#hello brainrot thy name is p3

[wizard-finix]

director's commentary for stygian ringlet??? 👀👀👀

OH BOY WHERE TO EVEN START

jesus christ this fic is easily the longest fic I've written to date. If you count Ghost of Mementos, it's OVER 70K WORDS TOTAL. AND IT'S STILL GOING. I've never written anything so long before. THIS THING STARTED AS A ONESHOT AND IT JUST E X P L O D E D

Actually this whole fic started after I was looking around on AO3 for PT Minato fics, and while I was bored during class I doodled what I thought Yu and Minato's masks would look like. I wanted their outfits to have some meaning to them beyond the surface-level aesthetics. Yu's outfit didn't get very far, but Minato… holy shit, once I based it off of Ryoji's outfit, it was off to the races. I immediately thought about how that awakening scene would go. and then I made a rough snippet of said scene. and then thought about how they would get up to that point and then before I knew it whoops I had a half completed fic

and then I finished and posted said fic

and then I noticed I still had some ideas left over for what happens later on

and I thought

"why NOT keep going, im having fun and the worst that can happen is I fall out of it, unfinished fics are better than no fic"

and that is how I found myself writing a longfic.

ANYWAY

my whole line of thinking for PT Minato was that I kept thinking about how Minato would bond with the PTs and how he would end up being a full fledged PT himself, because honestly that would make a prime opportunity for some really interesting character development. Minato had originally accepted the price of sealing Nyx at the end of P3, but after somehow accidentally falling back into reality and hanging out with the PTs for a while, he'd probably start to wonder if its ok to want things to be better than they turned out. his rebellion is the fact that he wants to live even though he's not supposed to. He's rebelling against his original fate, and his persona is the very person who fought against his true nature as DEATH INCARNATE just to be his friend. MAN. He'd fit right in with the PTs. (I still have feelings over these two dont mind me)

I was a little worried the whole amnesia trope would be a little dumb or dragged out too long, but it turned out to be fine. I mostly used it for plot regulation, bc I wanted him to have time to learn more about them at the same time as they're learning about him. He probably wouldn't have had a good reason to stick around long enough to bond with them otherwise. Kind of like Sophia, now that I think about it.

I've also learned a lot doing this?? outlining is a GODSEND why the hell wasn't I making bullet point lists before this

uhhhh I cant think of anything else off the top of my head, except that maybe chapters 10 and 12 were my favorites to write so far, though its real hard to pick a favorite

also if you want to see the notebook lecture doodles that spawned this entire brainrot circus here they are, some masks and a chat icon

(kinda wanna make a royal-style character art with him holding his mask but that's self-indulgent art for another day)