30-day VGC: My favorite character

At first, I had a difficult time deciding what my “favorite” character could possibly be from all of video games. After decades of gaming and who knows how many titles and characters, there were simply too many to choose from. Then as I woke up this morning it came to me. There was one particular character that has shaped me throughout my life that I wanted to talk about.

Let’s talk about white mage from Final Fantasy.


_White mage & wizard © Square Enix_

Strangely, unlike a lot of other characters in video gaming, especially with today's heavily narrative games, white mage is a blank slate. But that's part of why she (he?) was so important. _Final Fantasy_ was one of the first games I remember picking out myself. I remember distinctly having to beg my father for it so I could get it for my birthday, and I remember him being skeptical about whether or not it would be an appropriate game for me. To be honest, I don't even remember how I became fixated on it. But it came out just before my birthday in 1990, so it was good timing. I was on summer vacation from school, so I had plenty of time to dig into the tens of hours it would take to complete the game.

But let’s get back to white mage in particular. White mage was my first encounter with a female-coded character in video games. (Arguably Samus Aran might have left an impression first if I had actually been able to beat Metroid back in the day, but oh well.) It’s arguable whether or not white mage is even female in the first Final Fantasy, as noted by the fan wiki:

Unlike the other five jobs, which are all largely meant to be male, the gender of the White Mage class is never specified. Fans have typically asserted over the years that the character depicted is female, though the sprites, particularly in earlier versions, are androgynous, leaving the decision ultimately up to the player. This concern was finally addressed in the PSP port, where the promoted White Wizard is significantly “feminine” in comparison to the other sprites. (source

At any rate, I found her sprite more feminine than the others as apparently a lot of others did, which was good enough for me in the era of impressionist 8-bit blocks. The best part was not just that white mage was female, but also she was an equal. The other characters in the party (mute as they were) and the story itself never remarked on her femininity. In fact, I was able to make her the leader of my little ragtag bunch, and no one complained. White mage just did what she wanted to do, and everyone respected her for it (in my headcanon, anyways). No one told her that because she was the healer she had to stand in the back and be passive.

I’m not sure which came first, whether this role as white mage formed my ideal as a leader or if I was just acting some as-yet-unrealized portion of my personality. But I believe wholeheartedly that the role of leader white mage describes my management/leadership style to this day. I’m firm, and I lead from the front. But I am also caring and nurturing. I stand with my people and make sure to tend to their wounds when they require respite.

Final Fantasy in particular was a formative game for me because it was my first exposure to a game where I could get heavily invested in the story and the characters. But in particular white mage created my first power fantasy that felt like me. Until that point, every video game role model I had seen was very much male and unlike me. I suppose this might be where I lost interest in later Final Fantasy entries… they abandoned the blank slate Warriors of Light for specific characters, and while well-written, I had a hard time mapping my identity in to those later games, especially since starting with VII the title characters almost exclsuviely became male. (Though Rydia and Celes were pretty bad-ass in their own rights.)

It actually wouldn’t be until Final Fantasy XIV that I would take the opportunity to write my own identity into the story of Final Fantasy again. I don’t remember what got me into that game, I think it may’ve just been the game du jour of friends at the time, but as soon as I found out that I could a) play a white mage, and b) acquire those iconic white mage robes that I got really into it.

And I succeeded in filling that role I adored.


_My white mage, Kittitas © Square Enix_