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Opinion on Bernadetta?


Henry234
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Lately, I've noticed how every person loves Bernadetta. Here's how I feel about her: She constantly thinks everyone who walks up to her is trying to murder her. I understand the fact that her dad is the reason for her social anxiety. However, that does not justify her actions in any way. I feel like all she does is scream, whine, and run away from anyone who is in her presence. (She's also very cringy) Marianne is a more realistic representation on what an actual person with social anxiety would actually be like. This is just my opinion.

Is there anyone else who feels the same way, or is she a person that you also like? Not judging on anyone's opinion, but I am curious if anyone feels as I do.

Edited by Henry234
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Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of the Bernadetta and Marianne comparisons as they're apples and oranges. Their situations are completely different.

The way I see it, Bernie's history of abuse 100% justifies her behavior, and it sounds like you disregarded her later supports where she's grown out of a lot of it.

Marianne's theme is more depression than anything else, completely different from Bernie's situation.

Edited by Sentinel07
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Neither Marianne nor Bernadetta strike me as having mere social anxiety as their primary issue. For Marianne, she's depressed and suicidal, which causes her to be socially withdrawn. For Bernadetta, she's paranoid, agoraphobic, and experiencing panic attacks and/or PTSD episodes. It's easy to read Bernadetta's dialogue as massively over the top, but if you've ever spent time around someone with untreated trauma of similar severity, you may recognize that it's not really all that exaggerated.

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9 minutes ago, Sentinel07 said:

Quite frankly, I'm sick and tired of the Bernadetta and Marianne comparisons as they're apples and oranges. Their situations are completely different.

How I feel when someone makes Bernadetta and Marianne comparisons:

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FUqoYED.png

 

But really, though, Marianne's shtick is more "my ancestors were cursed, and now I'm cursed" (props to anyone who reads this like Claude said it) and there's some strong implications that she wants to straight up die (in fact, she outright tells Byleth in her A-support with them that she prayed "to be taken to the goddess").  Her social anxiety comes from the fact that she doesn't want anyone to share in her misfortune and feels more akin to a beast, which is why you often find her talking to animals instead of people.  The curse of her heritage leads her to believe her existence is a burden for others, which leads to her having suicidal thoughts and depression.

Bernadetta, on the other hand, was tormented in such ways as to make her paranoid about every little thing she did wrong.  Her father was flippant on her social behaviors - when she was not doing what he asked of her he'd lock her up in the house, but when she started getting comfortable with the solitude he started dragging her out of the house.  And he'd do things like force her to sit tied to a chair all day staying quiet.  Bernadetta did not have a normal childhood, and therefore she does not suffer from mere social anxiety, but rather full on paranoia and severe general anxiety.  She does believe she's a burden to others as well, but not for the same reasons as Marianne and it's more she's afraid of what will happen when she "inevitably" disappoints someone because, in her experience, disappointment led to abuse.

I'd say Bernadetta and Marianne are on opposite ends of the bipolar spectrum of mental illnesses - mania and dementia.  And actually, I quite like both of them as characters and how they're depicted, even if the game tries to make light of Bernadetta's paranoia by accompanying it with silly music (though I will say all her running away from people made it genuinely funny when she approached Alois so casually that he thought she was someone else until he let the interaction sink in).

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I honestly don’t like how they handled Bernadetta’s anxiety in the game. For every support that isn’t Byleth, Bernadetta’s supports are treated like a joke. Just look her support with Caspar.

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Ugh can we stop with the Bernadetta and Marianne comparisons! Comparing characters in general is just really stupid and something I don’t really agree with because most of the time like here for instance it just boils down to “oh this character handles trauma in a way I find more agreeable so therefore they are the better written” and that’s just not an argument or really any kind of valid criticism. It’s fine to compare very surface level things like one character has more depth than the other or something like that which is fine. But actually comparing the characters in their entirety is just kind of dumb wanna know why? It’s because characters are people and people are different. Different People handle trauma in different ways that much is obvious. No two people are going to handle trauma in the exact same way that’s just how people work so to say one is “more realistic” than the other when both are valid forms of dealing with trauma is quite frankly a little insensitive.

17 minutes ago, Etheus said:

And Marianne for that matter. I know what it's like to feel like a burden and a curse on those around me.

Same man same

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16 minutes ago, ZeManaphy said:

I honestly don’t like how they handled Bernadetta’s anxiety in the game. For every support that isn’t Byleth, Bernadetta’s supports are treated like a joke. Just look her support with Caspar.

The only time it's ever like that is in her C-supports, which are regrettably repetitive. However, most of her B-supports are where she truly begins to shine.

As for Caspar, well he's an idiot so I don't blame her.

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I can't say I particularly dislike Bernadetta but I do have some issues with how she's written. I often negatively compare her with Persona's Futaba who's also a socially awkward shut in. 

With Futaba her anxiety and lack of social skills sometimes lead to amusing situations but her shutting herself up inside due to a traumatic events is primarily treated as a tragedy that must be ended. Bernadetta is the opposite of that. Sometimes she has serious conversations about how abusive her father was and how much he damaged her but its primarily played for laughs. The lighthearted moments where we're supposed to laugh at wacky Bernie and find it cute outnumber those where her issues get taken truly seriously like with Dorothea. And ultimately the serious moments do a lot to ensure her more lighthearted moments just aren't funny.  Bernadetta being broken after being tortured isn't funny yet at times I start to strongly suspect that the game finds it hilarious and wants me to find it funny too. Having the paranoia and the shrieking toned down several degrees would have really helped. Rather than making over the top screams she could have stammered, started to shake or act overly skittish. How over the top Bernadetta is make her seem like a joke character half of the time despite it not being funny in the least. 

There's growth in Bernie after the time skip but due to how supports are handled the more confident Bernie who started leaving her room can revert right back to wacky Bernie from part 1. That can be kinda awkward. Sometimes Three Houses starts locking C supports that should have taken place before the timeskip so that being done to her C supports would have helped.

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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Dealing with her is way above Byleth's pay grade. It's not like I don't have sympathy for her upbringing, but it's unfair for the faculty to dump her and her issues on an unqualified teacher, and so with that in mind, I choose to ignore her.

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1 hour ago, Etheus said:

I absolutely love Bernadetta.

 

And Marianne for that matter. I know what it's like to feel like a burden and a curse on those around me.

All this. And while I don't scream like Bernie, I do have a tendency to assume that everyone else assumes the worst of me (I've heard it referred to as "stress-vision").

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13 minutes ago, Sid Starkiller said:

All this. And while I don't scream like Bernie, I do have a tendency to assume that everyone else assumes the worst of me (I've heard it referred to as "stress-vision").

...Now that you mention it... I think I might be in the same boat.

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I think comparisons to Marianne can be dubious, but if we must, note how Marianne's anxieties about her crest are based in reality. When she meets her ancestor, she's not surprised. She spent her whole life assuming that's what she would become. The paralogue even implies she knew exactly where to find Maurice, as if it's a secret she has kept for years. Heck maybe that IS what she'll become under the right circumstances. Nobody has studied her crest to find out. There is mysticism with Marianne's situation that we don't get with Bernie. 

Edited by Glennstavos
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3 hours ago, EdgeOfDreams said:

It's easy to read Bernadetta's dialogue as massively over the top, but if you've ever spent time around someone with untreated trauma of similar severity, you may recognize that it's not really all that exaggerated.

None of what I see with Bernadetta comes off as particularly humorous but her reactions are well within the range of what I'd expect to see (and have seen) in a nervous break. Basically the people saying that it isn't realistic don't really have any idea of what they're talking about but plenty of opinions on the subject. That too, isn't really all that surprising.

Edited by CyberNinja
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Meh unit. Annoying character.

Having as many supports as she does with her stupid "WAAH THEY'RE GOING TO KILL ME" shtick being played on 90% of them gets irritating quickly.

To those that say her father's abuse 100% justifies how she behaves: It doesn't, it's exaggerated as fuck and should've been toned down to her just being shy and reluctant to talk to people trying to approach her on most support with perhaps a few of the males being cases where she feels like they're trying to kill her. To slap that shtick  onto as many of her supports as they did made it dreadful to have to read more than 2 of her C supports and because the B and A supports build on it, you still get more doses of this.

As for the Marianne and Bernadetta comparison, the only similarity I can really see is that they're both shy when it comes to socializing but one just assumes that everyone's out to kill her so those around her just think "WTF?" and the other just feels cursed and not worth anyone's time with signs of characters seeing her as a "diamond in the rough".

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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I don't like either Bernie or Marrianes personalities. They piss me off for some reason. So one dimensional pre time skip for bernie. I understand she was dealt a bad hand with her experiences but god her voice is like nails. 

But I use her cause that deadeye, encloser and Hunter volley....

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I fin her semi-relatable In way  (Because in a world where she lives I would most likely be scared to death too) but I do agree that she is very unrealistic. Marianne is a better realistic character, and Bernadetta is cringe at times. I like how she looks though, and she’s pretty strong (As far as I’ve gotten with her). 

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5 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Dealing with her is way above Byleth's pay grade. It's not like I don't have sympathy for her upbringing, but it's unfair for the faculty to dump her and her issues on an unqualified teacher, and so with that in mind, I choose to ignore her.

To be fair, it's doubtful that anyone in this setting is qualified to properly treat severe paranoia. They're not even at Freud, let alone real psychology.

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8 hours ago, Henry234 said:

Is there anyone else who feels the same way, or is she a person that you also like? Not judging on anyone's opinion, but I am curious if anyone feels as I do

Does it matter?

I mean, good topic title, but the rest is quite the trainwreck.  This is straying into mental health territory, which is a tricky subject on a good day.  Hence why it's being closed.

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