Imagine expecting the guy who wrote an mpreg Homestuck song to have writing that’s 100% serious all the time when his games have never been that.
I know it’s probably because I’m older than the average vocal Deltarune fan, but it’s so funny how opposite I feel about Deltarune when I see takes like this.
I actually prefer the lighthearted parts over the darker parts. I am so, so burnt out on the barrage of self-serious writing flooding the media landscape at the moment. Not everything has to be some deep humorless mysterybox about trauma 100% of the time. I mean, yeah, the game obviously has some pretty serious story elements but if it was only that it would be god awful. The humor balances it out.
If anything, the world needs this 2010s tumblr ass silliness at the moment and I find it to be a breath of fresh air against how performatively mature and dark a lot of writing for stuff is at the moment.
The only thing im mad about is missing miss mizzle somehow and then hubert tells me im an evil doodoo head and i cant be fucked to replay chapter 4 for it.
Anyway I am
the best 4th wheel in the lesbian and kris polycule
Justice for Berdly
deleted by creator
I think the game actually goes to easy on the ex cop stalking his ex wive. People underestimate how threatening Asgore is because he is shown as a pathetic nice guy. I do not think that’s bad, in fact there are a lot of stalkers like him out there. How he’s designed and written captures well what happens when somebody can’t let go, thinks he owns his ex and becomes more and more obsessive and encroaching. Actually a fairly spot-on take on a stalker who wasn’t a domestic abuser before he lost it. I’ve been stalked by an ex as well and the way she would creep out of the woodwork on my way to work or leave unwanted gifts to me was exactly how Asgore acts towards Toriel. Well, except the part were Asgore weaponizes Kris and makes them deliver the flowers, that’s just fucked up. Can’t help but wonder what that will make them feel when they realize a few years down the line what their dad dragged them into there.
Now, here’s the thing. My ex wasn’t built like Asgore. Guy does landscaping, he is built like a lumberjack. Just look at those arms. Yes, DR characters aren’t UT characters, Asgore Deltarune is not the boss that smashes the Mercy button with his trident, i get it. But still, he’s a big, strong guy that Toriel (who cannot use magic in this setting to defend herself as in UT!) would be mostly powerless against if he decided that flowers don’t cut it anymore and that he needs to be more hands-on. The whole situation must be horrifying for her.
And we do not get to see that to anywhere near the same amount we get to see Asgore’s self justifications and self pity. We get one sentence of Asgore realizing he was wrong and one sentence that it’s ok if she does not want to see him anymore, but we never hear from Toriel about this, it is all just implied and subtext whereas Asgore gets several sequences where Kris can watch him from the shadows monologing about his feelings. Toriel’s side in this does not get enough spotlight and that informs how people react to the divorce arc. It’s hardly surprising half of the fandom starts turning on Sans of all people because he dares to bone Asgore’s ex.
I was talking on a more abstract level with regards to the way the berdley and asgore characters are treated, not that they do not do bad things. A lot of characters do bad things, berdley kidnaps a child, and susie is an attempted murderer.
The actions of a lot of people if examined objectively are wrong and worthy of condemnation, but they are all worthy of love… except Berdley, because he’s the kind of nerd Toby Foc has a problem with. I think that’s him dealing with some stuff, and I don’t actually like it.
Berdley is not a major character though. Queen says in chapter 2 that theres nothing wrong with berdley besides being annoying and I think thats fine for his characterization.
He’s immature and self centered because he’s just a kid who craves constant external validation and will grow out of it. There doesnt need to be time spent on transforming his character because he isnt a source of conflict for the cast.
Also in
weird route
The weird route he clearly sees something wrong with Noelle and tries to stop Kris/soul.
Also where does berdley kidnap a child? He (and Noelle) was told that everything in chapter 2 is a dream so it’s strange to condemn him for choosing to larp as queens right hand man when he doesnt think there are real world consequences.
Also where is Susie an attempted murderer? If youre talking about the chapter 1 scene in the school then I disagree that Susie was ever seriously considering maiming Kris or any of her classmates.
Berdley makes repeated attempts to prevent the freeing of Nicole, and therefore is denying her her freedom as I recall it. Am I wrong there? am I remembering that wrong? It’s been a while.
Susie tries to kill Kris with an axe in chapter 1 as I recall it.
Berdley is roleplaying in what he perceives as a dream world and then get come uppance for it by being controlled by Queen and you have to save him. Queen is pretty much always in control of Noelle after she gets captured.
Berdley also creates the mecha used to fight giga queen, so he is also key in saving Noelle as much as aiding in her capture.
The Susie and lancer fight against Kris and ralsei in chapter 1 can be lost and doesnt result in a game over. Susie attacking lancer is her realizing how her violence affects others and herself.
Given that he’s a fucking creep who is constantly violating Noelle’s boundaries while exploiting her work and taking all the credit for it, i think Berdley should just put up with being made fun of by girls. He would honestly deserve it if Susie would dropkick him in his smug redditor beak. But she doesn’t do that, because by chapter 2 her lesson that she can’t fix everything by ultraviolent crashouts is already sinking in. I’d say she shows a pretty decent amount of restraint towards the guy who treats her crush like absolute shit.
Women do not owe men love. We just don’t. That already goes for better men than Berdley who aren’t hitting on a bunch of super obvious lesbians in the most uncomfortable way possible.
Also, literally any other kid with significant screentime undergoes more character growth than him:
Susie learning to open up, be vulnerable and trust people
Noelle overcoming her phobia, learning to set boundaries and realizing she has agency
Ralsei learning to not be a textbook people pleaser who constantly puts others first and slowly coming to the breaking point where she understands that she is actually a girl
Kris … ok well Kris will need a bit of time and central plot reveals about what the deal with their soul is until we get to them not being used as a stabby puppet anymore, any time we get a glimpse of what’s going on behind that emo fringe it’s obviously a setup for the main twist in the story. But that setup is there for reasons. It’s a given it will pay off.
We can say in general that personal growth is front and center for kids in Deltarune. And Berdley gets the chance to grow like that as well, the gang talks to him about this and tries to make him see where he went wrong and he completely fails to learn anything worthwhile from it. He will probably realize he fucked up in a later chapter, but it’s totally appropriate not to make it too easy for someone like that. Abusive men get let off lightly all the time. We do not owe them pity, we already do enough when we give them a chance to rehabilitate themselves and most of them fail as hard at that as Berdley. He represents a type of guy that actually exists in concerningly large numbers. It’s no coincidence he is literally the old twitter icon. That he isn’t some terminally online groyper already shows how sympathetic and kind his portrayal actually is, that genre of dude is usually much worse irl and Toby Fox is being really generous towards them with how Berdley is written. A guy like that does not deserve pity, i will spare that for the countless women every one of these jerks has wronged.
If Berdley can be a stand in for every nerd misogynist, can Susie be a stand in for every violent bully? Susie has traumatised people, and iirc she as of chapter 4 at least has made no efforts to make amends to anyone she has hurt (Except Kris) . Why is this okay but Berdley is not? We are even shown that these people are still hurt by Susie’s actions.
All of these characters hurt people, and all of them learn that there are other ways to form connections… except Berdley. And as you say that is because Berdley represents someone with whom Toby Fox has personal beef, which is my exact complaint.
And if we are to speak of personal trauma. I suppose no, no one owes twitter misogynist forgiveness. But no one owes violent bullies that either. No one owes the kid who threatens social outcasts forgiveness either, and yet the narrative has endless patience for Susie. Which I think is good, I just don’t like that that is selective.
No, the unhoused black-coded butch lesbian who bullies people as a defense mechanism against everybody treating her like absolute dirt cannot be a standin for every violent bully. Most violent bullies are not hypermarginalized in the same way she is. Look at her material conditions and which forms of marginalization she faces that Berdley doesn’t. If she is not scary and always ready to fight, if she shows weakness, odds are good that people will just do horrible things to her. Do you know what happens to unhoused queer girls? She’s the way she is to literally survive and not be sex trafficked. You can’t hold her and Berdley to the same standard because the world at large treats them in vastly different ways.
And to reiterate, we see a ton of personal growth from her. She changes her behavior, Berdley does not. She talks to Kris and Noelle about how she fucked up, Berdley does not. He instead doubles and tripples down on being a creep. And it’s not as if everybody suddenly loves Susie. She gets treated with open hatred by every kid who has an opinion on her besides Kris (who she has made amends to), Noelle (who she has never bullied in the first place and who, in turn, always treated her with kindness), Ralsei and Lancer, who she has quickly formed close friendhsips with in spite of being off to a rocky start with both of them, and Berdley who immediately wants to date her as soon as he learns she is a gamer.
Well okay then we are back to my problem with the Berdley character being that he is not afforded the same humanity.
Berdley represents a phenomon Toby Fox doesnt like, Susie is a person. That is my issue.
For real every single character does questionable things, usually for understandable reasons though.
Exactly. Susie and Berdley both hurt people as a way to cope with loneliness and form human connections, Ralsei is insecure and worried about being judged so is planning… something, the townspeople react to Susie’s actions by ostracising her, Every darkner villain is also shown at their core to be sympathetic, but they are also very clearly hurting people.
To be fair I’ve hated Sans since Undertale because I’ve always found him to be a bit of a passive aggressive jerk.
Papyrus was the cooler bro
I actually agree. My point was that Toriel and him always got along well, that he makes her laugh, that he treats her ok, that she deserves a break from being a financially struggling single mother of two troubled kids.
TBC, i also do sympathize with Susie in that situation. By the end of ch5, it’s confirmed that she was at least homeless, maybe outright unhoused and struggling with massive food insecurity before she moved into Castle Town and that was hinted at before. It’s entirely possible that walking in on her surrogate mother figure and seeing her wasted brought back some extremely painful memories. But as somebody who was raised by a single mother, i also see the pressure Toriel is under and i get why she needs to blow off some steam.
Small correction: Shes not explicitly unhoused since you can take her to the apartments and she tells you thats not what she meant by taking her home. I think its important to note since it wouldn’t drag down carol for having homeless kids in her town (Carol is a neglectful classist workaholic but she isn’t at that level).
Shes most likely a foster kid since we get zero indication of any parents and I doubt they would be written into the game by now. Theres also theories that shes also part human (due to the bleeding) and that plays into her marginalization. The room in chapter 3s ralsei explainer is highly implied to be her room since its shabby and has a Godzilla poster that ties into “Susiezella” later in TV world.
No one in hometown is explicitly unhoused, though I think theres no community mediation and people are left to fend for themselves emotionally and financially if theres ever an issue in their family.
Toriel feeling safe to be drunk around Sans who just moved in is also evident that sans is not in competition with asgore he just is a better person.
Possible. I mean, it is also mentioned that she’s moved around a lot. Maybe she is unsafe at home, or ran away to escape a violent environment, it is also implied she may not have a room of her own or a bed at the appartments. What we can say with fairly high certainty is that she is suffering from severe food insecurity. She literally laps up milk that Alphys leaves out for the cats, her idea of food includes toaster crumbs and pinecones, there’s a reason she absolutely wolfs down anything that is put in front of her. Which may also contribute to her crashouts, she’s literally hangry all the time.
Either way, she’s as impoverished as a person in hometown can be.