WMG / Petscop

As a WMG page, all spoilers are unmarked!

The game is a Nambla metaphor

Paul finds a note with the letters "A", "B", and "NLM". With those letters, you can make the word NAMBLA. Those lovely pets are a metaphor for kidnapping little kids.

• Maybe but part of that doesn't account for the female Care or Tiara/Belle.
  • ....NAMBLA has two A's. With those letters, you can make NAMBL, not NAMBLA.

Care is a victim of incest

Care is heavily connected to two things: flowers, and the phrase "nobody loves me." These two things form the backbone of this theory.

The note found in Care's bedroom appears to be about her father. The lines of the note that pop out here are "A young person walks into your school building. They walk in with you. You're holding their hands. They come out crying into their hands, because nobody will love them, not ever again." Survivors of childhood sexual abuse often end up with feelings of self-loathing and stigmatization, which can lead to them feeling that they either can't be loved or don't deserve it. The note's reference to a school points towards Marvin being Care's father, since it's known that he has a daughter and has some connection to the school.

A girl speculated to be Care herself is found on the lower floor of the shack with a giant daisy in it. Paul plucks the petals from the flower in an imitation of the "loves me, loves me not" game. In addition to representing her trichotillomania, the petal plucking could be a "deflowering" metaphor, which would explain why her sprite distorts after they've all been plucked; the distortion could symbolize her being traumatized by the event. The "loves me, loves me not" game may also represent conflicting feelings towards her father and confusion as to whether or not he loves her.

The final piece of evidence lies with the pets Randice, Toneth, and Roneth. Randice, being a flower, can pretty easily be linked to Care. Toneth is first seen in a painting in Even Care, where he is standing next to Randice. He's seen in person much later, when he appears during the encounter with the shadow man. Since the shadow man is implied to be Marvin, it would make sense that Toneth has some kind of connection to him. Roneth is a hybrid of Toneth and Randice, and is speculated to be their child, which leads one to conclude that Care was impregnated by her own father.

• Might be slightly Jossed, as Roneth, according to his description in one episode, is Toneth's half brother, however, that might depend on how one interprets "half brother."
  • Also if you think about it: It's possible that Mike might have been their child, since the text "Mike was a gift." could potentially play in the fact that this man KNEW that he had a child with his own daughter...
• Mostly Jossed. Petscop 20 features Rainer lambasting Marvin for being emotionally and psychologically abusive to Care by convincing her that she's an ugly monster who, therefore, is unworthy of love. This seems to be the crux of the whole thing... I will admit though, Martin thinking about his daughter in the tub is still, y'know.

In order to change Care NLM into Care A, she has to be loved.

"To catch her, you had to lie, but it may not be a lie forever. [...] You can turn Care NLM into Care A." The lie was changing the treadmill to -1, possibly "adding" one petal to her flower and ending the "loves me, loves me not" mantra on "loves me." It might be a lie at the moment, but if Care does ends up being loved, she can be healed.

The thing behind the second censor

It's not the most complex thing, but something I stumbled into watching it. The grave for Michael has the epitaph "Mike was a gift" The second object that needed to be censored involved something red, garnered a "What the fuck" reaction from Paul after watching it, and came out of a giftbox.

Garalina is forcing Paul to keep making videos.

He dug his grave, now they're going to make him lie in it.

The censored objects identify Paul

Upon finding...whatever it was in the child's room, Paul hesitates, but then says that it might just be something any kid's room would have. This suggests that he is familiar with it, but perhaps too familiar, like it's something that Paul had as a child. As for the "red pyramid", Paul reacts more with shock than disgust, like he's personally angry at what appears.

• Confirmed.

Tiara/Belle is adopted

My evidence is that one of the themes of Petscop is the abuse that some adoptive parents deal their children and the fact that her her features (eyebrows, eyes, nose) aren't included in the Child Library on the grounds that she isn't family, which would suggest that she was 1) adopted, 2) kidnapped, or, 3), both. Granted, we don't know precisely what that note meant by "family" but I presume that the note refers to biological family, not adopted.

One could say that, since he couldn't keep or get a hold of Care and the fact the Mike died, Marvin decided to seek out other children for his nefarious purposes, coming across Tiara/Belle. Once he has her, he tries to recondition her, the which he fails at because she resists it (as implied by Quitter's Room and the lines "I am Tiara, not Bell(e)" or "I am not Tiara", which suggests conflicting thoughts).

• Confirmed in Belle's case, as she's adopted.

Paul is not Care's twin, or Care reborn. Rather he's Care's parallel from a dimension that's a mirror image of her own.

Paul repeatedly indicates he is not familiar with many commonly known things. He finds himself turning doorknobs the wrong way, and he fails to recognize the Christmas Tree on the calendar, for instance. In addition, Paul's first experience with the Quitter's Room has him on the reflected side, not the default side, and frequently throughout the series, the direction of how something rotates is often indicative of something. The windmill changes the direction of its rotation once Paul accesses it and uses the Tool within, and many of the things associated with him rotate in a counterclockwise manner. If you were facing a door and you turned the doorknob to open it, with a mirror to your left, then your reflection would open the reflected door by turning the knob in the opposite direction.

• This is supported by the fact that when Marvin opens the controls section of the options menu in Petscop 20, the default configuration has the right and left buttons make you go left and right, respectively.

Rainer was a worker for/founded Garalina and is re-purposing the game to interrogate/punish Marvin.

Here goes: Petscop was a game in development, but was cancelled for reasons that we probably won't learn about. Rainer, a worker/founder of the company, had that "event" between him and Marvin during the game's development that started the bad blood between them; when the game was cancelled, Rainer modified the development build he had of Petscop to give to Marvin as a trojan horse, actually being full of evidence for his crimes and Rainer saying that he knows what he's done. If we assume Marvin is the one playing during Petscop 20, Rainer is making him find the grave of a child he presumably abducted, and goes over in detail what he used the censored objects for in a berating manner, as well as accusing him of knowing exactly what that brick house was "used for".

Petscop is set in a slightly Zeerust setting.

Technology in the Petscop universe is more or less the same in our universe, but their technology is just better, which allows for seemingly impossible things to happen on a PS1 console.

Paul is an adult, transitioned Care.

Paul is a trans man whose traumatic childhood memories are repressed (as is common). The game intended to bring those memories to light so he can testify against Marvin, his father, alongside the other abused children.

Jill and the Family are trying to bury the crimes Marvin committed.

Is stated by Rainer that Jill is Care's aunt. We can assume that Jill is Marvin's sister or cousin, and kidnapped Paul to prevent him from revealing the contents of the game to the authorities. The fact that game the records all the playthroughs and many are Marvin's brings credence to this theory.

The unseen "friend" is Paul's mother, who either adopted him or escaped "The family" and was Un-person'ed.

At the end of the game, Paul discovers a note in-game with their (supposed) real name: Tiara Leskowitz, with the words MOMMY attached to it. The fact that this is such a late reveal implies that she never told him the truth.

Care is a fictional female representation of Paul's childhood.

Due to the recurring Paul is trans theories that do point out various details that imply that Care was Paul (like apparently looking eerily similar and having their birthday the same day and year). However, due to the game's emphasis on child abuse and trauma with little to no allusions to gender identity or sexuality, I can believe that those trans allusions were unintentional by the series' creator and that indeed Care was Paul, but more in the way of a fictional character that represented Paul's forgotten abusive childhood.

The whole story is a looping timeline that Marvin is trying to end.

The things Paul/Paul's family censors from the video are things that would otherwise produce a paradox. When the Windmill and the Friend disappeared, they went back in time. The only thing he knows is that eventually, the friend would be reborn as his daughter; all the stuff Marvin does to abuse Care and abduct children is an effort to find the reincarnation of the friend and either kill her, or render her unable to have children (for instance, emotionally abusing her to think no one will ever love her means she'll never seek a relationship to begin with) in order to prevent the chain of events that causes the Windmill Incident and sets it all in motion.

---