Theory behind what's really going on (lore).

[Artuno]

Okay so obviously spoilers, particularly for after you've gotten the secret final true good ending.

After I got the final secret ending, I was wondering "what was the point of all that? Feels kind of anti-climatic." but then out of nowhere I had a thought.

That image... of Ame and Kangel. Obviously, there's a whole duality thing going on here, that much is clear. She has an online person that isn't her that is practically a different person. That final message in Secret.txt with that drawing of the two of them? Combined with the idea of "making a new P-chan" made me think how the heck is she making her own P-Chan? In her head of course. There is no P-chan, there is no boyfriend/girlfriend, it's just her and herself. The moment I thought this, and the more I thought about it, the more everything perfectly fit into place. All of the evidence matches up.

So first let's start with the main stuff, the operating system/desktop and the webcam. I thought it was weird how there's a webcam view and she's talking to you, especially if you're both hanging out all the time. That's cause it's HER desktop, it's HER webcam, she's looking at herself, she's operating the computer by herself. The messages? She's sending them to herself, she has two accounts after all.

Second, the medication. Why is it that when SHE takes the medication, time skips by and everything goes all trippy? Duh, because it's from HER point of view. She took the meds, time is flying by for her, she's the one feeling all of the trippiness.

Another one, Dinder. Why is P-chan just okay with her going out and seeing/♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ other guys? Cause there is no P-chan, she's single and she's going out and seeing random dudes.

What about hanging out? What about going out on dates? She's going out by herself on dates. That one ending where she goes to an amusement park? We don't really see anyone in that photo cause she censored it to heck. When she hangs out at home, the cuddling? That's her doing self-care. The *** option is probably just her doing herself, and the Nympho ending is her getting addicted to that.

The blue screen of death with each ending? Her getting bored and just force restarting her computer or something.

The more I think about it, the more the whole thing makes sense. The duality of personas extends beyond the Ame/Kangel dynamic. We have to include P-chan as well.

[Orange]

Just when you thought it couldn't get anymore messed up!

[奶小的姑娘]

P-chan is like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.

[waku waku]

It's a pretty good theory that seems to line up with most of the things she does, and yet there are some which really stretch the possibility of her actually doing that on her own, like the fact that P-chan apparently takes care of her mundane tasks and she's a mess otherwise. And you can visit her parents with her. If you take it literally that looks like a toxic relationship, but if you interpret it that way, that means she's actually doing it herself. Which is...surprisingly healthy for a coping mechanism.

Then, there's also exactly one ending where this does not make sense:Labor is evil. It implies that P-chan was somehow staying home while she was at work until one day she just "did not come home" while P-chan was waiting for her. and any way to interpret that in the vein of this theory seems forced and stretched. There's no reason for her to run away from home, if something bad did in fact happen to her P-chan should not be able to reply when she is being silent. Only thing that makes sense is "deciding to spontaneously move somewhere else (her parents?) and leave P-chan behind", but even if you are mentally unstable, that just sounds like the kind of thing you don't do just on a whim when your darkness is low.

[Verenti]

My take on it is that P-chan is her imaginary friend that she mentions, whose "physical avatar" is a pink stuffed cat, which is why P-Chan seems to be associated with cats in the interface. I think the whole game is not her actually doing anything, but preemptively living out all of these possible outcomes, trying to find a way to make it work. Pushing the responsibility of choice (in this mental simulations) is just a way of trying to avoid responsibility for her potential failures (or successes)-- if something goes wrong and she gave up control-- she didn't fail; P-Chan failed.

She's running from control because as long as she doesn't try, she hasn't failed. She keeps the quantum possibility of success alive (Schrodinger's Cat and all that) by not trying. So, those first 20 or so endings represent her trying to navigate possibility, lying awake, talking to her pink stuffed cat. Then, exhausted from the anxiety of being locked in her mind and all that darkness, her ability to feel anxious dries up, she gets the courage to try and does succeed and realise that she didn't need someone taking control from her after all. She gains confidence to stand on her own feet.

That's just my take on the game.

[»RuwudBoy]

Originally posted by 奶小的姑娘:

P-chan is like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.

Yeah, agreed. A lot of this is hinted through various responses to her streams and reactions to events. She clearly watches Fight Club and then says some cryptic ♥♥♥♥ about it on Tweeter to herself in regard to it. There's a lot of other parts like this as well that don't come to mind but the Fight Club reference and reaction definitely stood out to me and made me go "uh oh someone ain't real around here. Some Tyler Durden action going on."

[»RuwudBoy]

I also think the drawings she has that look like a kid drew them were ones she drew, well, as a kid. The other girl in the drawings is her imaginary friend. Ame says that her imaginary friend vanished the moment she went onto the internet so I think she went from having the imaginary friend 'existing' with her to it becoming her online persona, probably put on by the traumatic experiences of her home life. Her mom had knives thrown at her and ♥♥♥♥. She took from escaping to her imaginary friend in reality to making the internet her new escape, and with the new escape came a new home for her imaginary friend, which is why the imaginary friend stopped 'appearing.' She also claims she believes she is trying to be more and more like KAngel, which is the imaginary friend she always had growing up, as if the trauma from her childhood created the imaginary friend now split personality as a defense mechanism. If you've ever played Deadly Premonition you'll know what I am talking about in regard to Francis York Morgan and Zach. If anything I think the ending is bittersweet in that she is taking the broken self and the image of someone she is striving to be and 'marrying' them together, as if coming to terms with both sides of her and working toward that future where she finds happiness.

[»RuwudBoy]

I mean I could keep going forevs. The nympho ending clearly states she bought a lot of toys and is worried she will love sex (with the toys) more than P-chan (and streaming.) the drug ending is her turning p-chan into an actual entity that she can only meet through KAngel, the Internet Overdose ending is KAngel becoming the dominant personality and putting Ame to rest, the ending where Ame goes cray cray and "stabs p-chan" is just her stabbing the computer (and a bottle of ketchup I guess,) etc. etc. Another weird thing is that in some of her pictures she actually goes out of her way to draw over/scribble out her keyboard, as if censoring "P-Chan" out of her social media images.

Not to mention "Producer" is a common anime trope for the faceless manager or boss of whatever visual novel or gacha game or whatever it is you're playing and she gets hella addicted to those.

[Artuno]

Originally posted by I biffed it:

It's a pretty good theory that seems to line up with most of the things she does, and yet there are some which really stretch the possibility of her actually doing that on her own, like the fact that P-chan apparently takes care of her mundane tasks and she's a mess otherwise. And you can visit her parents with her. If you take it literally that looks like a toxic relationship, but if you interpret it that way, that means she's actually doing it herself. Which is...surprisingly healthy for a coping mechanism.

Then, there's also exactly one ending where this does not make sense:Labor is evil. It implies that P-chan was somehow staying home while she was at work until one day she just "did not come home" while P-chan was waiting for her. and any way to interpret that in the vein of this theory seems forced and stretched. There's no reason for her to run away from home, if something bad did in fact happen to her P-chan should not be able to reply when she is being silent. Only thing that makes sense is "deciding to spontaneously move somewhere else (her parents?) and leave P-chan behind", but even if you are mentally unstable, that just sounds like the kind of thing you don't do just on a whim when your darkness is low.

My take is that if P-chan represents the part of her brain that really wants her to be a streamer, then one day after coming home from work, Ame realizes that part of her mind no longer exists, dead along with her dreams of becoming an internet streamer. Nothing bad happens to Ame, she just stopped talking to P-chan. She grew up.

[Happyguy22]

I'm going to just drop this here:

It's possible each ending isn't in the same universe so to speak - in each one P-chan is different: in some he's real, in some he's fake.

It's very possible that Save 0 is the true one, it being akin to "reality" and the rest being "what ifs".


I highly doubt it, but it'd explain how different the theories contradict each other.
"P-chan is fake" is more credible still in my eyes compared to it, but it's something.

[Silvaria Sereneblossom]

my counterpoint: p-chan and k-angel are real people in a sense - because ame-chan is DID and those are her alters. p-chan does all the mundane boring ♥♥♥♥ that ame-chan can't deal with, k-angel is the idealized version of her that ame sees herself as unable to be.

[Artorius]

It also explains why the heck P-chan did not stop KAngel in Internet Overdose ending. They had several days to keep KAngel away from streaming after the first vomit incident.
AND at some point P-chan's replies start making no sense (day 28 or 29, don't remember), cause Ame already went ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy and can't even think rationally as her another personality.

[Pixie Actual]

Originally posted by Happyguy22:

It's possible each ending isn't in the same universe so to speak - in each one P-chan is different: in some he's real, in some he's fake.

Heck I'll go a step further and point out that enough LSD makes her literally see the player, so not all the endings are exactly anchored in reality in the first place.

But also, the viewers see P-chan in the first internet lore stream, don't they?

[waku waku]

All I know is I like this theory more than P-chan being real, because that would make Ame look incredibly selfish and abusive for spontaneously abandoning a person in most endings because she "didn't get what she wanted", even if she let you control almost all of her actions for 30 days.

On the other hand with this theory it is more like ending up abandoning a coping mechanism because it wasn't working. Or deciding that she doesn't deserve love, because unconditional love towards Ame is pretty much the only personality trait P-chan has.

[Happyguy22]

I will say, I read a comment that made a point that P-chan only talks when she's having a breakdown or it's stress related. All he does usually is post stickers.

So, questionably is P-chan actually a good person? He seems more akin to a unwilling carer than someone who loves her unconditionally. In addition, he doesn't work and he comes across as very exploitative at times.

On the other had, they raised the point that he could easily just be only acting as something that keeps her balanced. He only "Becomes real" when she is on a knife edge of a breakdown - when it makes sense that he would be real to her, stopping her going on the deep end or trying to distract her (We see this in the Internet Overdose when he tries to distract her to talk about butterflies and the such).

Originally posted by biffed it 2 in HD:

snip snop

I mean, she is quite selfish and egotistical. Being needy is usually viewed as selfishness, even if that someone is mentally ill. She declares she is his first priority a few times to my knowledge, and she does come across as very impulsive, making decisions on a whim.

She declares herself above everyone many times, and she views her viewers nothing more than a statistic most often. If P-chan fails even slightly she abandons him.


As I said far above though P-chan feels more like a carer if he is real, because the way he acts is more akin to either that or a figment of her imagination - only really supporting her when it gets really bad.

Originally posted by Pixie 01:

snip

I thought that's made up though, I thought the purpose of the Netlore was just to make ♥♥♥♥ up and then play it off as real?

[TemmieNeko]

PK CHAN