The Wonders of Generic Units

Aren't generics great? I'm not just talking about Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm talking about stuff in general. I think generics make for great possibilities when it comes to fanfiction, world building, and roleplay. Think about it: You've got an established character design you get attached to over time as it fights for you, that frequently has no personality of its own. You are then free to come up with your own interpretation on the design, creating a character who is simultaneously original and familiar.

Take a look at some of the characters we had fun with back at Zoofights. A surprisingly large chunk of them were generics given personality: Sarah, Celestia, Skeiron, Spy (although, in-game, for a generic he has a lot of personality), Stella, James, Erebus, Pech, Del, and Jonesy, to name the most frequent. Plus there was Alex, who was a similar idea except based off a single character instead of a unit, and also Zephyrus and Oceanus, who show what happens when you take a character with absolutely no personality and assign him a shockingly deep one.

One of the things I like about the original Final Fantasy is how you're able to put your own spin on the characters and story with your imagination. The archetypal example is of course 8-Bit Theater, and a lot of FF1 fan work falls into the same routine. Hell, even I did it once. But last summer I made my own interpretation of the tale, creating one of the longest-running subplots in the process. I mention this because a month or two ago I came across a fanfic that was a retelling of FF1 with personalities for the Light Warriors and Fiends. The writing quality was average but it had some very original ideas. What I found interesting about it was that its interpretation of the Fiends - it was a bizarro version of what I did for Zoofights! In the fanfic, Lich, Marilith, and Tiamat are all friendly, and the true villain is Kraken, who is manipulating everything behind the scenes. In Zoofights, Lich, Marilith, and Tiamat were all rotten to the core, but Kraken turned out to be a pretty nice guy (and ultimately he's the only Fiend to survive Zoofights). And that's why I like FF1's creative potential - two wildly different interpretations of the characters that both manage to work.

Oh, and I reached a stage on FFT that presents a drastic jump in difficulty and is apparently infamous for doing so based on what I've read. TIME TO GRIND.