feotakahari

I still can’t stop myself from thinking about a Persona AU of In Sound Mind (since they both involve fighting your Jungian Shadow.) In Persona, people meet their Shadow and go “you’re not me,” then “you’re me.” Desmond’s canon Shadow acts as intrusive thoughts, and he knows they’re his, but he shouts them down because they’re wrong. What would intellectual recognition without emotional acceptance do to a Persona-style Shadow?

Thinking some more about that Persona AU of In Sound Mind. Desmond is the Wild Card, of course. Keeping the Greek thing, the obvious choice for his starter Persona is Psyche, but I think Asclepius fits better with the lyrics of Here Comes a Savior. He tends towards heals, buffs, and status cures.

Virginia/Medusa uses Curse. She’s also the backup healer, since she wishes she could heal her scars, and she gets reflect spells later as an ironic “mirror” theme.

Allen/Icarus is Fire, naturally. He’s pretty balanced and can do a lot of things. Maybe a bit of focus on speed, since he can fly across the battlefield.

Max/Minotaur is the physical bruiser. Using skills from HP seems like his style. Since Fire is taken, let’s take his Shadow’s breath attack and say he’s Wind.

Lucas/Cyclops is hard to pin down, but he definitely gets a few Gun attacks. The wiki says Cyclops is usually Electric for some reason. It’s also been Earth, which could work as an element here since Allen’s Shadow is definitely Earth.

Tonia’s persona is Sphinx, of course. She’s probably a damage-focused caster. Sphinx has had a lot of different elements, but I’ll go with Holy to avoid doubling up. (This is the Persona 5 version where Holy does damage.)

In this version, Allen interrupts Virginia when she has her breakdown, and he manages to get the shard away from her. This means her Shadow can’t end the fight quickly, and Virginia eventually gets the upper hand and gets her Persona. They go to Desmond to try to figure out WTF just happened, and get trapped when his whole building ends up in the Metaverse.

Max escaped into the Metaverse after his attack on the research facility went sideways. He still hasn’t beaten his Shadow when Desmond and co. arrive, and he’s losing his damn mind trying to fight it off. Pure stubborn refusal to give in has its downsides—it’s hard for him to accept this thing is part of him.

Lucas has been investigating the Metaverse ever since the war. He goes in to try to find Desmond, and has to be saved himself.

Tonia is still dead. A ghost cat sounds about right for Persona.

Since Desmond beats his Shadow early on to become a Wild Card, I’m not sure who the final boss is. Maybe something big and ugly was drawn by the Vietnam experiments, and it’s taking this opportunity to finally get through.

Holy shit, I didn’t know horror was allowed to be funny. It’s not even in the horror-comedy way, where you never take the horror seriously. It can be really scary, and also have sight gags and puns, and the two actually work together.