Penny for the character thing?
How I feel about this character
I love Penny. She’s an amazing character and she was a great introduction to a lot of Atlas stuff. Her existence brings up a lot of questions with James, as well, which I think we’re going to get discussed this volume.
She was sweet and kind and adorable and that’s so, so good. I love that she was Ruby’s first non-Beacon friend, and the first person Ruby very viscerally lost. I think her kind personality was important and there’s so much of her we never got to know.
Why was she with James the day Qrow showed up?
Who were her other teammates? Why didn’t Ciel fight? What did they know about Penny?
Was Penny set up to be a maiden? She wasn’t Fall. Was she meant to be Winter?
What was her plan to stay at Beacon? That’s the one that haunts me the most. We never got to know the plan. And I doubt we ever will. This girl, this tiny, sweet, baby girl, had a plan to escape her destiny and ended up dying instead.
And that. Fuck man. That still hurts, almost four years later.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
Penny/Ruby is the obvious one. They had amazing chemistry. I think Penny/Weiss has some good potential as well, and You and Me kicked off the Penny/Mercury ship in a big way. But Penny/Ruby will always be my fave. It’s just a bummer I ship Qrow/James more and that makes Penny/Ruby hard to write in most AUs.
My non-romantic OTP for this character
Penny and James, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my writing. I have been making Penny James’ daughter for the last four years and no amount of [spoilers] is going to make me change that. They had such an interesting, implied relationship and I really, really wish we’d seen them interact like, at all outside of her death.
Because James says “about the girl” not “about the robot” not “about the soldier”. James keeps her close-by after everything in V1. James cares.
And we never got context outside of her death how much he cared.
My unpopular opinion about this character
I don’t think she’s coming back. And if she does, I don’t think she’ll be Penny. Penny’s death served a very specific purpose and while I know Ruby needs to deal with her death, I don’t think bringing Penny back will fix that.
She had an aura. She wasn’t “just” a robot. Her soul is gone. And I hope V7 confirms one way or another.
Alternatively: she’s coming back, but not because she’s a robot. She’s coming back because they’re gonna go find the Life relic, and you know for a fact that if Ruby gets the choice she’ll wish Penny alive. If it’s a 3 deal, I imagine she’ll go for Pyrrha as well. The third is where I’m up in the air.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
I wish we’d known her plan. I wish we’d seen her interact with James. I wish we’d gotten confirmation if Ruby had a crush on her, like I suspect. I wish we’d seen her team. I wish we’d seen her more in general. V3 shuffled her offscreen until she died.
I wish we’d seen her with James.
I wish we’d seen her with Qrow. Because if anyone in the inner circle knew what she was, it would have been him.
Mostly, I just wish we’d had more time with her.
