Started Dirge Of Cerberus, Here's My Main Takeaway So Far:

rebirth hard mode update:

those adjudicators and yin and yang with JUST CAIT??? oh. my gosh. AAAAAAAAH. thank goodness for the fat moogle acting as another target 🙏🙏🙏

also i did NOT get the box throwing game my first playthrough... but i had much more luck this time, it only took me three tries :) not. that. bad!!

HA HA HA HA HA HA. HA HA HA HA HA HA!

okay this is just me being mad about something irrelevant so feel free to skip this one but! i was scrolling away on youtube, as a bored final fantasy fan who was away from home does. then, i find this video:

i see this and go 'oh my gosh, my favorite. an uninformed idiot made a whole video. can't wait to hate watch!" little did i know i would barely make it two minutes in. i save the video, and when i get home, i start dinner and turn this on.

according to this guy, the first thing the game "doesn't tell you"... is what punisher mode is. you know, the like, major function of cloud's kit. that they explain. and i was so mad i closed the video, went downstairs to my faithful ps5, and slotted the data disc into it to redownload the whole game to prove this guy wrong.

a half hour later (i went and finished my dinner while it was downloading dw) i start a new game, and lo and behold, literally like, four battles in, is the explanation for punisher mode:

JESUS CHRIST. WHAT THE FUCK??? anyway. i was so mad and i'm literally right and i don't care i just needed this out of my noggin.

as kids, i imagine kain got in a lot of trouble. all three of them were little trouble makers, (i mean, c'mon. three kids running around a castle? they're bored.) but only kain ever got in trouble. it seemed obvious to the king and rosa's parents and cid (and basically all of the adults in their life) that kain coerced them into spending their time making mischief rather than dutifully training as they should've been.

obviously, this was not the case. have you met rosa? that girl was out and about as soon as she heard cecil and kain might've been exiled from baron. she headed straight for damcyan, even though her lack of experience with heat had her ill almost instantly. rosa acts first and thinks later- if she wanted to sneak out to the town during training, she was the one begging kain and cecil to help her.

and cecil, despite his almost-inability to actually tell someone "no", generally went along with it. he noticed early on that kain was taking the brunt of the blame, and tried to take some himself, but between kain's self sacrificial nature and the king of baron's favouritism, cecil's attempts never held any water.

reeve being anxious about one thing or another but vincent and cid (and yuffie and shelke, sometimes) are always there to help him

always catching when he's overthinking something

dragging him away from wro hq to go out with them for dinner

being with him after some sort of scare, so he knows they're all okay

helping him get through panic attacks, if and when he has them

yuffie sends him updates when she's away in wutai, or on a mission

shelke updates reeve on cid and vincent, since neither of them are technology experts, and she's with them all the time anyway.

cid likes to have reeve "help" him bake (reeve just sits there, and they talk, mostly.)

vincent takes naps on reeve when he's home, since reeve always seems to worry the most about vincent.

i finished the game and I'M RIGHT! WHERE IS MY DoC FOUND FAMILY CONTENT??? i gotta do it myself (i was doing it already but was i nervous shelke was gonna die so i left her out just in case but she DOESN'T!)

started dirge of cerberus, here's my main takeaway so far:

reeve, cid, and vincent have two daughters, yuffie and shelke.

three dads, two daughters.

am i close 🤨

imagining domestic reevincid brings me life y'all

vincent napping on the couch

reeve working from home on a laptop

cid baking in a cute little apron

vincent reading with reading glasses

reeve doing the dishes after a meal

cid working on vehicles in the garage

vincent doing laundry

reeve doing taxes

cid buying groceries

domestic reevincid

now that i'm about halfway through dirge of cerberus, i went back and replayed remake intergrade, chapter 2...

the thing that stuck out to me the MOST is that the deepground lackeys or whatever the hell you wanna call them are totally outfitted for long range combat when they fight yuffie and sonon. i also remembered WAY more members actually being there- but in all actuality you probably only see 20 or so members, including the ones nero murders (out of boredom or for power? another day.)

but they're all equipped with their stupid like, range enhancing helmets that would fucking impossible to see out of at short range (hello security officer helmet, but at least that thing doesn't cover their whole head.) and they're all wearing pants, which begs the question. was it just a small sample size (~20 members) or did they change the deepground uniforms in the three years inbetween remake intergrade and dirge of cerberus? 'cause they're totally wearing different outfits depending on their gender in dirge of cerberus- their thighs are OUT if they're women. but all pants in intergrade. did we only fight men, or was there an outfit change...?

also nero has split pupils (cat pupils? idk the right word) like sephiroth... is that just a jenova thing? if so, why don't more SOLDIERs have eyes like that??

are other people making "hopes and dreams in part 3" bingo boards?? i was thinking about it and made a list of like 30+ things to put on the board (a LOT of them are definitely only dreams and won't happen but i thought of them and want them to happen so...)

if other people are, or have ideas, pleeease let me know i'm so curious what other people expect or hope for from part 3

cid raines you'll always be famous to me