As someone who looks after and lives with a family member who is very capable at day-to-day things and seems happy but is diagnosed as having extreme paranoid delusions and says he's constantly being attacked by a voice in his head, I've seen how things have gone with austerity in the UK. In the 2000s he had people coming around to check up on him, make sure his meds are still working and are right for him, and just listen to him as an outside-the-family outlet. Those visits were quite frequent, every few months, then they gradually dwindled to nothing under austerity after the financial crash. I myself have noticed doctor's visits are shorter and more quick-and-to-the-point, impersonal... Now I'm the only person who can help him with really heavy and bad thoughts and ideations he has. I'm on my own. Along with that, I've seen a lot of this family dynamic of low-key child neglect, and treating children almost like pets or commodities... products even... These things and the Lynchian-arse atmosphere are really what made Petscop fascinating to me. When it was active, just knowing there might be another Petsdrop soon made the Internet feel electric. Footnote *clap* : We have been failed by our systems.
I am really sorry you have to deal with that. I really hope you get the resources you need. The welfare state is being chipped away, even in the UK. These rightwing buffoons are the enemy.
Petscop resisting explanation is something that both frustrated and enthralled me during my time digging into it. Had answers been overtly obvious, then I honestly don't believe it would be nearly as revered as it is today. The lack of answers, explanations, *anything* - truly making sense without invalidating some other preestablished idea is what makes it so weirdly alluring. I scrapped my Petscop script *so many times* and even walked away from part one mid-way into it because I didn't think I could do it justice. I still don't think I did it justice. It's a horror story that will forever exist under the veil of mystery - something entirely unexplainable - forever. I really enjoyed the insight here and I hope you're doing well my friend.
You too! I actually haven't had a chance to check out your video on Petscop yet, so to be clear, this was not directed at you. Hope you're doing well too, and I'm delighted to see how successful your channel has become. Keep it up.
For all the franchises trying to build "lore", the really enduring pieces of art are ones that beg questions instead of giving answers. As simple as "The Lady or the Tiger?", as open-ended as "What was in Jules's briefcase?" or as all-encompassing as "What the *hell* did I just watch?"
Did not expect petscop to come back on this channel, always nice to see. If there is no *clap* footnote in the video though, I will commit atrocities...
i think to a large degree, the most popular form of horror media analysis online- the 'game theory' style just does not work with petscop, because that is a method of analysis that deals with figuring out what is literally happening in a story and has no space for thematics. and if you read tonys other works, it becomes pretty clear that hes not too heavily concerned with 'lore' as much as he is with tone, thematic meaning, and getting the audience to reflect. i think thats why nick nocturne bounced right off of it five years after the series ended, im able to see a lot of very important symbolism i couldn't see back in the day, like the vase and flower casket representing the nature of paul and care, with paul being the new person that emerged in their psyche after seeing her distorted image in the vase, and that 'split' (though i dont think thats an accurate word) in personality both being why paul cant remember being care, and serving as part of the further 'split reality' themes, where things that can be seen in one cant be seen in the other. also, no one has ever read much into the alchemical symbolism with the ritual in the last episode, which i find odd because its not subtle. but then it also lends itself to what your talking about- commentary and the foster care system and then that spiraling out to larger social commentary ("the gift plane has closed and all personel have left"). Theres a lot in petscop about the flaws of the nuclear family model and how parents often treat their children as something to mold for their own purposes. though i do love theorizing on petscop, i do think that there is no 'real solution' (and the most fun theorizing is found when not trying to force everything into one theory. the terrible 'paul is an ai11!!111!!!' theories are what people get when they try to do that) 11:55 i think this sort of ties into the ending. paul knows what hes meant to play to continue as intended, and he knows hes meant to put care NLM in the machine. but he chooses to do things his own way instead, which then leads to the almost dreamlike and clearly more allegorical ending. that might be what lina represents, marvin cant 'find' her, or 'bring her back', he just has to accept her as intangible yet present. he cant do that, but paul and tiara, by sabotaging the ritual can. my reading has changed a lot as well, i was originally one of the first 'paul is trans' theorists, but though i still think that might be the case in some sense, i lean more towards the 'paul and care are a system' theory and more abstract theorization on what lina represents
and theres also a lot of ambiguous stuff the community originally took at face value. was rainer successful in doing himself in for instance? we see what was essentially his digital ' [redacted] note' but not if he actually went through with it, and we know more stuff was developed later, unless that was produced via some supernatural means ('its a growing organism') and if mike is actually dead. the series leads us to think this, but then care A's description mentions that '[rainers] brother (who is mike) didnt want us to find him, because he knew we were looking for micheal A'. and i remember when petscop 11 dropped, we were all so set on 'mike is dead' that many assumed that the brother in question was marvin, which now is clearly not the case. but that was never really re-evaluated
Despite knowing Petscop is meant to be unsolvable, I still viscerally feel the desire to figure it out, to make it click, to get the missing piece. I don’t think any other project has left me with this intense of a feeling. I still feel it while watching your video, while knowing that if I did get that closure, it would eliminate the excitement of discovery when thinking about petscop.
Hearing that Tony has now explicitly stated that he withheld or obscured certain plot/character details is so vindicating as someone who has been in the "this is a work which intentionally resists interpretation" camp from the very beginning. I have always felt deeply that the thematic core of Petscop is this question: what if there are no cohesive "answers"? What if the puzzle cannot be solved, either because not all of the pieces have been made available to us or because no such clarifying structure exists in the first place? It's a work which asks us to question our desire to narrativize our experiences, to make sense of what has happened to or around us in a linear, logical way, when the reality may well be that no such answer exists, or, if it does, it may not be able to meet our need to understand in a way that will resolve our feelings. Why did that person treat us so cruelly, after all? Is there really always an answer? Would it really help if there was? I do also completely agree with the systemic reading of Petscop offered here. I think it functions beautifully, tragically, on both levels: the personal and the structural. The horror of both feeding the machine and being fed to it. I know back in the day there was a lot of resistance to your sociopolitical reading of Petscop, but it seems clear to me that such an interpretation co-exists very well with the more existential readings, rather than in conflict with them. Thank you for your continued analytical work on this media, which in my opinion is one of the greatest works of horror of all time.
11:42 “is the act of solving these puzzles perpetuating something nefarious?” I love this idea ive been saying this about the roachprophets ARG for a while but i hadn’t considered it applied to petscop! Great video!
I really love what Tony said about not getting hung up on the details, because as much as I loved learning about this series through you and through the subreddit, I also had a very personal experience with Petscop that transcends all of the hard analysis we were all doing back then. And in hindsight, it’s kind of odd to that I never voiced any of that stuff. Why didn’t I share anything about how the series affected me personally? I’m not really sure.
i love how you contrast the feel of petscop as we first experienced with seeing it in a big screen setting. i remember following the series intensely, loving your videos about it. i've been looking back on it recently and i'm so glad to have been there, you know? feels like a privilege of some kind to have been part of the community that fell in love with this enchanting and weird puzzle. gonna watch the series with episodes b2b soon, i want to feel that sense of pace you mention you felt at the screening.
Man, that was a cathartic watch. Loved your thoughts on how Petscop talks about austerity, surveillance, puzzles. The puzzles stuff in particular -- puzzles that feed into systems, puzzles that obfuscate truth. It's so obvious in retrospect, right? Episode 1 -- the solution to every puzzle involves tricking and capturing a pet. Care isn't growing eyebrows -- "That's a puzzle." With every puzzle Paul solves, he sees more caskets and becomes "part of the family". I noticed on a rewatch that at the beginning of the series, Paul stops to collect every single 'piece'. Symbolically, puzzle pieces, mayhaps...? (Eats tinfoil hat) Are you planning to make a video on 3D Workers Island? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
i always thought your marxist analysis of petscop was salient and refreshing. so few people remember to analyze systems, or that those anlyses can reveal about the narrative and our own lives.
I feel like I agree and disagree in the sense that I feel like Petscop falls somewhere in between being a work you try to "solve" and a work you should just try to feel. Rabbits by David Lynch is an example of one extreme end of that spectrum, you could theoretically try to work out what is going on in Rabbits by dissecting every line they say and every subtle or creepy thing they do, but I think we can all agree that would be missing the point, it is meant to be a thematic work designed to make you feel something. In Petscop, the culminating moment to me was not the last episode but rather Petscop 21, when "Care" dances around the sign. A completely confusing and meaningless video out of context, but an incredibly powerful and emotional one to me at least in context. But you only know that context if you "solve" it, if someone thinks to sync it up with ABBA outside of the video, and of course we have to know who Care is and why her dancing is important. But it is an emotional moment and not a mechanical one, it provides no further clues and from that point the narrative if there is one becomes very hard to make sense of. I think in some ways it is the key to understanding it. What compels us to "solve" Petscop is not simply some desire to solve puzzles or mysteries given incomplete clues, but because we wish to know more about this central tragic figure in this story, and 21 is both a reminder that she was not simply a puzzle to solve but a real (fictional) person, but that we can only know that, know the significance of this video, by coming to understand her as a person. I've been following your videos on these things for a long time and you always provide a lot of insight, thank you for making them.
How nice to see you again on UA-cam! I will always remember the live stream when a lot of new videos came out! It was incredible and thinking about it at that moment is super nostalgic for me. I always thought that Petscop was a text that is open to multiple readings, but I had never thought of it as a text that resists interpretation (insert mind explosion meme).
That quote by the creator really did crack it wide open for me. I did get obsessed with the puzzle elements of it, but also really loved the story. The basic plot of petscop is really simple, but the story is deep and meaningful.
I'm early for once, been binge watching the old petscop videos again lately. Honest it holds up so well and will continue to be a very iconic development for the somewhat niche audience it was made for. Tony is a genius and I will be looking forward to whatever he makes next. Also I will say that his story Tapers (while I know is not cannon to petscop) does a good job to conceptualize the way Tony creates stories. And I would highly recommend it to anyone. Thank you Mr. Masterclass for putting so much effort into these analysis videos. Appreciate it and keep up the great content
i was at the screening:D lolol i didnt realize you would be there it surprised me. been watching ur stuff for awhile. but it was really great!! been thinking about petscop nonstop since.
i always appreciated your Petscop analysis. System injustices occurred, and the characters in the plot are in the situation they're in because of it. i know people affected by losing healthcare options, losing housing, losing that sense of security, just so a company can save a few dollars. i hope the last 8 years of UK and US politics have awoken people to the ideas you presented in your original analysis because they are real dots that were always connected to us, no matter how hard we shook them away.
thank you so much for making this video! seeing this made me feel better after a dark day. i'm glad seeing Petscop on the big screen in the flesh changed your understanding of the series (it certainly did for me too) and i hope it leads to more stuff like this happening in the future.
I remember being really frustrated that petscop ended “abruptly”. I was still a young teenager when this series started and I haven’t watched it all the way through again since so maybe I should. I wanted the satisfying reveal of the mystery.!
Your statement about how much has changed really is poignant. I didn't have a deep uncertainty over the broad 'online left' at the time. I hadn't seen the devastating aftermath of like, CHAZ/CHOP on Seattle. Like, I still believe in what I've always believed in, but I've become so much less willing to believe people. Thinking back to Petscop era feels so much more innocent in some ways. The work itself has resisted explanation, and feels particularly important for that reason.
bringing up history, politics, or etc. in the context of petscop is fine even from the title. the expansion of keeping pets, as opposed to working dogs and mousing cats, from a mostly upper class to often middle class hobby in the 20th century due to economic shifts is notable. thats just from the surface presence of pets as part of the title and theming.
To me, Petscop's beauty lies exactly within the fact that the puzzle was never meant to be solved. Like the nature of family trauma as seen by outsiders, how one can only glimpse at the bad things that happened, but rarely will you ever get the full picture because you weren't there and this didn't happen to you. It reminds me of one of my favorite art pieces: "Étant donnés" by Duchamp, a large assemblage you can only peep through a hole that leads to a puzzling scene that you're meant to solve by yourself.
I think the dichotomy is that Paul uses STEM logic to advance, he has to. But we watch the series with a more humanities approach, because we don't get the answers, so that's the lens we have to take.
always great to see a video from you but a petscop one is a treat! petscop is an absolutely amazing series that i don't think i'll ever be over. watching up to the ending i remember wanting to hear paul's voice after he goes silent for multiple episodes just to get some confirmation he was okay in some shape or form. watching videos about it is fun in a thing to watch while working, but your series really hit different. petscop will always be the series that had me tearing up rooting for everyone.
You were mentioned on the Petscop Reddit the other day, and I immediately remembered how great your videos were as companion pieces to the series. I'm in the camp of not being particularly bothered what the 'true' interpretation of Petscop is (assuming there is a 'true' interpretation), and for me it's more of a vibes thing that throws up bigger questions one can ponder. Your videos were my favourite 'ponderings' of those bigger questions. It's very nice to reminisce and see you revisit yours and Tony's work.
Haven't watched the video yet and i will when i have time to. I just want to say that it was really frustrating watching pyroynical's video on petscop after yours, it felt like a repeat of everything you said about petscop so far.
Petscop holds a specific place in my mind and soul, it simultaneously says so much and nothing at all with how it plays out, and everyone's interpretation brings life and light to the presence it has in the unfiction sphear; But its such difficult thing to love at the same time in some aspects. With everyone's own interpretation comes confusion, misinformation, unanswered questions, theories ontop of theories, it like THE Ouroborus of unfiction. I also think that's what makes it beautiful and enjoyable. I dont think any current unfiction has pulled something off remotely close. Speaking on Tony Domenico's work, do you think you'll be making a series/video for "3DWI. SCR" ? Its the latest short story from Tony and definitely worth a look into!
Tony said in one of the interviews after the series ended that they like ambiguity for it's own sake, and like when it stands on it's own. I think that's the real point of the work.
You were so right in Petscop, when it was being uploaded to UA-cam still, was something you had to be there for. And Petscop, viewing it all on it's own, really does create something else entirely and it feels so good still. Petscop is amazing.
To your point about how treating it like a puzzle misses the point of Petscop, I've actually been meaning to make a video about Rainer since he's often overlooked in discussion about the series. If you try to "solve" Petscop, there isn't anything to talk about with him. He's just a modifier to the events of the story, rather then an active participant. But then you're discussing an event without a cause, and that doesn't make any sense. If you want a full investigation of something, you need to discuss the underlying factors that lead to its creation. Its kinda like trying to discuss Hastur without any prior knowledge to Ambrose's short stories and/or the French decadence movement. The King in Yellow was born of an intersection point between the two, with some influence from Edgar Allen Poe tossed into the mix. But without those three influences, you just get the funny yellow guy who trolls people that like the theater. An interpretation which runs counter to its own foundations, I feel.
The Rage of the Stage Players in Pittsburgh offer a unique experience too. Black comedy, horror, fantasy, mature and dark reimaginings of established works. Hell, they've even posted live readings of their works on their UA-cam channel (Winnie-the-Pooh and the 7 Deadly Sins is my favorite so far). Their work may be PG, but they sure are entertaining!
i had no idea about the screening until right this moment, that's disappointing. maybe it will occur again at some point but i would have loved to attend something like that.
I am a forever single, chronically online (& chronically & terminally ill) millennial, who is looking at any/all of the half dozen things I rely on to survive being completely gutted in the coming months/years, so I am in about as existential a crisis as it gets. I doubt I will survive very long, but I also don't have "an easy way out" to end my nightmare of 20+ years now, that only seems to get worse & never that 'eventually it gets better' everyone loves to repeat. I cannot find anyone who understands or is affected by this shtstorm, all I see are the comments, "It won't be that bad, stop being so dramatic" & "MAGA fanatics reap what they sow & are now seeing what they actually voted for!" From ppl clearly barely affected by having a fascist, anti-humanist leader in charge... I can only hope that my usual autistic haven of playing UA-cam every waking minute to distract me from the intolerable, painful world, and that I can stay invisible enough that I can get thru 4 years with no more stress induced heart failures or have my fixed single income or lifesaving meds not be stolen by a corrupt, greedy govt...
the reap/sow comments are intensely frustrating. As if the lives of the people who don't deserve it would be an acceptable loss to make the Trumpers regret their vote.
I LOVE your materialist lens in which you view horror. I just don't think the creators are that deep. I actually laughed out loud when you started interpreting Valley Verde through a Geopolitical lens 😂😂 but I think you should absolutely make your own creepypasta using your knowledge of politics
Maaaan. Wish i coulda been at the screening. If i was still in the nerd culture community, that would be something i would absolutely help facilitate. Unfortunately, in Small Town, Southern State...I had to move on from that scene. Not healthy and i wasn't influential enough 😅. Anyway never stop doing what you do
How could a person possibly understand Petscop's themes without understanding it as a critique of neoliberal capitalism's systems of coercion and control? It would have to be a shallow and brittle read indeed.
Off topic David Lynch welcomes people "solving" his works but he does say there is a solid theme happening. Things mean something in particular. I don't know why people turn to calling something lynchian when it's something not to understand when there is he has a point but he also appreciates others feelings but there is an specific intention. However the Lynch effect I take away is the idea that something is only horrific if we choose to engage with it and he has absolutely put that idea forward especially twin peaks imo.
Anybody who thinks that horror media has nothing to do with politics really has no place discussing horror. What scares us is really inherently political.
Not that I think it dismisses your framework but the events unfolded in Petscop feel cultish rather than systemic. It could be systemic in the sense that the system "allowed" it to happen or it could be systemic in that cults are systemic. What's interesting to me about Petscop is how the potential real events in the story contains extremely disturbing metaphysical ideas about rotation, directions, rebirthing, time ect. but even if it's real in the context of the story, they seem to also exist as a metaphor for what is seen as ordinary child abuse. The idea of literally loosing youself to turn into what your "family" desires you to be or "no one will love you" is about parents projecting their desires onto their children. Complex mechanics about rotations and other worlds just to turns into a parent covering up physical abuse as "hitting a door". It's almost like external pain observed is DEALIGNED with internal pain.
this guy thinks there's politics and other socioeconomic factors at play.. doesn't he know abuse happens in a vacuum perpetrated by people with Evil Souls and also art never means or alludes to anything else other than its own fictional concepts? 😭
You call it a surveillance system, but doesn't it also create copies of the players as AI? thats how you get marvin talking with "pall". And this is very similar to Marvin's sin, "rebirthing". what I mean is, in pursuit of trying to get marvin to "recreate" his crimes in-game, rainer creates a system that does the thing that marvin was after.
Did you think the last 4yrs went well? I COME IN PEACE‼️‼️‼️ Feel like I have to say that so I don't get mobbed like last time. I'm a 7yr sub...... Lol I just want to understand.
As someone who looks after and lives with a family member who is very capable at day-to-day things and seems happy but is diagnosed as having extreme paranoid delusions and says he's constantly being attacked by a voice in his head, I've seen how things have gone with austerity in the UK. In the 2000s he had people coming around to check up on him, make sure his meds are still working and are right for him, and just listen to him as an outside-the-family outlet. Those visits were quite frequent, every few months, then they gradually dwindled to nothing under austerity after the financial crash. I myself have noticed doctor's visits are shorter and more quick-and-to-the-point, impersonal... Now I'm the only person who can help him with really heavy and bad thoughts and ideations he has. I'm on my own.
Along with that, I've seen a lot of this family dynamic of low-key child neglect, and treating children almost like pets or commodities... products even... These things and the Lynchian-arse atmosphere are really what made Petscop fascinating to me. When it was active, just knowing there might be another Petsdrop soon made the Internet feel electric.
Footnote *clap* : We have been failed by our systems.
I am really sorry you have to deal with that. I really hope you get the resources you need. The welfare state is being chipped away, even in the UK. These rightwing buffoons are the enemy.
Petscop resisting explanation is something that both frustrated and enthralled me during my time digging into it. Had answers been overtly obvious, then I honestly don't believe it would be nearly as revered as it is today. The lack of answers, explanations, *anything* - truly making sense without invalidating some other preestablished idea is what makes it so weirdly alluring. I scrapped my Petscop script *so many times* and even walked away from part one mid-way into it because I didn't think I could do it justice. I still don't think I did it justice.
It's a horror story that will forever exist under the veil of mystery - something entirely unexplainable - forever.
I really enjoyed the insight here and I hope you're doing well my friend.
You too! I actually haven't had a chance to check out your video on Petscop yet, so to be clear, this was not directed at you. Hope you're doing well too, and I'm delighted to see how successful your channel has become. Keep it up.
For all the franchises trying to build "lore", the really enduring pieces of art are ones that beg questions instead of giving answers. As simple as "The Lady or the Tiger?", as open-ended as "What was in Jules's briefcase?" or as all-encompassing as "What the *hell* did I just watch?"
Did not expect petscop to come back on this channel, always nice to see. If there is no *clap* footnote in the video though, I will commit atrocities...
i think to a large degree, the most popular form of horror media analysis online- the 'game theory' style just does not work with petscop, because that is a method of analysis that deals with figuring out what is literally happening in a story and has no space for thematics. and if you read tonys other works, it becomes pretty clear that hes not too heavily concerned with 'lore' as much as he is with tone, thematic meaning, and getting the audience to reflect. i think thats why nick nocturne bounced right off of it
five years after the series ended, im able to see a lot of very important symbolism i couldn't see back in the day, like the vase and flower casket representing the nature of paul and care, with paul being the new person that emerged in their psyche after seeing her distorted image in the vase, and that 'split' (though i dont think thats an accurate word) in personality both being why paul cant remember being care, and serving as part of the further 'split reality' themes, where things that can be seen in one cant be seen in the other.
also, no one has ever read much into the alchemical symbolism with the ritual in the last episode, which i find odd because its not subtle.
but then it also lends itself to what your talking about- commentary and the foster care system and then that spiraling out to larger social commentary ("the gift plane has closed and all personel have left"). Theres a lot in petscop about the flaws of the nuclear family model and how parents often treat their children as something to mold for their own purposes.
though i do love theorizing on petscop, i do think that there is no 'real solution' (and the most fun theorizing is found when not trying to force everything into one theory. the terrible 'paul is an ai11!!111!!!' theories are what people get when they try to do that)
11:55 i think this sort of ties into the ending. paul knows what hes meant to play to continue as intended, and he knows hes meant to put care NLM in the machine. but he chooses to do things his own way instead, which then leads to the almost dreamlike and clearly more allegorical ending. that might be what lina represents, marvin cant 'find' her, or 'bring her back', he just has to accept her as intangible yet present. he cant do that, but paul and tiara, by sabotaging the ritual can.
my reading has changed a lot as well, i was originally one of the first 'paul is trans' theorists, but though i still think that might be the case in some sense, i lean more towards the 'paul and care are a system' theory and more abstract theorization on what lina represents
and theres also a lot of ambiguous stuff the community originally took at face value. was rainer successful in doing himself in for instance? we see what was essentially his digital ' [redacted] note' but not if he actually went through with it, and we know more stuff was developed later, unless that was produced via some supernatural means ('its a growing organism')
and if mike is actually dead. the series leads us to think this, but then care A's description mentions that '[rainers] brother (who is mike) didnt want us to find him, because he knew we were looking for micheal A'. and i remember when petscop 11 dropped, we were all so set on 'mike is dead' that many assumed that the brother in question was marvin, which now is clearly not the case. but that was never really re-evaluated
Beautiful comment. Thanks
Despite knowing Petscop is meant to be unsolvable, I still viscerally feel the desire to figure it out, to make it click, to get the missing piece. I don’t think any other project has left me with this intense of a feeling. I still feel it while watching your video, while knowing that if I did get that closure, it would eliminate the excitement of discovery when thinking about petscop.
Hearing that Tony has now explicitly stated that he withheld or obscured certain plot/character details is so vindicating as someone who has been in the "this is a work which intentionally resists interpretation" camp from the very beginning. I have always felt deeply that the thematic core of Petscop is this question: what if there are no cohesive "answers"? What if the puzzle cannot be solved, either because not all of the pieces have been made available to us or because no such clarifying structure exists in the first place? It's a work which asks us to question our desire to narrativize our experiences, to make sense of what has happened to or around us in a linear, logical way, when the reality may well be that no such answer exists, or, if it does, it may not be able to meet our need to understand in a way that will resolve our feelings. Why did that person treat us so cruelly, after all? Is there really always an answer? Would it really help if there was?
I do also completely agree with the systemic reading of Petscop offered here. I think it functions beautifully, tragically, on both levels: the personal and the structural. The horror of both feeding the machine and being fed to it. I know back in the day there was a lot of resistance to your sociopolitical reading of Petscop, but it seems clear to me that such an interpretation co-exists very well with the more existential readings, rather than in conflict with them.
Thank you for your continued analytical work on this media, which in my opinion is one of the greatest works of horror of all time.
11:42 “is the act of solving these puzzles perpetuating something nefarious?” I love this idea ive been saying this about the roachprophets ARG for a while but i hadn’t considered it applied to petscop! Great video!
I really love what Tony said about not getting hung up on the details, because as much as I loved learning about this series through you and through the subreddit, I also had a very personal experience with Petscop that transcends all of the hard analysis we were all doing back then. And in hindsight, it’s kind of odd to that I never voiced any of that stuff. Why didn’t I share anything about how the series affected me personally? I’m not really sure.
i love how you contrast the feel of petscop as we first experienced with seeing it in a big screen setting. i remember following the series intensely, loving your videos about it. i've been looking back on it recently and i'm so glad to have been there, you know? feels like a privilege of some kind to have been part of the community that fell in love with this enchanting and weird puzzle. gonna watch the series with episodes b2b soon, i want to feel that sense of pace you mention you felt at the screening.
also love that you felt vindicated on the marxist critique you made, always felt like you were ahead of the community with that one
Man, that was a cathartic watch. Loved your thoughts on how Petscop talks about austerity, surveillance, puzzles.
The puzzles stuff in particular -- puzzles that feed into systems, puzzles that obfuscate truth. It's so obvious in retrospect, right? Episode 1 -- the solution to every puzzle involves tricking and capturing a pet. Care isn't growing eyebrows -- "That's a puzzle." With every puzzle Paul solves, he sees more caskets and becomes "part of the family". I noticed on a rewatch that at the beginning of the series, Paul stops to collect every single 'piece'. Symbolically, puzzle pieces, mayhaps...? (Eats tinfoil hat)
Are you planning to make a video on 3D Workers Island? Would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Paul does say, "That was an experience", but in a confused and even disappointed tone. Great summing-up of it I think.
i always thought your marxist analysis of petscop was salient and refreshing. so few people remember to analyze systems, or that those anlyses can reveal about the narrative and our own lives.
I feel like I agree and disagree in the sense that I feel like Petscop falls somewhere in between being a work you try to "solve" and a work you should just try to feel. Rabbits by David Lynch is an example of one extreme end of that spectrum, you could theoretically try to work out what is going on in Rabbits by dissecting every line they say and every subtle or creepy thing they do, but I think we can all agree that would be missing the point, it is meant to be a thematic work designed to make you feel something.
In Petscop, the culminating moment to me was not the last episode but rather Petscop 21, when "Care" dances around the sign. A completely confusing and meaningless video out of context, but an incredibly powerful and emotional one to me at least in context. But you only know that context if you "solve" it, if someone thinks to sync it up with ABBA outside of the video, and of course we have to know who Care is and why her dancing is important. But it is an emotional moment and not a mechanical one, it provides no further clues and from that point the narrative if there is one becomes very hard to make sense of.
I think in some ways it is the key to understanding it. What compels us to "solve" Petscop is not simply some desire to solve puzzles or mysteries given incomplete clues, but because we wish to know more about this central tragic figure in this story, and 21 is both a reminder that she was not simply a puzzle to solve but a real (fictional) person, but that we can only know that, know the significance of this video, by coming to understand her as a person. I've been following your videos on these things for a long time and you always provide a lot of insight, thank you for making them.
How nice to see you again on UA-cam! I will always remember the live stream when a lot of new videos came out! It was incredible and thinking about it at that moment is super nostalgic for me. I always thought that Petscop was a text that is open to multiple readings, but I had never thought of it as a text that resists interpretation (insert mind explosion meme).
That quote by the creator really did crack it wide open for me. I did get obsessed with the puzzle elements of it, but also really loved the story. The basic plot of petscop is really simple, but the story is deep and meaningful.
I'm early for once, been binge watching the old petscop videos again lately. Honest it holds up so well and will continue to be a very iconic development for the somewhat niche audience it was made for. Tony is a genius and I will be looking forward to whatever he makes next. Also I will say that his story Tapers (while I know is not cannon to petscop) does a good job to conceptualize the way Tony creates stories. And I would highly recommend it to anyone. Thank you Mr. Masterclass for putting so much effort into these analysis videos. Appreciate it and keep up the great content
Thanks! Are you aware of his new project?
mryes.itch.io/3dwiscr
i was at the screening:D lolol i didnt realize you would be there it surprised me. been watching ur stuff for awhile. but it was really great!! been thinking about petscop nonstop since.
i always appreciated your Petscop analysis. System injustices occurred, and the characters in the plot are in the situation they're in because of it. i know people affected by losing healthcare options, losing housing, losing that sense of security, just so a company can save a few dollars. i hope the last 8 years of UK and US politics have awoken people to the ideas you presented in your original analysis because they are real dots that were always connected to us, no matter how hard we shook them away.
thank you so much for making this video! seeing this made me feel better after a dark day. i'm glad seeing Petscop on the big screen in the flesh changed your understanding of the series (it certainly did for me too) and i hope it leads to more stuff like this happening in the future.
Petscop is always in the back of my mind. One of the best series I’ve seen on UA-cam, and your analysis videos are my favourite I’ve been
It's funny. Cause I just re-watched your entire Petscop investigation like a week ago, and then you release this. I'm eating good tonight.
Was recently rewatching your petscop series because I’ve been showing Petscop to my partner, cool to see you come back to it!
Ever though the series has been over for a while, I will never get tired of you uploading more thoughts on Petscop.
I remember being really frustrated that petscop ended “abruptly”. I was still a young teenager when this series started and I haven’t watched it all the way through again since so maybe I should. I wanted the satisfying reveal of the mystery.!
It's giving pre recorded lecture. still a great video tho, but u really are serving university professor in that fit.
You were so right to talk about neoliberalism in your petscop videos and I'm glad you feel vindicated
Your statement about how much has changed really is poignant. I didn't have a deep uncertainty over the broad 'online left' at the time. I hadn't seen the devastating aftermath of like, CHAZ/CHOP on Seattle. Like, I still believe in what I've always believed in, but I've become so much less willing to believe people. Thinking back to Petscop era feels so much more innocent in some ways. The work itself has resisted explanation, and feels particularly important for that reason.
bringing up history, politics, or etc. in the context of petscop is fine even from the title. the expansion of keeping pets, as opposed to working dogs and mousing cats, from a mostly upper class to often middle class hobby in the 20th century due to economic shifts is notable. thats just from the surface presence of pets as part of the title and theming.
To me, Petscop's beauty lies exactly within the fact that the puzzle was never meant to be solved. Like the nature of family trauma as seen by outsiders, how one can only glimpse at the bad things that happened, but rarely will you ever get the full picture because you weren't there and this didn't happen to you. It reminds me of one of my favorite art pieces: "Étant donnés" by Duchamp, a large assemblage you can only peep through a hole that leads to a puzzling scene that you're meant to solve by yourself.
I think the dichotomy is that Paul uses STEM logic to advance, he has to. But we watch the series with a more humanities approach, because we don't get the answers, so that's the lens we have to take.
always great to see a video from you but a petscop one is a treat! petscop is an absolutely amazing series that i don't think i'll ever be over. watching up to the ending i remember wanting to hear paul's voice after he goes silent for multiple episodes just to get some confirmation he was okay in some shape or form. watching videos about it is fun in a thing to watch while working, but your series really hit different. petscop will always be the series that had me tearing up rooting for everyone.
Honestly your analysis of Valle Verde through the lens of politics and geographical history really drew me in.
You were mentioned on the Petscop Reddit the other day, and I immediately remembered how great your videos were as companion pieces to the series. I'm in the camp of not being particularly bothered what the 'true' interpretation of Petscop is (assuming there is a 'true' interpretation), and for me it's more of a vibes thing that throws up bigger questions one can ponder. Your videos were my favourite 'ponderings' of those bigger questions. It's very nice to reminisce and see you revisit yours and Tony's work.
Haven't watched the video yet and i will when i have time to. I just want to say that it was really frustrating watching pyroynical's video on petscop after yours, it felt like a repeat of everything you said about petscop so far.
expecting pyro to have anything but a surface level reading of something is a fruitless endeavour
Petscop holds a specific place in my mind and soul, it simultaneously says so much and nothing at all with how it plays out, and everyone's interpretation brings life and light to the presence it has in the unfiction sphear; But its such difficult thing to love at the same time in some aspects.
With everyone's own interpretation comes confusion, misinformation, unanswered questions, theories ontop of theories, it like THE Ouroborus of unfiction. I also think that's what makes it beautiful and enjoyable. I dont think any current unfiction has pulled something off remotely close.
Speaking on Tony Domenico's work, do you think you'll be making a series/video for "3DWI. SCR" ? Its the latest short story from Tony and definitely worth a look into!
Petscop music lives in my head rent-free forever. I can't stop it.
Tony said in one of the interviews after the series ended that they like ambiguity for it's own sake, and like when it stands on it's own. I think that's the real point of the work.
You were so right in Petscop, when it was being uploaded to UA-cam still, was something you had to be there for. And Petscop, viewing it all on it's own, really does create something else entirely and it feels so good still. Petscop is amazing.
Shit, I forgot how much I loved your Petscop work. Gonna go through that playlist again after this. 0v0
Never thought I would see petscop again on your channel. Hyped!
To your point about how treating it like a puzzle misses the point of Petscop, I've actually been meaning to make a video about Rainer since he's often overlooked in discussion about the series. If you try to "solve" Petscop, there isn't anything to talk about with him. He's just a modifier to the events of the story, rather then an active participant. But then you're discussing an event without a cause, and that doesn't make any sense. If you want a full investigation of something, you need to discuss the underlying factors that lead to its creation.
Its kinda like trying to discuss Hastur without any prior knowledge to Ambrose's short stories and/or the French decadence movement. The King in Yellow was born of an intersection point between the two, with some influence from Edgar Allen Poe tossed into the mix. But without those three influences, you just get the funny yellow guy who trolls people that like the theater. An interpretation which runs counter to its own foundations, I feel.
The Rage of the Stage Players in Pittsburgh offer a unique experience too. Black comedy, horror, fantasy, mature and dark reimaginings of established works. Hell, they've even posted live readings of their works on their UA-cam channel (Winnie-the-Pooh and the 7 Deadly Sins is my favorite so far). Their work may be PG, but they sure are entertaining!
the real petscop were the friends we made along the way
Im a huge fan of the material analysis. I hope we get to dee more ❤
i had no idea about the screening until right this moment, that's disappointing. maybe it will occur again at some point but i would have loved to attend something like that.
I am a simple human. I see "Petscop", I click.
I am a forever single, chronically online (& chronically & terminally ill) millennial, who is looking at any/all of the half dozen things I rely on to survive being completely gutted in the coming months/years, so I am in about as existential a crisis as it gets. I doubt I will survive very long, but I also don't have "an easy way out" to end my nightmare of 20+ years now, that only seems to get worse & never that 'eventually it gets better' everyone loves to repeat. I cannot find anyone who understands or is affected by this shtstorm, all I see are the comments, "It won't be that bad, stop being so dramatic" & "MAGA fanatics reap what they sow & are now seeing what they actually voted for!" From ppl clearly barely affected by having a fascist, anti-humanist leader in charge...
I can only hope that my usual autistic haven of playing UA-cam every waking minute to distract me from the intolerable, painful world, and that I can stay invisible enough that I can get thru 4 years with no more stress induced heart failures or have my fixed single income or lifesaving meds not be stolen by a corrupt, greedy govt...
Good luck and take care of yourself
the reap/sow comments are intensely frustrating. As if the lives of the people who don't deserve it would be an acceptable loss to make the Trumpers regret their vote.
So excited for this 🙏
I LOVE your materialist lens in which you view horror. I just don't think the creators are that deep. I actually laughed out loud when you started interpreting Valley Verde through a Geopolitical lens 😂😂 but I think you should absolutely make your own creepypasta using your knowledge of politics
Back to the roots
Maaaan. Wish i coulda been at the screening. If i was still in the nerd culture community, that would be something i would absolutely help facilitate. Unfortunately, in Small Town, Southern State...I had to move on from that scene. Not healthy and i wasn't influential enough 😅. Anyway never stop doing what you do
Oh thank goodness.
How could a person possibly understand Petscop's themes without understanding it as a critique of neoliberal capitalism's systems of coercion and control? It would have to be a shallow and brittle read indeed.
Oh. My. God.
Off topic David Lynch welcomes people "solving" his works but he does say there is a solid theme happening. Things mean something in particular. I don't know why people turn to calling something lynchian when it's something not to understand when there is he has a point but he also appreciates others feelings but there is an specific intention.
However the Lynch effect I take away is the idea that something is only horrific if we choose to engage with it and he has absolutely put that idea forward especially twin peaks imo.
Anybody who thinks that horror media has nothing to do with politics really has no place discussing horror. What scares us is really inherently political.
Not that I think it dismisses your framework but the events unfolded in Petscop feel cultish rather than systemic. It could be systemic in the sense that the system "allowed" it to happen or it could be systemic in that cults are systemic. What's interesting to me about Petscop is how the potential real events in the story contains extremely disturbing metaphysical ideas about rotation, directions, rebirthing, time ect. but even if it's real in the context of the story, they seem to also exist as a metaphor for what is seen as ordinary child abuse. The idea of literally loosing youself to turn into what your "family" desires you to be or "no one will love you" is about parents projecting their desires onto their children. Complex mechanics about rotations and other worlds just to turns into a parent covering up physical abuse as "hitting a door". It's almost like external pain observed is DEALIGNED with internal pain.
I dig it. Whats up Dave.
11:31 a question ive pondered as well.
Deleted but not forgotten
if only there were fumos in petscop
this guy thinks there's politics and other socioeconomic factors at play.. doesn't he know abuse happens in a vacuum perpetrated by people with Evil Souls and also art never means or alludes to anything else other than its own fictional concepts? 😭
You call it a surveillance system, but doesn't it also create copies of the players as AI? thats how you get marvin talking with "pall". And this is very similar to Marvin's sin, "rebirthing". what I mean is, in pursuit of trying to get marvin to "recreate" his crimes in-game, rainer creates a system that does the thing that marvin was after.
Oh! Professa stockdale ova heaa
Did you think the last 4yrs went well? I COME IN PEACE‼️‼️‼️ Feel like I have to say that so I don't get mobbed like last time. I'm a 7yr sub...... Lol I just want to understand.
No, I don't think things are going well for working class people in general, and I'm a vocal critic of the Democratic Party as well.
Pettywetty scoppywoppy
petscorpe
Not a hand clap nor "footnote" to be heard. SMH unsubbed
leftist audio let's go!!!!