My thoughts on the "DR chapter 3 is filler" debate is... Uhh no, it's not filler, not in the pointless sense anyway. It's purposeful filler. Tenna's been so alone for a while and the Knight was the perfect opportunity to have some fun again. Speaking of the Knight, umm... yeah!

You're meant to drown yourself in Tenna's games so that you never have a reason to leave! But too much fun becomes overwhelming. You're supposed to feel like this. You want to progress with the adventure as much as the Fun Gang do. And it's not like the chapter isn't important. We got more elaboration on the Dark World, Susie's past, the Dreemurr and Holiday's relationship, uhhh y'know..... The ROARING KNIGHT. Chapter 3 is also significant cause...

... This marks the end of all the silly adventures. Things are starting to get serious now. At least before, everything was seemingly self-contained, but now that real people are in danger, there's really no time to be playing games. Susie acknowledges this herself.

I think the problem is that people see any sorta filler and immediately dismiss it since those scenes don't contribute to the story, when I'd say this isn't the best mindset to have. People need to start differentiating between filler and downtime. ACTUAL filler is bad, something there to fill up empty space and stretch time for no meaningful reward. Downtime isn't. Downtime is just as important for the player/ reader as with all the action. Like I do understand wanting to see all the exciting scenes and characters, but if a thing was all hour long action scenes with no meaning behind it, aura and hype moments with no setup or satisfying payoff, you'd get overwhelmed very quickly.

So what do we do? Fill those in betweens with silly interactions, puzzles, bits for the lore people, etc. What you people define as filler is one of the main reasons why UTDR is still as popular and relevant as it is. We all love to post silly and intriguing scenes from the games and theorizing! The board games aren't that bad, in my opinion!

Imagine Undertale, but if it was just the battles, no dialogue, no lore, no structure. Like yeah cool you just played a neat bullet hell game, but after that..? Another dust collector in your game library. Nothing substantial to leave you wanting more.

Anyways I'm so soupy! You stay soupy too! :D