- Claire spends almost as much time complimenting Penny's fashion choices as Ray does, though she's more subtle about it. The one time she walked in on Penny changing, she was very careful to keep her eyes above the neck, which wouldn't be an issue if she wasn't interested in girls. And then of course there's the fact that she's quite touchy-feely with Ray, but at the end of the novel insists she never had any feelings for him. Even the fortune-teller machine in Chinatown makes it clear that she was never a threat to Penny.
- Also, Claire's powers are a variant on her mother's, but while Claire's cuteness ability works on anyone regardless of gender (though there are some people who are naturally immune), her mother's sex-appeal power only works on males. It's stated that a lot of powers have a subconscious element, so it could be that their powers take into account who they are attracted too. This would also partly explain why Claire's powers work better on people she fan-girls over like Gabriel than one's she doesn't like Jagged Bones.
- Possibly related: Now that I think of it, why exactly has Lucyfar seen the inside of Claire's wardrobe meaning she recognised Claire's original superhero 'costume' ?
- In the first chapter Penny is messing around with a device her father designed to induce super-powers and gets zapped. Nothing seemingly comes of it and its abandoned soon afterwards but that's because Penny's powers start coming in, harder and faster than expected. It actually working would explain why her powers came in so much faster than expected and actually getting the frequency right by accident is surprisingly plausible under the sort of logic that drives super-hero stories.
- Becomes even more likely with the revelation in Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her that Penny actually has two different mad science powers: the quasi-sapient one that can work in any theme or tech type, and a clockwork-themed power that includes full analysis and control.
- But it will still use the GG initials. Grey Ghost or something similar that plays off her all grey outfit.
- Children of supers are expected to inherit powers, though nothing solid says they have to inherit their parent's powers. Claudia's family is a complete unknown to the reader, but we know Bull has a daughter he distanced himself from Penny's age...
- Further evidence for this theory: Both Bull and Claudia have Irish accents and they both have physical powers.
- Additionally Bull refers to his daughter as Cat and in the teaser for book 3 it is revealed that Claudia's middle name is Catherine.
- Confirmed in Henchmen when they are finally reunited.
- It takes a pretty hefty dose of intentional blindness for Audit/Brainy Akk to not figure out their daughter is Bad Penny. Believable, as 'making it personal' and unmasking each other are pretty strictly against the rules (almost) everyone plays by. The Audit is more than willing to break the rules, but only stopped by Brian, who also went out of his way to give Penny a critique on her fight, with a quick and dirty tutorial. Also fits in with his lackadaisical attitude to the threat TIM poses, while Mech is playing them up as being the real deal and Audit is fearing for Penny's safety.
- It is mostly seen in the first book, but Penny's blackouts tend to happen when she is alone, and her power is very, selective in the information it gives and when. Penny says that her power does not repair her equipment, but it offered to repair the conqueror orb in Mech's lab. Either her focus/specialty is in conqueror tech, (which is possible) or it is picking and choosing when to give her information. And it's choice of conqueror tech for repair work is ominous.
- Possibly confirmed in Nemesis. At the least there is an evil part of Penny who resents all the times Penny suppresses her power's more evil inventions, particularly it's fondness for wanting her to make bombs.
- Completely confirmed in Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her where it's indicated that her power has its own goals, and is burning out her brain.
- Unless the problem has been solved offpage, then Marvelous is still cursed and the curse itself has resisted both technological (via Brian Akk's invention) and magical treatment.
- As seen in Henchmen, Penny has the capability to perceive how other people's powers work. This and the ability to combine both magic and technology in single inventions could be the key to restoring Marvelous's powers.
- The Jade Statue has the capability to curse others and possibly could be modified to lift curses.
- If the cure involves merging magic and mad science, then "magic science goo" will be a component or Cybermancer's assistance will be required.
That or the real Spider is a woman with brown hair in pig tails who has the power to possess and (and thus speak through) a gigantic spider that she discovered somewhere beneath the streets of LA.
- Jossed in I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence. Spider is just a mad scientist's experiment that went rogue.
In Spider, Mammon says that with more power, he could summon a "being of black fire, a true fallen angel". It is possible that this is Lucyfar.
- As we see in Moon, she is actually capable of learning real science and creating replicable technology, she just normally goes into a fugue state before she can get elbow deep in sweet sweet science and made assumptions about her powers early on that meant she wouldn't even try. Whatever her mad science abilities actually are, they either aren't her main power or are in fact actively restricting her ability to access an analysis power similar to her father's.
- Semi-Confirmed in Please Dont Tell Me You Believe Her. Penny turns out to have two separate Mad Science powers: the semi-sapient power that can work in any theme or tech type, and a clockwork-themed mad science power that includes full understanding and control.
- He's an extremely powerful supervillain with powers of destruction, decay, and bad luck, and he looks like a humanoid black cat. And this setting clearly has superpower-granting magic items knocking around, in addition to all the other superhero tropes.
- We are told in no uncertain terms that Claire's Mom slept about a lot with men with such frequency that she doesn't know who Claire's Dad is, yet are never given any indication she feels the same way about women so we can be fairly sure she is only attracted to men and her powers are stated to only work on men several times.
- Related to the above: Claire is never being shown demonstrating physical attraction, other than Penny's misinterpretations of Claire and Ray's friendship in the first book. Her interactions with other characters such as Gabriel, Lucyfar and others who you might expect a hormonal teenage girl (and daughter of the Minx) to be attracted to are entirely platonic and/or fangirl geekiness. As such her powers effect men and women but in a purely platonic fashion, causing those affected to find her cute but in the way you might think of a puppy or a baby - not at all sexually.
- Claire may not yet be aware that she is asexual, perhaps due to her hero worship of her mother and desire to emulate her so she has not given who she is attracted to much thought.
- Her Mom might know or suspect, as at one point in book one when Penny is visibly frustrated by Claire and Ray going to practice parkour together (It Makes Sense in Context) Miss Lutra tells her that she "has nothing to worry about"
- It happens during the discussion about the game's ending:"So. Which ending did you get?"
"The one where you take of your mask and die in your parents' arms."
Claire abandoned her normally graceful, bubbly giggle to go 'pffffft' instead. "You have to be ridiculously goody-goody to get that ending!"- Alternatively In Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her, Heart of Gold Penny will be the one who ends up sacrificing herself - possibly as some part of helping Real Penny getting her body back from her evil super power with Heart of Gold ending up back in the Robot Penny body - and will die in Penny's arms. Afterall Penny created the Heart of Gold so in a way she is her parent. Also noted that the Heart of Gold is the 'good' (or at least, more good) version of Penny.
- It's stated on numerous occasions, that Abigail looks very similar to how Penny will look in a few years.
- After witnessing Penny's inventing power in the superkids clubhouse, Barbara is neither surprised nor afraid of how Penny was acting during that time. She also immediately recognizes that Penny doesn't remember anything from the time spent inventing.
- The Audit's least favorite statistic correlates combinations of hair style and color and powers with a "possession" mechanic. This could be because Penny actually fits the profile and it was pointed out to Mrs. Akk sometime prior to the story.
- It seems like most defeated superheroes are left laying unconscious on the ground or otherwise immobilized/restrained by supervillains who don't take off their foes masks/costumes so that things "don't get personal". Likewise, either Spider is incredibly good and has a support network for creating new false identities for captured supervillains, or supervillains are allowed to stay in costume/not get finger printed/have their secret identity remain a secret even after being captured. As absurd as this might sound, it does avoid creating more situations like Deadly Flame, who felt like there was no place left for him in society so he might as well do as much damage to it on his way out as possible. Either that, or there are some rules where it is illegal to try and arrest/detain supervillains unless they're actively committing a crime so that supervillain who lacks a secret identity is still allowed to live a fairly normal life. This process helps avoid making supervillains feel like they can't go legit or change sides should they desire to and aren't forced into a life of crime from which their is no escape. The only reason that Penny and her friends had to worry about having their own identities get revealed if they were captured in the first book was because nobody took them seriously enough to grant them the sort of blanket Secret Identity protection that "professionals" get.
- The superhero and supervillain community in LA has been carefully guided by Spider (and possibly her counterpart on the other side of the line if there is a Big Good in the superhero community) to be more like wrestling; lots of big flashy speeches and posing and a minimum of people actually getting hurt. What if a new group of younger superheroes show up however who combine the worst traits of Marcia and Claudia from book one? Superheroes who really want to hunt down supervillains and take them to jail even if they're out of costume and don't have a problem with getting personal. Now if they were adults they could doubtlessly be dealt with by the villain equivalent of Morning Dove, but given their age a softer touch is clearly required. Thus she'll turn to her new favorite trouble shooters, the Inscrutable Machine to either convince these heroes to see things the LA way, or humiliate them enough that they give up.
In the third book her first fight with Lighting Wisp and Sharky is directly described as going up against someone with a mix of both of her parents powers. Also noticeably we see her starting to combine inventions she's already made into bigger more powerful inventions, much like the Kludge did back in the second book. Not only that, but many of her designs as Pennultimate have a clockwork theme, right after she spent a lot of time in space observing interacting with the clockwork creations of the Jupiter colonists.
Even in the first book, a few moments after meeting Cybermancer whose "power" is his understanding of how technology and magic can be blended together, Penny comes up with a brand new way to blend technology and magic and creates the formula for the "curse grenades" we see him using later on.
And in Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Giant Monster, we're introduced to Wonderland, a villain from decades ago, who wields the same candy chainsaw and corrosive cola that Penny uses in her early appearances.
Given he's described in the first book as one of the supervillains who always tends to succeed/win he probably used some of that money to hire her private tutors so she didn't have to go to public school and end up suffering Freakiness Shame.
Also consider the following sayings about how it is bad luck if a black cat crosses your path, and if you break a mirror it is seven years of bad luck. So imagine just how much bad luck you're going to end up with if breaking mirror (Mirabelle) causes a black cat (Entropy) to cross your path!
Confirmed in Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Giant Monster where she often has to talk him down when she either gets in trouble, or appears to.
Does she expect that Penny's Mother the Audit isn't going to start running numbers and probabilities if her daughter starts acting differently? Even if the version of events she tries to explain ends with her wanting to be a supervillian, Evil Penny's crimes are probably going to be whole lot more destructive than Ban Penny's were previously. If the robot claiming to have exchanged souls with the person it was based off of is one of the oldest cliche's around... its probably because it has ended up actually happening at least once....
Not only that, but Claire and Ray have been shown the various functions of the soul switching machine, and by convincing Penny to make a steel heart when said heart was tried out in the robot body it gave those two a glimpse of what an evil version of Penny would look like... Of course this could lead them to the conclusion that the Steel Heart version of Penny somehow switched bodies with her though that would still lead them to trust Robot Penny over Meatbag Penny.
Finally lets not forget that Rage, Ruin, and Cassie heard all about Penny's desire to take her robot home with her and have it serve as a sister. Why would it suddenly turn against her/she suddenly change her mind?
In short, as is ever the running theme of the series, expect plenty of Poor Communication Kills as lots of people have the bits and pieces of the proof that Penny is clearly not herself but it will take Real Penny's prompting to start getting them to put said pieces together.
There's no way to have a satisfactory ending without Penny permanently dealing with the issue of just how dangerous her powers can be at times. Since Evil Penny has been established not to actually be Penny's powers as entity unto themselves but rather something more like her worst instincts combined with a total lack of morals this may mean she can have just as much trouble properly controlling her powers as the real Penny did. If said powers like The Machine ultimately prefer to be wielded by the real Penny rather than Evil Penny we may see them resist her desires in some way at a critical moment (possibly by causing her to create inventions that do what she wants, but in a way that ultimately only create more problems for her and Penny will need to make peace with them as part of regaining her real body.
Or she could convince Mourning Dove to do whatever it is she's been offering to do since she first met her to Evil Penny before any more body swapping takes place, and losing the powers that were her chief reason for existing will leave Evil Penny a sobbing wreck or possibly completely dead to the world around her
In short, that fire is the only thing that makes it possible for Penny to go ahead with her plan to have a huge staged battle with her robot double and then go home to confess things to her parents. If she'd been forced to confess then and there instead, leading inevitably to her introducing her parents to Heart of Gold Robot Penny then there was no way that Evil Penny would be able to arrange a situation where Heart of Gold Robot Penny would believe she could get away with swapping bodies with Meatbag Penny.
The fire was necessary for Evil Penny to pull off her plan, Evil Penny has a love of explosives, and people are fairly certain someone or something was spreading it on purpose. So in the end we're left with two equally unlikely situations, either the fire was a Contrived Coincidence that somehow managed to perfectly suit Evil Penny's needs... or Evil Penny somehow managed to arrange a Xanatos Roulette (some kind of subroutine in Heart of Gold Robot Penny? She was at the scene of the fire which was an hour and a half drive from Penny's house...) which would reunite the two Pennies so they could set a time to carry out their plan, while also buying them just enough time to pull it off successfully.
- She is described as wearing a white skirt and wields a wand who's blasts appear to be musical, based on Goodnight's description of them. in 'You Believe Her' we discover Ampexia is the latest in a line of magical girl super heroines stretching back at least to her mother and grandmother with music based powers which she does not want.
- When she briefly accepts the powers in that book she is described as wearing a pure white dress... before she continues to refuse the call and her clothes return to normal.
- We know that Mirabelle can fix objects with her power. Vermiel is a broken crystal, and previous attempts to rejoin have resulted in rejection from hosts. In a benevolent take, Mirabelle may have healed flaws in the crystals induced by the shattering that led to the more destructive aspects of their personality, as well as their inability to fully join together again. After her healing, the four pieces can once again join together, and meld with Jeb.
- It's also possible that she subconsciously "fixed" the crystals to be more like what she wanted. The realization that this was a possibility may have led to her acceptance of losing Vermiel at the end of the book.
- Both used rifles, and Jeb implies that his Knight Templar grandfather was active in New York, and while Judgment is well-known in the L.A. community, the short story Summer of Lob mentions that he took a shot at Bull in New York once.
- In-universe, Little Reaper Girl is a video game based off of Psychopomp. In later books, we encounter Wonderland, who employs candy-based weapons reminiscent of the ones Penny develops based off of upgrades in Teddy Bears and Machine Guns. Thus, it seems likely that the Junkyard and Toybox choices were similarly cribbed from prominent mad scientists.
