Mouthwashing Analysis - Blog Posts

Genuine question but does post-crash Curly have an eyelid??

Sure there’s a whole meaning about now he’s forced to watch the consequences of his actions of letting Jimmy run around the ship after previously ignoring it and turning a blind eye (see what I did there). Now that he’s made a choice the game makes damn sure he sticks with it.

There is nothing left for him to do but watch what he has allowed to happen because his eye is the only thing he can really use on his own. He’s now a spectator in his own body, forced by Jimmy to take the pills, forced by Jimmy to eat his own flesh and forced by him to stay alive. Jimmy is the captain now and makes almost every choice for him, whether he wants that or not. The monster he allowed or just down right ignored (whether or not Curly could’ve actually done anything is actually difficult to say because of the way Pony express is and also the limited options on the ship. Be 100 percent aware I don’t completely blame curly in the slightest!!!) is now his saviour of sorts. And he has to live with the fact that he is only alive because Jimmy let him. That all he can do is watch the man that massacred his friends and caused their deaths save his life. You’re saved by the people you save.

But also his eye must be fucking dry?? Like eyeballs are no joke they gotta stay moist and if you don’t blink bacteria will start climbing in there and rooting around as they do after like a few weeks let alone a few days

ALSO THIS IS A VIDEO GAME SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF AND ALL THAT STUFF !!!!

(Also reached my first 100 likes a couple days ago!! Thank you guys so much hehe)

I don’t think you really get a real sense of what Anya is like as her own person. STAY WITH ME PLEASE THIS IS NOT AN ANYA HATE POST I LOVE HER!!

It’s just that she’s under so much emotional stress due to being around her abuser and also being pregnant that we never get to see who Anya is. She’s always on edge and nervous (for 100 percent good reason !!) Plus being through the perspective of Jimmy mainly doesn’t help us seen who she really is.

We don’t see her as a capable and competent nurse because of the way Jimmy frames her, the way he talks about her when in his perspective and the way he treats her. I didn’t really think about how capable a nurse she was because it’s hard to keep somebody in Curly’s conditions ALIVE with limited resources because it’s never mentioned by Jimmy even once. All he sees are her faults because it allows him to feel better about what he did to her, allows him to just see her as not really a human who has prospects and a good future in nursing ahead of her.

Jimmy just wants to take everything from her that could’ve made her human in his eyes so he can feel better about what he did, so he doesn’t feel guilt and doesn’t feel the need to take responsibility. He acknowledges Curly being a ‘hero’ and a good person and (not sure if this an actual quote from the game or if I’m just stupid) that he can’t be half the man Curly was and that’s only because he believes that’s something he can ‘fix’ by putting him in the cryochamber.

ANYWAY main point is that Jimmy is unreliable narrator and attempts to take away Anya’s achievements by not acknowledging them so he can view her simply as an object which lets him feel better about what he did.

something about mouthwashing that has always bothered me is the cake-baking scene. where the game’s dialogue is usually very realistic, this scene feels… weird. the dialogue is unnatural and too video-gamey. anya, swansea, and jimmy are telling curly things he should already know for the player’s benefit, such as the backstory for the communal birthday parties and how to bake the cake. it’s strange. but i think i’ve finally figured it out!

We start with Daisuke. “Look at your face!” suggests that Curly’s reaction to being surprise-birthday’d was an expression of shock. This is supported by Jimmy later apologizing to Curly for jumping him like that.

Back to the present. Curly, who tends to use fewer filler words comparatively, uses the word “uh” twice in two lines. “Uh. Wow,” followed by:

I wanna talk about this question for a minute. Let’s look at the scene. Curly can see the birthday party decorations from his position. Curly knows the approximate date off the top of his head, according to the dead pixel scene, so he should know it’s around his birthday. Curly has also undoubtedly experienced many Pony Express birthday parties before. All this to say, why the hell is he asking what the occasion is? It should be pretty obvious, no?

The answer is dissociation.

We know from Curly’s POV introduction that he spaces out in conversation, and that Anya is aware of this. This lasts to the point where he’s staring off at nothing until Anya asks if he’s listening.

He also appears to dissociate during his conversation with Jimmy before the crash: he stops talking completely until prompted by Jimmy to respond and doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening (Jimmy tells him everyone on the ship should die and Curly seemingly agrees, only to very clearly be upset and in shock when Jimmy goes and makes this happen).

Now, Jimmy, Anya, and Swansea have known Curly for years. Seems pretty reasonable that they would be able to recognize signs of his dissociation, yeah? And they do.

Again, these are things that Curly should absolutely know. I believe Anya and Jimmy saw the facial expression that Daisuke referred to and noticed Curly’s inexplicable confusion and realized he was dissociating. They then informed him of the details of the situation while posing it as a question, likely in an attempt to ground him. Anya ends her information with “right?” while Jimmy ends his with “remember?” This allows them to give Curly the information he isn’t grasping in a gentle way that doesn’t call attention to the fact that this is something he should already know.

Anya then gives him more direct instruction by telling him where the cake recipe is (again, a thing he should absolutely know considering he eats in that kitchen every day) and lightly tells him to go make it. She’s guiding him to a task that he would ordinarily be able to complete on his own because she can tell that he’s unsure and out of it.

Swansea—who, while not as close to Curly as Jimmy and not as attentive to the crew’s mental wellbeing as Anya, has known the captain for years— does the same thing, more directly. He asks Curly about the cake recipe and tells him where to find the ingredients and recipe. Again, Curly should absolutely know this already, but for some reason he isn’t doing it on his own.

From the crew’s perspective, if you as Curly choose to engage in this optional dialogue, Anya and Jimmy told Curly to go make the cake, and instead of doing that Curly wandered quietly around the lounge. Brought on, probably, by this dissociative episode. So Swansea reminds Curly what he’s supposed to be doing and where to go to do it.

(While Jimmy and Anya are consistently shown to be in tune to Curly’s emotions (Jimmy moreso pre-crash), Swansea typically is not; however, he’s standing near Anya during this segment, meaning she had the opportunity to tell him what she’d noticed.)

Now, an interesting thing about Curly’s optional conversations with the rest of the crew here: He doesn’t say anything during them. This is a little odd, considering Curly is a fairly social character. He does have other optional interactions where he doesn’t respond, but those are typically after he’s just had a back-and-forth with the other person or where you’re able to respond nonverbally (such as closing/opening the door to Utility when Jimmy jokes about it). But for the most part, Curly does respond to what others say.

Not here, though. He can drift between Daisuke, Anya and Swansea, and Jimmy, but he doesn’t say a word apart from when Jimmy notices his silence and prompts him to speak.

Even then, he just agrees with Jimmy without any indication that he processed what Jimmy said. If you go for Jimmy’s second optional dialogue, Curly once again has no response.

All this to say—

This post was not made to demonstrate any overarching story element. Honestly, I kinda thought I was stringing conclusions together. But now that it’s all down? It… kinda makes sense. This is consistent with Curly’s character, with Anya’s and Jimmy’s dynamics with Curly, and with the typically excellent, human, non-meta dialogue Mouthwashing utilizes in all other scenes.

It works down to the little details, such as Daisuke being the only one who doesn’t have weird dialogue here; he’s only known Curly a few months and is probably less in tune to the captain’s mannerisms. (Plus the crew tends not to tell him about anything serious.) Furthermore, dissociation can be caused by stress, and Curly is VERY stressed in this scene, preoccupied as he is with needing to tell the crew about the termination. His flavor text during this scene demonstrates that pretty well; his flavor text is much more cynical than his norm and often leads to him thinking about the termination rather than what he’s supposed to be doing.

Is there a possibility that I’m completely wrong? Of course. But I finally have a plausible explanation for something that has been bugging me for months, so I’m satisfied.

hope you enjoyed today’s episode of MOUTHWASHING THEORY TO FILL A PLOT HOLE THAT NO ONE EXCEPT MY PEDANTIC ASS THINKS ABOUT <3

If I said anything wrong re: dissociation or if you have another Watsonian explanation for why this scene is written so oddly, please do feel free to share!

OP, I LOVE YOU

Mouthwashers, read this immediately

You took my thoughts out of my brain, I wanted to write something similar, but I'm afraid my English is not good enough hahaha

About Curly (Mouthwashing)

This could be controversial, but I want a more nuanced conversation about Curly. I’ve seen what people have to say on TikTok and it makes me froth at the mouth. It’s either “He’s just a baby,” or “He’s a monster who never cared about his crew,” OR, which actually aggravates me the most, “He’s morally gray,” with NO further elaboration.

So here: A deepdive into Curly’s character, intentions, and actions.

Before I begin, I want to talk about what I see as a misconception in the Mouthwashing community.

This game is masterful at subtlety. There’s a lot of specifics that we as the audience don’t know. What infuriates me is that we pretend we do.

Something I hear often is, “Curly didn’t do anything when Anya told him she was assaulted.” There’s merit to this claim, but the situation is more intricate than that and it’s contingent on one very important factor: We don’t know what Anya told Curly. All we know is that she told him something, and it had to be something that would implicitly imply Jimmy as the father, but would still shock Curly at the idea of Anya being pregnant. While this could be interpreted as Anya outright having told Curly, I don’t buy that. He’s weirdly confused and flustered, he even questions “Who-?” in a way where it seems that he initially believes Anya had a fling with a crewmate rather than that she was assaulted. There’s a palpable ignorance in his response that implies to me that Curly finds out with us that Anya has been assaulted.

All this implies to me that Anya said something mildly vague, but still extremely concerning. Something like:

“I’m scared of Jimmy.”

We know she didn’t want him in the medbay, we know she didn’t want him around her. We know Curly knew this. Curly knew she was afraid of him.

He ignored it.

He ignored the signs of something more sinister in favor of feeding his idea of Jimmy just being a gloomy, down on his luck guy- more than anything, his friend. He should have listened to Anya when she said she didn’t want him in the medbay, when she said she didn’t want him near her. But he’s “known him for a long time.” He wanted to believe his instincts about Jimmy over Anya’s.

To Curly, the signs could have meant a lot of things. Anya simply being afraid of Jimmy could have meant that she just felt off about him; She just didn’t like him. A mere character clash. Of course, it was more than that. But Curly’s blindness was a mixture of ignorance and faith. He didn’t believe Jimmy was a bad person, he didn’t think he was scary. He trusted him.

In regard to the events of the game, a lot of people place a good chunk of the blame on Curly, which I do think is somewhat deserved. But I think it’s better to recognize his responsibility and how he failed.

The claims and reprimands of what Curly should or should not have done can only come from the omniscient presence we as the audience have. There’s inconsistencies in modern moral standards. The verdict of how good a person you are in a situation in where you must choose to trust or distrust a good friend is dependent on whether or not that friend is actually a good person or not. The idea that Curly knew Jimmy was dangerous is entirely baseless. Curly put all his cards on Jimmy, dismissing Anya’s discomfort as being a mere clash of character to his detriment. There were signs of his degeneracy, but Curly above anything wanted to believe in Jimmy with the standards of being “a good friend.”

Again, these assumptions are contingent purely on my theory of what Anya told Curly. The game not showing us what was said in specifics is intentional because they want us to know this and only this: Curly did something wrong. He has to have for the themes of the game to work. He works as Jimmy’s foil. He has to do shit wrong, not taking Anya’s fear seriously and not stopping Jimmy immediately from crashing the ship (which is also an effect of his trust- with a mixture of his own feelings of doom and failure,) to take responsibility where Jimmy cannot.

What substantiates that to me is Anya’s line, “I have to believe our worst moments don’t make us monsters.” It’s a line in relation to Curly. We’re meant to believe that this is her thinking he crashed the ship, but she’s actually talking about how he failed her. That was Curly’s worst moment. And Anya, in that statement, forgives him for it, or at the very least, doesn’t see him as a monster. Jimmy takes both “Our worst moments don’t make us monsters” and “I’m taking responsibility” and tries to reflect them on himself, but really they are statements bound to Curly. Curly is everything Jimmy wishes he was and because of that, Curly’s character shines a light on everything Jimmy isn’t. Curly ran into the cockpit in an attempt to salvage the ship, even when he knew it would crash, while Jimmy sat in a fetal position outside the door, weeping. Contrast.

That’s really all I have to say. I needed to get this off my chest, because Curly is probably the most interesting character to me in Mouthwashing, but gets a lot of one dimensional character analyses. I think a lot of it stems from the subject of SA being touchy, which I understand. People want to see it in black and white because it’s comfortable to them, but it gets complex with other people involved like Curly, who has good intentions and still ends up enabling Jimmy.

I would love to see what other people have to say about this because there’s probably a lot of things I missed. Thanks for reading all this if you did.