Yuletide Reveals II: Penny Dreadful

[selenak]

This was the big one, the über-ambitious one, the „I want to write the ULTIMATE Penny Dreadful story" one.

To establish background: like many another watcher, the Penny Dreadful season 3 and show finale left me dissatisfied with our heroine’s fate. However, in my case fannish ire was strangely missing because I immediately saw it as a great set up for what would surely work as the perfect finale, pulling the various themes, dynamics and pot threads the show had established together. Seriously, my immediate reaction to watching was to check when we’d get season 4, because I was so absolutely sure this was the set up, not the pay off. When I found out this was indeed meant as the series finale, I knew I had to write what was in my head, but not at once. I knew it had to be a Yuletide story, and one that while using what I thought Vanessa should do next (yes, next; bless genre shows and their possibilities re: a certain state) as its central arc still also worked as an ensemble story, bring the remaining regulars (with two exceptions, I’ll get to this in a moment) together for a common goal while also exploring their shifting dynamics. Oh, and of course, this being meant as a finale story, it would have to pay homage to the show’s past and gone characters as well.
Now, since the show had established an Egyptian connection from the pilot onwards and had thankfully sent Ferdinand Lyle there in s3, the answer to how to pull all this off to me obvious from the start: use both Egyptian mythology and an Egyptian adventure setting. My one fannish regret was that I couldn’t include Lily, but there was just no way this could have been done without going off into a different story which would have to be about Ethan finding out what happened re: Brona. The other surviving Penny Dreadful regular who’d been there from the start but isn’t in my story is Dorian Grey, but a) he wasn’t needed in any way, b) the ending the show had given him was perfect, down to the, ahem, framing, and c) he’s my unfavourite.

Below you’ll find the result of these ponderings. And I am really proud of it.

Falling Towards Apotheosis (18025 words) by Selena
Chapters: 13/13
Fandom: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Vanessa Ives/Sir Malcolm Murray, Ethan Chandler/Vanessa Ives, Vanessa Ives & Joan Clayton, Mina Harker/Vanessa Ives, Vanessa Ives & Claire Ives, Vanessa Ives & Peter Murray, Caliban & Vanessa Ives, Madame Kali | Evelyn Poole/Sir Malcolm Murray, Ferdinand Lyle & Sir Malcolm Murray, Ethan Chandler & Sir Malcolm Murray, Sir Malcolm Murray & Victor Frankenstein, Ethan Chandler/Hecate Poole, Vanessa Ives/Alexander Sweet | Dracula, Catriona Hartdegen & Sir Malcolm Murray, Sir Malcolm Murray & Dr. Florence Seward
Characters: Vanessa Ives, Sir Malcolm Murray, Ferdinand Lyle, Ethan Chandler, Victor Frankenstein, Caliban | John Clare, Madame Kali | Evelyn Poole, Hecate Poole, Alexander Sweet | Dracula, Catriona Hartdegen, Dr. Florence Seward, Joan Clayton, Claire Ives, Mina Murray, Peter Murray, Kaetenay (Penny Dreadful), Jeanne d'Arc | Joan of Arc, Sir Geoffrey Hawkes
Additional Tags: Epic, Post-Canon, Dysfunctional Family, Team as Family, Friendship/Love, Ancient Egyptian Literature & Mythology, Canon Compliant, Yuletide, Yuletide 2016, Fix-It
Summary:

As Vanessa's true plan to defeat Dracula is revealed, she and her friends find themselves on an epic quest that involves the living and dead alike.

Comments

[misbegotten]

I cannot WAIT to read this. ::twirls in happiness::

[selenak]

*beams*

It's entirely in either Vanessa's or Malcolm's povs, switching by chapter.

[saraqael]

Thank you for this story. To call your story a 'fix it' doesn't do it enough justice. John Logan's abrupt ending to the show felt like a complete betrayal of Vanessa Ives and of the entire story he'd been writing since season one. There was only one other tv show where the ending left me feeling this angry at the writer/producer, Twin Peaks. 25 years later, and I remain so irritated by the ending of Twin Peaks that I still can't even think about it without getting angry. John Logan's ending of Penny Dreadful had put Penny Dreadful into this same unwatchable category for me. I hated what he did to Vanessa Ives so much that I couldn't enjoy any part of the earlier story at all. This might sound kind of ridiculous, but your I feel like your story has given Penny Dreadful back to me. You gave Vanessa Ives back her purpose, her dignity, and her ferocious will to overcome evil. I'd always thought that Vanessa's story was somehow meant to culminate in Egypt and involve Egyptian mythology. I thought that she would die there but you turned it around and brought her back there which is marvelous. Thank you!

[selenak]

You are more than welcome! I am so glad I was able to give the show back to you; it meant (and means) so much to me, that I can imagine how you had felt, losing it in this particular way.

I put so much of my writerly all in this story that I'm over the moon every time someone tells me they've read it, and got from it what I hoped they would. (And correspondingly crushed when it's ignored.)