Persona 3 Redux

Art done by xeeoh.art on instagram!

The character in the middle is my OC Kotone Yuki! She’s Makoto and Fuuka’s daughter from the future! If you like this art please check out the artist on Instagram! And if you want to read my WIP story featuring Kotone you can from the link below!

Link to the fanfic!:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60811984

Welcome everyone to my very first authors commentary post! This post will be covering chapter 1 of my fanfic Persona 3 Redux! If you haven’t read it you can read it from the link above! Reading any further without knowing what happens in chapter 1 would be pretty confusing I imagine, and it will contain spoilers for the chapter.

Let’s first start by talking about our main character, the future daughter of Makoto and Fuuka: Kotone Yuki!

Kotone’s character wasn’t too hard to come up with. I firstly wanted to make her different than Fuuka and Makoto and still share some similarities personality wise to the two while being her own person. I originally wanted to have her struggle with deep anger issues but I think that idea has been sorta scrapped. The only time her anger has truly been shown was in chapter 15: “Two Paths, One Mission”

Originally, both of her parents were going to be alive, and be in a healthy relationship. Now, I think that approach doesn’t properly punish Makoto for choosing to kill Ryoji, and it doesn’t allow for Kotone to really have any issues. It just seemed too good to be the “bad future.”

Next I decided to have Fuuka and Makoto not be on good terms. Constant arguing and bickering, maybe even Makoto being a distant father. While better for story potential than the former vision it definitely would alienate readers. We spend so much time playing as Makoto and seeing him like this would hurt a lot. And my fic would attract people who like Makoto x Fuuka (I love it too!) Who would want to see their OTP be in a loveless marriage?

Finally I decided on my final vision. Makoto died from apathy syndrome while Kotone was still a child, leaving Fuuka alone to raise their daughter. This allows for many things.

1. Makoto is properly punished for choosing to kill Ryoji while still allowing him and Fuuka to be together.

2. It allows Kotone to have family issues which would in turn lead to her own insecurities.

3. It makes Kotone’s timeline truly feel like the bad future it’s meant to represent.

Originally, my plan was to have Kotone not like her father. Now… this causes quite a few issues the first being she wouldn’t be very likable. Getting readers to care about an OC is already hard enough… why shoot myself in the foot and have her be antagonistic towards the main character? So I tuned down that personality trait. While she doesn’t not like him she won’t go out of her way to seek out alone time with him or be next to him if she has other options.

Now, let’s talk about Fuuka!

Truth be told, nothing much changed with her. Once I decided on my vision for Kotone’s past her role became blindingly obvious. If her husband were to succumb to apathy syndrome what would be in character for Fuuka to do?

Fuuka is smart. She’s proficient with computers, coding, hacking, really anything to do with technology. Why not put those skills to use? That was when I decided to make her a scientist/researcher for the Kirijo group. Their experiments require the use of many different machines and Fuuka has the skills and drive to help.

This allowed for her to be away from Kotone a lot leading to their strained relationship. Fuuka obviously loves Kotone and only wants the best for her. But Kotone is a teenager, and what do teenagers see? Mom is always gone. Mom is always working. Mom couldn’t care less.

This allows Kotone to realize how wrong she was once she’s sent to the past and form a friendship with past Fuuka.

Now, if I could rewrite chapter 1 I think I would. I like most of the things in it, but I’d like to change how cliche the opening is. When I was first writing the chapter I didn’t think much about how cliche it was but holy crap rereading it I always cringe…

We start off the story with a character waking up to an alarm… next the character gets scolded by a parent. Then she looks in the mirror and we learn she’s a fairly attractive person who gets attention from boys but see’s herself as inadequate/worthless.

AHHHHH WHY!!!!!

It’s really not that bad but it hurts sometimes. Hopefully I didn’t lose any would be readers from that opening…

Now, onto plot!

When I first started I didn’t have much plan with the plot. Just have her time travel back and let the characters deal with it… and that’s what I did. I believe every character reacted the way they should have… but I think I’m getting ahead of myself. Gotta stick with chapter 1!

Chapter 1 doesn’t really have much plot. Just kinda showing you what Kotone’s life is like before she travels in time. Father’s dead, she has some mommy issues, aunts and uncles who helped raise her are dead, she doesn’t like herself, is depressed (could have done a better job showing that), wants to be a hero/someone of importance, and has a boy she likes but is too self conscious to accept his feelings.

The time travel though is where stuff gets weird. Now, originally I didn’t have a plan for how she’d do it… just that it’d happen before The Fall. I figured out how I want it to happenbut the problem is finding a way to fit that explanation into the events of the first chapter. I obviously didn’t foreshadow it and going back to edit such a major part of the plot is a little tacky. So I’ll just suck it up and find a way to explain it in a way that makes sense. Obviously, I can’t reveal how it happened yet but you should at least know that in the story’s canon it wasn’t random!

So I think overall chapter 1 is a serviceable start to the series. I think my writing has improved drastically since chapter 1 (I rewrote a lot of it but stayed true to the original events) I actually stay in the same tense now, I don’t write out sound effects, and I think I don’t make everything so on-the-nose now.

Shiomi and Minato were additions that I never really fleshed out and for good reason… they weren’t all that important. They’re kind of just plot devices. Describing them in detail in chapter 1 would be pointless because they aren’t major characters. They don’t go to the past with Kotone. They’re her friends from her future that motivate her to continue forward.

Their names are references to Makoto’s manga name and FeMC’s last name from the stage play. Something that fans would appreciate.

I think that covers most of my thoughts about the first chapter. Other than the opening if I could change one thing it would be to make apathy syndrome even more of a threat. I show that some civilians have it and one of her classmates succumbed to it but I think for being right before The Fall I could have shown a lot more people with it.

I think I should make it a goal to use this blog more! Mainly so my followers and anyone curious from Ao3 can know when a new chapter is in development!

So starting from today I’ll include posts for whenever I finish an outline! The current working title for the chapter is “Enemy’s Brutal” and I imagine it’ll be over 5000 words at an absolute minimum. I don’t want to necessarily spoil what happens in the chapter BUT if anyone actually wants to read the outline I’ll include a couple of pages from it within my Outline reveal post and future reveal posts will have snippets from that respective chapter’s outline.

I don’t know how much traction my story’s tumblr blog gets from my Ao3 readers but if there’s at least one person out there that likes my story enough to follow its blog then I’ll ensure you get the best content drops possible!

Stay tuned for author commentary on Chapter 1! There you’ll learn about how this project came to be and my original intentions regarding the story. I hope you all have a great day/night!

Read the fanfic from this link!

A/N: Italics convey thoughts!

“Ah… where am I?”

Makoto looked at the sky, noticing it was darker than before.

“Ah… I see. I went to hell… oddly comfortable though.”

Makoto turned his head to the left and saw a sleeping Fuuka above him. As he sat up, he inspected where his head had previously been resting.

“Her… lap?”

She was completely out, her face at peace.

“It's pretty late. Why did she stay with me so long?”

“Hey, Fuuka!” Makoto shook the sleeping girl.

“Hmm… Ma…koto-kun?”

Fuuka opened her eyes and immediately noticed how late it was.

“Oh no! Why didn’t any staff wake us up?”

“Oh shit…! Tartarus!”

“Hey, Fuuka, we gotta leave… now!”

Makoto got up and took the sleepy girl by the hand. Opening the courtyard door, he was met by a security guard.

“What are you kids doing here so late? We were about to lock this place up.”

“We fell asleep…”

“That could have ended terribly…”

“Well… I’m just glad I didn’t lock this place up with kids still here. You could have gotten me fired.”

“We’re sorry about that, sir!” Fuuka said apologetically.

“Yeah, yeah… Just get outta here.”

Makoto and Fuuka walked out of the school, still holding hands.

“My parents are going to kill me…”

“I’ll call Kirijo-senpai for you. She’ll put in a good word.”

“Thanks, Makoto-kun.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Fuuka looked down and noticed she was still holding Makoto’s hand.

“Oh!” She pulled her hand away. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Um… I was holding your hand pretty tight.”

“Eh, it didn’t hurt or anything.”

Fuuka took out her handbag to ensure she didn’t forget anything inside the school when she noticed her phone and bento box. Taking out her phone, she saw many missed calls from her parents, and checking the bento box, she saw the cookie she baked on the top.

“Oh, I forgot I made that.”

“Made what?”

“The cookie Kotone-chan asked me to make for you.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Don’t worry. You don’t have to eat the cookie if you don’t want to. I’ll just… throw it away…”

The security guard from before locked the front door of the school, and Makoto, noticing her despondent expression, said something oddly bold.

“Wait, no… I’ll eat it… The whole thing.”

“Seriously? But my food made you sick!”

“I know, but seeing you so… Listen, I just want to eat it.”

“Don’t think about how I feel! I don’t want you to get sick again.”

“It’s fine, Fuuka. I made a promise… remember?”

Makoto walked up to her, took the cookie out of the bento box, and inspected it. It wasn’t uniform, but other than that it looked like a normal chocolate chip cookie. As he readied his body for another travesty, he bit into the cookie.

“Was it good…?”

“Yeah, it was surprisingly normal. What did you put in it?”

“I used a box mix.”

“Thank God…” Makoto sighed in relief as he ate the rest of the cookie.

“Looks like Kotone’s revenge was nice and sweet…”

“Oh, I forgot I added a special ingredient.”

Makoto turned to Fuuka in shock.

“And that was…?”

Makoto’s stomach started to growl.

“Laxatives to help get your bowels moving! Kotone-chan told me it’s necessary to empty your bowels after a hearty meal. I hoped you would have been able to eat the full bento box, though, so I’m not sure what’ll happen on an empty stomach…”

Makoto felt an odd feeling in his body. He rushed to the front entrance of the school only to find the door locked.

“SHIT!!!”

-//-

If you’d like to read more check out the full story here!