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highladyluck · 3 years

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WoT AU: Perrin’s Cursed Shadar Logoth Ax

Concept: WoT AU where Perrin is the dumbass who keeps a shiny cursed ax from Shadar Logoth, while Mat drops the dagger before leaving Shadar Logoth and ends up getting wolf powers instead, so they get each other's powers and story paths. Their personalities are the same.

What's really interesting about this is how much it highlights that the individual ta'veren struggles are actually at root the same; all of the boys struggle to accept both the responsibilities and the violence that the narrative pushes on them.

However, the boys don't struggle with the same issues to the same degree! So if you give responsibility-avoidant Mat the plotline that incentivizes responsibility, and violence-repulsed Perrin the plotline that incentivizes violence, they hit their growth points quicker and get over their internal conflicts faster. XD

I’ll put the plot and characterization details under the cut. Also, shout-out to @adurna0, ßætåñŵå£k€r ßùprëmê, and Pexitron for contributing enthusiasm, questions, and ideas to this nonsense.

Mat’s Path: Beloved Culture Hero With Daydreaming Superpowers

In the original universe Mat's internal struggle is to come to terms with responsibility (with his spelled-out fate as catalyst), and his external struggle is about leading battles and revolutionizing warfare. In the AU, he'd be put in a position of responsibility after saving everybody and he'd behave better because he was being appreciated and trusted, and the only struggle would be to stop him from using the Wolf Dream for literally everything, including battles somehow.

I think Mat would likely be kind of uneasy about the wolf powers at first, but he'd LOVE Tel'aran'rhiod, he's always daydreaming, and that's a place where your daydreams become real. He'd test out all of his fun wolf powers and Dreamwalking abilities immediately. Hopper would still be exasperated but for completely different reasons. Mat would also go back and rescue Emond's Field from Trollocs and Whitecloaks and turn it into a trading empire. At some point when Perrin returns from Rhuidean, Mat would go on a special mission to steal Perrin's hat, because frankly Perrin wouldn't keep wearing it after leaving the Waste anyway, and it looks better on Mat. This is my only concession to the original storyline’s aesthetics.

Unlike Perrin, Mat would not hesitate to rescue people from Masema, and he'd be good at the political stuff. He'd love being viewed as a hero, though he'd possibly have some of the same struggles Perrin did re: taking on leadership, because it implies responsibility. But with Mat, it's more that he'd pitch in during a crisis automatically and then bitch about it after, and I think after people started giving him positive attention for helping them, he'd act out and complain less.

He and Faile wouldn't be into each other but they'd be bros (a little like him and Birgitte in the original universe) and have a good working relationship; Faile would be his work wife (but not his actual wife) in his role as Lord of the Two Rivers. Mat's love interest in this situation is Berelain, but it's a very slow burn. (I can’t imagine anything but a slow burn romance for Mat, he’s just built for it.)

He'd be freaked out about Berelain at first (due to getting the Min advice about running from the most beautiful woman you've ever seen) but eventually he'd be like 'wait, hang on, I do not take advice' and he'd court Berelain and even more eventually succeed. Probably Berelain is the one who gets kidnapped by the Shaido in this version? Also, he would absolutely kick Lanfear's ass in Tel'aran'rhiod, with or without the power of love.

Perrin’s Path: Luckily, I’m Very Qualified For This Job

Ok, so on to Perrin. In the original universe, Perrin's internal struggle is to come to terms with his capacity for violence (with his wolfman destiny as catalyst), and his external struggle is about taking on political and social responsibility. In the AU, Perrin would now have actual stakes for the hammer vs ax issue, so it would get resolved sooner. Also, Perrin's issues with responsibility aren't 'I don't want to work hard', they're 'I'm not the right man for the job'. Once Perrin has the thought "The Pattern has specifically prepared me to be really good at killing people, that's my job now", he'd just go do his job.

Again, I like to think that Perrin still has the hammer vs ax dilemma, but now has rather different stakes, and Perrin might be a lot more concerned than Mat ever was about the lingering darkness in his soul. I think that's what prompts him to go through the stone doorway in the Stone of Tear, in this universe. Unlike Mat, he knew specifically what he was going to ask for in the Rhuidean doorway, so he asks for them directly (I haven't quite worked out what his accessories would be in this universe, but I bet one of them is a hammer. Maybe the ashandarai becomes a war hammer?)

His big internal bugaboo is whether all of his new battle memories make him a bad person and whether he’s tainted forever by the ax, so he spends way more time than Mat ever did feeling bad about being really good at war. However, once he decides, 'Well, I'm working for the light, this is clearly my job now, and I have the tools for it, so I should do my job and take pride in my work," he's fine.

I also think that, being a blacksmith, he would be more familiar than Mat is with metalworking and would invent cannon way earlier. He would invent cannon so early that I also think he would have time to invent guns. That's right, in this universe, Perrin has a gun. He probably forges a gun with the One Power. He'd also make it out of *Finnland earlier than Mat, and with all of his body parts, because a) Perrin would absolutely bring guns to fairyland, b) Perrin doesn't give a shit about the delicate rules of fae bargains and c) Perrin would have obsessed over the puzzle of the gift he didn't specifically ask for, and would have known before he entered *Finnland what it was for, so once he found Moiraine he'd be able to escape immediately.

Perrin and Tuon get married somehow, but there's no love there and by the end of the series they're both fully intending to kill each other. (Tuon doesn't trust him and is pretty sure he's going to be a huge threat to her rule; she doesn't flirt with him by threatening to kill him, because when Tuon wants you dead, you are just dead, she doesn't telegraph her intentions.) Perrin feels bad about having to kill his wife, but the Seanchan are evil and there's no way in hell Perrin's leading their armies after all this is over, so she's gotta die. Perrin might manage it first, since Tuon would wait till after the Last Battle, but then Selucia or literally any other Seanchan party would immediately kill Perrin. So. Hopefully everybody stays their hand till after the Last Battle, because otherwise the Light is screwed in this scenario.

#wheel of time #wheel of time au #wheel of time spoilers #wheel of time meta #mat cauthon #Perrin Aybara #ta'veren role reversal AU #honestly it's mostly a good universe unless you are an Original Universe Ta'veren Love Interest #and as long as Perrin can refrain from killing his wife until the rest of the world is saved #and as long as you don't mind that Mat can see your dreams which frankly I find very upsetting

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drivebyanon · 6 years

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Romanogers swirling thoughts

Warning. This is going to be LONG.

After watching Infinity Wars, the Romangers little bonzai that was rooted in my head decided to take some miracle grow and become a huge Willow tree. I can’t seem to stop thinking about the Cap and Black Widow. They were just so damn awesome together in the few scenes they had. Now, I spent a lot of time pushing any OTP feelings down after Ultron. I felt like my Romanogers heart was crushed and didn’t want to go there again because it basically sucked seeing everything built up from the Winter Soldier completely ignored. It was downright disorienting how fast they turned things around in Ultron. Or maybe I was just short-sighted to see the B & N coming?

And it was so hard for me NOT to like those two crazy kids after TWS . Think about it, in the fiction world the signs (pitfalls) for romance were all there for viewers to pick up on in The Winter Soldier:

Quippy fast humor between the two

Revealing conversations on a road trip

Pretending to be a couple

Having to kiss to avoid detection

“Trust Conversation” while looking deep into each other’s eyes

Trying to setup the other person with someone else (while ignoring your own feelings)

The Long Goodbye at the end

UST all over the place

The typical romance plot tropes were all over the place so of course so many of us were ready and willing to travel down the Romanogers road. It was practically paved for us! I mean that’s basically the plot of It Happened one Night without the quirky ending where the Walls of Jerico fall! (If you haven’t watched It Happened one Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert then you gotta, it’s soooo good). And then came The Age of Ultron and everything was turned upside down. I was so confused where the Bruce & Nat relationship came from. There was not enough there in Avengers to even make me consider it. I thought it would be more Nat & Clint if anything. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner. What a great decision to replace him in the movie instead of Ed Norton. Everything just clicks with Mark and he is an adorable hunky dork. But if Joss Whedon had plans on going there to begin with, he needed to work harder to set it up, create the UST between the two. And it didn’t help that the Russo Brothers seemed to have a completely different plan altogether.

The disorientation didn’t abate with Civil War either. Because we had the weird (and I’m sticking to it!) and I mean WEIRD romance with Sharon Carter. Just….no. But then we also had gems like Natasha showing up at the funeral to be there for him AND turning to help Cap? Just like WTAF? What do you want me to feel? What do you want me to root for? Just tell me, because the back and forth is really confusing.

Which brings me to Infinity War, all that duo bad assery & the Romanogers baby James theory which makes me fall happily down the rabbit hole. Now, I have my serious doubts that the Marvel Powers That Be would actually have this happen because they are intent ignoring any of the chemistry Natasha and Steve share and flub every other romantic storyline they roll out (Like what even happened to Thor, Jane Foster, and Lady Sif slight tension?). The only relationship that is on point is Tony and Pepper. But even so, it is definitely easy to go down the road of Romangers baby for a couple of reasons:

The clumsy attempt at bringing Natasha’s fertility into the movie series. Why do that? There was no reason for it. She could have easily told Bruce “We both have darkness in us”. Boom! That’s it. But instead we get a backstory of how she can’t have a baby so she’s a “monster” to explain why they’re compatible? Joss firmly decided to put it in there (for questionable reasons), but once it was said, it enters the brain and how we look at the character of Natasha Romanoff. Before Ultron not once did I look at Natasha and think of her as a mother or non-mother. She was just a kick ass female character. But afterwards, and with the debate that followed, it was hard to separate her from the concept of “motherhood”.

At the beginning of Infinity Wars Tony is talking to Pepper about dreaming of a baby and wondering if it’s prophetic. So it automatically starts off down a “Huh, an Avengers baby” road. And that conversation really seemed to come out of nowhere. Papa Stark has come a long way from the playboy he was in Iron Man. But right there in the beginning of the movie it sets up the idea of “baby” and it lingers there. Where are the filmmakers going with it? Is it something to just show Tony’s growth or was it put in there as a plot device to hint at the possible ending?

So I don’t think we’re too crazy for our brains going down that way. Whether intended or not, there is a path for it that was built. My only issue is that it feels a wee bit tainted because of that “monster” conversation with Bruce. Even if unintentionally, it set up motherhood almost as a “redemption” quality which is frankly annoying, because her redemption is more than that. Joss did such a disservice to the character by so clumsily inserting that line into the movie. If by supreme miracle the Marvel PTB actually let there be a baby James Rogers, my god it would be pretty amazing, and it deserves not to wrapped up in the debate mess Joss created.

So those are the thoughts that have been swimming around my head, and I’m ready for the complete heartbreak that Avengers 4 will bring because knowing my luck with OTPs they’ll kill off our Cap (although I’ll keep praying). But at least we always have fanfiction.

And just because I love gifs, Romantic Tropes:

Quippy Humor: