently. He becomes unnerved if you’re in danger and acts impulsively as if- as if- …Griffith puts his faith in you, but you- you can’t appreciate the implications that that has!”

realest and gayest shit I’ve ever heard fucking HELLO

[runningfrom2am]

leveling the playing field VII

summary: you didn't meet the requirements for the plinth prize, only to find out that you're not just missing out on that- you're missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime. your friend wants to help, because maybe you can help each other.

pairing: coriolanus snow x fem!reader

wc: 2.5k

tags/warnings: capitol brat!reader, maybe slightly ooc coryo, idk i tried my best. do they love each other or hate each other? who knows (we do, kind of). implications and discussion of abuse, so read with caution!! also a little bit of swearing

masterlists // nav // requests

join my taglist here

next part

"Mister Snow, Miss Y/L/N."

At the voice of the Dean, you're both shoving off of each other, faster than you believed it was possible for you to move. You slide back across the floor, stumbling to stand up at the same time as Coryo as Dean Highbottom stares you down.

You didn't realize how completely dead to the world you were it was too late. "Uh, Dean Highbottom." You say, noticing he wasn't about to speak anymore, just staring you down with disappointment. "We were just, um-"

"Don't even try." He cuts you off, holding a hand up to you to shut you up. "I knew it was an irresponsible decision to let the two of you work together on something apparently so important. You're both disqualified, effective immediately, and at the very least demerited. If I get it my way, you'll be expelled."

Coriolanus goes completely pale, fully in shock. He was screwed, without the prize he had nothing. It was his prize, they couldn't take that from him over a juvenile mistake.

"No." He looks at you, shocked, as you argue with the Dean. "Whatever you think you saw has nothing to do with Coryo's mentorship- with my mentorship."

He rolls his eyes. "Y/N, my decision is final."

"I don't think it is." You cross your arms. "And we both know why, and unless you want me to tell someone-"

"No." The Dean replies firmly, and you can see he's trying to hide his panic. "Just get back, please. And make it hasty." He waves you off, and the two of you rush along.

"What was that?" Coryo whispers to you once you are out of earshot.

"Nothing." You insist, not so much as looking in his direction now.

"No, that was not nothing, you threatened the Dean."

"What? No, I didn't." You try and lie, but he's smarter than that. Of course he's smarter than that.

"Yes, Y/N, you did. I was right there, I heard-"

"Coriolanus, it's in your best interest to drop it."

"But-"

"Now."

He sighs at the finality behind your statement. "What are we going to do? He told us that we're disqualified."

"We're not disqualified." You chuckle, shaking your head and stopping in the hall next to a reflective window to wipe off the smeared mascara from under your eyes.

"What if they take it out on Lucy Gray? She could be in serious trouble, here." He asks, and reasonably so. If this gets to Dr. Gaul, which he doesn't doubt that it will, it is not a stretch to assume that if they get disqualified, they will find a way to do the same to Lucy Gray.

"Oh, who cares Coryo? She's district." You scoff, cleaning your fingers on the underside of your skirt. You knew that Lucy Gray would be just fine, nothing that you could do would harm her, and you wouldn't want that. You really liked Lucy Gray, but why would he pinball from kissing you like it was his life in the balance to being so concerned for her in a minute?

"She's my tribute! If she doesn't win I am fucked- do you realize that? Do you realize how badly you could have screwed this up for me? My whole life depends on Lucy Gray right now!" At least it wasn't personal, you think at his outburst.

You let out a sigh, managing a small, smug smile. "Coryo, trust me. They won't hurt her- not on our account anyway. Just trust me."

Coriolanus sighs, running a hand over his face and then through his hair. You can't threaten a powerful man like Casca Highbottom with nothing; he's certain that you know something you most definitely should not, but what that could be is lost on Coriolanus. "Okay." He agrees, watching you as you finish cleaning up what's left of your makeup after your breakdown. Seemingly it's gone. To him, if he hadn't seen it, if you hadn't cried in his arms, he wouldn't have known it happened at all.

"But still, don't tell anyone. Yeah?" You add, turning back to face him now.

"Not a word." He promises.

You giggle, reaching up and wiping his mouth with your sleeve. "You've got a little lipstick, there..."

Coryo chuckles, pulling his head back to do it himself, attempting to cover the burning he can feel appearing in his cheeks. How you could go from crying, to kissing him the way you had, to angry and then back to your normal self could give him whiplash if he didn't know you better. Luckily, the idea of you has never scared him.

Lucy Gray hadn't made another appearance after Jessup's death that afternoon, so Coryo had gone home and come back with a couple of blankets and his pillow. He really just ran home, stripped his bed and showered before returning to you. In the morning you had folded everything up for him and tucked it in the bleachers next to you when other people started arriving. Why were you the only mentors who even decided to spend the night? It was laughable how much more you deserved a mentorship than any of them, but this is all the more chance to prove yourself. Your classmates make it so easy. It's not like you wanted them around, so it was a win-win through and through.

Coryo had been shocked that morning when Dr. Gaul arrived, not saying a word to either or you or even so much as sparing him a knowing glance. He had anticipated a very uncomfortable meeting with her following the events of the day before, but no such moment came. The Dean must have decided that keeping that secret was the right move.

It was itching at Coriolanus that you hadn't talked about it either, but he was not about to be the one to bring it up. Maybe he should go talk to Tigris about it- she had been kind enough to come in on her day off today to watch. Not that it mattered to him, though, it didn't. It was an act of comfort, just like the hug. He had asked you what you needed, and you answered with your actions. That was all. That's all it had to be, after all. You both needed to focus, and he needed to not start falling for you now- of all times. Even if deep down he knew this infatuation, if that's the right word, started years ago. The way he used to think it was hunger causing his stomach to lurch when you so much as looked at him, or that was the envy of your family wealth when you would show up to academy events in a dress that fit you so flawlessly it made the room spin around him, voices fading out to nothing. But no, that had always been side effects of hunger. Or at least, that's what he used to think. Until he got to hold you the way he has these last couple weeks, and the way your hair splayed out over his arm when you used him as a pillow last night, curled up on the floor in the academy.

Now, everything is different at the most inconvenient time possible. The worst part, the worst part of it all was that you seemed entirely unphased. That is why this was bothering him. That even though he's been fed, he's still so hungry.

God, you were so bored. You don't ever remember the games being this boring before, but that was when you could snack away on endless trays of hors d'oeuvres and your parents allowed you to drink with other party guests until the games were done by a reasonable hour in the evening. "Finally." You sigh, standing up as Lucy Gray emerges from the tunnel, likely in search of food or water.

Coral and her pack of seemingly mindless followers were making a move on attacking Lamina, which hardly had you lifting your head. "Y/N." Coryo summons you over and you smile, making your way to his side. "She looks like she needs something, but if I send anything the drone will point them right to her."

You hum in agreement, scanning the widescreen of the arena. "They have their own pile of water over there, she could take that if she sees it. And if she's quick." You point, as if somehow you could relay this information to her.

It feels like you did when you see her head lock in the direction of the pile of bottles, hand instinctually patting over her pocket. "She's checking if she still has it." You whisper to Coryo, breath fanning over his neck. He just nods, knowing this isn't a topic anyone could hear you discuss. "Looks like she doesn't want water, she wants them out. Smart." You add quietly, eyes locked on the screen.

"Sounds like you." He replies, making you smile to yourself.

The two of you watch on baited breaths as she waits for the right moment, and she finds the perfect one. She takes off toward the bottles, quickly and quietly just as you whisper for her to go, now.

"Watch, if she's really smart, she'll take one, then dump the rest." You say, watching as she just grabs one before darting to the middle, hiding under the rubble in the center while the others are still preoccupied. "Oh. Well, that's an interesting approach." You cross your arms, standing up straight again. At least this was at least exciting.

"Remind me why we didn't throw you in with them?" Coryo asks, raising an eyebrow at you.

"You kinda did, didn't you?" You laugh quietly, pretending to hit his shoulder.

"That's fair." He agrees, focussing once more on the screen, trying to keep track of Lucy Gray. She goes out of sight from any of the cameras underneath the debris, before emerging a few moments later and running over to the remaining water bottles.

"As you predicted..." Coryo sighs, gesturing to the screen you were already watching as she begins to dump the other bottles, placing the one she just had next to them.

"She just has to hurry." You reply, resisting the urge to gloat over your accurate call. And again, you were right because it isn't long after Lamina's now dead body falls to the ground and the other tributes finally notice Lucy Gray's presence, chasing her back into the tunnels. You're hoping the map you drew up for her was helpful, and that she can hide. If she dies down there, you won't know.

You give Coryo a high-five with both hands, feeling glares on you from the other mentors about the waste of their tributes water. They're just mad that they got stuck with tributes dumber than Lucy Gray, and you can't fault them for that. "Cake with the cream." The blonde grins at you, mocking Lucy Gray's accent.

"Snow lands on top." You smile back in confirmation, his hands wrapping into yours and shaking them happily. "Now we just have to hope that..."

You trail off, not getting the chance to finish as you see one of the other tributes stumble out of the tunnels and toward the lone water bottle Lucy Gray left. "Who do we have here?" Lucky's narration interrupts your thought process. "Ah, it's Ill Dill. Tuberculosis on legs." The shock of his statement has you dropping your jaw, laughing and earning you a glare from your classmate who was designated her mentor. It wasn't funny, truly, but just the shock of him saying that. Regardless, you hadn't seen her since day one, and even before then, she was incredibly sick. Never a threat, hardly a thought.

Coryo sees this shift in your demeanor, looking back to the screen as well and slowly dropping your hands. The tribute, Dill, you think, takes a sip, and the two of you hold your breath as she lays down next to the uncapped bottle, ceasing all movement after only a few moments with blood dripping from her nose onto the cement beneath her.

You glance nervously around the room, making sure no one is making the same connections you are, knowing what you know. So far, no one seems alarmed, but Dr. Gaul has apparently left- which is shocking to you. Regardless, Dill was knocking on death's door anyway, you're surprised she came out at all. You place your hand on Coryo's shoulder trying to be reassuring, as if to say no one knows.

It's at that moment where Reaper comes out, calling out for his district partner. She remains unmoving even as he runs to her side, trying to shake her awake. Cue the buzzer; that's one less tribute between Lucy Gray and you getting your dream job.

Your heart stops as he eyes the bottle next to her, your hand gripping tighter onto Coryo's shoulder. You're both waiting for the other shoe to drop, Reaper knows that something isn't right. Luckily for the two of you, he ignores it. He lifts the dead girl up, looking around before carrying her to Lamina's side under the beam. Followed by Marcus, then Jessup, then Bobbin.

"What's he doing?" You ask quietly among other whispers which you are sure that if you could hear them clearly would echo your sentiments.

"I don't know..." Coryo replies, slightly shaking his head as the boy moves away from his line of bodies and over to the wall.

You have to fight the urge to laugh when he rips the flag down from the wall, causing all sorts of chaos to break out in your theatre. "He just tore down the flag..." You hear Lucky say, and as you look around at the chaos it caused, it makes you want to cheer for the boy. He had been looking at the flag when you tried to speak to him just before the bombing- had he known?

He lays the large red fabric over the row of bodies, turning to look directly into the camera everyone is fixated on. You get chills as if he's staring at you directly. Personally. "Are you gonna punish me now?" He shouts, making people jump in the now, suddenly silent room. "Are you going to punish m-?"

He's cut off abruptly by the face of Dr. Gaul, in an apparent emergency broadcast. So that's where she went. Coryo sits up straighter to listen in, and you can feel him tense under your palm.

"I am devastated to announce that due to injuries sustained in the rebel bombing of the arena, another one of our academy students, the son of our President, Felix Ravenstill has died." You gasp, lifting a hand to cover your mouth as chatter erupts in the room. You never loved Felix, far from it, but it seemed to you that your classmates were dropping like flies. That would make anyone a little on edge. "We cannot allow the rebels to continually get away with such violent, senseless acts. This is why we have to retaliate, with something very special for our tributes in the arena. Even if that means there will be no winner." You don't hear what else she says as Coriolanus is abruptly pushing his chair back as he stands.

"Hey, what are you doing?" You ask as he starts to back away, eyes still locked on the screen. You reach out and grab his hand. "Coryo?"

"Where's your bag?" He asks, ignoring your question.

"Uh, over there." You point to your now unoccupied seat.

"Okay, I'm going to take it. I'll be back. Stay here." He prompts you, squeezing your hand for just a second before going and grabbing your bag, leaving in a flash.

"Alrighty then." You mumble to yourself, taking over his spot.

taglist: @keziahcore, @kitscutie, @annaelise, @serrendiipty, @babyspice6, @fratboyharrysgf0201, @totallynotkaibiased, @stelleduarte, @klplynn, @secretsicanthideanymore, @bejeweledreverie, @gloryekaterina, @andrewgarfieldsbitch, @queenofspades6, @pixiepopz, @pepperonipastas, @ladybug0095, @lunamothwrites, @nhlfs, @sbrewer21, @mus-tbe-a-weasley, @splxtscreen, @unclecrunkle, @karmaswitch, @sunghoonsbakery, @coconut-dreamz, @nekee-lilac02, @ooooglymoooogly, @riddlerloveb0t, @lovedbalances, @notyourwildestdream, @snowlandson-top, @too-lit-for-fanfic, @utopiakys, @deafeningballoonnacho, @roosterschanelslut, @impeterporker, @chmpgneprblem, @cosmoetik, @http-ilysm, @Lauravanderbooben20, @dry0campa, @luclue, @lokidala, @urvampgfsworld, @carolanns-world , @nan-nie, @shakespearseclipse, @iovemoonyy, @notyoursweetheart-honey, @girlalwaysathome, @gingerpixie, @xyzstar, @eatpizzasass, @slytherinholland, @chess1ca, @queenofshinigamis, @elodiebeau, @soulessjourney, @emeixho, 

if your user has a strikethrough that means i was unable to tag you! double-check that your user is correct! I also did some googling and it says it's possible you aren't being tagged because you could be a new blog or they've flagged you as a possible bot, so try reblogging something or leaving some comments. you can do that here if you'd like ;)

fill out my form linked here to join my taglist!

[catindabag]

TBOSAS CRACK! TAKE: ✨HIMBO CORYO SNOW✨

⭐️❄️⭐️

So I was drinking and talking with my friends about TBOSAS yesterday and I remember one of them joking and saying something about how the story would’ve been so much different if Coryo Snow had the same ✨goofball energy✨ as Tom Blyth (his actor).😂

I think I choked on my drink on that one, ‘cuz imagine thee Coriolanus Snow (Le Poor Cabbage Boy) with the same himbo goofball energy and carefree attitude as Tom Blyth. The Hunger Games would’ve died right there and then. Heck! Dr. Gaul would rather feed herself to her mutts or die from aneurysm than consider Himbo!Coryo as her apparent heir and apprentice.

Also, Dean Highbottom would probably be too busy dying inside whenever he sees a happy Coryo Snow smiling and skipping like an idiot while hanging out with his genuine BFF, Sejanus Plinth.🤣

Dean Highbottom be like:

Casca: *is drunk AF* Oh Panem, why am I even here? Just to suffer-

Coryo: ✨Good morning✨❤️, Sir! I hope you’re having a great day today. *waves like an idiot*😊

Casca: Fml. The bane of my existence is here again.😩

Coryo: My dear friend Sejanus gave me some chocolate cookies earlier. Do you want to try one, Sir? They’re very delicious~.🥰

Casca: *dumbfounded* How the heck are you even Crassus Xanthos Snow’s son?!

Coryo: Well, people say that I look like him. So yeah, I am his son.😀

Casca: No you ain’t! You’re too nice and too happy to be his! So you must’ve been adopted!

Coryo: But sir, I really am his son.🥺

Casca: Please just tell me you were adopted-

Coryo: But sir-

Casca: Look me in the eye and tell me you hate me! Please, I beg you!!😭🔪

Coryo: Sejanus! Sej, help! The Dean is drunk again! He’s saying weird things to me!

Sejanus: I’m on my way, my love- I mean, ✨bestie✨!😘

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Getting some Berserk thoughts down, because the last time I was in my feelings about Griffith and the Golden Age arc, I’d promised at least one anon that I’d talk about it later and then I didn’t shfhff

But dam the Primrose Hall speech is such Wuthering Heights level miscommunication! It makes me ill!

Griffith positing that: a) having a dream is thee most important thing in the world and b) he cannot respect or consider a friend anyone who does not have their own dream (implicitly a dream different from his, so those two spheres never need interfere or threaten each other) or someone who is subordinate to him and therefore in danger of dying for his dream.

And then like five chapters later we get Casca’s flashbacks about Griffith and that immediately establishes that he is a lying liar who lies when it comes to his own emotions and guilt, but also that we can’t really know what he’s feeling in the present day, exactly, because he’s a different person now.

Contrary to what Griffith stan nation might say lol, I don’t think the dissonance between his two reactions to a child’s death directly resulting from him striving to achieve his goals is actually him just being a better liar by the Golden Age era.

He’s become indelibly crueler over the years and like, twenty is not fifteen.* He’s older and spent the entire time in between at war, killing other people, and commanding his own troops to die, for his dream. Age has hardened him. Meanwhile, him succumbing to that cruelty, to steel himself against personal grief, is literally the culmination of the Golden Age arc!

*caveat that the ages are messy, but he appears to be a teen and at least four to five years older by the Primrose Hall speech

But that flashback sequence is truly the key to Griffith’s character. It establishes both that he feels a general guilt over the blood on his hands, but also that he is motivated by a catastrophic level of sunk cost fallacy.

I also think him musing that the child must have really admired knights and wanted to be a knight himself, and that he always looked at Griffith like he was a hero out of a story is more indicative of Griffith and his initial perceptions of glory/his dream when he was younger, than simply an element of his guilt for leveraging the sense of hero worship he invokes in his followers (which is def an element at all)

It’s just very telling that this comes on the heels of Guts’ guilt over Adonis’ death and being reminded of his own younger self when seeing him.

Griffith’s own dream likely started out of naivety and simply wanting glory/to be a hero/to ascend when he started the Band of the Hawk as an adolescent. I think that child’s death represents him understanding the cost of being a mercenary, and leading people to their deaths for his own gain, when it’s far too late and he’s already sitting on a pile of corpses. And the only way to make it up is to keep grasping at his dream so that at least those deaths weren’t for nothing. I really don’t think he’s particularly torn up about Adonis’ death in the moment, but the larger abstract sense of guilt very much threatens to crush him if he ever falters.

And you know who has historically made him falter and put himself at risk, threatening his dream?

So, I think he’s very deliberately talking about Guts here actually, rather than the usual shipper line that he’s not even considering Guts when he says this.

And I think he’s very deliberately bringing up the key differences between himself and Guts (having a dream; Guts viewing himself as nothing but a tool to him despite!!! Griffith trying to convince him that they’re equals) and trying to convince himself that Guts shouldn’t mean much to him/that he cannot respect his life.

Because what’s one thing we know Griffith does? He pretends he doesn’t care while visibly caring very much.

And interestingly, what Griffith claims not to respect at all when speaking to Charlotte, seems to be what drew him to Guts in the first place. I’d argue, part of how Guts makes him falter, aside from an emotional connection, is potentially that he’s envious/tempted by the concept of being so uniquely unburdened with personal goals, considering Griffith himself is practically drowning in his own ambition.

Which, arguably, could simply be traits he values in any subordinate but not an equal. But we’re told several times by Casca that Guts is a unique case for him, that he’s never deliberately sought someone out to join him. And ostensibly, in that moment that observation is the only thing Griffith knows about him.

And it’s also worth noting that he initially simply asks Guts to join them. (More specifically he just says “I want you.” Super normal). The dual and its terms are something Guts sets, resulting in this moment.

But even after that point, he keeps trying to nudge their relationship into a more personal dynamic. Confiding in him, making it clear that he doesn’t tell anyone else these thoughts. And of course the famous scene where he insists that his own life isn’t worth more than Guts’ at all.

But Guts views himself as a sword to be wielded by Griffith (something we see Casca echo too) and keeps reinforcing the fact that he only does as Griffith demands.

And Griffith is very willing to leverage that and use Guys’ obedience to his benefit. At the heart of it, Griffith has always been mercenary even about this relationship. He’s very much trying to have his cake and eat it too, where his close personal friend and confidant is also his dog who he can bring to heel whenever it suits him.

It is very telling the way Griffith reacts when Guts tries to leave him. Where when he realizes he can’t talk him out of it, he decides to make him stay.

To me, this all ties back to the Primrose Hall speech, and how Griffith is trying to distance himself from his feelings for Guts, because he’s so much closer to his goals at that point. And ostensibly both the Princess’ favor and the attempt on his own life have made him really reevaluate how close he is to achieving something real and to not let something petty like feelings get in the way of that.

…and then Guts breaks up with him and everything falls to pieces.

[megala-theia-praxidike]

SnowBaird I found romantic in the Book Part 10

(A.K.A me crying and unhinged for the book!meadow scene)

They hoped to see each other again

😭 it just soooo

Her touching his lips and him feeling her fingers. I will fight ANYONE who does not think there was no love between them. This is goddamn romantic aaaaaaaahhhhh😭😭😭😭

Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh😭😭

This scene is so hot 🥵

They were laying and embracing each other in the meadow and sharing that ice water.. aaaaashekegsmlk.sjdjlds

Lucy Gray was scared for Coryo that night when he entered the arena to get Sejanus. She appreciated that he killed Bobbin and was angry at Coral and her gang for going after Coryo. Coryo is not the only one who's a bit of a freak. Lucy Gray likes his mark on her palm and my god, he kisses that palm🥹

It's a little theory of mine that, that is why Lucy Gray was gunning for Coral. She is not the saint most think she is. She's morally Gray.

Say what you will about Coryo's possessiveness and how he keeps thinking of her as his but Lucy Gray is the one who SAYS IT OUT LOUD.

Can they be anymore hot

Putting this here cuz Coryo finally calls her his girlfriend

Also him calling Casca "evil incarnate" 🤣

Part 9

Part 11

[13eyond13]

Something I think fiction does sometimes is make sex represent the end goal for relationships so often that if two characters sleep together it causes readers to automatically see them as truly in love / that it would solve all problems for the pair to be together forever, even when that isn't necessarily what the narrative is trying to say / depict otherwise.

I am thinking about this because of Guts and Casca... to me they sleep together initially almost as an act of friendship? A way of experimenting with each other and learning about sex, perhaps of distracting themselves from the person they're both more actually into, and of course also because they do care about each other and maybe are attracted to one another on some level, and want to see what it would be like to try to get even closer together. But I think the story also makes it pretty clear that Guts is more emotionally invested in his relationship with Griffith than with Casca, in what you might call a narratively romantic sense... and Casca is shown sort of seeing the futility of her feelings for Griffith and eventually growing apart from him that way pre-Eclipse, even though she still cares for him the most out of everyone she knows (though I don't think he ever feels nearly the same way about her). So getting with Griffith isn't end game for Casca (and she herself eventually realizes that), but I also don't read Casca as a character for whom getting with Guts is the end game character arc-wise, either. I'm not sure Miura even had a concrete end-game character arc in mind for her, to be honest. I feel as though unfortunately she was written mostly as something to be used between Griffith and Guts rather than to end up having her own fully realized narrative journey in the same way that Guts (and maybe also Griffith) will. I want to see her and Guts as friends and at peace more than I want to see them live happily ever after together as a couple, because I feel like that's actually more how they really feel for one another than anything else. Granted, there's a bit of an interesting ironic twist in the story that happens during the Eclipse, where Griffith (unintentionally?) drives Guts and Casca closer together than I think they might have been otherwise with the trauma that he causes them both (even though I think their relationship is probably something he'd be jealous of and read as more romantic than it actually might be and wish to destroy, simply due to his own insecurities and his own possessive feelings for Guts). But I also didn't really read Guts' reactions in the Eclipse scene as Guts being jealous and possessive over Casca in a sexual / romantic sense - I read it more as him feeling empathy for her pain and desire to protect her from harm / from the darker side of Griffith he maybe knew about a bit better than anybody else. I DO care about Guts and Casca's relationship a lot, and find it one of the most emotionally compelling things in the story. But I don't think shipping them together for a happily ever after is really what I'd want for them, nor something that the narrative was actually trying to work towards / suggest to be the best ending for anybody involved? I don't know if I think shipping Guts and Griffith necessarily is either, particularly because of how irredeemably awful Griffith behaved during the Eclipse... but I DO think the story intentionally hinges more around the Griffguts relationship and their emotional journeys / character developments than it does about any other pair/relationship in the series, and that both of them have intense unresolved feelings for each other that come off much more suggestive and stronger than ones of just simply wanting to be friends. And I think all of these characters are pretty explicitly aware of that themselves even in the story as well.

Haha I don't even know what I'm trying to even say here except to work out some of my own thoughts about the main 3 that I care about, I suppose!

[deripmaver]

Casca and Griffith: Before and After The Eclipse

Back by unpopular demand: ME!!!!

My main MO in Berserk fandom is Sad Casca Hours, where I make posts that literally just exist to make you feel sad about Casca, because I feel sad about Casca and why should I be the only one who has to suffer?

To me, one of the absolute most heartbreaking aspects of Berserk is Casca and her (platonic) relationship with Griffith. It is genuinely impossible for me to look at the way she talks about him, thinks about him, and interacts with him in the Golden Age without feeling a lump in my throat. I think this particular relationship is overlooked - and honestly, I get why. It's just so fucking sad, you can't think about it and also expect to have a good day after LOLLLL.

I want to take a look at their relationship by comparing and contrasting two specific moments in it: Casca's first meeting with Griffith as a child, and Casca's first meeting with Griffith as Elaine, post-eclipse. I also want to go briefly into how, textually, Berserk handles atonement and forgiveness.

We're here to have a bad time!

Griffith Meets Casca as a Child

Griffith, as the young commander of a mercenary army, comes across Casca as the nobleman who purchased her from her family attempts to rape her. As Casca tells Guts looking back, it was as though an angel came down to her, a powerless girl, and gave her the agency to fight for herself.

It's not JUST that he saves her from the noble, it's that he puts the sword in her hand and shows her how she can fight for herself.

Casca's life up until that point has been marked by terror after terror, to the point where the daily injustices become banal, just part of her every day existence. Her family is helpless except to flee when bandits ride through their village. Then, at the age of twelve, she is offered up as an unwilling sacrifice for the good of all them. When a noble offers her family money to take away one of the mouths to feed, they have little choice but to accept. It's not ever specified how she felt about this at the time, and it's not clear if her parents have some inkling that the man they're selling their daughter to has ill intent - but what is clear is that there's no way for them to refuse the offer. After being sold off, the noble attempts to rape her - yet another instance of powerlessness.

Griffith giving her the sword might actually be the first time in Casca's entire life that she has any kind of power. It's key that he lets her kill the noble, both because of how it gives Casca agency over her own fate, again for the first time in her entire life, and because it reinforces the recurring theme in Berserk of atonement coming through direct confrontation with the people you hurt, in this case the sub-theme "everyone gets to kill their rapist."

It's also important to point out that Griffith's motivation here is seemingly completely altruistic. He hates that the nobles exert their power over the most helpless among them, and he gleefully takes the opportunity to humiliate the noble by turning the tables on him. Casca at this point is malnourished, and a girl, and completely unable to fight - there's no reason for him to welcome her into his band. There's no way he could have known how good of a fighter she would become, and how loyal, but in this moment he just says that if she wants to come with him, the decision is hers. This points to Griffith, in the early Golden Age, genuinely pushing for a more egalitarian world than the ones the nobles currently control (though I maintain that he always envisioned himself as being the supreme ultimate authority of that world as opposed to destroying the hierarchy entirely).

Griffith Meets Casca After the Eclipse

Casca, after the eclipse, is in a shockingly similar position to where she was when Griffith met her for the first time.

She's traumatized from sexual violence, unable to fight, unable to even talk, and helpless to the violence of the world around her. It's not quite right to compare her directly to twelve year old Casca, because child Casca was mentally sound and was capable of learning combat - but then the comparison isn't exactly right also because of the history between Griffith and Casca, and because of the years of loyalty and service Casca gave Griffith.

It's always complicated to analyze how, exactly, Griffith felt about Casca before the eclipse. For my part, I see him as viewing her akin to a favorite tool - he felt genuine affection for her, but in a sort of dehumanized way, while of course Casca saw him as beyond human and even godlike. He saw her as someone he could pluck up and put wherever he needed, and he took it for granted that she would always be by his side regardless of what he did. Honestly, I do think he geniunely liked her.

His actions towards her during the eclipse, and immediately before, are a reflection of having that stability shaken. When she attempts to exert her own agency by forming her own relationship with Guts, Griffith is suddenly made aware that she's stopped acting just like his favorite tool, and I think this makes him angry. His rape of her is in some ways reminding her of her "place" - she is being treated like an object both because of the rape itself, and because the main reason he rapes her is to hurt Guts. He is purely using her as a tool for his petty, malicious vengeance.

Then, two years later, he is reunited with her on the Hill of Swords.

I'll post these panels given the slightest opportunity lol. Griffith doesn't expect to save Casca - he moves completely unconsciously to protect her, and then when his heart still throbs upon seeing her and Guts, he says it must be because of the child inhabiting his body. This is of course up to interpretation - I don't fully buy it, because Griffith has never been honest about his feelings.

What I need to point out with this scene, though, is that Griffith does not for a second consider Casca. Everything on the Hill of Swords is about Guts, when arguably Casca is the one who was hurt the worst during the eclipse, and who was the most loyal to Griffith. For goodness' sake, she's the only reason Griffith still had a BotH to sacrifice in the first place. Griffith tells Guts that he no longer feels anything for anyone, and after saving her from the rock fall, Griffith does not even spare a glance towards her. She genuinely seems to mean nothing to him.

Interestingly, as Griffith leaves, again not even deigning to look at Casca, he gives one of the only examples of victim blaming in the entirety of Berserk, by saying that Guts should have expected what happened.

Griffith in the Golden Age seemed intimately aware of the dangers a young girl alone could face, and he wants to protect Casca from that despite her being a perfect stranger. Griffith after his rebirth must, then, also have some awareness of the dangers in the world facing a disabled woman like Elaine, particularly a branded one - and yet he leaves her to those dangers, uncaring of how she struggles under them.

The purpose of this comparison isn't to make an argument one way or the other about how much Femto is the same as Griffith. Just for clarity's sake, my stance is that Femto and Griffith are one and the same, and that all of Femto's actions (rape included) are actions taken by Griffith.

What I really just want to highlight here is the pure, unfeeling cruelty with which Griffith treats Casca after the eclipse. KLSHGSLKJ as if sexually assaulting her and completely destroying her mentally isn't enough, his apathy towards her after becomes a near constant torment as much as his outright hatred towards Guts. It must be noted that he offers Guts and Rickert a place in Falconia, while Casca gets no such acknowledgement. It's as though, to him, she doesn't even exist, while her entire life has been consumed by the trauma of his betrayal during the eclipse. Isn't that just painfully realistic, though? How often do the people who hurt you the most go on in life, unaware of the deep pain you feel every day?

A quick note I'd like to make is that, of course, we're intentionally not being given any sort of look into NeoGriffith's mind, save for the slightest hints in the Hill of Swords. We don't know if he does harbor any sort of thoughts about Casca, if he's intentionally avoiding thinking about her due to guilt (wouldn't that be nice), or if she genuinely means nothing to him with his heart apparently frozen. While I do want to point out that we shouldn't take what Griffith says at face value, I find myself struggling to imagine what internal monologue could justify his treatment of Casca, both during the eclipse and after.

I think if you're reading this you're wondering why tf I'm getting so emo about Griffith, who canonically raped Casca and killed everyone she ever knew and loved in front of her (save Guts), being mean to Casca in the aftermath. Like, do I think he should be nice to her? Pretend like nothing happened? No, of course not - what I want is that he didn't assault her in the first place, not after how much she idolized him and loved him. It's brutal to have watched that happen, and to watch the utter apathy with which he looks at her after, to the point that I wonder how he could have ever cared about her if this is what he would do.

As for protecting her as Elaine from the dangers in the world, am I really suggesting he should have plucked her up and away from Guts to hide her away from all the monsters in the world?

SPEAKING OF WHICH.......................

Griffith's Kidnapping of Casca

ohhhhh nmy god oh my fucking godhksdjfghnvlskfdj

Griffith left Casca to the dangers of the world on the Hill of Swords, and then the minute the fact that she's apart from him presents a weakness to him (ie his uncontrolled travel to visit her and Guts during his full moon transformations into their son), he just... Kidnaps her.

Casca has just revived, and has this sweet close-knit support system, and Griffith pulls her away from all of that because, to him, she is just a tool that he can pick up and place wherever he needs her. Again, we don't know what's going through Griffith's head as he does this, but we very much do see the way it impacts Casca, and that to me overrides whatever internal justification Griffith may have for his actions - if he even bothers to justify it to himself.

Smug bastard.

The utter dehumanization that Casca is subjected to by Griffith in chapter 372 is so... cruel. It's just cruel. There's no other word for it. After everything, he has her drugged in Falconia, and again he won't even deign to look at her. I have a whole post on Ch 372 here where I go through this in depth.

Before everything, Casca used to look at Griffith like this.

In Berserk, in order to be forgiven, characters need to go through an internal transformation that relates to the harm they previously caused. We look at Farnese, who was going to have Casca tried for heresy, and who wound up being Casca's protector and humbling herself by learning magic from Schierke. Then, with Guts, after assaulting Casca he makes a point of changing his whole ethos and allowing Farnese and Serpico to join him. His narrative punishment for this, also, is directly related to his relationship with Casca. She is terrified of him and refuses to be near him, to the point where he can't even help her be revived. Not to say he's fully forgiven, or that he SHOULD be fully forgiven until he can speak with revived Casca, but these are examples of how Berserk treats forgiveness and atonement. I really recommend this essay by @imhaitusncarnate on Guts and toxic masculinity.

Griffith, while running Falconia as an apparent utopia, has done absolutely nothing like that - and his interactions with Casca in particular are just absolutely horrific, torment after torment like she's not even a person to him. I think this is meant to set him apart from characters who truly seek to atone for the things they've done. With Guts, he's flawed and he fucks up again and again as he tries to protect Casca. With Griffith, he won't even acknowledge her as she's drugged and helpless in his "paradise."

It's so incredibly painful to look at their first meeting where Griffith saves her, and puts agency into her hands for the first time in her life, and then to see how he treats her now. That, I suppose, is the crux of this essay - in many ways I think Griffith's morality as a character is represented in how he treats Casca, and to overlook that (and to overlook her) is to miss some of the most important overarching themes in Berserk. In fairness, I think this goes for Guts as well. He's narratively supported when he's caring for Casca, and narratively punished when he isn't.

There can be some arguments that this treatment is simply because Miura doesn't care about women, but genuinely I don't buy that. I think there's plenty of textual evidence that, while flawed at times, Miura even from Conviction Arc intended Casca and her trauma to be a key player in both Guts' and Griffith's character arcs.

I don't think you need to be reminded every day of how horribly Griffith treats Casca post-eclipse because not everyone has an overabundance of melancholic humors like I do, but I think it's important to acknowledge it exists and not chalk it up to misogyny on Miura's end.

I think, eventually, Casca will have a moment where she takes agency back into her own hands, in contrast to the moment where Griffith helped her all those years ago. I also think, at some point, Griffith will have to really look at Casca again. It'll be interesting, and heartbreaking, to see what happens then.

[gamblersdoll]

can you write some nasty reader x guts anal? Thank you🥰

anal, spit, slight degradation, special guest since i saw the opportunity. fingering, (f) oral, (f) girl on girl, mentions of fucking guts ass, threesome.

“fu-fuck.” he grunted, eyes screwing tightly shut and pushing himself slowly into your puckered hole, biting his lip until he was only a quarter of the way. “fuck, mean to tell me.. youve never done this?”

“nuh uh..” you grit, adjusting to his girth and length. it was hard to describe the feeling, having a little peak when you both prepped your hole up before he took it. he pushes slow again, having you claw but moan each inch went inside.

“shit, i couldnt tell.” he chuckles, gathering spit in his mouth to spit it all around your ring. “sure, youre tight— but that could be just natural, probably thought about me taking you this way, y’know?” he groans, bottoming out and gripping your flesh.

“i nev—“

“shh, shhh.” he coos, kissing your back and pressing you down by your back. “relax, leave it to me.” he says, a hand going up and down your back. “if its not for you, then ill let you take my ass, too.”

well shit, might as well lie through your fucking teeth.

he spreads your back end apart, biting his lip as he pulls his hips back slow but enough to slam it back in. “shit, just know you’ll go dumb just with a couple strokes.” he had you right where he always wanted you, bent over and taking his cock in your ass.

you whine, a hand reaching back as you sob into the sheets that only makes your arm fold and held on your back. “guts..” you moan, biting your lip as he finds a pace to start you off that, losing himself in the mix.

“god—fuck!” he groans again, lost in the way you also creamed with your ass, maybe it was new to him. who wouldve thought? no matter, he started his pace with his hips again. his balls, heavy, heavy balls slap against your slit, causing your toes to curl.

his hand wraps around your neck to your throat, pulling you up to his chest and hes so close to your ear. “you love this cock?” he hotly breathes, another hand tweaking at your areolas.

“love this cock..” you repeat through your teeth, feeling his lose his pace, hips stuttering but firm.

“yeah? you do?” he mocks, hands back to your hips and steadying you so he can just fuck himself into you. “fuck, yeah, you do.” he laughs, kissing your cheek and hearing the door click.

“guts! brought some lub— back..” casca trails off, arousal immediately shooting to her core, seeing the position you both were in. “you couldnt have waited?!”

“sorry, love.” he says, defeated sounding, “only started maybe ten minutes ago.” he says, a beckoning finger to her and shes hot on your trail.

“no matter, missed both of you.” she mumbles, lips pressing to yours and shes already out of her top and pants. “i can tell you drank my mango juice, beautiful.” she says between kisses, moving down to your breasts and suckling.

and the sight alone only makes guts fuck into you harder. perfect.

“s-sorry!—“ you yelp, sobs rippling through as you feel her tongue dance along your clit and guts make himself comfortable inside your puckered, abused hole.

casca lays on her back, your sticky cunny just inches above her face and shes already kissing your slit. you were growing close, seeing her fingers curl inside her own walls and feel each hole of yours be taken.

that little tight coil in your tummy was also synced somehow with cascas. living together does that, you figured. because she had only been here for five minutes, and both of you were to cum so soon..

“fuck, youre close, can feel it.” guts growls out, the biggest and thickest arms in the world just wrapping around you and a hand snaking down to cascas, him leaning over you and practically casca.

casca moans, feeling guts’ fingers curl into her cunt and her continued efforts to your clit were no better.

until it wasnt, one final slam of his tip punching into that spot in your ass that made you cum, shocking your cunt and it ripples through. you clench around guts’ cock, making him grit his teeth and spill himself into you. and his fingers never let up with casca, her legs shutting to cream around his fingers.

he breathes heavily, laying both of you down next to each other and kissing both foreheads. “you both alright?” he mumbles, receiving both heads nod and he smiled.

“good, im glad.”

[lauralot89]

One Perfect Moment

Griffith is quite possibly the greatest villain of all time, and also the most misunderstood.

This is not to say he's done nothing wrong. He's done Everything wrong. He's done it so wrong that the wrongness is visible from space, and he did much of the Wrong well before he joined the God Hand. But somehow the common fandom view has become that he's a cold calculating monster well before the Eclipse, who doesn't care who or what he sacrifices in pursuit of his dream.

In actuality, everything the man does is driven by his emotions and especially his affection. He loves Guts too much to let him leave without a fight, he can't handle his sorrow on his own so he goes to Princess Charlotte, and when he's caught with the princess he can't get away because his sword is broken from the stupid impulsive fight he had rather than just telling Guts his feelings. Even the suicide attempt that started the Eclipse was a result of him having an emotional breakdown from overhearing Guts and Casca.

But this? This right here, when we see Griffith tearing his skin off in shame and self-loathing after he prostituted himself to a child predator because he personally felt responsible for a little boy's death? This is everything.

All you need to know to figure out what will happen to Griffith and the Band of the Hawk is this scene. It neatly lays out everything to come.

There is no war without death. There is no throne without blood spilled. And that may be logical, but contrary to popular interpretation, Griffith only acts like he's driven by logic. He's not. He's debased himself to the point that self-mutilation is the only way he can stand his own skin, all for the purpose of staving off the inevitable as long as possible.

And then he reaches a point where he's literally unable to debase himself further.

After losing the ability to walk, to hold anything, to speak, after losing skin and half his face and having his body violated in every imaginable way, including the most obvious ("like we were husband and wife"), there's nothing left for him give of himself, and his dream is still out of reach.

and then a bunch of demons show up when the man is out of his mind from a year of torture and isolation, and tell him he's a spoiled child playing with his friends' corpses and their suffering is for nothing if he doesn't kill everyone else and take the throne:

[Shredding his skin]: "I have neither regret nor remorse about that."

[Sacrificing everyone]: "I can't apologize. No, I won't apologize!"

if it helps you sleep at night, Griffith

They're both acts motivated by guilt from the pain he caused those who placed their faith in him, and the second one wouldn't hit so hard if not for the first. It's SO good and yes, he's a bastard, but he's not the heartless conniving bastard he's painted to be.

Perfect moment, no notes.

[as an aside I just realized when getting these images that directly before the Eclipse begins Griffith is mentally begging Guts not to touch him because he can't make stupid self-destructive choices when Guts is there and then he doesn't make the decision to join the God Hand until he can't hold onto Guts so they aren't touching anymore, amazing work]

[bthump]

What are your thoughts or analyses on the phallic imagery in berserk? Less so the more obvious ones like seen in Casca’s nightmares which are obviously pointing to her sexual trauma, but like we see with the vagina-esque monsters and how Guts’ sword is alluded to being like a penis in some cases. Sorry if it’s a weird question lol

Sorry for the wait on this lol, I was on vacation for a while, and it's also a topic I wanted to spend some time on because I love it and I wanted to be relatively thorough. Thanks for the ask!

So yeah, disclaimers out of the way, Freudian analytical theory is very silly, very gender essentialist in ways that can often be transphobic and misogynist, and as far as I'm aware pretty much wholly unrelated to real psychology. Back in the 70s and 80s you had film theorists who took it seriously as a genuine glimpse into the subconsciousness of humanity or whatever, but now it's pretty much just a readily available source of sex and gender related symbolism that's easy to understand.

And in Berserk I do genuinely think it's a valid lens to view the story through because Miura is often quite heavy handed in utilizing it as symbolism. I mean, Guts literally gives someone an orgasm by stabbing her at one point. Some of this can definitely be a stretch, taking established symbols and running with them, but some of it is also almost certainly purposeful. I'll leave it to you to decide what you see as legit and what you see as stretching believability here.

This is very long lol

So yeah, it starts off strong in Berserk with Guts' oversized sword. Swords are dicks, ie sources of masculine power, especially in Berserk

and in the context of the story the dragonslayer is Guts overcompensating imo. And it's not compensating for a small dick lol, which would be more the purview of comedy, but for a loss of masculinity, ie Guts' childhood abuse from Gambino, and rape trauma. It's about his need to prove himself because he was made to feel like he had to, imo.

And it's not just the size of his sword, his obsession with it is also a major factor. He has a grandiose speech about how his sword is like a part of his body (hmm) and that it's been at his side through everything and he's always relied on it. The dream he lands on is to be the best and strongest sword fighter ever. He's currently having a breakdown over not being able to hit someone with his sword. He has a recurring tendency to break other guy's swords lol. At one point Casca screams at him that he essentially cares about his sword more than her. etc etc.

In the story dreams are at odds with emotionally healing human relationships, and dreams are represented by swords (Guts' sword obviously, Casca becoming Griffith's sword, Griffith calling the throne a sword while taunting the king in the dungeon as well as his vision of himself throwing him a sword and pointing to the castle in chapter 72).

So through a Freudian lens, Guts' sword can also be said to represent emotional isolation, positioning masculinity as emotionally isolating. Which, yk, fits with Griffith also equating dreams and masculinity in his Promrose Hall speech (a man must achieve a dream before he can have a family or lover) and, I suppose lol, Casca getting "softer" and more feminine as she falls for Guts, as femininity is therefore the opposite: emotional reliance on and support of others.

So if swords are dicks, then it follows that wounds are vaginas, ie yonic symbols. Also pretty obvious when you read some of the lines during the Guts and Casca sex scene lol. "I too want a wound I can say you gave me." These can represent weakness and victimization (I did warn for misogyny lol) and/or (often sexual) relationships and emotional openness.

So you have the relationships - "licking wounds" with Casca; Guts letting Casca stab him when he thinks about abandoning Griffith; the Beast of Darkness calling Casca the wound Griffith left so Guts can keep feeling the pain Griffith caused; Griffith scratching his own shoulder where Guts' sword pointedly didn't wound him; Griffith being out of reach of Guts' sword post-Eclipse; "let's give him a heap of raw iron;" and Farnese grinding on Guts' sword while possessed and Slan directly treating being stabbed as sexual penetration for the most obvious examples...

Also I'd argue that any time Guts gets his ass kicked in a fight it functions as an echo of his rape trauma symbolically and subconsciously to Guts. Both kinda obviously at times, like eg when Slan overpowers him and tears off his shirt while wounding his chest, and kisses him after the stabbing, causing Guts to feel a burst of fear

or when Rosine stabs Guts through the mouth as another enemy who flirts with Guts mid-fight. And of course the first duel with Griffith in which Guts unilaterally sets the stakes to sex slavery because he's projecting.

But also a little more subtlely, such as when Zodd is given the same position as Nightmare Donovan in Guts' concussion nightmare after he kills Adonis, or all this consistent imagery that rapists and apostles tend to get.

Or, interestingly, the way the Berserk armour functions as self-harm as Guts fights by penetrating Guts to "heal" him.

Something that solidifies its hold over Guts and makes him lose more and more of his positive humanity to his urge to kill.

So yeah, from a Freudian angle I'd suggest that Guts is driven to fight to reclaim the sense of masculine power he was stripped of when he was raped, and every fight can be said to be a repetition of his rape trauma in which he (usually) successfully fights back, but also continuously retraumatizes himself rather than healing.

I'm going to delve a little deeper into how phallic and yonic symbols intersect with the characters' relationships now that we've outlined some of the preliminary symbolism, starting from the Golden Age.

The first duel between Guts and Griffith is rife with Freudian symbolism, very overtly. Griffith stabs Guts and then Guts proceeds to have a nightmare about his rape trauma. Then he projects that trauma onto Griffith when he assumes Griffith wants to fuck him and adds sexual stakes to their duel. Then, yk, he takes Griffith's sword into his mouth lol.

Griffith winning by dislocating Guts' arm can be easily taken as a symbolic unmanning/castration, nicely introducing us into Guts' three years of growth towards prioritizing relationships instead of aimless sword-swinging to prove himself. It's also suggestive of penetration when you're primed to look for sexual symbolism (and if Guts offering Griffith his ass and then biting a sword doesn't prime you for it, what does?):

And the two of them losing their swords in the course of the fight and resorting to unarmed combat can also be taken as a telling symbol of the conflict between dreams and their relationship with each other. They lose the symbols of their dreams and contend only with each other, in a more positive contrast to the second duel that ends their relationship, in which they fight only with swords and never touch each other.

Wounds come into it when Griffith nearly gets killed rushing in against Zodd to save Guts, leading to the most impactful moment of their relationship, where Griffith admits he did it solely for Guts' sake and had no other reason. Griffith also points out how wounded Guts is after that fight, in what I'd call a nearly flirtatious way:

And if you follow these symbols completely strictly this scene suggests Guts retreating into his defensive masculinity in his sword exercises after being defeated/emasculated by Zodd and accused of not valuing his personal relationships by Casca, and finally finding a new, more constructive purpose for his sword after Griffith essentially confesses his devotion to him.

Dedicating his sword to Griffith in return for the wounds Griffith suffered for his sake, with, it has to be noted when the topic is freudian symbolism, his sword held at exactly crotch level.

In the second duel Guts destroys Griffith's sword before leaving, a symbolic castration which is most likely intended to represent and foreshadow Griffith's subsequent loss of power when he throws his life away and ends up tortured in a dungeon for a year. More interestingly imo, is Griffith tracing scratch-markes on his shoulder after sleeping with Charlotte and while crying over Guts - the same shoulder Guts' sword didn't quite hit when he won the duel, drawing attention to the lack of a wound by Guts' hand, a wound he created himself and traces in his devastation.

You have a nice... I don't know what the comic terminology is lol so I'm just going to call it a match-cut here, with Griffith and Casca both getting penetrated by the same number of arrows/skewers, to signify Griffith and the Hawks' fall from power, in contrast to Guts' growing phallic power as he pursues his sword swinging. Power which he demonstrates when he returns and saves the Hawks and Casca and Griffith by swinging his sword a lot and defeating a lot of powerful enemies and, if I'm gonna be crass, healing Casca's suicidal despair with his dick lol.

Interestingly though, before he does that he lets Casca stab him while experiencing the guilt of having driven Griffith into a torture chamber by leaving. It's a wound that highlights his emotional connection to Griffith and vulnerability to those emotions, even as he tries to deny them. He then manages to successfully deny them for a little while longer after having sex with Casca.

In this Freudian context, Guts and Casca's sex scene is an affirmation of a relationship, but one which is emotionally uneven, with Casca ready and willing to emotionally rely on and support Guts, but Guts still dedicated to his sword-swinging dream, inviting Casca with him but only as long as she doesn't get in the way of what he wants to do. This does fit with phallic symbols being associated with emotional distance and yonic symbols being associated with emotional closeness lol. (Also fittingly, the one way he does open up to her is about his rape trauma after a flashback.)

It's worth noting that in this disconnect Casca erroneously assumes Guts fought the hundred men and "bled" for her, making her want "a wound" from him in return. Guts fighting those hundred men is much more reminiscent of his fights against apostles, the fights that revolve around replaying his rape trauma to make himself feel better. Casca assumes they already have an emotional bond due to Guts' wounds, but she's wrong - Guts specifically thinks to himself during the hundred man fight that he's not doing it for Casca.

This is reflected in the Wyald fight when Guts insists on fighting Wyald, again as part of the whole reaffirmation of masculinity thing I outlined at the start of this, when Casca just wants him to run away. The Wyald fight is pretty overt about being about Guts' rape trauma imo, moreso than most fights in the story. Wyald's rapiness is made a point of from Guts' point of view when he sees him wielding the torso of a woman sexually impaled on a pike and gets extra angry, and when he literally cuts off Wyald's dick when he's about to rape Casca, and then has his pointed line about needing to "settle the score with him... with them... by his own sword."

SO ESSENTIALLY to sum up this subsection, I think you can argue that what prevents Guts and Casca from being an equal relationship is Guts stlil being hung up over needing to prove his masculine power through sword-swinging, rather than embracing his emasculation (which, remember, tends to signify positive relationships in this context) and coming to terms with it ("immersing himself in sorrow" as Godo says much later.)

Like, to return to Griffith, it's fitting that after Guts destroys his sword and he goes through a year of torture and is thoroughly emasculated, he's able to recognize his feelings for Guts and understand that Guts is more important to him than the dream, the "sword called the throne."

But he doesn't quite come to terms with his emasculation either. This symbolism is one explanation for the wagon scene where he propositions Casca - a desperate bid for some form of power. Not the strongest explanation imo, but since we're currently in the business of actively looking for this symbolism, it definitely fits. Casca's rejection and pity reinforce Griffith's emasculation, and overhearing her tell Guts to leave again is the final straw. Relationships are a bust, swords are now his only recourse, as we see when he has a vision of himself throwing him a sword and pointing to the castle.

You could take the nightmarish vision he has of a life with Casca as Griffith rejecting emasculation, but an alternate way of taking it is Griffith regaining a form of phallic power, and the emotional isolation that goes with it. After all, it's implied that he has a child with Casca, while totally withdrawn and emotionally isolated.

I once said in a different silly essay that Griffith choosing the dream is, in a way, Griffith choosing another version that nightmare, and that take also fits here.

And hey, it's another reason for Femto to rape Casca lol, if we want to ascribe meaning there, and of course we must in this kind of analysis. In the wagon Griffith essentially offers sex to Casca for the faint vestige of masculine power it could give him (emotional isolation and a child); in his nightmare he imagines that life and it drives him to suicide; and after becoming Femto he forces sex onto Casca and then continues on to embody emotional distance and masculine power.

This power is painfully demonstrated through the rape of Casca, but also subsequently through his pure untouchability (often in pointedly sexualized contexts); through his phony relationship with Charlotte and ascending to the ultimate patriarchal role of king/emperor and taking that sword called the throne; and I guess also through his actual sword lol which he still uses.

An example of sexualized untouchability - check out the positioning of that third thought bubble, in this scene where Griffith lords his invulnerability over Ganishka.

And look at all those pillars, I'm js.

And I'd be remiss not to point out the most recent confrontation with Guts where Guts tries many times to hit his naked body with his giant sword, completely fails, and then Griffith kidnaps Casca. More very on-point emasculation symbolism, it might as well be Guts trying to fuck him but unable to get hard lol. His breakdown afterwards doesn't do much to disabuse you of that notion either.

Anyway, back to post-Eclipse Guts. There's not much else to add that I didn't cover at the start, but in brief:

Guts has lost his arm during the Eclipse, which is an emasculation - he loses it while watching Femto rape ~his woman~ so it's like the most traditional symbolic castration there is lol. And of course he replaces it with a bigger, better, and more overt phallic symbol: a canon. And like the first thing we see him do with it is shove it into the mouth of a monster he's banging and blow her head off. So yk, there's that.

And there's Puck, who exists to help bridge Guts' emotional distance and essentially serves as the feminine counterpart to Guts' masculinity for a while. From his magical empathy, to his tiny size, to his lack of genitalia (note that in Freudian theory the lack of a penis is an indicator of femininity rather than specifically the presence of a vagina), to his connections with female characters Theresia and Jill, even arguably to his introduction where Guts saves him from a bunch of men throwing phallic knives at him by skewering them with his own (bigger) projectiles, this is consistent during the Black Swordsman/Conviction arc era.

Chestnut Puck is a lot more boyish, with his particular humour, his cameraderie with an annoying teenage boy, and now having his own feminine counterpart in Ivalera, but that's fine because his thematic job as a feminine influence on Guts is over after Guts starts collecting more friends.

And as far as the RPG group goes, there are a few notable instances of phallic symbolism for them too. Farnese and Serpico are an obvious example, with Farnese sexualizing the wounds Serpico voluntarily suffers for her, when she demands he duel for her honour a bunch of times.

Farnese brandishing the end of her whip at him doesn't hurt the freudian power dynamic symbolism either lol.

In the Conviction arc Farnese wielded a sword she was incapable of using, suggestive of her true femininity under a brash masculine surface, and when she softens in the Millenium Falcon arc she becomes a caretaker with only a small dagger for self-defense. That said, she does get that epic moment of stabbing a tiger in the eye with a long silver pole (candlestick) when she rejoins Guts' crew rather than becoming a housewife, so she still gets some badass phallic weapon imagery lol.

Serpico wields a thin rapier in the Conviction Arc, which Guts easily grabs in his hand, and in the Millenium Falcon arc he switches to a... limp feather duster lol. Serpico is very feminized compared to Guts and his weapons fit as part of that, but they're still effective weapons. You could maybe argue, within this Freudian lens, that this is indicative of Serpico's healthier relationship with masculinity. He's not compensating for anything, he's at peace with himself.

And god I gotta say something about Guts and Serpico's duels. In the first one you have Serpico delaying Guts while Farnese steals Casca from him, and part of that delay is to force Guts into a fight where he can't wield his sword, a parallel emasculation to Casca being kidnapped.

Then you have their confrontation after Farnese's no good very bad night, which is just incredibly suggestive lol.

You cannot tell me this isn't Guts getting blueballed when Serpico leaves after one quick exchange. Particularly coming in the same chapter featuring possessed Farnese grinding on Guts' sword (which Guts was much less interested in, incidentally). Also: wounds as sexual imagery again. Guts licking the blood off his cheek? Come on.

And finally you have their fight in Farnese's basement, in which Serpico attempts to hinder Guts by surrounding him with giant pillars, which Guts smashes through as he dodges around them. Another neat illustration of Guts' pure phallic power and Serpico's much more effeminate style.

One final note to address part of your ask, which didn't naturally fit into the rest of this lol: I would interpret vaginal imagery in monsters as mainly castration anxiety, yk, vagina dentata vibes, the fear of sticking your dick in a hole you can't see into. There's actually a lot of interesting stuff to consider in terms of the feminine as the unknowable other when it comes to Freudian theory, but that's like, not something I would expect Miura to lean into first of all, and also it would take another essay of explanation. If you're interested in that kind of Freudian analysis though I'd recommend the books Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover and The Dread of Difference, edited by Barry Keith Grant. I took a course on women and horror films ages ago and read chunks of those, and it was very fun, and iirc both address Freudian imagery in horror.

Okay! So that's the rundown of like, all the examples of Freudian imagery that interest me at least lol. This isn't exhaustive ofc, Berserk is long and not stingy with this stuff, but this response is already so long and meandering lol, so I'm going to wrap it up here.

To sum up, phallic imagery often represents masculine power as well as masculine flaws (like emotional isolation) in Berserk, while yonic/vaginal imagery tends to represent feminine weakness as well as feminine virtues (like emotional connection and vulnerability). As a general rule, the more phallic imagery someone violently swings around, the more fucked up they are. Phallic violence is used to compensate for past trauma, but it only continues the cycle of violence. The way to break that violence is to accept one's wounds and focus on them, to heal, rather than trying to distract from them.

I don't think this is always the best way to interpret Berserk lol, but it adds another dimension that very often complements the surface meaning and thematic resonance of the story, sometimes purposefully, sometimes likely incidental. And either way it's a lot of fun to read into!

[maoam]

Do you think that Guts also has feelings for Griffith?

Yes. It's pretty obvious. Even their first interactions are ladened with homoerotic subtext. The whole phallic sword fight and Griffith grabbing Guts face and telling him "you belong to me now" while Guts, who normally hates being touched due to his childhood sexual trauma, doesn't mind and is intead mesmerized. And it just continues from there right after.

Miura did like to draw Griffith naked from Guts point of view. Lol. Also notice how he is a bit flustered.

There are more "naked Griffith in Guts' mind" moments but this is a pretty memorable one. Another user pointed out how Casca is depicted as childlike and sexless here (wrapped in a loosen cloth and acting like a child due to what happened) while Griffith is naked and desirable, and how it pretty much represents Guts desire (reconnecting with Griffith) and responsibility (over Casca).

There's also the whole thing with Beast of Darkness clearly showcasing Guts' inner desires... like it literally says it out loud "she's a sacrifice so you can continue longing for Griffith". But I won't attach that image here for obvious reasons lol.

[sunsetling-12]

I WATCHED THE BALAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES AND I HAVE THINGS TO SAY

i loved the adaptation btw, of course its the hunger games franchise that we're talking about here

anyway, spoilers ahead

we dont see him making the infamous cabbage soup, but we do see the snows apartment falling apart

tigris is still everything to me, they pulled her lines straight from the books — unfortunately we don't see much of her, but hunter schafer slayed every time she was on screen

i was very confused abou the plinth prize being a thing since the beggining, but i think it made sense... idk a lot happened in the movie after coryo rescued sejanus from the arena so i dont know if they had the time

i was also very confused that the thing about the academy students mentoring the tributes was unknown until that moment in the movie, again, i think they did this to expose the most things at once

lucy gray singing after her reaping was everything to me

oh, and the snake on mayfair's back too, very girlboss of her

the scene in the zoo, when he's parading her around is a copy of the book, i liked it very much

unfortunately coryo and lucy gray barely interacted, not like they did in the book, but the scenes they had before she went into the arena were very good

i though they were going to skip arachne's death, but they didn't — they skipped her funeral, though, but thats fine

they did the scene with clemensia and the snakes but she dissappeared right after, we never got to see her skin changing to scales which i think was a miss

the explosion didn't kill as many of the mentors as it did in the book, not that they showed anyway, the only name mentioned was felix ravinstill

i loved that we got to see more of the arena than in the books

the scene where coryo rescues sejanus is the exact same and i wasn't expecting less

lucy gray doesnt kill wovey :D

she does kill dill D:

i kind of hate the fact that coryo gave her the compact with the poison inside already, it just... idk it didnt had the same impact

i missed that they cut lucky interviewing the mentors as their tributes got killed, i would've liked to se lysistrata talking about jessup and humanizing him for the capitol

the snakes scene is awesome, a lot more people die in this — including reaper, which i think was a better ending for him than the one he got in the book, he embraced his death and it was quite beautiful

lucy gray singing to the snakes was AMAZING, everything that i ever wanted

i kinda loved how coryo gave the handkerchief with her scent to the snakes, it was a very deliberate choice and not like the book that he "did without thinking straight"

viola davis as dr. gaul was PERFECT, everytime she stole everyone's moment, she's just as unhinged as she is in the book, we dont see as much, but its implied

i wished they showed her expetiments with the avoxes to get the point across on how she is, but thats fine

casca highbottom was also a little shit, love it

coryo and sejanus meeting on the train to go to twelve caught me off guard, but i like it

rachel sang a lot in the movie and i was there for it, it was perfect everytime

their reunion was sweet, i'll admit it

i wished they've show it where the covey lived in the seam, but we cut straight to where he meets her in the meadow

i loved their scene in the lake and lucy gray singing "lucy gray" (lol) but i wished she'd sing the valley song to maude ivory instead

i also loved that they made movie coryo be the only one — technically, she most likely sang it to the covey, but anyway — who heard her sing the hanging three since you know, in 65 years he'll be shitting his pants with katniss

the hanging of sejanus was so heartbreaking, him crying out for his Ma... i cried, i knew i was going to cry and i did it anyway

seeing lucy gray realize coryo also killed sejanus was pure gold, i loved seeing her visibly tensed up and starting to see him with an entire different lenses

the whole ending in the woods was just like the books, i think it made a little less ambiguous about lucy gray's end, but i liked it

(and also i always believed she lived anyway)

maybe im reading waaaay too much into tigris, but her calling snow by "coriolanus" instead of "coryo" made me think she's starting to see the man he'd become — and this man is nothing like the little cousin she loved

"snow lands on top" is the last line of the movie, perfection, if you asked me

the only thing that i didn't like was that i dont know if they made coryo as unhinged as he is in the books, because we're not in his head and reading his line of thought, in the movie he does seem very genuine and it does seem like he really likes and cares about sejanus and lucy gray — we don't see him comparing her to an object or the excuses he gives himself to like her because she's not "really district" therefore not a second class citizen — until the very end when she finds out about the whole sejanus-being-hanged-because-of-him thing

idk his breakdown kinda feels rushed in the end since we dont have the context of what was going on in his mind beforehand and i think people who dont read the book would think it came out of nowhere

aside from this, i loved the movie and im totally going to see it again as soon as i can lol

EDIT: i just fucking remembered that they dont say anywhere that the 10th Games were erased ????? why ????? is the whole point !!!! oh i would've love to hear him say "goodbye lucy gray, we hardly knew you" i would've gone insane

and also, she doesn't say "the show is not over until the mockingjay sings", and it makes me a little annoyed — like, idk where they couldve put this line, but i whish they did

[alovelyburn]

Why do you ship Griffith and Guts, considering they will never be canon?

The glib answer would be "because I read the series." But let me not be glib.

Okay there are different definitions of "canon" when it comes to pairings.

If the question is "why do you ship them when they're never going to ride off into the sunset together," the answer is "because it's a fascinating dynamic and I don't have any investment in relationships I enjoy working out or characters that I like being happy."

If the question is "why do you ship them when they have no canonical romantic interest in each other," the answer is "because I disagree with that statement."

And like I said yesterday, I always back my perspective up, so here we go:

In the Beast of Darkness scene where the Beast in question suggests that Guts only keeps Casca with him as an excuse to keep longing for Griffith, the use of furigana over the kanji on "yearning" or "longing" is specifically chosen to modify the meaning to reflect romantic love. [Link 1] [Link 2]

Miura had stated that in manga androgynous characters typically favor their feminine side and fall in love with men, and he felt that he couldn't write an androgynous character without being committed to portraying that. He was talking about Duranki, but it's interesting in light of Griffith's design and how much more andrognyous he became even at the same time as Miura started talking more about having been heavily influenced by Shounen-Ai. [Link 1]

Also he stated that Griffith was inspired by people he knew who could not love women and instead focused their affection or friendship on men. Then, on another occasion, he referred to Griffith as having fallen in love with Guts, which is the reason for his extremely unGriffithlike behavior. [ Link ]

Miura once said that Griffith provides the fuel that Guts needs to continue living. Before someone says that's because Guts is so mad at him, I agree with that, but also bear in mind that his feelings about Griffith are specifically lampshaded described as complicated and conflicted and not just hate. [ Link ]

The writer of the OVA also stated that Guts and Griffith's feelings for one another are complicated and involve many different feelings, including romantic love. [Link 1] [Link 2]

Now mind you I did genuinely think the story itself, the staging of panels, the tropes evoked, the narrative choices, the visual cues and the language used already implied all of this. Compare some of the Golden Age scenes with them to pages in a romance manga, for example. But for people who don't see it that way, perhaps these things will contextualize the perspective of those who do.

Anyway, long story short, I do think they canonically have romantic feelings for each other mixed in with all their other complicated positive and negative feelings, and I don't care about couples getting together or being happy, I just want interesting stories and relationships.

[catindabag]

That’s it. Here are my personal Top 10 favorite TBOSAS fanfics to read on the weekends.

PS: Most of them were published even before the trailer for the upcoming movie premiered.

So here are my recommendations:

1. The Plinth Prize by Redex

This oneshot is a certified classic angsty Snowjanus/SnowPlinth fic. And honestly, this is why I support my fellow SnowPlinth shippers, cuz this story could definitely replace the last 3 chapters of TBOSAS and I wouldn’t even question it.

2. Nothing to lose by HopelessRomantikk

This oneshot is another Snowjanus/SnowPlinth fic. However, this one is quite romantically sweet as cinnamon with lots of kisses. Just play the song Say Yes to Heaven by Lana Del Rey in the background and you’re good to go.😘

3. Reflections of the Garden by madzdolin

This one is an angsty SnowBaird fic that actually gives you one of the best bittersweet endings ever. It also gave the readers a proper closure to Coryo’s relationship with both Lucy Gray and Sejanus. You might even cry a little when you read the last chapter. Just saying~.😚

4. Saving Each Other by flipflop_diva

This oneshot is one of those unique SnowBaird fics that gives the readers a good “What if” scenario to seriously think about, cuz in this AU, Coryo doesn’t escape the Arena with Sejanus. So he’s basically stuck with Lucy Gray as another “tribute,” until they both won by waiting and poisoning everybody else. And yes, Reaper was not amused.

5. You Complete Me by gaytriforce

This oneshot is another classic Snowjanus/SnowPlinth confession fic. Moreover, I really loved the simple way of how they got together. And to be honest, this short fic could replace the whole Peacekeeper arc and I wouldn’t even notice the change.

6. Pursuit Predation by evaerobics

This oneshot is that rare Snowjanus/SnowPlinth AU fic that deserves another 50 chapters. It basically gives the readers a “What if” scenario where Coryo was chosen to Mentor District two’s male Tribute, Sejanus Plinth. And yes, Sejanus kissed Coryo in front of his classmates before entering the Capitol Arena.

7. The last two loves of his life by boneslen

This one is a good bittersweet angsty SnowBaird/SnowPlinth fic. Basically, Lucy Gray was forced to become an Avox by Dr. Gaul. Sejanus is still dead. And Coryo is busy having a mental breakdown every second of the day. The newly elected President of Panem just really wants both his girlfriend and boyfriend back, ok. The Bi-panic is real with this one.

8. Roses and Nutmeg by PliaPlia

This Snowjanus/SnowPlinth oneshot features a very stressed out malnourished AF Coryo, who became quite ill because he keeps giving away his food to a very busy Tigris. Seriously, somebody give the poor cabbage boy some soup. Sejanus, call your Ma and feed your future boyfriend.

9. Feverish Dreams by Cordeliadumaurier

Let’s just agree that this long ass SnowBaird fic has the craziest story of the season. I mean, the revenge plot alone is amazing, and every single character is insane in their own way, even Lucy Gray. Moreover, everyone is just borderline obsessed with Coryo’s dead dad, Crassus Snow. Even dead Dean Casca Highbottom was freaking in love with Snow’s dead dad! So yeah, they’re all obsessed, depressed, and crazy. Everyone needs therapy, but Snow still lands on top. #Crasca4ever

10. The Sound of Snow Falling by PRES_CS_HGT

This HG/TBOSAS fic is one of my personal favorites. The plot alone is great and unique in its own way, because it features a very young and confused 5’4 and a half Coryo Snow waking up after the end of the Second Rebellion. Also, the new President, Alma Coin wants to place him inside the Arena as a Tribute for the crimes he doesn’t even remember committing. And his assigned Mentor, Katniss Everdeen hates him for some reason. And what the heck happened to Tigris?! Why is she so old?! And why does she look like a literal tiger?! Who knows, Coryo Snow.

Special Mention:

1. I’m so sorry, Coryo by HopelessRomantikk

Basically, this features Sejanus Plinth’s angsty POV in TBOSAS, and how he was secretly in love with Coryo Snow since forever. However, he still meets the same fate here.

2. The needle in the brain by Sweetlit

This TBOSAS AU fic is already wild and spicy like some Lana Del Rey album. The plot alone is great and full of mysteries. Moreover, this story’s “What if” scenario features a very desperate and depressed Coryo Snow seducing a heartbroken Dean Casca Highbottom to let him stay in the Capitol after winning the Hunger Games. And let’s just agree that if ever Crassus Snow reads this fic, he might as well burn Panem to the ground.

3. The Hanging Tree by SirFanfic

This oneshot features a regretful Coryo Snow, who decided to have a last minute change of heart and saved Sejanus from being hanged.

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 4

Casca

She is part of a weird fucked up love triangle with two dudes. All three of them are honestly kind of terrible for each other but she gets shoved aside in favor of the two dudes in most fics and is not allowed to grow past the toxic relationships of her past. Also she’s a cis woman who dresses pretty masculinely (because she’s in a mercenary band) so she gets type casted as the mean lesbian friend, when she’s straight in canon

I've seen more than one Yaoi Shipper say that Casca should have died during this one big canon event as opposed to being assaulted by one of the people in the Yaoi Ship, which of course conveniently would remove her from the narrative and as an obstacle to said Yaoi Ship. Aside from that specifically, though, I think it's particularly cruel to imply that being killed is a better outcome than being a victim of SA, and is an example of the contempt fandom on the whole has for female characters who act traumatized - particularly when both male characters in the ship have similar trauma and its never implied they should have died rather than be assaulted.

She's an incredibly interesting character in her own right with really good dynamics and parallels to Griffith and Guts, and the way those three play off of each other is integral to the story, but most of what I've seen completely ignores her in favor of focusing on only Griffith and Guts

Elizabeth Midford

She started as just a cutie fiancée trying her best, turns out she's also a swordfighting genius, very under pressure to perform feminity in the Victorian Rose type of way. Fandom crucifies her bc she's Ciel's fiancée and they want him to be with his butler, Sebastian, the demon he sold his soul to for revenge

anime was a shitty canon divergent adaptation that butchered her character down to her "cutesy silly girly" persona, which obviously made the 2008 anime fans hate her with a passion (nothing wrong w being girly I'm just saying the adaptation made her super one dimensional) anyways fujoshis used to treat her as a villain because she's the fiance of Ciel,, who as u might know already was HEAVILY shipped with his butler, Sebastian back then (now it's kinda looked badly upon, nice tbh that ship sucks ass xD) She's a bit similar to Misa Amane from death note in the way she was treated. (Like an obstacle the yaoi ship must overcome rather than a person)

she's my silly little rabbit! i could gush about her character but i'll keep it short and just say that she's really well written and one of the best characters in the series. anyways she's ciel's fiance and she's like, rightfully annoying as any other 13 yr old girl would be but the fanbase fucking crucified her for even existing. she gets demonized for being 'annoying', but then ciel gets yaoishipped with an even more annoying guy. there is 100% an argument that lizzie/ciel is weird bc they're cousins (i personally don't ship it) but that falls flat when her detractors then ship the 13 yr old ciel with an eons old demon who Canonically looks like his father. the anime also never reached her main character development until years after its peak and that was only in a movie, so she really got the bad end of the stick here. not me though i had a giant crush on her when i was 12

[mr-nauseam]

Eventually this day was going to come because I have a lot of lgbt ships in TBOSAS and it's a topic I think about constantly. Lately even more since I proposed to do a post about Casca's life so let's talk about:

Homosexuality in the Capitol

I think the most common opinion is that surely that doesn't present any obstacle right? They are there in TBOSAS Pluribus Bell and his husband Cyrus, first canon gay couple to be mentioned. No one is saying bad things to them, and not even Snow's prejudiced family has thought anything ugly.

They are totally neutral to the mentions of his husband, the love of his life being a man, and aside, not in the Katniss era we are told in the districts there is freedom to marry whomever you want? No matter the gender, and if we go to the movies, I think we all agree that it confirms that most people in the Capitol would not make any fuss to see two men or two women kissing.

Personally I think that yes, by the time of Katniss that was no longer such an acute issue, but I have every reason to believe that in TBOSAS people weren't really that indifferent. At the end of the day there is 60+ years difference between one story and the other, things can change a lot and social class I think is a relevant aspect here.

Let's start by putting things on the table. Panem has no religion, but I don't think that eliminates homophobia, it is an evil that in fact has claimed more victims under reasons that have nothing to do with God, although moral panic is usually related, this is capable of existing independently, and science has not done much to help the normalization of a diverse sexuality. It has often been used against them in fact.

With that in mind we can start, first I don't think that in Panem homosexuality is penalized or criminalized. In short, I think the idea of ending up in prison for being gay is a bit of a stretch, but just because your existence is not an open crime does not mean that certain actions are not considered as such, and that suddenly people will be tolerant.

The Capitol doesn't seem like a tolerant place at all. Gender, race, social class and sexuality cofluctuate, one another, and this is where I find Pluribus Bell so interesting. A gay man who once owned a bar before the war, then survives by running an underground black market business and is known for his discretion.

I need you to repeat some of those words so that they stand out, so that we understand each other clearly. Pluribus Bell is a gay man who during the war was forced to participate in the black market. Underground business to survive.

What is not striking in that statement? He's a man who for some reason didn't go to war, (we could talk someday about how the enlistment worked) and easily moved into an underground business in order to survive. Pluribus Bell lived in his bar, didn't he? The war was brief indeed, though devastating as wars go, and while it's the kind of situation that makes people think fast, isn't it striking that within the Capitol, a gay man and his partner knew how to navigate the underground world with some ease and mastery?

While it is true that Coriolanus is our narrator, a child at the end of the day, I think he is also a smart child who observes others, and never saw in Pluribus Bell the destabilizing stress that dominated, for example, his grandmother at times. Only perhaps he recognized him as a sad man after he lost the love of his life in a bombing. After he was left alone with his cat.

And not only that. The Snows know Pluribus Bell or knew of its existence probably thanks to some word of Crassus Snow, an old acquaintance, an ex young university student who frequented that bar frequently, always accompanied by his best friend in the past, is not so rare, and while I like the snowbottom this not the focus point.

It's a nice note to make but let's think coldly, a rich teenager discovers that the owner of the bar he frequents is involved in clandestine business since before the war, because if we have understood each other, we have already suspected that Pluribus Bell was probably involved in some clandestine activity since before the war hit the Capitol.

It could have been for any reason but I think we're getting to the point that being gay and being involved in these kinds of activities under the law, under the radar, are not uncommon for queer people, because it's a community that has always been persecuted in one way or another. Also, from what little we know of Crassus' character, maybe it was the type of activity that wasn't exactly illegal so he could ignore it, and who knows, maybe he mentioned his name once he was trapped on the front lines, and his family was trapped to war horrible circunstances. Or maybe Pluribus Bell meet them later, when he attended the funeral and approached the family who lost the young man he remembers with some sympathy.

He does not seem to be part of the Crassus haters club, and has extended the Snow family a kindness that in the words of Coriolanus would be improper, being one of the few people who is fully aware that the Snows are starving. They are no longer rich and powerful. Isn't that what Coriolanus, Tigris and his grandmother have been fiercely trying to hide from others? Why do they seem so comfortable with this stranger knowing the truth?

Do they know something that puts them in a position of equals? Something that make they can never believe in Bell as a threat?

The Snows have never felt the need to hide their poverty from Pluribus. He has never felt the need to hide the fact that his partner was a man in front of them. Sounds like a good match doesn't it?

But is that the only explanation? Necessity is the obvious explanation, there was no alternative but to let Bell know, but once the war was over why not put on the act again? Maybe social class is influencing these non-reactions. Bell is something like the Snow's neighbor but he doesn't exactly live in the Corso. Exclusive area, where the elite live, and he used to own a bar. It's not humble but it's not at the level of what the Snows once were, they had cooks, servants, laboratories and almost totally owned the industry in D13 before it blew up.

Everyone easily believed that they would have assets in other businesses. They have been able to rub shoulders with the richest and most powerful people, for God's sake, one of Coriolanus' classmates was related to the president. So they are not on the same level.

Pluribus is below the Snows, socially speaking, as TBOSAS often proves, sometimes you are below someone in one respect and above them in others. That's how the Plinth have all the money that Coriolanus doesn't have but none of the respect he gets just for being a Snow.

Sexuality is an aspect in which the so-called lower classes usually have an enviable freedom contrary to the life of many people who are heiresses, the advantages of your legacy not mattering and your surname not being a brand.

Someone like Pluribus from whom no glory or success is expected, with no fortunes at his feet who wants to be supported for generations. What difference does it make if he loves a man? In reality he does not, so whether it is a security born of the possible tit for tat in giving away secrets, or he can simply do publicly what no sane heir would do outside of a locked room.

Because that's one thing, just because the big families, who run the Capitol see these relationships badly or may be prejudiced against them doesn't mean it will never happen. Surely there are heirs kissing where no one sees them, loving each other in the shadows, and others falling for the scandal of the press discovering them, because surely that is something that people would talk about.

If any of the wealthy people cross the boundaries, I think it would explode the television in contradictory opinions, or not at all, because they have paid to drown out the rumors, and in an office a father rebukes an heir, because their names matter and must be preserved. They as an elite have the right to continue their history for decades.

Something that someone poorer, less relevant, need not worry about.

And the secrecy? I don't think as I said that being gay is a crime perse in the Capitol, no one can send you to prison for fucking another girl being one yourself, but I think the prejudice exists, and a lot. Also the ridiculous rules, they may not say it is a crime to be homosexual but for sure in the army something like homosexual behavior exists in concept to be punished, with absurd justifications like a proof of a lack of character. Sign of low mental strength, which studies made by faceless scientists confirmed.

Relevant if you remember the capitol is highly militarized but in education I'm almost sure there is no class where these issues are discussed, it is something that can only be learned in the street, in life, so complex and unpredictable. It may look bad in public, maybe not two hands holding hands, but what about a gender expression that goes beyond what is expected? Pluribus had a very long wig, I remember.

Too aristocratic gesture or a particular expression of gender. And yes. I know what you may think: What are you talking about? The academy uniforms wear a skirt!

Have you noticed it is not a full skirt and actually reminds a part of the Roman army dress? But I grant you, maybe the gender in clothing had already started to blur since those years, a slow process, which finally culminates with the Captiolio we see in THG.

And that's where I end this post on something of a hopeful note, because remember ordinary people, those who work every day, may still face stupid laws. A possible aggressive medicalization, with therapists who say they have the key to correcting these deviant attitudes. People who still have to argue with their parents, who may still have to flee their homes, probably was worst after the war and the hate dominate the head of the people, and the population was low but they are also the ones who have their own spaces, maybe something like a bar of their own and in more than 60 years things have surely changed.

Although it is good to remember the Capitol is one thing and the districts another, just like the world were live people of lower social classes and the one were live the upper class are different, they not play the same rules, oh and not forget the race, nor ethnicity, these influence on this too (or maybe because the other person who is mentioned to us as homosexual in canon is Barb Azure Baird).