#yk what though its better than being turned into a mockery of what it used to be

[mako-bones]

Thinking about...Him </3

[bthump]

What do you think about the point in the story we are at now? Would you say you like the direction Miura is going in or not? What are the things you dislike about Berserk as it is now?

lol this is hard to answer because it’s so heavily dependent on what happens next. I think we’re at a point where everything could start coming together in a way that really appeals to me or where everything could just fall apart and I’ll have to accept that this is no longer a story I’m particularly interested in.

Though I am slightly leaning towards the former right now, whether that’s based on real evidence or mostly blind optimism I’m not entirely sure lol.

Basically I think it’ll depend on a) whether Moonlight Boy becomes a major motivational plot point or turns out to be more of a red herring or brief inciting factor in the shift to a new arc, and b) whether Guts and the rpg group overcome the imminent challenge they’ll face thanks to their personal growth and friendship or whether it’ll fuck them up.

But the reasons I’m feeling tentatively optimistic right now are:

all the foreshadowing re Guts losing himself to the armour and wreaking some havok, which has to happen at some point lbr

fetus as the focal point of Casca’s traumatic memories and symbolizing her thorn-covered heart, which to me screams sacrifice material, which would be the only thing that could make it time sharing Griffith’s body interesting to me (ie what happens to Griffith if it’s sacrificed?)

I’m gonna link this post because I’m still mostly feeling the basics of this theory, ie Skull Knight and Elfhelm in cahoots plotting to use the behelit to entrap the godhand, at Guts and Casca’s expense. Plus another possible way for Moonlight Boy to come to nothing is if it’s a manipulation of Danann’s.

I think Guts is purposefully being written as emotionally distanced from the rpg group, which is a good sign for the power of friendship not saving him yet, and there are also aspects of Guts+rpg group that parallel Griffith+Hawks in the golden age (eg Farnese’s feelings for Guts being paralleled to Casca’s feelings for Griffith, Guts gaining followers who compare him to fire, etc) which also gives me hope that tragedy will strike.

Miura’s little bait and switch wrt Guts and Casca’s relationship that honestly felt like gentle mockery of people who wanted them to immediately get together lol. Yk Casca getting sent out in a pretty dress to meet Guts complete with romantic double page spread and having a breakdown, then changing into pants and cutting her hair and saying how much better it is, and not being able to look at Guts now.

Also more recently, Guts at a loss now that he’s brought Casca’s sanity back and it didn’t actually solve any of his issues. “The hell do I do now?” “You have reached the end of your journey. It is not always a happy thing.” I’ve been worried for a while that Guts’ complex issues have been dropped and we’re meant to see him taking Casca to Elfhelm as him genuinely growing past them, and that one moment was such a huge relief when I read it lol. It really suggests to me that this sidequest was always about Guts trying to find a distraction to avoid dealing with his actual issues (fear/trauma, insecurity, love/hate feelings for Griffith, regret, etc), and those are going to make a return sooner rather than later.

Miura implying in interviews that we’re not all that close to the end, so there’ll probably be at least one more arc after Elfhelm, which gives me more hope that this whole rpg arc will lead to some amount of narrative-shaking tragedy and we’ll get some interesting stuff after.

this parallel with the climax of the Millenium Falcon arc and my firm belief that it has to come full circle.

other stuff like complex apostle characters, the lost chapter worldbuilding, schierke suggesting that her elemental guardians are holy see angels alongside implications that holy see angels are the godhand. Basically my hopes for worldbuilding that doesn’t boil down to good spirit world vs evil spirit world.

all the little suggestions that NGriff isn’t as emotionless as he’d like to be that have nothing to do with a demon fetus giving a shit about its parents

So I guess my answer is that I do like the direction I hope Miura’s going in, but there’s also enough counter evidence that I may be wrong about that direction.

So some of the things I dislike about Berserk now are:

Moonlight Boy and the Fear that he will derail everything and the plot will soon revolve around, idk, Guts and Casca trying to free their kid’s soul bringing them closer together or some awful shit like that.

Moonlight Boy and the Fear that Miura is actually going to ignore the absolutely incredible foundation he wrote in the Golden Age to support the hints of Griffith’s current capacity for emotion in favour of pinning it all on a magic baby.

I have some lowkey fears that Guts “bleeding” for Casca is gonna be a thing, largely based on me recently re-reading the scene where Farnese gets upset about everything Guts has done for her while bathing her. Like yk, maybe Casca will remember Guts saving her and warm up to him... tho in all honesty I can’t actually think of an example of Guts being the one to save her post-Eclipse lmao, he fucks it up every time. Maybe when he first put on the armour and killed an apostle in front of her or w/e, yk. Some shit like that. Like I can come up with 50 counter arguments but those only work if you accept the basic premise that Berserk will be good, yk?

The fear that we are meant to understand that Guts has overcome most of his flaws throughout the Millenium Falcon/Fantasia arcs and will get a big moment to demonstrate that and overcome the armour or save Casca or whatever.

And less speculatively and more generally, like many people I’m not a fan of the current art style, I think the larger cast on Guts’ side is causing some poor writing and not helping the pacing issues (and tbh I think Berserk is paced fairly well up until the boat stuff), I don’t like the lighter more comedic tone right now bc I got into Berserk for the grimdark vibe and tragedy and characters succumbing to their fatal flaws and making huge mistakes and I miss that a lot. I’m not saying Berserk can’t be light and funny and campy but I prefer that Black Swordsman or Conviction Arc style where it’s offset by a lot of fucked up shit, or Golden Age style where there’s an underlying sense of dread bc we already know shit’s going to go wrong, yk? If shit does get dark soon I might end up being a lot less critical of the current tone on re-read tbf.

So basically to sum up:

hopes: tragedy, character flaws that haven’t been dealt with yet coming home to roost, Moonlight Boy becomes a non-issue.

fears: power of friendship staves off tragedy, slower gtsca romance, moonbaby affects plot and emotions, guts’ flaws get brushed under the rug instead of fucking him over

I can argue that the former makes a lot more sense than the latter, but I’ve been burned a lot in my life and I know a lot of fans would argue the latter makes more sense than the former so yk, everyone has their biases including me and idk how blinded I am by those biases lol.

Anyway ty for asking!

[moodyf0ody]

Introspection

It’s March! February has been a crazy month, I think so? Or was it the start of March? I don’t even keep track of dates anymore, everyday just passes and I just try my best to get my responsibilities done for the day. Everything that went by has been a blur, but some of the events have been so significant that I can’t help but learn from them. 

1) Reflecting on Class Time I realise how boring my teachers are. Really BMS is so repetitive but I still don’t know how to apply so I really think our teachers should give us more homework, including more essays and case studies. We’re getting so much less than the Science students and it may be that the Social Science teachers think that since their subjects are a little easier to understand, they don’t have to pressure us. Of course we have the option of doing our own work and passing it up to them, but how can we know which are the best questions to attempt, and if they’ll ACTUALLY mark it?! Damn it! 

ESS is such a drag, the presentations in class are better than having her present. But still, it’s a damn Science subject, you’re supposed to explain the concept to us first, not have us speculate about it. How does it make sense that our teacher has to study before she can answer our questions, especially when our questions are PURELY subject matter we don’t understand from the textbook? I also feel like the textbook does not even explain things, it just states them. What even is ESS? Why are my answers so different from the marking scheme. How am I supposed to find the time to practice questions also? How do you apply the damn thing! 

Maths is fine because maths just always makes sense, I think? I’m not practicing enough and I hate that! I guess I’m so swamped with my other activities but I shouldn’t make any excuses. I”m not efficient enough. Nevertheless, my Maths teacher does not inspire me to see the Maths in the world. Bummer! I think that is her job! 

The languages on the other hand have been so so enriching. English has had me thinking about how people should use language to convey important issues to each other. It has me thinking about how powerful language can be if the user of it has something to say. If only there people who were willing to listen and dwell upon the words, too! But of course, since so many people abuse the language and use it to maybe hurt people (NOT constructive criticism), it could be disastrous. However, I wish my English teacher knew more about the world because she doesn’t seem 100% aware on global issues, OR SO SHE SEEMS. I want more from her, more insight, more cultural artifacts that I can refer to. Oh, but I was pleasantly surprised when she brought in the John Barleycorn piece and I took about half an hour just trying to read one paper of it. But I made the correlation that John Barleycorn was not a person but a drink and it turned out to be what the author intended. That was when I started thinking, shit, that’s how it works! Everything is a fucking metaphor, people ARE actually saying EXACTLY what they mean, but NOT EXACTLY at FACE VALUE. It just depends on who’s listening. 

My Malay teacher just has a way of telling us things, she doesn’t need to have tons of knowledge about global issues, but I think she would be elevated onto as Ruth says, ‘unicorn level’ if she did. I love the concepts that she uses, and her energy is infectious! I nearly never fall asleep in Malay class. We started on our Reflective Statements and Written Assignments, and I think it’ll be interesting for me to discover which issues I am inclined towards. So far, it’s the negative issues portrayed by Naguib Mahfouz in Midaq Alley. Midaq Alley is so much fun, it’s so funny, ridicules the Arab society, reaches out to women and just makes me reflect upon the many characters in my own culture. I feel like I am so shielded from the bad in my country, I need to find more holes to peek through. Btw we just got a sneak peek at what we’ll be tested on in Paper 1 and it’s really cool how it works. I can’t wait to do more research on my Malay culture and history to understand why we do what we do and say what we say. Why is it that materialism is so prominent in this culture, and women oppression, and social status, and religion is sometimes used as an excuse, and also how religion can be a saviour? It’s so very exciting! I just came across some twitter accounts of Malaysian designers collecting some of our cultural artifacts, and I feel a certain way when I learn about my roots. But I only see the beautiful parts of it, I haven’t taken the time to really go through the dirt :/ I’m excited to see how my teacher tackles Madame Bovary, so far, I’m not really a fan of it. I like the element of how Emma is so brainwashed by romantic novels though, kinda seems like Flaubert’s mockery towards writers who write to do just that. Hm! 

Econs is the same as business. Sometimes, it’s really interesting but I think my teacher’s VOICE is just so sleepy. I like how she provides us with a lot of materials though (kind of a lot). Some tutorials and calculations, and she mixes things up in class sometimes. We just started learning about GDP and I’m thinking, how the hell do they do it in real life man? Going door to door obtaining all the data, and with all the possible inaccuracies, wow I’m excited to learn more about Econometrics. Intimated as well to be honest with ya. Although I really wish she could make relations to real life situations, like the economic conditions of our country at least you know. I mean I don’t have enough time to do the research and exploring, I have 6 subjects, isn’t she supposed to give it to me? Make use of class time? 

2) MPAC Wow, I don’t even know where to start with this one. We had 3 weeks of prior notice about the MEGAFAIR performance. It wasn’t a normal skit, it had a theme, intended audience, NO fee, and it was a half hour play. Yeap. I had a small team of 20, barely any with experience and no guidance whatsoever from the teachers. But we had this one senior, and input from Ruth’s friends from sekolah seni. 

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”- Sir Isaac Newton 

This is how we managed to come up with our masterpiece, Nasi Lemak Mawar. We had many problems with the storyline and the script. Our first one was entertaining and funny, but we didn’t give it enough thought. We thought that anything that kind of made sense was okay. Then we received some negative reviews, an especially terribly negative review from YK, but it was exactly what we needed. For many days our teachers were telling us, “It’s not - MEGAFAIR. Think about your audience. You’re supposed to be talking about semangat kejihadan usahamanan! We were not getting it, we were overattached to our script and we were uninspired. 

Until, our senior told us, your plot is completely unrealistic, no one will learn anything from it, it’s a plot with a lot of holes. He pointed out the exact scenes and parts of the plot he had a problem with, and we got it. We finally understood. So that night we called him to brainstorm with us, and he was so willing to do it. It was awesome. Ruth’s friend suggested a simple plot, giving the teachers exactly what they wanted. But that’s just it, before this our conflict was between what the teachers wanted and what we had. Which is in other terms, boring shit and some funny ass shit! And on our first night of practice, our story was incredibly boring. INCREDIBLY BORING. I was like, this is not it. This is not gonna work. We’re doomed. 

At the end of that practice, we gathered together and I was not sensing any excitement from the crew. From my experience, I thought that an indicator of an entertaining play would be that the cast are dying to watch their friends’ scenes. And I didn’t see any of that. Everyone looked like they had something to say, and someone mentioned that we bring a new character to life, someone who actually matters. I realised how in a play, your characters should impact the plot, audience or the characters. And that was really missing from our play. We started brainstorming like crazy. I felt so enlightened and happy that other people were giving input. And it was golden input! 

Later that night, I couldn’t imagine myself sleeping, knowing that my story was not at its best. So I forced Ruth and Haleens to stay up with me and build this damn script. So we got the rough idea of things and since Haleena is great at doing things impromptu, and so is Ruth, they decided that we don’t fuss over a script. We see what the actors do. Ruth suggested that we build the character around what Haleena and Syahmi could do as well. And later on, as I developed the script (little by little) I found myself building my lines around my friends’ personalities. 

Practice was lots of fun, and the ideas were flowing. However, it was hard because some of us had homework and other commitments sometimes, people didn’t really speak their minds. Ruth was supposed to be my assistant director but she spend most of her time just clinging to Karam. I hated having to repeat myself when people were not being attentive, and when people came late. But I found that delegating tasks really helped me, because honestly there is a shiit load to do. 

I got the inspiration to show her visions for the business from a movie I watched, The Princess and the Frog and made a little dance to it. I was committed on that, because I knew that would add a lot of value to our play andI was right. My friends were cooperative as well, but I faced some issues with the music. Thank God, from a movie I watched, “Ferris beuller’s day off” I thought of another song, an even more perfect song to play. And it was a great decision because it was so much more upbeat. 

In the end, I had to make a proper play so that the sound and lighting people could follow (I made sure to assign some people here!) and most importantly to get the flow of the play. Otherwise, you would have people talking over each other and lines that are kind of lame coming out. So a script is motherfkg improtant. Also, we found utility hahaha in doing lines without the script and actions in a circle, running lines lah. 

For backstage stuff, Amin and I carefully assigned who would be carrying what in and out, and we made sure we practiced these transitions, also within a time limit. This was the part that the audience laughed at because of how fast my actors did it, and how LOUDLY they did it HAHAHA. It was really funny. This part was super stressful, but the actors were really independent and they were mainly alert, even at 1 am! Also, I told the sound managers exactly what they had to do, and told the actors exactly where their props had to be and where they had to be. This took a lot of time but it was very worth it, because it was very smooth. We took the time to practice with the EVER SO COOPERATIVE sound and lighting crew and we were so relieved that we did. 

Then it was showtime, and everyone came to watch. Even my family members! The audience was roaring and they were so into the play. However, my mum said the dance sequence was too short. But people still loved it so so much! They thought it was adorable, well-thought out, easy to follow and a good way to promote MARA. I loved how it turned out as well, finding it impossible to accept the credit because I knew it was not one person. It was 100% collaborative and it was beautiful! I learnt so so so much from this experience and I am so grateful to have the support from Karam, Ruth, my parents. To be surrounded by the super talented and hilarious actors I had. For the ideas and inspirations from the art all around us, and from the people as well. I feel so much closer to the school because I have put in a little part of me inside. Hm.