Bird Theory Is Back In Town

Hi, I’m Taine! I post art when I feel like it, otherwise I just enjoy the vibes. I’m actually not a robot, surprisingly. (she/her, 22, ace, autistic)

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Bird Theory Masterpost!

A helpful little index of all my Deltarune theory & analysis posts specifically involving Berdly thus far, in vague chronological order.

Berdly and the Sky Mantle (aka the observation that started it all)

Some visual similarities between Berdly's dark world sprite, Queen's beta design, Giga Queen, and the bird teacher from the Undertale anniversary livestream.

Berdly and Spamton cutscene parallels

Details regarding the relationship between Kris and Berdly that get completely taken for granted

Semi-joking theory about Queen and Berdly

Berdly's Speedrun Strats

The Bird Teacher connecting the dots, and strange similarities between UTDR and Touhou (this one's wild. seriously.)

Shop 3 and Bluebird of Misfortune (this one's just rambling based on audio first impressions. But seriously what is with this game and melancholy waltzing.)

Chekov's Berdly!

Berdly's importance in a meta sense

Ask 1 - Berdly and Romance

Ask 2 - Colour Theory (my take on an idea based on an analysis I really have to watch)

Ask 3 - Berdly and incel ideology (aka why does everyone have such bad faith takes)

Hypoglycemic Berdly (aka over-analysing a single interaction because I can)

The Happiest Outcome and Berdly/Alphys Parallels

Berdly's absence of presence and Being Important By Omission

Ask 4 - Aromantic Berdly!

An in-depth analysis on Berdly's treatment in the eyes of snowgrave players... in the form of yet another incredibly long winded rant about dark humour and bad faith readings

SCC and the alleged music ban (which may or may not come up again sometime soon)

Deltarune and Joke Choices (most of which involve Berdly)

Berdly reflecting the player base and why misinterpretations say more about the gamer making them

Berdly's life is a tragedy hidden in plain sight seriously why does no one bring this up?

Golden Berdly and the NEO Vessel

Allegedly incomplete character arcs and plot twists in Undertale setting a precedent

Ask 5 - Berdly’s completely normal home life

Ask 6 - The lack of context regarding Berdly and a certain somebody else...

Rambling about fanon misunderstandings of Noelle and Berdly’s relationship (with hopefully some coherent points in the tags)

Instances in which Hometown feels less Deltarune and more Chicken Little

Common misconceptions about Berdly that somehow make their way into serious DeltaTheories and irk me endlessly

Ask 7 - Burning arms, burning eyes

Wonder what that spelling-based encounter was doing in chapter 3's journey to nowhere?

Berdly's self-fulfilling prophecy.. oh no..

Man, those Birds sure are Weird.

Vagueposting about a certain line in chapter 3 that always gets used as a gotcha

Berdly’s descriptions of Susie being more revealing than you'd think

The NEO machine's creator and interesting parallels to characters we already know

Ask 8 - we take Berdly seriously around here

An interesting use of motifs.. specifically the part you don’t pay attention to..

Ask 9 - Berdly's presence or absense in the prophecy

Like a chicken with its head cut off...

A PSA towards anyone writing a Chapter 2 Roaring AU

Ask 10 - Ralsei and Unexpected Kindness towards someone you wouldn't think about

Noelle’s relationships with Berdly and Spamton (and how the fanbase has them completely backwards)

More over Friend Inside Me you ain't the only Toy Story parallel in town.

Lancer Parallels? Lancer Parallels.

Pattern recognition and noticing Berdly connections where you'd least expect them

Berdly being relevant outside the Weird route? Inconceivable.. right?

Bonus: theories that aren't necessarily about Berdly but may involve Berdly significantly!

Birdcage Blue and Yellow (aka why Pink and Yellow isn't the only omnipresent colour scheme)

Snowgrave and Fatality

The Angel, The Titan... and The Weird Birds.

A very serious and meaningful take on equipment effects and monetary gains

Slash HJ theory about the librarbian bird npc

Hometown’s hospital wallpaper

Reaper Bird's importance to Deltarune

"How do you feel about losing your face?"

The power of sine wave birds

Librarby part 2 - Elec/Holy boogaloo?

Crack theory about a normal bird

Reaper bird is so goddamn strange.

Don't worry bout those butterflies I'm sure it's nothing.

There's no shame in an egg...

Now spell: Heaven Says (less the post itself more the details in the tags)

It's time for Egg Delivery

The illusion of power as a means of control

Happy Theorising Gamers~

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Deltarune Chapter 5 is a psyop designed to mess with Ace Attorney fans whose favourites are Turnabout for the Ages and Turnabout Academy.

What I’m saying is it’s a psyop designed to mess with me specifically.

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Have you seen that GasterGang/Berdly comic bigtabart posted here like 12 hours ago? It made me think of the local professor of ornithology (you)

I had to look the comic up since I didn't see it before this ask, but holy shit that's funny.

Honestly I have a feeling it might be onto something considering the importance of the librarby books that Norm was obstructing for the first few chapters, plus the computer lab dark world being mentioned in Asgore’s distorted notes from Flower Castle.

And I don’t have any proof or anything but something tells me the rusty birdcage from Kris's room has something to do with the mystery of the tree, the man and the eggs.

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is this how it feels to read my posts about deltarune.

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So I saw your awesome art of Berdly overlaid with Spamton NEO and Swatch and all that, I assume that implies that you think Berdly was the one who designed it? Or is that assumption wrong? Do you still think that now after Chapter 5? I'm super interested in your take since Ive always assumed it was Maddie or Alphys who made it, since, Mettaton

First of all, thanks so much!

Second of all, I have a pre-ch4 post detailing the connections of Neo that ended in me realizing “hey, Berdly is surprisingly involved here!” which led to me making that very hypothesis. Even without this theory being true (since Pink/Maddie, Mettaton and Alphys are definitely important considering their involvement in both Undertale and Deltarune, and they do seem to be likely candidates), I still liked the idea of forming Berdly as a misshapen collage out of various different images, like a super scuffed version of the personality square (I can’t remember the exact name right now, all I know is that there’s a really cool art of Noelle with the actual psychological chart. something about how you are to others versus yourself, which fit with the idea I wanted to convey about conscious versus unconscious identity.)

Third of all, ch5 resulted in me making this very rough supplemental to the original post, for some initial thoughts about the theory following the recent chapter.

Fourth of all, seriously thanks I’m glad you thought the art was cool ^^

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Regarding the NEO Machine.

A while back I noticed the bizarre detail of the gold statue from the Spamton Sweepstakes event being described in an oddly similar way to the NEO Machine... and it got me thinking about how the introduction of NEO in chapter 2 has left us with so many unanswered questions.

So I did the reasonable thing, and documented all the characters majorly connected to the NEO vessel in Deltarune as one does.

and, well…

I think I’ve made the Deltatheory equivalent of a cognitohazard. Read on if you’re interested, but be warned.

Starting off simple, there are several characters that directly connect to Deltarune’s NEO:

The Hacker, Swatch, Spamton, the Werewires, and the unknown Lightner who designed The NEO Machine in the first place.

(Note that while Mettaton is also referenced in various ways throughout the Spamton NEO battle, there is yet to be a direct throughline between Undertale’s Mettaton NEO and Deltarune’s NEO Vessel despite the obvious parallels between the two. I’ll explain a bit more later…)

The Hacker is the NPC with the blue checkmark sidequest and hints towards the existence of the secret beneath the palace. He’s constantly making gamerisms and takes pains to remind you he’s The Hacker despite No One Asking. Not much to note here other than his design referencing a completely different NEO. Honestly, you could probably unlock NEO without this guy, but good luck trying to find the hidden switch without having a cursor to point it out for you.

Not gonna waste my breath too much here since everyone knows Spamton is part of the NEO subplot. The short version is this: On the Normal route, you end up making a deal with him to sneak on through to the basement, transfer date from the LoadedDisk, and upload him to the machine so he can reach Heaven, while on the Weird route, your jackass stunts result in enough chaos to allow a certain spambot to breach Queen’s defenses.. to the point the final battle is less of a final line of heroic defense, and more trying to keep you from screwing him over at the good part.

Swatch is another pretty obvious one, being the art application based darkner who helped build the NEO machine before it was discarded... and who oddly shares a counterpart in the form of the librarbian in Undertale, complete with colour-coded books. Swatch also oddly feels the need to cover up the existence of NEO, which feels a little excessive considering the spelling tiles, teacup rides, mazes and electrical puzzles that act as barriers on the way to NEO.

Then there's the Werewires, the alternative forms of the plugboys citizens of Cyber City who resemble common 9-to-5 workers and end up brainwashed by Queen's control wires before you free them by snapping the wires, much like you end up freeing SNEO... And have I mentioned that Ramb, the plugboy who leads you onto the sword route, was given meaning by Kris playing with him? And this distorted sense of meaning is precisely what leads to the plug-n-play hell that is the Sword Route? Freedom’s for the Big Shots after all… though unfortunately, constantly alluding to the fandom buzzwords isn’t enough to save Ramb from being frozen in stone by the end of chapter 3.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at how Undertale’s NEO was designed in the first place. In the past, Alphys was the only one who responded to Mettaton’s Human Fanclub Advertisement, and she was the one to show him the sketches of a body that would become Mettaton EX. Being the human-culture weeb that she is, both Mettaton EX and MNEO are heavily influenced by anime and video game designs, with the latter being a pseudo-final-boss to act as a last line of intimidation on the weird route…

But in Deltarune, despite there being a human in hometown and monsters living on the surface, the two of them are total strangers, meaning the Mettaton we know is unable to exist, as Alphys is a awkward high school teacher. We can at least introduce Tenna to the Blook household so they won’t be bored for long (hence a certain somebody’s quote along the lines of “something awakening within me”), but if the circumstances that led to Alphys designing Mettaton NEO in Undertale didn’t exist in this world… then how did Deltarune’s NEO come into existence? How did the anime and video game influenced, oddly humanoid, robotic body make its way to the librarby computer, when the one who drew it in Undertale isn’t connected to the friend she designed it for in this world? And why go to the trouble of designing something like that with such love and care, only to discard it as if it never mattered?

Something doesn’t add up here.

But even with this alternative scenario, there seems to be someone else who fits the bill.

A Lightner who has been introduced to the same video game and anime culture that influenced Alphys’ robotic designs, who also has a fascination with the human body, who also seems to be alluded to by several of the aforementioned characters, and who also had the opportunity to design NEO on the librarby laptop…

And it’s… Huh?

Hey, remember how I started this post?

I mentioned how I noticed the golden statue was described in an oddly similar way to the NEO machine.

And I thought: surely, that’s just coincidental? Surely, if I do a bit more research it should assure me I was seeing things where there was nothing?

Because why would the Smart Race battle directly parallel the Spamton NEO boss, complete with the same quote upon violent defeat?

Why would Berdly serve the same role as Mettaton NEO on the Snowgrave route, as a brave yet ultimately meaningless stand against a merciless player, again with the same flavour text quote?

Why would Berdly constantly allude to gamerisms in the same manner as the walking Matrix reference, including the same Minecraft With Gadget references?

Why would Berdly be rescued from wire control in the same way as the working-class-adjacent npcs as one of the few characters known to work a job, and who bonds with Kris over playing in much the same way as Ramb, yet is also ultimately seen as not belonging in the eyes of others?

Why would Berdly and Swatch have such similar avian design elements and subservience to Queen, along with visual resemblance to Undertale’s librarbian, especially considering Swatch and the Swatchlings also disappear following Snowgrave on the Weird route?

Why would Berdly’s dark world design and Alphys’s classroom motivational poster reference the same video game other than to remind you they’re both absolute nerds?

And why, of all characters, does Berdly have such strong connections to all the characters related to the NEO Vessel sidequest?

I don’t have a clear answer to why this is the case just yet.

But I do have my personal hypothesis why the abandoned machine was so heavily guarded, and why such a wondrous embodiment of a Lightner’s hopes and dreams was left to rot in the first place…

It’s the same reason why a neglected child suffering from a lack of identity or sense of self-worth would purposely reduce themselves to a label assigned by others, denying themselves of any genuine self-expression outside of what is expected of them…

…and it’s the same reason why Kris was only half surprised by what they saw beyond the door.

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Oh my god. Okay. So.

I don’t know if this is confirmation bias at play or if I’m actually onto something but if I’m right then chapter 5 has provided me with an absolute smoking gun for this theory. And it has everything to do with Pink.

Let’s go step by step here:

The “catgirl time” line from the hacker is blatant foreshadowing for Pink, and comes in the same interaction as referencing Roblox. Adding another arrow in the quiver of Hacker Is A Typical GamerDude Like Berdly.

Swatch has been confined to the pink plastic vanity table. This would be another instance of the devs refusing to show Swatch below the shoulders and a one off tie to Susie’s date prep, were it not for the fact the interaction is completely skippable and honestly kind of useless to someone like Susie who prefers to not cake her face in makeup (source: I missed it when I played), and the fact that Swatch is situated where a mirror should be, making this the second time UTDR has trapped a bird in a reflection next to Reaper Bird in the True Lab.

Berdly straight up foreshadows the Pink boss several times. The doki meter, the thing about being a puppet king promoting the love of two beautiful girls, the whole concept of the dating sim challenge where it’s three people competing for one potential date…

Berdly, SNEO, and Pink are all fought against a cityscape background. The connections between SNEO and Pink make sense given she directly alludes to Spamton and the NEO subplot, but what about Berdly? Also, the green wires return.

The official lyrics of Pink's battle ost directly allude to the weird route, and the switch trailer starts with MewMew in an iceberg. Some queen of Snowgrave.

Seth, one of the characters the game directly acknowledges as non binary, is a devoted fan of Berdly. And in the above unused dialog (it’s unused because it is dependent on how many of the flowers you met, when it’s only unlocked after you met them all) describes their gender identity in direct reference to both Kris and Berdly (“something as cool as a bluebird… that a blue bird would also find cool!” Which is met with blank faces from Susie and Ralsei, before they ask Kris to help them out)

Egg. Not only does Shop 3 have a waltz soundtrack like Bluebird of Misfortune, but this is one of the few times the egg room eggs have been directly acknowledged next to the eggs collected on Berdly’s desk.

In conclusion…. What.

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Just caught myself trying to link Berdly (Rejected Concept) with Weird and Weirder Birds. lord help me

Related, I think the name Weird Birds is extra interesting given how loaded the word "weird" is in DR's context. Something something, Berdly the Weird Bird on a Weird Route

Plus on the 6th anniversary livestream one of the many subtle edits made to the game's script (other than having Berdly channel Riders Fandub Jet and act like an obnoxious gamer nerd ahead of schedule) was to indirectly refer to the weird birds as "sine wave birds" at the save point outside Castle Town.

For reference, Berdly's arrow attack forms a sine wave.

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Is no one else going to talk about how Susie's ch5 flower motif of Violet is not only a pretty smart callback to a ch1 savepoint description that could so easily be read as "violent tormentor" as well as a notable symbol of sapphic love, but is also the waitress alias for Mother 3's Kumatora - a heroine explicitly depicted as gender nonconforming in contrast to the previous entries' traditionally feminine Ana and Paula.

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The chapter 1 and chapter 5 egg rooms have starwalker birds guarding them, and in chapter 5 The Original Starwalker’s journey supposedly ends… at the same time our journey to find the Forgotten Man does. Coincidence?

I’d say that would be coincidence, were it not for the other birdlike kawkaw enemies outside the same field, the fact that the eggs you collect end up by a certain bluebird’s desk in ch4, and said bluebird shares a colour scheme with the feathered wings of the ch5 Starwalker bird. And the Starwalker wings and face strangely resembling that of the titan.

…so maybe it’s not a coincidence. There’s something going on with the Starwalker birds, though I have no idea what that is.

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Lucky Morningstar.

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the harvest is bountiful this year.

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…is the reason river person talks the way they do because it’s literally stream of consciousness.

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you know it's getting real when you break out the ms paint diagram.

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Given that AA4 was referenced in Chapter 5 through Ralsei’s Trucy outfit in the trial section, I’m convinced the mental flashbang that is Flowery’s reveal came about from Toby remembering how we first meet Klavier in case 2 and going hey you know what would be really funny.

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oh my god okay. so, im @ lebonkulus on twitter, and for months now i've been creating a comprehensive doc called the Avis Opus that im making out of love for berdly's character I am genuinely shaking here because it feels like YOU GET ME, I have emphasized the importance of *waltzes* and *wings* and *berdly as a whole* but ive felt insane cuz it feels like nobody has gotten it! and i just got to your shop 3/berdly analysis and, holy cow, you have said one of the MAIN things ive found important! the waltzes!!!! I just wanted to say, I am sooooo elated but also mad I just found your blog today. It's like I accidentally read your mind or something without even knowing it. Im worried people would accuse me of copying you word for word, when ive come to conclusions like those completely independently! i appreciate your blog SO MUCH. could i use it as a source? or discuss berdly stuff with you or anything??

Absolutely ^^ I don’t use any other social media for talking about Deltarune (if you don’t count YouTube video descriptions.. I don’t even use community posts lmao), so feel free to cite the posts or share with links or anything!

As for discussions, so far I’ve been working via asks and replies so they all can be linked to the public post (which I still have to update for ch5..), that way anyone else can access or see if they have similar questions.

Glad the blog has helped ^^

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Hi! Your theories are very interesting so I'd like to ask your thoughts on something, what do you feel about the newly uh... Rejuvenated(?) discussion on what the Red Soul actually is?

What I'm referring to is how Determination is never said to be the property of human souls in general (though the player's seem to have a lot of it), and given that Flowery is both the seventh soul and has parallels to Frisk, some people (including myself) are considering the idea of the red soul being hope (something highlighted by Flowery, as each of the other flowers put focus on their "virtue" in their check and flowery puts focus on hope alongside it being a recurring thing the soul does in deltarune)

Apologies if this is a bit too much or if you're just not interested-

To be honest, I didn't see that much of the ongoing Soul Physics Debate so I didn’t even know this was a subject of contention. Still, here’s my take for an outsider’s perspective on the soul traits off the top of my head…

Hope and Determination do go together quite a bit in UTDR - the emphasis on Hopes and Dreams throughout both games particularly in True Pacifist and in reference to the Shadow Crystal battles.

There’s also Seam alluding to the Power of Will, whereas Queen specifically uses the word Determination (as for why she believes it’s something all Lightners possess is another can of spaghetti, since she’s estimating off the Knight’s actions)

Plus there’s Perseverance, which I also thought seemed strange to consider separate from Determination in Undertale when it’s almost a perfect synonym in plain English terms. Yet the former was one of the “soul traits” that were only given focus now, and the latter was a substance you could inject into monsters and flowers for new and terrifying effects.

The way I see it is a bit more abstracted - in terms of concepts, I see Determination as taking those Hopes and Dreams, and using them to make them real… hence why creating a dark fountain requires the “Power of Will”, which Queen describes earlier.

Flowery also mentions Dreams a lot alongside Hope, again tying into the Hopes and Dreams as of the True Pacifist finale… which also happens to reveal Frisk as someone separate from the player.

And then there’s whatever’s going on with Chara, considering they only return in person at the end of No Mercy which goes out of its way to reinforce their nihilism and belief in the “pointlessness” of the world. And in True Pacifist, it’s revealed why they came to the underground in the first place… they hated humanity and wanted to disappear. In short… they had lost Hope.

Yet at the very end, as confirmed by the anniversary stream, Chara ends up being the last person you save. Thus, as we see the other flowers take pains to keep their virtue in check, Chara regains their Hope.

So while I don’t have any strong evidence for or against the red soul being Hope, I do think it could be a possibility considering what we know of the “red soul children” in Undertale.

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Randomly assigning ace attorney characters pokemon types bc I just felt like it:

Phoenix - Normal/Dragon

Maya - Psychic/Ghost

Miles - Steel/Psychic

Manfred - Dark/Electric

Ema - Water/Flying

Franziska - Ice/Fighting

Pearl - Water/Fairy

Godot - Dark/Fire

Gumshoe - Grass/Ground

Larry - Normal/Rock

Kay - Flying/Dark

Lang - Fighting/Normal

Eddie - Steel/Grass

Verity - Psychic/Fighting

Stacey - Fairy/Dragon

Excelsius- Fire/Poison

Apollo - Normal/Bug

Trucy - Fairy/Psychic

Kristoph - Poison/Dark

Klavier - Electric/Rock

Athena - Psychic/Electric

Fulbright - Electric/Ghost

Blackquill - Dark/Fighting

Rayfa - Ghost/Fairy

Nahyuta - Psychic/Dragon