However, I think the real insult was not to women but to men. In many ways, the interaction between Billy and Penny is a sort of gilding of the typical geeky-guy obsession over a cute girl. Since the story is not explicitly about Penny, one would expect that she would necessarily be underdeveloped. However, as a story written buy a man *about* a man, it does a diservice to men by perpetrating patterns of behaviour about them that are both immature and self destructive. Because of Billy’s social immaturity, he finds the prospect of initiating contact with Penny almost terrifying. When he is finally forced to talk to her, he then becomes fully enveloped in a platonic relationship with her, never setting a tone of any sort of romantic interest. As was said in the “Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty” link, sometimes people don’t love you back, and this story only seems to serve as a message of “keep up the hope” for the guy-geek crippled by obsession.

Not to mention, Billy goes on to stalk Penny, and that is just completely glossed over.

Myles: I agree that, as a character, she didn’t grow much throughout the miniseries. In fact, she seemed to be whittled down, as you said, to “Helps the Homeless, Doesn’t Eat Meat” to the point where even the audience cares about her as much as Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer. Joss responded briefly to the criticisms around Penny, and it seems the writers slapped on a cause for her so that she wouldn’t be just a pretty face. At the end, I was waiting for her to do something. Anything. She didn’t have to beat anyone up.

David: I like that ending much better. In my head, I’m pretending she rejected both of them. I think if she had done anything at all in Act III, it would have made it more obvious that her characterization throughout the acts was meant to parallel Hammer and Horrible’s own viewpoint of her.

S. A. Bonasi: If only we could actually remind every satire/parody writer before they start writing instead of having to analyze and reanalyze after everything is said and done! I definitely agree with you that women characters need to be more dynamic rather than being ass-kickers across the board. We tend to forget that ’strong women characters’ actually means what you’ve said!

“Women on television, by and far, are ignored and left underdeveloped with no storyline for their own, and there is no excuse of supervillain point-of-view to explain it away.”

This needs to be engraved on plaques and used to beat every writer who writes parody/satire over the head…er…I mean, given to every writer who writes parody/satire so they can hang it on the wall facing where they do their writing, so they will always see it when putting pen to paper.

David,

I like that idea. Even better, Captain Hammer’s death could inspire Penny to herself become a superhero and archnemesis to Dr. Horrible with, of course, her helping the homeless on the side. Mind you, I do think it’s more important for female characters to be dynamic/interesting/3D than neccessarily be ass-kickers, but I think it would be fitting in this instance.

That said, I do find that I disagreed with the ending of the story. I don’t really care that Penny died, but I don’t like that it was purely accidental. It would have been far more powerful if, say, Dr. Horrible had actually killed Captain Hammer, and then Penny had rejected him.

Joss is far too addicted to killing the innocents, even when it’s not the optimal move for the story being told.

I didn’t necessarily need her to be ass-kicking for her to come full circle as a character, but rather I needed her to do something at all. I found she was really great in Act II (I found her earnestness a bit off in the first part, to be honest), as there was a chance for her to break out from her naive shell (Created by the series’ central conflict between Horrible/Hammer happening under her nose without her knwoledge) and at least become an active agent in the action. Instead, unlike past Whedon heroines (as loathe as you may be to canonize them), she’s there simply to be an object of affection and a piece of the puzzle to be battled over.

What I wanted from Act III was not a tragic death, rendering her important to the plot without making her into much of anything, but some sign that she had that agency, that she wasn’t just being toyed around with. Speaking not so much from a feminist perspective (Of which I am but an occasional student and not a practitioner) but from a storyline one, I felt like there was room for growth that was never accomplished. While the small budget and the cobbled up nature of the event’s creation likely dictated some of its lack of scale, Whedon still created a universe where I felt this character could have done much better things; part of me wants the inevitable “sequel” of sorts to retcon a new narrative that reveals Penny’s side of this story in a whole new light, but something tells me it won’t happen that way.

Anyways, great observations!