Primer: Petscop
Sep. 21st, 2023 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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fanifestoPetscop (Pronounced: Pet-scop) is an horror un-fiction* and “This game I found”** type web series (notably: NOT an ARG***, although it was believed to be so for a while.) spanning from 2017 to 2019 with 24 episodes (ranging from a couple of minutes to half an hour long) and a soundtrack. The plot follows Paul playing through a game he found while slowly uncovering the secrets of said game and what, exactly, the developer of the secret portion is trying to say or re-create.
Due to the nature of the series, this primer contains some spoilers in order to get a fuller idea of what this web series is about.
(*un-fiction refers to fiction that treats and presents itself as if it were real.
**TGIF as a genre was popularized by petscop and is typically used to describe the web series inspired by it: it’s called that because the format is usually in a “lets play” or “discovery log” format of a game the protagonist found. I.E. “This channel is about a game I found.” Some examples would be Animal Investigator/A.I. builds, Diminish, and Sherif Domestic.
***While technically being an “alternate reality game,” Petscop lacks the outside influence (a way to “play” or discover things outside of the channel as a viewer) that an ARG needs to be categorized as such. Additionally, the creator of the series has stated that Petscop was not meant to be a puzzle to be solved.)
Content warnings:
General: Some main topics of the series is child abuse, childhood trauma, dysfunctional families, death, and rebirth.
Theres also: Child kidnapping, Onscreen kidnapping, talk of animal injury, talk of missing persons, child death, talk of and motifs of car acidents, currently controlling families, heavily implied suicide, the recording and monitoring of someone aware and unaware of this, and references to a specific real child abuse case. Despite all this the ending is implied to be happy for the protagonist.
With all that said: Petscop is constrained to the game and most of these things are shown rather abstractly, through in-game counterparts recreating events, or through text. There’s no traditional jumpscares, although there are parts with sudden loud noises (episode 16 in particular).
Petscop is abstract in its execution, so there are multiple ways to interpret events. It’s one of those things that needs to be re-watched a couple of times to really understand it.
It can be watched in its entirety on the Petscop youtube channel. There are now official captions made by the creator. To get the entire story one can watch all 24 petscop episodes and the last section of the soundtrack video, there are no outside channels or videos off of this channel to understand the main story. The only outside source that’s official or treated as such is the name of the account that posted petscop to the r/creepygaming reddit page which is u/paleskowitz
Recommended post watching or outside watching:
I highly recommend not watching any "The Game Theorists" channel/@GameTheory videos over this series. For the love of god do not do this. Instead, make your own decision on what is happening or what petscop is about!
If you do want some videos or reading discussing possible ways to interpret the series, here's some recommendations:
Another highly recommended post-watching reading is this interview with the creator of petscop!
Bite from the interview: “There’s room for interpreting it in different ways, based on your own experiences and what you care about, […] I prefer not to explain it in words myself, because that would take away from personal interpretations, and because I think too much is lost in that translation into words.”
Speaking of the creator of Petscop: you can find his youtube channel here.
(Crossposted from my journal.)
Due to the nature of the series, this primer contains some spoilers in order to get a fuller idea of what this web series is about.
(*un-fiction refers to fiction that treats and presents itself as if it were real.
**TGIF as a genre was popularized by petscop and is typically used to describe the web series inspired by it: it’s called that because the format is usually in a “lets play” or “discovery log” format of a game the protagonist found. I.E. “This channel is about a game I found.” Some examples would be Animal Investigator/A.I. builds, Diminish, and Sherif Domestic.
***While technically being an “alternate reality game,” Petscop lacks the outside influence (a way to “play” or discover things outside of the channel as a viewer) that an ARG needs to be categorized as such. Additionally, the creator of the series has stated that Petscop was not meant to be a puzzle to be solved.)
Content warnings:
General: Some main topics of the series is child abuse, childhood trauma, dysfunctional families, death, and rebirth.
Specific spoilers:
Theres also: Child kidnapping, Onscreen kidnapping, talk of animal injury, talk of missing persons, child death, talk of and motifs of car acidents, currently controlling families, heavily implied suicide, the recording and monitoring of someone aware and unaware of this, and references to a specific real child abuse case. Despite all this the ending is implied to be happy for the protagonist.
With all that said: Petscop is constrained to the game and most of these things are shown rather abstractly, through in-game counterparts recreating events, or through text. There’s no traditional jumpscares, although there are parts with sudden loud noises (episode 16 in particular).
Petscop is abstract in its execution, so there are multiple ways to interpret events. It’s one of those things that needs to be re-watched a couple of times to really understand it.
It can be watched in its entirety on the Petscop youtube channel. There are now official captions made by the creator. To get the entire story one can watch all 24 petscop episodes and the last section of the soundtrack video, there are no outside channels or videos off of this channel to understand the main story. The only outside source that’s official or treated as such is the name of the account that posted petscop to the r/creepygaming reddit page which is u/paleskowitz
Recommended post watching or outside watching:
I highly recommend not watching any "The Game Theorists" channel/@GameTheory videos over this series. For the love of god do not do this. Instead, make your own decision on what is happening or what petscop is about!
If you do want some videos or reading discussing possible ways to interpret the series, here's some recommendations:
- Sock Muppet has some interesting videos on the topic, particularly some of their later ones.
- Mysticete has some interesting ways to view petscop, and a lot of his videos lean towards giving the viewer tools to dissect the series with, rather than telling the viewer what to think.
- If you want a glimpse of what people were thinking about the series while it was still ongoing: The Petscop Investigation by Nightmare Masterclass should be what you're looking for! Although, a lot of these theories and ideas are debunked or don’t work as well with the completed series due to this being made while it was ongoing.
- r/petscop also has The Petscop Comprehensive Progress Document, which you can check out.
- If you didn’t get what was going on in Petscop 21, this video should help!
- Not actually analysis, but you should watch Pieces of paper if you haven’t yet already.
Another highly recommended post-watching reading is this interview with the creator of petscop!
Bite from the interview: “There’s room for interpreting it in different ways, based on your own experiences and what you care about, […] I prefer not to explain it in words myself, because that would take away from personal interpretations, and because I think too much is lost in that translation into words.”
Speaking of the creator of Petscop: you can find his youtube channel here.
(Crossposted from my journal.)
