#again i do wanna clarify that this is only a take i've heard like. twice

[irregularbillcipher]

regarding the birdie bad dad thing, idk if this is a situation you can logic your way out of by citing facts about the poor guy. unfortunately i think a lot of people think substance abuse = a terrible person regardless of when their addiction began or why, because theres a pretty persistent belief in our society that only bad people become addicted to drugs/alcohol in the first place lmfao. it conveniently makes people coping with mental and physical health crises that much easier to ignore!

yeah, i will say for the person i saw the other day, when someone corrected them and said "hey, birdie didn't have alcohol issues when he was a father, it couldn't have impacted his kids," they did recant. i don't wanna imply this guy stuck their head in the sand or anything, they admitted they were wrong. but it was such a weird take on the character, because all you have to do to see that literally isn't true is to read an eight word sentence at the end of his character bio

like i've seen him forgotten when listing decent parents in the lisa universe-- people pulled from fangames under the assumption there were no non-abusive parents in the base games which, like, isn't true-- and i do think that birdie's current state as a person with pretty obvious addiction issues does just sort of make people forget that he is the only parent in lisa who is never implied to be bad to his kids in any way

part of it is probably just that people don't seem to think about him more seriously-- despite being a party member with one of the most clearly defined backstories pre-definitive edition, he doesn't get a ton of in-depth fan content outside of random fanart, so people just sort of remember him as The Drunk Guy and then if they remember he had kids, might just go "yikes, that probably wasn't good," but i do think you're absolutely onto something about how people will just automatically demonize anyone with addiction issues, no matter what the circumstances are behind it. birdie has one of the most ""valid"" reasons to be struggling with addiction that anyone could dream up-- the man was a single father who lost his kids to a situation that seemed mostly, if not entirely, out of his control and he spiraled after that-- and even acts in a pretty "palatable" way, mostly being weepy or overly affectionate, and there have still been some people who have just automatically assumed he was abusive in some way. he's Bad because he's drunk and well we really don't have to think about him and his grief any further than that! he's just a Drunk Guy, so all the circumstances around it must be his own fault.

idk like he is a side character at the end of the day, despite the interesting parallels that can be drawn between him and some of the most important characters in the game, and the general importance he may hold in a narrative about fatherhood, i don't wanna imply that Not Understanding this random party member is like, the most pressing issue in the lisa fandom. i just think it's a shame that he gets overlooked so easily, and it's sort of disconcerting that i've seen people forget that he was implied to be a decent dad more than once

anyway yeah i agree very much with this ask, and especially how addicts are just unfairly demonized no matter how they actually act as people. i do understand how, in a narrative about abuse and especially abusive fathers, someone might assume that birdie would have also been a shitty dad. like genuinely, i do, especially if they haven't reread the character bios in a while, or just heard secondhand that apparently birdie has kids who passed away. but the fact that people forgetting that the circumstances behind joey and jimmy's deaths seemed more like an issue of a lack of resources than deliberate abuse or neglect is a take i've seen more than once is just surprising, and birdie's current-day alcoholism being cited for why he must have been a bad dad is just sort of frustrating