charmed1998fan - Tumblr blog

charmed1998fan · 4 years

Note

If you could create an AU which incorporated all four Charmed sisters, how would the story go? And how would it affect their powers?

Hi! Sorry it took me a week to answer yourquestion. And sorry about this, but while I was writing the answer, my handsslipped on the keyboard and I accidentallywrote a ramble that has 3K words… Oops?

TL;DR: Most of the show’s plots would be pretty muchthe same if I was too lazy to do more than incorporate the fourth sister intoeach episode—or very different if I was self-indulgent and decided to fixeverything I don’t like about the show while I’m at it. :D The girls wouldeither grow up together, or they’d learn about Paige’s existence as adults (Ithink the best time for this would either be the pilot episode or P3 H2O).Paige would be the only one who might have different powers (lots of optionshere), Prue, Piper and Phoebe would have the same ones.

Truth be told, this is not a topic I’ve thoughtabout too much before. Currently, most of my fanfic-daydreaming revolves arounda different fandom. At the height of my love for Charmed, most of myfanfic-daydreams focused on either A) my own season 9, or B) anythingChris-centric (had a huge crush on him back in the day).

Now here’s the thing: my season 9 was actuallya Power of Four story, but I’m reluctant to call it an AU because I was tryingto make it canon-complaint (albeit with a twist). It’s a sequel, not a rewrite.To be clear, when I say this story is canon-compliant, I’m only talking aboutthe show, not the comics. I actually started writing it a year before the firstCharmed comic was published. I never finished writing it, though. Iwrote three episodes and then abandoned it. :D

Although I didn’t really get around toexploring this in the fanfic, I still remember how I planned on explaining whythe Charmed Ones became the Power of Four rather than the Power of Three.Here’s where the canon-twisting comes in. Let me tell you the story I had inmind:

In AllHalliwell’s Eve, when Cole and the Charmed Ones time-traveled to the 1600s,they unintentionally altered history without realizing it (butterfly effect andall that). After they returned to the present, Angels of Destiny sensed thedisturbance, and they foresaw a powerful evil rising to power and taking overthe world in just a few years. Because this was not meant to happen and wentagainst the grand design they were protecting, they decided to interfere—bygiving the Charmed Ones, the most powerful good witches ever, even more powerso that they could defeat this evil being. How did they give them more power?By turning the Power of Three™ into the Power of Four™. But because P4 wassomething that also went against the grand design, turning P3 into it wasn’tthat simple. They had to work step by step:

Step 1: Magically create* Paige, a love childof Patty and Sam. Give her a telekinetic power like Prue has (albeit with aWhitelighter-y spin) so that she can replace the oldest and most powerfulsister of the trio.

Step 2: Make sure that Prue dies and that Piperand Phoebe meet Paige, creating a new version of P3.

Step 3: Wait a few years to give the new trioenough time to really consolidate this new Power of Three and reach the strengthand bond level that the first trio had.

Step 4: Make sure that Prue is revived. SincePiper and Phoebe now have an equally strong bond with Prue as well as Paige,the two P3s merge and become P4.

Step 5: Wait another couple of years to give P4a chance to consolidate, to give Prue and Paige a chance to form the samestrong bond they have with Piper and Phoebe.

Step 6: Now is the time when the evil tries totake over the world. Make sure the Power of Four™ find out about it, then stepaside and let them handle it.

Step 7: Congratulations! The over-powered P4managed to defeat the evil. Though the existence of P4 does go against thegrand design, it is not as bad as it would have been had the evil won, so justshrug that off and live with it. Things may not be exactly as meant to, but hey, good enough. Go back to wherever it isthat Angels of Destiny live, and relax. Your job is done.

* My original idea for how the Angels ofDestiny created Paige was that they time-traveled to November 1976. There they performedsome kind of magic that caused Patty to conceive a baby the next time she andSam… you know. I called this canon-compliant because everything we saw on theshow really did happen, the twist is just that the reason it happened is becausethe Angels altered history. I have to admit, though, now that I’m thinkingabout this, I can’t figure out why they would bother with a convoluted planlike this if they could have just time-traveled to the 1600s instead andchanged the thing that started the butterfly effect. I don’t remember if I hadthis thought-out back then or not, though I’m guessing I didn’t.

An alternative way of creating Paige that Ithought of now: the Angels of Destiny pulled a “last Thursdayism” on Paige.When you’re playing The Sims 2, you can’t turn back time, but you can alwayscreate a new sim, an adult sim, and that sim will have memories even thoughthey’re brand new in the game. The Angels of Destiny couldn’t time-travel, butthey could create Paige. So they did,and they gave her and the people she would’ve had relationships with fakememories as if she were alive the whole time and not a brand new person.

Backstory

Leaving aside the sequel, if I were to rewritethe show with the Power of Four™, if I were to make an AU that starts from thebeginning, how would the story of the show go? Let’s talk about how the wholething would begin, how P4 would get established. Like I said, I haven’t giventhis much thought before, so allow me to brainstorm here and see what I cancome up with.

*****

Version 1: Witch/Whitelighter relationshipsare not forbidden. Patty and Sam don’t have to hide their relationship, so theyget married and Sam becomes the step-father of Prue, Piper and Phoebe. ThenPatty gets pregnant and gives birth to Paige, who they don’t have to give away,so they raise the four girls together. Of course, not too long after Paige’sbirth, Patty dies.

Version 1A: After Patty’s death, Sam clips hiswings but stays with the family. He raises the girls along with Penny. Ofcourse, since the girls had their powers bound and Patty and Penny decided tohide magic from them until they are old enough, the girls don’t know that Samis a former Whitelighter. When their powers are unbound after Penny’s death in1998, Sam tells them the truth and becomes their guide as they learn tonavigate their lives as witches.

Version 1B: After Patty’s death, Sam ends uppulling a Victor and abandons the girls (poor Prue gets double Daddy issues).He tries to watch over them from afar, but doesn’t get too involved in theirlives, making only scarce guest appearances on the show like Victor does.

Version 1C: Sam dies with Patty. Or at somepoint after Patty, who cares? The point is he’s gone, the girls are raised solelyby Penny and there is only one Victor on the show.

Either way, in this version, all four girlsgrow up together. When Phoebe finds the Book in the attic in the first episode,they all get their powers together. They are all in the story from thebeginning to the end.

*****

Version 2:Witch/Whitelighter relationships areforbidden, but Patty decides to keep the baby anyway. She knows the Elders aredumb and useless, so she doesn’t worry about anything happening to Paige. If the Elders ever notice that Patty’spregnant or has a newborn, she just tells them the baby is Victor’s (says theyhad a one-night-stand or something), and they fall for it, so no problemo.

In this version, the girls grow up together aswell, just like in version 1, but there is one difference: Paige doesn’t knowthat Victor is not her father, doesn’t know that she’s only a half-sister ofPrue, Piper and Phoebe.

Version 2A:Paige doesn’t develop Whitelighter powers at the beginning, she only has awitch power. She starts developing Whitelighter powers later on and is veryconfused by it, until…

Version 2B:Paige has Whitelighter powers from the beginning, but none of the sisters haveany idea what a Whitelighter is at that time.

Version 2Ba: Later,the sisters meet Leo. They discover that he is something called a Whitelighterand that he has the same powers that Paige has. They’re all very confused byit, until…

Version 2Bb:Leo enters the story later on (or never?), or he enters early but the sisters don’tfind out that he’s a Whitelighter until later on. The Charmed Ones are notaware that Whitelighters are a thing until…

…the sisters learn about Sam, Patty’s Whitelighterfrom before she died. This is where Paige discovers that Victor is not herbiological father, and that she is her sisters’ half-sister. Cue some Paigeangst here.

*****

Version 3:Patty and Sam give Paige up for adoption like they did in canon. In the firstepisode of the show, Prue, Piper and Phoebe meet Paige, who has discovered thattheir mother was her biological mother. It’s like in the reboot, when Mel andMaggie met Macy in the first episode. Of course, Prue, Piper and Phoebe arereluctant to believe Paige at first, but later that night Phoebe finds the Bookof Shadows in the attic. She reads aloud a spell to unbind the powers of the“four sisters,” and she reads about Melinda Warren’s “Power of Four” prophecy.When all four of them start performing magical tricks the next day, Prue, Piperand Phoebe realize Paige might have been right. Cue them getting to know eachother and forming the P4 together.

*****

Version 4: Pattyand Sam give Paige up for adoption like they did in canon. Prue, Piper andPhoebe do not meet Paige right from the beginning. All the spells thatmentioned “three” in canon don’t mention any number in this version. MelindaWarren’s prophecy was some vague crap about three sisters (each with one of herthree powers) finding the light and together becoming the strongest witchesever. As it later turns out, this “light” is the half-WhitelighterPaige. But the sisters don’t know that yet at the beginning of the story.

At the beginning, the sisters feel that they’renot reaching their full potential. The spells meant to be cast by the CharmedOnes together aren’t fully effective. For instance, Charmed vanquishing spellsonly wound the demons; this is enough to let the sisters finish the demons offotherwise (like, with athames and offensive potions and stuff), but still, thespells are not strong enough to actually vanquish the demons as they’re meantto. However, the girls attribute this purely to the fact that they are new atthe craft. They figure they’ll get better in time, as they learn to controltheir powers better and get more practice.

Then surprise! Later on (I think the best timefor this would be the episode P3 H2O—ornot quite P3 H2O ’cause I didn’t likethat episode, but instead some good episode that also introduces Sam, Patty’sformer Whitelighter and lover), they discover that their mother had a baby withher Whitelighter, who she had to give up for adoption because it was aforbidden baby. This baby, now a young adult, is a fourth sister, who’s ahalf-Whitelighter. Prue, Piper and Phoebe look for her and find Paige Matthews.When Paige joins them, they can suddenly perform much more powerful magic thanbefore. Vanquishing spells actually kill the demons, etc. The Charmed Ones nowrealize what the prophecy really meant.

*****

Version 5:Patty and Sam give Paige up for adoption like they did in canon. Similarly to version4, Prue, Piper and Phoebe do not meet Paige right from the beginning. However,they don’t lack full power here, because in this version the Charmed Ones onlyhave the Power of Three. The Power of Four does not and cannot exist. MelindaWarren’s prophecy wasn’t vague, the P3 spells all work as intended, etc.

When the Charmed Ones learn about Paige in P3 H2O, she doesn’t add to the group andsuddenly make them stronger. Instead, what they discover is that Paige has theability to replace any of the sisters in the Power of Three. You can read moreabout how this works below, in the section Powers: version 4.

*****

Okay, I think that’s all the ideas I can comeup with now. If I were to choose just one of these versions… I don’t know, Imight go with Version 3, or maybe Version 1C.

Story

Now we’ve established how the story wouldstart—but how would the story go?

All right, if P3→P4 were the only change madeto the series, I imagine the story would go pretty much the same way, exceptthere’d be four sisters reciting spells together rather than three. :DObviously, one sister dying and getting replaced wouldn’t happen in thisversion, but I feel like in most plots there wouldn’t be a problem withincorporating the fourth sister into them, and it wouldn’t be necessary tochange them too much.

Of course, you could change how the storylineswould play out if you wanted to. For instance, when Cole becomes the Source inseason 4, I feel like Prue would also notice that he was acting weird, maybeeven sooner than Paige did. So then Prue and Paige could team up, and togetherthey could find some concrete evidence, which would convince Piper and Phoebethat Cole was evil (again). Then they could either A) vanquish Cole sooner,before Phoebe has a chance to get pregnant and join him as the Queen of theUnderworld, or B) save Cole before it’s too late, turning him into a mortal (again).

But I don’t think it would be necessary to makechanges like these. The storylines could play out more or less in the same way.For instance, Piper and Phoebe disregarded Prue’s concerns in season 3—whywouldn’t they do it again in season 4? I do think that, with Prue being alivethe whole time, Piper would keep more of her early-seasons personality lateron. Which means that when Phoebe becomes Queen of the Underworld, Prue wouldmore likely take the role that Piper played in that episode. Piper herselfcould be more of a hopeful peacemaker with Paige—or she could do her own thing,she could get tired of playing the peacemaker and try to stay on the sidelinesof this conflict, be all “I’m tired of getting stuck in the middle of your crapmy whole life, leave me out of this.” But this wouldn’t affect the storyline’sturn-out much. In the end, Phoebe would still vanquish Cole and he would comeback and they would vanquish him again and all that.

I could see it going either way, different orthe same. So now the question is this: if I’m creating this AU, do I want to tryand keep the show as it is, keep all the same storylines, with the only big differencebeing that all four sisters are there at all times (which would be the easierway to do this)—or do I want to take this opportunity to self-indulge and putin the work and change every single thing I don’t like about the show while I’mat it? :D I love Charmed, it’s been one of my favorite TV shows for thelast 15 years or so, but let’s be real, it ain’t perfect.

One thing I’d like to address before I move on tothe final section, the powers, is the question of Prue’s love life. If shedoesn’t die mere two years after Andy, that means something has to change.Obviously, Prue can’t end up marrying anyone other than Andy, which means thatA) Andy wouldn’t die in this story, B) Andy would die but would later bebrought back to life, or C) Prue would take a vow of celibacy and prove thatyou don’t need romance in your life to be fulfilled. Well, I feel like C) wouldbe out of character for her, so I guess it’s either A) or B). Either one worksfor me, just as long as the two of them get their happily ever after togetherand get married and have babies and stuff. :)

Powers

Now, in terms of powers, I see fourpossibilities.

*****

Version 1: (This option applies to Backstory: version1, 2 and 4.) All the sisters have the same powers they had on the show. TheCharmed Ones were prophesized to be siblings who are descendants of MelindaWarren and who, as a group, have each of Melinda’s three powers. P4 meet thecriteria, which makes them the Charmed Ones.

*****

Version 2: (This option applies to Backstory: version1, 2 and 3.) Melinda had four powers, not three. The Charmed Ones wereprophesized to be four sisters with the Power of Four. Paige, as the fourthsister, has the fourth power that Melinda had. This fourth power could reallybe anything: invisibility, telepathy, icy breath (like Prue’s past life), youname it. There’s countless possibilities here.

*****

Version 3: (This option applies to Backstory: version1, 2B and 4.) Paige only has Whitelighter powers. Of course, she is ahalf-witch, she is part of the Power of Four™, she can cast spells with hersisters and stuff, but she didn’t inherit any of the three Warren powers thather sisters have. She doesn’t mind, though, ’cause she has enough powers as aWhitelighter.

*****

Version 4: (This option applies to Backstory: version1, 2 and 5.) The prophesized sisterhood is a trio, not a quartet. There canonly be the Power of Three, not the Power of Four. Paige is an extra fourthsister. If she were to recite a spell along with Prue, Piper and Phoebe, theeffect would be exactly the same as it would be if only Prue, Piper and Phoebesaid it. Paige can’t add to the Power of Three—but she can intercept it andform the Power of Three with any two of her sisters.

In this version, Paige possesses all threeWarren powers: telekinesis, freezing, and negligib— I mean, premonitions.However, she can’t use them whenever she wants to. She also has Whitelighterpowers, which she can use at any time, but the Warren powers she can only useunder certain conditions. To give an example of the conditions I have in mind:

Let’s say Paige wants to use telekinesis. Inorder to do that, the distance between Prue and all three of her sisters has tobe bigger than the distance between Paige and Piper/Phoebe. Plus, it can’t justbe a centimeter bigger (that would be a total chaos), it has to be at least, say,100 meters bigger, or something like that, IDK. Therefore, if all four sistersare in a room together, Paige can only use her Whitelighter powers and shecan’t cast any Power of Three spells. If Prue goes on a vacation to anothercountry and Piper, Phoebe and Paige stay in San Francisco, Paige can usetelekinesis and cast P3 spells to her heart’s desire.

One more condition could be that, since thePower of Three was meant for Prue, Paige can only use telekinesis if Prue isn’tusing it at the same time, regardless of the distance. If Prue on her vacationdecided to move a bottle of water to herself from across the room, Paige wouldnot be able to use telekinesis in that moment. Alternatively, it could be thatthis condition doesn’t apply, but what happens is that Prue loses her powerwhen Paige is tapping into her place in the Power of Three. If Prue is away ona vacation, she can’t move the bottle of water across the room magically; shehas to get up and walk for it like a normal person.

These rules also apply with freezing/premonitions,wherein Paige replaces Piper/Phoebe in the Power of Three.

An exception to these rules would be unrelatedpower losses. If, say, a demon took away Prue’s powers through apower-stripping potion, Paige would be able to use telekinesis even if she werestanding right next to Prue. However, if two or all three of her sisters losetheir powers, Paige can’t use any of her witchy abilities. She can only betapping into the Power of Three from one side at a time, not two or all three.

Does this make any sense? I hope so, but I’mnot sure.

*****

Anyway, I’m done rambling now. Sorry for allthis. I’ll try to answer questions more concisely next time.

#ask #Charmed #Prue Halliwell #Piper Halliwell #Phoebe Halliwell #Paige Matthews #The Charmed Ones #P4

13 notes · View notes