#penelope sly cooper | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ms-scarletwings · 10 months ago

Text

Bare with me i have a ton of thoughts about this I need to try to get out in one big vomit blast

The worst part is how it’s NOT that hard to sell the “Penelope betrays the gang” premise. That’s a completely workable and believable follow through from the third game, where she was introduced as a twist villain off the bat. She’s cute and has been great to her friends as seen but she is not a fundamentally good person. She’s not, and that doesn’t count against her as a character, either. Dimitri is not a good person. He’s every bit the same sleazy, self absorbed lounge lizard you beat the hell out of in Paris. He helped the Cooper Gang for the same reason his once fought against them, because it aligned with his own interests. I’m sure he feels a lot more warmly towards them now, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with their moral code. The same with Panda King. His character development that suits him to joining the gang has NOTHING to do with atoning for or feeling a hint of remorse for the countless people he has killed/exploited; it’s freaking about putting aside his deserved embarrassment so he can come through for the daughter he abandoned when she needed him. Everything else for the gang was repaying a debt.

And Penelope is not that different from King or Dimitri in this realm. She was a career criminal with an enormous, merciless death count who tried to kill the gang when they were inconvenient to her ambition (to only provide her skills to “the best”) and joined them when she found the cards fell differently. She absolutely did not align with Sly’s principles of honor and integrity as the Black Baron. She rigged every tournament in her favor, cheated her ass off, and tried to literally yeet Sly off of a plane rather than accept losing at her own game. The Black Baron was not an imprisoning role she felt restricted to play… it was the Hyde to her Jekyll. The costume and her technology let her actually defy restrictions and be every bit the ruthless dogfighting blowhard she couldn’t be otherwise. Black Baron was someone who reveled in blasting his opponents out of the damn sky threatened his own staff with, and I quote “If we lose- if I lose, I’m going to take it out on all of you.”

What I’m saying is all of those qualities she showed when she was the Baron didn’t leave after she ditched the disguise. And it saved Bentley’s freaking life in Bloodbath Bay when she brought that side of herself back out again.

I really want to remind all of you that Lefwee is the only trilogy boss that was straight up MURDERED by a member of the Cooper gang.

I shit you not, Sly, Murray, Bentley, none of them have never actually killed a main antagonist directly. Clockwerk/Clockla? Carmelita was the one who laid the hate chip to a final rest. The Mask of Dark Earth? Also the cops (and it kind of just exploded on its own technically). At worst you only get the Batman treatment from Sly once you’ve made him an enemy. Penelope fed an entire man alive to hungry sharks and did a victorious emote over his final cries. It had me jaw dropped for what a suddenly dark closer it was, because we hadn’t seen something that nonchalantly brutal since Arpeggio’s death.

“Stand and take it!”

Point is, Penelope had the guts all along. Her widdle innocent Coco Bandicoot ass appearance completely belies a cheeky genius capable of utterly savage things if backed into a corner or taking a chance to chase glory.

You think Bentley’s romantic jealousy toward the crush Penelope was kindling for Sly was the only insecurity of his that had been obviously bleeding through to the surface? You think his frustrations about being paralyzed were the only things he probably found Penelope a cathartic ear to vent to when they became closer? Those chapters leading up to the heist on Kaine Island were a subtly tense period regarding Bentley’s view of himself and his role in the brotherhood. He explicitly was starting to ask himself some of the same questions that set Dr.M up for an ugly fallout with his and Conner’s relationship. Dr.M was a test for both Sly and Bentley to acknowledge some of their faults and remember what truly mattered to them, which both of them passed. Wholesome and wonderful.

But Penelope only joined on board for maybe the last few months or so of this team actually being a team. I don’t doubt that she fell in love with this mental powerhouse who could finally match up to her competitively, in fact I think the realization that it was actually Bentley and not Sly who had outsmarted her during the ACES played so so much into that. So what does that leave of her impression of Sly? All of this work, all of this sacrifice on some of their parts, to get Sly in spitting distance of his family inheritance, and then after Bentley invests every bit of faith against the doubts he probably clued her in on, this “lifelong friend” mf goes missing in action. No note, no goodbye, god forbid Bentley also told Penelope about the discovery that his BFF actually just ran off to elope with the very cop that tried to put all of them behind bars for years now.

Bentley of course knows Sly like a brother and where the man’s heart and commitments actually are. He knows that Sly earned that trust and he came out of the third game more solid than ever in his respect for the Cooper legacy and their leader.

….Did Penelope?

cause I’m not gonna lie,, I think the freak not.

Without Sly in the picture, Bentley proved capable of inventing fucking time travel and hijacking the entirety of Thiefnet. Thinking that the raccoon was only holding back dude’s potential wouldn’t even have just been in line with her in-character beliefs, it was more or less exactly what Dr.M concluded just by observing the gang from the outside. Penelope is right about Bentley. What makes her wrong in the important sense is her disregard for where Bentley actually is his own person with other priorities and ambitions besides that of the Contessa or Muggshot…. or the Black Baron. She can’t “become a villain again” because she actually never stopped being a villain, see?

And that’s why I’m so fucking mad about what thieves and time did with that raw premise. Bringing Bentley’s character development a little closer to the foreground now that we’ve pretty much finished with Sly’s coming of age? Making the part of him that’s a good friend who believes in Sly’s principles confront the part of himself that we all know had been making more devious and destructive plans over the years? Setting up this philosophic showdown between a genius thief with honor and a genius thief without honor where they still love each other but also have their own higher priorities tugging them apart and it’s agonizing for both of them?!? Jesus Christ that would actually be a story worth tolerating Bob Cooper after all!

It was a good idea and Sanzaru kind of dragged it over the drain and slaughtered it. The execution feels so hamfisted and abrupt, they obviously don’t show a lot of understanding for Penelope’s motivations, and honestly wtf is Le Paradox even here for? Paradox absolutely did not have to be here to make this work and he kind of slaughters it a little bit harder, because now you have to actually sell me the bigger bridge that Penelope, who’s risk averse, hard to impress, and arrogant as all fuck would volunteer as an underling to this joker. That actually, she needed him to be able to kill Sly who she already sees as an intellectual inferior. Yeah, real boss babe baddie you cultivated there, stooping down to be a dragon in chief instead of the main antagonist herself.. not! If Penelope weren’t here, Le Paradox would just be a shameful clockwerk wannabe beating a dead horse at best. She shouldn’t sell out for some skunk, she’s frustrated that Bentley sold out for some raccoon.

If he had to be there, the roles honestly should have been swapped regarding who’s the one atop all operations. Give her room to at least pretend she’s forced to do something she doesn’t want to. Give her that red herring to try and distract the team away from finding out who’s actually trying so hard to kill Bentley’s best friend. Give her that chance to be Mr “pugilism is my passion” again until the new mask is literally ripped off and she has nothing left but excuses. By all means, let this coward be riding a smug high about throwing an entire arsenal at Sly, but not about breaking Bentley’s heart. Don’t reveal her to actually be stupid for no other reason than to grant Bentley a soapbox to monologue about how dumb she is and how she knew nothing about him. Really the biggest problem with the whole thing was that the cooper gang was actually already apart and realizing their identity outside of the trio. Sly 3 ends with Bentley accepting Murray and Sly giving him space he uses to do exactly what Penelope wants tbh??? They were happy partners in crime with no hint/foreshadowing that they would end up fighting over the Master Thief code, and then she for… some reason??? Decided to stage a cause for the gang to come back together… so she could get rid of sly for the offense of… getting the gang back together. I don’t get it either.

It was a decent first draft, but they should have gone about it any other way than the route of a writer trying (intentionally or not) to convince you instead that the grand moral of everyone’s relationship drama (looking at what they did to my poor Carmelita too) was just “bros before hoes” and no one in the Cooper gang gets to fall in love without someone completely compromising everything they believe in and are, actually.

I’m not angry that they did it. I’m angry that they did it badly.

im bored

#Sly Cooper #sly 3 honor among thieves #Sly 3 #sly cooper analysis #Penelope sly cooper #sly cooper Penelope #The Black Baron #Fixing Theives in Time #sly 4 hate #scarlet talks about things #long post

78 notes · View notes