#another sum-up: love what-if. picky as hell about the application lol

[auncyen]

ooooh for the trope thing, that one specific kind of canon divergence AU where canon characters are swapped around :D

This is a tough one lmfao I want to rate it higher because I think it's an interesting concept, but my general experience with it has it sitting at D for me in persona fandom. Black Mask aus in p5 fandom usually make me pause, read the summary, and then keep scrolling. I just don't usually find them convincing about why the other character became Black Mask and how they're a threat without the conspiracy or alternatively why they're working with the conspiracy. (ex. one of the most convincing AUs for Akiren's Black Mask/Akechi's PT characterization tacked on new metaverse powers way bigger than what either Akechi or canon Akiren has to explain how Akiren was a huge threat working truly solo.) So I feel like that counts a D. Every so often I'll read the summary and tags, think "sure I'll give that a try" and browse, and I don't think they're all bad... I just still don't have a Black Mask au that's like YEAH, THAT'S TOTALLY HOW IT'D GO DOWN. I'm not the biggest fan of arcanaswap, either, which usually does the entire cast and seems to make characterization shifts to fit what the arcana's usually been associated with. When you examine each character, sure, there are different arcanas you can associate them with (and I've argued for swapping Ann, Makoto and Caroline/Justine around!) If I see the entire cast being changed I assume I'm not going to like it.

That said in general with fandom I find "what if" interesting, and "what if this character ended up in completely different faction because someone else reached out to them (or similar)" interesting. Hell I've toyed with the idea of an AU where Akiren is functionally the Black Mask but working directly with Yaldabaoth, an AU where Haru was fumbling through the Metaverse and giving people something close to psychotic breakdowns but not quite (between it being Haru and her element being psi I wanna say like. she just gives them waking nightmares, some of them might actually look like changes of heart with the victim screaming confessions to the people they've hurt pleading for it to stop) before her father discovered what she was doing and directed her targets with a mix of "see how corrupt this guy is?"/"you must do your part to help the Okumura name too, Haru (UNLESS YOU WANNA GET MARRIED OFF)" until it goes too far. So like I'm not completely opposed, I'm just... skeptical.

I think the best way to sum this up is that I'm more likely to like a roleswap if it's kind of incidental/secondary to the "what if X's life went differently in this way, how would things work out", with a big focus on characterization, and the more characters that are being shuffled around the more likely it is I won't be interested.