People who paid attention to my blog in recent weeks probably know that July 10-17 was a busy time for people who ship Ruby Rose and Penny Polendina. There were a lot of fanfic of the two of them together, I read most of it (and plan to at least try the rest), and a lot of those fics were specifically set after Penny was turned into a real girl. And I can’t understand why.
Now, I don’t think Penny being a robot is the only interesting thing about Nuts & Dolts. There’s more to the ship than “Girl who likes weapons dates girl who was built as a weapon”. But at the same time, turning Penny human both removes some of the things that make N&D interesting and makes the overall story worse.
Cards on the table, I cannot think of a single Pinocchio-type story which I think was improved by having the non-human turn into a human. They’re stories about people who were born different from other people, they feel like they need to become normal, and the narrative agrees. “Yes, them being weird was bad; this problem will be resolved in the most obvious, boring way possible.”
And this isn’t just a canon plot point I think is dumb. This is a dumb canon plot point that directly hits one of the things that I like about Nuts & Dolts. Penny feels isolated from humanity for being a robot, but Ruby doesn’t care. She’s surprised, but Penny can’t even get any decent angst in before Ruby insists that she’s still real, even if she has “got nuts and bolts instead of squishy guts”.
That sense of being isolated from the world, just because of what you are, but having one person who doesn’t care at all? Someone who accepts you for who you are? That’s what I see as the core of Nuts & Dolts, more than any jokes about how much Ruby loves weapons.
And having Penny become a “real girl” like Pinocchio before her just guts that.
Anyways. Not all the Nuts and Dolts Week fics with a human Penny were bad; I liked the one where she discovers heatstroke. But broadly speaking, I just…do not get the appeal of writing a story when Penny’s human. If you’re gonna skip her second death, why not skip the part where she gets squishy guts, too?
(If any Nuts & Dolts authors have an explanation, I’d genuinely like to hear it. I like hearing people with different opinions!)