#ryoji can play music on minato’s antlers :)

[floaties-for-arsene]

wake up babe ryomina swap au just dropped

more context below hehe :)

I’m gonna try to not go too crazy explaining the AU, so here’s my attempt at a “condensed” outline of the AU!

So the story of Persona 3 happens normally.. up until Ryoji’s revelation. After Ryoji explains the Fall to SEES and presents them with the option to kill him, Minato is insistent that there has to be another way. Eventually he settles on the idea of removing Ryoji’s status as the harbinger of the Fall, and to do so, make Ryoji human.. the problem is, in this act, Ryoji’s powers would transfer to Minato. Hence the swap part of the AU :)

At first everyone is really hesitant about this, especially Ryoji; he’d much rather put himself at risk than Minato. But he persists and eventually the team agrees to trust him. Ryoji and Minato relentlessly plan to ensure that things go as well as they can. On New Year’s, Ryoji initiates a sort of sharing of powers between the two; since the two exist within each other, I’m really leaning into their out of body connection for this.. if that makes any sense. When the swap happens, Minato disappears, and Ryoji blacks out.

When Ryoji recovers, SEES seeks out Minato in the Dark Hour. Ryoji is distressed that he can no longer sense Minato’s presence and begins to worry that things went terribly wrong. Ryoji is still weak and it’s soon apparent that he’s unable to summon a persona… and being in such danger, as well as being separated from Minato and dealing with a potential massive failure to protect someone so dear to him, he begins an existential crisis. This conflict eventually leads to Ryoji’s awakening, accepting his mortality and strengthening his resolve to fulfill his end of the plan and have faith in Minato… and when Ryoji awakens to his persona, he feels a familiar, comforting presence :)

So tldr, Minato becomes Ryoji’s persona, and the team work to beat Nyx after taking away her little pawn. I have waaaayyy more I could write about the rest of the AU and I even have epilogue stuff planned but I’ve already rambled enough and I mostly just wanted to put these designs out here since I’m super proud of them lol