Ma Dincht

[Pumpkin]

One of the few not dead or absent parents in the series. I like Ma Dincht a lot, its obvious she cares a lot for Zell and she raised him right (well, no one is perfect). I want a ma like her

Discuss Ma Dincht!

[Ayen]

She was a cool dude. Letting me hide in her home while Galbadia soldiers raided the town. I think. I can't remember. Too many GF summonings my last playthrough.

[Fox]

Terrible to play cards with though. She doted on her son so much she made a card with his face on it and made it completely overpowered next to any standard deck.

I mean, it's sweet and all but ruins game night.

[Pumpkin]

xDD

[Galuf]

zells cool because he punches guys. and hhis mum taught him how...:cool:

[Ayen]

Terrible to play cards with though. She doted on her son so much she made a card with his face on it and made it completely overpowered next to any standard deck.

I mean, it's sweet and all but ruins game night.

And she has the only copy too, the cheat.

[Shiny]

Talking about people's hygiene problems. That's gross Ma Dincht.

http://jegged.com/Image/Strategy/Final-Fantasy-8/Walkthrough/FF8-0294-Balamb-Zells-House-Ma-Dincht.png

[Jessweeee♪]

Ma Dincht for best Final Fantasy mom :spin:

[Iceglow]

She doted on her adopted son so much. She wasn't his biological mother... Orphans at an Orphanage tend not to have mothers.

[Leigh]

I'd tap it.

[Bubba]

She doted on her adopted son so much. She wasn't his biological mother... Orphans at an Orphanage tend not to have mothers.

Yeah, what's the story with that? I assume she adopted him from the orphanage. Why did no-one adopt any of the others? Do all orphans get automatically enrolled as SEEDs?

[Iceglow]

I can't remember if I ever saw an official document regarding this (i.e. the ultimania guide) but my understanding is that all the party characters excepting Rinoa were war orphans from the Gabaldian - Estharian war that Laguna, Kiros and Ward fought in. Rinoa obviously being the love child of Julia and General Caraway after Laguna "disappeared" by getting injured in Lunatic Pandora and going to Winhill. Obviously, I'd say the characters were born in the later part of the war because Ellone has the characteristics of a child aged about 3 - 5 when she was kidnapped from Winhill, and Squall wasn't even born by the point Laguna leaves Winhill. We can also establish by this point that at the war had been continuing for at least a few years.

The game does a pretty poor point of explaining how long exactly Laguna is hunting for Ellone in before ending the war by imprisoning Adel. Though my take on it is that he must have been gone for several years. After all he had time to become an actor in a movie, infiltrate an enemy country, ingratiate himself deeply enough in to the culture and society to then become a member of a resistance movement against the leader of that country. It was also enough time for Raine to give birth to Squall and pass away. Whilst impossible to determine how long Laguna is actually gone for, except that there's been 17 years since Esthar cut off contact (using the original game manual is impossible here as the age listed for Laguna would be his age at the time you play as him, anything otherwise is statistically impossible for him to then be Squall's father. In the "present" of the game's story Laguna would be 44 or 45 years old depending on how birth dates play out on the calender) We can ascertain that the minimum time period he was gone for is 8 months or so. Raine would have to have been pregnant when he left otherwise the story fails.

Cue we cut forwards in the game narrative to the Orphanage where Squall is now 7. At 7 years old it's unlikely he'd have any memories of his mother, if she died when he was very young, If I recall she died in childbirth but even if she died in the first 18 months or so of his life, it'd make no difference. Edea and Cid are the owners of the orphanage and this is where our other war orphans including Ellone who is a couple of years older than all of them comes in and Garden. Due to Time Compression, Ultimecia travels back in time, gives Edea her powers as a sorceress, Squall also appears there aged 17 and between Ultimecia and Squall Edea is given the idea of forming Garden and SeeD. Knowing it is essential to save the future. (God damn time travel hurts my head). At some point around this time, the children with exception of Squall. Seifer and I believe Quistis are adopted.

By the time Cid finds funding and creates Balamb Garden, Edea has disappeared (presumably on her own mission to create the "White SeeD" to safeguard her and Ellone. I presume she'd have had the assistance of Laguna in some way doing so as the story does show in a Squall flashback that "Sis" is gone from the orphanage and that a man came to take her. The man must be Laguna. With no Edea around to run the orphanage, Cid takes the remaining orphans directly in to Garden. SeeD has a high number of orphans, I'm guessing with a whole school to fill Cid must've scooped up a lot of the world's war orphans and begun training them. However, we know SeeD is not exclusively the domain of orphans nor are our intrepid SeeD team the first class of SeeD to ever be brought in to service. SeeD serves from the age of 17 until they are 21, we can deduce from this that with SeeD being the worlds most renown fighting force that there has been at least 5 years of SeeD combat services prior to our team joining the ranks.

The documentation/story I recall seeing refers to Squall having been at Balamb Garden since he was 9. After a while Zell joins them but due to the training to use Guardian Forces, their memories of their shared childhood are gone by the time we get to the present (really bad plot device. I mean I get the principle of "hey these give you amazing power but your long term memory is the price" however, if Squall can remember his training and also facts and skills required such as dancing, military history etc then he'd remember seeing the face of some blonde haired kid every day of his life apart from for like 2 years where he was adopted, he'd remember the name too and I doubt Zell would be that common a name drugs or hypnosis would explain the lack of memory there better, a hypnosis based brainwashing treatment) When they meet Irvine and Selphie they obviously remember neither of them because they've been training with GF for so long (plus it'd be harder to recall the fact that you know someone from around 10 years or more ago considering you never saw them since).

Selphie claims to have found a GF on a training mission in Trabia and junctioned with it despite the fact that the game does explain that GF training only takes place at Balamb, Trabia and Gabaldia provide education and training and that potential candidates to join SeeD are then transferred to Balamb to continue their training and recruitment in to SeeD. Students who are not candidates for SeeD are usually recruited by the Gabaldian military once they leave the Garden institute. So quite how Selphie understood how to junction a GF or use it enough to wipe her memories without a faculty or tutor staff member pulling her up on it is beyond me, what kind of child protection and safeguarding do they have in the world of FFVIII?

Irvine however, is at Gabaldia and never equips a GF so remembers the whole orphanage thing pretty vividly. His lack therefore of mentioning he has an adoptive family is just another example of the games story being cut back because they either forgot to write that in to the story or wanted to ensure it fitted on to 4 discs.

Of course, I think it'd been nice to have this explained better in the game. Hell I'd love to see an expanded remake where the original story gets some of it's plot holes filled in, it could truly become the best game in the series if they did. I'm pretty sure that this is what disappoints me at times about FFVIII the most, the ambiguity of the story on key information.

[Rantz]

Ma Dincht is okay but she's a little arrogant about Triple Triad even after I've beaten her ten times in a row. No, Ma Dincht, have YOU improved YOUR game? :mad2:

[Rin Heartilly]

Let's not forget, there's only 1 bedroom in her house which is huge and she gives it to Zell :ohdear:

Ma Dincht loved her son so much she gave him the only bedroom, where she sleeps...I have no idea.

[Bubba]

Let's not forget, there's only 1 bedroom in her house which is huge and she gives it to Zell :ohdear:

Ma Dincht loved her son so much she gave him the only bedroom, where she sleeps...I have no idea.

They have erm... a complicated relationship.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Ma Dincht loved her son so much she gave him the only bedroom, where she sleeps...I have no idea.

The stack of Timber Maniacs.

"....you've finished sleeping on it!"