My brother told me to make the Delete This meme. The Persona 4 reference was baked into the file name and of course there would be a persona 4 reference because it has been living rent free in my brain recently!
Originally this was just gonna be an AU where Yosuke replaces the shrine fox. It then escalated into: what if all party members except Yu were some sort of mythological crearture or cryptid.
Then I began to write and I guess I now have a massive AU fanfic in the works-
To talk about the AU a bit more, it'll be very similiar to the standard P4G story, except with a focus on folklore. Yosuke is still the Magician Arcana, but his mother will fulfill the role of the Hermit and the actual fox who takes over the shrine. Unfortunately this does mean the shrine fox itself does not exist in this AU.
As for the main cast we have:
Yu - an ordinary human. I thought this fit the best for him. He's going to still be an animal whisperer with an added interest in the occult.
Yosuke - A kitsune and shrine fox in training. Liberty is taken with all of the mythologies to some degree, to fit the narrative and also mirror the fact that folklore tends to have both some kernels of truth and a lot of exaggeration. Yosuke has 3 tails despite not being, you know, 300 years old.
Chie and Yukiko - They are both Tanuki, Yukiko's family of course running the inn for generations. Chie moved into inaba when she was basicially a very young child, and them both being Tanuki adds to them both being friends.
Kanji - Kanji is a werewolf, as is the rest of his family. Werewolves are obviously aggressive in folklore, but i decided to twist it a bit. They're only really dangerous during a blood or supermoon.
Rise - Rise is a Siren. Self-explanatory. I mostly based her appearance on a Common Lionfish. Once again, there's both a duality when it comes to the myths of Sirens. Their song charming people is a side-effect, it is actually an evolutionary adaption to communicate over long distances, similiar to whales. However this manifested in legends because some sirens certainly abused this unintended side-effect. They do not eat humans though.
Naoto - Naoto is a bakeneko. This is mostly based on the myth of some cats becoming sapient and helping their owners. Fits well with the Fortune arcana. They also have a split tail, which is seen as an omen amongst bakeneko.
Teddie - Teddie is already Teddie, and I thought it to be best to keep him as he is already. Everyone is confinced he's the strangest one, even though they're all out of the ordinary.
Overall, this AU operates on a similiar logic as VTMN, where there is a masquerade. Cryptids and Yokai prefer to keep themselves as hidden as possible, as to not be hunted. Humans are generally unaware of them and the magic around them, both linked to a general loss in believe and the obliviousness people have.
I hope to explore a lot more of p4g, just with a new twist. I usually write these things at a slow pace though, so it might take like ages until i actually post any writing about it. I like writing the whole thing up to prevent waits between chapters and burnout/losing interest.
"An analogy. You have a maze, and you have a handful of bugs. You put the bugs in the maze, and you leave. Given infinite time, one of the bugs WILL find a way out, if they just erratically try and try. This is why they called us Iterators."
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Persona 4
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hanamura Yosuke/Seta Souji, Hanamura Yosuke/Narukami Yu
Characters: Hanamura Yosuke, Seta Souji, Narukami Yu, Tatsumi Kanji
Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, They both need a Hug, rated teen because of language, Kanji is only briefly in this , Internalized Homophobia
Summary:
Three times were Yosuke and Yu leaned on eachother for support and one time they realise their feelings for eachother.
"Vergessen ist dein wahrer Name... Nun ersetzt durch ein Spektakel."
"Forgotten is your true name... now replaced by a spectacle."
Now, I am strongly conflicted on the recently created 'Direwolves' by Collossal. On one hand, technology like this COULD be theoreticially used to help current species which are going extinct or recently extinct species by perhaps increasing the avaiability of their genetic pool. HOWEVER, the creation of these 'Direwolves' proves that we need to be incredibly careful with this technology.
These animals are neither direwolves, if anything they are their own species or a genitically modified form of a greywolf. They do not actually have that many things in common with actual direwolves either, from what i could tell (they look more like a game of thrones/media version of one).
I usually try to stay out of debates like this, but as a person who grew up loving extinct animals, this pains me to see. These animals have no current niche in the modern ecosystem neither do they resemble an actual Aenocyon Dirus from what I can tell. I encourage everyone to look up peer reviewed studies about these animals and if you want to know more about what Collossal actually created, a lot of people have made great videos about the topic. (Hank Green, etc.)
Regardless of my concerns regarding the creation of them, I hope these animals live a long and fulfilling life.
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