#if there’s anyone Swansea does not seem to care much for it would be curly

[coconutcows]

“Anya told Swansea and he did NOTHING!!1!1!!!”

Has it occured to you that Anya and Swansea had a conversation of which we did not see 99% of??? That the only bit we actually heard is Anya saying “No, I understand that’s how it has to be…” which could refer to any number of things??? And that it’s implied she’s feeling some relief after this conversation as Jimmy points out she’s been crying and she barely seems to have noticed, coupled with the fact she says quite easily that she’s fine to give Curly his meds, it just slipped her mind.

Swansea may have offered to do something and Anya said no, or he may have told her to let him know if she’s uncomfortable or changes her mind or Jimmy tries something again or whatever but We. Don’t. Know.

I just get tired of seeing people act like Swansea didn’t care about Anya at all. No, he isn’t the sweet cuddly father figure he’s sometimes made out to be, but being a grumpy ass old man doesn’t keep him from being caring. He bitches about his kids but the devs say he goes to their apartments to fix things and check on them. Different people care in different ways.

There’s plenty of moments that imply her and Swansea have a half decent relationship. He’s the one she talked to post crash. Her and Swansea stand and sit together at the birthday and I believe if you talk to them she teases about how he likes the terrible cake. When he argues against opening the cargo hold she has no problem speaking back to him. Personally I think she freaks out so bad when he starts drinking the mouthwash because of his sobriety history, which she probably cares about.

“He didn’t help open the medical door” they never mentioned Anya or any risk. What Jimmy and Daisuke said 100% came across as just trying to get into Utility.

“He didn’t try to help Anya when they got in!” There was one person who was clearly unresponsive and one person who was in a critical condition. Basic first aid is to help the person who has a better chance at survival.

“He never mentioned Anya in his speech to Jimmy, only saving Daisuke!” In his speech to Daisuke he says ‘stick the kid with a bunch of sadsack adults’ clearly referring to all the Tulpar Crew. Yeah maybe he just meant surviving the crash, but maybe Swansea also meant saving him from wasting his potential in a dead end job had everything not gone to shit. It was too late for him to do anything for Anya in every way. Jimmy had attacked her months before, doing something after the fact wouldn’t help with what’d been done. They got into medical too late when she’d overdosed. And potential wise he probably did see her as a smart kid who applied and failed to get into medical school year after year, haul after haul, and watched her fall into her dead end job as a nurse on a long haul space freighter.

I think he did care about Anya. But we’ll never know because he wasn’t a direct enough part of her story.

[chimaeray]

Mouthwashing thoughts assembled from my Discord messages with a friend while we both go apeshit about it

Spoilers this is your only warning because I will be getting RIGHT into it. Things are not organized super well it's all braindump baby. CW for game topics including sexual assault, torture, and general misery.

Jimmy's so certain everyone is or should be like him that he can't imagine anyone actually caring about other people. From Anya asking for any help and care whatsoever being a nuisance to him, to Swansea keeping watch at the utility room just trying to keep Daisuke safe and put him in that cryopod once everyone else was too far gone. This is unfathomable to Jimmy, who's first instinct upon learning they were all getting terminated was to belittle and shame everyone as a way to guilt Curly further. Of course including Curly himself, who was struggling (kind of having a midlife crisis) and putting on airs to keep everyone else calm and okay for this one last job. Jimmy is so sure of himself being able to fix things like Curly does, and figuring out how they can "both be heroes in this," that he makes a dying man eat his own flesh and then freezes him under the idea that this is GOOD and RIGHT. He doesn't care about the misery and pain Curly is in at this point. At first he seemed happy Curly was helpless and incapable. He seems to take satisfaction in volunteering to force-feed those painkillers, after he ridicules Anya first. He's so sure Curly should be grateful and thank him for all of this. He can't take responsibility even when he kills himself, all he does is reassure himself he did the best he could at every moment and fixed it all in the end. Curly will be miserable for the rest of the life he may or may not have. Jimmy got his, alright. Curly was feeling unsatisfied with his life, so isn't this better now? Curly says he doesn't want his life to feel like something he has to escape, but now his own mutilated body is the prison. While he watches and hears everyone else die, and he can't even try to fix it anymore. He missed his chance to do anything about Jimmy before it was too late. And when Jimmy says he can still fix this, make sure they survive and will be okay, Curly wheezes and laughs at him.

My take on Curly is that he did his best by and large, but he valued his relationship with Jimmy and trying to salvage it more than he should have especially when Anya told him she was raped. He is still a man in a place of power that didn't want to rock the boat too much, and that ended up enabling someone that would rather implode the whole fucking thing. After everything Anya still chose to die with him. She loved him(in the very least platonic but I know romantic was teased), still felt safest with him, and wanted to keep them both safe from Jimmy. So she locked them into a room together to die, quietly, away from him. Even if that made Curly witness as she overdosed and died. She had the gun hidden away with them, out of Jimmy's reach. Until Jimmy manipulates Daisuke into crawling up that vent, sentencing a young and hopeful man to a miserably painful death. Jimmy doesn't even respect Anya's authority and capability as the nurse (at all) enough to have listened when she said the mouthwash would be too sugary to use as an antiseptic. He still pours it onto Daisuke's wounds, because his short-sighted selfishness used up the entirety of the last bottle of antiseptic they had to poison Swansea.

(Daisuke is literally in an osha training video that's like "If you know it's dangerous don't do it! Even if a supervisor says so!")

By the end Jimmy only feels guilty for some of it. He knows he sentenced them all to a miserable death but he only feels guilty for Daisuke, and then Curly to a point. He doesn't really regret Swansea that much, it seems mostly like he's bothered he got caught (Swansea even tries leveling with him, to some extent--somewhere between a confessional and a final reach to see if he can be reached at all). He only worries about what having to deal with a baby might mean for him, but he doesn't give a shit about Anya at all. She's a non-issue in his mind, just some pathetic and poor girl that couldn't even get through schooling. He's only worried about the fact that a baby means he'd have to be responsible for it, and whatever discipline may come from the last remains of the company for sexually assaulting the nurse. Her suffering matters so little to him, if at all even considering he smears her entirely out of his perception while looking for antiseptic.

He's such an unreliable asshole he can't even confront himself, he has to use Curly and Polle as his conscience in his hallucinations.

The party scene is so intense. What a way to illustrate how off the deep end he is and it feels deserved. It's not just used to show he's insane and trying to cope by pretending they're all alive. It's everything he wanted. Praise, adoration, respect. Part of what I think is very interesting is he refuses to admit they're fully gone, but he doesn't necessarily deny their appearances. He isn't fixing them to look normal in his hallucinations, it's still their dead bodies he's propped up in chairs around him. Like a really weird coping mechanism to assure himself that its fine, he did it, he did a good job. Now he just needs to eat and celebrate with everyone! They just need to eat a little bit of Curly, get through one more meal, it'll be okay!

[sushi-rat]

I think some others have talked about this too, but I'm gonna put my thoughts out there as well

I genuinely do not believe Curly did anything wrong. He was not perpetuating rape culture by 'choosing Jimmy over Anya', but rather a victim of the horrible capitalist organization of Pony Express and Jimmy himself.

What does Pony Express being a horrid organization to work in have anything to do with Curly's choice to soothe Jimmy? Well, as Jimmy points out in his conversation with Curly right before the crash, nothing can go wrong on this shipment. We already know pay will be docked should anything go wrong as is shown in the beginning by Jimmy moving towards the asteroid. Anything bad being recorded or reported results in the entire crew getting their pay docked, and some of the crew is already in financial straits. Anya doesn't even have any savings, this pay is all she would have. If Curly reports to Pony Express that Jimmy raped Anya and she's now pregnant, they won't punish Jimmy but instead punish everyone by not paying them.

On top of that, Jimmy would still be on the ship and doing things. They are in the middle of transit. No one is going to come for them to arrest Jimmy or get him off the ship. They are going to continue being stuck with him until transit is over. This is evident by the ship having not been searched for in the months after the crash and having lost communication with everyone. Pony Express does not care, and this was prolly made known somehow to the crew before the events of the game.

How about don't report it and just kill Jimmy? When the transit ends and a crew member is found dead, their pay gets taken and the perpetrator would be locked up. If Anya was given the gun and she injured or killed Jimmy, she would not recieve proper payment from Pony Express and would have to rely on a good appointed attorney to defend her, just crossing her fingers that she doesn't end up in prison because self defense ruling is not as easy to get as people seem to think. If Curly, Swansea, or Daisuke kills him, they would end up in prison and Anya would have no money. If they somehow hid that Jimmy was murdered, make it look like suicide or an accident, that is considered 'something going wrong', pay gets docked. No matter what, Anya gets fucked over by the end of the transit if it's reported or not.

Why should pay matter so much? Because if something like Pony Express exists, then the system of general society is not a utopia that values its people. If Anya has her head in her hands over not having any savings, and Jimmy is bitching about everyone getting fucked over by losing this job, then clearly pay is important to live. What happens on this ship is not all there is. They have lives outside of this that they are navigating, just as we do in real life. I believe Curly was trying to protect Anya by thinking about the repercussions outside of the ship.

I also stated that Curly is a victim of Jimmy too. We see multiple times that Jimmy loves to manipulate Curly by twisting the blame onto him:

Using Jimmy and Curly's personal conversation in the cockpit at the birthday party, and claiming Curly gets to wipe his boots clean of the crew, that he got what he wanted without the guilt. When Curly tries to talk and correct Jimmy, Jimmy continually cuts him off and even gets a little aggressive by slamming his hand on the table. Curly decides it is better to just shut up

Blaming Curly for Jimmy raping Anya. Saying that Curly is the model captain that was supposed to make sure nothing went wrong, and Jimmy getting Anya pregnant through rape must then be his fault if anyone finds out

Blaming Curly for the crash is the most obvious. Everyone on that ship that died, except for Jimmy, died thinking that Curly tried to kill them all. Maybe at some point they started getting some thoughts that it was somehow Jimmy's fault, but they never got that confirmation

Jimmy even blames Curly for him now having all the responsibilities of Captain when it was Jimmy who crashed the ship with the intent of burying everything that happened with death. Curly did not ask to end up so injured and close to death

Jimmy is very effective at getting Curly to do what he wants, which is often to push him down and make him seem like the bad guy.

It also seems Curly is scared of Jimmy at some points, such as Curly shutting up and not correcting Jimmy at the birthday. Or even when Anya reveals she talked to Jimmy and told him about the pregnancy. He tells her she should've waited for him to be there and asks if Jimmy got angry. Curly seems to have inclination that Jimmy is prone to violence or outbursts, and having known Jimmy for a long while, Curly wanted to make sure Anya wouldn't get hurt when talking to Jimmy. Curly having this knowledge of Jimmy also implies that he has been the target of Jimmy's wrath before, which would explain constantly trying to appease Jimmy. I think this is absolutley confirmed when Jimmy seems to hurt Curly when giving him his meds that second time, the anger Jimmy displays at wanting Curly to shut up. Curly is trying to keep everyone safe from a man he knows is dangerous.

It's also been pointed out before that the music playing while Curly is searching for Jimmy after Anya telling him about the pregnancy sounds panicked. If it is from Curly's perspective, this can be reminiscent of Curly panicking over what Jimmy is going to do. It is further confirmation that Curly is scared of Jimmy.

If Curly knows Jimmy is dangerous, then why is he friends with him and working with him? If you are asking that question, I am genuinely asking you to try and learn/understand what it is like being a victim of abuse, how hard it is to turn and walk away, how hard it is to imagine your life without that person even if all they do is hurt you, how if you somehow walk away you end up missing them and maybe even come crawling back to them. I firmly believe Curly has been mentally, emotionally, and physically abused by Jimmy before, not just what happens in the game. I have even seen some small discussions of Curly having been sexually abused too, and I could see it in ways, but regardless of whether that is true, Curly has absolutely been abused other ways.

Curly is not a bad person at all, and is not a representation of rape culture amongst bros. Rather, he is a victim of circumstance where he has very little options. He, being the Captain and trying to protect Anya, is evaluating the situation from multiple angles. He came to the seemingly best solution available to him: appease Jimmy so he (hopefully) won't hurt anyone, in the process being able to keep Anya away from him to stop further sexual abuse from happening, and trying to 'sweep everything under the rug' so everyone gets paid properly and Pony Express never has to know. It's a shitty situation, but Curly is not a shitty person at all.

[askhatchetfieldhigh]

what mouthwashing character i would assign all of you to

anya : grace

idk anya is responsible and rational and she has a lot of hope that everyone can survive on the ship. even if anya doesn’t have a canon religion i have a feeling she would be catholic and heavily confide in mama mary. anya usually has to do things herself (before the crash and after bcus she has to take care of captain curly) much like grace. grace can’t really rely on anyone but herself instances being bailey in working boys giving her the gun (even though *he’s* the cop), her parents refuse to help her through her adolescence where she experiences *natural* feelings, and the Jerrys at camp idontwannabang who don’t protect the children at their own camp. (grace is a little more outgoing than anya but that’s because anya was assaulted and always seemed afraid after that very very traumatic incident.)

daisuke : ruth

daisuke. honestly was gonna assign richie bcus of the obvious Japanese name but i’m trying to assign them by personality and not just for fun. anyways, daisuke seems cheery and outgoing on the outside (ruth isn’t *that* extroverted but she’s energetic most of the time) but he feels like he’s a failure. so does ruth because she wants to be seen. to not be ignored. ruth and daisuke both handle a lot of verbal abuse too sometimes. with daisuke getting it from swansea and also by being called a slacker once (most likely more than once) by his own mom. and ruth just being verbally abused by.. honestly everyone. she’s trying. he’s trying. they both are and they both have their own release and way to relax. ruth acts in shows, daisuke… drinks mouthwash. (ruth doesn’t fit *too well* with daisuke but they seemed like the fit the most with each other.)

swansea : steph

steph felt like the obvious choice. both being sarcastic and mostly being weirded out a little by everyone in their perspective group. despite that, both swansea and steph really care about everyone. having a tough exterior but being extremely selfless and caring on the inside. i mean, swansea was guarding the utility room and saving the only remaining pod for daisuke. so he could live, and steph for willing to sacrifice pete for everyone else in this town. and also risking her life and future by evading the fucking law. (okay, to be fair pete and grace also did that but no one is perfect okay! I can’t psycho analyze every character ever, c’mon.)

jimmy : max

this was a little hard. i felt that max wasn’t a perfect match but.. i can make this work. a reason why i honestly thought they were kinda similar is because they are both *extremely fucking deranged.* but they kill for different reasons. jimmy kills for his own happy ending. max kills for the fuck of it, or ‘for the greater good’ since wiping out every nerd is best for everyone. but one of the things that also sets them apart is that jimmy thinks he’s the hero. max fully knows that he’s a bad person. a villain. (i guess they both have god/superiority complex’s too.)

i’m sorry peter and richie you guys are nothing like curly or any other character. genuinely can’t think of a reason you guys would be assigned with curly 😭

(OOC: anyways thanks for reading me rave on and on about my favorite little indie game hyperfixation, idek if you know what mouthwash is please watch it before responding if u have the time. gl on ur theatre show btw)

11/14/2024

I don't do horror anything... so I have no idea what any of this is...

~ Grace Chasity 🙏

LETS GO I LOVE DAISUKE SO MUCH YESS!!!

-- Ruth!

I like Mouthwashing, so I'll take it.

> Steph

FUCK YEAHHH

- MAX

that's okay... I haven't heard of mouthwasking anyways, heh.

**Peter Spankoffski

I mean... I could be curly for funnies 😏

~~ Richie

OOC: Hey dude!! Thanks for this rant!! I do enjoy mouth washing, so this was fun to read!! Thanks sm <33

[livestock-and-bibles]

VERY curious about ur mouthwashing thoughts but also it’s been a while since ive seen the game so ive gotta rewatch a playthru augh

There’s a couple of reasons as to why I don’t have much interest in the game!!

1. Gameplay

I honestly cannot stand this new trend of horror games that are just the player talking to people, walking around, occasionally finding an object. I dislike this in the game Bad Parenting also. I’m like. Why does this have to be game? There’s no gameplays so what’s the point? I think it would’ve been more enjoyable as a novel or an animated series with the graphics it already has! It would be very striking. So yeah I find the actual gameplay very dull. Also the controls look really wonky from when I watched gameplay of it

2. Characters

I found myself not really caring too deeply about anyone? Like Curly is okay I guess, I like his design and the disability theming but his actual personality is so meh to me. Jimmy has potential but it never really explains why is inferiority complex is so deep so I’m just like ??? Barely any of the characters ever get and of their backstory or family life discussed except for Daisuke and Swansea but even then it’s very little (but those two are my favourite characters and I have very little criticism for them lol. They carried the game). I have so much hatred in my heart for the way they wrote Anya. It just feels so misogynistic to me. Like ofc the only woman on the crew has the rape as backstory + pregnancy plot. I’ve never seen that before /s. I’m just so tired of that being the only plot line women get in horror media. I understand the pregnancy is supposed to parallel with Curly’s disability but it’s still a very tired trope. Also her design is clearly ripped off of Wendy Torrance from The Shining lmao. There’s also a lot of other design elements that are kind of ripped off from Evangelion (the text on screen resembles the the title cards, Curly post accident resembles an Eva, etc.) so I just don’t really care about most of the characters and their relationships except for Daisuke and Swansea, and they don’t get enough screen time anyway lol

3. Plot

Most of the base plot is pretty good and interesting. It’s a solid premise. But I feel as though it’s kind of meandering until you get to the big twists. I was just watching like. When are we getting to the meat of the story. I do like the dual / non linear narrative, that’s always fun. Definitely some enjoyment was lost just bc I saw spoilers online, but I think a game is pretty weak if it’s enjoyment is completely lost because of spoilers, like I replay The Dark Descent all the time even though I know the ending because the story is that strong and the gameplay is fun. That’s where the game kind of suffers because the gameplay is so weak. Also I think the ending was kind of dragged out. I was watching the playthrough and I was just sitting there like. When will this be over. I get it Jimmy is terrible. We do not need five more scenes about this. There are some really fun moments though, like when he eats Curly’s leg or when Swansea mercy kills Daisuke (That’s always a trope I love) Though those are the only scenes I can remember where I was genuinely enjoying the game.

Overall I feel that the game was more style over substance, and a lot of it just wasn’t really my cup of tea when it comes to games. Don’t even get me started on how the fandoms seems to ignore Swansea (an old fat guy) and Daisuke (the only person of colour). Like y’all’s ageism, fatphobia, and racism is really showing guys. I see how y’all favour the white, conventionally attractive characters over these two,

I really wanted to enjoy the game. I really did. But alas. It just wasn’t really my vibe when it comes to horror games and I can be picky so it’s not to say that my opinion is the only correct one, it’s just how I feel. It was mainly the gameplay that I had a problem with, I just can’t get into walking simulator games lol

[animalsmadeoutofglass]

Erm

I don’t usually post my writing here but I thought I’d try posting something

Spoilers for Mouthwashing

Warning for: mentions of death, blood, panic, being drunk (in mention. Not moment.), Jimmy (I feel the need to put a warning as a joke but also as a genuine warning for anyone who played, felt triggered by the subtext and couldn’t finish or did and couldn’t stomach his behaviour.)

Please take care of your mental health first.

IM SORRY IF THIS IS REALLY EDGY OR OUT OF CHARACTER IM TRYING 😭😭😭

🌺

Daisuke’s pov.

It aches in my shoulder so much worse than I thought it would in the vent after I first felt it. The jokes didn’t seem to work at all this time and the results were even worse than I was hoping for. I can’t think and my head feels like it’s full of foam. I can’t focus. I can’t focus on really much of anything. Jimmy says something about being able to fix things again and to hold on, to not move. What else am I to do? I can’t even get a word in, can I? It all comes out like I’m drunk again on mouthwash. I can hear Swansea reply, he’s not happy. Hah.. of course he’s not. He’s probably furious because of that drink we gave him. I wish we hadn’t. There had to have been a better way, right?

She’s gone. Anya. I saw her; sitting there, lifeless with blood flowing down from her nose while Curly’s breathing seemed so much more intensified. I can’t even try to joke about this. Am I going to die? What about my mom? My home? My life back on Earth? Did I even have a real life? A real future? God, it hurts so much. The foam is filling up more and more in my head. My words aren’t even words when I talk anymore, are they?

Why does it have to hurt so much? Why did Jimmy think this would be a good idea? Why did I listen? I trusted him because I thought it would save Anya. I try to speak again, but I think Swansea tells me to be quiet. He sounds… sad. Quieter. He’s thinking. He’s got the axe and he’s watching over me while I lay and wait. Maybe I’ll be able to just.. take a nap and they’ll find a way to fix this. Even when they use mouthwash to try to disinfect my wounds, it just hurts. I can’t do anything but cry and let out some sort of sound. I can’t tell if Jimmy gave up or if he’s still ‘thinking’.

“Close your eyes, Daisuke.”

Yeah. That sounds nice. I can do that. Close my eyes and wait. Swansea kind of felt like a dad anyways. Maybe he’ll help.

I’m scared. I just wanted to go home. I thought all of us would be okay.

I just—

[phosphosuppmain]

I was writing this in the tags but I fear it's too long and important for that.

FUCK YES I NEED MORE PEOPLE TO BE AWARE OF HOW VIOLENTLY COMPLICIT CURLY IS IN ALL THIS. yes of course he's also a victim of Jimmy but if ANYONE ELSE (maybe not Daisuke-) was in his position THEY WOULD HAVE TAKEN FUCKING ACTION AGAINST HIM.

Curly knows what Jimmy did. He knows how wrong it is. And what does he do? Well Jimmy is STILL part of the crew, STILL co-pilot, STILL in the same room as Anya, stood beside her like nothing is wrong. Curly did nothing.

Don't get me wrong I am a massive fan of Curly for real but I DESPERATELY NEED PEOPLE TO KNOW HE IS NOT A GOOD PERSON.

Ok apologies for the excessive all caps lemme get serious a moment- if I can I'm on a bus and shaking and freezing cold. Anyway.

Curly has had every opportunity to take appropriate action against Jimmy but he hasn't, he also had the opportunity at the BEGINNING of their journey to not let Daisuke be on the ship. Daisuke didn't want to be there, the ship was built to cater for 4 not 5, all signs point to Daisuke Shouldn't Be There. But he is. Why? His parents wanted him to... But why do they have more say?

I feel it's because Curly is a fucking chronic people pleaser. Which me too babes but I'm not letting evil people get away with evil deeds. He wants to make everyone happy, but that's not possible in this situation. He makes Jimmy happy by letting him continue to be rotten and sacrifices Anya's happiness because she Seems Fine. It's only when she comes to him and tells him she's pregnant that he wants to take action against Jimmy- and even then Jimmy is the one who takes action because Curly is too much of a wuss to do anything. He doesn't want to hurt anyone.

And in not wanting to hurt anyone, everyone in the ship except him dies.

Of course he might die in the cryo pod, if nobody finds him or his injuries kill him or whatever but he's got a solid 20 years for someone to find him. And considering there was like a year or two or whatever left until the ship was meant to arrive at its destination it's likely someone would send a search party. And considering how much Anya cared for him it's unlikely he would die from his injuries- or else he would already be dead.

From memory there isn't overly much going on between Curly and Swansea but again I'm freezing my tits off in a crowded bus so do not take my memory to be good in this moment ahsbsh- BUT I do wanna touch on Swansea because he's so fucking well written it makes me cry.. I think with all his faults Swansea is the most merciful of the crew members. Including his lost sobriety and rage and constant axe wielding- he's a great red herring fo sho- ANYWAY he's a better man than everyone else on the ship and uh I hate the fact that the fandom neglects him quite a bit yet kinda idolises Curly Ty for coming to my ted talk I need a blanket and some food effective immediately.

I love the way that Mouthwashing uses Jimmy and Curly taking turns as the perspective character to make their actions not just parallel to each other, but hopelessly, disgustingly inseperable. The clear picture it paints us of how Curly enables Jimmy and how Jimmy guilts Curly into further enabling him. They both avoid responsibility when it really counts-- Curly through shows of appeasement and Jimmy through shifting the blame to someone else.