Can we all take a minute to appreciate how Penny Polendina bucks the trend of “neurodivergent-coded robot/non-human character who is neurodivergent-coded solely because they are a robot/not human, and it’s only played for comedy”? Like I’m so tired of neurodivergent rep being comic relief non-human characters, but Penny subverts all of that because the source material does everything to make Penny as human and as genuine as possible. I mean, Penny has a literal canonical soul, she has complex relationships with her father, with Ruby, with Winter, her range of emotions, both positive and negative, is vast and is demonstrated thoroughly and effectively in Volume 7…she’s a neurodivergent character that I feel I actually identify with because she’s so genuine and real.
Just think back to Volume 2, right after Ruby sees her stop a truck with her bare hands. Penny begins to panic, she starts to hiccup, she hugs herself, all because she’s scared that Ruby is going find out a deep personal secret. When I first watched this scene, I felt that. I still do upon rewatching it. I would have done the exact same thing. Penny felt isolated, singled out, because of what made her different. I would have tried to close myself off, too. To hold myself just to feel some semblance of comfort in a situation where everything seems to be crumbling around me. That same scene is what made me fall in love with Penny because, even though it’s the scene which reveals she’s not human, she felt so real.
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