#they were old enough to read “animorphs” unless the beta blockers gave him total amnesia i don't think he could forget he had a *brother*

[arverst-aegnar]

Alright, i've been seeing this for years now, and maybe someone can explain this to me, because it seems like i'm the only person who doesn't get it:

(spoilers for To the Moon, btw, if anyone needs a spoiler warning for a game that's over 10 years old)

why is it so sad and terrible that River never knew Johnny remembered their first meeting?

Yes, it is sad that he forgot it, and it clearly bothered her that he had. I'm sure it was frustrating for her that her attempts at explaining never worked, and upsetting that she never knew why it was he forgot. Maybe she wanted answers about why he didn't meet up with her again, and died without ever knowing the reason. But in comparison with the literal decades of life spent together, starting as teenagers and lasting until her death, why is it such a tragedy that one brief, admittedly very sweet moment was lost along the way?

The ending is bittersweet, no question, but to me it's bittersweet mostly because Johnny is dying and River is already gone. How a relationship starts certainly has an impact, but it isn't the whole story, and they had a long, happy life together before either of them ever knew one of them didn't quite remember how it started. I just don't understand how the absence of this one memory, as significant and meaningful as it was, would just... negate all the rest of it, so that it's impossible River died as happy and satisfied with the life she'd lived as anyone could hope to be.