berdly being so used to people ignoring him that hes immediately "in love" with susie the second she shows him a lick of respect is really sad now i that i think about it
Berdly's crush misunderstandings are like that one scene in Arrested Development. "I have feelings for you" "I have feelings for you too" Narrator: The feeling was friendship, and neither man had ever felt it before
@@dissonanceparadiddle Gosh? Did you just say gosh? DID I JUST CATCH YOU A GODDAMN DELTARUNE FAN USING THE FUCKING INFORMAL EXCLAMATION USED AS A EUPHEMISM FOR GOD WHICH WAS COMMONLY USED DURING THE 1940S BUT HAS RECENTLY FUCKING SKYROCKETED IN USE?!? Based, have a nice day
Berdly reaally encapsulates the feeling of being a neurodivergent kid and meeting another neurodivergent kid who is slightly more annoying. You hate them at first, but then you realize they're just often misunderstood. 😅
Yep, literally the reason why I like Berdly. I have a really great friend who's neurodivergent like me, only problem is he doesn't get social cues and acts obnoxious as hell. We all pretend to hate the guy but really he's a good person who often misunderstood. Sometimes annoying people are more than first impressions
10:54 I think the texture of books line is a classic Toby Fox context joke! If you previously played a run where you defeated Queen with violence, Berdly loses all use of his right arm. This line only plays if you save his arm, and it confirms to the player that his arm works. Despite the game constantly telling you otherwise, your decisions mattered!
Also "getting paralyzed in the dark world carries over to the light world" is a pretty good indicator that.... probably being unable to move your entire body also would carry over
oh my god… “freshly picked-up”… he doesn’t realize he can’t move his arm until he tries to pick up his books… how did I not notice this before that’s so funny
I'd think the interaction would be Spamton, like Queen, order Berdly just the same. Exception or diferrence being that Spamton makes Berdly feel significant. Similar to the full Spamton sidequest with Kris. Spamton lures customers, Queen has servants. The parallels are there.
@@chewviewleonardo6511 Seeing how Spamton saw in Kris an equally hurt and stuck puppet, I'm certain he'd relate with Berdly too. Their interaction really wouldn't be that different from how it went with Kris and Queen (any pairing of these lightners and Darkners) Except with different results. Kris wasn't entirely alone. They had Susie and Ralsei to help them fight and spare lightners, solve most puzzles with and be there as emotional support, all while they took their moments to follow Spamton's instructions which he specifically told them to do alone. This ends in Kris ultimately getting that help from his friends and beating Spamton. Berdly on the other hand, has no support. He likely wouldn't get far or if he managed to get in the basement, Spamton would just kill him. Although his new goal was to take Kris's soul, he does talk about gaining [Hyperlink Blocked] which is supposedly "love"/"LOVE". Killing the goofy lightner would certainly grant him LOVE.
Upon seeing the spelling bee flashback, my 1st reaction was: "really, that's it, that's all it took to inflate your ego to that degree?" After thinking a bit, it made me wonder. How attention starved was he, that a a small victory could do that?
Berdly's relatability is what makes it so easy to engender hate for him. We'll probably never meet a reality warping murderer in our day to day. But a toxic nerd? Oh yeah, we know or have been that at least once in our lives. It is much easier to comprehend the latter
My problem with this idea is that plenty of people have met violent bullies like Susie is at the start of chapter 1 as well, yet a really large chunk of the fandom accepted Susie's character arc but not Berdly's.
I do think this is true. Like the ONLY character, in all media I have ever consumed media that I hold actual resentment towards is Mabel from Gravity Falls. And there's plenty of characters that did far worse things than she ever did. But I think you are spot on with the fact that - Mable's exist in the real world, the hatable anime villains are far less relatable - they are "just a fictional character" and therefore I have no emotional reaction to them
I always thought Queen's "I Did Not Ask Him I Did Not Ask Him" combined with Berdly implying Queen said she wouldn't make Noelle a robot if he joined her didn't contradict one another. Queen was probably monologuing about her plans (as she does to Kris and Susie) and Berdly volunteered to be her loyal peon in Noelle's place, making Queen promise not to robot-ify Noelle's face in turn (likely met with a solid "Ok Sure Whatever" and some regrets later on)
Either that, or it's Queen manipulating us by gaslighting the Lightners into thinking Berdly willingly joined her. Queen is meant to be a master manipulator after all.
@@pancakes8670 But Queen also makes it pretty explicit when she's lying with the character portrait. Not sure about in-universe since Berdly takes her at face value when she's using the Lying portrait, but the player sees, at the very least.
Regardless of your opinion on Berdly, that part where you're doing a puzzle and he walks up and starts yapping and rambling as you're trying to solve it was absolutely hilarious.
I literally couldn't solve it the first time because i wanted to read his dialogue during that part, and only after i realized that you're SUPPOSED to ignore him. :(
Berdly snow grave is like when a 7 year old is being super annoying while running around giggling having a good time, and you trip them, because youre annoyed, but then after they trip and are hurt and start crying you realized how messed up that was and feel bad
to answer 23:17 The eyes disappearing and his face slightly changing expression I believe is a parallel to undertale's Serious mode. In the first game, serious mode was entered when in the no mercy route or when important battles were happening and would shorten item text and flavor text to a more proper real name instead of puns or jokes. example, shortening the Butterscotch pie into buttspie when normal, but when serious it was shortened to pie. I think this is deltarunes way of handling that type of "mode". I have a feeling if another weird route is present, a similar thing will happen with whatever character we will be facing.
For the sake of over-analysis, I imagine the eye on Berdly's halberd disappearing may also be a nod to the fact that he's not forcing an interpretation of whatever "Kris" did to Noelle on Snowgrave.
I think you're overlooking something with regards to freezing enemies (including Berdley). They don't just die because they're frozen. What happens is that you freeze them _and then they can't get out of the Cyberworld when you close the Fountain._ The same happens to Berdley. He's stuck frozen in the Cyberworld when the Fountain closes. What exactly happens to beings that get stuck in a Dark World when its Fountain is closed?
Mistaking acts of kindness for romantic advances is an extremely common thing men tend to do in general. It's more common amongst guys with low self esteem, but virtually any guy who hasn't experienced platonic affection before (which seems to be an alarmingly high number) can fall victim to this misconception. I'm not surprised Berdly falls into this as well
yeah, it seems in most places girls being affectionate is a lot less taboo than boys being affectionate. women dont think twice about being touchy feely or complimenting others, (especially with other girls. growing up as a girl who likes girls was an experience) but men seem to think affection is only for romance, so a lot of misunderstandings tend to happen which isnt a fun experience for anyone. it really doesnt help that the wrong men can be _scary_ with those misunderstandings, though. puts a lot of women off from being kind.
I didn't necessarily misinterpret platonic displays of affection as romantic, but I definitely clung to the extremely few displays of platonic affections that I got growing up in High School. From guys or girls. I very frequently replayed them in my head to remind myself.
36:23 Rouxls Kaard being a secret boss shouldn’t be as hot of a take as it is; it makes perfect sense. Toby Fox is the kind of guy who makes this goofy-ass man you meet at the beginning the most powerful character (eg, sans), the embodiment of a game’s rules should be powerful in a world that’s literally a game, and, lastly, what better way to end the route where you break all the rules (the weird route) then for the Rouxls to break you.
I've never seen Berdly as autistic but your point about Berdly masking his nerdy-ness in chapter one but then going full gamer in the dark world actually makes me think about how I and many other autistics often unmask and feel like we can be ourselves alot more on the internet and hm I think im more sold on it now.
I... Did notice but just gloss over them.... I notice how similar the wire mechanic was.. And how you need to set them free.. And well.. This process can go well.. (pacifist route) can go regular (normal route) or can go horrible (spamtom fight).. Breaking the strings.. Can end up... In various ways..
Another thing! Their fights can either end with a big explosion, or with them being free from their wires. The difference is, Spamton is too far gone to truly be free, but Berdly has a chance.
@@Kyumifun spamtom is dead, and berdly is also.. Dead.. And not dead... I truly belive the that crazy theory of that crazy guy (if you know you know).. So.. Maybe.. Berdly will become dust.. Over his books.. And kirs will take them out and throw them into another dark world, now having an object enbuded with the dust of a monster... Leading to an epic part 2 of his fight.. Now half books half himself, he'll stand in the way of Kris..in chapter 4.. Or maybe in the grand finale of the weird route.. Once the fountains create the roaring.. Every person killed during the weird route will fuse with their respective object.. Creating for an very agresive finale chapter.. A boss rush..
even if you have no _external_ pressure, the "gifted kid syndrome" can still occur it may take longer to crash and burn (or even be avoided, as was my case and the pandemic manadged to relieve schoolwork to a point where i realized that wasnt healthy) but it still has the same "symptoms" of being a gifted kid also "can you please kill off berdley?" followed by snowgrave is so funny
honestly i don't understand why everyone thinks we won't see more berdly the snowgrave thing definitely reads to me like he's going to get a lot more important from now on (which i fully support and want) because of the fact that we're going to be without him, i feel like it's a very toby fox thing for him to hammer in that he's gone like that.
@@_Ph4tom_ toby has toyed with us before by changing the one ending thing on the store page to read as a hypothetical thing that being said, even then that doesn't change the fact that he can definitely write just one ending but exclude a character from important scenes depending on your choices and just, like overall it's completely ridiculous for people to believe that toby fox is going to just pump and dump individual characters at us chapter by chapter and then drop them, there's literally nowhere for them to even be hidden from us every chapter because hometown is deliberately tiny and easy to explore for new interactions
@@creeperking8702 i wouldn't say all, since well, at least when it comes to darkners, Jevil, Roulxs and Lancer seem to have it pretty fine, but when it comes to lightners, yeah, this kids always have a reason to be down
@@Mr.Auternick_006 I wouldn't say Jevil has it fine. He's just incredibly nihilistic and has deluded himself into thinking he's the only free one because of the knowledge he has.
@@ZanderBiatch well, yes, Jevil is delusional, however, that delusionalness only brought him happiness, he enjoys this life, and his back story, for at least from what Seam told us, he didn't had a rough past
@@Mr.Auternick_006 If someone locked away in IRL prison, or in this case probably more of a mental asylum (but they don’t have that kind of tech in Card Kingdom, or King doesn’t care, both? Both), is deluded into thinking they’re the only free one while it’s everyone else on the outside who is imprisoned, does that really make their situation different?
What gets me about berdly hate is that Spamton is right there. He's literally the most evil character, barr king, he never does anything nice to anyone, and he's always exclusively self-interested to the point he helps you with genocide (which is done at the expense of the only character that reads his mail)... but the fandom loves him (and not without reason, he's very funny) and will pretend he's nicer than he really is (which isn't great). It reveals that a characters likeability is more about perception than what they do/are actually like.
EXACTLY! It's interesting, because Spamton's dialogue after his defeat shows that Deltarune believes even an asshole like him can redeem himself (even if only a little), and we're suppose to acknowledge it as a good thing. And then Berdley acts moderately self-centered, not unlike a teenager with real life problems, which is, as you know, UNFORGIVABLE. Even after he... acknolwedges his faults and makes multiple attempts to redeem himself on-screen????? More than Spamton??????????????????? I guess it might be because Berdley's faults are depicted in a more realistic, down-to-earth way than Spamton. But for how supposedly obsessive DT fans are with hyper-fixating on every line in the game, I feel like some still miss the point on certain characters regardless of how much they personally like them. There's a huge difference between not liking one and believing them to be problematic or "objectively" poorly-written.
But all those evil deeds mean I have a cool game to play in which things happen and they can't affect me otherwise whilst I can be annoyed by a character. Hence why I love Snowgrave so much.
I wouldn’t say Spamton is so bad in a regular route. He seems to think he and Kris can break free of their chains together. Chapter 2s main idea is thinking you know what’s best for someone, which would make this fit even more.
@AfinaTheShark when he fails to break free he decides to try and kill you to take your soul And considering he's a scam bot i doubt he'd have actually helped kris like he promised had the neo body worked
@@Tat011 It's similar to how Chara gets Asriel to absorb their soul. He thinks taking Kris's soul will free them both. Which he technically isn't wrong, depending on how the whole Kris ripping out their soul thing plays out.
26:26 One thing to note is that Snowgrave can be used on normal enemies as well, and it actually has a unique death animation. Instead of the standard freezing animation, the enemies instead will dust away similarly to how enemies die in Undertale.
Berdly deserves better. I always felt like he was simply underdeveloped, but watching this helped me understand that maybe he's got a lot of depth that's hard to see unless you actually look. I hate that he tends to be the constant butt of the joke, and that Deltatraveler didn't even bother to include him.
I love his most redeeming part with Noelle and Kris. Breaking his silliness and genuinely being worried and frightened for her well being. It's nice he acknowledge and talks about his own issues and past. Getting help to get over it. He's also hilariously one of the quickest to adapt and embrace the dark world. It's nice seeing Kris, Suzy, Noelle and Berdly happily roasting bird seeds over a fire in summer. So his best route might be canon! He's ok!
This might be misreading his dialogue but I saw, when his arm gets fried, that he got a shocker faced dialogue, as if "Oh no what's going to happen to my gaming?? My writing!!", so he goes home alone quickly He is very much an anxious little bird in my lens.
Berdly isn’t an incel. Berdly is a lot of things but he’s not that. Bros better about Kris’s pronouns than half of the actual fandom and he knows (and later fully accepts) that Noelle is vastly smarter than him. To quote Queen: “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just annoying.” And honestly, I can kinda relate to him a little bit. I’ve felt (and still kinda feel) the need to prove myself as useful and not dumb to the point where it was be for my health. But I’ve actually realized how deep Berdly is without the Spamton parallels. Berdly is what you get when you mix self loathing with a heaping hill of arrogance and while there’s still Spamton’s in the world, you’re more likely to see more Berdly’s. The thing that pisses me off about the fandom however is that at large, they gloss over any character growth that he did in favor for other characters like Noelle. I like Noelle but to just ignore Berdly and act like he’s just the same annoying nerd from early in the game is annoying in of itself. Like dude very much cares about his friends to the point where he was able to both break out of mind control for them as well as realize in Snowgrave that Noelle was acting weird and wanted to help her by battling Kris. But I don’t see a lot of people talking about that. It gives me flashbacks to how the fandom treated (and still kinda treats) Alphys. The nerd character getting the short end of the stick just because people label them as “annoying”. Demonizing them and putting nasty stereotypes on them without consideration of what the story is actually trying to do and say with their character. It makes me sad honestly. But unlike Undertale, Deltarune isn’t over yet and I have faith that Berdly will get more growth and thus will get more love by the fans.
He thinks girls are swooning over him (they aren't) and he doesn't know how to make them stop without upsetting them. He's like, the opposite of an incel.
I agree to everything u said.Its really annoying how people can accept others characters but when it comes to characters like berdly or Alphys they can care less.I just don’t understand that and hate that to,I really love berdly as a character and alphys they are really cool in my book and I want to see more of them.
People just use the same tired meme phrases these days - I agree, Berdly's not an incel. He doesn't frequent r/incel or rants about how Staceys only want Chads and that he's owed sex or whatever. He's a stereotypical 1980s example of a (slightly masogynistic at most) high school nerd.
Man, the Spamton/Berdly parallels... That's crazy. You squeezed some really fresh insight out of Berdly's character arc, and 3 years after Chapter 2's release. Great vid :)
Everyone wishing the worst for berdley only made me like him more. I relate strongly to being a little weird. I'm super stubborn and constantly looking to impress people, especially my friends, and I end up having this confidence that comes off as arrogance and am extremely hard on myself because of both. Berdley has this confidence in being himself that I'm jealous of. I don't mince words when I say he (and spamton) are my favorite characters. And to make it more clear yes I am neurodivergent, if it wasn't clear already by me spilling my heart about the funny bird guy from deltarune.
I didn't like Berdly at first, but when i played the game again i realized how funny he actually is. He endears me a lot because it reminds me of how people viewed me as annoying when i was younger too, being neurodivergent and all. I also really like his imaginary chrush on Susie, it's very cute.
yeah, i always question like. WHY people who hate him with a burning passion feel that way. maybe im projecting a bit but it reminds me of how i was bullied as a kid cos ppl made awful assumptions about my behaviors, seeing me as arrogant, bossy or pedantic, without ever actually getting to know or understand me. it's smth to consider i guess
3:03 "acquired taste" More like LITERACY TEST Seriously, his character is on of the peak archetype of fiction, the insecure prince. Someone who brags a lot, not because is a mean ashole but because of insecurities, SPECIALLY since is the top option to befriend the main character, as its objective is be respected and admired BY EVERYONE. Thus when chapter 2 came out i just enjoyed the ride, specially his try to get in the qeen good side but keeping tabs on Frisk, the ending was pretty epic, not the bad one obviously
listening to the comparisons between berdly and spamton reminded me of something that may or may not be relevant to this video: a few darkners (most notably lancer after he fights susie, and spamton in the dubiously-canon "full inventory" dialogue) seem to suddenly reset to their "default" behavior/personality when they stray too far from it, as if character development is a privilege only lightners get to have and not darkners. maybe I'm reading too deep into this, but, it creates an interesting contrast nonetheless
it reminds me of dream bubbles from homestuck(which undoubtly influenced toby a lot), where souls of dead people could exist but could not change or grow as a person and just wander in them
@@AybarsBilgin I don't know much about Homestuck, but the main thing I know about it is that there's like 29,000 different methods for characters to come back to life. How has anyone permanently died in that universe?
@mystrenula3911 not exactly? You see, when characters die, I think there's also a thing where you have to kiss their dead body to bring em back to life like once, or when they die on their questbed, they can become godteir. And then there's John's retcon powers, which can change timeline/canon events. Wouldn't say that's like a bullion different ways to revive someone. But the dream bubbles are different, they are something that the "horrorterrors" created so the dead and living can communicate through dream bubbles passing through. So the dead people in the dream bubbles are from individuals from different times lines and different circumstances and different deaths, so there's like an infinite amount of them.
Cool thing i found out, the puzzles in cyber city all need noelle (last one involves teamwork with the whole team does count more towards foreshadowing of what berdly's failings were as he is the one he is missing the mice in a basket puzzle) All of them so happen to involve Noelle to even be solvable, hell the december puzzle would have been killer if berdly was there instead of Kris imagine what those two would talk about. This all seems environmental storytelling.
25:30 I noticed when looking at the official piano score for deltarune chapter two that smart race and big shot have the same baseline. I started calling it the “coaster motif”. A friend said it’s probably nothing, but I couldn’t help pointing it out. I’m so happy I finally have an explanation for a detail I noticed but didn’t have any explanation for!!!!!!! Thanks
One way or another, he'll be back, as Toby has stated "There will be only one ending" unless of course he decided to backpedal on that so... Who knows, either Berdly will be back as a boss fight or he'll never show up again or he'll just be dead in one route and alive in the other.
@@The-Polarcool didn't the steam page get updated to "only... 1 ending?" Or something like that???? Besides, with the existence of Snowgrave and how after you leave the Cyber World most interactions change based on what you did, I heavily doubt that there will be only one ending, unless Toby plans to have the one ending to be like, Kris and ONLY Kris fights against the final boss and then regains control of themselves with no one else around and then the screen fades to black or something. I hope not
Ngl toby could make him straight up disappearing from the game interesting. I don’t think there’s a single thing that would be guaranteed to make it a bad game XD
You made some mention about "what does this mean?" questioning berdly's kinda goofy line "I do so love the smell of books!" and I give my opinion by saying that this is Berdly's attempt at humor. He's saying some weird and kinda goofy stuff like "I must gather my booklongings" and "Ah the smell of fresh books" in an attempt to add some humor to make the situation less awkward
THANK YOU for talking about Berdly not understanding romance!! This is something I've been so interested in when it comes to his character (big part of why I personally headcanon him as aromantic) and I feel like I don't see people talk about it enough. He quite literally says that he was NOT in love with Noelle and yet people still take that at face value, as well as his crush on Susie. Overall, this is a great video and warms my Berdly-loving heart. Thank you for spreading the good word 🙏
This is by far the best Berdly analysis video on youtube! Perfectly encapsulates everything I love about this silly little bluebird. Though I'll say that Berdly returning to a dark world in a future chapter isn't completely out of the realm of possibilites. There's a detail during the light puzzle segment, when you interact with Susie and Lancer, he says something along the lines of "So... When we make track jackets... I'm making his (Berdly's) a different color!" which could possibly be hinting that Berdly will return to a dark world eventually. -Though this could just be a massive cope, since Berdly's my favorite character and I just really don't want him to become irrelevant.-
ROUXLS SECRET BOSS SUPREMACY 💯💯 Definitely the best video I've seen on Berdly. I've always enjoyed him as comedic relief but I'll admit, I struggled to see his character as that deep compared to the fun gang and Noelle. Video definitely made me realize that there's a lot of intricacies to his character and some things I never even considered like the Spamton parallels. Berdly still has big potential in either normal route and weird route so I'm excited to see where his character goes.
berdly’s eloquent speech reminds me of when i used to talk in a very particular way from the idea that if i use specific wording then people won’t treat me as stupid and there’s absolutely no way i could be misinterpreted (i was wrong this made people think i was weird or stuck up) also realising that may be a neurodivergent thing because i’ve seen no person speak like that before in public
I'm at timestamp 4:18 an I'm gunna take a sec to write what I think Berdly's basic functions are just to see if our thoughts align. For snow grave to work narratively you need two things: Be close to Noelle, and be socially isolated. The first is obvious, you already had to freeze dozens of enemies to get to that fight and if it was just a nobody to Noelle it would lack all weight. The latter is more practical in nature. Toby already has to write two variations of the story to accommodate Berdly's presence or absence, and for every character Berdly has a close relationship with Toby had to create an explanation for why they don't notice or react in a major way. Toby doesn't want the stories to diverge too much or add too much technical complexity. You see this in how he wrote character deaths in Undertale between routes. In Neutral you never get a major character witness or gain direct confirmation that 'the human' killed any other major character until the end. Sans was in the room next to where Tori dies and only alludes to the fact she stopped answering when he knocked. Undyne only notices Papyrus didn't come with his report or answer the phone. Alphys wasn't looking at the cameras when Undyne faced the human etc. You could make the case of sans having more knowledge but the point is he doesn't act on it until the very end. That separation means that only small changes need to be made to account for who dies and lives in a neutral run, verses having to rewrite whole arcs if the characters had seen more. Berdly only is friends with Noelle and works in the librarby, that's easy to write around. As for outside of snowgrave I only see him as: a recurring barrier to progress, someone for queen to bounce jokes off of and vice versa, and a way to naturally bring up Noelles feelings over the name 'December.' I will come back to Edit this comment after watching the rest of the video. I hope I am enlightened to the depth of Berdly-ness in this feathery soul. ***I'M BACK!*** First can I say I love the idea of Berdly reflecting the negative consequences of what you do in the dark world? That's so cool and I'd have never thought of it. It seems I narrowed in on narrative function to much in my guess, and you taught me alot about the character I had never considered! Can't say I hated Berdly before but I've learned to like him so much more. I hope the algorithm picks this video up, you deserve it!
Berdly is my favorite character in deltarune for a multitude of reasons. Autism coding aside, my guy is the only "main character" that isnt a mystery. We know berdly. Sure hes cringe, but thats the point. Hes got flaws, but hes one of the more grounded and realistic characters, down to earth and *somewhat* relatable. In comparison. Kris doesnt give us much to go by being a silent protag, susie is a cartoon bully turned action hero, ralsei doesnt know what it means to be ralsei, and noelle is also a mystery. Berdly is transparent, simple, flawed but endearing.
@thatoneundertalefanatic I don't hate susie. She's just not relatable to me in chapter 1 until the near end of it, and changes weirdly quickly. Susie is alright, but she is still a mystery.
@@SoundtrackDetector do you. Need characters to be relatable to be enjoyable? I always found that so weird. Also yeah, she changed quickly lmao She just found out about a whole another world, had her first ever actual friendship, felt what it's like to receive kindness and to give it and had to deal with the fact that the fate of the entire world depends on her Who WOULDN'T that change quickly?
i got so delusional about berdly when chapter one came out that to this day hearing anyone say they dislike him or find him annoying gives me a dark pit in my stomach. like. thats my boy thats berdly stfu hes just neurodivergent leave him alone
I love Berdly so much, he’s honestly my favourite Deltarune character but he’s actually so overhated. As a neurodivergent “gifted kid” I really relate to him and think he’s such an interesting character to analyse. I very much appreciate you making this video as it may help others understand him more (and for the fact that there’s hardly any Berdly content out here, I’m actual starving). Also the Spamton Berdly parallels??? Omg I never even thought about that and now that will be stuck in my head for the next few days omg
going along with your speculation on what might happen with Berdly's character on the weird route, he works for Ms Boom. She's likely the first to notice he's hurt or missing, and I wonder what she'd have to say about that when we inevitably meet her. More (probably) baseless speculation on my part- Berdly may also have multiple jobs because he enjoys doing it, or it may be a way to get out of his house and not be around whatever family hangs around there during the day.
I personally wouldn’t say he is an incel, but more like kids who learn toxic masculinity and gain low self esteem due to neglect from parents. Him having an arc where he helps the gang and/or Dess would be a great use of his character and wrap up his arc with a confidence boost. It’d also be a good message that these kids can still change before they trip into the incel (or worse) pipeline. Much like Susie going from bully to a decent person through gaining a support system. I don’t believe Birdley’s done tagging along or being involved in dark world things. Like you said it’d be odd if “don’t forget” leads to him fading into the background. I think he’ll at least hold similar relevance to Toriel where he’ll continue to have meaningful interactions with the group.
@@tuamaputanna2897 I’d say that his toxic masculinity is related more to thinking that asking for help is a weakness, him taking on the role of “protecting” Noelle despite her not needing one, him not listening to what people are saying (Noelle in general, him chasing Queen around despite her not wanting him around), him falling for Susie the second she was nice to him, his better than thou attitude, and his idea that Noelle was in love with him. (At least this is why I can see people thinking he has incel behavior.) It’s definitely to preserve the hierarchy he set of him being #1 and Noelle being #2 (despite her being supposedly smarter than him), but it’s built due to his family not paying attention to him so he craves this attention and hasn’t been taught how relationships work/how to pick up on if someone likes him or not. He became self absorbed, never listened to Noelle, and forced her to be her right hand because she couldn’t stand up for herself. If he continued down his path before Susie told him off I could see him getting to the point of blaming woman for his failures. His grades start to slip? He’s trying his hardest/There’s no way this is as smart as he gets so it must be Noelle’s fault for not teaching him well enough. He can’t find a girlfriend? It can’t be him, he HAS to be smart and cool and desirable to have around, so they must be the problem. Obviously, I don’t think Toby would have gone that route as it’d get too heavy, but these traits can yell red flag to woman and female bodied individuals. Yes it’s a smarts thing due to it being the only thing he gets praised for, but the behaviors he exhibits because of his need to be smart to get attention are in line with traits of toxic masculinity. He protects, he provides a world for Noelle and him, he is king and he needs a queen to back him up. Don’t get me wrong though! I love him a lot! When I streamed it I had people in my chat going “ew he’s so weird what incel behavior” and I defended him with my whole chest. He’s still a kid and just needs positive supports in his life so he doesn’t become someone that blames others once he gets tired of blaming himself.
Queen having that horrible TikTok AI voice was not something I thought I'd ever hear, but it made me pause for a moment, breathe in, then audibly wheeze for a solid minute. Thanks, I hate it.
im sure other comments have said this but i loved/hated birdly from the begining because i instantly saw my middle school self in him. i really hope he gets more developed in chapter 3
The response online to Berdly has helped to remind me that not everyone was unlucky enough to be a "gifted kid". For more information about what I mean, there are plenty of videos out there about what happens to gifted kids, especially after they inevitably plateau. Something worth noting is that a lot of gifted kids do turn out to just be autistic. The fact that people didn't like Berdly so much just goes to show that most people haven't had to deal with the unique circumstances that lead to the pressures that drive Berdly to be who he is. As for why no one else mentions this, it could be that no one else has cared for a long time as of when the story takes place. Even so, once a gifted kid always a gifted kid. Or that's how gifted kids see it at least. You feel that you have to latch onto it and you live in denial even as everyone catches up and even surpasses you because if you aren't the smartest, if you aren't the best, how will you get love and attention and praise? David Achu has a really good video on that very topic for anyone interested.
Berdly instantly became my favorite deltarune character. I understand why people find him annoying as crap because I get it, but it reminds me so much of how I was when I was like in elementary school because like any boy at a young age I was a jerk but his character is honestly so fun and nice to see someone of his archetype. TL:DR I LOVE BERDLY (Thank you Toby for making him 💙)
2:00 i think the worst thing a fictional character can do is be wasted potential that ultimately adds nothing to the story when they atleast had a chance to be a GREAT character like Rock Lee from Naruto i know im harsh but when a character is as likable and cool as someone like him is gets to do nothing in the second part of the story it feels so bad in retrospect, i know Berdly isn't like that but atleast he isn't boring because thats the second worst thing he can be
1:30 Alphys was disliked because one of her character arcs was to stop relying on lies (but she spends most of the in game time lying) and it's not easy to trust a liar trying to change, I guess it took some time for the fandom to understand the reason behind why she was like that. And I understand how to some people trusting a person who lies is a almost impossible task
I never disliked her for that, turning monsters was a accident, she was only doing what Asgore asked her to do, she and Asgore wanted to try go free without any more humans dying (or monsters rotting on the moutain) The only bad thing she did was after the experiment, and how she hid the amalgamates, but then I remembered, if I accidently revived people into zombies, would I be like "yo dude, here's your mom with 2 other people fused with her!" Yep, not gonna happen. There's also the nessages, with I found funny, but I understand how it could annoy people (still prefer them over skipping a bunch of big cutscenes) and the whole "she was lying to you in hotland" but honestly, people really weren't actually looking at it with too much attention, I literally could create a tex defending her about if if anyone wanted to know.
@ViniciusDiasissy it's not about the reasons she lies it's the amount of lying she does, like telling undyne anime is real despite knowing it isn't, the whole "she's saving you from Mettaton" scenario she fabricated, the lies to the deceased monsters family members, she literally got her job by lying, her lying about Asgore, her constantly telling Mettaton that she's working on her new body when she's not even in the pacifist route when she's getting relying less on lies she pretends to not know sans (thought that time might have been the only time she lied not for self preservation but out of respect for sans) maybe, there's probably more but my point is that even if people understand the reason she lies the amount of lying she does can easily be of putting
Great analysis as usual! As a neurodivergent person myself, I think berdly tries to “categorize” his nuanced friendships into “roles” hes used to seeing in media like video games. It’s something I’ve caught myself doing on occasion too!
I’m happy I found someone that actually looks deep in to Berdly’s character and not just finds him annoying and says he’s a bad character. Like don’t get me he is annoying but there’s more to his character that I wish people can see and understand.Also most of the things that he did was for his friends,Also sure he’s annoying he didn’t deserve to die like that or die at all people like him can change
Like Susie,Susie was a bully and literally threatened to bite your face off but she changed and everyone loves her but here comes berdly and when the game tried to make u understand him more people don’t care and still hates on him.The fact that berdly was being ignored,used as a punching bag and more just hurts me cause I’ve been in his shoes before and it’s not fun at all and trying to hide those feels by trying to play it off and hide it with a huge ego.
Berdly is basically the character that is designed to be overreacted to so that the people that hate him say “please let me kill him” only to turn that sh!t right around once they get exactly what they wished for. That idea of getting exactly what you asked for in a world you can manipulate is HORRIFYING, because sometimes you don’t realize the consequences of your impulsive actions until they start crawling up your spine
@@johnlasker5408 I mean, I and several others at LEAST have experienced that on varying levels of magnitude, and minutes into Berdly’s first appearance in chapter 2 I literally chanted “PLEASE tell me we can kill him” several times. It WAS largely intended to be ironic, but the point still got across. He was annoying to the point that a bunch of people’s first instinct in this game where we had the prior context of Undertale’s genocide route was “You can probably fight him instead of sparing him, and I can’t wait to do it”. Even this video agrees to an extent, such as when things like “You might think Berdly is annoying, but if you’re going to make that happen, then the game WILL make sure you question that decision as much as it possibly can” are said. Even if that isn’t Berdly’s WHOLE purpose in the story, which is not what I am suggesting at all, it’s pretty clear that his personality was written to be extremely jarring to experience, and it’s not much of a stretch to say that Toby directly wrote him to be the victim of the genocide-adjacent route SPECIFICALLY because he knew that his fans were expecting one, and that Berdly would be the biggest target for all those who would dislike him enough to joke about his death. Remember, this is a meta narrative about the relationship of art and its consumers, and characters like Spamton and Jevil portray a relationship of one wanting to break free of control. If we are the ones in control, and we only see this world as a game, or art, then we don’t value Berdly the same way we value a person. It’s easy to want to kill him because there are no real consequences, and Toby likely wants to have the narrative of the weird route profit off of our willingness to disregard the lives of those we see as beneath our own; that of those who live in the game. Meta-narratively speaking, the glass shoe fits.
@@GameJam230 personally I think it’s more him coming off annoying but as the chapter goes on, becomes more sympathetic and likable. There’s generally a lot of effort put into him having likable qualities so I don’t think Toby had the entire intention to be just annoying, even in snowgrave we see how he genuinely care for Noelle and wants to protect her. I think it was more subversion on the annoying character trope Btws what do you mean by “which is not what I am suggesting at all?” Not trying to be malicious
@@johnlasker5408 Berdly developed MORE likable qualities, yes, but was still extremely superficial and annoying. He wasn't calling himself dumb because he actually became humble, he was calling himself dumb so he could be just like the others in the image he saw them as. In fact, in his conversation where Susie makes a Dragon Blazers 2 reference, he says "You're not only kind, but a true gamer as well", before immediately solidifying his stance on intentionally being ignorant and making mistakes, simply because he thinks that's what the others will accept him for. He hasn't become any better, he just stopped pretending to be superior to everyone else, but he's still a narcissist and his "crush" on Susie is pretty obviously just an infatuation that began the very instant he found out she could be kind to him while knowing he's stupid and that she knows game references. Not to mention, he ONLY gets this character development very late into the run, and ONLY if you hadn't already killed him in the snow grave route, which actually further reinforces MY point, which is that his worst character traits were placed front and center as a means of bringing people to overreact to how annoying he is. As for what I meant by "I'm not suggesting that at all"? It's just another way to say "that's not what I mean". I said it right after mentioning that I don't think Berdly's ONLY purpose in the story is to be annoying enough to kill, and it seems like that's what you interpreted me to be saying, so I was just saying that isn't what I intended. The point is that Berdly DOES have multiple purposes in the narrative, but I absolutely think what I've mentioned is one of them.
@@GameJam230 true he doesn’t change how he acts but that doesn’t mean he didn’t become a little bit humble. He teamed up with the fun gang to save Noelle, apologized twice after he messed up, gather all the friends to help build the robot without wanting to be the one in control, and asked if they want to create a dark fountain before doing it. He gotten a bit better While his infatuation with her is because he doesn’t know the difference between romance and friendship, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to genuinely build a connection with her. Like you said, they do have things in common that can build into a friendship so he wants to pursue that as much as possible. I still don’t really believe that Berdly over annoyance was the main reason people did the snowgrave route. If he wasn’t there, there would still be a lot of people doing it cause of how mysterious and haunting it is. Berdly was just a side effect to this route
This is so cathartic, there is so much to think about with Berdly and I feel like so few people talk about him any deeper than the jokes surrounding him, but this video has it all!! And even more, because I've never even considered the parallels with Spamton and now I need to sit and think about this for the next five years
I'm so very happy you made this video, Berdly is probably my favorite character in all of Deltarune and it is so relieving to see someone that gets that Berdly isn't a bad guy he's just kinda delusional and just like everyone else is having his own internal journey
35:28 "Berdly representing Berdly" is perhaps one of the most perfect phrases I've ever heard to describe Dark World Berdly, this video is magical. (I do have a bias as a Krerdly shipper though.)
If I had a nickel for every time a Toby fox character who was hated for being annoying and was a nerd I would have two nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
That Spamton Berdly relation makes so much sense, since each lightner we’ve seen so far has hard a Darkner parallel, Kris and Ralsei, Susie and Lancer, Noelle and Queen, each giving purpose to their respective lightner, Berdly never got a parallel, and maybe what Spamton initially was is Berdly’s way to see how far into the dumps he could go through obsession but ironically Berdly is ignorant to this by his obsession with Queen
I haven't gotten all the way through the video yet (I'm sure it's great!), but there's something I've noticed about the fanbases of both Undertale and Deltarune. Obviously, we encounter a variety of archetypes throughout our journeys in both, but here's what catches my attention: Undyne and Susie, as far as I can tell, both exhibit the "hot-headed brute turned loyal friend" archetype. They're both very popular in their respective games, and I say that's great! I love both of them. Lesbians rule. However, Alphys and Berdly are both what I would consider "awkward nerds who get in your way but decide to help you", and they're both the least popular characters in their respective games. Isn't it strange that people are more willing to forgive and emotionally invest themselves in a character that sincerely threatened to murder them, over one whose biggest crime is being annoying?
I do kinda hope that Berdly comes along as a party member, I mainly wonder about his acts and weapons. I do wonder if he is kinda connected to Spamton, I wonder if Suzie connected to Jevil
So, at my first playthrough, I saw Berdly as pretty annoying - and no surprise there, I'm pretty sure that was Toby's intention. A good character =/= an instantly likeable one. But then I started reading into things more. How he seems to think that he needs to _earn_ his love, that he needs to be exceptional to matter. How he has a hard time reading the subtleties of how other people feel and ends up in embarrassing or upsetting scenarios because of it (and, boi, that is relatable--) And now I really like the character! About the Weird Route: imagine being able to visit him in the hospital, unconcious and everything. And still with that haunting text *(He doesn't seem to be awake.) Maybe we can take Susie there, and she'll comment something like "Y'know, I never liked him and all, but, like... This looks hella uncomfortable." Just, I expect some kind of further emotional gut punch down the road.
Tbh, his first appearance is perfect misdirection. He comes off as just being kind of a jerk and a smug one at that. Then towards the end of chapter 2, it is revealed that he is genuinely just kinda awkward and oblivious about a lot of things and his antagonism against Kris is literally just being that friend who annoys you because he has a competitive mindset for one reason or another(And yeah, perfectly relatable as someone who absolutely does not really stand out in any way besides being thick headed about doing some of the work other people see no value in being done).
Many people say that they grew to like Berdly during chapter 2, but I've always been a fan of him, ever since chapter 1. In part, because he's a bird and I'm a big bird fan; though also, because even then, when we didn't know of his “gamerness”, I still felt identified with his attitude. Berdly is literally just me from a few years ago, and I really can't hate him because of that. Chapter 2 made me just like him even more, because now I could actuallly justify my love for this bluebird with actual reasons, lol. I do genuinely hope he gets to appear more in the game. It would be a huge shame if he was just “forgotten” after this chapter. Either way, though, at least we'll always have fanfics...
I do like that he has the wits to KNOW when someone is better, even when putting on airs that he's "the best" or whatever. It shows that he does have some eye for talent. An eye for someone's capacity that someone as humble as Noelle might miss. He VALUES being the best, so he's the most conscious of positive traits that do lean that way. It's why he drops the mask when Susie soundly catches him on something that legitimately stumped him. Once he knows the jig is up, he concedes. And quickly takes to Susie's advice as well, likely believing that because she has proven herself "better" she generally has a better idea about that whole life thing. Of course, for his eye for talent, he doesn't quite pick up on traits he likely deems less important or social cues quite as well at all. I see the hate in terms of projecting the most gamer image onto him as possible, hell, that's partially how he's written. Though yeah, this video does hit on a lot of those more respectable qualities, and of course the socially awkward stuff. As for direction, I AM really curious how the future chapters are gonna carry... Anything over. I think it's fairly obvious that the "weird route" will largely only become prominent in chapters where we're bringing someone else from the light world into the dark world. Is doing the weird route in Chapter 2 the only way you can access the weird route in later chapters? How intrusive and genuinely disgusting are we gonna have to get as "the player" to "free" ourselves into the story? What we do with Noelle is literally just the START, and we're already adopting some of the more disgusting things Berdly gets characterized with. I think it's gonna take a steely resolve to keep up with that route, and I already struggle committing to a Genocide run in Undertale.
Wow. I just randomly stumbled into this video on UA-cam, but this is one of the best put-together Deltarune analysis videos out there. and on a very interesting under-explored topic. Really great job with making this video!
Berdly might just be the middle child, overshadowed by the older ones who can do a lot more than him, and the younger ones that get all the attention. His parents see him as “just another child,” and Berdly relishes the few moments where they see him as the “smart child.”
@@johnlasker5408 it's a struggle!! It's a lot easier now that I'm out of school. School brought it out horribly because of how competitive grades are made to be and how it was my only source of praise growing up 😞 I have a good support system now and my friends are aware of my condition and respect me, as I do unto them. Thanks for inquiring ^_^ I enjoy telling people about these things
@@johnlasker5408it seems my whole comment responding to this got deleted 😭 oh well! Paraphrasing, it's quite a struggle and I heavily relate to Berdly's struggle with not being "the best" in school because of it!
@@lambybunny7173 You should be able to see it through comment history, assuming it wasn’t deleted deleted and was automatically hidden deleted. Because youtube.
At first I thought that the drawing of Berdly pointing at the graph that says “ego over time” instead said “age over time” with just a straight linear line and for some reason that shit was super funny to me
the segment about berdly and spamton's similarities actually made me scream and cheer and punch the air wildly because i've been thinking about the same thing since DR CH2 came out its SO NICE to finally see someone else make those observations too
the umriss references always get me off guard... im happy to be someone who likes berdly and his relationships with the others. i always find myself smiling and laughing whenever hes on screen
Wow this is so good. Really insightful, even if some details are speculation (thats where the fun is lol, and a lot of what youre saying still holds up) Just wanted to say these character deep dive videos are great and a lot of fun. Also youre really well spoken, and the new mic was a good choice. Each video just gets better!
I think berdly’s fixation on being smart reads as him trying to sort of “compensate” for him being … vaguely ND. Like he has a lot of confusion about what connections with people are and has a habit of him trying to perform what they “should” look like. Like his constant need to justify his presence is another small thing which feels like a bit of a toby detail to me like susie’s food jokes which we all look at with suspicion.
Like idk man I see someone this composed of their own performances and plastic and see someone on the verge of a mental breakdown far more than a cringe kid.
What made Berdly really relatable to me was the spelling bee story. I once won a spelling bee in middle school and I will admit it made me feel like a god for a hot minute
berdly being so used to people ignoring him that hes immediately "in love" with susie the second she shows him a lick of respect is really sad now i that i think about it
This is one of the reason he's one of my favourite characters. I kin him
He just like me frfr
Fuckkkk he’s me-coded I fear
it just be like that sometimes 😔
just like the average man actually
(like me fr)
Berdly's crush misunderstandings are like that one scene in Arrested Development. "I have feelings for you" "I have feelings for you too" Narrator: The feeling was friendship, and neither man had ever felt it before
Hahahahaha lol
Gosh that's grim
@@dissonanceparadiddle
Gosh? Did you just say gosh? DID I JUST CATCH YOU A GODDAMN DELTARUNE FAN USING THE FUCKING INFORMAL EXCLAMATION USED AS A EUPHEMISM FOR GOD WHICH WAS COMMONLY USED DURING THE 1940S BUT HAS RECENTLY FUCKING SKYROCKETED IN USE?!?
Based, have a nice day
what is Arrested Development?
@@zixvirzjghamn737 it's a tv show!
Berdly reaally encapsulates the feeling of being a neurodivergent kid and meeting another neurodivergent kid who is slightly more annoying. You hate them at first, but then you realize they're just often misunderstood. 😅
TRUE
Oh my God you're right
Yep, literally the reason why I like Berdly. I have a really great friend who's neurodivergent like me, only problem is he doesn't get social cues and acts obnoxious as hell. We all pretend to hate the guy but really he's a good person who often misunderstood. Sometimes annoying people are more than first impressions
literally me and my friend
As someone who MIGHT have ADHD (not sure), I agree
10:54 I think the texture of books line is a classic Toby Fox context joke! If you previously played a run where you defeated Queen with violence, Berdly loses all use of his right arm. This line only plays if you save his arm, and it confirms to the player that his arm works. Despite the game constantly telling you otherwise, your decisions mattered!
Also "getting paralyzed in the dark world carries over to the light world" is a pretty good indicator that.... probably being unable to move your entire body also would carry over
oh my god… “freshly picked-up”… he doesn’t realize he can’t move his arm until he tries to pick up his books… how did I not notice this before that’s so funny
The ammount of berdly and spamton parallels made me actually SHOOK ive been staring at a wall for like 5 minutes because OH MY GOD ???
Yeah it took me like 30 seconds to fully comprehend what I heard, and my face went through every emotion possible
I NEED them too interacting man.
Spamnton can be a baller father fogure to this pathetic little guy
I'd think the interaction would be Spamton, like Queen, order Berdly just the same. Exception or diferrence being that Spamton makes Berdly feel significant. Similar to the full Spamton sidequest with Kris. Spamton lures customers, Queen has servants. The parallels are there.
@@chewviewleonardo6511 Seeing how Spamton saw in Kris an equally hurt and stuck puppet, I'm certain he'd relate with Berdly too.
Their interaction really wouldn't be that different from how it went with Kris and Queen (any pairing of these lightners and Darkners)
Except with different results.
Kris wasn't entirely alone. They had Susie and Ralsei to help them fight and spare lightners, solve most puzzles with and be there as emotional support, all while they took their moments to follow Spamton's instructions which he specifically told them to do alone.
This ends in Kris ultimately getting that help from his friends and beating Spamton.
Berdly on the other hand, has no support. He likely wouldn't get far or if he managed to get in the basement, Spamton would just kill him.
Although his new goal was to take Kris's soul, he does talk about gaining [Hyperlink Blocked] which is supposedly "love"/"LOVE". Killing the goofy lightner would certainly grant him LOVE.
EXACTLY!! Such a good eye they have! :0
Upon seeing the spelling bee flashback, my 1st reaction was: "really, that's it, that's all it took to inflate your ego to that degree?"
After thinking a bit, it made me wonder. How attention starved was he, that a a small victory could do that?
Berdly's relatability is what makes it so easy to engender hate for him. We'll probably never meet a reality warping murderer in our day to day. But a toxic nerd? Oh yeah, we know or have been that at least once in our lives. It is much easier to comprehend the latter
My problem with this idea is that plenty of people have met violent bullies like Susie is at the start of chapter 1 as well, yet a really large chunk of the fandom accepted Susie's character arc but not Berdly's.
Being annoying in fiction is worse than being mean.
@@yurigagarin9765Unfortunately, Berdly made a distinctively grievous error: being annoying.
I do think this is true. Like the ONLY character, in all media I have ever consumed media that I hold actual resentment towards is Mabel from Gravity Falls. And there's plenty of characters that did far worse things than she ever did. But I think you are spot on with the fact that - Mable's exist in the real world, the hatable anime villains are far less relatable - they are "just a fictional character" and therefore I have no emotional reaction to them
@@anonymentor1775 Ralsei makes that error all the time whenever he's on screen and yet, I see no one hating
I always thought Queen's "I Did Not Ask Him I Did Not Ask Him" combined with Berdly implying Queen said she wouldn't make Noelle a robot if he joined her didn't contradict one another. Queen was probably monologuing about her plans (as she does to Kris and Susie) and Berdly volunteered to be her loyal peon in Noelle's place, making Queen promise not to robot-ify Noelle's face in turn (likely met with a solid "Ok Sure Whatever" and some regrets later on)
yeah, i kind of read it as "I Wanted Him To Not Rebel Against Me Not For Him To Be My Loyal Peon"
Yeah Yeah That's Cool Anyway
Either that, or it's Queen manipulating us by gaslighting the Lightners into thinking Berdly willingly joined her. Queen is meant to be a master manipulator after all.
@@pancakes8670 But Queen also makes it pretty explicit when she's lying with the character portrait. Not sure about in-universe since Berdly takes her at face value when she's using the Lying portrait, but the player sees, at the very least.
Yeah, I could see that
Regardless of your opinion on Berdly, that part where you're doing a puzzle and he walks up and starts yapping and rambling as you're trying to solve it was absolutely hilarious.
I literally couldn't solve it the first time because i wanted to read his dialogue during that part, and only after i realized that you're SUPPOSED to ignore him. :(
even watching letsplays i have trouble focusing on what he's saying because i want to watch the puzzling
Berdly snow grave is like when a 7 year old is being super annoying while running around giggling having a good time, and you trip them, because youre annoyed, but then after they trip and are hurt and start crying you realized how messed up that was and feel bad
Yeah 😢
Is this an experience you have had or a theoretical
That's very specific don't you think 😅
disclaimer, i may or may not be a witness, suspect, culprit, investigator, victim, in said situation
bro is out here tripping 7 year olds. Menace to society 🙏🙏
to answer 23:17 The eyes disappearing and his face slightly changing expression I believe is a parallel to undertale's Serious mode. In the first game, serious mode was entered when in the no mercy route or when important battles were happening and would shorten item text and flavor text to a more proper real name instead of puns or jokes. example, shortening the Butterscotch pie into buttspie when normal, but when serious it was shortened to pie. I think this is deltarunes way of handling that type of "mode". I have a feeling if another weird route is present, a similar thing will happen with whatever character we will be facing.
Hi starmatter!!!!!
@@Dual-Earth oh hey what's up? Funny you just commented, I just uploaded two new extended tracks
@@starmatterr kool
For the sake of over-analysis, I imagine the eye on Berdly's halberd disappearing may also be a nod to the fact that he's not forcing an interpretation of whatever "Kris" did to Noelle on Snowgrave.
I think you're overlooking something with regards to freezing enemies (including Berdley). They don't just die because they're frozen. What happens is that you freeze them _and then they can't get out of the Cyberworld when you close the Fountain._ The same happens to Berdley. He's stuck frozen in the Cyberworld when the Fountain closes. What exactly happens to beings that get stuck in a Dark World when its Fountain is closed?
Scares me every time I think about it
If that's true then he might come back when the roaring happens
Could this be what happened to Dess/Gaster?
@@matiasgarciacasas558 that would be pretty sick actually
Uh oh gamers
Mistaking acts of kindness for romantic advances is an extremely common thing men tend to do in general. It's more common amongst guys with low self esteem, but virtually any guy who hasn't experienced platonic affection before (which seems to be an alarmingly high number) can fall victim to this misconception. I'm not surprised Berdly falls into this as well
yeah, it seems in most places girls being affectionate is a lot less taboo than boys being affectionate. women dont think twice about being touchy feely or complimenting others, (especially with other girls. growing up as a girl who likes girls was an experience) but men seem to think affection is only for romance, so a lot of misunderstandings tend to happen which isnt a fun experience for anyone.
it really doesnt help that the wrong men can be _scary_ with those misunderstandings, though. puts a lot of women off from being kind.
Yo, is that a Kazuha pfp?
I didn't necessarily misinterpret platonic displays of affection as romantic, but I definitely clung to the extremely few displays of platonic affections that I got growing up in High School. From guys or girls. I very frequently replayed them in my head to remind myself.
Pretty much.
irl patriarchy commentary in deltarune
36:23 Rouxls Kaard being a secret boss shouldn’t be as hot of a take as it is; it makes perfect sense. Toby Fox is the kind of guy who makes this goofy-ass man you meet at the beginning the most powerful character (eg, sans), the embodiment of a game’s rules should be powerful in a world that’s literally a game, and, lastly, what better way to end the route where you break all the rules (the weird route) then for the Rouxls to break you.
I think he might be the new night
I've never seen Berdly as autistic but your point about Berdly masking his nerdy-ness in chapter one but then going full gamer in the dark world actually makes me think about how I and many other autistics often unmask and feel like we can be ourselves alot more on the internet and hm I think im more sold on it now.
SHIT YOU'RE SO RIGHT
I'm not even autistic and I get that (though I do have ADHD and very likely have some amount of brain damage from my childhood.).
oh shit i never thought of it like unmasking online
As an autistic person I have no damn clue what this means-
Kind of surprising how much the nerds are hated on in this series when that's literally what the players see when they turn off the monitor
I had never made the connections between Spamton and Berdly. I will have to mull this over
I... Did notice but just gloss over them....
I notice how similar the wire mechanic was.. And how you need to set them free..
And well.. This process can go well.. (pacifist route) can go regular (normal route) or can go horrible (spamtom fight)..
Breaking the strings.. Can end up... In various ways..
Another thing! Their fights can either end with a big explosion, or with them being free from their wires. The difference is, Spamton is too far gone to truly be free, but Berdly has a chance.
@@1BeautifulDuck and on top of that, berdly is a BIRD. spamton changed forms to grow wings, hoping to reach heaven, which he never could.
@@frangolles Don't forget (heh) that they both "die" in the Snowgrave route.
@@Kyumifun spamtom is dead, and berdly is also.. Dead.. And not dead...
I truly belive the that crazy theory of that crazy guy (if you know you know).. So.. Maybe.. Berdly will become dust.. Over his books..
And kirs will take them out and throw them into another dark world, now having an object enbuded with the dust of a monster...
Leading to an epic part 2 of his fight.. Now half books half himself, he'll stand in the way of Kris..in chapter 4..
Or maybe in the grand finale of the weird route..
Once the fountains create the roaring.. Every person killed during the weird route will fuse with their respective object.. Creating for an very agresive finale chapter..
A boss rush..
even if you have no _external_ pressure, the "gifted kid syndrome" can still occur
it may take longer to crash and burn (or even be avoided, as was my case and the pandemic manadged to relieve schoolwork to a point where i realized that wasnt healthy) but it still has the same "symptoms" of being a gifted kid
also "can you please kill off berdley?" followed by snowgrave is so funny
honestly i don't understand why everyone thinks we won't see more berdly
the snowgrave thing definitely reads to me like he's going to get a lot more important from now on (which i fully support and want) because of the fact that we're going to be without him, i feel like it's a very toby fox thing for him to hammer in that he's gone like that.
Because Toby foxy said the game will only have one ending, but I think he will change his mind
@@_Ph4tom_ toby has toyed with us before by changing the one ending thing on the store page to read as a hypothetical thing
that being said, even then that doesn't change the fact that he can definitely write just one ending but exclude a character from important scenes depending on your choices
and just, like overall it's completely ridiculous for people to believe that toby fox is going to just pump and dump individual characters at us chapter by chapter and then drop them, there's literally nowhere for them to even be hidden from us every chapter because hometown is deliberately tiny and easy to explore for new interactions
Funny, i started as "damn, this guy is annoying" and now i'm currently as "damn, this guy is relatable"
And so sad, all of these characters are so sad and tragic. I feel so bad for them.
@@creeperking8702 i wouldn't say all, since well, at least when it comes to darkners, Jevil, Roulxs and Lancer seem to have it pretty fine, but when it comes to lightners, yeah, this kids always have a reason to be down
@@Mr.Auternick_006 I wouldn't say Jevil has it fine. He's just incredibly nihilistic and has deluded himself into thinking he's the only free one because of the knowledge he has.
@@ZanderBiatch well, yes, Jevil is delusional, however, that delusionalness only brought him happiness, he enjoys this life, and his back story, for at least from what Seam told us, he didn't had a rough past
@@Mr.Auternick_006 If someone locked away in IRL prison, or in this case probably more of a mental asylum (but they don’t have that kind of tech in Card Kingdom, or King doesn’t care, both? Both), is deluded into thinking they’re the only free one while it’s everyone else on the outside who is imprisoned, does that really make their situation different?
bro got absolutely dess-imated
dess-troyed even
This comment is dess-picable
I dess-pise this comment.
@@somedudefromapharmacy would you mind dess-cribing why
This is dess-picable
@@idk-_- I commented the same, my comment got deleted for some reason
What gets me about berdly hate is that Spamton is right there. He's literally the most evil character, barr king, he never does anything nice to anyone, and he's always exclusively self-interested to the point he helps you with genocide (which is done at the expense of the only character that reads his mail)... but the fandom loves him (and not without reason, he's very funny) and will pretend he's nicer than he really is (which isn't great).
It reveals that a characters likeability is more about perception than what they do/are actually like.
EXACTLY! It's interesting, because Spamton's dialogue after his defeat shows that Deltarune believes even an asshole like him can redeem himself (even if only a little), and we're suppose to acknowledge it as a good thing.
And then Berdley acts moderately self-centered, not unlike a teenager with real life problems, which is, as you know, UNFORGIVABLE. Even after he... acknolwedges his faults and makes multiple attempts to redeem himself on-screen????? More than Spamton???????????????????
I guess it might be because Berdley's faults are depicted in a more realistic, down-to-earth way than Spamton. But for how supposedly obsessive DT fans are with hyper-fixating on every line in the game, I feel like some still miss the point on certain characters regardless of how much they personally like them. There's a huge difference between not liking one and believing them to be problematic or "objectively" poorly-written.
But all those evil deeds mean I have a cool game to play in which things happen and they can't affect me otherwise whilst I can be annoyed by a character.
Hence why I love Snowgrave so much.
I wouldn’t say Spamton is so bad in a regular route. He seems to think he and Kris can break free of their chains together. Chapter 2s main idea is thinking you know what’s best for someone, which would make this fit even more.
@AfinaTheShark when he fails to break free he decides to try and kill you to take your soul
And considering he's a scam bot i doubt he'd have actually helped kris like he promised had the neo body worked
@@Tat011 It's similar to how Chara gets Asriel to absorb their soul. He thinks taking Kris's soul will free them both.
Which he technically isn't wrong, depending on how the whole Kris ripping out their soul thing plays out.
26:26
One thing to note is that Snowgrave can be used on normal enemies as well, and it actually has a unique death animation. Instead of the standard freezing animation, the enemies instead will dust away similarly to how enemies die in Undertale.
Well, you can't naturally. You have to cheat to be able to fight anyone after getting the spell.
@@Kjf365 technically it was possible to skip the cheese maze, and use Snowgrave on enemies that way but I think it got patched.
yes but youre not meant to do that
*_Now why would Toby code this, something we would never see in the Sowgrave route, unless its going to matter later?_*
Can’t believe a whole extra several hours of gameplay were added just to specifically kill one character.
Berdly deserves better. I always felt like he was simply underdeveloped, but watching this helped me understand that maybe he's got a lot of depth that's hard to see unless you actually look. I hate that he tends to be the constant butt of the joke, and that Deltatraveler didn't even bother to include him.
Rise up Berdlybros
I love his most redeeming part with Noelle and Kris. Breaking his silliness and genuinely being worried and frightened for her well being.
It's nice he acknowledge and talks about his own issues and past. Getting help to get over it.
He's also hilariously one of the quickest to adapt and embrace the dark world.
It's nice seeing Kris, Suzy, Noelle and Berdly happily roasting bird seeds over a fire in summer. So his best route might be canon! He's ok!
This might be misreading his dialogue but I saw, when his arm gets fried, that he got a shocker faced dialogue, as if "Oh no what's going to happen to my gaming?? My writing!!", so he goes home alone quickly
He is very much an anxious little bird in my lens.
i like how berdly is seemingly more concerned with being able to game than with being able to write
@@michelewest9687a valid concern
@@michelewest9687 could just write with the offhand
pq vc escolheu esse username
Everyone in Deltarune has 80 hd's
Nuh uh they just have arthritis
Autism
Bruh 😂😂😂
80 HD TVs? They're all members of the LGTV community?
@RudyG.Numpad Maybe man. I know them 80 ad's are related to a-d-tv, that condition where kid can't pay attention due to the a-d's TV in their brain.
Berdly isn’t an incel. Berdly is a lot of things but he’s not that. Bros better about Kris’s pronouns than half of the actual fandom and he knows (and later fully accepts) that Noelle is vastly smarter than him.
To quote Queen: “There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just annoying.” And honestly, I can kinda relate to him a little bit. I’ve felt (and still kinda feel) the need to prove myself as useful and not dumb to the point where it was be for my health.
But I’ve actually realized how deep Berdly is without the Spamton parallels. Berdly is what you get when you mix self loathing with a heaping hill of arrogance and while there’s still Spamton’s in the world, you’re more likely to see more Berdly’s.
The thing that pisses me off about the fandom however is that at large, they gloss over any character growth that he did in favor for other characters like Noelle. I like Noelle but to just ignore Berdly and act like he’s just the same annoying nerd from early in the game is annoying in of itself. Like dude very much cares about his friends to the point where he was able to both break out of mind control for them as well as realize in Snowgrave that Noelle was acting weird and wanted to help her by battling Kris. But I don’t see a lot of people talking about that.
It gives me flashbacks to how the fandom treated (and still kinda treats) Alphys. The nerd character getting the short end of the stick just because people label them as “annoying”. Demonizing them and putting nasty stereotypes on them without consideration of what the story is actually trying to do and say with their character.
It makes me sad honestly. But unlike Undertale, Deltarune isn’t over yet and I have faith that Berdly will get more growth and thus will get more love by the fans.
He thinks girls are swooning over him (they aren't) and he doesn't know how to make them stop without upsetting them. He's like, the opposite of an incel.
I agree to everything u said.Its really annoying how people can accept others characters but when it comes to characters like berdly or Alphys they can care less.I just don’t understand that and hate that to,I really love berdly as a character and alphys they are really cool in my book and I want to see more of them.
People just use the same tired meme phrases these days - I agree, Berdly's not an incel. He doesn't frequent r/incel or rants about how Staceys only want Chads and that he's owed sex or whatever. He's a stereotypical 1980s example of a (slightly masogynistic at most) high school nerd.
It's not over Berdlybros 🙏
Basically, the UT and DT fandom act like 90's bullies
Berdly is literally me, I'm that stupid bird
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
Man, the Spamton/Berdly parallels... That's crazy. You squeezed some really fresh insight out of Berdly's character arc, and 3 years after Chapter 2's release. Great vid :)
Everyone wishing the worst for berdley only made me like him more. I relate strongly to being a little weird. I'm super stubborn and constantly looking to impress people, especially my friends, and I end up having this confidence that comes off as arrogance and am extremely hard on myself because of both. Berdley has this confidence in being himself that I'm jealous of. I don't mince words when I say he (and spamton) are my favorite characters.
And to make it more clear yes I am neurodivergent, if it wasn't clear already by me spilling my heart about the funny bird guy from deltarune.
I didn't like Berdly at first, but when i played the game again i realized how funny he actually is.
He endears me a lot because it reminds me of how people viewed me as annoying when i was younger too, being neurodivergent and all. I also really like his imaginary chrush on Susie, it's very cute.
yeah, i always question like. WHY people who hate him with a burning passion feel that way. maybe im projecting a bit but it reminds me of how i was bullied as a kid cos ppl made awful assumptions about my behaviors, seeing me as arrogant, bossy or pedantic, without ever actually getting to know or understand me. it's smth to consider i guess
@geekyrobot__7316 i feel the same way dude.
3:03 "acquired taste"
More like LITERACY TEST
Seriously, his character is on of the peak archetype of fiction, the insecure prince.
Someone who brags a lot, not because is a mean ashole but because of insecurities, SPECIALLY since is the top option to befriend the main character, as its objective is be respected and admired BY EVERYONE.
Thus when chapter 2 came out i just enjoyed the ride, specially his try to get in the qeen good side but keeping tabs on Frisk, the ending was pretty epic, not the bad one obviously
listening to the comparisons between berdly and spamton reminded me of something that may or may not be relevant to this video: a few darkners (most notably lancer after he fights susie, and spamton in the dubiously-canon "full inventory" dialogue) seem to suddenly reset to their "default" behavior/personality when they stray too far from it, as if character development is a privilege only lightners get to have and not darkners. maybe I'm reading too deep into this, but, it creates an interesting contrast nonetheless
Everything in the game is canon
it reminds me of dream bubbles from homestuck(which undoubtly influenced toby a lot), where souls of dead people could exist but could not change or grow as a person and just wander in them
@@AybarsBilgin I don't know much about Homestuck, but the main thing I know about it is that there's like 29,000 different methods for characters to come back to life. How has anyone permanently died in that universe?
@@AybarsBilgin except for Vriska who exists
@mystrenula3911 don't read homestuck
@mystrenula3911 not exactly? You see, when characters die, I think there's also a thing where you have to kiss their dead body to bring em back to life like once, or when they die on their questbed, they can become godteir. And then there's John's retcon powers, which can change timeline/canon events. Wouldn't say that's like a bullion different ways to revive someone. But the dream bubbles are different, they are something that the "horrorterrors" created so the dead and living can communicate through dream bubbles passing through. So the dead people in the dream bubbles are from individuals from different times lines and different circumstances and different deaths, so there's like an infinite amount of them.
Cool thing i found out, the puzzles in cyber city all need noelle (last one involves teamwork with the whole team does count more towards foreshadowing of what berdly's failings were as he is the one he is missing the mice in a basket puzzle) All of them so happen to involve Noelle to even be solvable, hell the december puzzle would have been killer if berdly was there instead of Kris imagine what those two would talk about. This all seems environmental storytelling.
25:30 I noticed when looking at the official piano score for deltarune chapter two that smart race and big shot have the same baseline. I started calling it the “coaster motif”. A friend said it’s probably nothing, but I couldn’t help pointing it out. I’m so happy I finally have an explanation for a detail I noticed but didn’t have any explanation for!!!!!!! Thanks
considering this is Toby, and that the main thing he's done besides the UNRELATED games is music, it's not an accident
If Berdly doesn't re-appear in later chapters, then Deltarune will only be a 9/10.
One way or another, he'll be back, as Toby has stated "There will be only one ending" unless of course he decided to backpedal on that so... Who knows, either Berdly will be back as a boss fight or he'll never show up again or he'll just be dead in one route and alive in the other.
@@The-Polarcool didn't the steam page get updated to "only... 1 ending?" Or something like that???? Besides, with the existence of Snowgrave and how after you leave the Cyber World most interactions change based on what you did, I heavily doubt that there will be only one ending, unless Toby plans to have the one ending to be like, Kris and ONLY Kris fights against the final boss and then regains control of themselves with no one else around and then the screen fades to black or something. I hope not
I have a feeling he'll be back in the church dark world
@@jma0645chess teory?
Ngl toby could make him straight up disappearing from the game interesting. I don’t think there’s a single thing that would be guaranteed to make it a bad game XD
You made some mention about "what does this mean?" questioning berdly's kinda goofy line "I do so love the smell of books!" and I give my opinion by saying that this is Berdly's attempt at humor. He's saying some weird and kinda goofy stuff like "I must gather my booklongings" and "Ah the smell of fresh books" in an attempt to add some humor to make the situation less awkward
THANK YOU for talking about Berdly not understanding romance!! This is something I've been so interested in when it comes to his character (big part of why I personally headcanon him as aromantic) and I feel like I don't see people talk about it enough. He quite literally says that he was NOT in love with Noelle and yet people still take that at face value, as well as his crush on Susie.
Overall, this is a great video and warms my Berdly-loving heart. Thank you for spreading the good word 🙏
This is by far the best Berdly analysis video on youtube! Perfectly encapsulates everything I love about this silly little bluebird.
Though I'll say that Berdly returning to a dark world in a future chapter isn't completely out of the realm of possibilites. There's a detail during the light puzzle segment, when you interact with Susie and Lancer, he says something along the lines of "So... When we make track jackets... I'm making his (Berdly's) a different color!" which could possibly be hinting that Berdly will return to a dark world eventually. -Though this could just be a massive cope, since Berdly's my favorite character and I just really don't want him to become irrelevant.-
ROUXLS SECRET BOSS SUPREMACY 💯💯
Definitely the best video I've seen on Berdly. I've always enjoyed him as comedic relief but I'll admit, I struggled to see his character as that deep compared to the fun gang and Noelle. Video definitely made me realize that there's a lot of intricacies to his character and some things I never even considered like the Spamton parallels. Berdly still has big potential in either normal route and weird route so I'm excited to see where his character goes.
berdly’s eloquent speech reminds me of when i used to talk in a very particular way from the idea that if i use specific wording then people won’t treat me as stupid and there’s absolutely no way i could be misinterpreted (i was wrong this made people think i was weird or stuck up)
also realising that may be a neurodivergent thing because i’ve seen no person speak like that before in public
I feel bad for Berdly because I have Noelle's type of autism and I've been friends with people who have Berdly's type of autism
I'm both of them combined and all of my friends have Kris autism
how do we know what kind of autism they have?
@@demetriam2408 Ya'll be shocken when Susie autism comes in
WHAR THE FUCK ARE THESE DIFFERENT KINDS OF AUTISIM
Oh boy as a teen I was both Noelle and berdly autism.....yeah apologies for some people for that annoying behavior
I'm at timestamp 4:18 an I'm gunna take a sec to write what I think Berdly's basic functions are just to see if our thoughts align. For snow grave to work narratively you need two things: Be close to Noelle, and be socially isolated.
The first is obvious, you already had to freeze dozens of enemies to get to that fight and if it was just a nobody to Noelle it would lack all weight. The latter is more practical in nature. Toby already has to write two variations of the story to accommodate Berdly's presence or absence, and for every character Berdly has a close relationship with Toby had to create an explanation for why they don't notice or react in a major way. Toby doesn't want the stories to diverge too much or add too much technical complexity. You see this in how he wrote character deaths in Undertale between routes. In Neutral you never get a major character witness or gain direct confirmation that 'the human' killed any other major character until the end. Sans was in the room next to where Tori dies and only alludes to the fact she stopped answering when he knocked. Undyne only notices Papyrus didn't come with his report or answer the phone. Alphys wasn't looking at the cameras when Undyne faced the human etc. You could make the case of sans having more knowledge but the point is he doesn't act on it until the very end. That separation means that only small changes need to be made to account for who dies and lives in a neutral run, verses having to rewrite whole arcs if the characters had seen more. Berdly only is friends with Noelle and works in the librarby, that's easy to write around.
As for outside of snowgrave I only see him as: a recurring barrier to progress, someone for queen to bounce jokes off of and vice versa, and a way to naturally bring up Noelles feelings over the name 'December.'
I will come back to Edit this comment after watching the rest of the video. I hope I am enlightened to the depth of Berdly-ness in this feathery soul.
***I'M BACK!***
First can I say I love the idea of Berdly reflecting the negative consequences of what you do in the dark world? That's so cool and I'd have never thought of it. It seems I narrowed in on narrative function to much in my guess, and you taught me alot about the character I had never considered! Can't say I hated Berdly before but I've learned to like him so much more.
I hope the algorithm picks this video up, you deserve it!
Berdly is my favorite character in deltarune for a multitude of reasons. Autism coding aside, my guy is the only "main character" that isnt a mystery. We know berdly. Sure hes cringe, but thats the point. Hes got flaws, but hes one of the more grounded and realistic characters, down to earth and *somewhat* relatable.
In comparison. Kris doesnt give us much to go by being a silent protag, susie is a cartoon bully turned action hero, ralsei doesnt know what it means to be ralsei, and noelle is also a mystery. Berdly is transparent, simple, flawed but endearing.
i disagree about kris, kris is actually a very realistic interpretation of quiet kids
@namie8715 that's fair I suppose, but I can't say that kris feels complete quite yet. Still very enshrouded in mystery to be solved.
This is a very...uh... interesting way to describe susie. Tf did she do for you to hate her that badly 😭
@thatoneundertalefanatic I don't hate susie. She's just not relatable to me in chapter 1 until the near end of it, and changes weirdly quickly. Susie is alright, but she is still a mystery.
@@SoundtrackDetector do you. Need characters to be relatable to be enjoyable? I always found that so weird. Also yeah, she changed quickly lmao
She just found out about a whole another world, had her first ever actual friendship, felt what it's like to receive kindness and to give it and had to deal with the fact that the fate of the entire world depends on her
Who WOULDN'T that change quickly?
Berdly Is my BRO, HE IS MY BROTHER IN ARMS IN BLOOD
I will defend him WITH MY LIFE, he does not know his true value
i got so delusional about berdly when chapter one came out that to this day hearing anyone say they dislike him or find him annoying gives me a dark pit in my stomach. like. thats my boy thats berdly stfu hes just neurodivergent leave him alone
I love Berdly so much, he’s honestly my favourite Deltarune character but he’s actually so overhated. As a neurodivergent “gifted kid” I really relate to him and think he’s such an interesting character to analyse. I very much appreciate you making this video as it may help others understand him more (and for the fact that there’s hardly any Berdly content out here, I’m actual starving). Also the Spamton Berdly parallels??? Omg I never even thought about that and now that will be stuck in my head for the next few days omg
It's one of those cases. One of the worst things a character can be is annoying
@@thatoneundertalefanatic yeah couldn’t of put it better myself 😔
going along with your speculation on what might happen with Berdly's character on the weird route, he works for Ms Boom. She's likely the first to notice he's hurt or missing, and I wonder what she'd have to say about that when we inevitably meet her.
More (probably) baseless speculation on my part- Berdly may also have multiple jobs because he enjoys doing it, or it may be a way to get out of his house and not be around whatever family hangs around there during the day.
Him kris Susie and Noelle all bonding over their messy family lives would be so interesting
I personally wouldn’t say he is an incel, but more like kids who learn toxic masculinity and gain low self esteem due to neglect from parents. Him having an arc where he helps the gang and/or Dess would be a great use of his character and wrap up his arc with a confidence boost. It’d also be a good message that these kids can still change before they trip into the incel (or worse) pipeline. Much like Susie going from bully to a decent person through gaining a support system.
I don’t believe Birdley’s done tagging along or being involved in dark world things. Like you said it’d be odd if “don’t forget” leads to him fading into the background. I think he’ll at least hold similar relevance to Toriel where he’ll continue to have meaningful interactions with the group.
Unless you kill him :)
It feels more like toxic smartitivity then masculinity
@@FellowInconsistent lol why not both!
@@AwkwardFellow i don't think it relates to him being female, it's just a smart vs dumb issue. That's why he has such a low opinion on susie at first
@@tuamaputanna2897 I’d say that his toxic masculinity is related more to thinking that asking for help is a weakness, him taking on the role of “protecting” Noelle despite her not needing one, him not listening to what people are saying (Noelle in general, him chasing Queen around despite her not wanting him around), him falling for Susie the second she was nice to him, his better than thou attitude, and his idea that Noelle was in love with him. (At least this is why I can see people thinking he has incel behavior.) It’s definitely to preserve the hierarchy he set of him being #1 and Noelle being #2 (despite her being supposedly smarter than him), but it’s built due to his family not paying attention to him so he craves this attention and hasn’t been taught how relationships work/how to pick up on if someone likes him or not. He became self absorbed, never listened to Noelle, and forced her to be her right hand because she couldn’t stand up for herself. If he continued down his path before Susie told him off I could see him getting to the point of blaming woman for his failures. His grades start to slip? He’s trying his hardest/There’s no way this is as smart as he gets so it must be Noelle’s fault for not teaching him well enough. He can’t find a girlfriend? It can’t be him, he HAS to be smart and cool and desirable to have around, so they must be the problem. Obviously, I don’t think Toby would have gone that route as it’d get too heavy, but these traits can yell red flag to woman and female bodied individuals. Yes it’s a smarts thing due to it being the only thing he gets praised for, but the behaviors he exhibits because of his need to be smart to get attention are in line with traits of toxic masculinity. He protects, he provides a world for Noelle and him, he is king and he needs a queen to back him up.
Don’t get me wrong though! I love him a lot! When I streamed it I had people in my chat going “ew he’s so weird what incel behavior” and I defended him with my whole chest. He’s still a kid and just needs positive supports in his life so he doesn’t become someone that blames others once he gets tired of blaming himself.
Queen having that horrible TikTok AI voice was not something I thought I'd ever hear, but it made me pause for a moment, breathe in, then audibly wheeze for a solid minute.
Thanks, I hate it.
I NEVER SAW THE BERDLY-SPAMTON PARALELS WHAT
im sure other comments have said this but i loved/hated birdly from the begining because i instantly saw my middle school self in him. i really hope he gets more developed in chapter 3
The response online to Berdly has helped to remind me that not everyone was unlucky enough to be a "gifted kid". For more information about what I mean, there are plenty of videos out there about what happens to gifted kids, especially after they inevitably plateau. Something worth noting is that a lot of gifted kids do turn out to just be autistic. The fact that people didn't like Berdly so much just goes to show that most people haven't had to deal with the unique circumstances that lead to the pressures that drive Berdly to be who he is.
As for why no one else mentions this, it could be that no one else has cared for a long time as of when the story takes place. Even so, once a gifted kid always a gifted kid. Or that's how gifted kids see it at least. You feel that you have to latch onto it and you live in denial even as everyone catches up and even surpasses you because if you aren't the smartest, if you aren't the best, how will you get love and attention and praise? David Achu has a really good video on that very topic for anyone interested.
exactly this
Berdly instantly became my favorite deltarune character. I understand why people find him annoying as crap because I get it, but it reminds me so much of how I was when I was like in elementary school because like any boy at a young age I was a jerk but his character is honestly so fun and nice to see someone of his archetype.
TL:DR I LOVE BERDLY
(Thank you Toby for making him 💙)
2:00 i think the worst thing a fictional character can do is be wasted potential that ultimately adds nothing to the story when they atleast had a chance to be a GREAT character like Rock Lee from Naruto i know im harsh but when a character is as likable and cool as someone like him is gets to do nothing in the second part of the story it feels so bad in retrospect, i know Berdly isn't like that but atleast he isn't boring because thats the second worst thing he can be
1:30 Alphys was disliked because one of her character arcs was to stop relying on lies (but she spends most of the in game time lying) and it's not easy to trust a liar trying to change, I guess it took some time for the fandom to understand the reason behind why she was like that. And I understand how to some people trusting a person who lies is a almost impossible task
I still dont like her, I just dont
also she was a massive pest in hotland with her constant messages, were it not for that i doubt shed be as disliked
@@MysteryKar i like her messages. hotland feels way more alive with them
I never disliked her for that, turning monsters was a accident, she was only doing what Asgore asked her to do, she and Asgore wanted to try go free without any more humans dying (or monsters rotting on the moutain)
The only bad thing she did was after the experiment, and how she hid the amalgamates, but then I remembered, if I accidently revived people into zombies, would I be like "yo dude, here's your mom with 2 other people fused with her!"
Yep, not gonna happen.
There's also the nessages, with I found funny, but I understand how it could annoy people (still prefer them over skipping a bunch of big cutscenes) and the whole "she was lying to you in hotland" but honestly, people really weren't actually looking at it with too much attention, I literally could create a tex defending her about if if anyone wanted to know.
@ViniciusDiasissy it's not about the reasons she lies it's the amount of lying she does, like telling undyne anime is real despite knowing it isn't, the whole "she's saving you from Mettaton" scenario she fabricated, the lies to the deceased monsters family members, she literally got her job by lying, her lying about Asgore, her constantly telling Mettaton that she's working on her new body when she's not even in the pacifist route when she's getting relying less on lies she pretends to not know sans (thought that time might have been the only time she lied not for self preservation but out of respect for sans) maybe, there's probably more but my point is that even if people understand the reason she lies the amount of lying she does can easily be of putting
Berdly aka the person i dislike at first then had a realization, it basically me during 13 to 17 aka the my early teens years.
Edit:spelling
what???
huh?????
@@callmeaprilroseorisha404A lot of us were really awkward nerds when we were younger, and Berdly is kind of a reflection of that.
@@Just_normal_youtube_channel oh no I get that it just too me way longer than it should’ve to understand the typos srry
Can you edit again and re add dislime? I very much lime that typo
I like Berdly because he's absolutely hilarious.
Great analysis as usual! As a neurodivergent person myself, I think berdly tries to “categorize” his nuanced friendships into “roles” hes used to seeing in media like video games. It’s something I’ve caught myself doing on occasion too!
i have not interacted with deltarune in over 8 months youtube recommended me this out of the blue and I'm so happy it did, amazing video!
My reaction to berdly was "Oh God such cringe, But I respect the hustle" and my opinion has never changed
I’m happy I found someone that actually looks deep in to Berdly’s character and not just finds him annoying and says he’s a bad character. Like don’t get me he is annoying but there’s more to his character that I wish people can see and understand.Also most of the things that he did was for his friends,Also sure he’s annoying he didn’t deserve to die like that or die at all people like him can change
Like Susie,Susie was a bully and literally threatened to bite your face off but she changed and everyone loves her but here comes berdly and when the game tried to make u understand him more people don’t care and still hates on him.The fact that berdly was being ignored,used as a punching bag and more just hurts me cause I’ve been in his shoes before and it’s not fun at all and trying to hide those feels by trying to play it off and hide it with a huge ego.
@@despertacular3241 for real. I wish people would stop skipping him and making up baseless claims just to hate him
I like your channel. Your essays are very good
Berdly is basically the character that is designed to be overreacted to so that the people that hate him say “please let me kill him” only to turn that sh!t right around once they get exactly what they wished for. That idea of getting exactly what you asked for in a world you can manipulate is HORRIFYING, because sometimes you don’t realize the consequences of your impulsive actions until they start crawling up your spine
I don’t think that’s the case
@@johnlasker5408 I mean, I and several others at LEAST have experienced that on varying levels of magnitude, and minutes into Berdly’s first appearance in chapter 2 I literally chanted “PLEASE tell me we can kill him” several times. It WAS largely intended to be ironic, but the point still got across. He was annoying to the point that a bunch of people’s first instinct in this game where we had the prior context of Undertale’s genocide route was “You can probably fight him instead of sparing him, and I can’t wait to do it”.
Even this video agrees to an extent, such as when things like “You might think Berdly is annoying, but if you’re going to make that happen, then the game WILL make sure you question that decision as much as it possibly can” are said. Even if that isn’t Berdly’s WHOLE purpose in the story, which is not what I am suggesting at all, it’s pretty clear that his personality was written to be extremely jarring to experience, and it’s not much of a stretch to say that Toby directly wrote him to be the victim of the genocide-adjacent route SPECIFICALLY because he knew that his fans were expecting one, and that Berdly would be the biggest target for all those who would dislike him enough to joke about his death.
Remember, this is a meta narrative about the relationship of art and its consumers, and characters like Spamton and Jevil portray a relationship of one wanting to break free of control. If we are the ones in control, and we only see this world as a game, or art, then we don’t value Berdly the same way we value a person. It’s easy to want to kill him because there are no real consequences, and Toby likely wants to have the narrative of the weird route profit off of our willingness to disregard the lives of those we see as beneath our own; that of those who live in the game.
Meta-narratively speaking, the glass shoe fits.
@@GameJam230 personally I think it’s more him coming off annoying but as the chapter goes on, becomes more sympathetic and likable. There’s generally a lot of effort put into him having likable qualities so I don’t think Toby had the entire intention to be just annoying, even in snowgrave we see how he genuinely care for Noelle and wants to protect her. I think it was more subversion on the annoying character trope
Btws what do you mean by “which is not what I am suggesting at all?” Not trying to be malicious
@@johnlasker5408 Berdly developed MORE likable qualities, yes, but was still extremely superficial and annoying. He wasn't calling himself dumb because he actually became humble, he was calling himself dumb so he could be just like the others in the image he saw them as.
In fact, in his conversation where Susie makes a Dragon Blazers 2 reference, he says "You're not only kind, but a true gamer as well", before immediately solidifying his stance on intentionally being ignorant and making mistakes, simply because he thinks that's what the others will accept him for. He hasn't become any better, he just stopped pretending to be superior to everyone else, but he's still a narcissist and his "crush" on Susie is pretty obviously just an infatuation that began the very instant he found out she could be kind to him while knowing he's stupid and that she knows game references.
Not to mention, he ONLY gets this character development very late into the run, and ONLY if you hadn't already killed him in the snow grave route, which actually further reinforces MY point, which is that his worst character traits were placed front and center as a means of bringing people to overreact to how annoying he is.
As for what I meant by "I'm not suggesting that at all"? It's just another way to say "that's not what I mean". I said it right after mentioning that I don't think Berdly's ONLY purpose in the story is to be annoying enough to kill, and it seems like that's what you interpreted me to be saying, so I was just saying that isn't what I intended. The point is that Berdly DOES have multiple purposes in the narrative, but I absolutely think what I've mentioned is one of them.
@@GameJam230 true he doesn’t change how he acts but that doesn’t mean he didn’t become a little bit humble. He teamed up with the fun gang to save Noelle, apologized twice after he messed up, gather all the friends to help build the robot without wanting to be the one in control, and asked if they want to create a dark fountain before doing it. He gotten a bit better
While his infatuation with her is because he doesn’t know the difference between romance and friendship, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to genuinely build a connection with her. Like you said, they do have things in common that can build into a friendship so he wants to pursue that as much as possible.
I still don’t really believe that Berdly over annoyance was the main reason people did the snowgrave route. If he wasn’t there, there would still be a lot of people doing it cause of how mysterious and haunting it is. Berdly was just a side effect to this route
I LOVE BERDLY WHERE MY BERDLY APPRECIATION SQUAD AT!!?🔥🔥🔥
Here I am
team berdly member
SMART SQUAD 🔥🔥🧊🧊❄🥶
Smartopia resident here sir ! 🫡
HERE 🤚🏻
This is so cathartic, there is so much to think about with Berdly and I feel like so few people talk about him any deeper than the jokes surrounding him, but this video has it all!! And even more, because I've never even considered the parallels with Spamton and now I need to sit and think about this for the next five years
after partaking in the survey i have been happily anticipating this video, thank you
CUZ I LIKE HIM!!!
the video starting by immediately stating my birthday is kinda terrifying thanks for that
YOU'RE 3 YEARS OLD!?
@@DvH_2happens sometimes
@@ilexdiapason been there before, it was wild
@@DvH_2 googoo gaga
I'm so very happy you made this video, Berdly is probably my favorite character in all of Deltarune and it is so relieving to see someone that gets that Berdly isn't a bad guy he's just kinda delusional and just like everyone else is having his own internal journey
35:28 "Berdly representing Berdly" is perhaps one of the most perfect phrases I've ever heard to describe Dark World Berdly, this video is magical. (I do have a bias as a Krerdly shipper though.)
If I had a nickel for every time a Toby fox character who was hated for being annoying and was a nerd I would have two nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice
Almost like some people see them as a callout 😭
That Spamton Berdly relation makes so much sense, since each lightner we’ve seen so far has hard a Darkner parallel, Kris and Ralsei, Susie and Lancer, Noelle and Queen, each giving purpose to their respective lightner, Berdly never got a parallel, and maybe what Spamton initially was is Berdly’s way to see how far into the dumps he could go through obsession but ironically Berdly is ignorant to this by his obsession with Queen
I haven't gotten all the way through the video yet (I'm sure it's great!), but there's something I've noticed about the fanbases of both Undertale and Deltarune.
Obviously, we encounter a variety of archetypes throughout our journeys in both, but here's what catches my attention: Undyne and Susie, as far as I can tell, both exhibit the "hot-headed brute turned loyal friend" archetype. They're both very popular in their respective games, and I say that's great! I love both of them. Lesbians rule.
However, Alphys and Berdly are both what I would consider "awkward nerds who get in your way but decide to help you", and they're both the least popular characters in their respective games.
Isn't it strange that people are more willing to forgive and emotionally invest themselves in a character that sincerely threatened to murder them, over one whose biggest crime is being annoying?
atleast alphys constant lies catch up to her and decides to change, berdly on the other hand never did anything worthy such vitriol.
we find more annoying people than we find murderers in life.
I do kinda hope that Berdly comes along as a party member, I mainly wonder about his acts and weapons. I do wonder if he is kinda connected to Spamton, I wonder if Suzie connected to Jevil
So, at my first playthrough, I saw Berdly as pretty annoying - and no surprise there, I'm pretty sure that was Toby's intention. A good character =/= an instantly likeable one.
But then I started reading into things more. How he seems to think that he needs to _earn_ his love, that he needs to be exceptional to matter. How he has a hard time reading the subtleties of how other people feel and ends up in embarrassing or upsetting scenarios because of it (and, boi, that is relatable--)
And now I really like the character!
About the Weird Route: imagine being able to visit him in the hospital, unconcious and everything. And still with that haunting text
*(He doesn't seem to be awake.)
Maybe we can take Susie there, and she'll comment something like
"Y'know, I never liked him and all, but, like... This looks hella uncomfortable."
Just, I expect some kind of further emotional gut punch down the road.
Tbh, his first appearance is perfect misdirection. He comes off as just being kind of a jerk and a smug one at that. Then towards the end of chapter 2, it is revealed that he is genuinely just kinda awkward and oblivious about a lot of things and his antagonism against Kris is literally just being that friend who annoys you because he has a competitive mindset for one reason or another(And yeah, perfectly relatable as someone who absolutely does not really stand out in any way besides being thick headed about doing some of the work other people see no value in being done).
This except i still find him really annoying
Many people say that they grew to like Berdly during chapter 2, but I've always been a fan of him, ever since chapter 1. In part, because he's a bird and I'm a big bird fan; though also, because even then, when we didn't know of his “gamerness”, I still felt identified with his attitude. Berdly is literally just me from a few years ago, and I really can't hate him because of that. Chapter 2 made me just like him even more, because now I could actuallly justify my love for this bluebird with actual reasons, lol.
I do genuinely hope he gets to appear more in the game. It would be a huge shame if he was just “forgotten” after this chapter. Either way, though, at least we'll always have fanfics...
Great video. I screamed when you mentioned Umriss.
I do like that he has the wits to KNOW when someone is better, even when putting on airs that he's "the best" or whatever. It shows that he does have some eye for talent. An eye for someone's capacity that someone as humble as Noelle might miss. He VALUES being the best, so he's the most conscious of positive traits that do lean that way. It's why he drops the mask when Susie soundly catches him on something that legitimately stumped him. Once he knows the jig is up, he concedes. And quickly takes to Susie's advice as well, likely believing that because she has proven herself "better" she generally has a better idea about that whole life thing.
Of course, for his eye for talent, he doesn't quite pick up on traits he likely deems less important or social cues quite as well at all. I see the hate in terms of projecting the most gamer image onto him as possible, hell, that's partially how he's written. Though yeah, this video does hit on a lot of those more respectable qualities, and of course the socially awkward stuff.
As for direction, I AM really curious how the future chapters are gonna carry... Anything over. I think it's fairly obvious that the "weird route" will largely only become prominent in chapters where we're bringing someone else from the light world into the dark world. Is doing the weird route in Chapter 2 the only way you can access the weird route in later chapters? How intrusive and genuinely disgusting are we gonna have to get as "the player" to "free" ourselves into the story? What we do with Noelle is literally just the START, and we're already adopting some of the more disgusting things Berdly gets characterized with. I think it's gonna take a steely resolve to keep up with that route, and I already struggle committing to a Genocide run in Undertale.
Honestly, I've grown to like Berdly, and the only problem I had was that we never got to add him to our party
Berdly is just a mildly neglected kid who needs some friendship that is mutual, in my opinion 😊
This is a really nice video! Gave me quite a few things to think about that i don't usually think about.
Wow. I just randomly stumbled into this video on UA-cam, but this is one of the best put-together Deltarune analysis videos out there. and on a very interesting under-explored topic. Really great job with making this video!
Not a legit TLDR: Toby needed a good character in the game so he added Berdly.
God I hope Berdly is here to stay. Give us a 5 person party with him and Noelle on the team I beg of you Tobias Fox.
Berdly might just be the middle child, overshadowed by the older ones who can do a lot more than him, and the younger ones that get all the attention. His parents see him as “just another child,” and Berdly relishes the few moments where they see him as the “smart child.”
I have NPD and everything you're describing about Berdly feels like you've ripped my brain open and read from it. Good lord this bird has NPD
Curious, how is it like having NPD?
@@johnlasker5408 it's a struggle!! It's a lot easier now that I'm out of school. School brought it out horribly because of how competitive grades are made to be and how it was my only source of praise growing up 😞 I have a good support system now and my friends are aware of my condition and respect me, as I do unto them. Thanks for inquiring ^_^ I enjoy telling people about these things
@@johnlasker5408it seems my whole comment responding to this got deleted 😭 oh well! Paraphrasing, it's quite a struggle and I heavily relate to Berdly's struggle with not being "the best" in school because of it!
@@lambybunny7173 ah that’s a shame, but thanks for at least paraphrasing it
@@lambybunny7173 You should be able to see it through comment history, assuming it wasn’t deleted deleted and was automatically hidden deleted. Because youtube.
At first I thought that the drawing of Berdly pointing at the graph that says “ego over time” instead said “age over time” with just a straight linear line and for some reason that shit was super funny to me
the segment about berdly and spamton's similarities actually made me scream and cheer and punch the air wildly because i've been thinking about the same thing since DR CH2 came out its SO NICE to finally see someone else make those observations too
the umriss references always get me off guard...
im happy to be someone who likes berdly and his relationships with the others. i always find myself smiling and laughing whenever hes on screen
LITERALLY CLAWING AT THE BARS OF MY ENCLOSURE AGEHJAJAGSHW I LOVE BERDLY THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
_I don't like Berdly... Cuz we all were a Berdly at one point. I find him relatable- and like us I hope one day he will be free._
Im SO glad you bring up Spamton’s and Berdly’s parallels. Its so under talked about and yet its something thats intrigued me since Chapter 2 dropped
Wow this is so good. Really insightful, even if some details are speculation (thats where the fun is lol, and a lot of what youre saying still holds up)
Just wanted to say these character deep dive videos are great and a lot of fun. Also youre really well spoken, and the new mic was a good choice. Each video just gets better!
Berdly has trouble differentiating between platonic and romantic feelings???
HE JUST LIKE ME FR FR!!!!
I think berdly’s fixation on being smart reads as him trying to sort of “compensate” for him being … vaguely ND.
Like he has a lot of confusion about what connections with people are and has a habit of him trying to perform what they “should” look like. Like his constant need to justify his presence is another small thing which feels like a bit of a toby detail to me like susie’s food jokes which we all look at with suspicion.
Like idk man I see someone this composed of their own performances and plastic and see someone on the verge of a mental breakdown far more than a cringe kid.
What made Berdly really relatable to me was the spelling bee story. I once won a spelling bee in middle school and I will admit it made me feel like a god for a hot minute
Oh this is one of those GOOD videos
My experience playing chapter 2 was just me slowly realizing that Berdly was literally me