Fanfic / Wanted It To Be A Game

An alternate universe role-swap fic set during the events of Persona 4, written by SkylaDoragono.

The roles reversed: the hero plays the villain, while the villain plays the hero. What makes one the other, and how easily can fate be manipulated to serve one's own ends? Originally written for NaNoWriMo 2012 and was continued and finished as the author's 2013 and 2014 projects; started before Golden was released.

You can read it here.

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Wanted it to be a Game provides examples of:

• Accidental Murder:
  • Chie's death is described by Seito as such. He just wanted her to leave him alone, and accidentally shoved her into the TV.
  • Namatame accidentally shoves Mayumi Yamano down a flight of stairs during an argument, killing her. He strings her up like the other corpses, hoping it gets passed off as one of the serial killers, but Adachi catches him and he soon falls under suspicion for all the murders.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Saki Konishi, Sayoko Uehara, Kou Ichijo, and Ryotaro Dojima go from random shmucks to Persona wielders in this game.
  • Rise Kujikawa was the team's navigator in the original game. Here, she becomes a front-line fighter far earlier than Arena.
  • Adachi is the Wild Card, meaning he can use more Personas than just Izanagi.
• Adaptational Heroism: Due to the role-reversal, Adachi's characterization in this fic is this. He begins as misanthropic and self-centered as he was in the game, then eventually upgrades to The Anti-Nihilist.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: In the game, Adachi's only interactions with Saki involved him flirting with her, only to then murder her when she disgustedly turned down his advances. In the fic, Adachi's lust for her is completely absent, and they have a tenacious, but ultimately much healthier platonic friendship.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • The protagonist, named Seito Souzen in this fic, is this as he takes Adachi's canon role. He's even worse than Adachi was in canon, as while Adachi was content to let events play out after his second murder and let his Unwitting Pawn Namatame do all the heavy lifting, Seito goes out of his way to escalate the carnage as time goes on; by the time he's caught, he's racked up a body count of seven kills (Chie, Yosuke, Naoki, Ai, Morooka, Eri, and Shu) plus two attempted murders (Yukiko and Sayoko) compared to canon Adachi's two kills (Yamano and Saki) plus one attempted (Mitsuo).
  • Kou Ichijo is Seito's accomplice.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • Adachi, when compared to both his canon self and Yu Narukami (whose role he takes). He lacks the insane natural talent his canon self possessed with Personas, and his inability to form bonds throughout the first half of the story stunts his growth as a Wild Card. He does eventually grow out of this after he develops as a Wild Card, though.
  • Chie and Yosuke never develop the power of Persona due to being the first two casualties of the story.
• Adapted Out: Mitsuo Kubo had a somewhat prominent role in Persona 4 as a copycat killer who served as a filler villain between Rise and Naoto's dungeons. Here, he's nowhere to be seen.
• Adults Are Useless: Played straight at first with Adachi being dragged along by Saki to save the kidnapping victims, but subverted later after he gets Character Development and Sayoko and Dojima get Personas.
• The Alleged Car: Adachi's "car" is a hunk of junk that could fall apart at any second.
• Alternate Universe: Explicitly stated. Izanami tells Adachi in no few words that there are dozens of timelines repeating the Inaba scenario and the one where the fic events take place is the only one where Adachi did the right thing.
• Anti-Villain: Kou Ichijo genuinely thought the TV world was a safe haven, as Seito manipulated him into believing it and throwing Yukiko, Naoto, Kanji, and Rise in. When he realizes the truth, he's horrified.
• Armor-Piercing Response: During the Iwatodai trip, when Kashiwagi's advances on Adachi push him too far, he angrily tells her that "I'd rather have the attention of a woman that respects herself more than this." The outburst causes her to seriously reflect on her own mistakes and actions.
• Ascended Extra: Due to Death by Adaptation, several of the social links in the original game are either changed or outright given to other characters, which leads to most examples of this trope.
  • Saki, instead of being the murderer's first victim, becomes a founding member of the Investigation Team and Adachi's Empress social link, replacing Margaret.
  • Kanji's mother, while still only a side character, becomes Adachi's Chariot Link.
  • Yuu Minami bonds with Adachi after his mother's death, becoming his Hanged Man social link.
  • The unnamed Nimono Lady, who originally appeared as a side character in Adachi's Golden social link, becomes his Temperance S.Link as he grows to understand her loneliness and grows to reluctantly love her.
  • Sayoko, in the original game, is the Devil Arcana social link. Here, she also becomes the navigator of the investigation team.
  • Namatame's case becomes the catalyst for Adachi's character development and eventually becomes his Tower social link in place of Shu.
  • Kashiwagi, who originally had no prominent story role, receives much-needed character development during the Iwatodai school trip and becomes Adachi's Moon social link.
• Byronic Hero: While Adachi fills the role of protagonist in this story, it doesn't change his propensity for narcissism, nor his misanthropic view of the world. He gets more optimistic and less misanthropic after Character Development, but it never goes totally away.
• Canon Character All Along: One of the Velvet Room attendants, Gabriel, turns out to be a version of the protagonist from the Accomplice ending in Golden.
• Chekhov's Gun: Yosuke leaves a call to Saki saying he has evidence proving who killed Chie. Eventually, Adachi realizes the evidence might still be out there and finds a Junes security tape showing Seito pushing Chie into the TV.
• Cigarette of Anxiety: Dojima needs a very understandable smoke after his nephew is exposed as a murderer.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Seito is still hung up over the death of his twin sister when he was a child, and it's implied that it is one if not the main cause of dissatisfaction with the world. When he discovers that the ghost of his sister visited Adachi and became his Death social link, he doesn't take it well.
• Darker and Edgier: The fic is darker than the original game, with Adachi providing a far more cynical viewpoint compared to the much lighter, comedic tone of the game. Yosuke and Chie, two of the most prominent comic relief characters, die early on, many of the comedic moments are pared down or removed altogether, and the Killer gets a much higher body count.
• Death by Adaptation: Yosuke and Chie both die early and are Seito's victims. Naoki, Ai, Eri, and Shu, who were part of the game's original social links, also die as victims.
• Demoted to Extra: Yosuke and Chie, who were among the earliest party members to join in the original game, are reduced to little more than Seito's murder victims.
• Didn't See That Coming: Even Izanami is thrown off when Adachi becomes the hero and Seito becomes the killer instead of the other way around.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: Mayumi Yamano and Kinshiro Morooka switch places; Mayumi is accidentally killed in an argument with Namatame instead of deliberately killed as the killer's first victim, while Morooka is Seito's fifth victim instead of the victim of a copycat killing by Mitsuo Kubo.
• Duel Boss: The other members of the Investigation Team are forced to remain behind and hold the line against enemy Shadows, forcing Adachi to face Seito one-on-one.
• Evil Feels Good: Seito admits this is why he kept killing after he'd pushed in the people who could have exposed him.
• Evil Nephew: Seito is one to Dojima, being the perpetrator of the serial murder case he's trying to solve. Dojima dreads having to explain this to his sister when the dust settles.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Adachi and Saki spend the bulk of the story at odds with each other, in part due to Adachi's apathy contrasting with Saki's determination to solve the case. However, as the fic goes on, they eventually warm up to each other and become best friends.
• Foreshadowing: If you pay attention to Seito's actions during the story, you'll notice he hangs out with Kou a lot. Kou is the accomplice/dupe of this story.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Adachi calls Seito out on trying to excuse his killings by saying it was the only thing that made him feel alive after his sister died.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: During his battle with Shadow Saki, Adachi outright punches the real Saki in the face to get her to admit her flaws and accept her shadow.
• Good Counterpart: The endgame reveals that this story's Adachi is one to the rest of the multiverse, as he's the only one who didn't become a Serial Killer.
• Got Me Doing It: Teddie's bear puns slip into Adachi's mind without him noticing. He finally notices he's using bear puns in chapter 33 and immediately references this trope.
• He Knows Too Much: Yosuke's final phone call has him claim to Saki that he knows who killed Chie. When he naturally turns up dead, the police assume he was silenced permanently. It also turns out that this is why Seito attempted to kill Yukiko; she was the only one who knew he was with Chie on the day she died and could have fingered him as a suspect.
• I Choose to Stay: In the end, Adachi chooses to stay in Inaba with his new friends.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Despite Adachi being the main hero and Chie and Yosuke dying early on, Yukiko, Kanji, Rise, Teddie and Naoto all still join the investigation team as they did in canon.
  • A copycat killer still takes the credit for the murders and rejects their shadow. Only since Mitsuo was Adapted Out, it's Nanatame instead.
• Intro-Only Point of View: Seito has a couple of viewpoint segments in Chapters 2 and 3 as he arrives in Inaba, discovers his powers when he accidentally kills Chie, and then decides to become a Serial Killer.
• Lethal Chef: Yukiko, as in canon. Kanji outright calls her cooking bad enough to defeat Izanami if she had to eat it.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: The party is forced to split in half when Nanako is kidnapped and Adachi accidentally shoves Dojima into the TV world in the latter's rage; Adachi, Saki, and Naoto go after Dojima while Teddie, Rise, Kanji, and Yukiko go after Nanako.
• The Load: Adachi lags behind the rest of the Investigation Team due to not having time to train inside the TV World, and not unlocking his Wild Card ability until halfway into the story. Once he does get his Wild Card ability, though, he quickly grows out of this.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Seito's immediate reaction to realizing he killed Chie is internal horror. Unfortunately, this abates when he realizes there's no evidence of his actions and he can become a serial killer with no one the wiser.
• Mythology Gag: In addition to the canon references to Persona 3 during the Iwatodai trip, the inn the students stay at is mentioned to have had several mirrors broken with no discernible cause, leading to its temporary closure; those mirrors were broken by the Persona 3 protagonists in order to defeat the Lovers shadow.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Adachi's reaction to seeing Kanji on the Midnight Channel is a flat "No. Just no. No. No. Nope. Hell no. Oh what the fuck, no. Forget it. No. Way."
• Outliving One's Offspring: Dojima has a harrowing near miss with this trope when his daughter is kidnapped and temporarily killed.
• Papa Wolf: Dojima, as in canon. When Nanako is kidnapped, his fear for her is so great that he awakens to his Persona and manages to run a dungeon all in the same day when the others generally need quite a bit of bed rest before they're fighting fit.
• Point of Divergence: According to Izanami, the diverging point here is Adachi not having killed Saki.
• Police Are Useless:
  • Adachi often thinks this about his coworkers, with the exception of Dojima, of course.
  • Pointed out by multiple others, as with the exception of Adachi, no one else in the police department can properly investigate the murders happening.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Adachi's investigation team, consisting of himself the Butt-Monkey new detective, a Junes employee, an inn heiress, a bitty private detective, a bruiser, a retired idol, a bear, and a nurse.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Adachi tears Seito apart during their final showdown.
  Adachi: You really think that's all there is to being alive, hunh? You're pathetic. Y-you... you think the world owes you everything just because you lost someone important? You're nothing but a little brat throwing a tantrum! Yes, I am sorry what happened to you; no one deserves to lose someone close to them. I seriously hate how this world is; where you give and give and suddenly everything is ripped out from under you and you're left in the dust. Sometimes it's your own fault, sometimes it's because of circumstances beyond your control, and it feels like the world at large just doesn't give a shit! But... in the end, we're only responsible for ourselves. If I learned anything this year, it's that only we can reach out and grasp that bright spot that's there just for us, whether it's in a person or a place. You said before I changed only as a bid for power; maybe that's true, but in the end I found so much more than just power. I found a place I belonged, with people that I can actually say I care about and would do anything for. But you didn't even try. You wallowed in your own misery and let the despair eat you alive until there was nothing left but a hollow shell. You know why all those people you killed kept coming to you? Do you know why Nanako wanted to reach out to you? Why me and Rise and all of us did?! Because we could see the emptiness in you, and were trying to find a way to fill it, but it's you who wouldn't let us do that!
• Reassigned to Antarctica: How Adachi ended in Inaba in this fic's backstory. He accidentally killed a perp whose girlfriend has political influences, and the girl complained about Adachi's Trigger-Happy tendencies. Because the guy really was guilty of the crime, the police couldn't fire Adachi because he technically did the right thing, but because they were pressured into "taking action" they just drastically cut down his salary and transferred him to the most rural town they had under their jurisdiction.
• Role Swap AU: Adachi becomes The Hero while Seito becomes the Killer. In addition, Yosuke becomes the second victim while Saki takes his original role as the classmate who wants to find out who killed him.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Adachi's reaction after seeing Naoto's and Kanji's dungeon. He has to be dragged inside by Saki and Yukiko.
• Ship Tease: Naoto/Kanji gets teased a few times throughout the fic, with Kanji retaining his canonical crush on her and Naoto in turn being repeatedly flustered by Kanji (particularly when she witnesses his Shadow).
• Small Town Boredom: Both Adachi and Seito make this comment in the beginning, with Adachi continuing to do so for a while afterward.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Saki survives and goes on to be an Ascended Extra.
• The Stinger: The epilogue shows Sho Minazuki ready to undertake his own journey.
• Stupid Good: Gabriel, a version of Yu Narukami who took the Accomplice ending, did so out of a well-intentioned but suicidally naïve attempt to redeem his Adachi.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: Adachi, Saki, Sayoko, and Ryotaro Dojima are now members of the Investigation Team, replacing Seito, Yosuke and Chie.
• Title Drop: Seito taunts Adachi during their confrontation by asking, "I thought you wanted this to be a game?"
• Token Adult: Adachi serves as this to the Investigation Team, being the only adult party member until Sayoko and Dojima join.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Adachi spends the first half of the fic as a nihilistic, self-centered jerk who clearly doesn't care for the rest of the Investigation Team, to the point where Saki has to essentially browbeat him into doing anything useful. However, after facing his shadow self, he becomes much more open, friendlier and optimistic.
• Trigger-Happy: Adachi likes to use his gun a bit too much, and at some point he claims that it was the reason he joined the police force in first place. He is hung up on how he cannot use it as much as he would like because he is too broke to buy his own ammo and cannot use the one he gets assigned after being reprimanded for "wasting" it.
• The Unchosen One: Ameno-Sagiri confirms that Adachi was never meant to bear the responsibilities of hope. He only ended up becoming a hero through a quirk of fate.
• Unwitting Pawn: Like canon Adachi, Seito manipulates someone into believing the TV world is a safe place so they'll put people in there to keep them safe. In this case, he chooses Kou Ichijou.
• Villainous Breakdown: Izanami has one when she realizes that Adachi of all people is about to defeat her.
• Would Hurt a Child: Seito takes perverse pleasure when his seven-year-old cousin Nanako comes up on the Midnight Channel, and fourteen-year-old Shu Nakajima is the last of his victims. This notably makes him even worse than the canon Adachi, who at the very least showed some regret for her death in the Bad ending where Yu throws Namatame in the TV.