[this post will have spoilers about deltarune chapters 3 so leave this post if you haven't played it!! if you're okay with spoilers, then click anywhere in this text to make the text in this post appear!!!]

deltarune chapters 3 and 4 came out not too long ago and i played them basically immediately (barring the job part where i have to work), and i have lots of opinions and essentially none are negative. i really love how this game and undertale share some aspects, but are also incredibly, incredibly different, especially, i'd say, in its themes.

to be quite honest i mainly want to talk about chapter 3 because i think it had the stuff that made me most insane, but we'll see if i end up doing more yapping than i anticipated. at least rn, chapter 3 is my favourite, and it's the chapter i resonated with the most.

chapter 3 is, i'd say most out of any deltarune chapter, about childhood and growing up and things changing. the biggest way that it explores this theme is through the game show, of course, wherein tenna has you, as kris, play through strange challenges in a very retro game alongside susie and ralsei.

tenna tells you about how things were in the past: kris and their family and friends would gather around the tv, they'd watch tv or play games and laugh and love, but slowly this changes, until suddenly it's a very lonely place around the tv, and watching the tv alone at night becomes something akin to a reminder of the solitude, a reminder of this change.

i think a lot of people can relate to this, though that sort of change might've happened at various stages of their life. in high school, i used to hang out with my friends irl all the time. one of us would play some game on the tv, and we'd all just shoot the shit and laugh when the person playing would do some crazy shit and get completely owned. eventually, though, we graduated, i moved, we got jobs, and it wasn't so simple as heading over after school. suddenly, there's a wall between me and my friends. i still love my friends, naturally, but the nature of my friendships as an adult versus as a kid are different.

we all live in different parts of the city, we have different schedules, and money becomes more of a factor. work and post-secondary school demand a lot more of your energy than grade school, so it's easy to end up just being too exhausted to really want to hang out during your free time. then there's just the existing obligations; a sleep over with friends isn't as viable when you're all twenty somethings with small apartments and you also have to get adult shit done over the weekend. something as simple as just hanging out and chilling in front of the tv with friends becomes a little bit more complex, a little bit less attainable, and the tv becomes a bit more lonely.

this chapter naturally doesn't explore this in the "becoming an adult" sense LOL, but more just the "things change and become a bit more lonely". overall, though, this chapter is very hopeful. for just that little bit, kris, susie, and ralsei are able to play in the game show and enjoy the moment. even if things change and you can't be together in the same way as when you're a kid, there're still always always times that everyone can hang out together and just have fun in a silly, easy way.

this chapter has come at a time when i've been thinking more about these sorts of things, honestly. i think about how i would get to see my friends basically every day irl, and how easy it was to just hang out.

eventually i'm sure it'll be at least a bit easier. our general wage level will hopefully get to a point where the money isn't as much of a factor; we'll have more vacation time in newer roles too hopefully; maybe some of us will even be able to score 4 day work week jobs, or maybe we'll all end up living at least a bit closer. the bottom line, though, is that i don't miss being a kid, i love my life, and i love the freedom of being an adult. i think i just miss hanging out with my friends, i miss having that infinite time, and i miss not paying rent.

i think this post was a little bit less focused than usual maybe, but i had fun writing it nonetheless. i hope you're all doing well, and thank you for reading xoxo