My Headcanons for the Original Final Fantasy

• Because the Warriors of Light have so little characterization that they are essentially blank slates, I came up with my own details about mine while I was playing the game:
  • Mikhail (my warrior/knight) is a brash young knight-errant from Cornelia who is desperate to become a hero. He is somewhat narcissistic with something of a legendary hero complex, but, at the same time, genuinely cares about his world and the people in it. (That, however, doesn't make the "legendary hero" thing any less annoying for the others in his party.) He chases skirts and thinks he's a way better lover than he really is, much to Clair's and Garnet's amusement.
  • Clair (my thief/ninja) is kind of ineffectual, more of a thief-wannabe than a seasoned Locke/Yuffie/Zidane type. Their sex is unknown to the rest of the party, and they respond to questions about their gender with a shrug and a genuine "I don't know." (I decided very early on that Clair was nonbinary, because I couldn't figure out what gender they were intended to be, if any. The thief-wannabe detail comes from their lack of a Steal command.) They have a lot of courage, but are very physically weak and dependent on their fellow Warriors of Light to keep them alive; this exacerbates their inferiority complex borne from a childhood of depending on adults to protect them from bullies. Through training and becoming a ninja, their self-esteem improves, but that nagging voice that they'll never be good enough never disappears entirely.
  • Garnet (my white mage/white wizard) is quiet and secretive, and has something of an air of mystery. The other Warriors of Light project various traits onto Garnet to try to make up for what they don't know: the three of them have decided that Garnet was a young girl, innocent and sweet (which often leads Mikhail to censor his occasional lewd comments about women), and was probably some sort of genius child prodigy. What a shock it was when the tiny little mage girl they thought they knew transformed into a tall, androgynously beautiful, male white wizard with long, flowing crimson locks and a sardonic sense of humor! They were right, however, about Garnet being a child prodigy—he possessed magical talent from a very young age, though he had to disguise himself as a girl to practice white magic due to cultural ideas about white mage being a feminine profession.
  • Vivi (my black mage/black wizard), likewise, has little in common with his FF9 namesake beyond his looks and magical prowess. Out of all four Warriors of Light, he has known Mikhail the longest, having started adventuring with him after running away from his abusive parents at the age of twelve, two or three years before the start of the game. He goes through puberty over the course of the game, growing into a tall young man with golden hair and some questionable ideas about women picked up from his older travel companion (ideas that are a frequent subject of white wizard Garnet's snark).
• The Garland in FF9 and the Garland in the original FF are the same person. Moreover, the planet where the original FF is set is Terra, many millennia before the events of FF9.