"My name is Minato Arisato, I'm a Fool Arcana so I got a bajillion Personae, but my first one was Orpheus. I use whatever weapon I can get my hands on but I always did like Shortswords, and my favourite fictional character is Simon the Digger."
—Minato in chapter 91, introducing himself to the previous generations of Persona users.
"That thing came from you Yosuke. You have to admit it or it'll go bearzerk again." Next person that says that has this bottle shoved where the sun don't shine.
'''Teddie, followed by Souji's monolouge in Face Every Shadow, Chapter 7.
Persona 3: Fairly English Story started as an AU Fic of what the author thinks Persona 3: FES would have been like if Minato Arisato had been raised in England after his parents' death. Then things started to deviate from the original source material, and Stuff Happened.It's told in first person from Minato's perspective, giving him more of a personality while still keeping the sleepy, expressionless teen that Fanon has made him out to be, while taking a few levels in badass along the way. Towards the later chapters, things start to get a little out of hand, yet it still somehow manages not to break canon most of the time, even the canon for its somewhat direct sequel, Persona 4.It also serves as a deconstruction of the concept of the Mary Sue / Black Hole Sue. Basically, Minato reaches Sue status, then the world refuses to play by the Sue's rules.The author has posted the first chapter of the sequel (titled For Every Soul, because get it? FES?) and there's an omake series called FESxtras, formerly called "Investigation Team Yo!". Then he goes on a two-year mission. Casey W has also begun work on an official sequel from the viewpoint of Seta Souji as he goes through the events of the altered Persona 4 canon. It's called Face Every Shadow. All tropes related should go below.The Author recently did a prequel called Stay Awake With Me, which covers the events between Minato's parents dying and him moving to England. It's alrady a Tear Jerker just on its own, but if you've already read Fairly English Story, then it's just absolutely heartbreaking. A rewrite is also currently in the works, titled Rebuild of Fairly English Story. If you considered reading Fairly English Story but was put off by the poor writing quality, then check these out.
Tropes contained in Persona 3: Fairly English Story that were not included in the original game.
Acquired Situational Narcissism - Minato does a lot of awesome things. This often inflates his ego. Now he's much more humble, but still points out that he is awesome on several occasions.
Ascended Extra - The Reaper is turned into an actual character. Yeah.
Adachi starts off as just a nice little cameo. By the end of the story, he has become part of a huge cast of supporting characters, while the sequel has him joining the main cast proper.
Author Appeal - Can you think of any other reason why the Jakkai become anthropomorphic animals?
Then when we actually see the backstory, it makes even more sense.
Big Screwed-Up Family - On Minato's mother's side, her brother is in the SBS, his cousin (his Distaff Counterpart of Persona 3: Portable) has been trained to fight since she could walk, his other cousin goes for midnight runs atop buildings. His father's? Shirogane, formerly Kuzunoha. Granddad faked his and Naoto's death to prevent Minato from ruining her life due to his carrying around the living personification of Death inside him.
It gets even worse that he didn't even know about it being faked for ten years.
Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu - Minato loses almost all his Personae and all the skills he's gained and still barely manages to beat Nyarlathotep.
Bag of Spilling - Averted. The S.E.E.S. armoury holds a large pile of normal weapons, but Minato keeps the good stuff to himself and loans out the leftovers, much like how most players did during the game.
Bilingual Backfire - For the first few chapters, Minato has to concentrate to understand Japanese. If someone says something and he isn't ready for it, it's written in Romaji.
During the Christmas Trip to England, this starts happening again.
Minatos can't differentiate between languages.
Bilingual Bonus - Minato's nickname for Ken: Kenjamin. "Ken" means "strong", and "Jamin" (taken from Benjamin) is Hebrew for "right hand".
Chekhov's Armory - Subverted. The author takes the tiniest things and creates whole plotlines with them, so readers start looking for Lost level patterns. In reality, the author's really just playing Xanatos Speed Chess.
Crazy Enough to Work - Minato discusses a plan with an enemy over the police radio, then says that only a fool would attempt it. He then tells said enemy to ask Adachi just what kind of Fool Minato is.
Darker and Edgier - You would think this would be hard to do in a world where the world's already gonna end and there's nothing you can do about it, but it happens.
To the surprise of everyone, Minato's shadow WAS the narrator of the entire story! So this leaves the real Minato being different to the shadow Minato, in other words, the snide remarks, insults and sarcastic comments were all of Minato's Shadow. What The Hell?!
Did Not Do the Research: The author himself admits mainly getting his information off the Megami Tensei Wiki; though there are some errors that would have been avoidable.
Case in point, his Tatsuya Suou has aparently killed Philemon. Who invokes As Long As There Is Good.
Similarly, Tatsuya describes the Wild Card as an 'impossible' power (or, for reference's sake, an Innocent Sin), which begets an Eternal Punishment. As the respective title's pages explain, the titles refer to Tatsuya himself, not his Wild Card.
His enemies do it too sometimes. Adachi has it mastered.
Headphones Equal Isolation - Minato listens to less and less music as he gets more responsible. He plugs in the headphones only when he's running from these responsibilities.
It Got Worse - Chapter 79 onward is made of this trope.
From chapter 94: "Take control over Gekkoukan High School, secure the surrender of Minato Arisoto through use of hostages. Kill hostages if target fails to comply. Do not engage the target directly, nor attempt to subdue him or take him by force, he is a lethal and ruthless leader of the terrorist organisation known as Strega, going by the handle of 'Jin'."
It's Up to You - At first, Minato is chosen to lead as Akihiko was injured and he was the most competent fighter out of him, Yukari and Junpei. However, once people start realising just how powerful he is, he ends up doing most of the fighting in many of the fights.
Then again, it's from his point of view, so he'd only really talk about the others if he can see them, and since he's almost always leading the attack, he just doesn't notice what they're doing, so they level up behind the scenes.
Jesus Was Way Cool - Louis Cypher agrees with Minato on this one. Turns out the reason he left heaven was because SMT's God wasn't like Jesus.
Laser-Guided Karma - Minato gets this often in the first half of the story.
Lampshade Hanging - Minato often gets irritated at the spooky voices in his head reminding him that he's farming friends for demonic powers at the most inappropriate times.
Lawyer-Friendly Cameo - Dante appeared in Nocturne, so it's okay for him to appear in this fic apparently. Even though other characters have actually played Devil May Cry.
The Legions of Hell - They act as Big Damn Heroes for Minato. At least, they wanted to. They retreated because they were scared Minato would slaughter them too.
Narnia Time - Time in the Velvet Room passes either hyper-fast or not at all. A more prominent example, however, would be the passage of time in the demon world
No-Holds-Barred Beatdown - This story loves this trope. Minato gives them, Minato gets them, we assume other people do too, but whenever Minato sees a fight he likes to join in.
Minato gave a truly gut-wrenching one chapter 88, and his opponent was still winning the fight.
Not so Different - Minato's conversations with Arcana Shadows often go this way.
Not So Harmless - Remember Ikutsuki? Shoots Minato in the head, his Persona is Nyarlathotep, and dammit, he can fight.
Strega qualifies too.
And let's not forget Adachi, the Arcana Shadows, normal Shadows, The Greek Pantheon, Nyxists, the Police, even Nyx herself does this.
Noodle Incident - Unreliable narrating often skips important things and just mentions them offhand.
Nonuniform Uniform - The head of the Student Council is allowed to take this further.
One of Us - The author is a troper, and it shows in the story. In fact, he himself apparently put the story into the Fan Fic Recommendation page of Persona 3.
One-Winged Angel - Chariot and Justice, which starts as a Space Marine Predator, transforms into a Space Marine Dreadnought and a Gundam respectively after splitting apart. Minato specifically has an Oh Crap moment at this.
He dies because his heart tries to kill the Shadow possessing his body by tearing itself from the Circulatory System.
Paper-Thin Disguise - Usually works, unless someone who talks to him on a day-to-day basis is in the room.
Parental Abandonment - Minato's Granddad faked his and Minato's sister's deaths in order to stop her from being dragged into the insane world that Death would inevitably drag Minato into.
Minato can get away with a lot of things because he honestly doesn't believe he can get in trouble for it. When he does think he's going to get a comeuppance, he usually does. Same goes for other Fools.
The Hollow Arcana is described as the power to make your insanity override reality.
All Psychology Is Freudian - Averted. While Minato does prefer the psychodynamic approach, as do the universe in general and the author, other branches of psychology, notably biological psychology and the behavioral approach, have large influences as well.
The Rest Shall Pass - Instead of the Shadows splitting up, Minato has to fight the Fortune Shadow alone while everyone else takes on Strength. Aigis finishes it.
Set Right What Once Went Wrong - One set of Shadows sent Minato back in time a week. He trained in Tartarus then jumped the Shadows just after they sent his past-self back.
Shonen Upgrade - Turning him into a Badass Abnormal. He loses them though. Then gets them back and uses then properly.
Song Fic - When the Shadow the Hedgehog theme "I Am" appears, someone is going to be kicked up the arseARISOTO STYLE.
Also, the Epiclogue
The prequel too, kinda.
Chainsaw Good - Minato is ecstatic when he finds a Chainsword in the Chariot dungeon.
Scarf of Asskicking - Minato wants one, but is too aware of the downsides, settling for a tie instead.
Fridge Brilliance? It really is an eye-opener. Reading the story a second time gives you a whole new perception of the tale.
Serial Escalation - From chapter 72 onwards, this is only to be expected.
Showy Invincible Hero - Admittedly, he is very powered, but he never gets hit by Hama or Mudo, and the closest thing he's had to a loss is a tie, running away, or picking up an a fatal mistake his opponent made and ripping it to pieces in panic.
Averted. The difficulty catches up with him towards the end.
Spell My Name with an S - Minato's last name is Arisato, but the author didn't know that at first. Whoops. He even lampshades it later, but decides to stick with it.
Sphere of Destruction - How else do you someone who keeps bursting out of her corpse alive and well every time you brutally slaughter her?
Well, I'd recommend calming down and getting to the front of the car and killing that Shadow. Oh, you were swearing. I was gonna say, I'm not that awesome.
The Stoic - Justified exceptionally well. Brain damage from the car crash that killed his parents also killed the lobes that link emotion to facial expressions. He has to force every scowl, every laugh, every smile. He's learnt to be good at it.
Not So Stoic - Subverted. The more Stoic Minato looks, the less Stoic he's feeling.
Story Breaker Power - By the end, everyone. Even the Mooks are Story Breakers, so it evens out.
Take a Third Option - Played straight and inverted. A villain creates a Lose-Lose situation for Minato, daring him to try and think up of a third option. Minato chooses the lesser of the two evils and kills a lot of people. Yes, that's the lesser evil.
Played straight later on concerning Freeing Minato from the Eternal Seal. If humans don't desire death, then there's no need for the seal, so you just need to social link everybody.
Translator Microbes - Everyone understands demonic as their mother tongue. However, demonic terms (like ''Sekai Rei''), aren't translated, even if they have meaning in another language.
When talking to a demon, you automatically know how to speak Demonic. Probably got something to do with the Sekai Rei.
Up to Eleven - Not just the fic. The Social Links go up to eleven too. And it is even a major plot point as Personae that are a part of Minato's Up to Eleven links are card-summonable a la The Inaba ScoobiesAND are unable to be destroyed.
Unstoppable Rage - Never Charm Minato and make him beat the crap out of his Nakama. Ever. Also never threaten Yukari or you will be put through a world of hurt and then disintegrated.
Weak, but Skilled - Adachi. Despite having Personae that are half as strong as Minato's, he still manages to hand him his ass through over half of the battle.
White Mask of Doom - We don't know what the Doom is, but it's suggested that whatever it is, it's full of doom.
Wild Card - Minato, but not just because of his skills. However, the real prize goes to Tohru Adachi. Seriously, we don't know whose side he's on anymore.
started as an AU Fic of what the author thinks Persona 3: FES would have been like if Minato Arisato had been raised in England after his parents' death. Then things started to deviate from the original source material, and Stuff Happened.It's told in first person from Minato's perspective, giving him more of a personality while still keeping the sleepy, expressionless teen that Fanon has made him out to be, while taking a few levels in badass along the way. Towards the later chapters, things start to get a little out of hand, yet it still somehow manages not to break canon most of the time, even the canon for its somewhat direct sequel, Persona 4.It also serves as a deconstruction of the concept of the Mary Sue / Black Hole Sue. Basically, Minato reaches Sue status, then the world refuses to play by the Sue's rules.The author has posted the first chapter of the sequel (titled For Every Soul
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