it's been about a year now since deltarune chapters 3 and 4 came out, and i've been thinking a lot about that, lately.
deltarune is a game about a lot of things. it's funny and silly and zany. it's sweet and charming. it's heart-wrenching.
it's a game about refusing to accept things being the way they are just because someone tells you that's the way they should be.
it's a game about standing up for yourself even when you're terrified–terrified that it might mean hurting or upsetting someone, even if by not telling them you're the one left hurt and upset.
it's a game about how sometimes a fiction or a fantasy can feel safer, easier to connect to and exist in than the world around you that seems to reject your place in it.
it's a game about being willing to let your walls down, to trust people, to find love and connection even when you've convinced yourself you don't deserve it.
it's a game about growing up. dealing with change, dealing with loss. things will be different. it's scary. it's hard to accept. you don't always need to just accept it, though.
it's a game about friendship, i think.
finding the people who are just like you. finding the people who are totally different from you, but you're able to learn from each other nonetheless. finding the people who will stand beside you in the face of anything, who take the blows when you're too weak to take any more yourself.
i've always struggled a little with making friends. i'm pretty socially anxious, and i'm absurdly shy around people i don't know well. a good amount of my close friends are people i've known since i was very young, from a time where it was just easier to walk up to someone and decide you'll be friends for life.
a few months ago i started at university, and in a week i'll have finished my first semester. this has meant i've needed to crawl a terrifying distance away from my shell, my comfort zone. i've talked to a lot of people. i've had to, horror of horrors, "put myself out there". it's scary, it's exhausting, it's difficult, but.
but.
it's rewarding, too. it feels good, to make friends. to find the people you click with. to come to find the confidence to smile and wave at someone, because sometimes a simple smile can be someone's ray of hope, someone's reason for holding on just a little longer. it has been for me, before.
and i want to keep making friends. and i want to keep moving forward. and i want to cling to hope, hope that things will be okay, hope even in the face of days that seem impossible. days where you wake up and you can't help but hate yourself, can't help but be frustrated at every little thing, can't help but despise the world. hope in the face of that, that's what i want. because it exists. that hope, crossed on all of our hearts. it exists. even in the darkest depths, it exists.
there's a reason to keep going, just a little bit longer. there's a reason to hold on, just a little bit longer. there's a reason to have hope.
if there's one thing i've learned from deltarune, it's that.
