Fanfic metas - Penny/Alice meta for Tell Me Something I Don't Know

[sultrybutdamaged]

I'm going to be using this space to store some of the meta essays I write for myself when I'm putting together a fanfic. This one is for Tell Me Something I Don't Know, which was for the MHEA event in Magicians fandom and based on the movie This Means War. I didn't do a lot of metas for this fic, and none for the main relationship, which was Wickadiyoff. But I had a background former relationship between Penny and Alice, which is a big ship for me, so I did an essay to talk myself into not shipping them for this fic.

This is the fic if anyone is interested: Tell Me Something I Don't Know

Set up for the fic:

Penny grew up in foster care, got his mind-reading powers early but the Traveling thing later. He didn’t really have friends growing up except for Frankie but he had a lot of younger foster siblings he looked after and got into a mindset of expressing affection through caretaking even though he was gruff and kind of mean otherwise. Alice had basically her canon backstory except that she started trying to figure out what happened to Charlie right away after he died, instead of waiting until she got to Brakebills, and so she got in trouble and ended up working for the Library by the time she was nineteen. She was assigned to be Penny’s tutor to catch him up on magic. They became friends of a sort, but Penny had to be patient with Alice’s weirdness about personal relationships. Then they had drunk sex, then fell into a fwb situation, then Alice got pregnant and they moved in together and had a kid (Charlotte, named after Charlie.)

While all that was going on, Penny also met Kady when she was brought in with a bunch of other hedges to work for the Library. They also became friends, and then were assigned as partners.

In the present, Penny and Alice split up about a year ago. They are good co-parents but their relationship is still very awkward.

Problem Statement:

1. The plot of the movie requires that Penny have moved on from Alice enough to be actively pursuing meeting someone new. So she can’t have ruined his feelings about love or anything like that. I don’t want her cast as the bad guy.

2. During the fic, Penny is going to get together with Kady (his bff, also they hooked up once years ago) and Julia (new person he met on the internet.) And the event requires a happy ending. So whatever happened with Alice either has to be something that wouldn’t be an issue in those relationships in the first place, or that Penny has learned from and won’t bring to a new relationship.

3. In the movie, the Penny character and the Alice character split up because the Penny character was lying to her for their entire relationship, and then they got back together in the end. I got rid of the lying as the reason for the breakup because my Penny would never be gross like that, and obviously they aren’t getting back together because I went the threesome route with the love triangle. But anyone who saw the movie might be expecting them to get back together, so I need the break up to be clear enough so that won’t be confusing.

4. The plot is very different from canon but the backstories are close enough that these are the same characters. So whatever happens has to feel like something that could happen in canon.

My meta about Penny and Alice:

Penny and Alice are my one m/f Magicians ship. Their season 1 dynamic is interesting, and I think it plays in neat ways with their canon relationships.

Alice does not know how to relate to people usually, but the moment when she took an interest in Quentin was when he started talking about feeling alone in a crowd. And she also felt that connection with Penny - she didn’t show any interest in him until he got stabbed and it came out that he had no one who would care if he died, and then once the rest of them became a unit to fight the Beast, she was the one who kept trying to pull him in and checking to make sure he was okay. I don’t think it was sympathy, I don’t think Alice is a very sympathetic person at all (remember the time she compared losing being a niffin to Fen’s baby dying??) I think it’s just that Alice is very used to being alone and so when she sees someone else in that position it’s like there’s a little click; “that person is totally alone, therefore he is like me, I could probably talk to him without failing at it completely.”

The difference is that Penny could handle the “Aliceness” of Alice in a way Q can’t. I don’t like the theory that Quentin idealized Alice - she said that about him in season three because she hated who she was at that point and she assumed that Quentin couldn’t see the real her and still want to be with her. But the real issue with Qualice was that Quentin did see the real her, and was turned on but also intimidated, and so it only worked up until the point when his insecurities got in the way. Then he got whiny and passive aggressive, which Alice had no tolerance for. And then Alice’s mean streak came out, and Quentin has no ability to handle that. And so… well, you know how that went.

NONE of that would happen with Penny, because Penny, even though he has abandonment issues and doesn’t expect people to value him very highly, is confident. So he can recognize Alice for how amazing she is without feeling that it lessens him, and he can see her get bitchy and know exactly what she is doing without taking it personally. If he gets angry, he won’t walk away, he’ll push back. My favorite Penny/Alice scene is the one in the Neitherlands where she’s losing her confidence: if Q had been there he would have told her she was brilliant and better than everyone and that’s sweet, but what she needed in that scene was Penny’s version of that speech: “stop doing that shit you always do where you talk yourself out of being awesome, because you are but you also self-sabotage a ridiculous amount.” (Very similar to what Margo would do in that situation - that’s what Alice needs.) Tough love but from someone who respects her and isn’t going to be put off by her avoidance techniques. And she does the same thing for him, like the numerous times she calls out that he’s giving up in both season 1 and season 3 and tells him to quit moping and find a way to save himself.

(There was a whole section here about Qualice that I cut out because it’s not relevant in my mhea where they never even met. Be grateful.)

So, you see the problem. I think they would be very good for each other and probably not fuck things up the way their canon relationships did, but I’m writing a fic where they don’t work out and Penny winds up with, basically, the relationships both canon versions of him had.

Solution:

So the idea is making it about Penny being too ready to take care of Alice and her not being about that. It's interesting because I feel like in canon that was an issue with Penny/Kady at times, but in the case of Penny/Kady it was a problem because she didn’t know how to handle being taken care of by anyone, since she was used to being the caretaker, and she didn’t know how to trust someone who said they wanted to take care of her. But none of that meant Kady didn’t want him to take care of her sometimes, as long as she got to do the same in return. And then with Julia - Penny23 was more mature about relationships than Penny40 because he’d actually had one for more than ten minutes, but thing that came up between them in season 5 was Penny wanting a more settled life and Julia not wanting to give up quests and saving the world and all that. (And then they settled it by them having a baby, which… was really fucking dumb, but oh well.) I think at the heart that argument wasn’t about life goals so much as Penny’s idea of a relationship being a partnership and Julia not being used to that because she’d never had something like that.

So here’s the relationships dynamics in the fic and how they will reflect the canon relationships:

• Penny and Alice’s relationship in the Library will be a lot like it was in season 1 of the show, but if they had been pushed into interacting more. So they become friends, but it’s a kind of spiky friendship - she pushes him away or is randomly mean, he’s got walls up too, etc, but they have moments of connection (like the one scene that I pretty much stole from the show where they learn a new spell and she wants a high five.). Eventually they sleep together pretty much the way they did on the show, where Alice is upset and drunk and Penny is like “I have no problem with you using me to deal with your emotions.” Then when she gets bitchy the next day, he can handle that and she is confused that he doesn’t fall for her pushing him away. So she keeps coming back and they fall into a pattern.

• Eventually she gets pregnant and Penny is immediately like “I will move in with you and take care of this baby.” (Once she decides to have it, because Penny is respectful of women’s choices.) That I’m pretty much basing on how 23 responded to Julia being pregnant, minus the psychic issue. (I’m… probably just ignoring that issue? This is the canon world, so what really happens is that the Library knows how to handle a non-Traveler having a Traveler kid and Alice is never in danger, but I think I’ll leave that implied and not actually talk about the issue because I hated that storyline.)

• The problem that’s going to come up is that Alice kind of views their relationship as a convenience. This is the part where I have to be careful because I feel like there is a lot of Alice hate in fandom and I don’t mean this as an insult to Alice. Pretty much all my negativity towards Alice went away when I realized I’m a lot like her. But I think Alice is someone who isn’t opposed to a relationship, but it’s not a priority for her and it’s never going to come naturally to her to put that first. (In canon, she clung onto Quentin because they got together at a time when she was really adrift after her plan with her brother had failed and she had no idea what she was doing with her life. And then she fell in love and she couldn’t just get rid of those feelings but she definitely wanted to.) But anyway, so for the purposes of this fic, even though they’re together Alice has a tendency in non-kid related matters to still act like she’s single. So she’ll brush off Penny’s romantic or caretaking gestures and she won’t let him help when she’s trying to figure something out or dealing with a problem. And Penny is good at boundaries but eventually he starts to feel like they aren’t really together outside of parenting and sex. (I strongly feel Penny/Alice sex would always be good. Alice is wild in bed but she’s bad about communicating that; Penny is psychic.)

• The split happens when Alice makes the decision to stay with the Library when her contract is up without telling him. This is a parallel to in the show when Penny assumed Julia would eventually want to settle down and have a normal life and she was like “oh I signed up for four more apocalyses, sorry, did I not mention that?” (This is going to be a little difficult to make work in the fic since Penny does end up with Julia, so I’m basically transferring a problem one couple has onto another, but go with it for now.) That ends up being too much for Penny and they break up. They sort of talk about it, but not completely because I want them to actually deal with the issue later in the fic once Penny starts getting involved with Julia and Kady.. Alice is upset with the breakup but then adjusts, but Penny has a harder time because he minds giving up being in a relationship more than she does. Alice misses him but not necessarily being his girlfriend.

• (I cut something here too because I don’t want to explain it, I want to see if you catch it in the fic. But just know that I’m not saying Alice needs to be single to be happy, just what she wants in a relationship doesn’t look like what the other characters want.)

• Okay, so then, the other relationships. Julia and Penny meet online and there is much plot drama but they’re pretty compatible? I started planning this fic before the show gave them any problems so it’s a little weird now, but this version of Penny and Julia are older, and they both have experience being in long-term relationships, so they are better at understanding what they want from that. So they communicate more. Plus, this Julia’s backstory is different, so she’s less likely to want to ditch him to run off on adventures. There’s something of the element from the show of him helping her get past some painful stuff and embrace how great she is. I think it works. I dunno, they’re probably the least complicated corner of the triad but they’re cute and this is a rom-com so that’s good enough. Also, a big part of their relationship is that even though she has issues, Julia doesn’t push Penny away, which sets her apart not only from Alice but Kady. I love Penny’s patience with the people he loves but he deserves a little of that back.

• Then Penny/Kady - they actually also have their beginning from the show. They meet at the Library, they fuck pretty quickly (yes, I kept the mind-reading bit.) But this Kady is a little further along in her story with Marina and the hedges and trying to help her mom, so she’s more fucked up by it. And Penny figures that out (because Marina tells him, but in a weird jealous Marina way because Marina is sexually possessive of Kady) and so he makes friends with her. Kady, like in the show, pushes him away a lot, but eventually she starts to trust him and then they get assigned as partners, and over time that evolves into a very intimate but non-sexual friendship. Penny still thinks Kady’s attractive but he assumes she’s not interested so he hasn’t thought about it seriously in years, and it takes her interest in Julia for him to realize he’s jealous. Kady thinks about Penny all the time and acknowledges that she has feelings, but assumes she’s not a good fit for him because she would fit into his ideal even worse than Alice did.

• On the Kady/Julia side - they have a bit of an opposites attract thing. They have none of their canon history here, but there are a couple of times when they get the opportunity to jump in the line of fire for each other or randomly hold hands, so they’ll be fine.

• Towards the end Penny and Alice will have a conversation about why their relationship failed. Up until that point Penny will be thinking it’s because she didn’t want him as much as he wanted her, and Alice will be the one who is like - no, it wasn’t you, I just didn’t want your idea of a relationship, and we tried to create a relationship based on what we thought was “healthy” or “stable” rather than what we actually wanted. And that will clue Penny into realizing what’s going on with Kady and then the whole thing cascades from there. So the things that didn’t work with Alice won’t be a problem because Kady and Julia want that aspect of Penny in a way Alice didn’t, and also because since there’s a triad, there’s a little less pressure off all of them to be exactly what the other needs. (This is a theme in the fic, where pretty much everyone has to figure out how to make a relationship that is unique to their situation and fits their needs even if it’s not traditional in a lot of ways. There’s a whole related thing with Quentin/Eliot + Margo that kind of fits into that. Plus Alice’s mystery deal.)