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.
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.
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.
No, Berdley does represent a person. He is an accurate carricature of a misogynist incel shithead. I am explaining to you over and over again what is going on here and you keep doubling down on how the exploitative creep is actually a misunderstood smol bean who is entitled to women’s love and affection and the actually problematic person is the homeless gay woman who acts the way she acts because she does not want to get get shanked or SAed in an alleyway.
That is not what is happening. What is happening is that i told you that I dislike how the Berdley character is treated within the story on a meta level by Toby Fox, in that he is just a stand in for a type of person that he doesn’t like. I believe Toby Fox is working out his hatred of a type of guy through Berdley, which I don’t find compelling.
You said that he’s bad within the story and that the type of person he represents sucks.
We are not in disagreement that nerd misogynists hurt people. We are not in disagreement on an in story level about whether Berdley has done bad things deserving of condemnation.
Edit: To elaborate a bit. My issue is not that Berdley is unsympathetic. I’m not saying make him more prominent or include him in the gang. I’m saying that he is as it stands a uniquely one note character in a way i don’t find interesting, and if he is just going to be that I would rather he not be there at all once Noelle is freed. To include a character solely to make a point about a type of guy Toby Fox doesnt like isnt interesting to me.
Yeah, see, i think Berdley is actually hillarious. I’ve seen several friends of mine do Deltarune letsplays and the Berdley parts always had all of us in stitches. The other girls n me were actually joking about birds with nipples in VC just yesterday. It’s cool and good to make fun of misogynists, Berdley is a spot-on way to do that while still remaining lighthearted enough and while i’ve tried my best to explain my stance to you instead of becoming hostile, i must say i find it extremely weird and sus when i see somebody get this defensive about the reddit gamer misogynist carricature.
I don’t think it’s productive to assume other people are bigoted based on whether or not they like the same fictional characters as you.
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.
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.