#I wasn’t really looking for al/truth parallels but now I’m starting to see them everywhere

[esthelle-wanders]

GUYS. Guys I just realized:

These panels are PARALLELS.

In both scenes, an alchemist is having his world rocked by a challenge to his fundamental understanding of the universe. To convey this, the challenger reaches into the frame from outside the page, providing an additional layer of meta.

The first challenger is Truth, and the second is Al.

Earlier, in chapter 4, Alphonse said he wants to get his body back, “even if that means doing the impossible and going against the flow of the world.”

THIS IS ALPHONSE ELRIC REWRITING THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE.

+ Full panels, because they’re fascinating in contrast:

Bonus beneath the cut:

They’re really going through it, guys

[nadziejastar]

I suspect that one of the reasons Lea and Isa became apprentices is because it seemed so obvious that they were test subjects. Nomura likes his stories to be surprising and if something seems too easy to guess he's not above changing it to keep the audience on their toes.

Well, Nomura admitted that he does like to add in twists that subvert people’s expectations. But I honestly doubt that was the case with Lea and Isa’s backstory. The story we got for them in KH3 was awful compared to the human experimentation story. When asked about Isa’s scar, Nomura actually seemed depressed. 

There was SO much evidence that there was an entire story planned that would fully redeem Isa, and also reveal that the only reason he got possessed was because he was a GOOD person who was loving and caring. Why throw all that away for the lame crap we got in KH3? I can’t imagine Nomura was happy about that.This is what I think Isa’s arc was supposed to be like. It’s going to be pretty long because I want to go into detail and do a full analysis on where the story was going with Lea and Isa’s subplot.

Day 26 ~Terminated~

“Is it true about Castle Oblivion…?” he asked, not looking his superior in the face.

Saïx’s response was icy. “That’s no concern of yours.”

“What about Axel?” he pressed.

Hearing that name, Saïx narrowed his eyes faintly, not even enough for Roxas to notice. He wasn’t attuned to such subtle changes.

“Who knows,” Saïx finally said. “Perhaps he is among the lost.”

“Wha…?” Suddenly, Roxas had no words.

That couldn’t be…

IMO, the whole concept of Saïx is that he’s a Nort with memories of being a boy who was “misled” by his heart. He’s affected by Isa’s memories, and hates it. I think the first major day involving Isa/Lea’s story is Day 26.

“Are you okay, Aladdin? Shouldn’t you rest a little?”

“I’m fine. Even if we can’t do much, we gotta try and rebuild the city while the sandstorm is settled,” Aladdin—Al—replied, but the woman looked down, an even more worried look on her face.

“That’s true, but… if you go on like this, you’ll collapse.”

“I said I’m fine, Jasmine. We don’t know when the next storm will come. We have to rebuild the city before the next sand storm comes.”

Restoration of the city has definitely come along since the last time I was here. Storms probably haven’t come for a while, either, I guess.

“If only Genie was here, at a time like this…”

The woman—Jasmine—murmured, head still down.

“Even if Genie was here, we can’t rely on magic. It’s our city, and we have to restore it with our own strength.”

“Yeah… you’re right.” Jasmine finally raised her head, and a small smile could be seen on her face.

Al is struggling without Genie, but tries to manage on his own. He doesn’t want to be a burden. But he’s running himself ragged. Without his best friend around, he’s in big trouble.

“If they disappear, does that mean we won’t see them again?”

“Yep.”

Roxas clenched his fists.

Maybe I can’t see Axel again…

“Let’s go back.”

“Huh? Yeah…”

And just as he went to go with Xigbar—

The world is swaying.

I can’t hear a thing.

The ground is rushing up.

—His consciousness was engulfed by darkness.

Roxas is terrified he might never see Axel again. His consciousness was engulfed by darkness. This is exactly why I think Isa became possessed in the first place. He was afraid.

Day 51 ~Missing~

Some kind of pressure was gathering between his eye brows. He walked down the hallway, and when he arrived at the lobby, no one was there.

“Axel…?” He murmured his friend’s name without thinking, then touched his mouth at the outburst.

They had told him that Axel might have been terminated. He remembered that part.

And being terminated meant there was nothing left, nothing at all, according to Xigbar.

When Roxas woke up, he was still worried and he felt pressure between his eyebrows. This is where Saïx’s scar is located. This is very important. I think the mind control experiments involved shutting down a person’s pineal gland. This part of the brain is susceptible to stress and controls the waking and sleeping cycle. It is also associated with the Third Eye, also known as the mind’s eye. Saïx cannot see Xion, so this part of his mind is still shut down.

“You still don’t know anything?” Roxas pressed.

“I know that I don’t owe you any explanations. Now, it’s time you got back to work. You’ll be on your own for a while. Whatever happened, the fact is we’re understaffed.”

Investigating? Might have? Does that mean it’s possible they weren’t all wiped out? Roxas wondered hopefully.

“Go on,” said Saïx. “You have missions to catch up on.”

Saïx got really nasty with Roxas when he inquired about Axel.

Maybe she had been sent away somewhere on a long-term mission, like Axel at Castle Oblivion.

But…asking about Axel seemed to put Saïx in such a foul mood, Roxas couldn’t bring himself to inquire after Xion.

Every day, he carried his slender ray of hope to the clock tower in Twilight Town, and every day he sat there alone.

Roxas didn’t even wanna ask about Xion because Saïx was in such a foul mood over it.

So it’s true. I can’t use the Keyblade anymore…

Xion destroyed the last Heartless with magic and despondently sat down on the spot. Saïx would scold her again for not obtaining any hearts, and she had no idea how to explain herself.

He said if I can’t wield the Keyblade, I have no place in the Organization. So what am I supposed to do…?

Roxas had a mission in Agrabah and the sandstorms were getting worse. Meanwhile, Xion was at the Beast’s Castle and learned she can’t use the Keyblade anymore.

Day 72 ~Change~

“Hmm.” Saïx sniffed. “All I did was find a place to send everyone who was getting in the way.”

Maybe he was telling the truth. The other members were only obstacles to Saïx— No. To both of them.

And yet, Axel couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his response. “Well, nice to know where I stand.”

He said it with a grin, but the hint of a frown tugged at the scar between Saïx’s brows. Apparently, the joke wasn’t very funny. “You made it back in one piece, didn’t you?”

Axel’s main issue was that Saïx was not worried about him at all when he was gone. All he cares about is the Chamber of Waking. Even Roxas was worried about him.

Were you worried I wouldn’t? Axel almost said, but he didn’t want to deal with putting him in an even fouler mood. Maybe the memories he has of anger and displeasure are really strong.

Saïx hated people asking if he was worried about Axel. Because that was Isa’s weakness. He’s changed a lot, which makes Axel sad.

Day 75 ~Inseparable~

“But… I got a bit worried about my biggest and bestest friend Al… so I popped back to see how things are.”

“Worry? So, you worry about best friends?” Roxas asked, and Genie dabbed at his eyes with a white hanky he’d pulled out of somewhere.

“You worry and worry! Are things going well with Jasmine… has the city changed at all… so many things I’m interested in, I can’t contain myself…”

After Axel returned from Castle Oblivion, he and Roxas covered for Xion. Axel said that friends needed to lean on each other. They started working together and became inseparable. But this day is all about a friend’s resolve—refusing help. Genie was worried about his best friend and wanted to help…

“Huh…” Roxas had to ponder that. Did the Genie mean that even if you thought you could help out a friend, it was more important to listen to what they wanted?

“Al said he wouldn’t rely on magic, right? I want to fix it for him, but you gotta respect your friend’s wishes.”

“Your friend’s… wishes…” So, even if you mean for something to be for your friend’s sake, their wishes are still more important?

…But he also wanted to respect Aladdin’s wishes to not intervene.

“That Genie we met seemed really worried about his friend Al,” Xion remarked eventually. “But then he said he’d respect his friend’s decisions. I guess you can’t just jump in and do everything for them, even if you want to.”

Idly swinging her legs, she took another bite.

Axel leaned his head to one side in thought. “Your friend’s wishes, huh…” It feels like I have heard that before, a long time ago, when I was human.

Axel said he heard that a long time ago, when he was human. Apparently Lea wanted to jump in and help Isa. But he was asked to respect his friend’s resolve and not intervene on his behalf. This is a really important day for Axel’s story, since he said he didn’t have a best friend.

Day 94 ~Hearts~

The time is ripe…

A great heart has at last appeared before us.

Rage… hatred… sadness, and happiness.

All gathered together are the fruits of the heart… that is Kingdom Hearts.

The world will begin to reform from now.

Gentlemen!

In order to gain more power, and, in order to have hearts of our own…

All gathered together, we Nobodies must not forget our goal.

To gather hearts, to have hearts of our own, to not let the heart mislead us.

This is a more literal translation of Xemnas’ speech under the heart-shaped moon. He’s promising the members that the heart will no longer mislead them. This is also the first day that the Beast’s predicament is paralleled to the main characters.

“I figured it worked that way everywhere… I mean, the master here has servants.” Roxas looked up the stairs to the door where the Beast had retreated. “He shouldn’t have to fight.”

“I don’t know that I’d call us Xemnas’s servants, exactly… But you’re right. If he’s taking on the Heartless himself, he must have a reason to fight.”

Xion stared down at the Keyblade. What’s my reason?

“A reason?” Roxas blinked at her, mystified. “Like what?”

“Like…maybe he has something he wants to protect,” she said softly.

Xion, in turn, was mystified that Roxas found the idea so strange. As if he had never thought to ask why.

The Beast’s Castle is directly compared to the Organization’s Castle. But the question is, why is the Beast fighting?

Roxas: I don’t know why we need to continue fighting Heartless like this.

Axel: Sure you do. We have to finish Kingdom Hearts. We finally got our first glimpse of it today, remember?

Roxas: Yeah, but what is it? “The heart of all hearts”?

Xion: It’s where all the hearts you and I collect wind up.

Axel: Exactly. It’s because of you two and the Keyblade that we’re finally making some progress. We might finally get hearts of our own.

Xion: “The strength of the human heart is vast,” Xemnas said.

Roxas: Yeah, but what do we need with it?

Axel: Are you crazy?

Roxas: I just don’t understand why having a heart is so important. Do you?

Axel: Kind of a strange time to bring it up…

Roxas: But don’t you ever stop and wonder? We’re fighting for something we don’t know anything about.

Axel: Roxas… We’re fighting because we want to know what it’s about.

Roxas: Yeah… Yeah, I guess you’re right.

Roxas also wonders why are WE fighting?

Day 94: Kingdom Hearts

Xemnas summoned us. Nothing he says ever makes sense to me. He showed us Kingdom Hearts, a big heart-shaped moon floating up there in the night sky, and said the human heart will never have power over us. Great… I guess? So why are we trying to get hearts again? Axel said I’ll understand better once I have a heart, but I’m not so sure…

Roxas had no idea what Xemnas was talking about.

Day 94: All Goes Apace

Author: Saïx

The hearts collected by our two Keyblade wielders, Roxas and Xion, have gathered together; and now, almighty Kingdom Hearts waxes large in the night sky. Our efforts have come to bear fruit, nearly ripe for the plucking. All plans proceed smoothly—alarmingly so, in fact, though this is no time to be deterred by paranoia.

Saïx sounds almost exactly like Xemnas, though. I think Saïx wants to believe Xemnas. He wants to believe that once he gets his heart back, he’ll never again be misled by it. But he doesn’t trust Xemnas and wants to figure out his hidden agenda.

Xigbar: Oh… Thank you, Sora’s heart, for pushing him right into our clutches. Aren’t hearts great? Steer us wrong every time.

Sora: You know, right, because you all have hearts! Axel and Roxas and Naminé, and that other girl. I felt what Roxas felt and…they laughed together, got mad, and they grieved. You have to have a heart to cry.

Xigbar: It’s about time you noticed.

Xemnas: Indeed. A heart is never lost for good. There may have been variances in our dispositions, but a number of us unquestionably showed signs of a burgeoning replacement. Once born, the heart can also be nurtured. Our experiments creating Heartless were attempts to control the mind, and convince it to renounce its sense of self. But understand, one can banish the heart from the body, but the body will try to replace it the first chance it gets, for as many times as it takes. And so I knew, even after we were divided into Heartless and Nobodies, it was just a temporary separation.

It’s interesting to note that the idea of the heart misleading a person is also brought up when Xemnas mentions the mind control experiments in KH3D.

Day 96 ~Xion’s Keyblade~

Day 96: Out of Trouble

Today’s mission was with Xion, in Beast’s Castle. I tried loaning her my Keyblade, and she had no problem using it. That meant I had to fight without it, but we got the job done.Afterwards Xion remembered how to summon her own Keyblade, so I guess we’re out of trouble. When we were done, we all had ice cream together.

This was the day that they couldn’t work as a team anymore. Xion got her ability back. It was also in Beast’s Castle. Axel was depressed. He hated it when Xion thanked him.

Day 96: Friends

Author: Axel

Xion regained her ability to wield the Keyblade. I don’t know how or why. Maybe there’s more to the Keyblade master they’re not telling me about. I feel like I’ve been spending more time talking to Roxas and Xion lately than my old friend, Saïx. This has to have been what it was like, friendship.

This day was all about how Axel missed Isa. He wished they could always be together, but that’s an unattainable wish. The next day, the sandstorms are gone. The Genie decided to help Aladdin anyways, so he wouldn’t have to worry anymore. Then we enter the next arc.

Day 117 ~Secrets~

Outside the window, the moon—the heart-shaped moon—floated. Axel watched it, still sprawled on his bed. There was still a little time before he had to leave on his mission.

To gather hearts, to have hearts of our own, to not let the heart mislead us…

For these past few days, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of Xemnas’ words. To not let the heart mislead us? What does that mean? Whenever I’m alone, these thoughts just float around in my head the whole time. I don’t know why I have to think so much about it. I bet the other Nobodies don’t.

The heart… emotions. I think about their origins. Contemplate it. Reason about it. When did I start doing this?

The truth was, Axel knew when. Maybe I’ve been pretending I hadn’t noticed.

This is what Axel was thinking before Saïx came into the room and asked him to go back to Caste Oblivion. He was staring at the moon contemplating the heart and emotions. He didn’t understand the meaning of Xemnas’ speech.

Speaking of changes, my relationship with Saïx has, too. I think it’s changed slightly since I’ve had time with Roxas and Xion. I couldn’t really say how, though.

“You and Xion are on the same mission today.”

“Thank you ever so much for going to all the trouble to tell me that,” Axel answered, facing the mirror and starting to get ready.

“I need you to go to Castle Oblivion again soon,” said Saïx, watching Axel’s face in the mirror. At those words, he finally looked at Saïx.

“Orders from ‘Lord’ Xemnas?” Axel asked, lips curling.

He’s having a hard time being around Saïx due to how different he is from the past. Axel’s sleeping memories awakened and he’s changed. And there’s a mirror present. The next day is the vacation day. And Axel’s part during that day is basically being depressed and sleeping all day, thinking about how much Saïx has changed.

Day 119 ~Work to Do~

“Our little Poppet sure is a wonder,” Xigbar remarked, and a vicious smirk came to his face. “It’s a shame we don’t have Vexen around to follow her.”

“The Organization still has his technical expertise, as he notated and saved everything,” Saïx replied, utterly unfazed. “We’re not facing any difficulties in that regard.”

“And? When those difficulties do arise?” Xaldin, his arms folded from the start, regarded Saïx with disdain. “You may find yourself hard-pressed to handle every possible scenario.”

“I take issue with this implication that Vexen’s demise at the hands of the boy with the Keyblade was my fault,” Saïx said.

“Right, I forgot, the kid did it,” Xigbar echoed with a heavy dose of accusatory sarcasm.

This is a novel-exclusive scene that takes place on Day 119, which is a pretty important day. Xigbar is mad that Axel took out Vexen, and he thinks it’s Saïx’s fault. Xaldin also views Saïx with disdain.

“I’m having Luxord take a look in every known world, but they have not yet been found,” Saïx replied quietly. His expression never changed. “Axel will be searching Castle Oblivion for any clues as well.”

“Oh, so Axel’s on the case.” Xigbar crossed his legs and leaned his elbows on them.

“How could an outsider get ahold of one of our cloaks in the first place?” Xaldin demanded. “They’re part of our equipment; we ought to be keeping track of them. If any went missing, it should have been reported.”

Saïx let out a deep sigh, the first semblance of a reaction he’d given this entire meeting. “We have not confirmed what happened to any spare cloaks in the possession of the members who were stationed at Castle Oblivion. Axel will also be looking into that.”

“Axel this, Axel that… Sounds like you’re thick as thieves.” Xigbar restlessly jiggled his crossed legs. “Makes me wonder what you two are up to.”

“I might wonder the same about you,” Saïx retorted, and the tension was so thick it was hard to breathe.

They’re discussing the fact that an outsider has one of their cloaks. Xigbar’s planning to get back at Saïx in some way.

“These reports come from various worlds,” Saïx went on impassively. “We still don’t know whether they are about one single person or multiple or which worlds they might appear in.”

“If I find them, should I eliminate them?” she asked.

“No. First, discover how many there are. Capture them, if possible. Don’t eliminate them.”

“Okay.” Xion nodded.

Xigbar, listening in with his arms folded, finally had to make a remark. “You’ve been working so well, Poppet.”

“Uh, thanks,” she mumbled.

“What’re you thanking me for?”

“Well, you gave me a compliment… Or did you?”

“Haha… Yeah, I guess you could see it like that.” Xigbar held a fist to his mouth, not quite covering a laugh.

“What did I say that was funny?” Xion looked uneasily up at him.

“Oh no, nothing. You’re completely right.”

If Saïx was interested in their conversation, he gave no indication.

And here’s the real strange part. Xigbar decides to praise Xion right in front of Saïx. This whole exchange was meant for him. The compliment was actually an insult to Saïx. This is the exact moment when Saïx’s demeanor around Xion totally shifts from cold indifference—the way he is with everyone—into burning hatred. Xigbar saying that Xion was “working well” was a huge trigger for Saïx.

“That which we treasure has power over us, Roxas. His heart is captive to it. And that makes it his weakness.”

“Captive…? I don’t get it.”

Everything Xaldin said only got harder and harder to follow.

“Nor should you. You have no heart to love with. Let’s not linger here.”

Meanwhile, Roxas is on his own mission at Beast’s Castle.

“Xion, do you remember the beast?”

“Beast…? The master of the castle, right? I remember.” Roxas and I went to Beast’s Castle together on a mission.

Roxas continued. “I found out what he treasures. But, Xaldin called it a weak spot.”

“Something you treasure is a weak spot?”

Roxas looked down. “I don’t really get it…”

There are so many things that Roxas and I don’t understand, Xion thought. If Axel was here right now, I know he’d explain it to us.

“I guess Axel won’t come home for a while…,” Roxas said, and Xion nodded.

Once Axel gets back, there are many things I want to ask him.

It’s emphasized that Axel will know what Xaldin meant.

Axel made his way through Castle Oblivion. Not much time had passed since he’d been here last, but it didn’t feel the same at all.

Everything inside was still made of that cold white stone. The layout, however, had changed—different hallways led to different rooms. He knew the rooms here shifted based on the memories of whoever walked in—so whose memories were controlling it now?

“Ugh, this better be over soon.” Axel rolled his eyes. He was talking to himself more and more, an unfortunate side effect of spending all his time with Dusks for days on end. The castle was now managed only by the Organization’s underlings.

The lesser Nobodies that served them were unfailingly obedient, but that was the only thing they ever did. The greatest difference between them and Organization members was not appearance but the capacity for independent thought. Where did that capacity come from, then? Did it have anything to do with the heart?

“I’m gonna go nuts in here…” Axel scratched his head and continued his search of the bizarre castle.

Axel was at Castle Oblivion on Day 119. And he brings up a weird subject out of the blue. The connection between the heart and independent thought. If Saïx had experiments performed on him to control his mind, then that is what allowed his heart to be captured? Is that the implication with this passage? Probably.

Day 119: Something to Protect

Axel has been gone forever. It’s been just me and Xion at the clock tower. While me and Xaldin explored Beast’s Castle, we found something he wants to protect… Xaldin says that’s a weakness, but I’m not so sure. What does it mean to care about something that much? I don’t, so it’s hard to wrap my head around the whole idea.

The main idea of this day is that wanting to protect something is a weakness that makes your heart a captive.

Day 119: Hearts and Emotion

Author: Xaldin

Watching that foolish beast flail about only deepens my disdain for humans and their incessant need to be pinned down by feelings. We became Nobodies precisely to avoid the shackles of emotion. It was only later that we realized the scale of that loss: that some things simply cannot be done without a heart. Nonetheless, I see nary a pleasant thing about it.

Axel was contemplating the heart and emotions a few days prior. Exactly what Xaldin is disgusted by. I think Saïx’s desire to find the Chamber of Waking is influenced by him being a Nort. Xemnas wants to find the Chamber, so naturally Saïx does too. He thinks he’s asserting his own will over Xemnas, but he’s really not. It’s Xehanort’s desire manifesting through an unwitting Saïx. He has no real capacity for independent thought.

“You’d better. It’s part of your work,” said Saïx. “You know you need proper rest to carry out missions.”

“Sorry… I’ll find the impostor today.”

Since two days ago, she’d been covering double ground, searching two worlds in one day. But she still hadn’t found any clues. Meanwhile, Saïx had no sympathy for her.

“You are to discover the identity of the outsider,” he told her. “Those are direct orders from Lord Xemnas. Failure is the same as insubordination. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Wha…?”

Xion had no idea that Xemnas had chosen her for this mission. To the best of her knowledge, Saïx was the one in charge of assigning tasks.

“I assume I’ve made myself clear. Keep looking.” With that, Saïx turned his back on her and left.

After Day 119 Saïx started berating Xion mercilessly. And he brought Xemnas into the picture as a threat.

Day 150 ~Fear~

He turned the corner to see Xion and Saïx there. He was about to run headlong toward them, but the frigid tension in the air stopped him short.

“We can’t afford to spend any more chances on you,” Saïx was telling her. “You were a mistake we never should have made. A failure.”

Failure…? What was that about?

With one parting glance at Xion’s miserable, downcast face, Saïx turned and left.

This is the first day where Saïx’s problem with Xion is seen in the game. His issue is that she’s a “failure”. That’s the word he uses most often to insult her.

Day 150: Too Precious to Lose

Xion didn’t come to the clock tower again today. She and Saïx had some kind of argument. Axel and I talked for a while about the things we can’t bear to lose. Axel thinks that for Nobodies, it’s our pasts, because that’s all we have to remember the pain of losing something. I don’t remember my past, but the idea of losing the present—Axel or Xion—scares me.

And this yet is another day spent with Xaldin, where he learns the rose is connected to the Beast’s cursed form. Saïx also calls Xion a “mistake”. I think he’s referring to himself. He’s angry about his cursed condition, and he blames the mistake he made of having his heart mislead him when he was a human.

“Yes. It seems that unless he completes some task before the rose withers, he’ll remain a beast forever.” Xaldin smirked at his own cleverness. “A beastly curse and a rose… Heh-heh. This will prove useful.”

“How?”

“Trying to explain it to you would be a waste of time. Let’s go, Roxas. No more dallying.” With that nonanswer, Xaldin left the chambers.

Roxas dallied anyway, peering through the doors again. The rose, the thing he treasures, is his weakness?

Nope, I don’t get it. I wonder if Axel will know what it all means…?

And yet again, it’s emphasized that Axel will understand what this all means.

Day 150: Dealing with Xion

Author: Saïx

As expected, the Duplicate is starting to show its limits. The Program showed promise, but a puppet is just a puppet: something to be toyed with until it breaks. I am utterly at a loss as to what Roxas and Axel see in that thing. How best to dispose of it merits my consideration going forward.

Saïx’s journal entry for the day shows that he wants Xion disposed of. He has an issue with puppets, since they are just things to be toyed with until they break. In Kingdom Hearts, whenever puppets are brought up, it’s usually to do with the fact that they don’t have hearts. Kairi was compared to a puppet. And Riku tried to use Pinocchio to restore her heart.

When asked about a deleted Pinocchio level, Nomura stated: “Set in a circus and playing off the story of Pinocchio, a puppet with a heart, and the Nobodies who possess no heart, we planned for a sad episode with Roxas and Xion looking for hope for themselves”.

“Xion’s exposure to Roxas effected a transfer of its power, just as we had hoped,” Xemnas continued. “Had things stopped there, Xion would have been an unequivocal success. But then, through Roxas, Sora himself began to shape ‘it’ into ‘her,’ giving Xion a sense of identity.”

Sora’s influence was more potent than they’d accounted for. That would be the power of a Keyblade wielder, apparently.

“Our plan seemed like a failure at this point, but then it occurred to me. Xion is keeping Sora’s memories trapped by claiming them as her own.”

Why does Saïx call her a “failure” and “defective” all the time? I think it’s referring to the fact that she did stray from Xemnas’ expectations, and at first he thought the Replica Program was a failure. And the reason was that was Xion had developed a sense of self—an identity of her own. This conversation takes place on day 299 ~Sora~.

“Losing Vexen was an unexpected blow to the plan—but even more unexpected is how this particular replica came to form its own identity as Xion.”

Xemnas paused there, and Saïx filled the silence. “That did catch us off guard. If anything like that happened in Castle Oblivion, it was never reported. Was it, Axel?”

This conversation takes place on Day 354 ~Truth~. It deals with the same issue; Vexen’s demise and Xion having a sense of identity.

“Why would you allow a deserter back under our roof?! She should be eradicated!” Xaldin all but bellowed.

“Deserter? You’re giving it too much credit,” Saïx said with a pointed look at Xaldin. “It’s a broken specimen to be collected for study.”

And look at how Saïx refers to Xion on this day. She’s a “broken specimen”. It’s projection. He’s angry because that’s exactly how Isa was viewed. Like a puppet. He was toyed with until he broke and no longer had a sense of self. Xion reminds him of Isa. And I think Saïx resents Isa more than anyone for being so weak and foolish. Trying to protect what was precious to him got him into his cursed situation.

“What is it, Roxas? You have a mission to complete. You’ve spent enough time worrying about a puppet.”

That word again. Roxas turned a furious glare on Saïx. “Xion is one of us!”

Saïx broke into a low chuckle, the first time Roxas had seen him so much as smile. “One of us? Don’t be absurd. Just count the chairs. When have we ever been more than thirteen?”

Xion developed a sense of self. She wasn’t supposed to do that, so he constantly calls her defective for it. It’s because he’s jealous. Even a puppet has a sense of self. But not him. I suspect that the meeting about Xion developing her own identity happened on Day 119, when Saïx started to hate her. And I think Xigbar was rubbing in his face how “broken” and “defective” Isa was.

151 ~Distress~

Then Axel realized he hadn’t seen her at the clock tower, yesterday or the day before. He stared at the wisps of darkness swirling away to nothing in her wake.

Saïx noticed his gaze. “Surely you’ve heard?”

Axel was baffled. “Heard what? I just haven’t talked to her since I got back, that’s all.”

“Hmph…” Saïx seemed to regret saying anything. “Just that we know for sure she is defective.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Saïx’s grudge got worse when she couldn’t beat Riku.

“Follow him,” Saïx ordered. “But do not engage him. The last to try was Xion, and it ended poorly.”

“She lost…?” Maybe that was why she looked so glum, Axel thought.

“Though it just means that thing is a failure.”

“I think calling Xion a failure is going too far if her opponent was Riku, you know.” When Axel had last encountered him, Riku had not been all that impressive. Since then, however, he’d immersed himself in power. The power of darkness—of Xehanort. Riku’s mastery over it had been far from complete at Castle Oblivion, but that was some time ago. There was no telling how strong he might be now.

“…Is it?” Saïx retorted.

“Well, why are you—?”

Saïx promptly cut off Axel’s question. “Go to whichever world you want to try first. Just track him down, find out what he’s doing. That may give us some clues leading to the hero of light.”

Guess I won’t get any more answers today, Axel thought. But seriously, what is your problem with Xion?

But I think he was just looking for any excuse to berate her. Xion was never expected to beat Riku. Xemnas wanted her to fight him so she could absorb some of his memories. She wasn’t a failure because she lost. Saïx’s issue was personal.

Day 152 ~The Wrong Buttons~

“Did something happen?”

“Not really…”

He’s a bad liar. I can pick it straight away. But, I guess that isn’t concrete proof that something did happen. Something must have happened that Roxas didn’t understand the reason for either, thought Axel. An emotion somewhere in my memories.

Xion started avoiding Roxas. I think Isa did the same with Lea, which is why Axel says he remembers the feeling. Isa realized that the apprentices were eventually going to try to exploit his weakness, which was Lea. And this is when he told Lea to stop trying to help him, and stop worrying about him. Lea was probably really confused by this.

Day 153 ~Disjointed Days~

Roxas: What kind of missions do you usually work?

Demyx: Me? Recon stuff, mostly.

Roxas: No taking out Heartless?

Demyx: Nah, it’s rare that I do anything that strenuous.

Roxas: But aren’t you expected to?

Demyx: Ha, they know better than that. They wanna keep the machine running, they pick the right tool for the job.

Roxas: And that’s me? The right tool for the job?

Demyx: Something happen in there, man?

Roxas: No, I just– Nothing. Our mission’s complete. Let’s RTC.

This theme of “having expectations” didn’t really have much to do with Roxas in the grand scheme of things. But it did have to do with Xion and Saïx’s feud. Xion was sent on a tough mission, but wasn’t meeting expectations (in Saïx’s view).

Day 153: This Is Gonna Be a Hit!

Author: Demyx

I’ve got me a new hit single! X-face is always barking at me to work, but what’s he expect me to do against a monster like that? I mean, stop and think about skill sets when you divide up the labor already!

The word he used most often to insult her was “failure”. Isa was probably called a failure too. Xehanort probably had high expectations for him, if he was indeed Subject X.

The fierce light in Terra’s heart also empowered the darkness within him. The stronger the light, the deeper the shadow, and that would be Terra’s path into the darkness.

Isa probably had a high emotional capacity which drew the apprentices’ attention. It was the source of his light. He’s empathetic and caring. But high emotional sensitivity can give rise to strong negative emotions, as well. Like fear. The apprentices thought they could exploit this, and turn his fear into darkness.

Vanitas closed his eyes as the emotion swept over him. This is a memory from Ventus’s heart. And it’s my feeling, too.

Fear could at times give rise to terrible power.

Yes, fear could sharpen into rage and in turn become strength, just as Xehanort had said. However, this time, the emotion gave birth to something far more special.

But they probably weren’t having much success getting him to fall to darkness. They probably made him fight, and he would either lose or collapse from the fear. He wasn’t really cut out for what they were doing to him. But…they knew his weakness.

Day 171 ~Love~

Before returning to the castle, Roxas saw Beast, wounded from protecting what he cares for, with Belle there to care for him.

Love had grown between the two. Xaldin declared the power of love to be worthless. Roxas asked what that power was, but Xaldin said that explaining the concept to a Nobody with no heart would be pointless, and departed.

Left alone, Roxas contemplated what love might be. At their usual spot, Roxas asked Axel what love is, but got no answers. Perhaps completing Kingdom Hearts and gaining a heart would offer some answers. Roxas watched the sunset with these thoughts on his mind.

The next day where Saïx’s issue with Xion is brought up is Day 171. The Beast was injured protecting Belle.

Day 171: What’s Love?

On my mission at Beast’s Castle, Xaldin told me about “love” and the special power it has over people. I tried to ask Axel about it, but his explanation didn’t make any sense to me. Every time I ask him about this kind of thing, he tells me I need a heart to understand. It’s like he’s dodging the questions.

And Xaldin is involved yet again. Saïx’s whole issue with Xion is related to the themes brought up in Beast’s Castle. Like the power love has over people.

Day 171: The No. i Project

Author: Saïx

Xion failed to complete its mission. If this continues, destroying it and using the next Replica as the Duplicate would undoubtedly yield a higher-grade copy. No. i was among the initial lot, which naturally raises questions about its capabilities. At present, it is nothing short of broken. I cannot fathom why Xemnas would want to keep it.

This is the day that Saïx declares her utterly broken and he doesn’t know why Xemnas wants to keep her. If anything, I think Isa must have been considered broken. He probably collapsed and wouldn’t wake up after the apprentices tried to exploit his weakness. He was trying to protect Lea out of love, went into his berserker trance, passed out, and was thought to be broken.

While he had succeeded in birthing Vanitas, Ventus had remained unconscious, broken after the removal of his heart. Though Master Xehanort had initially tried to discard Ventus after he failed to awaken, for some reason the boy had come to his senses.

There’s only one character in the series who is constantly referred to as “broken”. And that’s Ventus. And considering the parallels between Ven/Lea and Axel/Roxas, it wouldn’t surprise me if that was the intended idea. Isa was broken similar to Ventus. He suffered mental collapse, but they realize that Isa’s heart actually survived. He’s a very unique subject. And then he’s made into a vessel. The very next day, Xion collapses and Saïx reacts very harshly.

Day 172 ~Sound of The Surf~

This was the second time Xion had fallen into a deep sleep. Was she sick? Roxas’s chest ached with anxiety.

Saïx didn’t let him get far. “And where do you think you’re going, Roxas?”

He stopped short and turned. “To see Xion.”

“What about your mission?”

“Don’t worry; I’ll do it.”

Obviously, I’m not skipping work, Roxas thought. But right now—

“There’s nothing you can do even if you do go. Xion will not wake up.”

“That’s not the point!” Roxas snapped. “I should still be with her!”

Saïx didn’t have to talk that way. Maybe Roxas wouldn’t be able to do anything besides look in on her. That didn’t matter—he wanted to see how she was. Why was Saïx being so obtuse?

There were a hundred things he wanted to say. But the words wouldn’t come out.

Saïx sounded vaguely disgusted. “What do you care for a broken, defective failure?”

One of the dreams Xion has before she wakes up from this long period of sleep is Sora sacrificing himself for Kairi. It definitely sounded like Saïx was projecting his issues onto Xion.

“Don’t call her that!” Roxas stalked up to him, glaring furiously.

“I’ll call that thing whatever I want. How we deal with Xion is no business of yours.”

“I don’t remember asking you,” Roxas retorted.

“Look at you…” Saïx shook his head faintly. “All up in arms over a creature that shouldn’t exist.”

“What, like a Nobody? We’re all Nobodies!”

Why won’t Saïx understand? Is it because he’s a Nobody? But so am I!

“You have nothing to worry about,” said Saïx. “Xion may be beyond repair, but that does not affect your standing with us.”

“My sta—? Argh, you’re like a broken record!” Roxas fumed. “I’ll do my mission later.”

He turned his back on Saïx and sprinted away.

Saïx said that Xion is beyond repair but that wouldn’t affect Roxas’s standing with them. It’s almost like he wanted to convince himself that Isa’s failures don’t affect HIS standing with the Organization. Which is how he probably felt when Xigbar taunted him.

Once he’d caught his breath, Roxas opened the door to Xion’s room.

It was identical to his own, furnished with only a bed and a closet, but somehow it felt chilly. He shivered.

She was definitely asleep, but he went to the bed and murmured her name. “Xion…”

Of course, she didn’t reply. Her slumber was so deep and quiet that for a moment, Roxas doubted she was breathing. Unnerved, he reached out and held his hand close to her mouth.

Oh, good. I can feel it. He pulled his hand back, clenching it tight. Why did Saïx have to say those things?

Defective… Failure.

Saïx is so much more harsh with Xion than with me. I have no idea what’s going through his head.

Even Roxas emphasized that Saïx is so much harsher with Xion.

“So, Saïx, what am I doing to—? Oh, boy. Awfully early for such a bad mood, don’t you think?”

Saïx had whirled to face him with a rather pronounced scowl.

“…Nobodies do not have ‘moods’ to be ruined,” he said at length.

“Well, sure, technically…”

Of course, with no hearts, they couldn’t have moods or fits of temper. If something went frustratingly awry, their faces might reveal shadows of remembered emotion, no more.

Still, for a remembered shadow, that was a mean glower on Saïx’s face. “Did I miss something?” Axel wondered.

“Xion has collapsed again.”

Now Axel frowned. He sure had missed something. “Did she get hurt or what?”

“No,” Saïx replied, any hint of expression vanishing from his face. “It’s just that the failure was functioning better than expected until recently.”

And Axel could tell that Saïx seemed genuinely angry at her, which is strange for him.

“‘The failure’? Is that what we’re calling her now?”

Saïx’s estimation of Xion seemed to have plummeted lower than ever. True, she’d lost badly against the Organization impostor—but that was Riku. Defeat was all but inevitable against him.

Failing to carry out a mission was unacceptable, of course, but not impossible. She could always challenge Riku again. If the mission was so unsuited to her in the first place, though, Saïx ought to know better as the one in charge of handing out assignments. And Axel was beginning to suspect at least some of the blame lay with him.

Saïx held some particular grudge against Xion…

He said she was functioning better than expected. But the mission was unsuited for her abilities. They’re the same concepts brought up when Demyx goes with you to Olympus Coliseum. I would say that Saïx hates her because she reminds him of Isa.

“I’m sure she’s fine.” The best Axel could offer was empty words of comfort.

Roxas closed his eyes for a moment, as if he had to say something terribly important, and took a breath that he let out in a sigh. “Saïx called her ‘broken.’”

Roxas was afraid she’d never wake up. He didn’t know why Saïx hated her. Axel wasn’t worried about Xion yet. He assumed she’d be fine.

“That’s not the problem. In any case, I don’t intend to speak about the failure.”

“Failure, failure… You don’t have to say it like that, do you?”

“I thought I told you not to get too involved.” Saïx swung his chair, turning his back on Axel. Axel could feel nothing but a will of rejection from that back.

Saïx went on and on about her being a failure.

“Seriously, though, Saïx—”

But Saïx barely spared him a glance and pushed Axel’s hand from his shoulder. “Xion is not qualified to be counted among us.”

Chilled by the flat rejection in that low voice, Axel stepped back. “Not qualified? How?”

Saïx still didn’t look at him. “See for yourself. I have nothing more to tell you.”

If Saïx was saying that, he probably meant it. Axel stared at the stubborn set of his shoulders.

Both of them had changed.

“Wonder which one of us is more different now,” Axel said under his breath.

Just for an instant, he saw a twitch in Saïx’s shoulders. But he wasn’t about to hold his breath for more. Axel showed himself out.

And he coldly rejects Axel, too. I do think Saïx resents Axel for the power he had over Isa.

Day 193 ~Memories~

They returned to the silent halls of the vast castle. Axel was carrying Xion with Roxas glued to his side. Her face was so pale it seemed translucent—not a comforting sight.

“Did it break again? That didn’t take long.”

Only Saïx would make such a callous remark. Rage surged up in Roxas, and he spun around. “Don’t call her an ‘it’!”

He was on the verge of throwing a punch, but Axel stepped in between them, still holding the unconscious Xion. He didn’t look at Saïx, but he did have one thing to say.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

Roxas had never heard him speak so coldly to anyone before.

Saïx made no reply.

He spent one more moment glaring daggers at Saïx before following Axel out of the room.

Other than being a failure, the other insult Saïx used the most was “broken”.

Xehanort shook his head quietly at the question. “I went astray, Eraqus. I once sought the χ-Blade, but my efforts to create it only destroyed Ventus’s heart. His memory was lost along with his heart, and now he is an empty husk. It pains me to see him so broken, and I am old. My guilt will eventually crush me.”

When she didn’t wake up after a while, Axel actually started to become afraid as well. I think that’s why Axel was so hash to Saïx. The situation reminded him of the past when Isa wouldn’t wake up, and how afraid he was. It also reminded him that Isa collapsed because he was trying to protect him. Roxas passed out because he was afraid he’d never see Axel again. The parallel was deliberate. Isa was afraid of losing Lea. Axel sees how much Saïx has changed, and it upset him a lot. He was so upset by this particular situation, he said Roxas and Xion were his new best friends.

Day 322 ~The Program~

Beast: No… I won’t believe it. He must have been lying. Belle, betray me? He said she would take everything from me. That’s not possible. I trust her!

Roxas: He, who? Xaldin? It sounds like Xaldin made some kind of contact. Then he might still be somewhere in the castle…

This is the day Xaldin makes contact with the Beast, leading to the plot of KH2.

Beside the Beast, who had once been a handsome prince, stood a man in a black cloak.

“It’s time you dealt with the girl. She’s scheming to take everything you have,” said Xaldin, his hood pulled low to hide his face. “Your castle, your treasures…and then your very life.”

The Beast hung his head. His castle was a desolate place, ruled by a monster. “Trust no one. Feed your anger. Only rage will keep you strong!”

“I’ve had enough of strength. There’s only one thing I want…” The Beast gazed, unmoving, at the glass bell jar around a single red rose.

What he wanted was—

“Hah,” Xaldin spat. “To love and be loved in return? Who could ever love a beast?”

The Beast whirled again, his cape rippling. He glared and let out a roar of fury. “Good. Let your anger rise!”

With that, Xaldin vanished.

The Beast was told Belle would betray him and take everything from him.

“Traitors like you deserve to lose everything,” Saïx said.

It’s probably why Saïx was so angry with Axel in KH2, after he left. In Saïx’s view, Axel took everything from him, then betrayed him.

Saïx gave him a cruel grin. “You will lose everything!” Axel grunted and collapsed to his knees in pain from the direct hit. After only one strike, he felt his consciousness fading. His vision was going black.

Saïx displays a viciousness towards Axel that is stronger than anyone else. He kept saying that he would lose everything as he tried to kill him. Saïx blames Axel for everything that happened to him. Isa’s love for Lea got him turned into a monster. Yet deep down, Isa’s heart still longs for love. This infuriates Saïx.

Day 352 ~Sunset~

Saïx had notice the exchange, too. He flicked a glance toward Axel and then turned to Roxas. “How are you feeling, Roxas?”

“…Same as always.”

Saïx smirked at the reply—and a chill ran through Axel at how vicious it was.

The only other person he was so vicious towards was Xion. I think it’s because both of them remind him of his weakness as a human.

“Can’t you just let things run their course?” Saïx complained.

“What course? Whose plans am I ruining, exactly?” Axel retorted, still staring at the empty space where Roxas’s portal swirled into nothing.

“The Organization’s. I trust you.”

Axel let out a low chuckle. “Yeah? Because your heart tells you to?”

“Just the memory of it. But if you continue to interfere, I’ll have to overwrite that memory with everything I’ve learned as a Nobody.”

“…Should I take that as a threat?”

“More or less. Keep it in mind.” Finished with the conversation, Saïx walked away.

Axel didn’t move for a while.

The dialogue is similar to the Beast as well. He trusts Axel…for now…

Day 352: What I Must Do

Author: Xion

Riku gave me this time. Axel told me to spend it thinking for myself. The Organization is determined to erase either me or Roxas. They’ll never allow us to coexist. I love Roxas and Axel. I’m sure Saïx would scoff at that. Call it a trick of my artificial memories. But the time I spent on that clock tower was real.I wish the three of us could stay together, just like this, forever. But I have to end this. I’ll never forget today’s sunset. Even if Roxas and Axel do, I won’t forget.

Xion says she loves Roxas and Axel and Saïx would scoff at that. I think it’s to emphasize the difference between Isa and Saïx. Isa’s motivations were actually just like Xion’s.

Day 353 ~Resolve~

The Organisation tried to annihilate either Roxas or Xion. I’m thinking about what I should do, what I want to do. I want to know a way to save both Roxas and Xion. I want to respect both their wishes. I wondered all night whether there’s really and truly no way to do that—and, of course, I couldn’t find the answer.

This is a really important day. It’s all about a friend’s resolve, just like Day 75 ~Inseparable~. Axel knew the Organization wanted to get rid of either Roxas or Xion. He wanted to find a way to respect their wishes, and also save them.

“Our plan does not require two of them. You understand this, don’t you? One is plenty.”

When you say ‘we,’ who do you mean? Axel wanted to ask suddenly, giving a bitter smile instead. We—Is ‘we’ the Organisation itself? Or is ‘we’ just Saïx and me? I don’t really know any more.

“Think good and hard about it.”

I am thinking. I’m thinking so hard that I’m sick of it. I’m thinking so hard that I just want you to tell me the answer. He wanted to tell him so, but Saïx had already started walking towards the lobby.

It’s just like that back is rejecting me. And, I’m realizing that my memories of the past are too different from the thoughts I’m having now. Why the hell am I here? I don’t really know any more. What the hell do I want to do?

Saïx is telling Axel that they don’t need both, and Axel realizes how different the present situation is from his memories.

“Are the three of us going out today?”

Without waiting for Xion, Saïx was the one to answer him again. “You’re alone for your mission.”

“…I can’t swap with Xigbar, can I?” Roxas suggested.

“How extraordinarily childish you seem. So you can’t do anything if Axel isn’t with you?” Saïx went on to say. Roxas bowed his head, and bit his lip.

“That’s not… true.”

I am sure Saïx’s words to Roxas on this day were intended to be very meaningful. It wasn’t just a throwaway line to show that he is douchey. He asks Roxas if he’s powerless without Axel and calls him childish. I get the sense that Lea always tried to take care of Isa, like Genie did for Al and Roxas and Axel did for Xion. Isa was dependent on Lea and felt powerless without him. And it’s why he didn’t want Lea to get hurt because of him. It sounds like Saïx remembers how Isa used to be, and is disgusted by it, fueling his hateful comments to Roxas. It’s all projection with him.

Xion’s true wish—and Roxas’ wish—is for the three of us to be together. That wish isn’t something I can grant, not anymore. So, I want to at least keep the promise I made. Axel looked at Roxas, still expressionless.

On this day, Axel respects Xion’s resolve and lets her leave.

“Did you find the right answer?” he asked her gently.

Xion nodded. “Yeah. I did. I’m on the verge of losing everything I ever cared about. So tell me…” She looked away for a moment, then back up into his eyes. “Riku, tell me what I need to do.”

It’s okay. I’m sure of it now. I just want to do what I can to protect Roxas. If I go back to Sora, his memories should return, and then at least Roxas will have Axel.

I’m the only one who has to disappear… And then they’ll be okay.

Xion wants to protect Roxas, and was ready for her fate if it meant that she was the only one who had to disappear. I think Isa wanted to protect Lea the same way. Which is why he has the Moon Rabbit as his Mystery Gear.

Day 356 ~Place to Belong~

“If you return your memories to him, you’ll disappear.” Naminé, too, chose her words carefully.

“You never had your own memories in the first place—they’re all his, and that’s what connects you to others. So no one will remember you when you’re gone.”

“I’m ready. But, I don’t know what I need to do. That’s why I came to see you.” Xion exhaled.

Xion wanted to make the decision that was best for everyone.

Naminé truly wanted to protect Roxas, too, just like she’d promised Riku she would look after Sora. It was her heartfelt wish, so to speak.

She gave Xion another smile. “If you’re ready, we can go see Sora.”

She was ready to disappear.

“In the beginning, I thought that was best too. But it’s depressing, you know. I can’t swallow it, there has to be something.”

“But this is for everyone’s sake.”

Everyone…? Who do you mean by everyone? Us? Or others?

“Don’t say selfish crap like that. Every last one of…”

“This is for the best,” Xion said.

I hate that sort of thing. There’s no such this as ‘this is for the best’. There’s, I want to, and I don’t want to, that’s all. I learned that in my human time.

But Axel couldn’t accept it. He said he learned that lesson back when he was a human. So, presumably with Isa.

“You’ll be destroyed, you know that, right?” To be accurate—she’ll disappear.

But, Xion readied the Keyblade. “…No holding back now, Axel.”

“Don’t mess around!” Axel yelled. Me, hold back, she says? This late in the game? “You…! Don’t treat me like a joke!” Axel wrapped his hand in flames and made his chakrams appear. “I’ve decided! No matter how many times you guys run away I’ll bring you back, no matter how many times it takes!” he wished—he shouted, he wailed, he vowed.

I’ll bring them back no matter how many times it takes. No matter how many times. For my own sake, for your sakes. No matter how strong Xion tries to make her power, I don’t think I’ll lose. Because, I’m strong.

He wouldn’t respect her resolve if it meant losing a friend.

Luxord: Perhaps he was ready for it. Perhaps he put his existence on the line and won what he’d been longing for.

Xigbar: Wait a minute. How would that even be possible? We don’t exist, remember? What you’re saying goes against the laws of nature.

Luxord: Then perhaps he bet his NON-existence. Either way, he came out a winner. Oh, Axel. A grifter to the end.

Saïx: That’s absurd. He won nothing and is nothing. He couldn’t stand the emptiness of being without a heart, and that led to his demise. He was foolish and weak.

Saïx was disgusted that Roxas was powerless without Axel. Maybe the same thing was going through his mind here, too. It’s actually Isa who he finds foolish and weak. He was ready to accept his demise. Isa sacrificed himself for Lea, and it caused him to wind up in his miserable condition. He is disgusted and ashamed of his past self. And a part of him is actually sad that Axel is gone and he HATES it.

“Maybe she’s being threatened by that guy…,” muttered Roxas, and Saïx snorted.

“Hah! Your human-like way of thinking is so nauseating.”

The fact that Isa was so different than Saïx was the root cause of all his nastiness. At least that’s what I think.

[thisdaynews]

Are Your Neighbors Ready for Mayor Pete?

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/are-your-neighbors-ready-for-mayor-pete/

Are Your Neighbors Ready for Mayor Pete?

Illustration by Carne Griffiths

Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer forPOLITICO.

DECORAH, Iowa—On a cold night in a small town, a man had a question for Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate with a serious shot at the American presidency. How, he wanted to know, would he deal with leaders of foreign countries where it’s still illegal to be gay? Buttigieg, dressed as he almost always is, in brown shoes and blue slacks and a plain white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, stood in the center of a stage surrounded by more than a thousand people who had packed into the gymnasium of the high school. Buttigieg gripped the hand-held mic and took a few steps forward.

“Sooooo,” he said, drawing out the syllable and the suspense, “they’re going to have to get used to it.”

Those 10 words, tough, almost defiant, elicited a response unlike anything else I witnessed trailing the ascendant Buttigieg on a pair of boisterous recent campaign swings. The sound started with a release of anxious laughter, followed by a hitch of surprise, before giving way to clapping and whistling and shouts and cheers that only got louder as what he had said sank in. It took nearly 30 seconds for the noise to subside.

Unspoken in his answer—maybe unintended but nevertheless true—was that he wasn’t only talking about, or even to, bigoted heads of state in distant, backward lands. He just as easily could have been speaking about his fellow Americans. For months now, Buttigieg’s utterly unprecedented campaign has offered a practically explicit challenge to voters: Can they accept the totality of who he is—the pragmatic, two-term mayor of a midsize midwestern city, the earnest nerd with a facility for language and degrees from Harvard and Oxford, the Navy Reserve lieutenant who did a seven-month stint in Afghanistan … and also the 37-year-old husband of a man who teaches Montessori middle school and with whom he hopes to parent children?

Up till now, Buttigieg’s youth and sexual orientation largely have been calling cards in the Democratic primary, distinguishing him in a field whose front-runners are in their 70s and whose back-of-the-packers are too numerous for most people to keep track of. Given his comparatively low profile not long ago, Buttigieg has raised astonishing amounts of money, from donors of all kinds but from wealthy gay supporters, too, eager to back a figure who could, they believe, crack or outright shatter the glass closet. As his poll numbers have climbed, particularly in the crucial early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, he has joined the foremost quartet of 2020 Democrats. And with that rise has come a new, more pointed question, raised by voters and political consultants alike, and rooted in electoral history: Will the one thing that makes Buttigieg totally new in the annals of presidential politics also prevent him from becoming his party’s nominee?

He’s not the first candidate to have faced this question, and not even the first in the last few cycles. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy raised the question, still unanswered, of whether the country was ready for a woman as commander-in-chief. In 2008, with Barack Obama, the question was about a black president. With Obama, the answer was a resoundingyes, but even in the primary it wasn’t always clear how things would turn out. Democratic voters, even the ones whoweremore than ready for Obama, were forced to wonder about the number of voters whoweren’t. At roughly this point in the ’08 race, Clinton led Obama by a lot, in no small part because voters, many of them black voters, simply thought he couldn’t win. Once he began winning primaries, those numbers shifted, and fast.

When it comes to the prospect of a gay president, the numbers right now are sobering for Buttigieg: Polling suggests that the country was more ready for a black president back in 2008 than it is for a gay president now. And last month, the current iteration of the question of readiness became front-page news when a leaked memo revealed focus groups commissioned by the Buttigieg campaign suggested his sexuality could be “a barrier” for black voters in at least South Carolina, the crucial fourth nominating contest—and a bellwether for the party’s more socially conservative voters.

As I followed Buttigieg in South Carolina and rode along on his latest Iowa bus tour, I met many citizens who feel legitimately drawn to him as an alternative to the other, older top-tier trio— Joe Biden, whom they view as aging and uneven, and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, whom they consider pie-in-the-sky lefties trying to sell them unrealistic ideas that smack of government excess. I listened to these voters grapple with their reservations, as they weighed, out loud, their feelings of fledgling support against what they perceive as the stubborn intolerance of others, including their neighbors and in some cases members of their own families.

I heard it down south in South Carolina.

“People don’t change from their old beliefs,” Andrew Davis, 70, told me in Rock Hill.

And I heard it up north in rural Iowa.

“My mom is a devout Christian,” Michael Moe, 59, told me in Algona, “and she would never vote for a gay.”

“I feel bad, because it doesn’t bother me,” Larry Untiet, 71, told me in Spencer, “but I’m sure there’s people—about Pete’s sexuality—that it’ll affect their vote.”

“That was one of the thoughts that I had when thinking about him,” Danielle Borglum, 43, told me in Waverly. “Like, are we really ready for a gay president? Like, were we ready for a woman? I thought we were, butclearlywe weren’t, you know? So there’s always that hesitation: Are we going to get behind somebody and then all the hate is going to come out?”

And it’s not just voters who have identified Buttigieg’s sexuality as a potential obstacle. “I think it’s an issue,” Tim Miller, a gay Republican consultant who was Jeb Bush’s communications director in ’16, told me. He cited a recent Fox News poll he tweeted about in which 68 percent of Democratic primary voters said they think Biden can beat Trump, 57 percent said they think Warren can, 54 percent said they think Sanders can—and only 30 percent said the same about Buttigieg. “There’s only one reason for that,” Miller said. “And that’s the fact that he’s gay.”

To assuage these concerns, that his candidacy is too risky to fully embrace, Buttigieg lately has leaned into comparisons with Obama, at the top of the list of historic firsts—and the one who won. He calls himself “a young man with a funny name.” His cadence can conjure that of the 44th president. The architects of the campaign that made Obama the first black president certainly have noticed the parallels. “He used to say, ‘I am proudly of the black community, but I’m not limited to it,’” Obama strategist David Axelrod told me. “And from what I see from a distance, it feels like that’s the same approach Buttigieg is taking.”

When I asked Buttigieg on his bus about the pages he was taking from Obama’s playbook, he didn’t push back. One lesson: “You should give Americans credit for being able to do something different, for being able to move past old prejudices, and when people are moved and inspired, that happens in ways that cut across tribal, ideological party lines,” he said. “I think in a very simple way he just demonstrated what’s possible.”

But Obama in a quite literal way didn’t have to be the sort of trailblazer Buttigieg is having to be. Before Obama, there was Alan Keyes, there was Al Sharpton, there was Carol Moseley Braun. There was Jesse Jackson. They were different kinds of campaigns, but Americans had seen high-profile black candidates before. Buttigieg, on the other hand, has had to invent an entirely new template, and that’s meant running notasa gay candidateper se, but not running away from it, either. Sometimes he speaks about the humdrum doings of his domestic life. Sometimes he is conspicuously, politically prudent, speaking nearly in code about the manner in which his identity shapes who he is and how he’s running. And sometimes, like when I saw him in Des Moines, in a high-profile speech in the big downtown arena, he tells some 13,000 people that he’s planning on hunting deer in rural Michigan on the morning of Thanksgiving with his husband’s father—surely the first time a presidential candidate ever has strung together quite that collection of words.

“Look,” Buttigieg said in the second half of his answer in Decorah, talking to retrograde rulers, but also to everybody, everywhere, “one great thing about America is that when we’re at our best, we have challenged places around the world to acknowledge freedom and include more people in more ways.”

As people filed out, buzzing, into the dark and frigid air, I caught up with the man who had asked the question. David Mintz lives in Florida. He had come because his daughter moved here to work as an organizer for Buttigieg. He struck me, though, as clear-eyed about the hurdle at hand.

“The sexuality of this president is going to be an issue internationally … if not domestically,” Mintz said, envisioning a Buttigieg administration. And that’s if he somehow can … win. “He’ll never get to the presidency,” Mintz added, “if enough people here can’t come to terms with that.”

Back on Buttigieg’s blue and yellow bus, the more west we went, generally the more conservative the territory got, and I asked him if he had surprised himself with his answer by being so blunt.

“I mean, it’s just the truth,” he said, “right?”

The America in which Buttigieg is runningfor president is notably different from the America in which he grew up.

The decade before Buttigieg was born, gay elected officials were such a novelty that people can still recite their individual names. In 1974, out lesbians Kathy Kozachenko and Elaine Noble won seats on the city council of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, respectively. In 1977, openly gay Harvey Milk in 1977 was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Kozachenko served one term. Noble served two, a tenure marred by homophobic threats and bullet-riddled windows. Milk was assassinated.

In November of 1980, 14 months before Buttigieg was born, Barney Frank of Massachusetts was elected to Congress without revealing he was gay. Not until he had won an additional three elections did he come out. “I wouldn’t have been elected,” he would say later, about the beginning of his career, “if I was out.”

In the 1990s, even as Frank kept winning and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin made history as the first person to earn a seat in Congress after running as an openly gay candidate,President Bill Clinton signed laws making it illegal for openly gay Americans to serve in the military (“ Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”) or get married ( the Defense of Marriage Act). Capturing the era’s conflicted attitudes about homosexuality was the iconic 1993 episode ofSeinfeldin which Jerry and George try desperately to convince a reporter they’re not gay, with Jerry adding, “not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

It was then, in the halls of St. Joseph High of South Bend, Buttigieg began to feel the first “ indications” that he was gay. He was the valedictorian. He was the president of his class. He was voted by his peers as “ most likely” to be the president of the United States. He knew of no gay students.

The 2000s were turbulent with respect to gay rights, trending toward tolerance. But in 2004, when Massachusetts became the first state to let same-sex couples wed but 11 other states passed constitutional amendments prohibiting the same, Buttigieg graduated from Harvard— closeted. That year, there were three openly gay members of Congress and no senators; the governor of New Jersey came out and resigned in the same speech. Obama, who had favored gay marriage as a state senate candidate in 1996, modulated as a presidential candidate in 2008, recognizing the reality of the cultural and political currents of the time, advocating only for civil unions.

If there had been a pill when he was younger, Buttigieg has said, that would have made him not gay, he would have swallowed it without so much as a sip of water. If somebody could have pointed to the part of his insides that made him gay, he “would have cut it out with a knife.” Buttigieg was the president of the university’s Institute of Politics, a history and literature major, a Rhodes Scholar, and he believed he could be an aspiring politician, or he could be an out gay man. But the one thing he could not be, he was convinced, was both.

Fifteen years later and a thousand miles away,Buttigieg arrived one Saturday last month in Columbia, South Carolina, at a tailgate before a football game featuring historically black Allen University. The stop was an obvious piece of his ongoing efforts to make any semblance of inroads with the state’s African American voters, who made up a crucial 60 percent of the electorate in the 2016 primary. They have been cool to his candidacy: Buttigieg polls consistently in the single digits overall, but this fall his lack of support among black voters has put him at or near zero.

Since the report about the memo in which some in the focus group said they “felt the mayor was ‘flaunting’ his sexuality by the very mention of having a husband,” many in the black community, and in the Buttigieg campaign, too, have pushed back at the suggestion that Buttigieg’s sexuality is one of the reasons for his lagging support. Still, Rep. Jim Clyburn, 79, the House majority whip and longtime congressman from South Carolina, whose grandson works for Buttigieg, said recently, “That’s a generational issue. I know of a lot of people my age who feel that way. … I’m not going to sit here and tell you otherwise. I think everybody knows that’s an issue.”

One of the standard pieces of paraphernalia Buttigieg’s campaign distributes at his offices and his events introduces him, in this interesting order, as “a husband, Afghanistan veteran, and the Mayor of his hometown,” but he often on the stump presents himself as a veteran, as a relative moderate, and as a fresh, not-from-Washington option as much as or more than he does as a gay married man. It’s especially plain in a place like this.

Spending time with him up close, though, is to be constantly reminded that who he is as a public figure—what he represents to which voters, and where—is not always his choice. The first person to get to him at the tailgate, for instance, was a 23-year-old fashion designer. Kashmir Imani shook his hand and promptly gave him a homemade hat. “PETE 2020,” it said, and the front was decorated with a wash of bright rainbow colors. Buttigieg smiled, thanked her, showed it briefly to assembled reporters, and then handed it to an aide.

He walked toward the DJ and the smoking grill, one table piled with catfish on paper plates and hot dogs and hamburgers with Wonder Bread buns, another covered with buttons and shirts announcing #HBCUsForPete. He barely had gotten under one of the blue tents when he was asked about the Equality Act by a young black gay man.

“The House has passed it, but this president will never sign it,” Buttigieg told Donny Williams, queuing up what sounded like an answer he might give on TV. “So, it’s one of many, many reasons we need a new president, because I’ll sign it right away. Part of it’s also who gets on the [Supreme] Court, right? Making sure that we’re appointing justices who understand that it’s discrimination that can’t stand …”

Buttigieg, though, seemed to sense this was not necessarily what the 18-year-old Williams wanted to hear. He paused.

“Has that been your experience?” Buttigieg asked, the worddiscriminationstill hanging in the air.

“Horrible things,” Williams answered.

Buttigieg pursed his lips and nodded.

“I wouldn’t want to wish that upon a new generation,” Williams said.

“Our generation can fix it,” Buttigieg said.

“Stay strong,” he told Williams. “I’m glad you’re out here.”

Buttigieg then gave a short, anodyne greeting to the gathering, about “building community” and doing it with “joy,” and was gone.

Up the road in Rock Hill, a line wrapped around a block, nearly 1,700 mostly white people waiting for the Buttigieg town hall scheduled for an outdoor courtyard. I saw buttons saying “PRIDE FOR PETE” and “BOOT EDGE EDGE” in rainbow letters and “AMERICA’S FIRST COUPLE” with pictures of Buttigieg and his husband, the former Chasten Glezman. I saw shirts saying: “CHASTEN FOR FIRST GENTLEMAN” and “NOT STRAIGHT BUT STRAIGHT FORWARD” and “MAKE AMERICA GAY AGAIN.” The president of the local Winthrop University College Democrats told the crowd, “I, as a gay millennial, am reminded as I see a fellow gay millennial make a run for the highest office in the land, just how awesome this nation can really be.”

In his speech, though, Buttigieg didn’t describe himself as a gay millennial. He first and foremost described himself as a mayor, and mayors, he said, can’t call potholes “fake news”—they just have to fill them. He talked about ending “systemic racism.” He talked about tearing down “walls of mistrust.” And he talked about “values,” like “faith and family,” “security and democracy,” and “freedom”—including, he said, freedom from “county clerks … telling you who you ought to marry.” But he did not talk about, at least not specifically, his sexuality—and in the subsequent question-and-answer, he wasn’t asked about it, either. He was asked about climate change, and improving public education, and repairing foreign relations, and the difference between Medicare For All and his plan of Medicare For All Who Want It, and he was asked, actually, if the country is ready not for a gay president but for such a young president.

The question itself brought a raucous round of cheers and chants.

“Well,” Buttigieg said, “I guess we got our answer right there.”

He leaned hard into the youth question, adding that “the world right now is seeing a rise of a new generation of leaders,” citing the presidents of France (Emmanuel Macron is 41) and El Salvador (Nayib Bukele, 38) and the prime minister of New Zealand (Jacinda Ardern, 39). “I will also point out,” he went on, “as a matter of strategy—not to get too political—but every single time in the last 50 years or so that Democrats have won the Oval Office—I mean every single time—it’s been a candidate who hadn’t been on the scene very long, who wasn’t perceived as a creature of Washington. … It’s how he we win!”

And the following morning, at the state conference of the black A.M.E. Zion Church, where the men wore bowties and the women wore pearls and one congregant fanned his face with a cardboard fan touting Biden, Buttigieg delivered to a different audience a similar pitch, stressing unity and nodding to his sexuality in only the most tangential ways.

“There’s talk of a wall going up on the border,” he told them. “I doubt that that will ever be built, but I have seen walls go up so high even between us and others that we love. … We must do something about that crisis of belonging. All of us in different ways have been led to question whether we belong, and I know what it is to look on the news and see your rights up for debate. All of us must extend a hand to one another because I also know what is to find acceptance where you least expect it.”

He drew murmurs of approval and ripples ofamen.

Would his sexuality be “a barrier” for people here?

“It wouldn’t be a barrier for me,” Carl Bankhead, 67, from Hickory Grove told me after the service.

But for his neighbors?

“We have had some discussion on that,” he granted, “and I have heard individuals say that it would be a barrier for them.”

When I asked Ronnie Massey, 58, a retired truck driver from York, about Buttigieg’s sexuality, he looked a bit puzzled.

“His sexuality?” he said.

I told him he’s gay.

“Really?” he said. “He didn’t come off as, like, being gay.”

He never had.But what happened throughout his first term as mayor made it possible for Buttigieg to do what he finally did toward the end.

Fred Karger, for starters, a Republican consultant, strategist and self-described “activist,” launched a run for the White House in the 2012 cycle, which was largely ignored but nonetheless made him the first openly gay major party presidential candidate in American history. With Mitt Romney, a Mormon, running, Karger’s campaign was predicated on rebuking the anti-gay stances of LDS Church.

The man who was the president already, meanwhile, announced his support for gay marriage in May of that year, a move that did nothing to dampen his public approval. Under Obama’s watch, the enforcement of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had ended in late 2010, and the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013. In his second inaugural address, Obama pointedly connected the civil rights fights of women and blacks to the civil rights fights of gays. “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” he said. By 2014, more than half the country supported gay marriage, and more than seven in 10 people considered it inevitable. “The Gay Rights President,” historian Timothy Stewart-Winter, the author ofQueer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics, would call Obama.

In South Bend, where Buttigieg took office in 2011 at age 29, these years read in the archives of theSouth Bend Tribunelike a string of the last acts of a closeted man, changing in what he thought was possible due to what was changing around him. He consistently advocated for gay rights, frequently funneling his explanations through the language of sound, just policy. In 2012, he signed into law a city ordinance that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. “I ran on a platform of economic development, and part of how you show that you have a healthy economy is you show that workers are treated fairly,” he said. In 2013, ’14 and ‘15, he spoke out, too, against the efforts of Gov. Mike Pence to amend the Indiana state constitution to ban gay marriage and institute its controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “This is not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing; this is just about the right thing,” Buttigieg said. “It’s not too late for the state to follow South Bend’s lead,” he added, “and add protections for LGBT Hoosiers.”

On June 16, 2015, in an essay in theTribune, he came out.

Three years to the day later, he was married.

And this past April, in a speech to the Victory Fund, the political action committee that aims to boost the number of gay people in elected office, he said, “Next time a reporter asks me if America is ready for a gay president, I’m going to tell the truth. I’m going to give them the only answer that I can think of that’s honest, and it’s this: I trust my fellow Americans. But at the end of the day, there’s exactly one way to find out for sure.”

The next week, he officially announced his run, kissing his husband on stage.

His rise, say historians of the gay movement that I talked to for this piece, is at once the result of half a century of struggle and absolutely astonishing in how seemingly sudden it’s been. “Before the Obama administration,” said Lillian Faderman, the author ofThe Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle, “his candidacy would have been unthinkable.”

Even afterit. Just last year,latelast year, Andrew Reynolds, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, published a new book,The Children of Harvey Milk: How LGBTQ Politicians Changed the World. What does it say about Buttigieg, the man now running first in the Iowa polls? Nothing. All this has happened so fast he’s not in the book. Not even once. (Reynolds, for the record, told me this week a paperback is due out in the spring. Rest assured, he said, in the new epilogue, Buttigieg will be mentioned.)

In Iowa, the bus rolled on,across the northern reaches of the corn-covered state, behind lumbering, lane-clogging, green-painted farm vehicles with tall, knobby tires, the trajectory of the trip pressing the central question of this campaign deeper and deeper into politically more and more difficult terrain.

In Waverly, population 10,126, in Bremer County, where Obama won twice but Trump won 53 percent of the vote in 2016, and where Buttigieg was introduced by a city councilman who called him more impressive than Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, Buttigieg got a question asking for a moment when he did the right thing in spite of potential adverse consequence. He opted to answer it by talking about coming out. “If your voters decide to fire you because of who you are,” he said to the 568 people jampacked into the high school cafeteria, “then it is what it is.” (Kari Rindels, 41, from Waterloo, who asked the question, told me she wasn’t sure others in her “very conservative, very Christian” family even would consider voting for Buttigieg. “To them, I hear a lot, you know, and I even hate repeating it, that thepersonis not wrong,” she said. “Love the person, hate the sin, in their eyes.”)

In Charles City, population 7,373, in Floyd County, where Obama won twice but Trump won 54 percent of the vote, Buttigieg was asked how he would, “as a gay man,” run his campaign “when evangelicals will make an issue” of his sexuality? “What I’m finding,” he said to the 276 people stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder into the Elks Lodge, “is the real question on voters’ minds is how their lives are going to be different if I’m president versus the one we’ve got or one of the competitors. And I find that elections are not so much aboutmylife. I’m happy to tell my story—and I’m proud of who I am—it’s really aboutyours.” (Donna Ponto, 60, from Greene, told me she asked the question because she has a gay cousin and two gay brothers and one of them and his husband are asking this question. She called Buttigieg “intelligent” and “likeable” and “sweet” but expressed doubt that what he said would work on actual evangelicals. “I didn’t feel like it was a real true answer,” she said.)

And in Spencer, the last stop of the last day of the bus trip, in the biggest town in heavily agricultural Clay County, where John McCain won 52 percent of the vote in 2008, where Romney won 59 percent of the vote in 2012, and where Trump won 68 percent of the vote in 2016, where the congressional representative is right-wing, anti-gay Steve King, more than 500 people filled a basketball court at the YMCA to see the very first credible gaycandidate for president.

One of those more than 500 people was Anneliese DeBeaumont, 19. Her long, blond, pink-trimmed hair stood out. She had driven two hours from the University of South Dakota. “I wanted to see him speak,” she told me. “It helps gay kids everywhere.” She likes him because he’s more moderate, and because he’s from the Midwest, not just because he’s gay, but still: “I was like, ‘There’s no way he’s going to make it this far,’” she said. “And he just kept going, and I was, like, ‘Whooooaaaa.’”

Also on hand: Kali Johnson, 17, with her short, purple hair, clutching her rainbow sign saying “PETE.” She had driven an hour from George, in Iowa’s northwest corner, population barely more than a thousand, where she attends a small, conservative school, she told me. “Having a gay president could be really eye-opening,” she said. “He could do a lot of things to help.”

Buttigieg told this crowd a story he deploys a lot.

“One of the best moments in this whole campaign was when a student came up to me,” he said. “A high schooler let me know that our campaign had signaled to her that she had a place in her school and in her community. She said, ‘I can go to school, having looked at your campaign—I now believe that I can go to school, talk about what I believe in, not be ashamed, just because I have autism.’ And I remember hearing that story and thinking, ‘Ah, now we’re really getting somewhere.’ Because if this campaign let her know, in some way that I don’t even completely understand, let her know, spoke to her, and let her know that she fits—if we can do that in a campaign months and months before the first vote is even cast, imagine what the American presidency can do if it is intentionally used to build up the sense of belonging in this country. This is what the presidency isfor.”

The questions in the question-and-answer sessions, written down on pieces of paper by people who had entered the gym, were being pulled from the jar. The last one was from “Chris B.”

“What protections,” the designated question-reader read, “do you plan for the LGBTQ community, especially for those who are transgender?”

Buttigieg, as is his custom at town halls, asked “Chris B.” to “give a wave” if he or she wanted. Usually, the person who asked the question is only too happy to take credit with an awkward hello, and Buttigieg invariably responds with one of his own. Here, though, in Spencer, Iowa, “Chris B.” gave no wave. Buttigieg clipped the pregnant moment and filled the silence.

“Um,” he said, “so this is obviously an issue of personal importance to me having grown up, not knowing if I would ever fit in. Because I was different. I didn’t know if my own community would have a place for me. And some great things have happened. Some great steps forward have happened in this country. I don’t think I would have guessed at the beginning of this same decade that we’re living in that it would be possible for me to stand in front of you, a married man, running for president of the United States.”

The people clapped and cheered.

“But just because marriage equality is the law of the land doesn’t mean that we’ve gotten there,” he continued. “We need an Equality Act to ensure at the federal level that it is not lawful to discriminate againstanybodybecause of who they are or because of who they love.”

The people clapped and cheered.

“Transgender Americans in particular are facing a lot of obstacles,” he said. “But Iknowthat progress is possible. Because of the things that have become possible.”

The most famous gay politician in America, even today, remains Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor whose rise to prominence coincided with the first public bloom of the gay rights movement. Milk and Buttigieg are different in many ways—as different, it’s tempting to say, as South Bend and San Francisco, Milk the voracious populist with his bullhorn and his soapbox, Buttigieg the buttoned-up, cerebral son of professors with his impeccable syntax. Everything Milk did, too, he did “with an eye on the gay movement”—he wouldn’t have run, or won, without support from that community, in his city—whereas Buttigieg at times has been a reluctant poster boy.

The more I watched Buttigieg on the campaign trail, though, the more two similarities become apparent. One is that he, like Milk, sees the moral necessity as well as obviously the political utility of trying to tie the plight of gays to that of anybody who’s ever felt shut out or left out or demeaned or deprived—what Milk called “the oppressed of all stripes.” And the other? Their use of the wordhope. Nearly half a century ago, Milk talked often about “the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias, and the Richmond, Minnesotas,” saying “the only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope. Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if it the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right.”

Seeing Buttigieg, it’s hard not to think of him as a movement candidate, at least in part. It’s hard, after all, not to think of Donny, and Kali, and Anneliese from South Dakota. But of course, for Buttigieg to matter as more than a symbolic figure, he has to win, and he can’t win with only their votes. He needs to persuade the Mintzes and the Borglums and the Untiets and enough of their neighbors—a group of voters who want the candidates’ policies to matter as much or more than anything else, and who want some assurance that a majority of their fellow Americans can view him that way, too.

It’s instructive, in that regard, to go back to 2008, and look again at the poll numbers—in particular the ones about whether the country was ready to elect a black president. Back in 2000, it had been in the high 30s. In January of ‘08, at the beginning of primary voting, one poll put the number 54 percent. But by that April, by the time Obama had won in Iowa and South Carolina and 13 states on Super Tuesday, another poll said the number of Americans ready to elect a black president was as high as 76 percent. One conclusion to draw from that: When public opinion shifts, it can shift quickly. And perhaps it takes only one person to shift it. Two and a half months before the first 2020 vote, 50 percent of the public said they were “definitely” or “probably” ready to elect a gay president, although they were slightly more skeptical about the country as a whole.

So here, now, in red, rural Iowa, Buttigieg closed this event the way he does so many of his events.

“I am propelled by a sense of hope, and I know hope went out of style for a bit in politics, but you can’t do this if you don’t have a sense of hope,” he said, making many think about Obama, making me think about Milk, but extending this template that’s never before been tested in American politics. “Running for office,” he said, “is an act of hope.”

Less than two weeks later the biggest poll in Iowa came out. It showed he’s in first place by 9 points.

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