The Velvet Key is a panfandom Journal Roleplay on Dreamwidth that ran
from 2011 to 2013, before fizzling out.
Its premise sees the characters brought to Prospero, a city that looks relatively normal, until midnight. Then, the Dark Hour, straight from Persona 3, emerges. Normal people turn into coffins and monsters called Shadows flood the city. To fight these Shadows and learn why they were brought here, the characters must use their new powers of Persona.
The Velvet Key provides examples of:
- Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: After Kaiji dropped, Saori was canon-updated to a future where she was engaged — and later married — to someone else.
- Actor Allusion:
- On the mun side. For the masquerade ball, Kaoru wore a plain white eye mask with a few rhinestones glued onto each corner. Remind you of anybody?
- Voice actor allusions went rampant during the March murder plot, since the perpetrator, Ryuunosuke, shares a VA with Minato.
- Affably Evil: Ryuunosuke made a post asking about the feasibility of getting a kitten on the same day that he killed Kaito.
- Ax-Crazy:
- The current character roster includes a pile of mass murderers. There hadn't been a murder for ten years before the characters came - suffice it to say that it's going to get a lot worse.
- Notably averted with Jin Kisaragi. He's taken from the end of Continuum Shift, so he's resistant to Yukianesa's influence. Not that it matters here, of course.
- Baddie Flattery: Ryuunosuke could fall into a number of categories - Combat Sadomasochist, In Love with Your Carnage - but what's for certain is that it took only a few comments upon his revival to start praising the person who killed him as awesome. Lancer was a little weirded out.
- Bizarre Instrument: Bunny in the Box will take anyone into its rotating membership, resulting in the need to write rock songs for the harp and other such things.
- Boss Battle: The monthly mod events usually end in this. Everyone gets to pitch in!
- Boxing Lessons for Superman: Persona users regularly offer one another lessons in physical combat, armed or unarmed, to supplement their powers.
- Brought Down to Normal: Why a Vocaloid and a Heroic Spirit can be basically on the same team.
- The Call Knows Where You Live: Jin tried to sleep through the Dark Hour, only to get attacked by Shadows way too close to the hotel.
- Cannot Spit It Out:
- Saori on confessing her feelings for Kaiji until the Personal Shadow event where she clocked her own Shadow and tells it not to touch 'her man'. Kaiji takes it rather well.
- April on her feelings towards Ledah, mainly due to how she doesn't want to make things awkward between them. But she later manages to spit it out.
- Casual Danger Dialogue:
- Karna, when asked on how he felt if his life was in danger upon arrival, and basically shrugs off the thought. Granted, he's seen a lot in his time, so it's no wonder.
- Lovers Event. Yandere!Vriska and Paranoid!Kaoru go from being about to seriously harm each other to calmly discussing the apocalypse.
- A Chat with Satan: Albedo would always try to break V/V's spirit this way when they were in-game. Not that it ever worked, which just intensified his hatecrush.
- Corrupt Church: The Church of the Three. Probably. Some of the characters have resolved to investigate it after it randomly appeared showing connections to the founders of Prospero and the Dark Hour.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Not as bad as Saber, but Ledah has gotten a shocked reaction on mentioning that he's a man, and he doesn't even encourage the misconception like Saber does.
- Emotionless Girl:
- Enemy Without: In November, there was an event in which the PCs had to face Persona 4-like Shadow clones of themselves, albeit greatly toned down relative to the source material.
- Even the Guys Want Him: Theoretically Lancer doesn't have his curse anymore, but considering his involvement in the love polyhedron includes Neah, Ryuunosuke, and Issei, you'd be forgiven for thinking it had gotten stronger.
- Extra-Strength Masquerade: The civilians conveniently forget or don't believe anything like Personae, revival upon death, and people showing up claiming to be from other worlds. The PCs getting frustrated with this is a big part of why they usually only befriend each other.
- Failed a Spot Check: Sakurako and Madoka, during the Ace of Swords event. They had no clue that the suddenly-appearing unfriendly version of Misa wasn't really her. When she only ever showed up during the Dark Hour. During an event where everyone was facing Shadows impersonating their friends and relations.
- Fisher Kingdom: Prospero humanizes everyone outside of the Dark Hour.
- Fish out of Water: One of Edgeworth's many sources of frustration is discovering that in this world, learning a single fact can take months of investigation.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Asuka is a real pottymouth in her native German.
- The Gambling Addict: The Fortune Full Moon Shadow afflicted the whole town and some player characters with this for the week leading up to its boss battle.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Well, Kaoru can't really say she loves much of anything, but she possesses a small pink stuffed bunny that John gave her while she was in the hospital. She's confused by it and later asks what it's for. By the time she's out of the hospital, he's fallen victim to the mass disappearance and she never really understood why he gave it to her.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: Even the evil characters need jobs. Ryuunosuke is a local bartender and happily chats up people he recognizes.
- Gratuitous German: Asuka orders her Persona around with German phrases since she thinks in German, refers to her Persona with the modern German spelling (Brünnhilde as opposed to Brynhildr) and occasionally just throws in an honorific or greeting in German because her player feels like it.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: Half the island gangs up on Albedo to try and save V/V? He tosses her at people.
- Hero Killer:
- Kiritsugu and Maiya went on a Servant-killing spree (including people closely related to the Servants in question) in April 2012.
- Followed by Kiritsugu being outdone by Lancer and Shirou of all people with shades of a Thanatos Gambit.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: V/V loves humanity and would really like to get along with people who have murdered her.
- Insult Backfire: The Fan Community Nickname "Fate/Persona" has been taken as a badge of pride by the large Nasuverse cast, and the game occasionally calls itself that.
- Item Get!: Caliban dungeon dive rewards, when what the characters actually got is revealed.
- Kick the Dog: Naoya strangles V/V to death in an alley after she gives him Valentine's chocolate and tries to get him to talk about his life. If that isn't pointlessly evil, what is?
- Maid Cafe: Prospero has one, staffed by male and female characters whose muns love to see them in despair.
- Minion with an F in Evil: Elsie during the Reversed Lovers event. The object of her "affection" was, as in canon, fire trucks, but she couldn't bring herself to destroy even a toy one when the arcana reversed.
- Mission Control: Madoka is here to remind you that there's only one enemy left!
- Monster Compendium: The Shadow Database, as maintained by Atsuro and others.
- Morality Pet: V/V for both Beatrice and Gilgamesh, while keeping them from killing each other.
- Murder the Hypotenuse:
- Sola-Ui did this to Saber very soon after her arrival.
- Waver Velvet's shadow during the Personal Shadow event tried to do this to Issei Ryudo. The reason? He was upset that Rider had taken Issei as a vassal and thought that he was being replaced.
- Mythology Gag: Kaoru just had to discover the wonder of sleeping in beds a third time.
- Neck Lift: Kaoru, affected during the Devil event to not stifle her feelings for her sort-of-friends, chokeslammed a guy who insulted V/V's music.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted with Shin Megami Tensei Cu Chulainn and the Fate/stay night Cu Chulainn, even though they are nothing alike - Diarmuid has the former as his Persona, while the other cast members have encountered the latter.
- Optional Boss: Nobody has to fight the bosses, but they give extra levels if you participate.
- Our Angels Are Different: Averted in Asuka's eyes by V/V's previous nature as TYPE-Venus. The former was half horrified and half glad there was someone from a similar world out there. The latter was just more or less horrified at the ensuing death threats.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: V/V's entire CR wants to get their hands on her murderer, even if she's keeping her mouth shut on who it is. Now that Naoya's for all intents and purposes been outed as the one who did it...
- Playing with Fire: Fire-using Personas go here.
- Asuka's Persona isn't just a fire-type to match her hair and attitude, she's literally on fire due to how her legend ended.
- Minato's Orpheus, in contrast to his personality.
- Ledah Rozwelli, presumably as the celestial sort of flame.
- Ryu's Persona, to match with his elemental association in canon.
- Refused the Call: Just sleeping through the Dark Hour is a feasible option, particularly if you don't care.
- Shipper on Deck:
- Ryuunosuke for Lancer and Saber because it freaks them out and it's funny, and also because he genuinely likes them.
- Saori for Klaus and Ingrid, but she hasn't made it public yet and it doesn't help they all live on the same hotel floor.
- Tarot Troubles: Eater did a surprisingly accurate session of card readings once — surprisingly because it wasn't decided on OOC knowledge; the mun did actual readings with a real deck while tagging the post. A few months later, Hiyono gave it a shot as well.
- Technology Marches On: Invoked by Asuka, who remarks that technology in her own world must have been stalled by the apocalypse instead of, you know, her canon being made in The '90s.
- Translator Microbes: Present, but suppressible. Everyone speaks English by default unless they concentrate on speaking another language they know.
- Undead Tax Exemption: Everyone, due to mysterious circumstances. Room and board are taken care of, jobs don't ask for references, and kids are automatically enrolled in school.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Several. Gilgamesh and Asuka are notable for their sheer apparent enjoyment in barraging each other with insults and arrogant assertions of their own superiority.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Characters under a certain age are supposed to go to school in between fighting Shadows. Even if they just look that age.
- Who Will Bell the Cat?: A source of Edgeworth's eternal frustration. Even those who agree with his idea to implement a justice system are in over their heads and they know it, leaving them to just hope someone else will come along willing and able to do the actual work involved.
- Wrong Context Magic: The Shadow duplicates in the Ace of Swords event kept their canon counterparts' abilities.
- Yandere:
- Here's an example of being yandere for your kid.
- Vriska during the Reversed portion of the Lovers event. She kidnapped all the people closest to her, calling them her property and only able to be slowed down by the failsafe built into the event, until she had to be stopped by Nepeta.
- Here's an example
- Zombie Apocalypse: The October 2011 event was this in a nutshell, courtesy of the Death Arcana.
