Now that this character is gone from NPE, I might as well try getting her here as soon as possible.
What is the Work?
Copy-pasted from my past post because I'm lazy
The Gone series is a YA psychological horror novel where a barrier surrounds an entire town and causes anyone over 15 to disappear (called the FAYZ). It also gives a select few children in the town powers, causing many conflicts, particularly with a faction of children from a school called Coates Academy whose leader has the second strongest power.
Who is the Character and What Has She Done?
Penny is one of the children from Coates, and easily the second most sadistic, only beaten in that department by Drake Merwin. Even before the events of the series, she attempted to poison her older sister Rose by pouring Drano in Rose's cereal. She developed her powers (creating illusions) later on in the series and was only introduced in the third book, taking Drake's place as Caine's main enforcer after he was presumed to have died. The first truly horrifying act we see her commit was waking up Caine Soren after he was sedated by the Brattle-Chance siblings, fully knowing he would kill them all. However, over time, she goes from vile to downright deranged, becoming a major antagonist in book 5, where she psychologically tortures a kid called Cigar to the point that he cuts out his own eyes, betrays Caine and entraps his hands in cement so she could humiliate and torture him in front of the Perdido Beach residents. When the residents turn on her, she has to flee and joins Drake Merwin and the Gaiaphage (who is omnicidal), to have the Gaiaphage possess Diana Ladris's unborn baby, which it succeeds in doing thanks to a last-second maneuver from Penny, who used her powers to disguise the Gaiaphage as a crib, tricking Brianna Berenson into placing the baby on it, letting the Gaiaphage possess the baby (essentially killing it at birth).
Heinous Standards
Yeah, she passes it fine. Her psychological torture of Cigar to the point of making him cut out his own eyes was one of the most horrifying moments to come from the Gone series, even beating out anything the pure evil Drake Merwin had done (at least in the original series, in the sequel series he was described to have left people hung on crosses to starve to death, but even that was a different kind of torture to what Penny did). Even in terms of scale, she's pretty high up, considering she was an integral part of the Gaiaphage (also pure evil) receiving a body, making her indirectly responsible for all the dozens of children the Gaiaphage murdered in the final book, and pretty much endangering the entire world considering the Gaiaphage's goal at the time was to end all life and turn it into itself. To top it off, she's also responsible for the only known case of infanticide in the Gone series when she killed Diana Ladris's newborn baby by offering it to the Gaiaphage. I have no concerns here.
What Makes Her Inconsistent
Tragedy
Despite being a sadistic monster with practically no redeeming qualities, she simply has a tragic backstory that's too lengthy and too sympathetic for her to be even Near Pure Evil.
For starters, her dad was a pedophile who would sexually abuse her sisters by taking illicit pictures of them and posting them online. While Penny herself didn't experience this abuse, she was still very messed up by it. Due to growing up experiencing what her father did second-hand (and also being generally neglected outside of him by her alcoholic mother), she didn't understand that what he was doing was evil, and actually wanted him to take pictures of her in the same way. When her father skipped her and moved on to her younger sister Rose, Penny felt abandoned and unwanted, with her father's sick values being instilled in her. While she would later discover what he did was against the law, those values never left with, with her described in the present day copying her sister's mannerisms they used in her father's pictures.
She would continue to experience neglect after being taken in by her aunt and uncle, who focused almost entirely on her sisters due to the abuse they had gone through. In a moment of jealousy from the neglect, she poured Drano (drain cleaner) in Rose's cereal, leading to her being sent to Coates Academy (a school for troubled children) at 10 years old. Her time at Coates was stated to be similarly miserable as she was continually ignored and also lost all contact with her family, with the only thing she heard from them being an incoherent, self-pitying Christmas Card her drunk mother had sent.
Then, during the FAYZ, when all the adults vanished, Penny suffered from the food crisis more than most other residents did due to her staying at Coates. As Caine Soren had stubbornly isolated everyone from the rest of the town (run by his brother Sam Temple), they were all starving. It got to the point that when one of their members committed suicide, Penny and the rest of the Coates kids cooked and ate his dead body to survive. Then when Caine brought the remaining Coates kids to an island resort owned by the Brattle-Chance family, despite being unquestionably loyal to (and also romantically interested in) Caine, he dangled her over the edge of a cliff when she accidentally spoke out of turn, despite her taking his side, and when Diana threw herself off the cliff too to protect the Brattle-Chance siblings from his wrath, he chose to save her instead, accidentally dropping Penny off the cliff as a result (and rejecting her romantic feelings in the worst way possible).
Her paralysis is where her tragedy gets really bad. Due to the Lana (the character with healing powers) not being on the island, Penny was left with her legs shattered in a million pieces, in constant pain with her legs mangled beyond recognition. Her life at the island involved being stuck sleeping in a bathroom while completely immobile, only able to drag herself to the toilet, with her only company being Diana (the girl she hated), washing her, bringing her food, and DVDs for entertainment. It's actively stated at multiple points that her time on the island left unable to move with her body broken and in perpetual agony was what pushed her already fragile mind over the edge, causing her to go crazy and commit the horrible crimes she did in the 5th book that pushed her past the MEH.
I'm also going to address an argument I heard her removal claiming she was already evil before her tragedy due to attempting to poison her sister when she was younger; therefore, it isn't as mitigating. For starters, this just isn't true. Before that incident happened, she still grew up with a creep of a father who instilled his twisted values into her, making her jealous of the abuse her sisters went through, not understanding it was a bad thing. She was also constantly neglected her whole life before the FAYZ and never given the proper care she needed. You have to keep in mind that she was 10 when the poisoning incident happened, meaning all this happened to her when she was even younger and more impressionable. The poisoning was also a direct result of this part of her tragedy, as it came about from jealousy of the attention her sisters got, jealousy that came about due to her father's worldview being reflected on her and the neglect she experienced up to that point.
Secondly, it really wouldn't matter either way. Some tragedies are just so bad that it doesn't matter how evil the character is or was beforehand, and Penny would seem to fall into that category. While she's paralyzed, we get vivid descriptions of her suffering from how much her legs hurt, of her experience being unable to move or act being horrible, of her calling out Caine for what he did despite her previously loving him previously, and there's even a passage where she outright states that she wants to die. It's all played for sympathy, we're not supposed to be reading about a 12-year-old girl going through this and thinking "she deserves it". What's more, while Penny was a pretty bad person before her paralysis, she was nowhere near as bad as she would become afterwards due to her paralysis driving her insane, something referenced multiple times, so this part of her tragedy still had an impact on her villainy going forwards.
Moral Agency
This is a more minor prevention that I initially didn't think she had, but after doing research for her removal, I think it's applicable. She seems too insane to be considered in her right mind, despite being a complete sadist, especially after her paralysis. Even before her paralysis, though, she was stated to have not understood that her father's pedophilia was a bad thing until she got older and he was arrested. Then, after her paralysis, we get several quotes that reference her mental state that seem too concerning to say she's really 'all there' enough to be Pure Evil (if her tragedy wasn't an issue). Instead of spending too much time talking about this, I'll just show the quotes and let you make up your own mind.
| “ | Penny laughed. "We're all crazy, Turk. The only difference is I know I'm crazy. I know all about me. You know why? Because sitting there with my legs broken and wanting to scream every single minute, eating the scraps Diana brought me, that kind of clears out your mind and you start seeing things the way they are." | „ |
| ~ Penny referencing her own insanity |
| “ | But this wasn't as simple as Drake's evil ruthlessness. This was madness. He was looking at eyes that were no longer partaking of reality. She was insane. He had helped to drive her mad. And now all her rage, all her jealousy, all the hate that Caine had used for his own purposes was being turned against him. He was a powerless toy in the hands of a lunatic with the power to make him as crazy as herself. | „ |
| ~ Caine realizing he'd driven Penny to madness when he dropped her off the cliff (probably the main evidence of her having moral agency issues). |
Verdict
Yes to Penny.