“Raise girls to be resilient, raise your voice to be heard and when silenced, raise it higher. In a household of girls, my parents always told me that I was to be educated so I wouldn’t have a man treat me less than I deserved. That I work so hard that I wouldn’t need a man to tell me I was not enough. So I persevered, I stood by morals and chose to educate myself with books and words. But I am still silenced at times for calling myself a feminist, for speaking a little too forcefully, laughing too loudly, and writing too freely. I then understood that I was a woman, a woman with a voice who spoke for all woman who were afraid to. A boy fears a woman who is strong and educated, don’t worry because you don’t need him. If you know who you are, what you do and you are proud. That is all you need, you is all you need. “
“We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.”
Hey guys, if you have the time please click this link and go view the AIDS memorial quilt. As of last year, all 1.2 million feet of the quilt has been photographed and made viewable to the public.
As such a cornerstone to our community as queer people, the AIDS quilt was a sign of love and remembrance of all who were lost. And for some, with no solution in sight. What a wonder science is, because living as HIV/AIDS positive is no longer a death sentence. It is a treatable and manageable disease. We can live full and happy long lives and not transmit the disease.
When it was intitially unveiled, the quilt had about 2,000 panels and it was now bloomed into 48,000. The majority of them measuring 6'3". About the size of a grave.
I urge you to take the time to treasure, understand, and support our community. As their lives and the queer movement- have brought undoubtable freedom as we live in our own.
Making a quilt can take countless of hours. And a quilt of this size, it’s a whole generations worth.
Love your queer elders. Love your gay history. Live free, today.
Going insane thinking about CoM again imagine if the EN translators took into account the masculine-leaning aitsu, which Sora uses for Riku, and the dub was more accurate “I got it! You’re thinking about HIM again, aren’t you?” “Yeah, Sora’s totally obsessed with that guy.” [“I bet you want us to take a hike so you two can be ALONE.”] “Alright, alright. In that case, we won’t get in your way. Go find him, cowboy.” [“We’ll try to be quiet while we SPY on you!” ] “You’re forever a child, huh, Sora. Will you be able to protect HIM like that?” “It’s your job to look after that guy, right?” “Right, I gotta protect him… Namine! Where are you?” Namine has replaced Riku’s name here Like are we all seeing this, are we all processing this, are we all understanding thjis
I do think the forgotten promise is the meteor shower one just because of the emphasis CoM puts on that memory, but it is super interesting how Nomura later in BBS adds a scene where Sora is given the responsibility of looking after Riku, which does connect back to this dialogue from CoM and further suggests beyond the use of “aitsu” that yes, the person being referred to here is Riku. It’s also possible the BBS memory is mixing with the meteor shower one on Sora’s end because his memories are so scrambled at this point in the game.
Also just the fact that, after Namine’s charm transforms back into Kairi’s charm and the identity of Sora’s precious person is supposedly revealed to be Kairi, Namine continues using ambiguous language irt Sora’s precious person — mainly “that person” — and she never says that it is Kairi. What’s the reason for still speaking ambiguously if this person’s identity has in fact been revealed? Why not, as the EN dub does, just use “her” and “she”? Why not just say it’s Kairi, mystery solved! Unless it’s not, and Nomura wants us to pick up on that.
Dgmr, even outside of heteronormative assumptions, Kairi seems to make sense. Namine looks like Kairi. Namine says Sora’s precious person is someone he made a promise with, and Sora did promise to return Kairi’s charm to her. It seems to check out. Except.
With the introduction of the meteor shower memory in CoM, it’s heavily suggested that Sora also exchanged a promise with Riku when they were young, and it’s this promise that forms the basis of who he feels his precious person is. It’s this promise that makes Sora so gung-ho about protecting and reaching Namine, even after he finds out she tricked him. “Maybe the memories are fake. But the promise is real to me.” The feelings specifically connected to this promise, this memory. “Do it! Erase my memories. Destroy my heart. I promised! I’ll always protect you!”
And it’s after initially recalling this memory that Sora’s precious person starts being referred to with a more masculine-leaning pronoun that not only does not match the pronouns that have been used for Namine or Kairi but is directly connected to Riku as Sora uses it for him, aitsu — “that guy.” Thus, the precious person that Sora exchanged a promise with — while it could be Kairi or Riku — is more likely to be Riku.
And I just want you to ask yourself why Nomura would even create a second, less obvious option for the identity of Sora’s most precious person like this. Why he would even make Riku a contender. Why he would write in this new meteor shower promise and connect it to Riku and have it form the basis of who Sora believes his most precious person is if that person is supposed to be Kairi and the promise is supposed to be the promise he made to return her lucky charm.
Ask yourself why the first instance of “aitsu” used for Sora’s precious person — which in EN would most accurately translate to he/him pronouns — is in a scene where Sora is being teased as if he has a crush. Of all the possible scenarios, possible situations to drop this first explicit connection to Riku, Nomura chose this one. Like genuinely ask yourself why Nomura would do this. Any of this. If the one Sora loves is supposed to be Kairi.
Oh yeah I agree that the “forgotten promise” referred to in the poem is definitely about the meteor shower promise, not Aqua’s request (I doubt Nomura had even thought of Aqua yet, although he did say he had already envisioned the scenes of Aqua and Terra meeting baby Sora and Riku while kh2 was in development iirc which overlapped with CoM, and that him wanting those scenes to become a reality were the reason he even wrote the development proposal for BBS but I digress). I just think it’s inchresting that kh3 confirmed that Sora doesn’t remember meeting Aqua, which only would have been about a year before the Meteor Shower. And yet in DDD in Sora’s nightmare, when Riku nearly managed to wake him up Sora is enveloped by a light (from Riku) which brings him to this very memory. I think it could be an important connection to the Meteor Shower memory, because while it is stated that Sora made an oath (in his heart) to protect Riku here, the meteor shower would have been the moment it became reciprocal and he said it out loud. It wasn’t just his promise or Riku’s promise- it was theirpromise.
Another thing is that while Sora’s paopu charm was transformed from Kairi’s charm, Repliku’s copy of the paopu charm was specifically made from the real Riku’s memories of Destiny Island. Why would Nomura do that except to imply that the memory of the meteor shower promise was derived from a real memory that took place on Destiny Island (not in Traverse Town or the End of the World like Sora’s promises to return to Kairi).
And if all this is such a reach, why would the author of the CoM novel- who even included information that no one knew about until later games- write that the lucky charm in the meteor shower memory was worn as a necklace when we are never shown that in the game? Either she was told about the subtext directly by Nomura or she saw the same implications we do. I would assume the former since she was definitely given more details on the story than were publicly known at the time.
Such good points. And man the BBS stuff… When I imagine the meteor shower promise playing out, I like to think Riku initiates it because, you know, Sora is scared so Riku comforts him, which is the part of the scene that’s revealed in CoM. (We also see that “fake” memory of little Sora crying and Riku comforting him because Namine left, so it’s safe to assume there’s probably some truth to that/Sora was crying during the meteor shower.) But I imagine after Riku makes his valiant promise with that little wooden sword, Sora would remember his encounter with Aqua in BBS which would’ve been, like you said, a couple months to a year beforehand, and — feeling more confident after Riku’s comfort and perhaps being gifted the necklace — Sora would assert that he wants to protect Riku, too. I feel like it wouldn’t only be Sora verbalizing that promise in his heart then, but the memory from BBS is what would push him to speak up and reciprocate Riku, make it their promise like you said. And that’s the part of the scene we haven’t learned of yet. BBS provides a stepping stone. Probably.
Which reflects where we’re at in the story now. We know about Riku’s feelings, Riku’s side. It’s pretty obvious — outright stated, in fact — that Sora is the person Riku loves most. We’ve seen Riku’s grand gesture for Sora (the sacrifice — which visually brings to mind the picture CoM paints of one of the boys, most likely Riku, raising his sword to the sky to comfort a scared and crying Sora), but we haven’t seen Sora’s reaction to that. We don’t know about Sora’s feelings, Sora’s side — because he can’t remember. We can infer, we can guess. But we’ve essentially got one half of a scene, a confession, an oath and are waiting on the other. We’ve now got two significant, incomplete moments to Sora and Riku’s characters and are waiting for the pieces to finally line up.
