you know I've read your tags for "gayblade has paopu fruit" and now all I think about is nomura being like "yea we can go with riku being gay and having an unrequited crush on sora" and sora, hijacking the writing process: "unrequited crush? not on my watch :)" this boy istg

It took me a good minute to realize what tags you were talking about lmao

Sooo. If we go off of accurately-translated CoM, Riku’s crush on Sora has been requited since at least 2004.

Even excluding the famous “aitsu,” there’s too much in CoM to not be deliberate. From Namine overwriting memories of Kairi and then one memory of Riku that officially flips a switch in Sora’s brain from I really want to find Namine to I need to find Namine, she is the most important person in the world to me. To how it’s never stated that Riku is the one in that memory; it’s something you have to piece together using context clues (Namine replaces Riku as the precious person Sora’s looking for in Castle Oblivion; Repliku has the same memory of the meteor shower Sora does), prev knowledge (Kairi arrived during the meteor shower this promise was made; ergo it can’t be her), hindsight (Namine can only access memories that Sora is connected to and she doesn’t erase or create them from scratch), and an understanding of WHY who is in this memory is left ambiguous…

Because there are romantic implications. What Sora feels for Namine (and what Repliku feels for Namine) in CoM seems to be romantic, so there’s absolutely no way Nomura could’ve come out and said Sora and Riku made that promise to protect each other. It’s left ambiguous because this way there’s plausible deniability; the general audience can assume that it was Kairi and both boys are into her… when actually, for whatever reason, Nomura used Namine to cleverly imply that Sora has confusing feelings for Kairi and Riku, and that Riku is in love with Sora.

And I’m almost positive this is why there are plot threads from CoM that still need tied up almost 20 years later.

Particularly Sora’s side of CoM; Riku’s side more or less wraps up in KH3 with his making peace with Repliku, helping Namine, and accepting his feelings for Sora. In order to wrap up Sora’s side, Sora not only has to thank Namine, but we also have to… address all those confusing feelings. Which KH3 hints may happen soon with Sora wondering what love is, the whole paopu fruit scene with Kairi, Riku’s heart shining with True Love’s light, whatever Sora first sees in the tunnel of light and what he realizes that he forgets — just all of it, honestly.

Now, I doubt Nomura wrote CoM thinking that Sora/Riku could or would ever go somewhere. It was 2004. But CoM creates, I guess, this subtle subversive path… so if he ever could or wanted to go in this direction later, he had a way of doing that. I dunno if that was planned... But, either way, 20 years is an awfully long time to go without addressing a memory so important to your main characters. With all the games released since then, he’s had more than enough chances to do it.

So he’s been holding off. For some reason.

Personally, I don’t think Nomura made a decision about Sora/Riku until he started working on DDD. Everything before that, including CoM, feels pretty ‘ehh who knows.’ But DDD really feels like a turning point in the series, for Sora and Riku’s dynamic. And a lot of players, even casual fans, pick up on this when they play the game — even if they don’t quite understand or like what they’re feeling.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many players, including me, walked away from this game seeing a romance between Sora and Riku where previously we didn’t. And now, knowing the likelihood that Nomura initially imagined Oathkeeper, the Sora/Kairi Keyblade, having a paopu fruit keychain, only to put it on the Sora/Riku gayblade a decade later… in addition to Nomura nearly not having Sora and Kairi share paopu in KH3… it really makes me feel like some decision was made irt shipping.

All this is to say, if Sora or Riku hijacked the writing, it would’ve been early on before CoM (whether to imply they have feelings for each other or not) and/or sometime after CoM (whether to portray these feelings more explicitly and do something w them or not).

And in the last decade, Nomura’s been able to do that a little more in each game. We most obviously see this through Riku getting closer and closer to articulating what he feels for Sora. But, like I said, KH3 shows Sora starting to figure some things out, too. Even if Sora/Riku wasn’t planned at all, I really do think it’s leading somewhere now.