Arty megaproject-y high-maintenance fort:
I just turned invasions off for the first time. Feels slightly like cheating, but it was just so *boring* to have all progress stalled for months while four gobbosquads were chilling outside the gates. All is well in Ghosttown (yes, really - I seriously considered switching projects after seeing that name), almost everyone is ecstatic, relatively few are idling. Even the one shameful blemish on our history - a stupid, avoidable flooding accident which resulted in the death of Vabok the Woodcutter - ended well on balance. In life, Vabok was a bit of an eccentric - deeply religious and with only passing aquaintances. He always managed to find something useful to do, avoiding idling and parties, always "having to" haul this or fell that. If all else failed, he was on break. I imagine him going "ooh, I'd love to come to your party, I really would. But, uh, I'm on break. So I can't. Overseer's orders, what can you do..."
After he drowned and the other dwarves failed to bury his submerged, walled-in corpse, he naturally came back as a ghost. However, he must have seen something unexpected in the afterlife - maybe he became disillusioned, or maybe his god gave him a few choice words about underestimating the value of crude dwarven companionship - because now he is a total socialite. He always hangs out by the well (where there's a more or less constant small party, which is fine with me since it keeps the children away from the danger room), and has become something of a mascot for the fort. He is my first ghost ever, so for all I know he might be having horrific effects that will force me to engrave a slab or lose the fort, but I hope I can keep him. He gives this goblin-free hyper-industrious fort some much-needed personality.
Militant shambolic low-maintenance fort:
"The Fish Cleaner vomits"
I find that sentence inexplicably wonderful. It's just so *punk* somehow. The fact that it pretty much sums up the whole fort is... slightly less wonderful, but I'm not abandoning this one. Ever. It is bound to crumble in a gloriously dwarfy way.