Penny McFarland

Penny Jeanne McFarland-McCormick is an original character created by SnowCalico for the fanfiction "Kenny's in Love", which was published in 1998. She is one of the most important original characters in the South Park fandom history and has been described as the first original "girlfriend" character.
==Appearance==
Penny wears a blue parka with a pink bow on the hood, pink mittens and black boots. She has been described as a "pallete-swapped girl version" of Kenny.
==Personality==
Penny is described by her creator as being "more or less (she is) Kenny in female form" and "more or less a nice person, unless you messed with her or her "man". (I suppose) being Kenny's double, she could be perverted a(nd) a bit more knowledgeable about the birds and the bees than most kids her age." She likes daisies, Terrance and Phillip, the colors blue and pink, slow music, and making fun of Eric Cartman, who she dislikes. She also fears rats and death and does not like anchovies. She is suggested to be intelligent based on her qualification for a foreign exchange program. She seems to have the ability to lift heavy objects, as she had enough strength to throw Cartman into a chain link fence.
Her author admitted that Penny's "full personality was never explored".
==History==
On Penny's South Park FanSpace profile, her author outlined Penny's history:
"Penny was born in Ireland to the bar keepers Steven and Edna McFarland and has an older sister named Kelly. The McFarlands lived life as the McCormmicks did, very very poor. Penny joined a forgein exchange student program and left Scotland for Colorado, where she ended up in Kenny's class. It was love at first sight, and soon the two decided (yes at age 8) that they wanted to be married. Shortly after Penny said "I do" a boulder crashed through the stained glass window of the church, and crushed Penny to her death."
She also has a relative named Drake, possibly an alternative name for her father Steven, and a pet hamster who did not appear in published work. She was said to have an Irish accent which was not discernible through her hood.
==Legacy==
The character only ever made one official appearance in a fanfic, "Kenny's in Love", in which she was killed off at the end. There was discussion of her making an eventual second appearance.
SnowCalico later reflected on her creation:
"Now, I only wrote one published story with Penny in it. My friend informs me she has been used my authors many times since, but not one of them ever sent these stories to me so I have no idea how they portrayed her character.
In truth, "Kenny's In Love" was the first ever fanfic I wrote. I never posted it in public until months later when my writing had improved, and gave it a total rehaul before showing it to the world. I had always admired Kenny as a character, and he will always be my favorite. I suppose I just though the whole girlfriend premise was cute. At that time it had never been done, it even preceeded Trey and Matt's girlfriend for Kenny by 2 years. I have since only used two made up main characters in my SP fanfics, one of them being Penny and another an angel named Gabriel. I prefer making fanfics close to the show as possible.
Penny died in the only story I ever composed with her, but of course death wouldn't stop her. I'd assume that she'd stay happily married to Kenny, and they'd prolly have a boat load of indestructible parka clad kids. The world couldn't possibly have enough of those."
Many years later in the text post I was thinking about the ghosts of fandoms past, the post author reflected on the enormous impact of the Penny character on the fandom:
"so back in the day there was a big south park site and, while it had a fan creation section, all the art was crude ms paint drawings of the characters and all the fic was canon-type scripts written and posted in the hopes that the author would get picked up as a script writer for the show. one day someone posted a little romance story between kenny and a palette-swapped girl version of himself called [Penny]. all the girls on the forum went ‘wait, that’s a thing? we can do that??” and suddenly there was a deluge of ocs the likes of which i’ve never seen since"
The author initially misremembered Jenny McCormick as the character in question. Jenyn was, in fact, Kenny's sister and unrelated; the former operator of The #1 Pip Shrine correctly identified Penny McFarland as the OC in question.
==Gallery==
Penny&kenny.jpg|Penny holding hands with Kenny
PennyMcfarlnd.jpg|What Penny would've most likely looked like, as drawn by user PaigePeijiPnag
==Links==
*FanSpace page
Category:Original Characters
Category:Female Characters