#penny celia

[nonrandomduck]

Penny Celia's got one of the most solid designs tbh

[thelegend2t]

Awful Hospital: Penny Celia Analysis

In the recent updates of Awful Hospital, we've been introduced to Penny Celia, the scientist in the image above. She was recently restored as a fully functional being. But if you read the comic you already know all that, let's analyze some of the finer details

Starting with her name: Penny Celia. She shares a last name with Maya Celia, but they're both very fungus themed, like "penicillin", so that makes sense.

Now, onto her altruistic look on life forms:

...What you have endured to exist is a spectacular achievement, and your supposed "limitations" are as intrinsic to that as any of your capabilities. The sum of what you can and cannot understand or accomplish all contibute to the absolute uniqueness of your lived experience out of all possible entities in every possible continuum. Nothing can be you or ever live your world as you will have known it except you, yourself, and that special world you carry will have always mattered, now and to infinity, regardless of whether any part of it will ever be seen, understood, appreciated or remembered by any other thinking thing or it is destined to fall silent and lie secret with your final breath. I say this to you, but also to every last one of your kind that may ever hypothetically perceive my words. You are strong, and smart, and have been gifted an existence that is yours alone.

This quote from her I think exemplifies her empathetic outlook on all people. While her peers would deem The Grey to be "below" her, she resents that notion, instead seeing them as not worse, but as equals. And believing all their lives to be precious.

(Also contibute is misspelled, Bogleech, fix this!)

What I find interesting however, is how her workspace might tie into this empathy for the Grey-Zoner.

We don't see much of her lab in it's fixed state but we can see plenty in it's "vestigial state". We can see a microscope, a magboil, several X-rays, a rat with an ear growing out of it, a refrigerator, and a painting/picture (the art style doesn't make it super clear)

Lets go down the list:

The microscope is human sized, in contrast with Penny's actual size. though this could just be a product of the vestigiality of the lab at this point.

The magboil appears to be used for examination purposes. I'll note that it very much resembles a human. It's bipedal, it has two eyes, it has a mouth, it has very human-like shoulders and ribs, it has skin, it even resembles a very pale human in skin-tone.

The X-rays are either from Earths fauna or Human beings (One of them looks like Yakub though)

The ear growing out of the rat looks extremly human

Pausing the list here, I think Penny has been studying Grey-Zoners, he hear her say "the complete nature of grey-phase existostatus remains unknown", and as a woman of and the very concept of science, I imagine she'd be working to plug this knowledge gap. Rats are a stereotypical lab animal, it could be the case she's studying human parts by morphing non-person animals. This, of course, is all assuming this stuff exists in her lab proper, but the image above is referred to as a state of the lab, not a different one.

Next we have the refridgerator:

It has two magnets resembling earth fruit stuck to it, but it also has an apple inside. You know, a very common earth fruit. Judging by the "DANGER" tape around it, and the old phase "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" it seems medical staff find it to be toxic. So why would someone on staff keep it in the fridge? Because they're studying what Grey-Zoners eat.

Heck, the fridge seems to usually be used for storing body parts, judging by the blood. Penny has cleared it out to store one toxic Grey Zone artifact for research purposes.

And finally: the image of portrait/painting: It features what looks to be a human man with hypnotic eyes, no nose, grey heir, a brain revealed by a barrier of glass, a lab coat and a very wide grin.

This reminds me of another doctor:

Now, sure, it's not a one to one match. Mr. Man isn't rocking the Brain-In-a-Jar cut or the lack of a nose, but Dr. Mans most prominent feature, his smile, is front and center.

Along with light skin and balding grey hair, this reads like a stylized portrait of the doctor, heck, maybe even a different version of him a la Jay and Joe. Penny did say she was relevant to more than one zone.

Regardless, there's also the fact that Dr. Man has been repeatedly shown to be a black sheep among his colleagues, the odd Grey-Zoner, and Penny would seem to be the only one who'd see past that prejudice. It's possible she started to see this way as a result of working with Dr. Man. Even if not though, I still believe they have the upmost respect for each other. Am I shipping them? I'm friend-shipping them at least.

This brings us to Awful Hospital's latest update:

Fern's climbing into The Abyss to find something that Doctor Man had presumably left for her, a note. A note she's going to be reading just after we're introduced to Penny. From a writing standpoint this would be a good time to show how Dr. Man feels about his colleague coming back. I suspect that's a thank-you letter, for what Fern has helped to do.