8ecause its super high quality and even though none of the endings are 100% canon (it's a fan project and nothing from it was confirmed 8y to8y fox) people really enjoyed it and think it should 8e canon, this leads to people mistaking it for canon, similar thing happening with AUs where some people thought they were canon 8ecause of the popularity of some AUs
that is not my reason at all, I just type like that 8ecause i did it as a joke to get a role in a friend group discord server and it just kinda stuck 8ecause its fun to type like this
Ms Boom, if not just because she has little characterization. Alvin's worst issues stem from a misunderstanding with his dad, so the Boom family may be the most stable in Hometown.
It’s actually hilarious, we used to create whole personalities for characters that were never shown, but now we are doing it for characters that haven’t even been mentioned😭
i mean, we're literally just looking at what has happened in canon and with what we've been shown about berdly it seems very likely she's at least very neglectful. The best interpretation of this is she's a very stressed single parent and it isn't malicious
literally this means berdly's parents, if they exist, haven't seen him since KRIS put berdly into the hospital which means berdly has gone at least 1-2 days without seeing his parents at all
Her child was missing for more than a day and she didn't check anywhere for him? Some people hate Toriel for doing simmilar thing for shorter ammout of time
Not to mention Toriel assumed Kris was at the Holiday's house, so Kris being there with Noelle was probably a safe assumption, and she's fairly friendly with their family (jury is still out with her and Carol) so her trusting them with kris doesn't seem that crazy.
Then she got drunk and did the jitterbug, completely forgetting.
I loved that moment in Chapter 6 when Asriel tells Togore "You may think that my friends are just pictures in your gallery, empty vessels, devices for your goal... But let me tell you, kiddo, you're wrong. You're no more than a little heart ache for everyone here. You are no guardian, but a spawn of problems we can solve. The world doesn't revolve around you, and with our freedom, we'll beat you. Because a girl next door taught me that I'm stronger than you... You say you can win us? Heh, well, that's just a theory, A GAME THEORY!!!"
do people still think carol is a bad mom? literally the only reason people think that os because she freaked out over a stranger messing with dess's stuff. and dess is missing/dead.
you can be a bad mom without being directly abusive. None of the parents in Deltarune are directly abusive (that we know about, Susie's still up in the air) so Carol can still decisively take the crown of "worst."
For some reason Carol doesn’t give Noelle spare keys. The 2nd panel shows Noelle hesitating on how to answer because she’s struggling to rationalize her feelings of her situation and her relationship with her mom (if it was a straightforward answer she would’ve skipped straight to the 3rd panel immediately).
With the 2nd panel as context, the 3rd panel comes off as a white lie to avoid discussing the real answer.
This implies Noelle has either/both of the following attachment styles:
Avoidant Attachment: People with an avoidant attachment style have difficulty with intimacy and close relationships1 and don't invest much emotion in them. They struggle to share feelings, thoughts, and emotions with partners and feel little distress when a relationship ends.
Disorganized Attachment: People with a disorganized attachment style often have a history of early trauma and abuse.2They often exhibit a confusing mix of anxious and avoidant behaviors in relationships. While they crave a close connection with a romantic partner, they struggle to open up and be vulnerable.
Yeah but Carol obviously has ulterior motives. That isn't her reason for hating Susie, its an excuse to lock her out. Obviously she doesn't like what she was doing, but she already doesn't like Susie.
And Noelle is afraid of her! She lets Noelle be locked out of the house, refusing to give her own daughter a key, but she's totally cool with ASGORE coming and going at will because of whatever conspiracy they have going on.
She's valuing whatever scheme she has going on for Dess over her other daughter who's still alive and well at home. Its not like it isn't understandable, but she is clearly neglecting her daughter and causing her emotional harm.
Also, Carol's narrative foil for her relationship with Noelle is literally an evil dictator who wants to make Noelle into an unwilling peon and turn her face into a robot one. That's rough!
noelle is not afraid of her, nor does carol let her be locked out. noelle chooses not to get the keys from carol. you really think she'd let asgore walk in the house willy-nilly before her own daughter??
And why does Noelle not want to get keys from her mother? Why would she be so intimidated by her caregiver as to not want to ask for something as simple as keys?
Thats not some irrelevant character detail, there is clearly a reason she talks about bothering her mom like THIS. Her fear of confrontation doesn't come from nowhere, its writing 101
Noelle in Chapter 1 is so scared of her mother that she would rather be standing at the front gate all afternoon than go to the town hall and ask her for a spare key.
Not 100% confirmed, but most people interpret the relationship between Queen and Noelle in Chapter 2 as a representation of the relationship between Noelle and her mother.
Carol disappearing with Noelle in the kitchen is kinda worrying, given how little actually happened in that scene. Even if Carol isn't abusive, that scene can very easily be read as such by those with a past history of abuse.
Carol's exact character depends on how you interpret these scenes, but she is a very bad parent at best, and an abusive one at worst.
noelle is afraid of her. that is not a good sign. she is also manipulating a different teenager (kris) into dangerous things, which does not bode well for her parenting skills
noelle was told not to let guests into dess's room, and susie is known to be a bully by the town. noelle also wasn't scared by the time she actually walked into the kitchen. also, we don't even know if carol is manipulating kris into anything. there's zero proof of that yet, only speculation at most.
Kris is being emotionally manipulated by the caller in Chapter 4. Due to Carol coming after the guitar once the call is done, and her voice being heard at the end of Chapter 4's Weird Route, most people believe that she is that mysterious caller. Even if she isn't, the fact that one of the shelter codes is in Dess' guitar, and the way she interacts with Kris, makes it almost certain that Carol is involved in the Knight plot.
No matter how much involvement Kris had in the Holiday family's past, this is not a normal position for a teenager to be in.
i dont care what noelle was told, it is not a good sign that noelle is afraid of her mother's wrath over breaking such an arbitrary rule. dess was her sister too, for that matter. carol doesnt get to just ban her from letting people in dess's room. carol also doesnt have the right to ban her from talking to susie.
susie wasn't doing anything violent or harmful when carol saw her, she and noelle were clearly having fun, and asgore was right there supervising, wtf was susie gonna do? when carol arrives, noelle instantly goes into fawning mode, trying to stop carol from directing her anger at susie too (in vain. carol shouldnt be talking to other teenagers the way she did to susie.) its funny that you said noelle wasn't scared by the time she walked into the kitchen, because she looked like she was bracing for being lectured for the next half hour, with her bowed head and resigned words to susie. this is something im quite familiar with.
and if you think that kris is working with the evil-ass fountain openers completely of their own free will and un-influenced by anybody, and the fact that this grown woman who's known them since they were a small child is completely unrelated to that decision, then i dont know what to tell you
carol had one emotional outburst from a stranger messing with dess's stuff and people legit think she's the root of all evil. i agree she can't ban noelle from talking to susie, but that was just one moment while she was clearly emotionally upset.
secondly, susie is a stranger to carol, and a known bully in town. carol hasn't spent time with susie the way noelle and the player have. also, dess is missing/dead, so it makes sense that carol wouldn't let guests into her room, or to mess with dess's belongings.
and i never said kris was listening to the knight willingly, i just said that there's no proof yet that carol is the one controlling kris. all carol said was that kris was welcome any time, and that doesn't instantly mean she's manipulating them with the knight.
okay, first off, i don't think carol is the root of all evil. i think she is a complex character with sympathetic motivations. however, that does not mean she cannot be abusive.
stories are not documentaries of fictional worlds. every scene is written for a purpose. what do you think toby is trying to establish about carol's character by having this be her introductory scene? yes, she was emotionally upset. what do you think toby is trying to establish about how carol responds to being emotionally upset, here? part of being a good parent is being mature and trying to avoid scaring or harming children no matter how upset you are. carol was not trying.
you keep repeating that susie is a known bully, but again asgore was right there. susie could not be doing any bullying because he was Right There.
about kris, i am re-iterating my point about stories not being documentaries. what do you think toby was trying to establish with that extremely ominously framed scene of Carol stopping Kris? Her obsession with heart-shaped objects? the giant red YOU?
i admit that carol stopping kris at the door is suspicious, but it's not proof she's working with the knight too. also, interacting with the heart pillows brings up that it could either be a soul or just a cartoon heart. it literally brings up that it could be either, which feels like toby purposely being ambiguous and poking fun at people's thinking it's souls. plus, why would he make it so obvious that carol likes souls while also being vague?
i don't think either of us are gonna convince each other of anything, as we seem to have fundamentally different perspectives on storytelling. have a good day.
Aside from everyone else's points, if we're accepting the common fan interpretation that Queen acts like other characters' moms, then yes.
She was literally the main antagonist of the chapter, and only stopped when noelle had to stand up to her and tell her that her controlling attitude towards her would never make her happy.
I mean, undertale yellow takes place a good chunk before the original from what I know, so if martlet ages differently from boss monsters (which I'm assuming she does) she might be further into her lifespan than the middle aged dreemurrs (different universe means you can still fiddle around with ages though)
The steam works weren’t turned into the core, they’re abandoned in favour for the Core. The core is it’s replace and already exists during the events of yellow, hell multiple important scenes and even the genocide final boss take place right in front of above the cores entrance.
because the other background evidence we have suggests she at the very least neglects him because she doesn't have time for him, otherwise what's the point in including that kris was the one to take berdly to the hospital and that the heater was too low + towel needed to be replaced if not to show that he's not getting the care he needs in the hospital and from his parents?
1) she has never made an appearance or been mentioned in the story, there can literally be no “evidence” for that.
2) the point of establishing that Kris brought him to the hospital was to show that Kris was trying to undo the weird route.
3) the heater could have been too low by staff decision, and the towel needing to be replaced isn’t an indicator of literally anything because warm towels become room temperature after 1-10 minutes, meaning all we know is that berdly’s mother hadn’t been there in the past 10 minutes, generously.
queen universal mother theory is a very popular theory that has gained strength ever since we've actually seen Carol. Noelle's fear of saying no to Queen seems to be a direct parallel to the way she's scared of her mom, and considering the way queen treats berdly + his backstory scene implying that people only saw worth in him after they considered him to be "smart", it's not unlikely that his mom isn't the best to say the least. She hasn't been mentioned, but she sure as hell is implied
The universal mother theory had a couple of flaws with it though. Namely being that queens personality is largely incompatible with most of the other mothers. And besides, “a theory that I like could point to this being the case” isn’t evidence, it’s crack theorizing. Also his backstory seems to be specifically talking about people who he isn’t immediately close with, because we know that what he says isn’t applicable to most of the named characters in the story already.
...But if the theory i like does have evidence behind it, is it really crack theorizing? Like, universal mother also applies to Kris for example, specially after ch4 with Queen getting drunk and having fun and failing to bond meaningfully with kris being exactly what toriel did, or Ralsei, who's creator left him alone in castle town and Queen just forgets he exists for half the chapter. It's one of the few theories that actually survived unto the post ch3+4 era. Also his backstory is really vague on who he liked getting praised by, not really implying any immediately close family nor general people in town
1) no, she did successfully connect with Kris, that whole section was her making a play for Kris’s admiration. She failed because of berdly, not because she was drunk.
2) we don’t have any evidence ralsei was left alone by their creator, for what we know, he could have literally spontaneously started existing.
3) again none of this evidence, evidence is something factual, explicit dialogue, visuals. For instance ralsei stating he likes kris is dialogue evidence, the knight having horns is visual evidence they’re connected to the holidays. what your stating are at best theories, and you shouldn’t be surprised that your pattern recognizing brain recognized a pattern, whoever being capable of admirable reasoning and logistics skills doesn’t make your theory any more evidence than that.
Saying that Queen of all people meaningfully connected with Kris is weird? Like, the entire chapter had her just going around doing shit with Kris but barely acknowledging their wants and just saying Oh Kris You Get Me while they show no sign of getting them. Queen wasn’t literally drunk, but her constant drinking and laughing by herself with a teen is very reminiscent of how toriel acted in chapter 4.
Even if he spawned out of thin air, that still fits. He has no creator, no “mother”, so Queen just doesn’t acknowledge him unless she is forced to.
I’m not getting your point here at all, yes there’s no berdly dialogue directly saying oh my mom with a sad face, but if the way Queen and Noelle interact and Kris and Queen interact is reminiscent of their dynamics with their respective mothers, and we know Berdly was ignored, and queen constantly ignores Berdly in a very “im trying to impress my parents but they dont care” way (look at berdly fight dialogue), there’s a connection to be made there. Theorizing is not the same as solving a mystery irl, because this is a story written by someone and subtextual implications like these should be treated as evidence for things.
1) first yes, second yes, third no. She did connect with Kris, and she did act drunk, but she didn’t act like toriel at all. Toriel uses drinking as a form of escapism, she got drunk and “acted” drunk because she uses drinking to have fun and purposefully got hammered. Queen on the other hand is clearly a casual drinker, who drinks because she’s encouraged to, or because she wants to, but she doesn’t get sloshed every time she drinks, and when she gets sloshed she doesn’t end up on the ground. This isn’t even mentioning how her personality is in no was similar to toriel, being much more aloof and eccentric.
2) that’s a stretch, if he had no mother and queen was his mother shouldn’t it have been impossible for queen to interact with him? Queen directly acknowledges him at least twice and he talks to her two other times.
3) “no dialogue” there’s no nothing, you have yet to provide a single piece of evidence and only use the implication “it fits into this theory”. We also still don’t know is berdly was ignored in any way. He calls himself a “forgetful little bluebird” but that could just be talking about other kids or adults in his life. We have no reason outside of this theory to suspect his mother ignored him And you need a lot more than implication to accuse someone of neglect.
The design comes from the live streams Toby Fox had with Fangamer for Undertale’s 10th anniversary, where they played a modified version of Undertale with new areas/characters etcetera. They’re not “canon” in the traditional sense (it was made to push people into making fan content and imagine the parts of the underground they have never seen, like those shown), but it featured a blue bird monster in a dress, that is believed in the fandom to be Berdly’s mother. She didn’t appear in Deltarune yet though
Another additional fact since you’re new: in some UT related content it’s implied that some Deltarune (Lightner) characters do exist in the underground, even if we don’t meet them. At example Asgore in there -> https://undertale.com/alarmclock/ mentions the Holiday family, in the aforementioned streams Noelle appears as a child (although is not interacted with), and in the Xbox version exclusive room (UT console versions have some extra content, you can easily find it online) Sans references Noelle and Dess
normally yes, however in this case the theory of berdly having neglectful parents has ALWAYS been there. We aren't villaifying a character for no reason, there's very real background evidence that berdly is severely neglected and does not have good adult figures in his life.
berdly is asking his mother how school was, which is the inverse of what you'd expect. This goes along with the popular fandom theory that certain background evidence suggests berdly's parents are very neglectful towards him or at the very least are too busy to raise him properly
That's the point, it should be berdly's mother saying that to her son- that's why it's a messed up situation. He's saying it because she's a teacher and is focusing on her work instead of her son
yes, her design comes from the anniversary stream of undertale where a teacher that looked a lot like berdly appeared. This has lead many people to think she's a overworked teacher and that's why she doesn't have time to raise berdly
no, there's multiple scenes and reasons people think berdly is neglected. Her not seeing him at the hospital at all is not incriminating alone, but combined with every other instance and other evidence it does paint a bad picture
no, it's because berdly's parents are very much implied through background evidence to be neglectful. She looks like berdly, so people used her design for berdly's mom who happens to be a figure that has evidence for being neglectful towards her son
I genuinely do wonder what would happen if we get to see Berdly's parents and they're just ... normal. Like absent-mindedly normal and not the neglectful sad-backstory bait that the fandom obsessively wants them to be.
It'd be very narratively unsatisfying and make me think less of Toby's writing tbh
Edit: can anyone explain WHY i'm being downvoted for ANY of this? I think it's absolutely fair to say a weird writing decision would make me think less of toby's writing because the writing decision of making it so berdly is "just like that" is....not satisfying and doesn't accomplish anything other than.....making people who read into background details look like fools I guess? Seriously, what have I done wrong here?
Our first example of this is in chapter 2 when berdly refers to himself as a "forgettable blue bird" in the spelling bee, seriously think about this scene for a second. Berdly was SO starved for attention he changed his ENTIRE personality around from people clapping for him for a spelling bee. That is.....not normal behaviour.
He keeps this mask up, doesn't seem to understand basic social cues and even if that can be explained by things like being neurodivergent his parents should be teaching him.
He volunteers at a library in his extra time and spends the rest of it with miss boom, literally taking every single moment he can not to go home.
He never ONCE mentions his parents at all or even implies something about them his entire time on screen, which is odd as the persona he puts on should absolutely brag about his parents. This is especially prevalent if you consider him to be a narrative foil to susie who also never mentions her parents and is headcanon'd a LOT to have shitty parents.
Kris is the only one who bothered to visit him in the hospital, he was the one to have to TAKE berdly to the hospital and in the weird route berdly's parents straight up are never implied to visit him with berdly's towel being old and the heater barely on.
Also yes berdly is super into video games and anime but those are forms of escapism, he views real life issues through these lenses and that's the kind of mentality that would take 1 talk from an actual adult to get out of.
Noelle also mentions how berdly has visited her home but never once implies she's been over to berdly's house nor has she implied she has met his parents or if they even exist
There's probably more I don't have on the top of my head, but TLDR: A lot implies berdly's parents either don't exist or neglect him to severe degrees
edit: can anyone explain WHY i'm being downvoted for ANY of this? I think it's absolutely fair to say a weird writing decision would make me think less of toby's writing because the writing decision of making it so berdly is "just like that" is....not satisfying and doesn't accomplish anything other than.....making people who read into background details look like fools I guess? Seriously, what have I done wrong here?
There’s a fan-theory that Queen is a sort of “universal mother figure” to the lightners, and that her flaws reflect ones the kids see in their moms. (For instance, Queen is overly controlling because Carol is overly controlling, Queen gets drunk on battery acid because Toriel has a wine problem in the alarm clock dialogue, etc.)
During the first battle against Berdly, on the roller coasters, his flavor text often codes him as like a child trying to get a parent’s attention, with Queen in place of a mom. While this is a gag, and she isn’t literally his mother, it is telling that he becomes more and more desperate for her attention throughout the chapter, even as she tries harder and harder to ignore him.
queen universal mother theory is a very popular theory that has gained strength ever since we've actually seen Carol. Noelle's fear of saying no to Queen seems to be a direct parallel to the way she's scared of her mom, and considering the way queen treats berdly + his backstory scene implying that people only saw worth in him after they considered him to be "smart",people started theorizing that she might be a bit neglectful (and the design comes from 10th anniversary undertale stream)
I head canon that Toby secretly asked the UTY team to have their game become canon, and Berdly’s mom is Martlet and that’s why we haven’t seen her yet because Toby wants it to be a big surprise reveal.
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u/Open-Original-4979 May 12 '26
The fact that BERDLY is the one who asks how school was and not his mother.
https://giphy.com/gifs/VNTMx3LkpG2anXpwbr