Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Two Cents: Penny and Penny



TWO CENTS: AN ANALYSIS OF PENNY AND PENNY.

One is a disabled seer!
The other is a disabled Oathkeeper!
That’s about where the similarities end.
Okay, that’s not entirely true. This analysis is to read further into the characters ‘Penny Balisong’ from GraciousVictory’s Jeanette-verse (based exclusively on Penny’s blog, ‘Runneth Over’, found here) and the ex-con Penny from tgecko’s blog ‘Penny Dropped’, located here. Then I’ll do some comparing and contrasting, because two characters named ‘Penny’ must have loads in common! Right?

PENNY BALISONG:

Right off the bat, you’re going to be able to pick up an impression of this character; that name is a pseudonym. A Balisong, commonly known as a butterfly knife, is a famously artistic weapon known for ‘fluttering’ – the way it gracefully and swiftly flips open and closed is captivating, but god knows it’s a deadly weapon. Then, of course, we’ve got ‘Penny’, the lowest form of currency in circulation. Simple, easily overlooked, and as any cashier will tell you, they can be somewhat of a hassle. Oh, and as a point of interest – ‘Penny’ is the diminutive of ‘Penelope’, which comes from some Ancient Greek syllables thrown together, part of them meaning ‘face’ or ‘eye’. Nifty little coincidence there…unless Penny knew about that, and I don’t doubt she put a lot of thought into her moniker. If so, that could be her personal private joke.
There you go! Penny Balisong, in a nutshell.
The theme of chess is prominent in the Jeanette-verse, so I won’t focus much on the way she plays the game around her; her trick is tarot, which is of course notable due to the fact that she’s blind. As one would expect from any psychic, Penny does love to be cryptic, which I get the impression she does to underscore the moments where she drives her point right home. She balances her vague, infuriating comments (oh, does she ever know that they’re infuriating) with blunt statements. This is even more easily seen in The Jeanette Experience, but Penny’s blog captures that well standing alone, too (for an example: within the first few posts of the blog, she gives a reading with very little explanation, only a warning. When asked which side she’s on, she bluntly responds that she’s on her own side. No mincing of words, there).
We get a really good look at Penny’s independence and how it tears her. Early on, she describes herself as ‘manipulative’, and the fun part is, I get the impression that she tries to manipulate herself more than anyone else (see, especially, the paragraph to follow: it’s a big, thick underline to the rest of what I’m about to say). Due to the fact that she’s blind, she obviously can’t do certain things on her own. She’s more than capable, in certain aspects, but until she got a Braille keyboard she couldn’t even type for herself, relying on her sister, or friend, and hoping they would convey her message. One will also notice that the insults against said characters only really come out once she starts typing on her own, but that’s beside the point (still amusing, though). Penny, indirectly, uses her disability to bolster herself and simultaneously wears it as a badge. She can recognize what she can and can’t do, and it pisses her off enough to give her the confidence to talk big; in a sense, she’s manipulating herself into being the confident quip-in-the-face-of-danger person she is, because anything less would mean she’s giving into her blindness. She’s able to say that she would do this, or would have done that, because she’s not physically capable. It as if she thinks of herself as being strong and weak at the same time, which is an interesting dynamic for her to have, and probably very true-to-life. I would expect nothing less from someone in her position.
Now let’s focus on my personal favourite part of her character! That aforementioned ‘infuriating’ part. Penny is, in Internet-speak, a classic troll. Her sense of humour, while perhaps aggravating to the characters she associates with, is beautifully sarcastic. She can be counted on for a good snark between insightful posts, whether it’s to point out that the resident badass watches ‘My Little Pony’ or throwing flat-toned quips in mid-rant. She’s also fond of insult humour – you’d be hard-pressed to find a pleasant word she says about anyone. Now, you can probably already see where I’m going with this, if you guessed at the whole ‘humour as a defence mechanism’…but what really bolsters that and drives it home like a volleyball being spiked right at your face is that she uses that humour after people die. She will flatly state the traumatic truth, and then casually go on to say something light-hearted that clashes jarringly with the previous sentence. She needs to be this way; it’s how she copes. Besides, even the most mentally stable have to get a kick out of the blind girl informing her friends at every opportunity that they’re ugly.
My last big point of focus? The way she approaches her feelings. Notably, her attraction to Jeanette. Penny actually speaks out against her little sister striking up a romance with Jeanette very early on, though she is quick to say it’s not because of the ‘girl’ aspect. From that point on, she eggs Jeanette on and tells her off for not making an honest woman of Chelsea (the word ‘honest’ loosely defined, here). It says a lot about her sense of self-worth, that she develops feelings for someone she often expresses to be her ‘opposite’ and proceeds to press at her relationship with someone else. Not just someone else, either – her own sister. That’s a nail in the coffin, as far as assessing Penny’s self-esteem goes; she doesn’t have any. Okay, maybe saying she has no self-esteem at all is stretching it, but you can tell that it’s definitely on the low end of the scale.

PENNY DROPPED:

This ‘Penny’ sticks with the one-cent deal, even making her profile picture a close-up copper ‘ONE CENT’. If I had to guess, that is clearly for the pun, and I am a pun-loving person. ‘Shiny Penny’ isn’t quite so shiny, and from there stems the problems: to begin with, our protagonist is an ex-con with mysophobia, starting up a blog as part of her therapy. She has clear obsessive-compulsive ticks, isolation issues, and a slightly strained relationship with her sister which she goes about resolving for the wrong reasons. Like, really wrong.
We’re going to start by tackling Penny’s comfort zone, which she tries to do throughout the blog, herself. Penny isn’t a big fan of people, and given the background – a hostile incident that had her serving time – we can see that this is something she’s been struggling with for a while. She isn’t a fan of others (particular children, since they’re animated germ factories) and is very quick to jump from ‘first impression’ to ‘dislike’; it doesn’t take much to offend her, and when she’s angry, she’s angry. When life starts to suck or she perceives a slight against her, her mind seems to leap right to the violent fantasies. Most people can indeed get a good rant going when angered, but the fact that Penny was once incarcerated makes these angry outbursts all the more poignant. She is quick to say in the very beginning that her history is history, and what happened was an accident…but this is still a person who got angry enough to act on it. Interestingly, and making that line of ‘there is me, and there is them’ a lot more defined, she doesn’t seem incredibly burdened by that violence. She’s almost dismissive, and seems to regret that it distanced her from her sister more than she regrets the violence, itself. To me, who couldn’t be more Canadian and pacifistic if you paid me, I find that aspect to her character extremely interesting. In a way, it pegs Penny as being somewhat cold and dismissive. On the other side of the same coin (I told you I love me some puns) there’s some strength to her, because of that. She knows it’s behind her, and wants to deal with the now, rather than dwelling on what’s already done.
When she actively tries to like someone, though, and those attempts are met with kindness, she becomes incredibly fond of them. The latter says, to me, that she’s not one of those crotchety types who likes to be alone. This is something that causes her a lot of difficulties and probably pain, but getting through the mental barriers she’s stacked up proves to be too exhausting for her to work through. Too much for her to want to work through.
Hence, the glimpses of her therapy sessions consist of her telling the Doctor what he wants to hear – or, what she thinks he wants to hear – rather than be honest. Throughout the blog, her phobias and obsessions get steadily worse, and it isn’t in the least surprising. Given that there’s Fear involvement, too, the moment you catch on as to where this is going, it becomes like watching two trains approach each other on the same track, in slow motion. You know it’s coming. You have the time to try to intervene, but you don’t, because you know it wouldn’t do the tiniest bit of good. She immerses herself in her problems and convinces herself that they’re the cure, not the cause – she cleans more, blocks herself off more, and then…she snaps.
The great thing is, snapped-Penny isn’t a huge leap away from holding-it-together-Penny…probably because she wasn’t holding it together so much as scrambling to hold onto her well-being. But I’ll get to that.
Penny gives us plenty of glimpses into her pessimism, which she approaches with rapid-fire disgust that she actively tries to counter. The way she fights back with optimism generally start off feeling honest and full, but wind up ringing a bit hollow by the time she finishes up – it’s as though she’s trying to convince the world, and herself, that she’s okay. That she has good days along with the bad. I can gauge, from this, that she recognizes the fact that she’s sinking and just doesn’t have the energy to do more than thrash around a little. She might even be convincing herself that she’s better off, given how much energy she can have when it comes to feeding her neuroses.
Lastly, I want to tackle her morals. Not too in-depth, because that would give away too many spoilers, but Penny has a very self-absorbed sense of right and wrong. What’s best for her, and the people she likes, is what’s best; period. It’s an almost childish mindset, but the lengths she goes to and the determination with which she upholds them is a very adult.
All in all, Penny is a lovely bundle of psychological problems, and she seems kind of resigned to it. They define her actions (to a point, not counting when everything goes to hell), she knows it, she’s okay with it. She just wants to figure out how to deal with what’s in front of her – climb one hill at a time.

THE CONTRAST?

Balisong is very ‘big picture’. Dropped is very ‘one step forward at a time’. We’ve got two very broken women, here, each with a whole host of very different issues; Balisong shoves her mental-self down and steps on her, trying to climb above them. Of course, that simultaneously puts her down, too. Dropped ignores the fact that they’re problems and wraps herself up in them, doing a very effective job of both shunning and clinging to them at the same time. Balisong prefers to dance around facts, especially when they’re combined with her feelings, whereas Dropped is very up-front and direct with both. It’s like Balisong is a knife (well, duh) and Dropped is a blunt instrument.

THE COMPARISON?

The most interesting and evident similarity between Balisong and Dropped is their issues with self-worth, and the walls they put up. No one can get close enough to get to know the real them, and I don’t think either of them likes themselves very much. Also, come hell or high water, they’re going to do what they think is right.

TO SUM UP…

Penny and Penny have several things in common, and just as much to separate them; they’re both extremely dynamic characters with good points and bad, and are each likeable and easy to relate to for different reasons. Putting aside the circumstances of the stories they’re in, they’ve both got some seriously admirable qualities…that can just as easily be overshadowed by the bad, if you aren’t willing to stick around and get to know these characters. Reading about them is much like making a friend, in that way, and that’s what makes them three-dimensional. Your impression of Penny is entirely going to come from which way you approach them. Do you want to like her? Then you will. Do you want to hate her? Oh, you will.
Kudos to both the authors – if I had to pay for your blogs, they’d be worth every penny.

(Yes. I just said that, and that’s my closing line. Deal with it.)

Vincent (Pyre for the Heart)

I've chosen to analyse the infamous main character, Vincent, from 'Pyre for the Heart' (found here, written by Fearblogger Malus. To give some background, Pyre is an not-yet-complete blog of our villain protagonist, who is putting a girl's diary up for the world to see after she scorns him. And they say women are the ones to beware, come the whole scorning-thing...
As he types up this girl's diary and he gives up glimpses into his own life, we start seeing some recognisable faces - hey there, Red Cap and Brute! - so it's shaping up to be an intriguing Fearblog. My focus, though, is on Vincent himself.
(Note: this analysis/review will be as spoiler-free as possible.)

From the get-go, we see a lot of evidence that Vincent isn't a character that we're meant to be cheering for. He's hurt, he's angry, and he's being quite petty about it. Vincent was spurned by a girl named Lois last semester, and to get revenge he starts putting her personal journal online for their entire school (and the rest of the Internet) to read. Already, I have to give kudos to Malus - there is a very distinct shift in the way both characters write.
Vincent will throw in his input as we read about Lois's accounts, and we get to see a bit more of his jerkass side. He's hypocritical, saying things out of spite that are completely contrary to the his initial self-portrayal; he claims he's on the high ground and ignoring the fact that he's wrestling through the mud.
As his posts continue to go online, he attracts the attention of some of our well-known (and lesser-known) Fearblog commenters, who proceed to leave cryptic comments (the way any good commenter would). There are two options the writer has, when this occurs: to ignore the comments for the sake of the plot, or have the character respond and let the plot proceed naturally.
Malus avoided the trap of having comments shape the plot by having the events Vincent/Lois documented occur last semester - that leaves Vincent plenty of room to talk to his commenters, and he does so in the style of any anonymous guy sniping back at the people seemingly trolling him. In fact, he takes an entire comedically-done post to snark at them.
The last bit of fact taken from the blog is this: one of the girls Lois writes about, Vivian, turns up in a post that's entirely Vincent's. Here's where I avoid the spoilers. The conclusion is - we see a glimpse into Vincent's life that [i]doesn't[/i] involve him sniping at a would-be girlfriend or people who disapprove of him. Vincent has friends. He's liked by a group of people, in his life away from his keyboard.

So, my conclusions about this character?
I love that I don't love Vincent. When I say 'his life away from his keyboard', I mean that I can believe he has one. Vincent is flawed; an emotional, spiteful teenager who lashes out and hurts people in the way so many teenagers do. Over the Internet.
A guy like Vincent is believable. His actions aren't so monstrous that you recoil, and they never go beyond the capability of an angry teen - considering we've got Fear influence at play, any overpowered acts of spite could be hand-waved away. The way Vincent is written, though, such a thing isn't necessary.
He's a bully online, he has friends in real life, and he gets in trouble for his actions. He's a hormonal jerk - and weren't we all in high school? I, personally, can compare Vincent's attitude to my own when I was in ninth grade.
Boiling it all down, Vincent is horribly and beautifully human, and I look forward to reading more about him.