"Fuck!"
—Saito, frequently
An alternate take on the main story, Persona 3 FES: Lusnati Style
is a fanfiction by DropletofSour, a humorous author who's known to handle physical humor as well as romance. The main character is one of his OCs, Saito Lusnati, who is from his very own horrid past, replaces the main character from the aformented game. The game has eventually took of from the main plot similar to another famous fanfiction of its kind, Fairly English Story, although it's not nearly as egregious. It also has a sequel which is abandoned account of frustration when writing it. You can find that here.
The Story is told in first person, through Saito's eyes, so the readers get to behold his unreliable narration and occasional stabs at the fourth wall. First and foremost, the story is humor driven, although it does take backseats for more serious moments. When it's not being serious, Saito makes jokes at the expense of the wold around him, bordering on crossing the line twice. And he swears. A lot.
Aaand now it's getting a not quite Updated Re-release in the form of Double Style. This one follows the recent fanfic trend of putting Persona 3 Portable's main characters as siblings, only with Lisa and Saito instead, and from her perspective. It's mostly being written to flex his comedy muscles from Drops' other, darker fics, and to appease the crowed that want a FemC story. It's shaping up to compound upon the hilarity of the original. They still swear. A lot.
Tropes contained in Lusnati Style that were not included in the original game:
- Abusive Parents: Saito was adopted post the car crash that killed his parents. His mother divorced his dad, and she got sole custody. She promptly abused him to the point of nearly killing him over an unnatural set of eyes. Saito survived that bit of his life and then was held under custody by his Dad. He considered his Dad this because of his neglect. This actually turns out to not be the case. Saito's adopted father was simply scared of what he would potentially become as a result of his previous abuse.
- The Ace: Saito is this. At Ace Combat games
- Anime Hair: Justified. Saito outright states that Seki dyes his hair blue-green and uses copious amounts of hair gel to keep it spiked up.
- Anti-Hero: DLS!Saito manages to be between Type II and III. DLS!Lisa complete averts the trope, however.
- Arc Number: DLS gives us 128 because it's the number of Geo-Guardians. And it gets repeated a lot.
- Ascended Extra:
- Theodore from Persona 3 Portable makes an appearance as one of the SEES members, due to an elaborate one-year deal with Igor. Chihiro is upgraded from a Social Link to a full on SEES member. A random cat from Elizabeth's requests gets a Personae and can talk.
- A lesser version is an attempt to give each individual Personae a personality inside Saito's head.
- Badass Old Guy: Raige counts, even if the Hanged Man battle didn't count. Not only is he a former Marine, he fought in Vietnam, and then returned to the front line one last time with a Rocket Launcher to help the others see the Shadow and led the assault on it. He even predicted the falling patterns of a sixteen piece MIRV missile the Shadow started firing and helped the SEES (And everyone else not a SEES) dodge it with precise timing.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Chapter 14 of Double Lusnati Style brings us: Lisa and Akihiko versus some fucking raptors.
- Beam-O-War: Saito's mastery of light versus Saitera's mastery of darkness. It's not as awesome as the trope usually calls for, so the author is thinking about doing a piece of art to do it justice.
- The Berserker: The aptly named Berserker Lisa. Lisa herself plays it less straight, though.
- Berserk Button: Don't hit Saito's hand.
- BFS: Junpei gets one early on.
- Big Brother Mentor:
- Oddly enough in a subversion, Seki, two years younger, became this for Saito before he moved to Japan. Played straight Seki does it again for a few months younger Lisa Lusnati.
- Saito somehow does this with Chihiro.
- Big Damn Heroes: Raige does this at the cost of his own life.
- Bilingual Bonus: Disi Aslan, Chihiro's Persona. It's Turkish for female lion.
- Blood Knight: Saito. He doesn't display the usual brutish behavior of one, but he makes it plain fairly early that he only fights "for the goddamned fight."
- Butt-Monkey: Hanyuu.
- The Cameo:
- Baofu and Ulala Serizawa of Persona 2 fame show up for an assist.
- As of Chapter 27 of Double Lusnati Style, Roy Fortune(the OC Protaganist from A Fool Named Fortune, another Persona 3 fanfic) has made a cameo as the Arcana Fortune that Saito and Lisa had to deal with, and is also mentioned as being a real person in the DLS world by Lisa.
- Seki, Saito, and Lisa have had two cameos each in A Fool Named Fortune(once in Chapter 25 on a Youtube video Saito made, the second time in chapter 47 on live TV) while Raige actually appeared in the flesh during Roy's Empress Link's Rank 8 scene(also in chapter 47) and is mentioned(in AFNF's continuity) as having been a friend of Roy's father.
- Cats Are Mean: Subverted. Shamisen is pretty mellow... and then he found out what his name was referring to.
- Character Development:
- There's a fair bit. Since the story is through Saito's eyes, you see his the most. He's grown from an angry, possibly angsty, teen into a respectable young man by the time of the Hanged Man battle.
- Also present is Chihiro, who goes from being a Shrinking Violet and relying on Saito as a crutch to slapping her own Shadow across the face and becoming a Lady of War.
- Done with Lisa. Some light has been shed on why she's so hateful and spiteful.
- Chaste Hero: Averted. Saito is seen covering his eyes when he runs into the female SEES members in nothing but towels.
- Clothing Damage: Played for laughs. His shoes died for a worthy cause.
- Clueless Deputy: It was mentioned offhandedly in an early chapter that a police officer in New York called him a liar when he tried to tell the police. Bet that son of a bitch was feeling dumb when Saito's mom actually tried to kill him.
- Combat Pragmatist: One of Saito's "rules" of combat is to never fight fair.
- Confusion Fu: Seki is the undisputed master: Dancing, Singing, using a chair, and just plain cheating. And you never know what he's going to do because he's unreadable.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Saito thinks his Dad is this. He is, but he feels about about it to the point where he frequently drinks his demons away.
- Dance Battler: Seki combines this with Warrior Poet. Lisa practices Capoeira and mixes it with Kung Fu.
- Defeat Means Friendship: Subverted: Aigis and Saito beat the shit out of each other until Ikutuski intervenes the first time they meet. Now she's kinda clingy.
- Department of Child Disservices: What kind of self-respecting outlet of child services would have left Saito with his mom!?
- Diagnosis from Dr. Badass: Saito studied psychology after he survived nearly getting killed by his mother. As a result, he diagnoses people from time to time.
- Death Seeker: Raige's motive all along.
- Ditto Fighter: Although Theodore uses a set of nun-chucks to fight without using Persona abilities, he's seen copying other people's Personae and abilities that they've mastered. Most notable is Saito's laser.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Seki. He and Saito both know how to dismantle common guns found in the area they stomp, but only Saito bothered to learn how to put them back together.
- Don't Look At Me: Sorta. Initially, he doesn't like it when people look at his red eyes. After the Priestess battle, he gets over it.
- Eldritch Abomination: What Saito calls the Shadows prior to learning that they're called Shadows.
- Energy Weapon: Saito's favorite type of attack. Doubles as showing the author's work because Saito explains how lasers work and cited various examples. His initial usages of the trope do the science right, but as he goes on, it gets less realistic, and more fantasy.
- Epic Flail: Theodore. He's so awesome, Saito laments that he's glad Theo's using nunchucks instead of a katana, otherwise, he'd be Overshadowed by Awesome.
- Everything's Worse with Bears: Seki wants to beat one up using a fold up chair. Take that as you will.
- Evil Counterpart: Chihiro meets hers then the Reaper turned her into a
Demonic Spider that Saito had to take down. Saito meets his own in Chapter 51. - Face Death with Dignity: Raige's last words were "Thank you" with a smile.
- Fix Fic: Played straight, but not how'd you'd expect. The author is on the side of the Persona fanbase that believes Persona: Trinity Soul can't be canon because of plot points made in Persona 4. He's attempted to recreate the story so that it can fit in the timeline following Persona 2.
-
Follow the Leader: Word of God openly admits that Fairly English Story was his inspiration to write this fic. - Good Old Fisticuffs: Seki and Lisa do this, while everyone else uses weapons. Subverted also: Lisa uses her legs while breakdancing.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Saito's got a jagged cross covering most of his front. Also invokes Don't Look At Me.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: This trope is beaten to death.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Lisa turned out to be this. It's showing up less in Double Style, however.
- Hollywood Atheist: Saito has shades of this. Might be justified by the fact that his childhood abuse was dolled out by his mother "in the name of God." Unfortunately, this is Truth in Television, based on what the author has seen.
- Humble Hero: Sunverted with Saito. He takes the Shadows seriously, but doesn't want to make a big deal of it. He cares about his power, though, because it doesn't let him be normal even by the standards of having a Persona.
- I Know Mortal Kombat:
- Seki. Many of his strategies with his Persona's abilities are derived from Immaterial and Missing Power. Lisa does Master Spark as well, but it's a subversion because she uses science to convert her lightning into said Spark.
- Junpei gets Rocket Jumping from Team Fortress 2.
- It happened a lot earlier, but Saito got the TLS from the Ace Combat series.
- Jerkass: Saito notes that Seki's training styles are overly extreme.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Saito also notes that Seki means well. Saito himself can have both tropes applied to him. Not so much DLS!Saito. Except for his sporadic nice moments, Saito is a prime Jerk with a Heart of Jerk.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Played pretty straight. Saito likes katanas because of how they're made. He even uses a ninjato and a pair of bokken at one point. He does acknowledge that Junpei's BFS might be better though, but only because Junpei's got the muscle mass and coordination to use it effectively once he learns to stop falling on his ass.
- Manipulative Bastard: Saito, but he limits it to checking things instead of directing people to do stuff. And even that made him feel bad.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Saito frequently reminds Fuuka to stay out of his head since (for the purposes of the fiction) she can read minds.
- The Napoleon: Seki. In Mental Depcriciation, though...
- Nietzsche Wannabe: Incredibly subtle. Saito, after defeating Erebus and surviving through the madness that was the Abyss of Time determines that humans are incapable of getting rid of the despair that keeps Erebus around.
- Random Encounters: Played for laughs. One of Seki's methods of keeping his skills sharp is to piss people off so much that they'll attack him at random. When Saito's Personae caught wind of this, they built a marble Colosseum in his mind and made him fight at random intervals during the day and during his sleep.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A Semi-Heroic version: Saito delivers one of the most epic of these kinds of speeches ever to Yukari in chapter 39 of DLS.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Saito has these. Officially, it's because he has ocular albinism, but he doesn't. Don't ask how that works.
- Running Gag: "I dunno what the fuck."
- Sarashi: Seki wears these on his arms and legs and wraps weights in them. Saito has a similar thing: he wraps boxing tape around his hands before going into battle.
- Sarcasm Mode: Also comes up. It's definitely there, but due to it not actually being marked, it can get difficult to tell at times.
- Schmuck Bait: The hot spring event. Here, Saito suplexes Ryoji for it.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Lusnati family. This actually annoys Saito, but he just substitutes "money" for any logical reasoning behind how Raige could do the stuff he does at times. Particularly, how Raige managed to smuggle a freaking rocket launcher and a Desert Eagle with incendiary ammo into Japan.
- Self-Deprecation: Saito does this often, to the point of calling himself a hateful little wretch as straightly as possible.
- Shout-Out:
- Saito finds a talking cat. He names it Shamisen when it wouldn't stop demanding a name.
- "Well, what else am I supposed to do? See about summoning a blue-haired guy with an emo-fringe who screams about drills and chainsaws, and just screams loud in general?"
- The entire fight with Saitera in Chapter 66 is a shout out to a bunch of stuff.
- She and her gorilla quote a lines from "Banana Zoo" from Class of 3000. She even comes in singing a line from "Throwdown" from the same show.
- Her last name is a reference to Hellsing. She even yells out Integra's catchphrase, "SEARCH AND DESTROY!"
- There's another reference to Hellsing in Chapter 61 by Lisa, where she talks about Dracula in a stealth plane crashing it on a Nazi aircraft carrier. Sound familiar?
- Lisa has a nod to Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, where she quickly slams three people about to molest Saori with a shout of "Shii! Kyuu! Shii!" This is what Big Boss will also do when he uses CQC on three opponents in that game.
- A "The Guy" shows up as a little kid in a cape with a machine gun. He also mentions that war is grand, a Major reference.
- Spoonerism: "Lusnati." Word of God: The last name is basically the last syllable of the Nautilus (that he first saw spelled wrong in a Mario hack as "Natilus.") put as the first syllable. Wow.
- Sword Cane: Raige, and dammit, he knows how to use it!
- Take That!: DLS does this to the original Lusnati Style. Lisa states that if Saito were to be the one narrating the events, much of what was going on would be filled with his pointless, hateful whining. Reread Lusnati Style. She's right.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Ryoji, after remembering who he was.
- Tsundere: Lisa. HARD.
- TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: Lampshaded In-Universe when Saito finds out that his younger sister Lisa has been reading Tropes to understand just what the hell Seki is babbling about.
- Unreliable Narrator: A given.
- Unstoppable Rage: Anger ensues when Saito here's about any child abuse.
- Useless Useful Skill: Surprisingly, being able to dismantle the Evoker has only been useful in one instance and every other time caused Saito some grief.
- Waif-Fu: Handsprings and CQC. Lisa by far in DLS.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- Oh my fucking GOD. The number of plot hooks you can find were completely forgotten later on.
- And whatever happened to "Johnny" of the Temperance link?
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Saito has trouble sparring with Chihiro. Subverted with his sister Lisa.
- Zerg Rush: Lisa employs this with capoeira spin kicks on her hands so that they occur ad infinitum. Seki notes that this is technically a Zerg Rush.
