#katamaren

If given the chance is there things Katakuri or Maren would have done differently in their love story? Like even though they ended up together do they have something they just wonder if they did differently what would have happened?

Katakuri definitely has a lot of regrets 😭

A song I really like to think of for them is “Sooner” by Goalkeeper, a song about wishing you’d met someone sooner. Considering they actually met a while ago and Maren just had his memory wiped, that is really more from Maren’s perspective, but…

I can just imagine the pain Katakuri feels when Maren says, “damn, wish we’d met sooner.” If only Katakuri had stopped Pudding, if only that spark to disobey mother had gotten him a little further, if only he had been smarter about it all. Those thoughts plague him, how could he have had Maren AND continued to be a good son? It all happened so quickly. If only he’d have time to plan…he’s spent so much time going over the events in his head in how things could have gone differently.

Maren is the type who lives with a lot of regrets, too. I just know the second he found out the truth he’d think it was all his own fault that Katakuri has been having live like this for so long.

So I think to answer your question: maybe there could have been a way to keep their relationship private. Sending letters, occasional incidental meetings, things like that…Katakuri is good at keeping things private. And no one would believe Maren anyways if he said he was writing secret love letters to the Big Mom pirates’ perfect second son.

What made it blow up in the first place wasn’t exactly related to the fact that Katakuri was showing interest in romance, either…the crime he committed against mama was that he didn’t do her bidding. Katakuri and Maren met shortly after Katakuri disobeyed her. He had been ordered to decimate a country whose payments were not up to par with their previous agreements, and to keep only the crops unharmed. Katakuri was used to this, but this time it weighed on him. He diverted his route and went to Hachinosu instead, where he sat at a bar and drank alone. That’s when a Maren approached him, and their tryst began in a moment of volatility. Later, mama found out that Katakuri had disobeyed her and was messing around with some Whitebeard Pirate.

Maren’s memory wipe was just an incidental punishment, an easy way to show Katakuri, “this is what happens when you don’t do what I say”. “Tough love,” the kind she gives to her children when she has to remind them who is in charge. Maren wasnt the focus of big mom at all.

Basically, if they were in a universe where they had less harm done to them, would they have still found eachother? Or in a universe where worse things happened to them? (I like to think they would. They seems to help compliment eachother. The parts that are scarred and not. Even if just for a moment, they would have spurred each other to be just that bit more.)

Thank you so much for this lovely thought!

Putting on my huge dork hat for a moment. If you know me then you know I’m a soul mates trope disliker, but then if you know me even better then you know that I treat Katamaren and all of their associated AUs (vampire, merman, knights) as one big soul mate universe. They somehow find each other in some way in all of them, even if they don’t always have a good ending. It’s honestly embarrassing but it just feels so right to me because they fit together in a way that feels perfect to me. I love exploring how their dynamic can be affected by the setting.

So yes, the “canon” One Piece timeline is not the best for them, but also not the worst! Maren’s memory is wiped as punishment to Katakuri, but they were together before for a bit, and then end up together at the very end.

On the flip side, for example, I have what I call the “Charlotte Maren” AU where everything is the same but Katakuri never allows Maren back into his heart once his memory is wiped. Maren stays obediently in an unhappy marriage with Smoothie as a test subject for Mama, while Katakuri stews alone knowing what could have been. Katakuri probably gets married himself, too (to a woman, specifically). Maybe I should call it the Good Boy AU that’d be evil and perfect. 🙂‍↕️

One of my favorite movies ever is The Fountain so I can’t help but be inspired by the idea of love transcending time and space as tragedies get repeated in new and different forms. I also really love the song The Origin of Love so that is another inspiration for me. ❤️