Roberta "Bertie" Songthrush is one of the two eponymous characters in Tuca & Bertie.
Bio
Physical Appearance
Bertie is a light brown songthrush with a grey beak. She has black pupils, long eyelashes, and white specks on her cheeks and forehead, with a small tuft of two feathers on her head styled back.
She is seen wearing a red sweater with white contrasting stitching at the sleeves and neckline, a pair of light denim jeans, and a pair of white high-heeled ankle-length boots.
As a younger adult in her mid 20s, she wore a teal button-down shirt with white polka-dots, unbuttoned yellow cardigan, grey pants, and teal flats. She had straight bangs and the two feathers at the back tied with a little black band.
When she was fifteen she wore a white short-sleeved top with a lavender flower on the front, light colored jeans that slightly flared out at the bottom, and sneakers. Her hair was styled similarly to her mid 20s design, although her bangs are styled a little differently.
Personality
Bertie is an introverted, nervous songbird who seems to have a cautious approach to life. She is career-oriented, with a strong passion for baking.
She's a loyal best friend to Tuca, being readily available when she needs it, and is often the one who gets her out of trouble; recognizing that Tuca needs her. However, she does have a desire to start her own life, and therefore moves in with her boyfriend Speckle.
However, she has trouble expressing her needs to other people, and she suffers from generalized anxiety.
Background
History
Bertie was born in 1989. Tuca mentions in Season 1 she and Bertie are both thirty, and the season aired in 2019.
Bertie's parents, although both having cheery demeanors, never wanted to discuss anything negative, rather nervously sweep everything under the rug and bottle up their emotions.
Bertie was a good student, competed in sports and won multiple awards, although it’s mentioned by Bertie in Corpse Week that she had a lot of pressure on her growing up.
Her family would spend the summer at the Jelly Lakes, and Bertie would attend a summer camp there. She was a great swimmer and, with the help of Coach Maple, she spent one summer when she was twelve training herself to be able to swim all the way to Peanut Butter Island, always showing up to the docks early in the morning before the coach arrived.
A camp lifeguard complimented her skills saying he didn’t believe she was only twelve, One morning, after complimenting her new red swimsuit her lured Bertie out into the woods to "show her something." Once they were alone, he sexually assaulted her. This incident scarred Bertie for life, leading her to quit swimming and resulted in her having a fear of trusting people around her, and also showcasing symptoms of PTSD especially when it came to sexual situations.
This is especially due to the fact her parents never talked about it with her and only had her visit the school counselor a few times, which did nothing for her as the counselor was incompetent and untrained for psychological issues or anything outside of post high school career advice, and afterwards they never discussed it with her again.
When Bertie was fifteen, after telling her then best friends about the incident and they acted either weirded out/jealous she "hooked up with a guy,” which led to her locking herself the bathroom to cry, she met Murial Nocturna, a laid back goth bat girl, and after she actually listened to Bertie talk about her trauma and she became her best friend. Murial shared her interests with Bertie and encouraged her to start dressing in goth fashion, and the two even kiss at one point, but she gradually began to grow more clingy and started copying everything Murial liked. After Bertie was voted “Goth-iest” in the yearbook after a photographer took pictures of her in her goth attire and makeup while she was crying after feeling like Murial didn't like her anymore, Murial snaps and tells Bertie they were never really friends and she only became friends with her out of pity, and the fact she was in a fight with her real best friend, Jessica, and claims she was "just messing around" when she kissed her.
Bertie met her best friend, Tuca Toucan, sometime during college. One night at a party Tuca blacked out from drinking too much and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital to get her stomach pumped, something that traumatized Bertie as she felt helpless.
Tuca and Bertie shared an apartment together in their twenties.
Five years prior to the start of the series, Bertie met Speckle, an architect, at a party at that she and Tuca crashed. They began dating shortly after.
Season 1
In The Sugar Bowl, it's shown that after about four years of dating Speckle is moving into Bertie's apartment, with Tuca moving into the apartment directly above them.
Season 2
Kyle
For more information about the alter ego Bertie makes up in therapy see Kyle.
Trivia
- Her full name is first mentioned in Yeast Week.
- In Bird Mechanics it's shown she has a habit of pulling out her feathers when she's stressed or having an anxiety attack.