fun fact! anya slept next to the pony mascot because it would make noises when it detected motion nearby, she slept by it for her own safety and to make sure it didn't happen. that's when he broke the mascot
@stevebear6295 it's called a failure of the company to ensure the safety of its employees and allowing horrible actions to take place due to that negligence
Kills 99.9% of germs. But what happens when the 0.1% slips through? I fucking love all the symbolism in this game, its fantastic. A narrative masterpiece.
I’ve always thought that was symbolism for how J*mmy killed 99.9% of the crew and the Curly is the .1% he was maybe able to survive, but he’s a shell of who he was so he’s less than a person
i think this is in account to the safeguards not being enforced for women’s safety because they wouldn’t think people would take advantage of it in that scenario. like yes most people wouldn’t sexually assault a woman on board but it’s the .1% that do. and that’s why we have the responsibility to protect women because of the .1%
For me, I always saw that the mouthwash’s ineffectiveness at being a disinfectant because of the sugar content was supposed to represent Curly’s inability to be a good leader. He’s a good man, “sweet”, but when it comes to clearing out the danger, doing his job by taking responsibility, he does jack shit.
fun facts about mouthwashing - daisuke didn’t actually get to close his eyes during his death - according to the polle posters, the crew was not allowed to sleep for more than 5 hours - jimmys name is based on a lana del rey song -daisuke didn’t even wanna go on that ship -swansea is a big sneaker guy, he buys them every sobriety - Anya canonically likes to watch really bad reality tv shows and eat a bunch of fast food to get her mind off things
Jimmy’s name is based off of A&W by Lana Del Rey and the song’s chorus says his name a lot. It discusses the theme of r@pe and a toxic relationship with the lines ‘this is the experience of being an American wh0r3’ and ‘Jimmy only love me when he wanna get h!gh’. Definitely expresses how bad of a person Jimmy is and the song really suits him.
I think the game does a pretty good job of showing you the extreme degree to which Jimmy disregards Anya. If he sees her while she's alive, it's only as either something he can use or as an inconvenience. He ignores her advice, dismissing it all as nonsense, and berates her when she dares to speak at all. Once she's dead, she's out of his mind completely. He doesn't hear her, he doesn't see her, he doesn't think of her. She doesn't appear in any of his guilt-ridden delusions. Even in the scene where the crew ID's are all on display, Jimmy's ID covers Anya's picture on every single one. The unborn child inside of her was more real to him than she was. It's brutal but true, a lot of misogynistic abusers just don't see women as people, or as anything at all.
And to top that, some players in real life (mostly right wing) ended up making lewd fanarts of Anya too. And when the game composer berated them as disgusting, they made videos insulting the game developers as a response, even chastised that composer “you are so like Jimmy” without any self-awareness.
Absolutely, I completely agree. I don’t think Anya can really haunt the narrative since we’re playing as Jimmy. For her to appear in his delusions would be for her to exist or “matter” in his mind. He doesn’t care about her at all. He is a selfish person and therefore sees the unborn baby as an extension of himself that’s why his mind gives it form and not Anya.Rapists feel no empathy towards their victim, for her to appear as a shadowy figure in the back would mean he cares which fundamentally he doesn’t, jimmy doesn’t think he has done anything wrong to Anya.
@@nont18411 ugh, I was once looking for mouthwashing gifs on discord and saw one of those "oh my goddness gracious" gifs and it was an image of ANYAS BODY.
The way he ignored her mentioning the sugar content in mouthwash being too high for it to be used as a disinfectant, the way he knew how much of the isopropyl alcohol would render Swansea unconscious without killing him, there's just so much. The motion activated loud Polle figure being where Anya's sleeping bag is seems intentional on her part. For a game that's setting is not too dissimilar from Futurama, it's a hell of a lot more bleak, and Futurama's first episode had us meeting one of the characters at a suicide booth, so it's not like that series didn't have dark moments itself, but damn.
@@UniversalControl-13 I still got mixed feelings about Anya's death. I feel happy she managed to find some sort of control, just... sad about the way she managed to do so. Minaxa has a theory that the Polly statue is actually the unborn child of Anya. It makes sense considering he cuts Jimmy off as he's about to use Anya's line without even giving her an OUNCE of recognition or regret for his actions toward her. That and the several correlations of baby imagery and horses including the ultra sound, the crying with the mutated Pollies. I totally forgot about the motion activated part though. Jesus 😢
first red flag is anya telling curly about how jimmy was inappropriate toward her during previous psych evals. to which curly laughs it off. anya tries to ask for help from the very beginning :/
literally like the fact that he was being repulsivly rude by saying f*ck u to Anya, someone he doesn't see as a person, during the psych eval he sees as useless by making it a point to make the time worse by saying "yeah i f*ck Ponys I'm sexually attracted to ponys" like u are such a weird loser but bc curly is his bestie and finds it funny its like oh.....
The first time I saw a streamer playing this game and became aware Anya was the only woman onboard the ship my mind instantly identified how inherently dangerous that was. I had no idea the story itself would actually delve into that subject matter, but in a sense I’m glad it did as it is the most realistic representation of the horrors a woman is likely to experience in that scenario, especially when zero safeguards have been put in place to prevent it.
As a victim of rape (who thankfully miscarried), I was kind of glad a game like this tackled it and didn't beat around the bush. So imagine my shock when I go check on what the fandom thinks and a TON of it was Jimmy and Anya happily married with her baby. I wanted to vomit.
It's kind of baffling to me how many analyses of this game ignore or explicitly dismiss the messaging about capitalism in Mouthwashing. Everything that happens on the Tulpar is enabled by the systemic abuses of the people who REALLY have control. The Pony Express company is defunct, the game states they're one of the only companies left still using human labor at all, most cargo ships are fully automated at this point, which is why most of the crew won't be able to just get another job easily. They're a failing, soulless company that's cutting every possible corner. The food they feed their employees is horrible quality. There are no extra supplies for the crew in case of a severe emergency (like what happens in the game). Pay is docked for HR issues. Pay is docked for sleeping longer than 5 hours a night. They've cut staff on the ship to the point that the loss of any one crew member could be catastrophic. They give their captains a gun to deal with any crew issues that come up instead of dedicating any space to a brig. Their only concern is protecting company assets, hence the locks on the cockpit and medbay. Zooming in further, rape culture and societal misogyny set the stage for Curly and Jimmy's actions. Jimmy is enabled both by Pony Express's complete lack of care for the safety of their personnel, and by Curly's blindness to the danger his friend poses to the others on board. It's Curly's fault Jimmy is there to begin with. It's implied that Jimmy had problems back on Earth, and was in trouble with the law. I don't think it's ever outright stated what he was previously in trouble for, but if it was anything violent, that should have been enough for Curly and Pony Express to bar him from the job. But it wasn't. So a violent misogynist is put into second in command on a ship with no crew protections to speak of, and the tragedy unfolds. I saw a brilliant comment on a video about the game that said "Curly is the mouthwash. Too sweet to do what needs to be done." And boy, that really nails it for me. I don't enjoy watching him suffer at Jimmy's hands, but I also can't help wondering if he finally understood in the end, how Anya felt.
I also believe that he knew she was right when Jimmy took the gun. He laughs when you unlock the box. A bitter, knowing laugh. Anya was right the whole time. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it
@RaineStormFlood Hi, local Marxism Expert™ here. I found your initial note interesting and thought I would leave a reply. One thing I found particularly interesting about the setting of mouthwashing is that in it, the actual amount of output that is received from each individual labor input (be it from intelligent machines not seen in the game but no doubt present somewhere or from humans, who developed the algorithms for those machines in the first place) produces such a surplus that they are able to bring the overall labor force to an absolute minimum, next to no personnel are required to run anything, but instead of using that productive capability to improve human lives, it is simply used to produce more shit that no one needs. Despite this the amount of work never decreases, most of the crew on the ship are highly overworked, much like how many today burn out and even straight up die under completely inane working conditions, while others go without much work at all. Even those who do work oft cannot earn a living, crushed by poor wages and high prices, turned into alienated husks, and then a single error occurs, and all firms, in their quest to make more and more money, turn out to be making less and less. Cue crisis of capital, either social democracy or fascism are instituted to prevent rising workers movement, blah blah blah. This is why Marx is so compelling (although Marx did nothing more than illustrate the empirical reality of production under capital, but I digress), because whilst the idiot opens their book on political economy with some blather about the motives of those who operate inside the Market, Marx is asking fundamentally different questions, like “what does $1 actually mean?” Because of this, he analyzes the social forms by which people interact with one another in capitalism, rather than the people themselves.
That final comparison is quite spot on and fitting I believe. Ive seen both bad takes saying Curly is perfect and other bad takes saying he had It coming for being an "accomplice". To me Curly is more an enabler than an accomplice. He didnt want his friend to go through a bad time so he helped him into the company. Then he tried to ignore What happened with Anya. But at no moment does he shift the blame on Anya to protect Jimmy. Hes more of a "lets meet in the middle" approach which not always works. I believe some animatic with Anya and Curly had a line that seems to fit quite well. "Curly might be a good man but he wasnt a good captain (with how he dealt with Jimmy)"
I interpreted Curly not being able/willing to see the dead pixel as a metaphor for his lack of willingness to see Anya's concerns/feelings/predicament. He's such a peacekeeper he literally wills himself to be blind to it.
Curly is very interesting because his role in the story doesn't let anyone playing the game off the hook. It's very easy for anyone with a smattering of self-awareness to look at Jimmy and think "This guy sucks I'm glad I'm not him", meanwhile Curly is staring you in the face clearly letting you know that "not being Jimmy" is not enough. For as much of an upstanding guy Curly was in the surface his fatal flaw still allowed tremendous evil to take place. That's what it means to take responsibility. Without that, all the Jimmies of the world are going to drag everyone under with them and not even realize they're doing it.
I was a bit shocked that people interpreted it like this, because this game gave me chills at how accurate Jimmy's pyschology is. How raw his instincts were, his selfishness, the urge to deflect, impulsiveness, his jealousy, his guilt, all horrible, but all are emotions that we all feel as people. Everyone has the capacity to hurt others and everyone has the ability to be as delusional as Jimmy was. We all could have made choices in life similar to his, and yeah, most of us chose to not, but it is still a real possibility, a real threat for as long as we live. And that is terrifying. That was the real horror to me in this game. Edit: Also yeah, Im shocked people deny that Curly is flawed too, and in some cases he was willing to protect Jimmy from the consequences of his actions, like.. that is not normal. Thats not how you respond to SA. But even his own emotions, his want to protect his best friend, thats something we all have in us too.
@@f87582 I think all of that is true, but at the same time Jimmy isn't a victim of circumstance according to the text. The catalyst for the entire situation is Jimmy's SA of Anya, which can't be rationalized away as some sort of temporary weakness, or some impulsivity that anyone could have acted upon. Jimmy is scum, and the tragedy of the game is that he's deluded himself so thoroughly as to protect his ego that he can't even see it, even as he's shooting Swansea in the head claiming he's doing it to "fix" everything. I think the best takeaway from Jimmy's character is that evil isn't this neatly recognizable label people come with that can be easily identified. I've often wondered this when seeing vile people in the news or social media, asking myself if these people know what they're doing is wrong, or bad. What Jimmy tells us is that someone's inner world can be so scrambled that even while they're doing terrible selfish things they can still see themselves as good and just. The real danger is being fooled by that delusion, like Curly did.
For real! I hated Jimmy! He was an asshat through and through imo. But i enjoyed Curly. I thought he was the "good guy" until it became more apparent to me that he didnt even really get on to Jimmy. He was going to just excuse it if he could. Ive also been SAed and also recently found out that one of my favorite teachers would groom kids or bribe them for sex. I understand both Anya and Curly. You dont want to believe theyre capable but you always need to remember that you never fully know someone
Indeed, like, when I speak up about things the Jimmies still win because the Curlys agree and I end up being "the dramatic one" or they of course see me as the wrong one. However, I'm also a Curly to many other situations so it still falls short. Since the world is more akin to coddle evil, hence why villains are much more adored, then I have no hope anymore.
Polle has Anya's text color, so Polle is the closest thing his mind could imagine her as... a thing. Also really happy you added the "Disablity as Punishment" bit, along with Curly's role all together. Too many people both over-villainize and infantilize him to the point of it bordering on grotesque ableism.
you're right- this and jimmy's visions of the fetus horse, "being attracted to cartoon horses", the entire thing is a string of insults by him towards her, it's despicable
@jam-etc And how you "ride" horses. And this is random, but I'm surprised nobody has talked about that instance at the birthday party where he said Anya most likely wouldn't get a job because "y'know" suggesting he's misogynistic as well
I didn't even notice the text color thing. I honestly put this together myself because I thought it as odd he never thought of Anya, and put together that he doesn't really view Anya as human, only an object of sexual desire, and we know that well, polle is an object of sexual desire for him, so I think that's kind of where the connection is. I think he also kind of blames her for everything. The reason he crashed the ship is because he thought his life was basically over because he was fired and had a kid on the way, and his personification of this, instead of being anyone actually responsible at pony express, is Anya.
Btw the reason Anya couldn’t do the pills is bc curly couldn’t give consent like how jimmy didnt have consent with Anya so she didn’t want to be like jimmy
Id like to add on to this by saying it was also probably due to the gagging nosies he made because the pills had to be forced down his throat, which could possibly trigger bad memories of you know what.
Mouthwashing is the title of the game not because the members survive on mouthwash but because mouthwash represents the game’s theme: how 99% of bacteria can be killed, but not all bacteria, meaning that the 1% of bacteria can still come and pollute everything in its path. Like how almost all pixels on the night screen are moving, but that one pixel on the top right doesn’t, and how it haunts Anya all the time. Like how the crew members were willing to deal with the side effects of mouthwash just to consume something. And how Curly let one bad crewmate get away with messing up everything.
I think Jimmy wrote that he’s attracted to horses on his psych evaluation as a cruel dig at Anya, calling her ugly while also disrespecting and devaluing her work. At first I thought it was just a crude joke at the company policies, but then I thought about it after the game was over and it just stood out to me as an exceptionally cruel thing to do, like he’s rubbing it in her face
In the final “mind palace” part of the game you see Daisuke in the vents as well as his hibiscus that represent him. You see Swansea multiple times watching you and of course you see Curley repeatedly watching Jimmy, judging him cuz he holds him in highest regard. Never do you see Anya and it’s intentional, she was NOTHING to Jimmy. Also Anyas death “the best decision she’ll ever make” is literal as it began the breakdown of jimmy’s charade as captain in control, he’s not in control of the situation or her anymore cuz she removed his control, so begins his downward spiral. Jimmy also insists Daisuke risk his life to go thought the vent not for Anyas sake, but for Curleys, cuz he deemed Anya a threat to the man he idolised not because the woman he abused may be taking her own life.
During the ID card hallway segment, there are actually copies of Anya's card, but they're all *covered up by the others' cards*. Not once is her face visible. In his own mind Jimmy has to bury the fact that she's a person...
Honestly Anya haunts the narrative in just how absent she is on Jimmy’s conscious. In every playthrough I’ve seen, every response to Anya’s s*icide is of genuine shock and distress, especially given how Jimmy insists that Curly’s the one at risk- it was tragic, and unexpected yet inevitable. And Jimmy has fu*k all to say about it. Anya is at the centre of pretty much everything, and the fact that Jimmy never even thinks about her is what makes that fact so loud.
I don’t think the last paragraph is wrong in that scenario though. There was barely any pills left as far as they knew so the only thing she COULD be doing in there is hurting Curly fr due to a mental break. It’s not crazy to not think about her taking her own life in that situation. Also I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t view her as more than “nothing” i think she’s the main problem for him. Remember this all happened because of what he did to her. He’s not blocking her out cause she’s nothing, he’s blocking her out cause she’s everything. She IS the fuckup. She IS what he needs to take responsibility for. Everything he does is literally trying to take responsibility for that. Trying to take it from Curly at the end and everything. That’s why we keep seeing “take responsibility” and such. Curly’s words and ideology are weighing down on Jimmy as Jimmy tries to fulfill them but because he’s trying to take responsibility he’s trying, and failing, to do so WITHOUT accepting his actions towards Anya. It’s why he’s so brash with her. It’s why he’s so dismissive. She CANT help him take responsibility, she CANNOT help him fix this when she herself personifies the problem for him. She’s proof that he actually can’t live up to Curly no matter how hard he tries which is why the game ended the way it did. Why her breaking first is what causes everything else to immediately fall to shit. It’s not showing everyone he doesn’t have it under control, they all already knew that, it’s showing HIM he doesn’t have it under control, that even now he can’t actually take responsibility for his actions.
Well, "man he idolizes" is what Jimmy tells himself, but in reality, all Curly is to Jimmy is a scapegoat. A person he can point to as the problem, the person he can throw under the bus, the person who *has* to take responsibility, the person who will be blamed if they are ever found. And he dies, ensuring that the scapegoat - mauled and barely functioning - is the only one left alive, a final sprint away from his actions.
16:02 I just realized that Curly is a representation of the audience. He doesn't catch up to Anya's hinting about her rape. She has to muster up the courage to tell him for him to understand what she went through and their predicament. He is seeing the bigger picture at the expense of ignoring the smallest details that are deliberately showing the fatal flaws of said picture. He's ignoring the important things so he doesn't have to ruffle anyones feathers, so that everything would be "okay." He was trying to take as much responsibility as possible to the point where he couldn't even do the right thing. He wasn't ready for this. The company wasn't ready for this. They shouldn't have been sent there in the first place.
Exactly, I have even seen multiple people think Jimmy and Anya were a couple in secret and he just got her pregnant by accident until its revealed he wants to avoid prosecution, I can't blame them tho. Curly is clearly a major people-pleaser, he wants to keep harmony in the Tulpar so his way of approaching Jimmy about the pregnancy issue is through trying to do damage control and having the smallest hope he will understand and take responsability himself and its only at the end when he realizes Jimmy is a horrible person
@@ItsTanuki0_Clock I find it really interesting how a lot of people and Curly didn't catch his red flags immediately after he's introduced to us. We don't know much about him, so of course, we don't suspect anything, but his godawful nature is pretty obvious..
There's something that I think goes overlooked with Curly's reaction to Anya's pregnancy, and it's that it takes him time to process it. That entire time you're playing as Curly is him spouting platitudes past both Anya and Jimmy, who bein to talk *past* Curly. It's absolutely fair to say he's in damage control mode, failing to grasp the gravity of the situation, constantly saying "we can fix this" or even "I can fix this." As if the situation could be "fixed" at all. On top of this, it's the only time we get to see Curly while we're playing as him, and I believe this is supposed to be a moment of disassociation. We see it multiple times with Jimmy, both in his hallucinations and while Swansea's giving his iconic speech that Jimmy is clearly not hearing and may be having the Graveyard hallucination while he's giving it, so I don't think it's unintentional that Curly only gets one moment, and in such a tense situation no less. It's only after the warning signs start blaring from Jimmy "Taking care of it" does the full realization hit him like a truck, which is why he initially attempts to take responsibility for what Jimmy did ("Tell me you didn't"." I should have-" "I didn't-") before finally asking the question that was probably brewing in his head for some time but didn't have the ability to: "What the fuck did *you* do?!" Curly TRIES to take responsibility for Jimmy, believing he is even capable of doing so and thinking he can correct the terrible wrongs Jimmy did, because he sees Jimmy as an extension of himself, cuz he is. But this connection prevents him from treating Jimmy like the threat he is. Curly's known Jimmy for years, something more solidified in the How Fish is Made's dlc, and likely has been a victim of Jimmy's manipulation for a long time, albeit on a smaller scale then we see in Mouthwashing. Curly even does something very similar to Anya in trying to appease Jimmy, giving him constant encouragement. ("But hey hey hey, you know I believe in you" - after having just ranted about his own troubles, having to completely push himself aside to cater to Jimmy.) However, the worst part is that Jimmy is well aware of this aspect of Curly and uses it in his final manipulation before crashing the Tupar. Jimmy shoves the responsibility of his awful act onto Curly, taking advantage of Curly's sense of responsibility to avoid taking it himself. Ultimately, Curly's not the perfect captain nor is he a malicious enabler, he's human, just like everyone else in the story. He handled Anya's situation poorly, that was without a doubt his "worst moment." But it didn't make him a monster, and I think even Anya recognized that. Hense why when she says it, it's directed at Curly, who she still treats with respect and care despite that failure. She stills refer to him as Captain, she still does everything she can to keep him alive and make his last moments as painless as possible... and I think that's beautiful.
so perfectly worded. i think the part where he tries to say what he should have done before he has to relinquish that control, realize he can't reel in jimmy like he thinks he can, is so visceral i think he is especially crushed when he starts saying "we can take it one day at a time" and jimmy continues to escalate
His reaction doesn't mean he doesn't know the gravity. Jimmy is a close friend so there's a bias and false belief his friend can be a good person. Many women run into the issue of reporting how someone did something terrible to them and others don't take them seriously b/c they care for the offender more
@@moxiemaxie3543 It's not just women, it's men. I say this because a similar situation has happened to me, which is why I understand Curly's actions: because I've had to look at the actions of my real life friends and figure out why they didn't take my own accusations seriously. Cognitive Dissonance is a hell of a thing. It's not as though these the gravity of these accusations doesn't exist, but rather it's grasping the situation. We don't want to believe that the people we like, the people we choose to spend time with, are bad people. So when faced with such an accusation, your brain naturally wants to protect you, so you can become dismissive. It has nothing to do with "caring for the offender more", it's the fact that admitting someone you care for is an abuser is really hard. My friends have since apologized profusely for their initial reluctance to believe me, and I've forgiven them. I don't believe they cared for me any less, but the person who took advantage of me was one of their friends someone they trusted enough to let into our home at the time. If I were in their shoes, I'd love to say I'd have done better, but that's just it: I don't know what I'd do in that situation, especially if I didn't have the background I do now.
I'm a young woman and have been SA'd. The second I found out Anya was the only woman on a ship full of men, I was concerned and worried. Including when we find out the sleeping rooms have no locks. Finding out Anya held the pony mascot close to her during sleep so that it'd make noise under any motion reminds me of the things I'd keep close to myself, or do to secure my door, during sleep to keep myself feeling safe from an unstable environment. I'd strategize techniques just as Anya strategized to use the mascot. Though I am still trying to heal from my SA, it's still in the back of my mind. Sometimes, it'll appear through nightmares. I remember crying to my ex who SA'd me that I was terrified of getting pregnant. He reassured me that if I ever got pregnant by him, he'd stay and care for the baby. He'd try to ramble about his care for me, but this game helps me verbalize what I was feeling; my ex held more respect for the autonomy of the imaginary "what if" baby than me. When he'd wipe my tears, I felt dread. He was leashing me along for his own wants and tried to diguise it as actually caring about "respecting" me and my body. Yet for all the caring he pretended to do, or do the bare minimum of, he wouldn't dare take responsibility for what he did to me. I remember he saw a cop car when he and I were going to meet, and over text he expressed he was scared I told the cops about what he did. If i remember correctly, he also stated that he was hesitant to even leave his car to get me because he was uncertain if i told the police. At the time, I didn't tell the police. When I did tell the police in the future about what he did, all I could do was file a report. Especially because my ex moved states. The coward ran from responsibility. And just how I felt similar to how I imagine Anya felt, Jimmy killed himself without having to take any responsibility for what he did to Anya. Ironic my exs name also starts with a J. Personally, I love how the game competely pushes Anya out of the narrative because it shows the harsh reality of how some men view women. How some men think they can SA women and think they are able to leave. Personally, the ex who SA'd me felt he had a right to cling to me as if he deserved any more ounce of goodness I could give him. I wonder if men feel as if they can run partially due to messed up justice systems where noone will hold them accountable, or at least not accountable enough to actually take full responsibility. Plus, some men just do not care about women whatsoever. By pushing Anya out of the narrative, I believe it shows what it's like to be a peer to someone experiencing SA. It can be tricky to notice someone experiencing SA. Other times, you can see signs more clearly. My heart breaks for Anya and this game hits so close to home. I like the awarwness this game brings. It makes my heart heavy thinking about what I experienced, what Anya experienced, and what so many other people have experienced. Espeically women. And especially women who get pregnant from SA. Side note: Anya mentioned a psych evaluation of someone being "excited" at cartoon ponies. I dont remember if it was Jimmy who said that. If so, I read some comments and found that Poolle (I forget their name) may be associated as Anya in Jimmys mind. I wonder if Jimmys(?) comment about being excited at ponies was foreshadowing to his character and how he viewed Anya. The pony mascot was a "thing" for the Pony Express ride. And to Jimmy, Anya was also a thing for the ride.
You're extremely brave and strong for having the courage not only to get away from him, but also go on to file a report. My ex fwb SA'd me earlier last month (revoked consent, so my case is less cut and dry: I asked him not to finish inside me because I'm not on BC, reminded him multiple times, and he did anyway). I took Plan B, it didn't work because I was ovulating that day. Took Plan C 4 weeks ago after a positive test, and have been debating whether to file a report or not. Because my abuser did the same thing as your ex; kept frequent contact, acted sweet and apologetic, but not in a genuine way. Rather than regret towards what he did to me, he only seems to feel sad about losing his potential "baby", and fear that he might face the consequences of his actions from a legal perspective. He only paid back the money I spent on the Plan C pills TODAY, after I made it clear I wasn't comfortable having him over ever again, and that I'm considering pressing charges. But like Anya, I'm trying to get into medical school, and have a lot on my plate as is. Sometimes I wonder if that's why he did what he did, because he sees my voice and autonomy as a threat because of it. No one deserves to endure what we experienced, and it hurts to know that Anya is so relatable to many people for that reason. Any advice would be appreciated
@ oh so I guess she was just scared of him and tried placating him each time he was around for fun then? It’s literally so clear within the narrative I can’t believe you’re victim blaming a video game character, how sad for you
@@andysworld3771 im just saying they was crashed for 5 months and she didn't look pregnant and yeah everyone was scared after the crash, you do know people lie right?
I always kind of assumed Jimmy being "sorry" for what he did to Curly isn't only cus of their weird "bro" relationship but mostly because there's no one to keep a level head and cover his ass.
Exactly! It is constantly shown that of the two, Curly is the only one capable of being useful in any capacity. He's the one who got Jimmy his job. He's the one who excels at that job. He's the one who tries to cover for Jimmy terrible behavior with Anya. Without Curly there to do the work for, it becomes very apparent how utterly hopeless Jimmy is.
This is my take on it. Jimmy: "Our worst moments don't make us-" (ironically, the belief once held by Anya). Polle retorts, "...If that's the case, why do you still care about *him?"*-being Curly and, by extension, himself. The game, many times, drives home the parallel between Jimmy and Curly: you switch between them as the POV character; Jimmy wants to be Curly, Jimmy sees himself as Curly, he feeds "himself" Curly, and at the end, he saves Curly because he is Curly. Polle is basically saying, "Despite your claim that our worst moments don't make us monsters... you're still engaging in the same behaviour worthy of a "worst moment" even now. Not Anya, not Swansea, not Daisuke... The only person you care about is Curly-yourself." That is to say, I think it goes beyond Jimmy seeing Curly as his bro; Jimmy is delirious, lacks any sense of self or self-worth. He is Curly, and at the end, he saves Curly.
To me, I think that's Jimmy realizing his flaws and all the damage he done, and apologizing to Curly because he's the one who took the responsibility for everything in the worst way possible... That's also why he decides to save him instead of himself.
THANK YOU for speaking so bluntly about Jimmy's disregard and apathy towards Anya!! Ive had to separate myself from directly engaging in most Mouthwashing fandom spaces because i keep seeing Jimmy rape apologists and it *ENRAGES* me.
Where is this discourse? I've seen 2 essays so far mention Jimmy apologists and so far 99% of all comments on YT/Insta/TikTok has been very "throw the whole man away" like, even artists make content just dragging Jimmy out and beating him up. Is this just a Twitter thing because I haven't found it anywhere in anything outside of the most fringe of takes that gets shouted into oblivion.
@@Jimgress I've seen a few comments on yt videos that definitely read more like people rage-baiting rather than actually liking Jimmy. Also there's at least one video essay on yt where the creator doesn't like Jimmy, thinks he's a pos, but refuses to believe that Anya didn't consent. Got two seconds into that video, peeped them arguing with people in the comments, and left my thumbs down and bounced. So while it's extremely rare, it does happen.
Jimmy rape apologists are the same with “Griffith did nothing wrong” crowd. They are either rage bait or actually believe that these rapist mass murdering villains have a point. And unsurprisingly, 100% of these crowds are men.
I think if Curly had been just a bit more conscious of the potential danger Anya would be in, he could have offered the med bay as a place for her to sleep, seeing as it locks. And i think thats important too. Like yes, Curly was under the rules of the company they worked for, but something like that, as small as that, would have at least shown her was aware of what could happen. But his complacency got them all killed
There's also a lot of other factors like, how would Curly reprimand Jimmy? Like, he can't just fight Jimmy or lock him somewhere, because either someone will feel sorry for him or because that ship is so fucking understaffed that a co-pilot is needed and no one else is fit for that part. It's all very sad that even if Curly makes it so Jimmy can't get to Anya or kills him, a snowball effect is gonna continue and it's still gonna be such shit.
@@bluewolf6323 a co-pilot is needed but swansea better fits the role than jimmy. the whole story is how jimmy is unfit as a co-pilot and a man, and that they were better off without him (the dead pixel that curly ignores/cant find)
@Kamn_exe That's one of the other problems,Swansea is good, but does he know about being a copilot? Can he be a good pilot enough to an engineer *and* the co pilot at the same time? They are already understaffed as hell, so Swansea has to juggle 2 jobs because someone is incompetent. That's still not a good position to be in.
@@Kamn_exe why would a mechanic know how to copilot? They were doomed from the start because of how severely understaffed the ship is, no one could have taken his place in work and that's part of the tragedy
I disagree with the idea that Anya should have been somehow looming over Jimmy - I mean, that would have been nice, but it would have pretty dramatically changed the point of the story. My takeaway from the game is that abusers don't give a shit about the people they hurt and when the people meant to hold them to account fail, they get away with it. That's the horror of it. I once had an abuser in my life and I'll spare you the details of what she did to me, but know it flabbergasted my therapy group. The most I could do was cut her out and years later, she wrote me a letter asking *why*. She put me through some heinous shit and to her it didn’t even carry enough weight to explain why I would want her to stay away from me. She didn’t carry guilt for any of it, I'm the bad guy in her story who just told her never to speak to me again out of the blue. It's fucked up, but reality is just like that in some cases. We want to imagine people being tortured by the knowledge of how they've harmed others, but sometimes at most they'll be tortured by the knowledge that they were too dumb to scheme a way yo get away with it. If Anya was looming over Jimmy somehow, it would be a very different game.
Yeah, and for as bad as what he did to Anya… he ruined the lives of everyone else on the ship too, Curley’s the most obvious, Swansea gave up sobriety after 15 years, Daisuke he just drove around until he lead to the poor idiot’s death… and he barely cares about all of that, the only one who’s in his thoughts of “take responsibility and fix things” is Curley and even that is still him focussing on “be a ‘good’ Captain” not what actually made Curley a good leader or all that much even if what he actually did to Curley
This. Not to mention the possible r*pe apologists it would bring. "He's still thinking about anya, so he 'must' feel kinda bad he did it. He can't be that bad🥺" Even though he did one of the worst things you can do to another person, it wouldn't work. If the creators humanized him with remorse for his actions it would be all r*pe apologists need sympathies with him as a person. They may still not agree with his actions, but they'd see him in more the light of "a guy that just messed up" nather than his true character. By completely removing anya from his thoughts, we as the player are able to see jimmy for who he truly is. An incompetent, insecure, manipulative asshole who even in the end takes the cowardly way out.
Jimmy only becoming concerned when Anya is pregnant is incredibly telling of his character. He only panics when he realizes _his own_ life is going to fall apart; he couldn't give less of a shit about Anya herself and dehumanizes her at every opportunity. I definitely agree that this is a better direction for his character to take. It's incredibly true to how abusive men tend to view women (or how many abusers view their victims in general).
@@lazydroidproductions1087 I feel like he saved Curly becuz he wanted to avoid responsibility, the future would have consequences for him. Whoever found him had the chance to uncover the truth. So this grapist decided to do what he does best, runaway from responsibility for eternity by choosing death. Death is only sad for those people who had a good life going for them, that obviously didn't include Mr "Protag"
@@AlleyDreamer (just wanted to say that, since Daisuke is the most relatable one to me, personally) It's so surreal how a major chunk of the fandom is debating whether Curly should take some of the blame, while some players still don't realize (or refuse to) that Jimmy assaulted Anya at all. I saw someone who thought the baby was Curly's.
4:59 Another thing that i think should be mentioned is that some of the scenes in the game have baby noises in the background. You can hear a loud cry of a baby when curly tries to stop the ship from crashing and when Swansea is chasing Jimmy in the graveyard. Jimmy only gave a fuck about the possibly of going to jail for what he did or having to pay for child support if Anya decided to keep the baby. He didn't give two fucks about the violent assault he did to Anya, and how that pregancy ruined her life(especialy if theyre in america). I hate him soooo much.
Also, if he did get what he deserved(aka, going to jail), he would have to worry about not getting a job in the long run, so what does he do? He crashes the ship because then there would be no baby, and there would be no living proof of his crime. There would also not be anyone to report him. Curly, Swansea, Daisuke, and Anya wouldn't exist anymore. There would be no one to put him in his place. HE FUCKING SUCKS!
The conversation surrounding if the writers should have made the SA more clear actually reminds me of an interesting new video from FD Signifier about how certain types of people misunderstood the more "subtle" themes in stories. I say it in quotes because I don't think the themes of the first Joker movie or The Boys are all that subtle to begin with. Yes it's pretty obvious to a lot of us that Homelander is bad and not meant to be sided with in any way despite him having some tragic stuff in his past, and yet there were people who were less exaggerated versions of him siding with him and thinking he's not all that bad - only to get pissed in the fourth season when the showrunners got sick of this kind of mentality and dropped a lot of the subtlety. While as a writer I understand the frustration of people missing the point, I don't think the proper response is to remove any subtlety and in the end create a worse product just so the message is as clear as day. I don't think it's necessary that Anya's SA was spelled out to everyone. Not everyone is going to pick up on it and that's fine, you don't need to drop any subtext. I worry that if they made the topic with Anya too blatant from the start then it would ruin a lot of the messaging in the game. I feel like the way they wrote her was intentional - you almost depersonalize her along with Jimmy because you're seeing her from his perspective. People who knew there was SA in the game going in tended to pick up on it faster, but a lot of people who had no idea just went along with it until they realized there was something wrong with Jimmy. I also worry if they just flat out stated it, this depersonalizing intention to her character would feel less like an intentional artistic decision and more like the developers themselves depersonalizing her and treating her like nothing more than a catalyst for the story.
I agree with this. Personally, I think the way they did it with Anya was incredibly tasteful and meaningful. So much SA horror puts the onus of the horror at the disposal of the victim; they show the assault for shock value, the woman’s character is reduced to her victimhood, and her character is only reduced to a single horrible act. But with the reveal hidden, we’re forced to look at Anya in the same vein as the other three, even if it’s a biased lense. The narrative simultaneously makes it clear that she’s important in some way despite how Jimmy’s POV keeps trying to diminish her, and we get to know her from the angle of Curly. It says something that the scene most fans remember about Anya ISNT her saying she’s pregnant, but the calm scene of her and Curly talking in front of the night scene. Anya is allowed to be more than her assault, even if it’s harder to gauge. And, in a sense, the brutality of what was done to her is mirrored in Curly instead of making her the subject of the violence on screen. Curly is an exploited, helpless person who’s left to the whims of Jimmy’s abuse; a perfect reflection to how Anya was harmed WITHOUT making that harm sexual. Because rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. I also feel like the subtly makes sense since the game is from Jimmy’s perspective, and reflects how he literally blocks out what he’s done when he’s faced with consequences. There’s so many subtle hints that the abuse is still ongoing (the broken Polle statue, Anya’s fawn response, Jimmy spiking Swansea’s drink, Jimmy coercing Daisuke, etc) that it doesn’t need to be overly stated, because we’ve already been able to piece together what kind of person Jimmy is.
@@gregjayonnaise8314 You're 100% correct, in some ways, every character at some point is the subject of Jimmy removing their bodily autonomy in some way, not just Curly. I like how they use each character to show this trait of Jimmy's without showing you explicitly what he did to Anya. I think this gets missed sometimes because its very in your face with Curly, but not even Swansea and Daisuke were safe from this. Jimmy literally drugs Swansea... I myself was victimized in my sleep, and his line about Swansea "probably not even remembering what happened when he wakes up" sends real shivers down my spine. Jimmy then coerces Daisuke into doing something incredibly dangerous that he didn't want to do, something that honestly did little good and in the end cost Daisuke his life. I appreciate how every aspect of the narrative ties back into and informs his behavior with Anya without ever being explicit about what he did.
@@KalinTheZola Precisely! Jimmy has shown that he’s perfectly willing to violate the autonomy and boundaries of the men he works with. So when we find out he got Anya pregnant, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that it was not consensually. If he’s willing to usurp control over the boundaries of Daisuke, Curly and Swansea, then why would he bother with Anya’s consent, when he’s shown to respect her even LESS than them? That’s why I think subtlety is something the game does well. The answer is clear if you think a bit harder about the situation for like five minutes. Even if it’s not clear and you don’t immediately catch that it was assault, at the very least, Anya wanting to hide the gun from him, paired with all of his actions, makes it clear that he’s some kind of danger to her.
@@juanpauloarcillas7600 While I feel for Daisuke, the sense of powerlessness Anya goes through hits home really hard for many of us. It's not to diminish what he went through, but the pain many of us go through when we are constantly degraded and have our very own autonomy taken away, it's so aptly represented by Anya and what she endures.
One thing i see so many people miss with the pixel scene is the tome left on board. As anya said "eight months". The ship had about 8 months to go. Shes realizing theres a chance that she might have to give birth on board. The fear of not only having a child of someone who assaulted you, but the idea of having that child in an enclosed space with no escape from the assaulter AND his enabler who is also YOUR BOSS. God that conversation gave me chills the second time around. If she knows shes pregnant for certain shes probably already a month in.
i'm personally of the opinion that curly is afraid of jimmy even before the crash, but he has a people-pleasing sort of personality that has him appear friendly regardless of this. my main evidence is that the scene with the blood ocean and the warning signs and the ladders is just before when curly if first alone with jimmy in the game. curly is already feeling like there is danger with jimmy, but he cannot bring himself to act on it. when jimmy rants at him after he reveals that the company is going under, he's shocked into silence, and i think that gives context that his last conversation before the crash with jimmy also being a moment where he's scared to silence. in spite of this, he's still culpable. when anya asks about the locks, he's either genuinely ignorant to what the true purpose of her question is, or he's wilfully ignoring it. we can see he's willing to help anya when it's an easy solution (see: him doing jimmy's psych eval instead of her) but when things become more complicated he closes himself off from any options besides simply talking to jimmy. there is something to be said that he's limited in what he could do because of the corporation hanging above his head, but limited is not completely powerless and yet he still acts like it is. and the exact kind of selective blindness and passive leadership is what's useful to the company. that's why curly has been able to climb the ladder, because his inability to act against things that are wrong makes him an asset to a higher corporate power. and because of this system, jimmys exist. people who operate in a way so far beyond the system they're in to the point where there is nothing in place to stop them.
I agree. I honestly think the it being so easy to miss Anya’s implication is intentional, Curly hardly reacts because it’s unclear if he’s putting 2 and 2 together, it’s easy not to. “What a strange question, Anya’s a strange fellow it’s probably nothing. Bigger picture,” missing the trees for the forest. And regardless they’re trapped on the ship for another 8 months, better not think there are serious problems brewing under the surface.
Jimmy is manipulator and has been manipulating Curly too before crash as well. We can see Jimmy using the things Curly has shared with him against him. The bday party conversation. Is proof of that.
Imma be honest, in hindsight the line that hits me hardest in the Anya nd Curly talk is Curly going "Now i'll go bonkers looking for it. Cheers. ... I don't think it ruins the illusion though. It's peaceful." YES, CURLY. THAT IS THE ISSUE. THAT THERE IS A GLARING, DEAD PIXEL AND YOU DON'T SEE IT, INSTEAD FOCUSING ON "But the rest of the ship is aight tho". Also, my idea for why there are no locks on sleeping quarters is either softer misogyny of "Yeah, no woman will apply for this job, they are too weak to be a cruise freighter. No need to lock the bedrooms, if boys are being boys we just 'don't ask, don't tell' and all that" - or hardcore misogyny of "Well, she is the only woman on the cruise with 4 men, all of them have their 'needs'. She better put out.".
I always thought the no locks on the sleeping quarters was just because Pony Boy Express was cutting corners - only doing the bare minimum of putting locks on the cockpit & medical bay for the ship to be “safe” (but not the crew).
Based on my experience working in copper refineries, it's probably more cutting corners in engineering. It's easier to meet the bare bones fire safety protocols and such if doors can't lock to begin with.
@@dragongirl2032_ i always saw it as Curly being playful, almost ignorant to what Anya tries to hint at. Honestly, i think your idea of it fits, though-
Something I heard from another speculation, which I found super interesting, is that with the whole dead pixel and Curly only really being focused on the big picture, that you could look at the Mouthwashing itself as symbolism as well. "Kills 99.9% of all germs" but there is still the 0.1%, like with the dead pixel, which is ignored but is still there. There are so many small things like that in the game, that just makes it more and more amazing everytime I see someone play through it, because people just notice so many difference things. Amazing video!
There as nothing more shocking than me hearing about ppl actually drawing Anya keeping the baby and dating Jimmy. Thank god, I haven’t seen it, but if it’s happening…then wow…
@@rancorious7785YEAHH LIKE Drawing her keeping the baby is fine I’ve known some cases where someone got raped but kept the baby anyways BUT WHAT HAVE SOME ARTISTS ATE FOR BREAKFAST TO DRAW HER *DATING* HER ABUSER!?
love that you're able to say "i love curly as a person" while also holding him accountable for his inaction and being brutally honest about it. People have been so black and white about his character online, either saying he's horrible and irredeemable, or that he did literally nothing wrong. It's refreshing to see genuine nuance in this video :)
Yessss, I see too many people not understand that Curly's character has nuance. They can't seem to understand the statements, Curly was an enabler to Jimmy and allowed him to co-pilot the ship, which was the catalyst to all the bad things happening/ he didn't take any direct action against Jimmy once he learned of anyas rape and might've been purposefully ignorant of her rape, and Curly was a victim of both Jimmy and the companies rules and his hands were also tied on what to do since Jimmy was the co-pilot can both exist at the same time.
THIS! I’ve seen people getting attacked and bullied for liking Curly (mainly on TikTok tho). Oversimplifying morally grey characters to either black or white is just WRONG and does not do any sort of justice to the character and its writers.
Yea curly has the right intentions and while he doesn’t notice Anya’s true issues he puts in effort to talk to her and even if he’s too late he does try to help her although it’s hard for him to imagine someone he trusts doing stuff like that (common thing in rape culture when somone close to the offender cannot picture these things happening and not acting or acting too late) he does believe her relatively fast and wanted to help
I think Anya haunting Jimmy wouldn't make any sense. Polly? Absolutely yes. He can't get the child out of his mind, but Jimmy doesn't give enough shits for Anya for her to be haunting his consciousness
But her being in the back 9f his mind makes so sense right he was going to crash the ship because of that situation he was trying to sell him crashing the ship because of what he did to anya as something to keep curlys reputation Jimmy saw anya as weak but he was caution that once they got off the ship she'd try to report it out side of the ship So her being thier even for a second like a glitch might emphasise something about how he saw her
Jimmy dosent just disrespect Anya but he openly mocks what happened as he slings insults to her face. Saying he was attracted to cartoon horses during the psych eval is one of the most vile, heinous, disgusting things that ONLY hits you on repeat playthroughs is some of the best writing full stop. He's calling her a cartoon, a mascot, a thing not meant to be taken seriously that's only here because pencil pushers thought it would be a good ideanand utterly strips her of her humanity during a moment of vulnerability whilst also insulting her looks and... Ugh. Mouthwashing is so good
i remember i first heard him say that in Berlin’s play-through and literally thought “what the fuck…that’s such a weird yet oddly specific thing to say” without peeping its deeper more disturbing meaning. it was only when i watched Cory’s iteration the next day that i picked up on it and realized just how malicious he was BEYOND his assault. My theory is that it either went over Curly’s head because he just didn’t pay attention to that statement’s meaning beyond the “bigger picture” or he KNEW what jimmy’s statement meant and actively chose to ignore it because he’s a bystander who simply watches the destruction. With the all the hints Anya was dropping its most likely the latter
2 things. Jimmy also beat curly while he was medicating him one time, and pony express is not all encompassing, the crew was actually laid off because the company went completely bankrupt and dissolved. Great video btw
@@AlleyDreamerCould be that they're switching to unmanned transport, but Swansea's line about Pony Express "kicking the bucket" makes me think the company is going under.
I was scrolling through the comments of a playthrough, and I saw someone point out how Anya gets uncomfortable feeding Curly his pain medication due to Curly not being able to properly consent, meanwhile J*mmy had no problem shoving the pills down his throat to the point he was gagging.
Swansea is my favorite, somehow he is the most well adjusted person on that ship. And that speach at the end is just cheffs kiss, it was so cathartic to hear him call out jimmy.
Swansea was portrayed as a drunk loser in Jimmys eyes because he knew he was a threat; curly was too incapable to do anything before and after the accident, Anya was nothing in his eyes, and Daisuke was too innocent to know what was going on. Swansea was the biggest threat in the beginning because he saw him for who he really was and could do something about it, whether it be carrying around the axe or blocking the door (can’t remember where it led too) and withholding the key. that’s why whereas Anya is portrayed as a good for nothing character and daisuke is just there vibing Swansea is seen as an annoying prick.
So about "Anya haunting the narrative in a subtle way, like a ghost thats gone when you turn away"... That does kind of happen. When/if you turn around when the game tells you not to, you see her corpse's face before the game restarts
I see what you mean, but that’s Daisuke’s face. You can see the axe wound. Jimmy really doesn’t give two shits about Anya and what he did to her, so she doesn’t haunt him. I hate Jackfelldownandbrokehiscrown so much.
I think a detail that people don't talk about enough is that Jimmy cut off Curly's leg and fed it to him when they had multiple other bodies. It was malicious intent, right till the very end.
7:42 as a normal and sane human I understand wanting the actual victim of the story to haunt the narrative, but from a character standpoint, the complete lack of even her face anywhere in his hallucinations shows us that jimmy does not care about her. At all, even subconsciously. In his active and subconscious mind, him r*ping Anya is nothing to feel guilty about, it’s not even morally bad because she is a female, not an actual person. Having jimmy haunted by the person he hurt the most would doubtlessly be satisfying for the player bc it’s just karma, but unfortunately he is really good at dodging karma and responsibility, so that’s no exception. Also, some Thoughts™️ I had that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet that I’m not skilled enough to make a really profound point out of: This crew (except Daisuke) have been doing this for long enough to know PE’s consequences for anything short of flawless performance and compliance. The audience only knows some from the Polle posters and the opening scene. So, based on the Lend A Hand poster and the fact that he keeps personal matters off record (as seen in two of his pov scenes as well as “looking at the bigger picture”), I’m fairly confident that part (however big or small) of the reason Curly did virtually nothing about jimmy, aside from being his friend and having some leniency pre-installed through that, is that he’s trying to avoid collective punishment. Him reporting an SA to HR would count as a complaint about lacking teamwork, which is a big no-no for the company even though that’s the least he should have done. He’s so desperate to follow rules (which is intentional on PE’s part) that it doesn’t even cross his mind to let Anya sleep somewhere with a lock on the door for the rest of the trip even after she points it out. Or look for other solutions that don’t boil down to “keep going as we were and hope nothing else happens”. The layoff and her pregnancy should have changed things (I’d like to think they would have for me, if I were in his position), but I think he might have been to shocked to think or process anything before it was too late. (And before anyone says anything, this is not me trying to absolve Curly of guilt, it’s just me puzzling together another fucked up layer of their situation. He should have done anything to help Anya, consequences and friendships be damned.) My other Thought is that, even if they didn’t crash, I’m not sure the ship’s resources would have even enough for the whole crew? It’s implied (or even outright confirmed) that they didn’t compensate for a last minute fifth person. We don’t know what the sleeping quarters look like, but there’s definitely only four cryopods, and, knowing Pony Express, there’s probably only just enough food on board for four people to last the entire trip, so they might have been doomed the moment they boarded no matter what (also 2 months after the crash Daisuke estimates that food will last for another 4 months - that’s about two months short of the original transit time, however it is possible that some of the food stores were destroyed or foamed up). Now to my actual point: thanks to jimmy, Anya would have been eating for two for the rest of the trip. Not to mention pregnancy complications, involuntary food waste due to morning sickness, actually giving birth and then having to care for an infant for the final stretch of transit! They have no crib, no clothes fit for a baby, no medicine fit for a baby, nothing. And, being the only nurse on there, all her medical problems would fall on Anya to take care of herself. Y’know. While pregnant. Thanks, jim. Anyways, do with those what you want, I’ve kind of lost the plot a bit at this point.
THIS! The collective punishment line! That one's been sticking with me. While Curly fucked up by not taking further action against Jimmy, they were all still screwed over by the corpo BS. It's why Curly was trying to figure out a way to resolve the situation without having to put it in the reports.
one part that really drives the point home about how much jimmy doesn't care about Anya is that when they found the mouth wash Anya said it had too much sugar to disinfect wounds, and of course Jimmy, the worst man alive, either didn't care enough to remember or just straight up wasn't listening tried to use it on Daisuke's wounds after sending him through the murder hole
It’s because they ARE jimmy or (curly). If that makes sense. They are the people who think that way. Either they don’t see some or all of the women in their life as humans or they defend those they know commit assault since they don’t empathize with the severity. So they try to push it under the rug. When people like that play mouth washing they don’t understand the actual message of the game because they are stunted/delusional like curly and Jimmy. They relate to to Jimmy so they don’t see him as an unreliable narrator.
also curly's conversation with jimmy very much comes off as that "don't let this ruin his life" sentiment seen so often from families and friends of rapists, especially young ones, and jimmy's quick to flip that around and turn it on him.
Could you say uts also like in a family thing where rhe abuser is in the family and the family like ignored it and they know what happened like you said
@charliepuppy. yeah i think that's also an important part of it. the whole crew system operates similar to a familial unit or close knit friend group and that element definitely plays into how curly treats the situation, especially due to his inability to percieve details as opposed to the larger picture. he feels the need to preserve the crew, and his immediate reaction to being informed of the rape is to negotiate negotiate negotiate because to him the dead pixel of a rapist being on board is preferable to the giant malfunction of the copilot being taken out of the crew (or His Friend Jimmy no longer being his friend)
5:58 I noticed a parallel that not only does the “pony” speak to Jimmy this way, but I found it to represent as Anya for the fact of his first documented evaluation comment we get from him, and as well as the background being the moon represents her love for the serene night time, I think he just genuinely views her physically as an insult calling her a literal horse or donkey for HIS actions that were committed AGAINST her. He blames himself as a victim for the consequence because he feels like he’s going to be forced into taking this responsibility of the child, and views Anya as a wHOR(s)E (horse feels metaphorical for what he’s actually calling her and sees her in his mind). It just makes the scene even more uncomfortable to me
15:19 this whole animation is amazing but this part was horrifying. Animator went off with this. It makes me want to cry like a little kid scared of the dark.
One thing I noticed when watching Kubz Scouts playthrough is that Jimmy seemed to talk down to Curly in most if not all of their conversations (and the fact he had been worried about Jimmy being angry after Anya told him she told Jimmy, whatever he tried to decide to do to deal with Jimmy until they got back could possibly escalate to violence or injury. Either way Jimmy was dealt with, it'd likely get docked from their final paychecks cause PE is the whole "one of you messed up so everyone gets punished" kinda companies). Swansea also mentioned that Pony Express was the last freighter company that had people working for it, so chances are the crew probably wouldn't find any other similar work after they got back, at least not easily
@AlleyDreamer I've seen some people debate about if Curly was a victim to Jimmy's pre-crash (emotionally, mentally, verbally) but those two instances made me think "he's known Jimmy a long time so obviously it couldn't have been all bad, but" the talk in the cockpit and party scene made Jimmy's reaction stick out to me and I'm curious about how their friendship stuck that long, another analysis (I can't remember who's) brought up how it seemed Jimmy was throwing Curly's words back at him. The backhanded "respect" is so weird to see Sorry for yapping I have a lot of thoughts on this game and Jimmy's such a rat of a man
@@jharris3110 Curly is useful to Jimmy as a tool, similar to Anya in that sense, only the consequences for the sh!te Anya gets put through are way worse. Jimmy got to use Curly to get back on his feet when he was in trouble with the law, He used Curly to get the job, to escape the blame of crashing the ship, probably also to shove his guilt onto (forcing him to go through all the pain), and throughout their whole relationship he needs Curly to explain all his disgusting behaviour, and sweet-talk him out of trouble. He Needs to keep Curly around, so he probably started of with a chill relationship, but then softly slipped into the ahole behaviour we know him for. Only slipping back into that chill when Curly starts to doubt him, like all good abusers do
@@Jimgressmainly the 'toxic yaoi" mfs and the people who will focus on literally anyone except for the woman who's victimization is the foundation of the narrative
Curly's situation is far more complex than it might seem at first glance. To start with, it’s important to recognize that he couldn’t have done much in the first place, especially given the circumstances. They’ve all been stuck together on this spaceship for nearly a year, living in a confined and isolating environment. The news of Anya's pregnancy wasn’t something Curly had much time to process-she only told him about it a few days before the crash. This revelation must have been an emotional bombshell for him. On top of that, finding out that one of his closest friends, Jimmy, is an abuser would have completely shattered his perception of someone he likely trusted deeply. Curly was likely overwhelmed, blindsided, and grappling with how to respond. It’s also worth noting that the timeline plays a significant role here. People criticize Curly for not acting sooner, but we genuinely don’t know what he would have done for Anya because, quite literally, the ship crashed the very same day he checked in on her. There was no opportunity for Curly to take meaningful action before the chaos of the crash took over. His conversation with Anya before this is also key: when he asked her something along the lines of “Was he angry?” or “Was he aggressive?”, it wasn’t just an idle question. That line suggests that Curly himself may have already experienced Jimmy’s abusive behavior or aggression before the crash. If that’s the case, then it adds another layer of complexity to his inaction-Curly may have already been conditioned to tread carefully around Jimmy, perhaps out of fear or a desire to avoid confrontation. Besides, even if Curly had taken more direct action, there’s a strong likelihood it would have backfired. Jimmy already seemed volatile, and stepping in might have made him react with even more violence and hostility. It’s possible that Curly understood this and was trying to avoid escalating the situation further. Realistically, the only thing Curly-or even the rest of the crew-could have done was to quietly keep an eye on Anya and take steps to create distance between her and Jimmy. For example, they could have arranged Anya's sleeping schedule to ensure Jimmy was working during those hours, or found other ways to subtly minimize his presence around her. But again, this is all hypothetical-because the ship literally crashed before anything else could happen. There was no time for Curly or anyone else to put plans like these into motion, which makes it unfair to assume the worst about what he might or might not have done. When you piece all of this together, it becomes clear that Curly’s actions-or lack thereof-are more nuanced than simple cowardice or indifference.’s easy to say that Curly should have stood up to Jimmy, but in reality, his emotional state and circumstances make his position far more sympathetic than it might initially appear.Which also lets be real thats how everyone would have reacted.Ultimately, it feels like many people are missing the deeper layers of Curly’s character. His story isn’t about him being a passive bystander-it’s about a person trying to navigate a deeply personal and distressing situation while trapped in a high-stress, no-escape environment. That’s why his reactions (or lack thereof) deserve more understanding and less judgment. (but yeah Oml i love this video Analysis tho i appreaciate you for not jumping on the trend of liking Mouthwashing because its in trend but liking it for its deep story and complicated characters)
Like what someone else in the comments mentioned, maybe he could've let Anya sleep in the med bay because it can be locked. There's not much else he could've done, killing Jimmy wouldn't be a viable option because he's the co-pilot. So many people call Curly a villain in failing to protect Anya, but really, what was he supposed to do? Especially in that short time frame.
@@mallarielove It appears that Jimmy was, at one point, a good friend to Curly and had even tried to help him by offering him a job. From Curly’s perspective, it’s likely that he didn’t fully realize how cruel Jimmy could be. The extent of what Curly might have known about Jimmy’s aggressive tendencies seems to be limited to an awareness of his anger issues, rather than any clear understanding of abusive behavior.
@@FireGoddessRose On top of that i feel like Curly would have done more for Anya if there was more time yk? Because the crash literally happend a few days after Anya Told Curly about how terrible jimmy is.I think Curly tried to take action but he didnt have enough time before his body was completly curly fried.
There are signs that jimmy is the one who crashed the ship. In the prologue you operate the left set of commands in the cockpit, which are revealed to be jimmy's as he is sitting in the chair on the left during the psych eval with curly. That is when I started to smell his bs at least. 😅
Yeah. Curly was in the cockpit trying to steer out of the asteroid’s path, Jimmy let him take the blame for his attempt to kill everyone, IIRC. The game had a bunch of subtle things going on, some people missed Anya’s pregnancy as a result of Jimmy raping her, other people missed that you were Jimmy when you crashed the ship because that’s his seat and it leads into… a maze-like prison full of ponies, he’s the one with the weird obsession with cartoon horses. Watched ManlyBadassHero’s play through, he caught it because of the horse thing, I caught it because of the seating, neither of us caught Anya’s thing but some people in the comments did, it’s not obvious, none of these things are, but they’re clear when someone else notices and points them out
I think the point is more “take responsibility for spotting and stopping people like Jimmy before the can hurt others, since they lack the capacity to do so themselves”
Like most abusers, really. The abused: inferior to the abuser; and the product of the abuse: a parasite to the abuser’s life. Which probably is also another reason why Jimmy crashed the ship. Not only will Anya report about the assault, (and if we imagine that Anya would prefer to keep the baby but most unlikely) Jimmy had to pay for child support too. Hence why the baby looks like a parasite. God, I love Mouthwashing.
I don't agree that Anya should haunt the narrative after her death. Only because as you said, the psychological stuff is in Jimmy's mind and I think if she haunted him more it would almost make him seem like a better person than he is. She is however still there subtly through the mascot even having her same colored font. You could call that the dead pixel you mentioned.
Well she does haunt the narrative. Every step of the way. He continues to ignore her, to forget about that dead pixel in his view. But she's always there, and he ignores her every time. The motif of horses are tied inextricably to Anya, she and her baby are the horses that haunt him.
@ Exactly. Even to your point, the fact that he views her as a horse dehumanizes her. The devolopers also confirmed that Jimmy destroyed the horse in the lounge area, which makes sense considering Jimmys lack of being able to face his own consequences.
someone i'm in a discord server with said that mouthwashing doesn't deserve a fandom because people can't handle this game. while its a pretty strong opinion (the analytical side of the fandom is absolutely awesome), i can understand the disappoint at seeing so many people reduce such an amazing game to stantwt memes. i cant imagine if rpg games like the crooked man or mad father had similar fandoms that joke about everything possible
While I can empathize with people who feel that meme-ing on something serious is in bad taste and definitely understand the feeling of wanting serious subject matters to be taken seriously, in defense of the memes, they were actually what got me interested in learning about this game. Psychological horror is not my genre and I can confidently say that even now this is not a game that I could ever play myself--like Omori, another popular and really emotionally taxing one--and so it's not a game that seeing casually really sparked my desire to pay attention to. But seeing the memes brought the game to a more accessible level for me. And in fact, I really enjoy listening to critical media analysis like this, and I never would have discovered the actual meaning of this game if not for the memes. Like the person making this video said, just because people are making jokes doesn't mean they don't realize the gravity of what the subject matter is--sometimes people need that cope lol. And to add my perspective, memes definitely allow the game to reach an audience that wouldn't otherwise feel interested. Obviously, I'm sure there are people not taking it seriously, but I feel like it's more about perspective and which type of person you're centering.
I cannot stop watching analysis videos and responses to this game. So many tiny tidbits, including responses from the developers to otherwise innocuous fan questions, have revealed so much about the characters of this game, and I am so, so appreciative that they are multifaceted and no one is a perfect hero, nobody is a simple one-dimensional villain, there's so much to talk about and discuss for each character. I myself am team swansea and I even I can admit that he made a lot of poor choices, but ones that he thought were the least bad choice. Jimmy can rot in hell though, I've worked with so many men in my life EXACTLY like him- deluded into thinking that he was entitled to power over others, that he had any kind of authority to command, and then broke down when faced with the reality that being a leader didn't just mean everyone followed your every command. It's a tale as old as time but one that is very rarely portrayed with honesty... because the people doing the portraying are often that exact kind of guy. Real leadership means you SERVE the people who you lead, most of all. Curly might've understood this, but jimmy never could.
Yeah this fandom is on a high dose of Copeium to get through the devastation this game wrought XD I do wish Anya had been given as much weight as Daisuke and Swansea were but I get that part of the reason why is that its the point so yeah. What i dont think I appreciate is the depiction of Curly as a doll or object that kind of gets UWU ified like a pet or treated like a ragdoll in a way but otherwise yeah I am enjoying our brand of Copeium XD
I keep seeing the little like Chibi”cute” curly drawings and it looks like cute in a chibi style but bro irl he would probably be screaming for help and in pain
I have not seen that Curly, I kinda want it instead of all the angst, post-mouthwashing hc animatics and stuff I get :/ I wanna see the crew (not J****) get a happy ending 😢
Curly definitely DOES NOT LIVE. He will be frozen for 20 years at most and then thaw out and die in the pod alone. The company went under before the crash and now the ship is stuck on some random asteroid who knows where in space. Full of something nobody really cared about. Mouthwash. There’s not even a reason to try and find them. He is well and truly screwed having been witness to everything. The only one of the crew who truly knew what happened. On top of that, his too little too late attempt to “fix” a problem is what leads to the game as a whole. If jimmy really got what he wanted they all would’ve died the instant it crashed. But he did just enough to cause even more damage. Even with that in mind curly definitely didn’t deserve any of what was done to him.
Have you seen the prequel game 'How fish are made' curly is confirmed to be in cryostatis for 10 years, at the end this fish (us) will try eating him, its implied he died😭
I honestly hate the lack of media literacy surrounding this game. Most youtubers play horror games and absorb them passively, I noticed a lot of male youtubers I watch and admire fail to see the point, or if they did, not bring it up. Some people act like because it's not directly confirmed in the canon, it means there was no SA behind the scenes. It's insane what men will say to avoid taking responbility.
I’ve watched Joel Vinesauce and EmortalMarkcus (both men) play the game and they both immediately understood what happened and empathized with Anya 😭🩷 Too bad still there’s a sea of males who can’t be bothered
“In my favourite AU called, the voices in my head” Girl me too. Also, Curly going to talk to Jimmy directly after Anya told him he raped her has the same effect as a teacher or principal going to talk to a bully after the victim finally had the courage to speak. It solves nothing and only enables the bully to be harsher on the victim, especially when the one who was supposed to stop the abuse failed by not taking proper action.
YOU'RE LITERALLY SO UNDERRATED WHAAATT im glad people are actually talking about the message of the game, both its commentary on capitalism and the psychology of the charactersss
I think this is related to fandomism (lol, I just invented this word XD). What I mean is that fandoms often simplify some aspects or character traits in order to fit them into their fanons. Just like overly idolizing Swansea as this "Dad of the group" and ignoring his flaws, or creating toxic yaoi fan arts of Curly (both pre and after crush) and J*mmy because..... why the fuck not? It's weird, but sometimes people like to simplify or ignore some aspects for their own comfort.
Yeah this was the reason that I was fucking horrified when I realized, after watching a video essay on the game, that this thing had a FANDOM. Modern fandom culture is NOT equipped for a story like this.
This might be a weird suggestion, but to be honest, I kinda want like a spin off of the first game, right but it’s like the perspective of Anya. She’s such a complex character right and Jimmy just made her into some fragile character. She’s clearly more than just a fragile piece. She’s literally so complex.
A lot of fandom, be it horror or not, end up with the problem of "...this person is evil... why are you making excuses for them and/or trying to bang them?" or "how did you miss the entire point and come away thinking [evil group] is actually good?" Boiling down characters, erasing nuance too
I think there's something you missed about Anya and the narrative of Mouthwashing, and how in truth she haunts Jimmy more than anyone else. Someone already pointed out that Polle himself IS Anya while also being a representation of the baby, but I'd like to explore this further. To understand what Polle truly means, we need first to have full understanding of Jimmy, the Pony Express and his true motivations. As nobody is born a villain, what was it that made Jimmy become one? In Pony Express and the capitalist dystopia of Mouthwashing, all that matters is if you can perform your job, no matter what. You are constantly exploited, underpaid, living in conditions nobody deserves to live, your humanity does not matter to them, you are nothing but a tool, you are meaningless. It's not too far fetched to say Jimmy was born in bad conditions, too, as not only have his struggle on Earth and position in the corporate ladder been stated in the game, in the Q&A they reveal Jimmy doesn't have hobbies, because he can't afford them. Be it because he cannot afford to waste time, or literally because he does not have money to afford better things, both bring you to the same answer: he has lived his life exploited by capitalism and cannot afford anything but look for a better life. Why do I need to say all that? Because that is his true motivation: under this bitter and evious person is someone who has had no control over his life, as it was taken from him by the reality of capitalism. As it was taken from him by the Pony Express. Something he constantly looks to regain by taking it from others. Besides his clear associations with the want for control throughout the game, he has clearly stated he likes Tulpar because of the control they have that, even if minuscule, is better than what he had on Earth. To Jimmy, Polle, as first and foremost a mascot of the corporation, means control. Control that is not his. Control that he has lost. As we all know how the story goes, Jimmy gained control over Anya, becoming the dead pixel in her once beautiful night sky. Always there, haunting, nobody else can see it just as clearly as her, it cannot be ignored no matter how much she tries. A singular dead pixel is enough to feel like you have lost control over everything in your life. Desperate, so desperate to get it back, to go back to how it was. She later learns of her pregnancy, and it only furthers this hopelessness of getting it back. She tells Jimmy, now he has also lost control of the situation - Then comes Polle, not as the control of Pony Express, but the control of the baby, the control of Anya, because he cannot ever get the same control over her he did before. Every time Polle appears is a reminder. A reminder that Jimmy cannot control it all. To Jimmy, Polle is the baby, yes, but Polle is also Anya. She sleeps next to Polle after the crash - it is her way of trying to have as much control as she can in this horrible situation where she has to sleep next to her abuser: Polle will speak if anyone gets close. Jimmy hates Polle. Jimmy breaks Polle; As Anya locks herself in the med bay, Jimmy has to face Polle to get the mouthwash: silently. Don't make any noise. You will have your control back as long as you do just that. Else, Polle will get you, Polle will control you, Polle will eat you alive; As Jimmy talks to Polle, he speaks like his son, but he speaks in Anya's color. The night sky-Anya's night sky-shines brightly behind Polle. She has gained control over Jimmy, even if only in his memories. She is his dead pixel now. Always there, haunting, nobody else can see it just as clearly as him, it cannot be ignored no matter how much he tries. And he tries, he sure does; As almost every single of Anya's cards has her face covered, you can see that there's a single one that isn't. Like a single dead pixel. Haunting. Jimmy has no control, as much as he tried throughout the whole game, he does not have control. Jimmy has no control, because of the baby, because of Anya. Even if he does not care for her, caring more about a baby that was never born, even if he tries not to think of her face, Anya is there haunting him in every single moment. And now he has to take responsibility. But he can't, so he will try to regain control in any way until his death. Anya is there. She has always been. Despite everything.
5:28 i think i saw this in a risely video but basically he knows he made a mistake, but he thinks his mistake was the baby, not what he did. jimmy is an absolutely horrible piece of human trash but god he is written so well.
8:33 I think they also could’ve left Anya out because of how human and real this horror is, there are people like Jimmy that get away with the horrible things they did without feeling remorse so another horror in the story is that he never faces consequences
I don't actually mind the memes per say - because I'm in a lot of fandoms that involve particularly dark topics and funny memes are par for the course - but one thing that does particularly annoy me with the fandom are some of them refusing to actually say Jimmy's name. Jokes about Jimmy being P-Diddy, going "cw/tw: Jimmy," or saying "so sorry you had to draw him" to artists. Rape culture operates partly on people refusing to acknowledge that rape even happens at all. This happens w/ people defending rapists directly or indirectly (Curly) but it also happens with people straught up refusing to even say the assaulter's name or dancing around what they did. He's a monster, yes, but it's a game about taking responsibility and addressing SA and rape culture, say the names of the people directly responsible!
While I do see where you're coming from, I'm also an artist. I like drawing things that I like. I like mouthwashing, I like (most) of the characters and I want to draw them happy. I don't want to draw a rapist happy, or in a semblance of a positive light. Drawing Jimmy would take time that I could use drawing someone I like. Ppl saying sorry for drawing Jimmy to artists all the time is annoying, but many artists don't want to draw a rapist and feel their sentiments apply to everyone. Absolutely agree on everything else
The main thing is, we aren't dancing around what Jimmy did, nor is it meant to protect or censor, because it's meant to be a joke. Most people who refuse to say his name most likely still say his name but butcher it ironically in comments to basically say "I hate Jimmy so much his name doesn't compute", kind of like how Schlatts name keeps getting butchered purposefully for the sake of the joke that he did something in '99. The "I'm sorry you had to draw Jimmy" is also an ironic joke, nobody actually believes that Jimmy shouldn't be drawn or animated, it's just another form of sarcasm towards the character of Jimmy in that he sucks so much that he doesn't deserve even a kids drawing.
The thing is hes not real. Yes say the names of real r*pists but like i dont see the harm of saying Jambalaya instead of jimmy. Also, its a joke to further show how the fandom hates him so much we dont even respect his name. I dont know why u guys make it so deep😭 no offense of course but while i understand fiction can translate to real life i dont think the joke is harmful
This is a VERY ignorant take. The joke is not that they want to rip responsibility away from Jimmy, the joke is Jimmy is SO horrible, they don’t even want to say his name and want to apologize to the artist for having to draw a 🍇ist.
i really dislike how people blame jimmy's wrongdoings on mental illness. don't get me wrong, he IS mentally ill, but being mentally ill does not make you commit violent crimes nor does it make you manipulate the people around you. implying that both comes off as excusing jimmy and demonizing the mentally ill. jimmy did the things he did because the world around him, especially curly, facilitated him with the ability to get away with it and not feel bad instead of directing him towards rehab. jimmy being mentally ill is largely a storytelling device, not a driving force. the only meaningful thing that would change were he sane is that he would have realized there was no hope and killed everyone to bury his tracks, and even that's a stretch
i agree in the dlc its hinted that jimmy had trouble with the law before on earth so its already known to curly the dude has some problems, but he just enabled them :( jimmy’s issues were brushed off and allowed to flourish until it was too late, similarly jimmy had the agency to not do what he did but he continued, there was failures on almost everyone’s part (aside from anya and i guess daisuke somewhat since we dont know how much he knew)
@@jasmines205 i don't think swansea or anya would have told daisuke honestly. he's an adult for sure, but swansea kind of perceives him as a kid (mostly because swansea's old) and i don't think either of them would think he could do anything about it. they both seem to perceive him as incompetent
@rockeyy6402 poor dude was left in the dark until the end. tbh if he knew how much of a monster jimmy was maybe it couldve saved him from the manipulation that killed him but we’ll never know sadly
I'm not defending jimmy at all but you're wrong. Mental illness is an important factor behind violent actions and I mean generally. Again, not defending jimmy
@@superior5792 jimmy's mental illness seems to manifest in delusions and hallucinations. you could argue for aspd but i wouldn't say so, he does seem to care about other people's problems or at least show some sort of uncomfortability about them (excluding anya because he doesn't see her as a person), he just refuses to take any blame for it. i don't think any of these symptoms actually could have pushed him to commit violent crimes. maybe they played a part in his thought process, but he would have needed a far stronger driving force to want to do anything he did. personally i think this driving force was him being sculpted into a wretched and selfish legacy-obsessed weasel by the world around him and picking up some awful beliefs about women, consent, sex, manhood, etc. along the way. he would still do most of it if he was sane, he just wouldn't be so flowery about it
I feel like Curly is great because a lot of people could likely see themselves in his position. He just wanted to keep the peace, he didn't want to come to terms with reality because that would make him uncomfortable. "Everything will be fine", all we have to do is get along The dead pixel conversation is also a great because it shows the analogy between his inability to see the dead pixel with his inability to see the problem As long as he doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. And even if he did, it'll be okay Curly is too nice, and that's what makes him "bad". He is complacent because all he wants are for his perceptions to be verified. Everyone is happy, everyone is getting along, there is nothing wrong, we're all in this together When Jimmy said that Curly wanted to "leave the dirt behind while his boots were clean", it was clearly an act of manipulation to cause Curly to double down on voicing his care for his crew. Reinforcing the idea in Curly's head that he cares about Jimmy and wont turn his back on him I want to imagine he thought of them as family, and he couldnt bring himself to tear it apart Thats why I think the unreliable narrator in this game is so good. The game wants you to think exacty like Curly and Jimmy. "Everything will be fine" (even though Curly was preventing it from being so) and "I'll take care of this" (even though Jimmy is the one that caused the problems in the firat place). I think an underlying message is that Curly tries to take on too much responsibility while Jimmy tries to run away from it. In fact, notice how Curly's "everything will be fine" mentality reflects Jimmy's avoidance of responsibility, while Jimmy's "I'll take care of it" reflects Curly's desire to solve everyones problems and make them feel at peace It makes the ending that much more tragic. The piece of shit removes himself of the ability to ever take responsibility, while the complacent mediator is forced by that piece of shit to potentially live on unable to do anything but watch In the end they died how they lived One always running, and the other only watching
the moon in that scene definitely represents anya to some extent, the polle statue has her text color and the moon it's self is often portrayed to be a divine feminine or as having feminine qualities
"But Jimmy can't because Jimmy's a f-ing loser!" closely followed by "Curley pitied Jimmy in a way that didn't help the situation at all" really sums up the entire game. Thank you for eating with this lol.
Jay actually got to the point of the story wherein Anya as an SA victim didn't get justice and how Jimmy is an abuser who 'til the end didn't feel any remorse as to what he has done
Of course Curly didn't see Jimmy as a threat. He didn't even think the dead pixel ruined "the big picture". He believes that you're not defined by your worst moments. Anya doesn't.
As a Tumblr girlie I completely agree with you on the point of tailoring your own content/internet experience. I’m in love with the jjk smau (jujutsu kaisen social media au for those unfamiliar) tag, but there’s this trend of every so often a person making a post complaining about there “not being enough written stories/everyone is doing smau now” and it’s so tiring. Block and filter the content girlie, make the content you want by yourself even! Tumblr is the epitome of curating your internet experience. Just so annoying to have people come into a specific tag to complain about said tag. Why would you go into a space you don’t like or want to gatekeep just to complain that said space is not to your specific tastes. It’s absurd.
One thing that Curly could have done to prevent this from happening is sending Jimmy to the cryopods for the duration of the trip. If Anya was already pregnant from Jimmy assaulting her then both can be sent to the cryopods. The cryopods can help Anya not go through with the pregnancy, and only be let out if she is needed as a nurse. Jimmy should have been in a cryopod until he can face the consequences of his actions. That is my immediate idea of what curly could have done to make things better. If Jimmy did not want to go to the pod, the gun, the axe, and the other 4 workers could have been enough to force Jimmy into the pod.
@@AlleyDreamer Pony Express did give the captain a gun. I can only assume that it was explicitly meant for situations like this. His captain training probably had at least a small section about dealing with violent crew members considering they make all employees do psych evaluations.
But also who would have been piloting the ship? One person should not be in charge of piloting an entire ship by themself, and Curly would not have been able to pilot the ship and also manage the crew at the same time.
On one of the polle posters it says that any conflict between crew members will result in everyone getting a pay deduction, I like to think that that is part of the reason why Curly was so insistent on handling this internally, it’s obviously not an excuse for his behaviour but I think pony expresses policies are a factor when it comes to how he treated Anya
I’m a little biased because I see a chunk of myself in Curly (I don’t like that, but if my autistic hyperempathy is going to kick in for one of the characters, at least it’s not Jimmy), but I’m torn between “he should’ve done something considerably more drastic” and “but what would that realistically be?” Because I can definitely relate to the almost toxic optimism and wanting to believe the best of people (it’s actually Anya’s line that sticks with me: “I have to believe that people’s worst moments don’t make them monsters”, and with who she saying it to at the time is just…). And while it’s kind of eye rolling to see the soft hints that were being given that can be picked up on, like the safety talk, that went straight over Curly’s head, I can also be a little bit obtuse and wonder if I would’ve picked up on it then if I didn’t have the extra context? I definitely would’ve asked why she brought that up just because that seems like an odd thing, but I don’t know that I would immediately be like oh no something definitely happened. And I might’ve been reading it wrong, but I read Curly’s talk with Jimmy (especially after he asked Anya why she didn’t wait for Curly to break the pregnancy news to Jimmy [implying he wanted to be there to back her up] and then asking if Jimmy was mad) as a peacekeeping/appeasement stress response to make sure he didn’t do anything dangerous. Which, yeah. I’ve read other people hypothesizing that their friendship was not terribly healthy and Jimmy regularly treated/spoke to Curly the way he did in the game rather than just that being a couple of rough times, which would suggest that he’s already been conditioned by Jimmy. Also, with the timing, if I did my math right (and I might not have because I am bad at that), Curly had 3 days at most to realize what Jimmy did to Anya before Everything Went Wrong. Another person pointed out that it would be difficult to do a complete 180 on someone who up until just then you trusted and who was your friend, and that’s typically something that people need a little bit of time to process. And then you throw in the whole no one is getting an adequate amount of sleep and Curly appears to be getting habitually less than that, which could explain why it takes so long for him to figure subtler things out and his wholesale disassociation after Jimmy’s weird villain speech before he crashes the ship. People really don’t think about how important sleep is. 24 hours without sleep is the same as being legally drunk, and constant lack of sleep builds up. Curly is an immediate topical fixer (if Jimmy doesn’t take the psych evaluations seriously and is stressing out Anya, Curly will give the evaluation rather than having to sit down and explaining why we should all respect each other’s time and not make each other uncomfortable with weird jokes) and someone who gets things too late or just not quite right (wow, Anya definitely should have been getting psych evaluations, too! Yeah bud, but that’s not the main problem here, try again). I have no idea why he decided to tell them they were going to be terminated from their jobs, though. Like, dude, bad call that could easily have been avoided. This is a long winded way of saying that I can see how Curly would make these mistakes, especially since some of his stress responses are similar to mine. Then again, I’m not the captain of a ship, so the fact that I’m not sure how much better I could have doesn’t let Curly off the hook. Also, thank you for including the bit about disability as punishment being very ick because it is really uncomfortable seeing people talk about how it was karmic justice or whatever :/ Edited for autowrong
Regarding what he could have done about Jimmy, most people bring up that Curly could have locked Jimmy in one of the cryo-pods so he's completely incapacitated until they get back to Earth. He also could have let Anya sleep in the medbay.
@@SolaireHighwind Assuming it’s not something that Pony Express would penalize them for (and even then just have a talk with folks about the importance of making sure that the one medic on the ship is in whatever mental state she needs to be to do her job as best she can being worth slightly less money) or assuming you could get Jimmy into the cryiopod(/balance the idea of what if there is another emergency because you’re already down a pod or just how important is a copilot? Would that cut even more into Curly’s sleep?), those are very good options! He did at least let Anya keep the gun hidden (another passive action, but…). Though I think he could’ve gone a step further by giving her the bullets. That would nullify any potential danger to her via the gun, while making the gun as harmless as possible. I personally wouldn’t give her the gun even without the bullets because whipping a gun out immediately escalates the situation, and if someone called her bluff, that would be very bad, whereas if someone pulled the gun out and did not get the reaction, he was expecting or attempted to pull the trigger and nothing happened, then he’s the one who surprised and in a compromised position. But I think that one took me several hours if not a whole day to figure out. And even if Curly suggested it, Anya might’ve refused, assuming he would just take the gun right back (and I don’t blame her; she’s scared, and Curly hasn’t exactly been quick on the pick up before and she might not be sure how much she can trust him even if I don’t peg him as a habitual liar, because there is a very small margin of error for her in her decision-making).
I think the easiest thing to do is ask Anya directly what she wants done. When she says she needs to hide the gun, it’s clear she feels unsafe; you don’t even need to entirely realize what happened to her to take the correct course of action. Some people just aren’t meant to be in positions of power, and Curly certainly wasn’t. Hiring a friend means being cognizant of the fact that your relationship will change from equal friends to captain and employee (still friends but power shift). That change never happened with Curly and Jimmy. He never took full responsibility for Jimmy as an authority figure until the ability to take it was stripped from him forcibly. Ultimately, better training could’ve stopped this; barring that, better communication with Anya could’ve stopped this; barring that, consulting with any of the other crew members like Swansea could’ve stopped this in less than 3 days. At least you recognize now that you wouldn’t have the level of judgement needed to be captain. Curly trying his best to be a good friend instead of a good captain was his downfall, sadly.
Although I don't think Curly was a really bad guy, I do think the state we find him in is a form of karmic retribution. This isn't because he necessarily was so terrible of a human being but because he indirectly did it to himself. I used to think that karma or justice was always supposed to be a moment to rejoice. However, I think it could also be used as more of a tragic turn of events. Essentially, you can't give back what was lost, nor can you take away the pain so all that's left is the comfort that the one who was responsible for it is suffering just as much as victim. To me, that sounds very tragic. I once thought that Curly was too optimistic or nice, but he really was just wilfully ignorant. He was put in a position where he had to hold his close friend accountable to his heinous crimes, and he couldn't do it. He was as much of a coward as Jimmy was. Jimmy couldn't take responsibility for his actions, and Curly couldn't take responsibility of his friend. I find the fact that what exactly happened to Anya was told more subtly adds a lot to the tragedy of the story. It makes us relate to Curly in the worst way. The signs were always there, but we just didn't see it. Anyone who has played through and still defends Jimmy is more like Curly than they care to admit or understand.
I think not so many people defend Jimmy. In the game he is presented so obviously scummy you need to be like Jimmy (not Curly) to actually defend THIS guy. But many people in this fandom, on the other hand, defend Curly and for me they look like Curly when he’s trying to defend Jimmy. “Curly is so nice!”, “Curly had no other options!”, “Curly is just too optimistic and naive!” They try to justify Curly’s actions and downplay his role in this whole mess when Curly was treating Jimmy as a victim after Anya multiple times told him how Jimmy raped her. I don’t think Curly is much of the monster as Jimmy is but he isn’t a good guy. He was wilfully ignorant about Jimmy and paid the price for that.
There’s also the fact that the friends we choose say a lot about us. Befriend a psychopath and you’re at best a spineless pushover, and at worst an enabler with psychopathic tendencies yourself.
If the narrative is from Jimmy's perspective, you'd have to have remorse in order to be haunted by something. Anya being a ghost in Jimmy's mind and haunting the narrative wouldn't make sense, he didn't care.
I think curly and the talk about locks also speaks to his naivety because he can understand people stealing things or using things they shouldn't but he doesn't seem to grasp that humans themselves can be the biggest threat and are more valuable than the things behind the only locked doors. but also the company doesn't see people as the more valuable property on this ship either.
8:20 in the segment where you walk through the hallway with all the ID's, if you look close enough you can see anya's id, but it is always covered by either swansea's or daisuke's. so i think that's that "back of the mind" detail you were talking about
Ooo fun fact There is another game the devs did where we litterally see Curly The games about fish Uhhhhhhhh what it called Just some frecky horror game about a fish journey to death but Curly is physically there and his duologue really tells you what he's thinking There isn't any of Jimmy's influence so you get the raw and unfiltered thoughts
@@AlleyDreamer The devs really cooked with how good that duologue is in relation to Mouthwash ✨ There's also some fishes (2) that resemble Swansea and Disuke One quite litterally looks like Swansea so you'll know when you see him
And as usual, Curly didn’t give a damn about Anya, just like Jimmy. At least on the surface because the concept of the game itself (Up and Down: the illusion of choice) is Anya.
For me, I feel like how Anya is just completely missing in the later parts of the game is actually really important. Jimmy doesn’t bother to even think about the terrible thing he did. He bothers to think about the consequences of that thing. Therefore, we get three points of an abuser’s perspective that are often times not portrayed as well as they are here: 1. The baby. It represents the consequences of his actions, something he fears, something that can bring harm to him. 2. Anya. She represents the past, and a victim’s trauma. He doesn’t care to think about how his actions have hurt her, especially since she isn’t important in his eyes- she cannot hurt him. 3. Curly. A representation of how abuse can follow you. He’s been there for Jimmy in the past, he’s known him for a while, and Jimmy knows him very well as a person. He is this continuous presence that even though mostly dehumanized, is still very prevalent. His treatment stands for how quickly someone can become dangerous towards you, even if you don’t think they will. This is just how I read the whole perspective from Jimmy- I’m not saying everything I said is canon.
The sentiment that “we can do both, i promise” is so real-genuinely i think we are OBLIGATED to do both, recognizing the gravity and seriousness of the source material while simultaneously creating fan art and headcannons which allow Anya to be her own, real person. So much of the story revolves around the trauma inflicted onto her and the way her personhood feels minimized by that trauma, it’s entirely contradictory to the main message of the story for fans to turn around and say “nooo you can’t imagine her being happy or being a three-dimensional person!!! she has to be defined by the ways men in her life have failed and abused her!!!” We align ourselves entirely with Jimmy when we allow ourselves to relegate Anya to an object whose sole purpose is to be used, as that is exactly what he did to her.
The best thing this game did was show just how easy it can be to unknowingly enable evil to happen. Most of the time it’s displayed as a lack of empathy for the affected parties or because the ignorance benefits the enabler, but here Curly had the best intentions in his mind. He was just focused on what was best for EVERYONE, instead of what was best for the one person that needed it most. Never think you know everything about someone you know, because you don’t and never will.
i kinda like how anya is not shown as although i understand it would be nice to see anya haunting jimmy in some way this is all in jimbobs mind and we can clearly see he cared so little of anya she does not even have any room in his nightmare and it just further proves that jimmy cant take responsibility of what he did to her so much so he cant even conjure a version of her in his mind unlike daisuke and swansea where you could maybe see a bit of remorse over thier deaths. the story at least gameplay wise is completely subjective and subjective in jimbobs mind
A thing about the mouthwash, it has too much sugar it so it is basically useless but it feels like it does something from the alcohol burn. Curly should have handled the issue. should have contained Jimmy ASAP the moment it became clear what was going on. should have shoved his ass in one of the cryo units. but he was sweet to jimmy, so Jimmy as the disease grew on that sugar.
Another problem, though, that complicated things further was that Jimmy was the copilot. With the other three knowing only what they know, and everyone running off of five-hour sleep scheduling, that would've left Curly having to sacrifice sleep to keep the Tolpar going. And considering how they were still the better part of a year away from their destination...the crew was still screwed, even if they had isolated Jimmy into a cryopod.
Anya’s absence in the later parts of the narrative is really effective to me because it’s SO jarring, like even in the scene with all the IDs, the very few of hers her face is always covered with Jimmy’s ID. When she’s dead the screen even glitches on her so he doesn’t have to deal with anything about her. Her not being there is so off that it makes you go “wait, why isn’t she there” and makes Jimmy’s lack of care for her all the more horrifying. Like it would be satisfying for him to be haunted by her but he’s too much of an asshole to even have that. It feels like a really intentional choice to make Jimmy’s lack of care for Anya so much stronger rather than an oversight :)
The whole of the game reminds me of the quote: "Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism." - Mary Phipher
I watched a playthrough of Mouthwashing for the first time last night and I was absolutely blown away by the storytelling, the characters, the depth of plot and dialogue.. just brilliant 😱 This video was suggested today and I'm so glad that I decided to check it out!! Loved your analysis, smashing subscribe! 💕
fun fact! anya slept next to the pony mascot because it would make noises when it detected motion nearby, she slept by it for her own safety and to make sure it didn't happen. that's when he broke the mascot
@@d3s0l4t3 D: 😭
Ugh he gets worse and worse 😞
Pardon my French, holy fucking shit
Made me more angry at him ngl
OH HELL NAH thats way to much like omg
Yeah as soon as she said “why aren’t there locks on the bedroom doors” I knew right then what was going on.
Yeah she was inviting him. Its called flirting.
@@stevebear6295what???😨
@@stevebear6295someone might wanna alert the authorities on this guy
@stevebear6295 it's called a failure of the company to ensure the safety of its employees and allowing horrible actions to take place due to that negligence
@@stevebear6295 UHMM.. NO??!? What’s wrong with u?
Kills 99.9% of germs. But what happens when the 0.1% slips through? I fucking love all the symbolism in this game, its fantastic. A narrative masterpiece.
Also, this channel seems awesome! You’re very underrated. Calling out to Luffy to fix america… man. That hit hard.
The 0.1% is the dead pixel that anya sees on the screen 😲
I’ve always thought that was symbolism for how J*mmy killed 99.9% of the crew and the Curly is the .1% he was maybe able to survive, but he’s a shell of who he was so he’s less than a person
i think this is in account to the safeguards not being enforced for women’s safety because they wouldn’t think people would take advantage of it in that scenario. like yes most people wouldn’t sexually assault a woman on board but it’s the .1% that do. and that’s why we have the responsibility to protect women because of the .1%
For me, I always saw that the mouthwash’s ineffectiveness at being a disinfectant because of the sugar content was supposed to represent Curly’s inability to be a good leader. He’s a good man, “sweet”, but when it comes to clearing out the danger, doing his job by taking responsibility, he does jack shit.
fun facts about mouthwashing
- daisuke didn’t actually get to close his eyes during his death
- according to the polle posters, the crew was not allowed to sleep for more than 5 hours
- jimmys name is based on a lana del rey song
-daisuke didn’t even wanna go on that ship
-swansea is a big sneaker guy, he buys them every sobriety
- Anya canonically likes to watch really bad reality tv shows and eat a bunch of fast food to get her mind off things
Omg anya so relatable
Jimmy’s name is based off of A&W by Lana Del Rey and the song’s chorus says his name a lot. It discusses the theme of r@pe and a toxic relationship with the lines ‘this is the experience of being an American wh0r3’ and ‘Jimmy only love me when he wanna get h!gh’. Definitely expresses how bad of a person Jimmy is and the song really suits him.
How does Swansea buy sneakers every sobriety if he's been sober for like, over a decade? These sound like headcanon tbh
@ nah it was on the creators QnA thing
@@crummycreator5548 I think they mean for every year of sobriety, like a token of sorts.
I think the game does a pretty good job of showing you the extreme degree to which Jimmy disregards Anya. If he sees her while she's alive, it's only as either something he can use or as an inconvenience. He ignores her advice, dismissing it all as nonsense, and berates her when she dares to speak at all. Once she's dead, she's out of his mind completely. He doesn't hear her, he doesn't see her, he doesn't think of her. She doesn't appear in any of his guilt-ridden delusions. Even in the scene where the crew ID's are all on display, Jimmy's ID covers Anya's picture on every single one. The unborn child inside of her was more real to him than she was. It's brutal but true, a lot of misogynistic abusers just don't see women as people, or as anything at all.
That’s how psychopaths are; they lack the brain wiring to experience emotional empathy or compassion.
And to top that, some players in real life (mostly right wing) ended up making lewd fanarts of Anya too. And when the game composer berated them as disgusting, they made videos insulting the game developers as a response, even chastised that composer “you are so like Jimmy” without any self-awareness.
@@nont18411 I literally hate when people romanticize grape...it's disgusting!
Absolutely, I completely agree. I don’t think Anya can really haunt the narrative since we’re playing as Jimmy. For her to appear in his delusions would be for her to exist or “matter” in his mind. He doesn’t care about her at all. He is a selfish person and therefore sees the unborn baby as an extension of himself that’s why his mind gives it form and not Anya.Rapists feel no empathy towards their victim, for her to appear as a shadowy figure in the back would mean he cares which fundamentally he doesn’t, jimmy doesn’t think he has done anything wrong to Anya.
@@nont18411 ugh, I was once looking for mouthwashing gifs on discord and saw one of those "oh my goddness gracious" gifs and it was an image of ANYAS BODY.
The way he ignored her mentioning the sugar content in mouthwash being too high for it to be used as a disinfectant, the way he knew how much of the isopropyl alcohol would render Swansea unconscious without killing him, there's just so much. The motion activated loud Polle figure being where Anya's sleeping bag is seems intentional on her part.
For a game that's setting is not too dissimilar from Futurama, it's a hell of a lot more bleak, and Futurama's first episode had us meeting one of the characters at a suicide booth, so it's not like that series didn't have dark moments itself, but damn.
Omg the motion activated polle holy shit 😭😭😭😭
Jesus christ, and Jimmy canonically was the one who broke the Polle statue...
Wow I never caught that. Anya must be really desperate for feeling of safety
@@UniversalControl-13 I still got mixed feelings about Anya's death. I feel happy she managed to find some sort of control, just... sad about the way she managed to do so.
Minaxa has a theory that the Polly statue is actually the unborn child of Anya. It makes sense considering he cuts Jimmy off as he's about to use Anya's line without even giving her an OUNCE of recognition or regret for his actions toward her. That and the several correlations of baby imagery and horses including the ultra sound, the crying with the mutated Pollies.
I totally forgot about the motion activated part though. Jesus 😢
@@FrickenDweeb the motion sensor polle...holy crap....good catch.
first red flag is anya telling curly about how jimmy was inappropriate toward her during previous psych evals. to which curly laughs it off. anya tries to ask for help from the very beginning :/
literally like the fact that he was being repulsivly rude by saying f*ck u to Anya, someone he doesn't see as a person, during the psych eval he sees as useless by making it a point to make the time worse by saying "yeah i f*ck Ponys I'm sexually attracted to ponys" like u are such a weird loser but bc curly is his bestie and finds it funny its like oh.....
The first time I saw a streamer playing this game and became aware Anya was the only woman onboard the ship my mind instantly identified how inherently dangerous that was. I had no idea the story itself would actually delve into that subject matter, but in a sense I’m glad it did as it is the most realistic representation of the horrors a woman is likely to experience in that scenario, especially when zero safeguards have been put in place to prevent it.
I felt bad for think this when i saw the crew. But i had no idea just how correct that assumption would be
As a victim of rape (who thankfully miscarried), I was kind of glad a game like this tackled it and didn't beat around the bush. So imagine my shock when I go check on what the fandom thinks and a TON of it was Jimmy and Anya happily married with her baby. I wanted to vomit.
It didn't think much of it until they revealed it was supposed to be a year long journey
Same omg
@@ignightroad im so sorry that happened to you :(
Hope ur doing ok now ❤
It's kind of baffling to me how many analyses of this game ignore or explicitly dismiss the messaging about capitalism in Mouthwashing. Everything that happens on the Tulpar is enabled by the systemic abuses of the people who REALLY have control.
The Pony Express company is defunct, the game states they're one of the only companies left still using human labor at all, most cargo ships are fully automated at this point, which is why most of the crew won't be able to just get another job easily. They're a failing, soulless company that's cutting every possible corner. The food they feed their employees is horrible quality. There are no extra supplies for the crew in case of a severe emergency (like what happens in the game). Pay is docked for HR issues. Pay is docked for sleeping longer than 5 hours a night. They've cut staff on the ship to the point that the loss of any one crew member could be catastrophic. They give their captains a gun to deal with any crew issues that come up instead of dedicating any space to a brig. Their only concern is protecting company assets, hence the locks on the cockpit and medbay.
Zooming in further, rape culture and societal misogyny set the stage for Curly and Jimmy's actions. Jimmy is enabled both by Pony Express's complete lack of care for the safety of their personnel, and by Curly's blindness to the danger his friend poses to the others on board. It's Curly's fault Jimmy is there to begin with. It's implied that Jimmy had problems back on Earth, and was in trouble with the law. I don't think it's ever outright stated what he was previously in trouble for, but if it was anything violent, that should have been enough for Curly and Pony Express to bar him from the job. But it wasn't. So a violent misogynist is put into second in command on a ship with no crew protections to speak of, and the tragedy unfolds.
I saw a brilliant comment on a video about the game that said "Curly is the mouthwash. Too sweet to do what needs to be done." And boy, that really nails it for me. I don't enjoy watching him suffer at Jimmy's hands, but I also can't help wondering if he finally understood in the end, how Anya felt.
I also believe that he knew she was right when Jimmy took the gun. He laughs when you unlock the box. A bitter, knowing laugh. Anya was right the whole time. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it
@RaineStormFlood Hi, local Marxism Expert™ here. I found your initial note interesting and thought I would leave a reply.
One thing I found particularly interesting about the setting of mouthwashing is that in it, the actual amount of output that is received from each individual labor input (be it from intelligent machines not seen in the game but no doubt present somewhere or from humans, who developed the algorithms for those machines in the first place) produces such a surplus that they are able to bring the overall labor force to an absolute minimum, next to no personnel are required to run anything, but instead of using that productive capability to improve human lives, it is simply used to produce more shit that no one needs. Despite this the amount of work never decreases, most of the crew on the ship are highly overworked, much like how many today burn out and even straight up die under completely inane working conditions, while others go without much work at all. Even those who do work oft cannot earn a living, crushed by poor wages and high prices, turned into alienated husks, and then a single error occurs, and all firms, in their quest to make more and more money, turn out to be making less and less.
Cue crisis of capital, either social democracy or fascism are instituted to prevent rising workers movement, blah blah blah.
This is why Marx is so compelling (although Marx did nothing more than illustrate the empirical reality of production under capital, but I digress), because whilst the idiot opens their book on political economy with some blather about the motives of those who operate inside the Market, Marx is asking fundamentally different questions, like “what does $1 actually mean?”
Because of this, he analyzes the social forms by which people interact with one another in capitalism, rather than the people themselves.
Too sweet to do what needs to be done hit me like a ton of bricks MAN
Honestly this is so well written and I agree so whole heartedly with you, especially the quote. That was real as fuck
That final comparison is quite spot on and fitting I believe. Ive seen both bad takes saying Curly is perfect and other bad takes saying he had It coming for being an "accomplice".
To me Curly is more an enabler than an accomplice. He didnt want his friend to go through a bad time so he helped him into the company. Then he tried to ignore What happened with Anya. But at no moment does he shift the blame on Anya to protect Jimmy. Hes more of a "lets meet in the middle" approach which not always works.
I believe some animatic with Anya and Curly had a line that seems to fit quite well. "Curly might be a good man but he wasnt a good captain (with how he dealt with Jimmy)"
I interpreted Curly not being able/willing to see the dead pixel as a metaphor for his lack of willingness to see Anya's concerns/feelings/predicament. He's such a peacekeeper he literally wills himself to be blind to it.
And that’s his fatal flaw.
Haha get it, fatal?…. I’ll see myself out
@@noahlani6480Ironically, he was the only one who didn't die from his fatal flaw
@@noahlani6480 friend the door is over there please excuse yourself
@@smilingzuko9613”The captain goes down with the ship right” -Swansea
People think the dead pixel means many things but there's no consensus. Some think it represents Jimmy others think it represents her baby.
Curly is very interesting because his role in the story doesn't let anyone playing the game off the hook. It's very easy for anyone with a smattering of self-awareness to look at Jimmy and think "This guy sucks I'm glad I'm not him", meanwhile Curly is staring you in the face clearly letting you know that "not being Jimmy" is not enough. For as much of an upstanding guy Curly was in the surface his fatal flaw still allowed tremendous evil to take place. That's what it means to take responsibility. Without that, all the Jimmies of the world are going to drag everyone under with them and not even realize they're doing it.
Exactly; evil prevails when good men do nothing.
I was a bit shocked that people interpreted it like this, because this game gave me chills at how accurate Jimmy's pyschology is. How raw his instincts were, his selfishness, the urge to deflect, impulsiveness, his jealousy, his guilt, all horrible, but all are emotions that we all feel as people.
Everyone has the capacity to hurt others and everyone has the ability to be as delusional as Jimmy was. We all could have made choices in life similar to his, and yeah, most of us chose to not, but it is still a real possibility, a real threat for as long as we live.
And that is terrifying. That was the real horror to me in this game.
Edit: Also yeah, Im shocked people deny that Curly is flawed too, and in some cases he was willing to protect Jimmy from the consequences of his actions, like.. that is not normal. Thats not how you respond to SA. But even his own emotions, his want to protect his best friend, thats something we all have in us too.
@@f87582 I think all of that is true, but at the same time Jimmy isn't a victim of circumstance according to the text. The catalyst for the entire situation is Jimmy's SA of Anya, which can't be rationalized away as some sort of temporary weakness, or some impulsivity that anyone could have acted upon. Jimmy is scum, and the tragedy of the game is that he's deluded himself so thoroughly as to protect his ego that he can't even see it, even as he's shooting Swansea in the head claiming he's doing it to "fix" everything.
I think the best takeaway from Jimmy's character is that evil isn't this neatly recognizable label people come with that can be easily identified. I've often wondered this when seeing vile people in the news or social media, asking myself if these people know what they're doing is wrong, or bad. What Jimmy tells us is that someone's inner world can be so scrambled that even while they're doing terrible selfish things they can still see themselves as good and just. The real danger is being fooled by that delusion, like Curly did.
For real! I hated Jimmy! He was an asshat through and through imo. But i enjoyed Curly. I thought he was the "good guy" until it became more apparent to me that he didnt even really get on to Jimmy. He was going to just excuse it if he could. Ive also been SAed and also recently found out that one of my favorite teachers would groom kids or bribe them for sex. I understand both Anya and Curly. You dont want to believe theyre capable but you always need to remember that you never fully know someone
Indeed, like, when I speak up about things the Jimmies still win because the Curlys agree and I end up being "the dramatic one" or they of course see me as the wrong one. However, I'm also a Curly to many other situations so it still falls short. Since the world is more akin to coddle evil, hence why villains are much more adored, then I have no hope anymore.
Polle has Anya's text color, so Polle is the closest thing his mind could imagine her as... a thing. Also really happy you added the "Disablity as Punishment" bit, along with Curly's role all together. Too many people both over-villainize and infantilize him to the point of it bordering on grotesque ableism.
@RaccoonsTrashVault oooo I didn't even notice the colors thanks for pointing that out!
thats SO FUCKEDDD I aint even notice that
you're right- this and jimmy's visions of the fetus horse, "being attracted to cartoon horses", the entire thing is a string of insults by him towards her, it's despicable
@jam-etc And how you "ride" horses.
And this is random, but I'm surprised nobody has talked about that instance at the birthday party where he said Anya most likely wouldn't get a job because "y'know" suggesting he's misogynistic as well
I didn't even notice the text color thing. I honestly put this together myself because I thought it as odd he never thought of Anya, and put together that he doesn't really view Anya as human, only an object of sexual desire, and we know that well, polle is an object of sexual desire for him, so I think that's kind of where the connection is. I think he also kind of blames her for everything. The reason he crashed the ship is because he thought his life was basically over because he was fired and had a kid on the way, and his personification of this, instead of being anyone actually responsible at pony express, is Anya.
Btw the reason Anya couldn’t do the pills is bc curly couldn’t give consent like how jimmy didnt have consent with Anya so she didn’t want to be like jimmy
I thought it was because she felt nauseous around curly cuz during pregnancy women feel nauseous around raw meat
@@Raenxoxo582STOP IM SOBBING RAW MEAT
Id like to add on to this by saying it was also probably due to the gagging nosies he made because the pills had to be forced down his throat, which could possibly trigger bad memories of you know what.
@@Fried_Puppersomg
@@Raenxoxo582IM FRYING TF U MAN RAW MEAT
Mouthwashing is the title of the game not because the members survive on mouthwash but because mouthwash represents the game’s theme: how 99% of bacteria can be killed, but not all bacteria, meaning that the 1% of bacteria can still come and pollute everything in its path.
Like how almost all pixels on the night screen are moving, but that one pixel on the top right doesn’t, and how it haunts Anya all the time.
Like how the crew members were willing to deal with the side effects of mouthwash just to consume something.
And how Curly let one bad crewmate get away with messing up everything.
@@kiwiana6190 even the idea that this type of thing is a rare exception to the rule makes me mad.
I think Jimmy wrote that he’s attracted to horses on his psych evaluation as a cruel dig at Anya, calling her ugly while also disrespecting and devaluing her work. At first I thought it was just a crude joke at the company policies, but then I thought about it after the game was over and it just stood out to me as an exceptionally cruel thing to do, like he’s rubbing it in her face
omg... 😭
I got that as well, which is rich coming from the dude who looks like he saw Eohippus firsthand
@ BAHAHAHA
In the final “mind palace” part of the game you see Daisuke in the vents as well as his hibiscus that represent him. You see Swansea multiple times watching you and of course you see Curley repeatedly watching Jimmy, judging him cuz he holds him in highest regard.
Never do you see Anya and it’s intentional, she was NOTHING to Jimmy.
Also Anyas death “the best decision she’ll ever make” is literal as it began the breakdown of jimmy’s charade as captain in control, he’s not in control of the situation or her anymore cuz she removed his control, so begins his downward spiral.
Jimmy also insists Daisuke risk his life to go thought the vent not for Anyas sake, but for Curleys, cuz he deemed Anya a threat to the man he idolised not because the woman he abused may be taking her own life.
During the ID card hallway segment, there are actually copies of Anya's card, but they're all *covered up by the others' cards*. Not once is her face visible.
In his own mind Jimmy has to bury the fact that she's a person...
@@CharlesAngelusI NOTICED THIS TOO THERES SO MUCH MESSAGING
Honestly Anya haunts the narrative in just how absent she is on Jimmy’s conscious. In every playthrough I’ve seen, every response to Anya’s s*icide is of genuine shock and distress, especially given how Jimmy insists that Curly’s the one at risk- it was tragic, and unexpected yet inevitable. And Jimmy has fu*k all to say about it. Anya is at the centre of pretty much everything, and the fact that Jimmy never even thinks about her is what makes that fact so loud.
I don’t think the last paragraph is wrong in that scenario though. There was barely any pills left as far as they knew so the only thing she COULD be doing in there is hurting Curly fr due to a mental break. It’s not crazy to not think about her taking her own life in that situation. Also I don’t think it’s that he doesn’t view her as more than “nothing” i think she’s the main problem for him. Remember this all happened because of what he did to her. He’s not blocking her out cause she’s nothing, he’s blocking her out cause she’s everything. She IS the fuckup. She IS what he needs to take responsibility for. Everything he does is literally trying to take responsibility for that. Trying to take it from Curly at the end and everything. That’s why we keep seeing “take responsibility” and such. Curly’s words and ideology are weighing down on Jimmy as Jimmy tries to fulfill them but because he’s trying to take responsibility he’s trying, and failing, to do so WITHOUT accepting his actions towards Anya. It’s why he’s so brash with her. It’s why he’s so dismissive. She CANT help him take responsibility, she CANNOT help him fix this when she herself personifies the problem for him. She’s proof that he actually can’t live up to Curly no matter how hard he tries which is why the game ended the way it did. Why her breaking first is what causes everything else to immediately fall to shit. It’s not showing everyone he doesn’t have it under control, they all already knew that, it’s showing HIM he doesn’t have it under control, that even now he can’t actually take responsibility for his actions.
Well, "man he idolizes" is what Jimmy tells himself, but in reality, all Curly is to Jimmy is a scapegoat. A person he can point to as the problem, the person he can throw under the bus, the person who *has* to take responsibility, the person who will be blamed if they are ever found. And he dies, ensuring that the scapegoat - mauled and barely functioning - is the only one left alive, a final sprint away from his actions.
16:02 I just realized that Curly is a representation of the audience. He doesn't catch up to Anya's hinting about her rape. She has to muster up the courage to tell him for him to understand what she went through and their predicament. He is seeing the bigger picture at the expense of ignoring the smallest details that are deliberately showing the fatal flaws of said picture. He's ignoring the important things so he doesn't have to ruffle anyones feathers, so that everything would be "okay." He was trying to take as much responsibility as possible to the point where he couldn't even do the right thing. He wasn't ready for this. The company wasn't ready for this. They shouldn't have been sent there in the first place.
Omg this! Yes!
@AlleyDreamer :D
Exactly, I have even seen multiple people think Jimmy and Anya were a couple in secret and he just got her pregnant by accident until its revealed he wants to avoid prosecution, I can't blame them tho. Curly is clearly a major people-pleaser, he wants to keep harmony in the Tulpar so his way of approaching Jimmy about the pregnancy issue is through trying to do damage control and having the smallest hope he will understand and take responsability himself and its only at the end when he realizes Jimmy is a horrible person
@@ItsTanuki0_Clock I find it really interesting how a lot of people and Curly didn't catch his red flags immediately after he's introduced to us. We don't know much about him, so of course, we don't suspect anything, but his godawful nature is pretty obvious..
@Someone-or8tp HOLY FUCK THAT MAKES SOOO MUCH SENSE
YOURE A GENIUS
There's something that I think goes overlooked with Curly's reaction to Anya's pregnancy, and it's that it takes him time to process it. That entire time you're playing as Curly is him spouting platitudes past both Anya and Jimmy, who bein to talk *past* Curly. It's absolutely fair to say he's in damage control mode, failing to grasp the gravity of the situation, constantly saying "we can fix this" or even "I can fix this." As if the situation could be "fixed" at all. On top of this, it's the only time we get to see Curly while we're playing as him, and I believe this is supposed to be a moment of disassociation. We see it multiple times with Jimmy, both in his hallucinations and while Swansea's giving his iconic speech that Jimmy is clearly not hearing and may be having the Graveyard hallucination while he's giving it, so I don't think it's unintentional that Curly only gets one moment, and in such a tense situation no less. It's only after the warning signs start blaring from Jimmy "Taking care of it" does the full realization hit him like a truck, which is why he initially attempts to take responsibility for what Jimmy did ("Tell me you didn't"." I should have-" "I didn't-") before finally asking the question that was probably brewing in his head for some time but didn't have the ability to: "What the fuck did *you* do?!"
Curly TRIES to take responsibility for Jimmy, believing he is even capable of doing so and thinking he can correct the terrible wrongs Jimmy did, because he sees Jimmy as an extension of himself, cuz he is. But this connection prevents him from treating Jimmy like the threat he is. Curly's known Jimmy for years, something more solidified in the How Fish is Made's dlc, and likely has been a victim of Jimmy's manipulation for a long time, albeit on a smaller scale then we see in Mouthwashing. Curly even does something very similar to Anya in trying to appease Jimmy, giving him constant encouragement. ("But hey hey hey, you know I believe in you" - after having just ranted about his own troubles, having to completely push himself aside to cater to Jimmy.) However, the worst part is that Jimmy is well aware of this aspect of Curly and uses it in his final manipulation before crashing the Tupar. Jimmy shoves the responsibility of his awful act onto Curly, taking advantage of Curly's sense of responsibility to avoid taking it himself.
Ultimately, Curly's not the perfect captain nor is he a malicious enabler, he's human, just like everyone else in the story. He handled Anya's situation poorly, that was without a doubt his "worst moment." But it didn't make him a monster, and I think even Anya recognized that. Hense why when she says it, it's directed at Curly, who she still treats with respect and care despite that failure. She stills refer to him as Captain, she still does everything she can to keep him alive and make his last moments as painless as possible... and I think that's beautiful.
so perfectly worded. i think the part where he tries to say what he should have done before he has to relinquish that control, realize he can't reel in jimmy like he thinks he can, is so visceral
i think he is especially crushed when he starts saying "we can take it one day at a time" and jimmy continues to escalate
WORDD
Honestly my favorite interpretation of Curly as a character and one that I’ve never been able to put into words
His reaction doesn't mean he doesn't know the gravity. Jimmy is a close friend so there's a bias and false belief his friend can be a good person. Many women run into the issue of reporting how someone did something terrible to them and others don't take them seriously b/c they care for the offender more
@@moxiemaxie3543 It's not just women, it's men. I say this because a similar situation has happened to me, which is why I understand Curly's actions: because I've had to look at the actions of my real life friends and figure out why they didn't take my own accusations seriously.
Cognitive Dissonance is a hell of a thing. It's not as though these the gravity of these accusations doesn't exist, but rather it's grasping the situation. We don't want to believe that the people we like, the people we choose to spend time with, are bad people. So when faced with such an accusation, your brain naturally wants to protect you, so you can become dismissive. It has nothing to do with "caring for the offender more", it's the fact that admitting someone you care for is an abuser is really hard.
My friends have since apologized profusely for their initial reluctance to believe me, and I've forgiven them. I don't believe they cared for me any less, but the person who took advantage of me was one of their friends someone they trusted enough to let into our home at the time. If I were in their shoes, I'd love to say I'd have done better, but that's just it: I don't know what I'd do in that situation, especially if I didn't have the background I do now.
I'm a young woman and have been SA'd. The second I found out Anya was the only woman on a ship full of men, I was concerned and worried. Including when we find out the sleeping rooms have no locks. Finding out Anya held the pony mascot close to her during sleep so that it'd make noise under any motion reminds me of the things I'd keep close to myself, or do to secure my door, during sleep to keep myself feeling safe from an unstable environment. I'd strategize techniques just as Anya strategized to use the mascot. Though I am still trying to heal from my SA, it's still in the back of my mind. Sometimes, it'll appear through nightmares.
I remember crying to my ex who SA'd me that I was terrified of getting pregnant. He reassured me that if I ever got pregnant by him, he'd stay and care for the baby. He'd try to ramble about his care for me, but this game helps me verbalize what I was feeling; my ex held more respect for the autonomy of the imaginary "what if" baby than me. When he'd wipe my tears, I felt dread. He was leashing me along for his own wants and tried to diguise it as actually caring about "respecting" me and my body. Yet for all the caring he pretended to do, or do the bare minimum of, he wouldn't dare take responsibility for what he did to me. I remember he saw a cop car when he and I were going to meet, and over text he expressed he was scared I told the cops about what he did. If i remember correctly, he also stated that he was hesitant to even leave his car to get me because he was uncertain if i told the police. At the time, I didn't tell the police. When I did tell the police in the future about what he did, all I could do was file a report. Especially because my ex moved states. The coward ran from responsibility. And just how I felt similar to how I imagine Anya felt, Jimmy killed himself without having to take any responsibility for what he did to Anya. Ironic my exs name also starts with a J.
Personally, I love how the game competely pushes Anya out of the narrative because it shows the harsh reality of how some men view women. How some men think they can SA women and think they are able to leave. Personally, the ex who SA'd me felt he had a right to cling to me as if he deserved any more ounce of goodness I could give him. I wonder if men feel as if they can run partially due to messed up justice systems where noone will hold them accountable, or at least not accountable enough to actually take full responsibility. Plus, some men just do not care about women whatsoever. By pushing Anya out of the narrative, I believe it shows what it's like to be a peer to someone experiencing SA. It can be tricky to notice someone experiencing SA. Other times, you can see signs more clearly.
My heart breaks for Anya and this game hits so close to home. I like the awarwness this game brings. It makes my heart heavy thinking about what I experienced, what Anya experienced, and what so many other people have experienced. Espeically women. And especially women who get pregnant from SA.
Side note: Anya mentioned a psych evaluation of someone being "excited" at cartoon ponies. I dont remember if it was Jimmy who said that. If so, I read some comments and found that Poolle (I forget their name) may be associated as Anya in Jimmys mind. I wonder if Jimmys(?) comment about being excited at ponies was foreshadowing to his character and how he viewed Anya. The pony mascot was a "thing" for the Pony Express ride. And to Jimmy, Anya was also a thing for the ride.
Thank you for sharing this ❤️
@AlleyDreamer omg, thank you for your consideration to reply 🥹❤️
Sending love friend
@@SomeRandomEcho thank you 🥰
You're extremely brave and strong for having the courage not only to get away from him, but also go on to file a report.
My ex fwb SA'd me earlier last month (revoked consent, so my case is less cut and dry: I asked him not to finish inside me because I'm not on BC, reminded him multiple times, and he did anyway).
I took Plan B, it didn't work because I was ovulating that day. Took Plan C 4 weeks ago after a positive test, and have been debating whether to file a report or not. Because my abuser did the same thing as your ex; kept frequent contact, acted sweet and apologetic, but not in a genuine way. Rather than regret towards what he did to me, he only seems to feel sad about losing his potential "baby", and fear that he might face the consequences of his actions from a legal perspective. He only paid back the money I spent on the Plan C pills TODAY, after I made it clear I wasn't comfortable having him over ever again, and that I'm considering pressing charges.
But like Anya, I'm trying to get into medical school, and have a lot on my plate as is. Sometimes I wonder if that's why he did what he did, because he sees my voice and autonomy as a threat because of it. No one deserves to endure what we experienced, and it hurts to know that Anya is so relatable to many people for that reason. Any advice would be appreciated
as an SA survivor, Anya questioning why there wasn’t a lock on the door and Curly dismissing her actually broke me.
To be fair anya could have lied
@ Dawg WHAT
@@andysworld3771 its all he said she said theres no proof "dog"
@ oh so I guess she was just scared of him and tried placating him each time he was around for fun then? It’s literally so clear within the narrative I can’t believe you’re victim blaming a video game character, how sad for you
@@andysworld3771 im just saying they was crashed for 5 months and she didn't look pregnant and yeah everyone was scared after the crash, you do know people lie right?
I always kind of assumed Jimmy being "sorry" for what he did to Curly isn't only cus of their weird "bro" relationship but mostly because there's no one to keep a level head and cover his ass.
Truuuu!
He lost his enabler and is now becoming a constant reminder of what he did
Exactly! It is constantly shown that of the two, Curly is the only one capable of being useful in any capacity. He's the one who got Jimmy his job. He's the one who excels at that job. He's the one who tries to cover for Jimmy terrible behavior with Anya. Without Curly there to do the work for, it becomes very apparent how utterly hopeless Jimmy is.
This is my take on it. Jimmy: "Our worst moments don't make us-" (ironically, the belief once held by Anya). Polle retorts, "...If that's the case, why do you still care about *him?"*-being Curly and, by extension, himself. The game, many times, drives home the parallel between Jimmy and Curly: you switch between them as the POV character; Jimmy wants to be Curly, Jimmy sees himself as Curly, he feeds "himself" Curly, and at the end, he saves Curly because he is Curly. Polle is basically saying, "Despite your claim that our worst moments don't make us monsters... you're still engaging in the same behaviour worthy of a "worst moment" even now. Not Anya, not Swansea, not Daisuke... The only person you care about is Curly-yourself."
That is to say, I think it goes beyond Jimmy seeing Curly as his bro; Jimmy is delirious, lacks any sense of self or self-worth. He is Curly, and at the end, he saves Curly.
To me, I think that's Jimmy realizing his flaws and all the damage he done, and apologizing to Curly because he's the one who took the responsibility for everything in the worst way possible... That's also why he decides to save him instead of himself.
THANK YOU for speaking so bluntly about Jimmy's disregard and apathy towards Anya!! Ive had to separate myself from directly engaging in most Mouthwashing fandom spaces because i keep seeing Jimmy rape apologists and it *ENRAGES* me.
It's really insane 😔
i still can't believe those exist ;_;
Where is this discourse? I've seen 2 essays so far mention Jimmy apologists and so far 99% of all comments on YT/Insta/TikTok has been very "throw the whole man away" like, even artists make content just dragging Jimmy out and beating him up. Is this just a Twitter thing because I haven't found it anywhere in anything outside of the most fringe of takes that gets shouted into oblivion.
@@Jimgress I've seen a few comments on yt videos that definitely read more like people rage-baiting rather than actually liking Jimmy. Also there's at least one video essay on yt where the creator doesn't like Jimmy, thinks he's a pos, but refuses to believe that Anya didn't consent. Got two seconds into that video, peeped them arguing with people in the comments, and left my thumbs down and bounced. So while it's extremely rare, it does happen.
Jimmy rape apologists are the same with “Griffith did nothing wrong” crowd.
They are either rage bait or actually believe that these rapist mass murdering villains have a point. And unsurprisingly, 100% of these crowds are men.
I think if Curly had been just a bit more conscious of the potential danger Anya would be in, he could have offered the med bay as a place for her to sleep, seeing as it locks. And i think thats important too. Like yes, Curly was under the rules of the company they worked for, but something like that, as small as that, would have at least shown her was aware of what could happen. But his complacency got them all killed
This!
There's also a lot of other factors like, how would Curly reprimand Jimmy? Like, he can't just fight Jimmy or lock him somewhere, because either someone will feel sorry for him or because that ship is so fucking understaffed that a co-pilot is needed and no one else is fit for that part. It's all very sad that even if Curly makes it so Jimmy can't get to Anya or kills him, a snowball effect is gonna continue and it's still gonna be such shit.
@@bluewolf6323 a co-pilot is needed but swansea better fits the role than jimmy. the whole story is how jimmy is unfit as a co-pilot and a man, and that they were better off without him (the dead pixel that curly ignores/cant find)
@Kamn_exe That's one of the other problems,Swansea is good, but does he know about being a copilot? Can he be a good pilot enough to an engineer *and* the co pilot at the same time? They are already understaffed as hell, so Swansea has to juggle 2 jobs because someone is incompetent. That's still not a good position to be in.
@@Kamn_exe why would a mechanic know how to copilot? They were doomed from the start because of how severely understaffed the ship is, no one could have taken his place in work and that's part of the tragedy
I disagree with the idea that Anya should have been somehow looming over Jimmy - I mean, that would have been nice, but it would have pretty dramatically changed the point of the story. My takeaway from the game is that abusers don't give a shit about the people they hurt and when the people meant to hold them to account fail, they get away with it. That's the horror of it.
I once had an abuser in my life and I'll spare you the details of what she did to me, but know it flabbergasted my therapy group. The most I could do was cut her out and years later, she wrote me a letter asking *why*. She put me through some heinous shit and to her it didn’t even carry enough weight to explain why I would want her to stay away from me. She didn’t carry guilt for any of it, I'm the bad guy in her story who just told her never to speak to me again out of the blue.
It's fucked up, but reality is just like that in some cases. We want to imagine people being tortured by the knowledge of how they've harmed others, but sometimes at most they'll be tortured by the knowledge that they were too dumb to scheme a way yo get away with it. If Anya was looming over Jimmy somehow, it would be a very different game.
Yup. Psychopaths are incapable of remorse or emotional empathy.
Yeah, and for as bad as what he did to Anya… he ruined the lives of everyone else on the ship too, Curley’s the most obvious, Swansea gave up sobriety after 15 years, Daisuke he just drove around until he lead to the poor idiot’s death… and he barely cares about all of that, the only one who’s in his thoughts of “take responsibility and fix things” is Curley and even that is still him focussing on “be a ‘good’ Captain” not what actually made Curley a good leader or all that much even if what he actually did to Curley
This. Not to mention the possible r*pe apologists it would bring. "He's still thinking about anya, so he 'must' feel kinda bad he did it. He can't be that bad🥺" Even though he did one of the worst things you can do to another person, it wouldn't work. If the creators humanized him with remorse for his actions it would be all r*pe apologists need sympathies with him as a person. They may still not agree with his actions, but they'd see him in more the light of "a guy that just messed up" nather than his true character. By completely removing anya from his thoughts, we as the player are able to see jimmy for who he truly is. An incompetent, insecure, manipulative asshole who even in the end takes the cowardly way out.
Jimmy only becoming concerned when Anya is pregnant is incredibly telling of his character. He only panics when he realizes _his own_ life is going to fall apart; he couldn't give less of a shit about Anya herself and dehumanizes her at every opportunity. I definitely agree that this is a better direction for his character to take. It's incredibly true to how abusive men tend to view women (or how many abusers view their victims in general).
@@lazydroidproductions1087 I feel like he saved Curly becuz he wanted to avoid responsibility, the future would have consequences for him. Whoever found him had the chance to uncover the truth. So this grapist decided to do what he does best, runaway from responsibility for eternity by choosing death.
Death is only sad for those people who had a good life going for them, that obviously didn't include Mr "Protag"
We don't even know if Daisuke's parents are rich, just that they'll be able to support him. Jimmy might have assumed that, but nothing concrete.
That is true he is very unreliable
@@AlleyDreamer (just wanted to say that, since Daisuke is the most relatable one to me, personally)
It's so surreal how a major chunk of the fandom is debating whether Curly should take some of the blame, while some players still don't realize (or refuse to) that Jimmy assaulted Anya at all. I saw someone who thought the baby was Curly's.
@@anitamihholap5926 i think the 'i thought curly was the pregnant one' thing was a joke
@@elledayooo that's not what I meant. Some guy thought that Curly was the father. That Anya slept with him cause they're lovers or someth.
@ oh i am so sorry i was talking about something else💔
4:59 Another thing that i think should be mentioned is that some of the scenes in the game have baby noises in the background. You can hear a loud cry of a baby when curly tries to stop the ship from crashing and when Swansea is chasing Jimmy in the graveyard. Jimmy only gave a fuck about the possibly of going to jail for what he did or having to pay for child support if Anya decided to keep the baby. He didn't give two fucks about the violent assault he did to Anya, and how that pregancy ruined her life(especialy if theyre in america). I hate him soooo much.
Also, if he did get what he deserved(aka, going to jail), he would have to worry about not getting a job in the long run, so what does he do? He crashes the ship because then there would be no baby, and there would be no living proof of his crime. There would also not be anyone to report him. Curly, Swansea, Daisuke, and Anya wouldn't exist anymore. There would be no one to put him in his place. HE FUCKING SUCKS!
Yupppp!
The conversation surrounding if the writers should have made the SA more clear actually reminds me of an interesting new video from FD Signifier about how certain types of people misunderstood the more "subtle" themes in stories. I say it in quotes because I don't think the themes of the first Joker movie or The Boys are all that subtle to begin with. Yes it's pretty obvious to a lot of us that Homelander is bad and not meant to be sided with in any way despite him having some tragic stuff in his past, and yet there were people who were less exaggerated versions of him siding with him and thinking he's not all that bad - only to get pissed in the fourth season when the showrunners got sick of this kind of mentality and dropped a lot of the subtlety.
While as a writer I understand the frustration of people missing the point, I don't think the proper response is to remove any subtlety and in the end create a worse product just so the message is as clear as day. I don't think it's necessary that Anya's SA was spelled out to everyone. Not everyone is going to pick up on it and that's fine, you don't need to drop any subtext.
I worry that if they made the topic with Anya too blatant from the start then it would ruin a lot of the messaging in the game. I feel like the way they wrote her was intentional - you almost depersonalize her along with Jimmy because you're seeing her from his perspective. People who knew there was SA in the game going in tended to pick up on it faster, but a lot of people who had no idea just went along with it until they realized there was something wrong with Jimmy.
I also worry if they just flat out stated it, this depersonalizing intention to her character would feel less like an intentional artistic decision and more like the developers themselves depersonalizing her and treating her like nothing more than a catalyst for the story.
@@KalinTheZola hard agree! And I love FD signifier!
I agree with this. Personally, I think the way they did it with Anya was incredibly tasteful and meaningful. So much SA horror puts the onus of the horror at the disposal of the victim; they show the assault for shock value, the woman’s character is reduced to her victimhood, and her character is only reduced to a single horrible act.
But with the reveal hidden, we’re forced to look at Anya in the same vein as the other three, even if it’s a biased lense. The narrative simultaneously makes it clear that she’s important in some way despite how Jimmy’s POV keeps trying to diminish her, and we get to know her from the angle of Curly. It says something that the scene most fans remember about Anya ISNT her saying she’s pregnant, but the calm scene of her and Curly talking in front of the night scene. Anya is allowed to be more than her assault, even if it’s harder to gauge.
And, in a sense, the brutality of what was done to her is mirrored in Curly instead of making her the subject of the violence on screen. Curly is an exploited, helpless person who’s left to the whims of Jimmy’s abuse; a perfect reflection to how Anya was harmed WITHOUT making that harm sexual. Because rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power.
I also feel like the subtly makes sense since the game is from Jimmy’s perspective, and reflects how he literally blocks out what he’s done when he’s faced with consequences. There’s so many subtle hints that the abuse is still ongoing (the broken Polle statue, Anya’s fawn response, Jimmy spiking Swansea’s drink, Jimmy coercing Daisuke, etc) that it doesn’t need to be overly stated, because we’ve already been able to piece together what kind of person Jimmy is.
@@gregjayonnaise8314 You're 100% correct, in some ways, every character at some point is the subject of Jimmy removing their bodily autonomy in some way, not just Curly. I like how they use each character to show this trait of Jimmy's without showing you explicitly what he did to Anya.
I think this gets missed sometimes because its very in your face with Curly, but not even Swansea and Daisuke were safe from this.
Jimmy literally drugs Swansea... I myself was victimized in my sleep, and his line about Swansea "probably not even remembering what happened when he wakes up" sends real shivers down my spine.
Jimmy then coerces Daisuke into doing something incredibly dangerous that he didn't want to do, something that honestly did little good and in the end cost Daisuke his life.
I appreciate how every aspect of the narrative ties back into and informs his behavior with Anya without ever being explicit about what he did.
@@KalinTheZola Precisely! Jimmy has shown that he’s perfectly willing to violate the autonomy and boundaries of the men he works with. So when we find out he got Anya pregnant, it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that it was not consensually. If he’s willing to usurp control over the boundaries of Daisuke, Curly and Swansea, then why would he bother with Anya’s consent, when he’s shown to respect her even LESS than them?
That’s why I think subtlety is something the game does well. The answer is clear if you think a bit harder about the situation for like five minutes. Even if it’s not clear and you don’t immediately catch that it was assault, at the very least, Anya wanting to hide the gun from him, paired with all of his actions, makes it clear that he’s some kind of danger to her.
It's really not subtle. She straight-up says that Curly wouldn't let her defend herself.
As much as I love Daisuke I will always remain an Anya girlie first and foremost 😌
@@comfehhh ya know what that is totally valid 😌
Can’t you be both?
Same
YESSSSS THISSSSS
@@juanpauloarcillas7600 While I feel for Daisuke, the sense of powerlessness Anya goes through hits home really hard for many of us. It's not to diminish what he went through, but the pain many of us go through when we are constantly degraded and have our very own autonomy taken away, it's so aptly represented by Anya and what she endures.
One thing i see so many people miss with the pixel scene is the tome left on board. As anya said "eight months". The ship had about 8 months to go. Shes realizing theres a chance that she might have to give birth on board. The fear of not only having a child of someone who assaulted you, but the idea of having that child in an enclosed space with no escape from the assaulter AND his enabler who is also YOUR BOSS. God that conversation gave me chills the second time around. If she knows shes pregnant for certain shes probably already a month in.
i'm personally of the opinion that curly is afraid of jimmy even before the crash, but he has a people-pleasing sort of personality that has him appear friendly regardless of this. my main evidence is that the scene with the blood ocean and the warning signs and the ladders is just before when curly if first alone with jimmy in the game. curly is already feeling like there is danger with jimmy, but he cannot bring himself to act on it. when jimmy rants at him after he reveals that the company is going under, he's shocked into silence, and i think that gives context that his last conversation before the crash with jimmy also being a moment where he's scared to silence.
in spite of this, he's still culpable. when anya asks about the locks, he's either genuinely ignorant to what the true purpose of her question is, or he's wilfully ignoring it. we can see he's willing to help anya when it's an easy solution (see: him doing jimmy's psych eval instead of her) but when things become more complicated he closes himself off from any options besides simply talking to jimmy. there is something to be said that he's limited in what he could do because of the corporation hanging above his head, but limited is not completely powerless and yet he still acts like it is.
and the exact kind of selective blindness and passive leadership is what's useful to the company. that's why curly has been able to climb the ladder, because his inability to act against things that are wrong makes him an asset to a higher corporate power. and because of this system, jimmys exist. people who operate in a way so far beyond the system they're in to the point where there is nothing in place to stop them.
Excellent analysis
I agree. I honestly think the it being so easy to miss Anya’s implication is intentional, Curly hardly reacts because it’s unclear if he’s putting 2 and 2 together, it’s easy not to. “What a strange question, Anya’s a strange fellow it’s probably nothing. Bigger picture,” missing the trees for the forest. And regardless they’re trapped on the ship for another 8 months, better not think there are serious problems brewing under the surface.
u ate this take
Jimmy is manipulator and has been manipulating Curly too before crash as well.
We can see Jimmy using the things Curly has shared with him against him. The bday party conversation. Is proof of that.
probably the best take ive seen on this
Imma be honest, in hindsight the line that hits me hardest in the Anya nd Curly talk is Curly going "Now i'll go bonkers looking for it. Cheers. ... I don't think it ruins the illusion though. It's peaceful."
YES, CURLY. THAT IS THE ISSUE. THAT THERE IS A GLARING, DEAD PIXEL AND YOU DON'T SEE IT, INSTEAD FOCUSING ON "But the rest of the ship is aight tho".
Also, my idea for why there are no locks on sleeping quarters is either softer misogyny of "Yeah, no woman will apply for this job, they are too weak to be a cruise freighter. No need to lock the bedrooms, if boys are being boys we just 'don't ask, don't tell' and all that" - or hardcore misogyny of "Well, she is the only woman on the cruise with 4 men, all of them have their 'needs'. She better put out.".
I always sorta heard the “now I’ll go bonkers, cheers” line as sort of bitter as well, like he’s mad at Anya for telling him.
I always thought the no locks on the sleeping quarters was just because Pony Boy Express was cutting corners - only doing the bare minimum of putting locks on the cockpit & medical bay for the ship to be “safe” (but not the crew).
@@dragongirl2032_fr that line gave me the vibe of “why would you point that out? Now MY experience is tainted” Curly is toxically positive
Based on my experience working in copper refineries, it's probably more cutting corners in engineering. It's easier to meet the bare bones fire safety protocols and such if doors can't lock to begin with.
@@dragongirl2032_ i always saw it as Curly being playful, almost ignorant to what Anya tries to hint at. Honestly, i think your idea of it fits, though-
Something I heard from another speculation, which I found super interesting, is that with the whole dead pixel and Curly only really being focused on the big picture, that you could look at the Mouthwashing itself as symbolism as well. "Kills 99.9% of all germs" but there is still the 0.1%, like with the dead pixel, which is ignored but is still there. There are so many small things like that in the game, that just makes it more and more amazing everytime I see someone play through it, because people just notice so many difference things.
Amazing video!
Omg ur so right!
THATS SO SMART OMG
it's a sperm meptahor
Anya will always be my #1 because this is the first time I saw a character and went “Jesus she really is just like me fr”
I love her sm
Sameeee
There as nothing more shocking than me hearing about ppl actually drawing Anya keeping the baby and dating Jimmy. Thank god, I haven’t seen it, but if it’s happening…then wow…
That's really messed up. I'd be genuinely triggered if I actually saw someone drawing that... I'll just keep away...
All I can hear in my head is, "TO THE WOODCHIPPER!" because WTF
Keeping the baby is understandable but DATING JONGLER!!???
@@rancorious7785”Jongler” is a new one
@@rancorious7785YEAHH LIKE Drawing her keeping the baby is fine I’ve known some cases where someone got raped but kept the baby anyways BUT WHAT HAVE SOME ARTISTS ATE FOR BREAKFAST TO DRAW HER
*DATING* HER ABUSER!?
Berleezey’s response to Jimmy complaining at the party table KILLSSSS MEEE
I realized that Swansea putting an axe in the sunset was foreshadowing Daisuke’s death…🌺
Omg that’s geniussss
"Useless ray of sunshine" damn
love that you're able to say "i love curly as a person" while also holding him accountable for his inaction and being brutally honest about it. People have been so black and white about his character online, either saying he's horrible and irredeemable, or that he did literally nothing wrong. It's refreshing to see genuine nuance in this video :)
Yessss, I see too many people not understand that Curly's character has nuance. They can't seem to understand the statements, Curly was an enabler to Jimmy and allowed him to co-pilot the ship, which was the catalyst to all the bad things happening/ he didn't take any direct action against Jimmy once he learned of anyas rape and might've been purposefully ignorant of her rape, and Curly was a victim of both Jimmy and the companies rules and his hands were also tied on what to do since Jimmy was the co-pilot can both exist at the same time.
THIS! I’ve seen people getting attacked and bullied for liking Curly (mainly on TikTok tho). Oversimplifying morally grey characters to either black or white is just WRONG and does not do any sort of justice to the character and its writers.
Yea curly has the right intentions and while he doesn’t notice Anya’s true issues he puts in effort to talk to her and even if he’s too late he does try to help her although it’s hard for him to imagine someone he trusts doing stuff like that (common thing in rape culture when somone close to the offender cannot picture these things happening and not acting or acting too late) he does believe her relatively fast and wanted to help
Serious media has a tendency to have super memey fandoms, like breaking bad for example
😂😂 yeah we gotta cope somehow
Another good example would be Omori
I don't know if I like it...
@@AbigailSkinwalker2210 And the Fear and Hunger series too.
@@AbigailSkinwalker2210Omori isn't serious
I think Anya haunting Jimmy wouldn't make any sense. Polly? Absolutely yes. He can't get the child out of his mind, but Jimmy doesn't give enough shits for Anya for her to be haunting his consciousness
But her being in the back 9f his mind makes so sense right he was going to crash the ship because of that situation he was trying to sell him crashing the ship because of what he did to anya as something to keep curlys reputation
Jimmy saw anya as weak but he was caution that once they got off the ship she'd try to report it out side of the ship
So her being thier even for a second like a glitch might emphasise something about how he saw her
Jimmy dosent just disrespect Anya but he openly mocks what happened as he slings insults to her face. Saying he was attracted to cartoon horses during the psych eval is one of the most vile, heinous, disgusting things that ONLY hits you on repeat playthroughs is some of the best writing full stop. He's calling her a cartoon, a mascot, a thing not meant to be taken seriously that's only here because pencil pushers thought it would be a good ideanand utterly strips her of her humanity during a moment of vulnerability whilst also insulting her looks and... Ugh. Mouthwashing is so good
i remember i first heard him say that in Berlin’s play-through and literally thought “what the fuck…that’s such a weird yet oddly specific thing to say” without peeping its deeper more disturbing meaning. it was only when i watched Cory’s iteration the next day that i picked up on it and realized just how malicious he was BEYOND his assault.
My theory is that it either went over Curly’s head because he just didn’t pay attention to that statement’s meaning beyond the “bigger picture” or he KNEW what jimmy’s statement meant and actively chose to ignore it because he’s a bystander who simply watches the destruction. With the all the hints Anya was dropping its most likely the latter
2 things. Jimmy also beat curly while he was medicating him one time, and pony express is not all encompassing, the crew was actually laid off because the company went completely bankrupt and dissolved. Great video btw
Ohhh i thought they were just going fully automatic with no humans
@@AlleyDreamerCould be that they're switching to unmanned transport, but Swansea's line about Pony Express "kicking the bucket" makes me think the company is going under.
I was scrolling through the comments of a playthrough, and I saw someone point out how Anya gets uncomfortable feeding Curly his pain medication due to Curly not being able to properly consent, meanwhile J*mmy had no problem shoving the pills down his throat to the point he was gagging.
I love J*mmy cencorship
Swansea is my favorite, somehow he is the most well adjusted person on that ship. And that speach at the end is just cheffs kiss, it was so cathartic to hear him call out jimmy.
It was!
Swansea was portrayed as a drunk loser in Jimmys eyes because he knew he was a threat; curly was too incapable to do anything before and after the accident, Anya was nothing in his eyes, and Daisuke was too innocent to know what was going on. Swansea was the biggest threat in the beginning because he saw him for who he really was and could do something about it, whether it be carrying around the axe or blocking the door (can’t remember where it led too) and withholding the key. that’s why whereas Anya is portrayed as a good for nothing character and daisuke is just there vibing Swansea is seen as an annoying prick.
@mcskinny4919 yes, it truly is a perfect unreliable narrator story
So about "Anya haunting the narrative in a subtle way, like a ghost thats gone when you turn away"... That does kind of happen. When/if you turn around when the game tells you not to, you see her corpse's face before the game restarts
isn't it daisuke's face?
@@ummmolly Might be both. I thought it was Anya due to nose bleed.
@@ummmolly Went back to check again. Yeah, that's definitely an axe would. But also there's the nose bleed so might be both?
when does this happen??
I see what you mean, but that’s Daisuke’s face. You can see the axe wound. Jimmy really doesn’t give two shits about Anya and what he did to her, so she doesn’t haunt him. I hate Jackfelldownandbrokehiscrown so much.
I think a detail that people don't talk about enough is that Jimmy cut off Curly's leg and fed it to him when they had multiple other bodies. It was malicious intent, right till the very end.
7:42 as a normal and sane human I understand wanting the actual victim of the story to haunt the narrative, but from a character standpoint, the complete lack of even her face anywhere in his hallucinations shows us that jimmy does not care about her. At all, even subconsciously. In his active and subconscious mind, him r*ping Anya is nothing to feel guilty about, it’s not even morally bad because she is a female, not an actual person. Having jimmy haunted by the person he hurt the most would doubtlessly be satisfying for the player bc it’s just karma, but unfortunately he is really good at dodging karma and responsibility, so that’s no exception.
Also, some Thoughts™️ I had that I haven’t seen anyone mention yet that I’m not skilled enough to make a really profound point out of:
This crew (except Daisuke) have been doing this for long enough to know PE’s consequences for anything short of flawless performance and compliance. The audience only knows some from the Polle posters and the opening scene. So, based on the Lend A Hand poster and the fact that he keeps personal matters off record (as seen in two of his pov scenes as well as “looking at the bigger picture”), I’m fairly confident that part (however big or small) of the reason Curly did virtually nothing about jimmy, aside from being his friend and having some leniency pre-installed through that, is that he’s trying to avoid collective punishment. Him reporting an SA to HR would count as a complaint about lacking teamwork, which is a big no-no for the company even though that’s the least he should have done. He’s so desperate to follow rules (which is intentional on PE’s part) that it doesn’t even cross his mind to let Anya sleep somewhere with a lock on the door for the rest of the trip even after she points it out. Or look for other solutions that don’t boil down to “keep going as we were and hope nothing else happens”. The layoff and her pregnancy should have changed things (I’d like to think they would have for me, if I were in his position), but I think he might have been to shocked to think or process anything before it was too late. (And before anyone says anything, this is not me trying to absolve Curly of guilt, it’s just me puzzling together another fucked up layer of their situation. He should have done anything to help Anya, consequences and friendships be damned.)
My other Thought is that, even if they didn’t crash, I’m not sure the ship’s resources would have even enough for the whole crew? It’s implied (or even outright confirmed) that they didn’t compensate for a last minute fifth person. We don’t know what the sleeping quarters look like, but there’s definitely only four cryopods, and, knowing Pony Express, there’s probably only just enough food on board for four people to last the entire trip, so they might have been doomed the moment they boarded no matter what (also 2 months after the crash Daisuke estimates that food will last for another 4 months - that’s about two months short of the original transit time, however it is possible that some of the food stores were destroyed or foamed up). Now to my actual point: thanks to jimmy, Anya would have been eating for two for the rest of the trip. Not to mention pregnancy complications, involuntary food waste due to morning sickness, actually giving birth and then having to care for an infant for the final stretch of transit! They have no crib, no clothes fit for a baby, no medicine fit for a baby, nothing. And, being the only nurse on there, all her medical problems would fall on Anya to take care of herself. Y’know. While pregnant. Thanks, jim.
Anyways, do with those what you want, I’ve kind of lost the plot a bit at this point.
Ooo that last part about thr extra 5th person that's a really good point!
THIS! The collective punishment line! That one's been sticking with me. While Curly fucked up by not taking further action against Jimmy, they were all still screwed over by the corpo BS. It's why Curly was trying to figure out a way to resolve the situation without having to put it in the reports.
one part that really drives the point home about how much jimmy doesn't care about Anya is that when they found the mouth wash Anya said it had too much sugar to disinfect wounds, and of course Jimmy, the worst man alive, either didn't care enough to remember or just straight up wasn't listening tried to use it on Daisuke's wounds after sending him through the murder hole
I’m flabbergasted to hear ANYONE has a defense for Jimmy. Wtf.
I treat that thing like Voldemort, he who must not be named. He’s a horrible person who deserves no defence.
Turds of the same smell compile together
It’s because they ARE jimmy or (curly). If that makes sense. They are the people who think that way. Either they don’t see some or all of the women in their life as humans or they defend those they know commit assault since they don’t empathize with the severity. So they try to push it under the rug. When people like that play mouth washing they don’t understand the actual message of the game because they are stunted/delusional like curly and Jimmy. They relate to to Jimmy so they don’t see him as an unreliable narrator.
also curly's conversation with jimmy very much comes off as that "don't let this ruin his life" sentiment seen so often from families and friends of rapists, especially young ones, and jimmy's quick to flip that around and turn it on him.
Could you say uts also like in a family thing where rhe abuser is in the family and the family like ignored it and they know what happened like you said
@charliepuppy. yeah i think that's also an important part of it. the whole crew system operates similar to a familial unit or close knit friend group and that element definitely plays into how curly treats the situation, especially due to his inability to percieve details as opposed to the larger picture. he feels the need to preserve the crew, and his immediate reaction to being informed of the rape is to negotiate negotiate negotiate because to him the dead pixel of a rapist being on board is preferable to the giant malfunction of the copilot being taken out of the crew (or His Friend Jimmy no longer being his friend)
and, ironically, in exchange for all that negotiation, they lost the captain instead.
5:58 I noticed a parallel that not only does the “pony” speak to Jimmy this way, but I found it to represent as Anya for the fact of his first documented evaluation comment we get from him, and as well as the background being the moon represents her love for the serene night time, I think he just genuinely views her physically as an insult calling her a literal horse or donkey for HIS actions that were committed AGAINST her. He blames himself as a victim for the consequence because he feels like he’s going to be forced into taking this responsibility of the child, and views Anya as a wHOR(s)E (horse feels metaphorical for what he’s actually calling her and sees her in his mind). It just makes the scene even more uncomfortable to me
15:19 this whole animation is amazing but this part was horrifying. Animator went off with this. It makes me want to cry like a little kid scared of the dark.
Yes omg I was so genuinely taken aback in the first time I watched it 😭
One thing I noticed when watching Kubz Scouts playthrough is that Jimmy seemed to talk down to Curly in most if not all of their conversations (and the fact he had been worried about Jimmy being angry after Anya told him she told Jimmy, whatever he tried to decide to do to deal with Jimmy until they got back could possibly escalate to violence or injury. Either way Jimmy was dealt with, it'd likely get docked from their final paychecks cause PE is the whole "one of you messed up so everyone gets punished" kinda companies). Swansea also mentioned that Pony Express was the last freighter company that had people working for it, so chances are the crew probably wouldn't find any other similar work after they got back, at least not easily
Oh yeah his "respect" is definitely backhanded 😭
@AlleyDreamer I've seen some people debate about if Curly was a victim to Jimmy's pre-crash (emotionally, mentally, verbally) but those two instances made me think "he's known Jimmy a long time so obviously it couldn't have been all bad, but" the talk in the cockpit and party scene made Jimmy's reaction stick out to me and I'm curious about how their friendship stuck that long, another analysis (I can't remember who's) brought up how it seemed Jimmy was throwing Curly's words back at him. The backhanded "respect" is so weird to see
Sorry for yapping I have a lot of thoughts on this game and Jimmy's such a rat of a man
@jharris3110 no sorrys here! You are free to yap!
@@jharris3110 Curly is useful to Jimmy as a tool, similar to Anya in that sense, only the consequences for the sh!te Anya gets put through are way worse.
Jimmy got to use Curly to get back on his feet when he was in trouble with the law, He used Curly to get the job, to escape the blame of crashing the ship, probably also to shove his guilt onto (forcing him to go through all the pain), and throughout their whole relationship he needs Curly to explain all his disgusting behaviour, and sweet-talk him out of trouble.
He Needs to keep Curly around, so he probably started of with a chill relationship, but then softly slipped into the ahole behaviour we know him for. Only slipping back into that chill when Curly starts to doubt him, like all good abusers do
Finally someone understands the actual game. I feel like media literacy barely exists so it's nice seeing someone get the actual point thank you!!
We are bringing it back one game at a time 😭
Who is misinterpreting this game? Where?
@@Jimgressmainly the 'toxic yaoi" mfs and the people who will focus on literally anyone except for the woman who's victimization is the foundation of the narrative
Curly's situation is far more complex than it might seem at first glance. To start with, it’s important to recognize that he couldn’t have done much in the first place, especially given the circumstances. They’ve all been stuck together on this spaceship for nearly a year, living in a confined and isolating environment. The news of Anya's pregnancy wasn’t something Curly had much time to process-she only told him about it a few days before the crash. This revelation must have been an emotional bombshell for him. On top of that, finding out that one of his closest friends, Jimmy, is an abuser would have completely shattered his perception of someone he likely trusted deeply. Curly was likely overwhelmed, blindsided, and grappling with how to respond.
It’s also worth noting that the timeline plays a significant role here. People criticize Curly for not acting sooner, but we genuinely don’t know what he would have done for Anya because, quite literally, the ship crashed the very same day he checked in on her. There was no opportunity for Curly to take meaningful action before the chaos of the crash took over. His conversation with Anya before this is also key: when he asked her something along the lines of “Was he angry?” or “Was he aggressive?”, it wasn’t just an idle question. That line suggests that Curly himself may have already experienced Jimmy’s abusive behavior or aggression before the crash. If that’s the case, then it adds another layer of complexity to his inaction-Curly may have already been conditioned to tread carefully around Jimmy, perhaps out of fear or a desire to avoid confrontation.
Besides, even if Curly had taken more direct action, there’s a strong likelihood it would have backfired. Jimmy already seemed volatile, and stepping in might have made him react with even more violence and hostility. It’s possible that Curly understood this and was trying to avoid escalating the situation further. Realistically, the only thing Curly-or even the rest of the crew-could have done was to quietly keep an eye on Anya and take steps to create distance between her and Jimmy. For example, they could have arranged Anya's sleeping schedule to ensure Jimmy was working during those hours, or found other ways to subtly minimize his presence around her. But again, this is all hypothetical-because the ship literally crashed before anything else could happen. There was no time for Curly or anyone else to put plans like these into motion, which makes it unfair to assume the worst about what he might or might not have done.
When you piece all of this together, it becomes clear that Curly’s actions-or lack thereof-are more nuanced than simple cowardice or indifference.’s easy to say that Curly should have stood up to Jimmy, but in reality, his emotional state and circumstances make his position far more sympathetic than it might initially appear.Which also lets be real thats how everyone would have reacted.Ultimately, it feels like many people are missing the deeper layers of Curly’s character. His story isn’t about him being a passive bystander-it’s about a person trying to navigate a deeply personal and distressing situation while trapped in a high-stress, no-escape environment. That’s why his reactions (or lack thereof) deserve more understanding and less judgment.
(but yeah Oml i love this video Analysis tho i appreaciate you for not jumping on the trend of liking Mouthwashing because its in trend but liking it for its deep story and complicated characters)
this is so true omg
he knew what kind of person jimmy was. knew he was dangerous and gave him that job
Like what someone else in the comments mentioned, maybe he could've let Anya sleep in the med bay because it can be locked. There's not much else he could've done, killing Jimmy wouldn't be a viable option because he's the co-pilot. So many people call Curly a villain in failing to protect Anya, but really, what was he supposed to do? Especially in that short time frame.
@@mallarielove It appears that Jimmy was, at one point, a good friend to Curly and had even tried to help him by offering him a job. From Curly’s perspective, it’s likely that he didn’t fully realize how cruel Jimmy could be. The extent of what Curly might have known about Jimmy’s aggressive tendencies seems to be limited to an awareness of his anger issues, rather than any clear understanding of abusive behavior.
@@FireGoddessRose On top of that i feel like Curly would have done more for Anya if there was more time yk? Because the crash literally happend a few days after Anya Told Curly about how terrible jimmy is.I think Curly tried to take action but he didnt have enough time before his body was completly curly fried.
There are signs that jimmy is the one who crashed the ship. In the prologue you operate the left set of commands in the cockpit, which are revealed to be jimmy's as he is sitting in the chair on the left during the psych eval with curly.
That is when I started to smell his bs at least. 😅
Yeah. Curly was in the cockpit trying to steer out of the asteroid’s path, Jimmy let him take the blame for his attempt to kill everyone, IIRC. The game had a bunch of subtle things going on, some people missed Anya’s pregnancy as a result of Jimmy raping her, other people missed that you were Jimmy when you crashed the ship because that’s his seat and it leads into… a maze-like prison full of ponies, he’s the one with the weird obsession with cartoon horses. Watched ManlyBadassHero’s play through, he caught it because of the horse thing, I caught it because of the seating, neither of us caught Anya’s thing but some people in the comments did, it’s not obvious, none of these things are, but they’re clear when someone else notices and points them out
I thought the point of Mouthwashing was "Don't be Jimmy. And if you are Jimmy, just skip to the ending and save everyone else the trouble."
I mean that's one way to look at it lol 😆
Well... If you think about it, yeah. Kinda. It's part of it.
I think the point is more “take responsibility for spotting and stopping people like Jimmy before the can hurt others, since they lack the capacity to do so themselves”
The message is for people like Curly, not people like Jimmy.
Sadly most of the people like Jimmy are already in government positions.
The message will never get through people like Jimmy because people like Jimmy are selfish psychopath who lack empathy and only think of themselves.
5:35 even then he doesn't even see it as a baby, it looks more like a bug or parasite
:O ur rightttt
Like most abusers, really. The abused: inferior to the abuser; and the product of the abuse: a parasite to the abuser’s life.
Which probably is also another reason why Jimmy crashed the ship. Not only will Anya report about the assault, (and if we imagine that Anya would prefer to keep the baby but most unlikely) Jimmy had to pay for child support too. Hence why the baby looks like a parasite.
God, I love Mouthwashing.
I like how Curly isn’t fully the hero, but he isn’t fully the villain! it makes him feel more human that way.
I don't agree that Anya should haunt the narrative after her death.
Only because as you said, the psychological stuff is in Jimmy's mind and I think if she haunted him more it would almost make him seem like a better person than he is.
She is however still there subtly through the mascot even having her same colored font. You could call that the dead pixel you mentioned.
Well she does haunt the narrative. Every step of the way. He continues to ignore her, to forget about that dead pixel in his view. But she's always there, and he ignores her every time.
The motif of horses are tied inextricably to Anya, she and her baby are the horses that haunt him.
@ Exactly. Even to your point, the fact that he views her as a horse dehumanizes her. The devolopers also confirmed that Jimmy destroyed the horse in the lounge area, which makes sense considering Jimmys lack of being able to face his own consequences.
someone i'm in a discord server with said that mouthwashing doesn't deserve a fandom because people can't handle this game. while its a pretty strong opinion (the analytical side of the fandom is absolutely awesome), i can understand the disappoint at seeing so many people reduce such an amazing game to stantwt memes. i cant imagine if rpg games like the crooked man or mad father had similar fandoms that joke about everything possible
now all of the meme community knows those exist, what have you done
I mean you don't have to imagine, that's just what happened to Omori
I'd get such whiplash if I ever stumbled onto any memes involving Misao, knowing what happened to the titular girl...
While I can empathize with people who feel that meme-ing on something serious is in bad taste and definitely understand the feeling of wanting serious subject matters to be taken seriously, in defense of the memes, they were actually what got me interested in learning about this game.
Psychological horror is not my genre and I can confidently say that even now this is not a game that I could ever play myself--like Omori, another popular and really emotionally taxing one--and so it's not a game that seeing casually really sparked my desire to pay attention to. But seeing the memes brought the game to a more accessible level for me. And in fact, I really enjoy listening to critical media analysis like this, and I never would have discovered the actual meaning of this game if not for the memes.
Like the person making this video said, just because people are making jokes doesn't mean they don't realize the gravity of what the subject matter is--sometimes people need that cope lol. And to add my perspective, memes definitely allow the game to reach an audience that wouldn't otherwise feel interested. Obviously, I'm sure there are people not taking it seriously, but I feel like it's more about perspective and which type of person you're centering.
I cannot stop watching analysis videos and responses to this game. So many tiny tidbits, including responses from the developers to otherwise innocuous fan questions, have revealed so much about the characters of this game, and I am so, so appreciative that they are multifaceted and no one is a perfect hero, nobody is a simple one-dimensional villain, there's so much to talk about and discuss for each character. I myself am team swansea and I even I can admit that he made a lot of poor choices, but ones that he thought were the least bad choice. Jimmy can rot in hell though, I've worked with so many men in my life EXACTLY like him- deluded into thinking that he was entitled to power over others, that he had any kind of authority to command, and then broke down when faced with the reality that being a leader didn't just mean everyone followed your every command. It's a tale as old as time but one that is very rarely portrayed with honesty... because the people doing the portraying are often that exact kind of guy. Real leadership means you SERVE the people who you lead, most of all. Curly might've understood this, but jimmy never could.
You're so right about Jimmy! And swansea is dad, like a realistic dad 😭
Yeah this fandom is on a high dose of Copeium to get through the devastation this game wrought XD I do wish Anya had been given as much weight as Daisuke and Swansea were but I get that part of the reason why is that its the point so yeah. What i dont think I appreciate is the depiction of Curly as a doll or object that kind of gets UWU ified like a pet or treated like a ragdoll in a way but otherwise yeah I am enjoying our brand of Copeium XD
Yeah without our copium we'd have to face the Horrors(tm)
I keep seeing the little like Chibi”cute” curly drawings and it looks like cute in a chibi style but bro irl he would probably be screaming for help and in pain
I have not seen that Curly, I kinda want it instead of all the angst, post-mouthwashing hc animatics and stuff I get :/ I wanna see the crew (not J****) get a happy ending 😢
Curly definitely DOES NOT LIVE. He will be frozen for 20 years at most and then thaw out and die in the pod alone.
The company went under before the crash and now the ship is stuck on some random asteroid who knows where in space. Full of something nobody really cared about. Mouthwash. There’s not even a reason to try and find them. He is well and truly screwed having been witness to everything. The only one of the crew who truly knew what happened.
On top of that, his too little too late attempt to “fix” a problem is what leads to the game as a whole. If jimmy really got what he wanted they all would’ve died the instant it crashed. But he did just enough to cause even more damage. Even with that in mind curly definitely didn’t deserve any of what was done to him.
I can dream 😭
Have you seen the prequel game 'How fish are made' curly is confirmed to be in cryostatis for 10 years, at the end this fish (us) will try eating him, its implied he died😭
I honestly hate the lack of media literacy surrounding this game. Most youtubers play horror games and absorb them passively, I noticed a lot of male youtubers I watch and admire fail to see the point, or if they did, not bring it up. Some people act like because it's not directly confirmed in the canon, it means there was no SA behind the scenes. It's insane what men will say to avoid taking responbility.
I’ve watched Joel Vinesauce and EmortalMarkcus (both men) play the game and they both immediately understood what happened and empathized with Anya 😭🩷
Too bad still there’s a sea of males who can’t be bothered
@@Lasagna_Garfield_ To add to your list, Pezzy, EddieVR, And Kubz Scouts got it as well!
@@Lasagna_Garfield_ kubzscouts and moistcritikal also figured it out!
@@Lasagna_Garfield_ Kwite too!
Dont start that shit women do it to
“In my favourite AU called, the voices in my head” Girl me too.
Also, Curly going to talk to Jimmy directly after Anya told him he raped her has the same effect as a teacher or principal going to talk to a bully after the victim finally had the courage to speak. It solves nothing and only enables the bully to be harsher on the victim, especially when the one who was supposed to stop the abuse failed by not taking proper action.
YOU'RE LITERALLY SO UNDERRATED WHAAATT
im glad people are actually talking about the message of the game, both its commentary on capitalism and the psychology of the charactersss
Thank you for watchingggg ❤️
I think this is related to fandomism (lol, I just invented this word XD). What I mean is that fandoms often simplify some aspects or character traits in order to fit them into their fanons.
Just like overly idolizing Swansea as this "Dad of the group" and ignoring his flaws, or creating toxic yaoi fan arts of Curly (both pre and after crush) and J*mmy because..... why the fuck not?
It's weird, but sometimes people like to simplify or ignore some aspects for their own comfort.
Yeah this is one of the times I don't think we should be shipping characters 😭😭😭
Yeah this was the reason that I was fucking horrified when I realized, after watching a video essay on the game, that this thing had a FANDOM. Modern fandom culture is NOT equipped for a story like this.
Would "flanderization" be a fitting term for what you're describing?
Sans Syndrome.
@@jesse3525Yeah, pretty much.
This might be a weird suggestion, but to be honest, I kinda want like a spin off of the first game, right but it’s like the perspective of Anya. She’s such a complex character right and Jimmy just made her into some fragile character. She’s clearly more than just a fragile piece. She’s literally so complex.
That would be so interesting i definitely can see it!
A lot of fandom, be it horror or not, end up with the problem of "...this person is evil... why are you making excuses for them and/or trying to bang them?" or "how did you miss the entire point and come away thinking [evil group] is actually good?"
Boiling down characters, erasing nuance too
I think there's something you missed about Anya and the narrative of Mouthwashing, and how in truth she haunts Jimmy more than anyone else. Someone already pointed out that Polle himself IS Anya while also being a representation of the baby, but I'd like to explore this further. To understand what Polle truly means, we need first to have full understanding of Jimmy, the Pony Express and his true motivations. As nobody is born a villain, what was it that made Jimmy become one?
In Pony Express and the capitalist dystopia of Mouthwashing, all that matters is if you can perform your job, no matter what. You are constantly exploited, underpaid, living in conditions nobody deserves to live, your humanity does not matter to them, you are nothing but a tool, you are meaningless. It's not too far fetched to say Jimmy was born in bad conditions, too, as not only have his struggle on Earth and position in the corporate ladder been stated in the game, in the Q&A they reveal Jimmy doesn't have hobbies, because he can't afford them. Be it because he cannot afford to waste time, or literally because he does not have money to afford better things, both bring you to the same answer: he has lived his life exploited by capitalism and cannot afford anything but look for a better life.
Why do I need to say all that? Because that is his true motivation: under this bitter and evious person is someone who has had no control over his life, as it was taken from him by the reality of capitalism. As it was taken from him by the Pony Express. Something he constantly looks to regain by taking it from others. Besides his clear associations with the want for control throughout the game, he has clearly stated he likes Tulpar because of the control they have that, even if minuscule, is better than what he had on Earth. To Jimmy, Polle, as first and foremost a mascot of the corporation, means control. Control that is not his. Control that he has lost.
As we all know how the story goes, Jimmy gained control over Anya, becoming the dead pixel in her once beautiful night sky. Always there, haunting, nobody else can see it just as clearly as her, it cannot be ignored no matter how much she tries. A singular dead pixel is enough to feel like you have lost control over everything in your life. Desperate, so desperate to get it back, to go back to how it was. She later learns of her pregnancy, and it only furthers this hopelessness of getting it back. She tells Jimmy, now he has also lost control of the situation - Then comes Polle, not as the control of Pony Express, but the control of the baby, the control of Anya, because he cannot ever get the same control over her he did before.
Every time Polle appears is a reminder. A reminder that Jimmy cannot control it all. To Jimmy, Polle is the baby, yes, but Polle is also Anya. She sleeps next to Polle after the crash - it is her way of trying to have as much control as she can in this horrible situation where she has to sleep next to her abuser: Polle will speak if anyone gets close. Jimmy hates Polle. Jimmy breaks Polle; As Anya locks herself in the med bay, Jimmy has to face Polle to get the mouthwash: silently. Don't make any noise. You will have your control back as long as you do just that. Else, Polle will get you, Polle will control you, Polle will eat you alive; As Jimmy talks to Polle, he speaks like his son, but he speaks in Anya's color. The night sky-Anya's night sky-shines brightly behind Polle. She has gained control over Jimmy, even if only in his memories. She is his dead pixel now. Always there, haunting, nobody else can see it just as clearly as him, it cannot be ignored no matter how much he tries. And he tries, he sure does; As almost every single of Anya's cards has her face covered, you can see that there's a single one that isn't. Like a single dead pixel. Haunting.
Jimmy has no control, as much as he tried throughout the whole game, he does not have control. Jimmy has no control, because of the baby, because of Anya. Even if he does not care for her, caring more about a baby that was never born, even if he tries not to think of her face, Anya is there haunting him in every single moment. And now he has to take responsibility. But he can't, so he will try to regain control in any way until his death.
Anya is there. She has always been. Despite everything.
5:28 i think i saw this in a risely video but basically he knows he made a mistake, but he thinks his mistake was the baby, not what he did. jimmy is an absolutely horrible piece of human trash but god he is written so well.
8:33 I think they also could’ve left Anya out because of how human and real this horror is, there are people like Jimmy that get away with the horrible things they did without feeling remorse so another horror in the story is that he never faces consequences
Definitely unfortunately
I don't actually mind the memes per say - because I'm in a lot of fandoms that involve particularly dark topics and funny memes are par for the course - but one thing that does particularly annoy me with the fandom are some of them refusing to actually say Jimmy's name. Jokes about Jimmy being P-Diddy, going "cw/tw: Jimmy," or saying "so sorry you had to draw him" to artists. Rape culture operates partly on people refusing to acknowledge that rape even happens at all. This happens w/ people defending rapists directly or indirectly (Curly) but it also happens with people straught up refusing to even say the assaulter's name or dancing around what they did. He's a monster, yes, but it's a game about taking responsibility and addressing SA and rape culture, say the names of the people directly responsible!
This is really interesting i didn't think about it that way you're so right!
While I do see where you're coming from, I'm also an artist. I like drawing things that I like. I like mouthwashing, I like (most) of the characters and I want to draw them happy. I don't want to draw a rapist happy, or in a semblance of a positive light. Drawing Jimmy would take time that I could use drawing someone I like. Ppl saying sorry for drawing Jimmy to artists all the time is annoying, but many artists don't want to draw a rapist and feel their sentiments apply to everyone.
Absolutely agree on everything else
The main thing is, we aren't dancing around what Jimmy did, nor is it meant to protect or censor, because it's meant to be a joke. Most people who refuse to say his name most likely still say his name but butcher it ironically in comments to basically say "I hate Jimmy so much his name doesn't compute", kind of like how Schlatts name keeps getting butchered purposefully for the sake of the joke that he did something in '99.
The "I'm sorry you had to draw Jimmy" is also an ironic joke, nobody actually believes that Jimmy shouldn't be drawn or animated, it's just another form of sarcasm towards the character of Jimmy in that he sucks so much that he doesn't deserve even a kids drawing.
The thing is hes not real. Yes say the names of real r*pists but like i dont see the harm of saying Jambalaya instead of jimmy. Also, its a joke to further show how the fandom hates him so much we dont even respect his name. I dont know why u guys make it so deep😭 no offense of course but while i understand fiction can translate to real life i dont think the joke is harmful
This is a VERY ignorant take. The joke is not that they want to rip responsibility away from Jimmy, the joke is Jimmy is SO horrible, they don’t even want to say his name and want to apologize to the artist for having to draw a 🍇ist.
i really dislike how people blame jimmy's wrongdoings on mental illness. don't get me wrong, he IS mentally ill, but being mentally ill does not make you commit violent crimes nor does it make you manipulate the people around you. implying that both comes off as excusing jimmy and demonizing the mentally ill.
jimmy did the things he did because the world around him, especially curly, facilitated him with the ability to get away with it and not feel bad instead of directing him towards rehab.
jimmy being mentally ill is largely a storytelling device, not a driving force. the only meaningful thing that would change were he sane is that he would have realized there was no hope and killed everyone to bury his tracks, and even that's a stretch
i agree in the dlc its hinted that jimmy had trouble with the law before on earth so its already known to curly the dude has some problems, but he just enabled them :( jimmy’s issues were brushed off and allowed to flourish until it was too late, similarly jimmy had the agency to not do what he did but he continued, there was failures on almost everyone’s part (aside from anya and i guess daisuke somewhat since we dont know how much he knew)
@@jasmines205 i don't think swansea or anya would have told daisuke honestly. he's an adult for sure, but swansea kind of perceives him as a kid (mostly because swansea's old) and i don't think either of them would think he could do anything about it. they both seem to perceive him as incompetent
@rockeyy6402 poor dude was left in the dark until the end. tbh if he knew how much of a monster jimmy was maybe it couldve saved him from the manipulation that killed him but we’ll never know sadly
I'm not defending jimmy at all but you're wrong. Mental illness is an important factor behind violent actions and I mean generally. Again, not defending jimmy
@@superior5792 jimmy's mental illness seems to manifest in delusions and hallucinations. you could argue for aspd but i wouldn't say so, he does seem to care about other people's problems or at least show some sort of uncomfortability about them (excluding anya because he doesn't see her as a person), he just refuses to take any blame for it. i don't think any of these symptoms actually could have pushed him to commit violent crimes. maybe they played a part in his thought process, but he would have needed a far stronger driving force to want to do anything he did. personally i think this driving force was him being sculpted into a wretched and selfish legacy-obsessed weasel by the world around him and picking up some awful beliefs about women, consent, sex, manhood, etc. along the way. he would still do most of it if he was sane, he just wouldn't be so flowery about it
I feel like Curly is great because a lot of people could likely see themselves in his position. He just wanted to keep the peace, he didn't want to come to terms with reality because that would make him uncomfortable. "Everything will be fine", all we have to do is get along
The dead pixel conversation is also a great because it shows the analogy between his inability to see the dead pixel with his inability to see the problem
As long as he doesn't see it, it doesn't exist. And even if he did, it'll be okay
Curly is too nice, and that's what makes him "bad". He is complacent because all he wants are for his perceptions to be verified. Everyone is happy, everyone is getting along, there is nothing wrong, we're all in this together
When Jimmy said that Curly wanted to "leave the dirt behind while his boots were clean", it was clearly an act of manipulation to cause Curly to double down on voicing his care for his crew. Reinforcing the idea in Curly's head that he cares about Jimmy and wont turn his back on him
I want to imagine he thought of them as family, and he couldnt bring himself to tear it apart
Thats why I think the unreliable narrator in this game is so good. The game wants you to think exacty like Curly and Jimmy. "Everything will be fine" (even though Curly was preventing it from being so) and "I'll take care of this" (even though Jimmy is the one that caused the problems in the firat place). I think an underlying message is that Curly tries to take on too much responsibility while Jimmy tries to run away from it. In fact, notice how Curly's "everything will be fine" mentality reflects Jimmy's avoidance of responsibility, while Jimmy's "I'll take care of it" reflects Curly's desire to solve everyones problems and make them feel at peace
It makes the ending that much more tragic. The piece of shit removes himself of the ability to ever take responsibility, while the complacent mediator is forced by that piece of shit to potentially live on unable to do anything but watch
In the end they died how they lived
One always running, and the other only watching
Wait that being a manipulation tactic by Jimmy? My mind is blown
the moon in that scene definitely represents anya to some extent, the polle statue has her text color and the moon it's self is often portrayed to be a divine feminine or as having feminine qualities
"But Jimmy can't because Jimmy's a f-ing loser!" closely followed by "Curley pitied Jimmy in a way that didn't help the situation at all" really sums up the entire game. Thank you for eating with this lol.
Jay actually got to the point of the story wherein Anya as an SA victim didn't get justice and how Jimmy is an abuser who 'til the end didn't feel any remorse as to what he has done
Of course Curly didn't see Jimmy as a threat. He didn't even think the dead pixel ruined "the big picture".
He believes that you're not defined by your worst moments.
Anya doesn't.
As a Tumblr girlie I completely agree with you on the point of tailoring your own content/internet experience. I’m in love with the jjk smau (jujutsu kaisen social media au for those unfamiliar) tag, but there’s this trend of every so often a person making a post complaining about there “not being enough written stories/everyone is doing smau now” and it’s so tiring. Block and filter the content girlie, make the content you want by yourself even! Tumblr is the epitome of curating your internet experience. Just so annoying to have people come into a specific tag to complain about said tag. Why would you go into a space you don’t like or want to gatekeep just to complain that said space is not to your specific tastes. It’s absurd.
One thing that Curly could have done to prevent this from happening is sending Jimmy to the cryopods for the duration of the trip. If Anya was already pregnant from Jimmy assaulting her then both can be sent to the cryopods. The cryopods can help Anya not go through with the pregnancy, and only be let out if she is needed as a nurse. Jimmy should have been in a cryopod until he can face the consequences of his actions. That is my immediate idea of what curly could have done to make things better. If Jimmy did not want to go to the pod, the gun, the axe, and the other 4 workers could have been enough to force Jimmy into the pod.
I wonder if he would have been allowed to 😭 the pony express is so evil they'd be like "that's extra electricity money"
Pony Express probably would’ve written it off as a ‘misuse of an emergency resource’ and docked their pay, unfortunately.
The thing I was wondering is, if Anya was put in a pod, would the pregnancy just be on pause?? That's my main concern/question
@@AlleyDreamer Pony Express did give the captain a gun. I can only assume that it was explicitly meant for situations like this. His captain training probably had at least a small section about dealing with violent crew members considering they make all employees do psych evaluations.
But also who would have been piloting the ship? One person should not be in charge of piloting an entire ship by themself, and Curly would not have been able to pilot the ship and also manage the crew at the same time.
I watched CoryxKenshin’s playthrough of Mouthwashing, and while he was playing as Jimmy, he said “I already don’t like my character.”😭😭😭
On one of the polle posters it says that any conflict between crew members will result in everyone getting a pay deduction, I like to think that that is part of the reason why Curly was so insistent on handling this internally, it’s obviously not an excuse for his behaviour but I think pony expresses policies are a factor when it comes to how he treated Anya
I’m a little biased because I see a chunk of myself in Curly (I don’t like that, but if my autistic hyperempathy is going to kick in for one of the characters, at least it’s not Jimmy), but I’m torn between “he should’ve done something considerably more drastic” and “but what would that realistically be?”
Because I can definitely relate to the almost toxic optimism and wanting to believe the best of people (it’s actually Anya’s line that sticks with me: “I have to believe that people’s worst moments don’t make them monsters”, and with who she saying it to at the time is just…). And while it’s kind of eye rolling to see the soft hints that were being given that can be picked up on, like the safety talk, that went straight over Curly’s head, I can also be a little bit obtuse and wonder if I would’ve picked up on it then if I didn’t have the extra context? I definitely would’ve asked why she brought that up just because that seems like an odd thing, but I don’t know that I would immediately be like oh no something definitely happened.
And I might’ve been reading it wrong, but I read Curly’s talk with Jimmy (especially after he asked Anya why she didn’t wait for Curly to break the pregnancy news to Jimmy [implying he wanted to be there to back her up] and then asking if Jimmy was mad) as a peacekeeping/appeasement stress response to make sure he didn’t do anything dangerous. Which, yeah. I’ve read other people hypothesizing that their friendship was not terribly healthy and Jimmy regularly treated/spoke to Curly the way he did in the game rather than just that being a couple of rough times, which would suggest that he’s already been conditioned by Jimmy.
Also, with the timing, if I did my math right (and I might not have because I am bad at that), Curly had 3 days at most to realize what Jimmy did to Anya before Everything Went Wrong. Another person pointed out that it would be difficult to do a complete 180 on someone who up until just then you trusted and who was your friend, and that’s typically something that people need a little bit of time to process. And then you throw in the whole no one is getting an adequate amount of sleep and Curly appears to be getting habitually less than that, which could explain why it takes so long for him to figure subtler things out and his wholesale disassociation after Jimmy’s weird villain speech before he crashes the ship. People really don’t think about how important sleep is. 24 hours without sleep is the same as being legally drunk, and constant lack of sleep builds up.
Curly is an immediate topical fixer (if Jimmy doesn’t take the psych evaluations seriously and is stressing out Anya, Curly will give the evaluation rather than having to sit down and explaining why we should all respect each other’s time and not make each other uncomfortable with weird jokes) and someone who gets things too late or just not quite right (wow, Anya definitely should have been getting psych evaluations, too! Yeah bud, but that’s not the main problem here, try again).
I have no idea why he decided to tell them they were going to be terminated from their jobs, though. Like, dude, bad call that could easily have been avoided.
This is a long winded way of saying that I can see how Curly would make these mistakes, especially since some of his stress responses are similar to mine. Then again, I’m not the captain of a ship, so the fact that I’m not sure how much better I could have doesn’t let Curly off the hook.
Also, thank you for including the bit about disability as punishment being very ick because it is really uncomfortable seeing people talk about how it was karmic justice or whatever :/
Edited for autowrong
Regarding what he could have done about Jimmy, most people bring up that Curly could have locked Jimmy in one of the cryo-pods so he's completely incapacitated until they get back to Earth. He also could have let Anya sleep in the medbay.
@@SolaireHighwind
Assuming it’s not something that Pony Express would penalize them for (and even then just have a talk with folks about the importance of making sure that the one medic on the ship is in whatever mental state she needs to be to do her job as best she can being worth slightly less money) or assuming you could get Jimmy into the cryiopod(/balance the idea of what if there is another emergency because you’re already down a pod or just how important is a copilot? Would that cut even more into Curly’s sleep?), those are very good options! He did at least let Anya keep the gun hidden (another passive action, but…). Though I think he could’ve gone a step further by giving her the bullets. That would nullify any potential danger to her via the gun, while making the gun as harmless as possible. I personally wouldn’t give her the gun even without the bullets because whipping a gun out immediately escalates the situation, and if someone called her bluff, that would be very bad, whereas if someone pulled the gun out and did not get the reaction, he was expecting or attempted to pull the trigger and nothing happened, then he’s the one who surprised and in a compromised position.
But I think that one took me several hours if not a whole day to figure out. And even if Curly suggested it, Anya might’ve refused, assuming he would just take the gun right back (and I don’t blame her; she’s scared, and Curly hasn’t exactly been quick on the pick up before and she might not be sure how much she can trust him even if I don’t peg him as a habitual liar, because there is a very small margin of error for her in her decision-making).
I think the easiest thing to do is ask Anya directly what she wants done. When she says she needs to hide the gun, it’s clear she feels unsafe; you don’t even need to entirely realize what happened to her to take the correct course of action. Some people just aren’t meant to be in positions of power, and Curly certainly wasn’t. Hiring a friend means being cognizant of the fact that your relationship will change from equal friends to captain and employee (still friends but power shift). That change never happened with Curly and Jimmy. He never took full responsibility for Jimmy as an authority figure until the ability to take it was stripped from him forcibly.
Ultimately, better training could’ve stopped this; barring that, better communication with Anya could’ve stopped this; barring that, consulting with any of the other crew members like Swansea could’ve stopped this in less than 3 days. At least you recognize now that you wouldn’t have the level of judgement needed to be captain. Curly trying his best to be a good friend instead of a good captain was his downfall, sadly.
@@SolaireHighwind Would be trickier to get back to earth without the copilot, unfortunately.
Although I don't think Curly was a really bad guy, I do think the state we find him in is a form of karmic retribution. This isn't because he necessarily was so terrible of a human being but because he indirectly did it to himself. I used to think that karma or justice was always supposed to be a moment to rejoice. However, I think it could also be used as more of a tragic turn of events. Essentially, you can't give back what was lost, nor can you take away the pain so all that's left is the comfort that the one who was responsible for it is suffering just as much as victim. To me, that sounds very tragic. I once thought that Curly was too optimistic or nice, but he really was just wilfully ignorant. He was put in a position where he had to hold his close friend accountable to his heinous crimes, and he couldn't do it. He was as much of a coward as Jimmy was. Jimmy couldn't take responsibility for his actions, and Curly couldn't take responsibility of his friend. I find the fact that what exactly happened to Anya was told more subtly adds a lot to the tragedy of the story. It makes us relate to Curly in the worst way. The signs were always there, but we just didn't see it. Anyone who has played through and still defends Jimmy is more like Curly than they care to admit or understand.
Ooo yes hard agree!
I think not so many people defend Jimmy. In the game he is presented so obviously scummy you need to be like Jimmy (not Curly) to actually defend THIS guy.
But many people in this fandom, on the other hand, defend Curly and for me they look like Curly when he’s trying to defend Jimmy. “Curly is so nice!”, “Curly had no other options!”, “Curly is just too optimistic and naive!” They try to justify Curly’s actions and downplay his role in this whole mess when Curly was treating Jimmy as a victim after Anya multiple times told him how Jimmy raped her.
I don’t think Curly is much of the monster as Jimmy is but he isn’t a good guy. He was wilfully ignorant about Jimmy and paid the price for that.
@artyom-ovsepyan you get it
THANK YOU.
There’s also the fact that the friends we choose say a lot about us. Befriend a psychopath and you’re at best a spineless pushover, and at worst an enabler with psychopathic tendencies yourself.
1:26 it's anya :((
Same she's also my favorite
me too
me too
@@oliveriscoolerthanu7834hole fan?
noo, it’s daisuke😡
If the narrative is from Jimmy's perspective, you'd have to have remorse in order to be haunted by something. Anya being a ghost in Jimmy's mind and haunting the narrative wouldn't make sense, he didn't care.
I think curly and the talk about locks also speaks to his naivety because he can understand people stealing things or using things they shouldn't but he doesn't seem to grasp that humans themselves can be the biggest threat and are more valuable than the things behind the only locked doors. but also the company doesn't see people as the more valuable property on this ship either.
When the fandom pulls out Actor AUs , thats when you know the game was devastating.
This is the most complex and poetic game I've ever seen
8:20 in the segment where you walk through the hallway with all the ID's, if you look close enough you can see anya's id, but it is always covered by either swansea's or daisuke's. so i think that's that "back of the mind" detail you were talking about
Ooo fun fact
There is another game the devs did where we litterally see Curly
The games about fish
Uhhhhhhhh what it called
Just some frecky horror game about a fish journey to death but Curly is physically there and his duologue really tells you what he's thinking
There isn't any of Jimmy's influence so you get the raw and unfiltered thoughts
"How fish is made"
THATS THE GAME
Oh I remember that game! How fish is made! I gotta go back and look at it!
@@AlleyDreamer
The devs really cooked with how good that duologue is in relation to Mouthwash ✨
There's also some fishes (2) that resemble Swansea and Disuke
One quite litterally looks like Swansea so you'll know when you see him
And as usual, Curly didn’t give a damn about Anya, just like Jimmy.
At least on the surface because the concept of the game itself (Up and Down: the illusion of choice) is Anya.
For me, I feel like how Anya is just completely missing in the later parts of the game is actually really important. Jimmy doesn’t bother to even think about the terrible thing he did. He bothers to think about the consequences of that thing. Therefore, we get three points of an abuser’s perspective that are often times not portrayed as well as they are here:
1. The baby. It represents the consequences of his actions, something he fears, something that can bring harm to him.
2. Anya. She represents the past, and a victim’s trauma. He doesn’t care to think about how his actions have hurt her, especially since she isn’t important in his eyes- she cannot hurt him.
3. Curly. A representation of how abuse can follow you. He’s been there for Jimmy in the past, he’s known him for a while, and Jimmy knows him very well as a person. He is this continuous presence that even though mostly dehumanized, is still very prevalent. His treatment stands for how quickly someone can become dangerous towards you, even if you don’t think they will.
This is just how I read the whole perspective from Jimmy- I’m not saying everything I said is canon.
The sentiment that “we can do both, i promise” is so real-genuinely i think we are OBLIGATED to do both, recognizing the gravity and seriousness of the source material while simultaneously creating fan art and headcannons which allow Anya to be her own, real person. So much of the story revolves around the trauma inflicted onto her and the way her personhood feels minimized by that trauma, it’s entirely contradictory to the main message of the story for fans to turn around and say “nooo you can’t imagine her being happy or being a three-dimensional person!!! she has to be defined by the ways men in her life have failed and abused her!!!” We align ourselves entirely with Jimmy when we allow ourselves to relegate Anya to an object whose sole purpose is to be used, as that is exactly what he did to her.
The best thing this game did was show just how easy it can be to unknowingly enable evil to happen. Most of the time it’s displayed as a lack of empathy for the affected parties or because the ignorance benefits the enabler, but here Curly had the best intentions in his mind. He was just focused on what was best for EVERYONE, instead of what was best for the one person that needed it most. Never think you know everything about someone you know, because you don’t and never will.
i kinda like how anya is not shown as although i understand it would be nice to see anya haunting jimmy in some way this is all in jimbobs mind and we can clearly see he cared so little of anya she does not even have any room in his nightmare and it just further proves that jimmy cant take responsibility of what he did to her so much so he cant even conjure a version of her in his mind unlike daisuke and swansea where you could maybe see a bit of remorse over thier deaths. the story at least gameplay wise is completely subjective and subjective in jimbobs mind
A thing about the mouthwash, it has too much sugar it so it is basically useless but it feels like it does something from the alcohol burn.
Curly should have handled the issue. should have contained Jimmy ASAP the moment it became clear what was going on. should have shoved his ass in one of the cryo units. but he was sweet to jimmy, so Jimmy as the disease grew on that sugar.
Yesss!
Another problem, though, that complicated things further was that Jimmy was the copilot. With the other three knowing only what they know, and everyone running off of five-hour sleep scheduling, that would've left Curly having to sacrifice sleep to keep the Tolpar going. And considering how they were still the better part of a year away from their destination...the crew was still screwed, even if they had isolated Jimmy into a cryopod.
Anya’s absence in the later parts of the narrative is really effective to me because it’s SO jarring, like even in the scene with all the IDs, the very few of hers her face is always covered with Jimmy’s ID. When she’s dead the screen even glitches on her so he doesn’t have to deal with anything about her. Her not being there is so off that it makes you go “wait, why isn’t she there” and makes Jimmy’s lack of care for her all the more horrifying. Like it would be satisfying for him to be haunted by her but he’s too much of an asshole to even have that. It feels like a really intentional choice to make Jimmy’s lack of care for Anya so much stronger rather than an oversight :)
The whole of the game reminds me of the quote: "Young men need to be socialized in such a way that rape is as unthinkable to them as cannibalism." - Mary Phipher
I watched a playthrough of Mouthwashing for the first time last night and I was absolutely blown away by the storytelling, the characters, the depth of plot and dialogue.. just brilliant 😱
This video was suggested today and I'm so glad that I decided to check it out!!
Loved your analysis, smashing subscribe! 💕