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i've said it once and i'll say it again: the worst part of final fantasy iv is the the part right after they defeat the giant of babil and cecil makes rosa and rydia get off of the lunar whale because "he needs to protect them" (implying they cannot protect themselves) (they've been functioning as healers for the last 10 hours of gameplay and cecil can't learn white magic past cura. he can't heal for shit!) (implying the final team against zeromus is going to be five men.) and then rosa and rydia sneak on the lunar whale and they come along anyway.
you will never convince me that makes sense. that after years of knowing rosa, that out of the blue cecil no longer respects rosa as a knight, and rydia as a summoner. NONSENSE. random, misogynstic nonsense.
going back to the land of the feymarch is honestly really funny. every single npc there is just like "oh, hey rydia! nice to see you again!" or "rydia, is that you? who are all these losers you're with?" or "rydia, you're back! please don't leave!" or "rydia, rydia rydia".
except for like, two people, who told me "man, monsters are really acting out of turn in your world" to which i was like, "yeah, they really are, huh?" and the other person who was like "this is the library. maybe you should go study," to which i was like "DAMNNN that's CRAZY" but to be fair the king and queen were down there and i was looking for them so maybe that was some sort of code???
idk i'm mostly joking but i do think it's nice how rydia got to be a part of this community since cecil and kain kind of blew up her original one. like she gets all of these people to recognize her and be excited for her return to their village and whatnot.
how awful do you think cecil felt when kain disappeared in mist? after accidentally annihilating an entire village, the guilt was already flooding in, let alone when he realized he personally dealt with rydia's mother. then the one person he had in the moment to rely on slides away in an earthquake that he definitely also could blame himself for (this is the most anxiety ridden man i've ever seen. he most definitely blames himself for that.) and is left with rydia, whom he dutifully takes care of, even though she hates him with all her guts (at the time).
imagine the self loathing, thinking that he condemned someone he loved to a death between stone and ash, thinking he could have prevented all of it if he'd simply had the guts to tell the king of baron "no". or investigated the ring he'd been instructed to deliver further. or anything else. but he didn't have time to dwell on it, because he needed to protect rydia, and that was his fault too.