#the way its explored as loss of personhood/self could fit so many characters

[ashes-as-ashes]

there should be a homestuck goncharov au.

[aspoonofsugar]

Penny’s Final Word

Cinder might have had the final word of the volume and that is a meta for another time. Still, there is another character who got to have another important final word:

Penny: Let me choose this one thing.

Penny’s arc has always been about self-actualization and escaping objectification.

She was created to be a weapon and everything was decided for her by basically... everyone:

Both enemies and loved ones alike ended up choosing for her multiple times, so it is fitting that Penny herself is the one who has the last word about herself. She makes the final choice that decides how her life should end and what her legacy should be.

At the same time, Penny’s final choice and sacrifice perfectly tie together all the major themes explored in the Atlas arc.

This analysis will try to explore her arc and to show how it is central to everything the Atlas volumes wanted to convey.

PENNY AND HER FAIRIES

What makes a person a person and not something else?

This is a key question in Penny’s story and it can’t be answered without addressing who her Blue Fairy is.

Is it Fria?

Or Ambrosius?

The answer is neither and both. These two characters are definately references to the Blue Fairy, but they are not the ones who make Penny feel human. The one who does is ironically a red fairy:

You saw my soul Through the nuts and bolts You're the friend I can trust Helped me see I'm not just a machine

It is Ruby’s aknowledgement of Penny’s personhood that makes Penny feel alive.

So, what about Fria and Ambrosius? What is their role?

Fria chooses Penny as the next Winter Maiden. This is a powerful moment thematically because it is an aknowledgement of Penny’s humanity. She has always been a real girl, a Maiden at Heart, hence she can be given the powers and protect them.

Ambrosius removes Penny’s robotic parts and makes the “real” Penny come to the surface:

Ambrosius: Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave...

Blake: Penny. The girl who's always been there underneath it.

Penny’s new body is human because Penny has always been human and has always wanted to feel human.

In short, these two moments are moments of recognition of Penny’s humanity. She becomes a human both in soul (Fria) and body (Ambrosius). In particular, she has always had a human soul and this is why it can be tied to the power of the Maiden. When it comes to her body, she aquires a human one because her new appearance is nothing, but a mirror of her soul.

Still, even if these two moments are both meaningful, they are also moments where Penny receives something passively. They are aknowledgements of Penny’s humanity yes, but Penny wants more. She wants personhood aka to live as her own person.

To truly become a person one must be able to make their own choices. And interestingly, Penny’s free will is linked to both moments with her two blue fairies.

Ambrosius’s magic does not simply give Penny a human body, but it gives her back her freedom. Not only that, but it makes it impossible hacking her ever again.

Fria’s interaction with Penny is more complicated.

First of all, Fria does not impose the power on Penny, but asks her to make a choice:

Fria: Penny. Are you the one?

Penny: I…

And Penny does so in a sense, but it is gray. Penny is given no time to think about this choice, differently from both Winter and Pyrrha. It is something imposed on her by the events:

Penny: But taking the Maiden power was the only way to stop--

Moreover, it is something she very clearly does not want:

Penny: I was the protector of Mantle, but now, I am much more than that, and I wish I was not.

In short, Penny’s interaction with Fria is a recognition of her humanity, but also a duty imposed on her by external occurrences.

It is not what Penny herself wants. To truly be human, instead, Penny should make her own choices and be given the chance to pursue what she wants.

Still, what does she truly wishes for?

PENNY AND HER JIMINY CRICKETS

Penny’s wish is made obvious since her first appearance:

Penny: "You called me 'friend'! Am I really your friend?"

Ruby: "Uuuum... Y-Yeah, sure! Why not?"

My wish came true That day that you appeared And called me friend

She wants friends to the point that Ruby’s awkward aknowledgement of their friendship is enough to make Penny completely loyal to the other girl.

At the same time, there are many Jimini Crickets that go in the way of Penny’s wish for friendship:

Penny: I've never been to another kingdom before. My father asked me not to venture out too far, but... You have to understand, my father loves me very much; he just worries a lot.

(...)

Penny: I... was asked not to talk to you. Or Weiss. Or Blake. Or Yang. Anybody, really.

Ruby: Was your dad that upset?

Penny: No, it wasn't my father...

Both Ironwood’s high expectations and Pietro’s overprotectiveness make so that she is not free to enjoy her own life as she wants.

She arrives to the point that she comes up with a plan to stay at Beacon with her new friends:

Penny: Ruby, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about. I want to stay at Beacon.

Ruby: Penny, they'll never let you do that.

Penny: I know, but I have a plan.

However, we never discover what this plan is:

This does not happen by chance and Penny’s plan is not a dropped plot-point. It is symbolic of how her agency is completely negated. She is objectified to the point that her story is interrupted before she can take any action. It is a meta-way to comment her character and her major struggle.

Penny’s first death is more than a murder. It is a way to refuse Penny’s personhood and agency:

Ruby:  And Penny… was killed… just to make a statement.

She is used as a symbol of Atlas’s shady research. Penny’s own self is forgotten in the chaos that follows.

The same thing happens in Atlas as well:

Ruby: I don't think Robyn was their target. Salem's goal has always been to divide us. I think Penny was exactly where they wanted her, just like at the Vytal Festival.

This time she is not framed as a victim, but as a perpetrator and used as the symbol of an authoritarian regime.

Her enemies’ objectification of Penny is made clear in many ways:

Cinder: I have come too far to be stopped by some toy!

Cinder: You’re just a tool to be used!

Salem:  Although he remains in captivity, it seems that he has worked with Ironwood to gain some control over the puppet masquerading as the Winter Maiden.

And Watts’s virus is just the culmination of it. It is the embodyment of the Jiminy Cricket trying to overwrite what Penny wants.

At the same time, though, Penny’s enemies are not the only ones who try to control her:

Pietro: I lost you before. Are you asking me to go through that again? No. No. I want the chance to watch you live your life.

Penny: But dad… I am trying to.

Penny’s loved ones have tried to protect her all along. However, this wish of protection ends up going in the way of what she really wants:

I've been combat-ready since The day dad made me Now I'll fight for something more Might sound wholesome, But strangely I've got friends Fighting for

What Penny wants is to fight together and for her friends. She does not want her life to be considered less than others’. Still, she does not even want it to be put before others’:

Cinder: I don’t serve anyone. And you wouldn’t either, if you weren't built that way.

Penny: That is not…I choose to fight for people who care about me.

In short, it is as Maria says:

Maria: Don’t you think Penny has had enough people telling her what to do?

PENNY AND BEING A REAL GIRL

At its root, Penny’s struggle has always been this:

Penny: I feel like I wish I could do both the things I need to do and the things I want to do. Is that normal?

She wants to reconcile her duty and her personal wishes.

It is her duty to accept the power of the Maiden and to protect it.

It is her wish to live with her friends and to protect them.

These two things end up coming into conflict multiple times:

Penny: And after the launch, I’ll return to help you all with the evacuation.

Pietro: About that, Penny. When Amity goes up, I think you should be on it with Maria and I.

Penny: But they need me here. Right?

Ruby: Well, if you stay far out of Salem’s reach, then she can’t open the vault. She can’t get to the relic. So...

Weiss: Maybe it is for the best?

Until the finale where Penny makes a specific choice:

Weiss: Penny, no!

If Penny were to act as the perfect Maiden, she would have just gone to Vacuo with the staff. In this way she could have protected both the relic and the power. Even if Cinder had ended up killing all her friends, Salem would have still lost.

However, Penny decides not to act as a Maiden, but as a friend:

Penny: You wouldn’t know anything about friends.

Even the reason why Cinder manages to mortally wound her is because Penny is worried about Jaune and Weiss and gets distracted for a second:

However, it is specifically in the moment of her death that Penny is able to make a choice to reconcile both who she is and what she has to do.

She chooses to protect the power:

Penny: She can’t get the staff..and the power.

And to save a friend:

Penny: I thought of you. And here we are.

Winter would have died without the Maiden powers and the same can be said about the people stranded in Vacuo. Penny saves all by choosing to be the one in control of her death.

Her choice is extremely powerful thematically and it ties together all the themes explored in these last two volumes.

1) It is a choice about trust:

Penny: Trust me.

Winter: Thank you for trusting me with this.

Penny asks to be trusted and chooses to trust as well. After all, this is what friendship is all about:

Attached but not By strings

It is a choice that uses the motif of “the part of you” in two different ways.

2)  Becoming a part of someone else can be seen as a reference to the process of grieving, which is one of the themes explored in this volume:

Grieving means to come to terms with your loss, to accept your feelings for the people who are gone and also their contradictions:

Robyn: Clover was a lot of things. You respected him, but I gotta tell ya, I think you’re the better Huntsman.

Vine: Then perhaps Clover was wrong too.

The lost ones will be missed regardless:

Harriet: Don't you dare! Clover was... He was...

Vine: ...Important to you.

Still, once you manage to finally grieve, you’ll realize the other person has become a part of you:

It does not matter if Qrow’s semblance has evolved, if it is a part of Clover’s power having stayed attached to the pin, both or if it is Clover looking out for them.

What’s important is that Clover will keep on living inside Qrow because Qrow will never forget him or what Clover has taught him:

Clover: You shouldn't do that, you know.

Qrow: Don't worry, I-I gave that up.

Clover: I meant deflect a compliment. Those kids wouldn't be where they are without you. You've had more of an effect on them than you realize.

Qrow should love himself. Only in this way he can stop being a self-fulfilling curse. Only in this way he can start looking at his own life with hope and wish for good luck.

Similarly, Penny won’t be forgotten and her legacy will live through Winter:

Penny: She's… gone.

Winter: No. She's a part of you now.

Penny: I won’t be gone, I’ll be part of you.

3) Penny becomes a part of Winter because Winter is finally able to do this:

Winter: But yes Penny, we must still acknowledge our personal feelings, wrestle with them. It ensures us that we're on the right path. It's what makes us human.

Winter is the one who taught Penny this, but it is obvious that through volume 7 and 8 she has avoided to face her feelings for both her family and Ironwood. By the end of volume 8, however, she is finally able to accept her emotions. She can finally follow her heart. Penny becoming “a part of her” is symbolic of this. As a matter of fact their dynamic has always been about Winter acting as “the mind” and Penny being “the heart”.

Symbolically they integrate because they both are becoming their own person even if in different ways.

Winter becomes her own person because she rejects this mentality:

Winter: Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don't have to.

Penny becomes her own person because she is finally in control of herself and her destiny. Moreover, she is able to do for Winter what Ruby has done for her:

Winter: No, Penny, you were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just a machine. Just… following orders.

Penny: You’re my friend.

She affirms Winter’s personhood and in this way she affirms her own as well.

In other words, this version of Pinocchio does not end with the protagonist being transformed into a real boy by the Blue Fairy, but with Penny transforming Winter in the Blue Fairy:

So “becoming fully human” in RWBY means to do this:

Qrow:  This last great creation would be given the power to both create and destroy. It would be given the gift of knowledge, so that it could learn about itself and the world around it. And most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow - the path of light or the path of darkness. And that is how Humanity came to be.

It is about gaining knowledge, like Penny does about feelings and relationships, loving life and accepting death. Finally, it is about making a choice, even if it is painful.

This is because being human is not always simple. It can be hard:

But I found that humanity It came with sacrifice

Having a human soul means you have a duty to do the right thing out of your own free will, like Fria’s gift showed.

Having a human body means you can experience the warmth of a hug:

But it also means you can be mortally wounded:

This is Ambrosius’s teaching.

Still, it was worth it all for Penny because she got the chance to meet friends and to feel alive:

An answered prayer A chance to Share the world To be a girl Who fin'lly felt alive

This is why her second death can be juxtaposed to her first one. Both times she was killed by Cinder. However, the first time she was used as a pawn in Cinder’s plan. This time instead she is not letting herself be controlled and she negates Cinder what she really wants out of her own free will.

In conclusion, there is this phrase by Jean-Paul Sartre:

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

And I think it sums up Penny’s story perfectly.

Penny does not choose to be born a robot or to be used as a weapon. She is objectified in multiple ways...

Still, she manages to make something amazing out of herself.