scattered in graves

Between rainer drawing her smiling and insisting that she's belle, its like hes trying to pretend nothing happened. There’s no belle a, b, or nlm because he ‘didn't do anything’ to her. because hes nothing like evil marvin, it was her choice to be uncooperative! She’s a quitter! (He just victim blames her. theres no justifiable reason for anyone to design the literal quitters room and still be in the right.) 

Him saying “If you hadn’t given up halfway, you would be Tiara,” is so fucking crazy to me because he literally fucking says she wasnt the one playing the needles before that. (“I put you inside the machine, and played[...] the Needles.”). So then there wasn't anything for her to ‘give up’ on??? AND THEN he admits he fucked it up?? (“I played it wrong, but that would have been okay.”) Like, it just reads as rainer saying it was okay for him to fuck up an incredibly important part of the process. and somehow SHE’S the reason it didn’t work??? Its just, combined with the adoption metaphor (through its reference to the Newmaker case), where the parents dont like the way the child is. and they try this experimental ‘therapy,’ to change her. And it does change her, she gets so traumatized it breaks her off from who she was before, forever. They still get to call her belle, even when they were the ones who destroyed belle. How could she ever be ok with being someone so unwanted? She’s smart. She knows what they want. They wanted to hear her say she's tiara. Except, to them, shes exactly the way she was before. A disobedient, broken girl who cant just act the way they tell her to. So she spends the rest of her life copying someone else. Calling herself tiara. If she says what they want to hear (“I love you newmaker”) then she’ll stop hurting. If she acts just right, they'll accept tiara and she wont be a quitter anymore.

The way those video essayists (mr goon, et al.) will just fixate on marvin saying she's played the needles. and then jump to the conclusion that tiara was the one who gave up on playing the needles. Even when rainer himself literally said she wasnt the one playing!!! Also, they’ll see her call herself tiara and be like “hmm… what if the rebirthing actually worked 🧐” which is NOT the conclusion i would draw from the game about child abuse. I dont think the intent of petscop was to give the concept of rebirthing any functional credibility, failed or not! Like, it just reminds me of how in cases of abuse, people almost always take the word of the abusers over what the child has to say (which is also filtered through the abuse). its just devastating to see.

If you had to ask me, I think rebirthing in petscop's narrative isn't there for people to sincerely discuss if metaphysically reviving someone works. It's not a representation dedicated to the horrific, real life concept of rebirthing. Instead, 'rebirthing' is a shorthand designation for all of the moving parts in the type of abuse that happens in the story, along with how it affects everything afterwards. The ‘reality manipulation’ also works as a metaphor for how people take advantage of having control over the story.

I dont know if you can tell, but rainer’s whole explanation in petscop 12 just makes me feel violent. He literally says, 17 years? “That seems dubious to me. What do you think?”. I dont fucking know, she probably has no concept of time and is probably completely disassociated from reality by that point. Also, something i noticed from p12 is that tiara takes longer than paul to read the messages. The amount of time is roughly about how long it takes to read them aloud. Idk. something about that is heartbreaking to me. im 100% reading too much into it, but when was the last time she read something that wasn’t “quitter’s room?”

I could’ve written this better but UGHHHHH. I hope this makes sense. theres so many other details about this that i didnt write about (irl belle, tiara helping paul, tiara becoming tiara leskowitz, etc). This is definitely only a subsection of the story petscop was telling, but its still so detailed. Unless i got something wrong, then it presented a case of a child being abused, and the abusers getting to tell the story. Which resulted in the audience believing the abusers. Idk if that means petscop is so good it literally replicated that, but in the end, i do think people need to reevaluate how biased the story is and how it affects the events. TIARAAAA you deserved so much better.