Post by Geist on Nov 17, 2024 4:21:43 GMT
I played Mouthwashing not too long ago and honestly it's stuck in my brain pretty hard. So I wanted to write about it.
Beware, for there be spoilers ahead --
I want to talk about Jimmy as a character. Good ol' Jimmy. Such a simple and yet villain because he could really be any of us (in varying degrees.) And I do label him a villain, despite him being advertised as the protagonist. It feels wrong to give him such a label, as I very strongly believe that's the label he would want and therefore does not deserve.
When the game starts and the prologue passes with the ship crashing, you (as Jimmy) assume the role of Captain despite no one actually seeming to agree with that idea or being comfortable with it. As you find out later that Jimmy is actually the one who crashed the ship and blamed Curly for it, you start to realize his "take charge, fix everything" attitude is a farce just for himself. Everyone else? They already know Jimmy is a fuck up. They know he's dangerous.
With that thought in mind, from the perspective of the other characters it becomes obvious in hindsight that they aren't protesting him as captain for a reason -- survival. They know that Jimmy is more likely than not to snap, and may even have guessed that he was the one responsible for the crash anyway. After all, they keep Curly alive. If they really thought that he tried to kill all of them, would they use all their painkillers to keep him going? Would Anya change his bandages to the point they have none left for anyone else's injuries?
At first, I thought about that with mostly Anya's point of view in mind. Jimmy did, after all, assault her and impregnate her as a result. Throughout the game, she seems afraid to interact with him the most -- shaking, looking away, but also praising him often as if she's trying to keep him happy. Because of how prominent Anya's fear of Jimmy is, it was more something I noticed later that made me feel like the others were also untrusting of him. Swansea as an example seemed like a generally grumpy person and you definitely think, "oh, he just is the kind of person that talks to everyone like that" -- and he is. But with Jimmy it's different.
Swansea talks down to Daisuke but still tries to teach him. Tries to keep him safe and mentor him. And, as it turns out, tried to save him over everyone else. With Anya, he is gruff and a pessimist but never outright cruel to her. They clearly have a good enough relationship that Anya is willing to talk to him one-on-one and confide in him her worries about the situation. With Curly you can tell that there's a mutual respect there (even if Swansea is clearly unhappy having to be responsible for Daisuke, or having to get the captain's approval to do certain things.)
But with Jimmy? That good ol' Jimmy. Swansea is actively dismissive towards him, clearly does not respect him, and is sarcastic basically any time Jimmy tries to assert his authority. Perhaps the only reason Swansea goes along with it is because it's some sort of company policy that the co-pilot is in command if the captain is incapacitated? If anything, Swansea actually seems to care about his job so this is plausible to me. In my mind, he was holding back because he wanted Anya and Daisuke to be safe -- but once that was no longer possible he had no reason to let Jimmy get away with things anymore. So he attacked him and (sadly) was killed in the process.
Jimmy never once thought he had done anything wrong. Sure, he says he's taking responsibility but I don't believe for one second he ever actually believed it was because he did something wrong. And this is where Jimmy's thought process kind of gets to me. Because I think we all want to believe we're not capable of things like this -- and that, if we are, there's some extenuating excuse because we'd never do something like that otherwise.
Jimmy -- GOOD OL' JIMMY -- can do no wrong. Well, he can, but its not his fault. Well, it is his fault, but he wouldn't have done it if they weren't losing their jobs! It wouldn't have hit him as hard if Anya was good at her job. She's supposed to catch these risks of psychotic breaks. Well, she could have caught it if he took it seriously. But he didn't take it seriously, because it's a silly notion to begin with. After all, crazy? Only crazy people are crazy. And Jimmy, certainly, is not crazy. It's not his fault he's at the bottom of the ladder. It's not his fault that Curly is at the top, reaching his hand down to pull him up with him. Who even asked Curly for help, anyway?
When people say it's all about mindset, it's not just your mind in that moment. It's everything leading up to it. Everything that can become an excuse to avoid taking ownership of the things you've done even when you know it's wrong. If you can convince yourself that action #1 isn't bad, then action #2 may be bad, but is less bad because you can excuse action #1. Of course, Jimmy is an extreme example of this but I think we can all say there's been times where we've done something we'd prefer to not take responsibility for that end up snowballing out of control until we finally own up to it.
I found myself thinking about things I regret a lot while playing Mouthwashing. Things I'd done or said to others that I knew weren't good but either enough time had passed or I got away with it smoothly enough that I convinced myself that it wasn't as bad as it actually was. We like to see ourselves as the heroes of our story after all. The ability to reflect and regret is more of a learned behavior than I think a lot of people realize -- you can't feel bad about something you've done until you see how it affects others, and people rarely pause to observe the consequences of their actions that deeply.
Getting back to Jimmy. Near the end of the game, he takes responsibility. He places Curly in the cryopod and ends his own life. I feel like, on the surface, this is supposed to be him really understanding what he's done in the grand scheme. He raped Anya, and that ultimately resulted in her killing herself in front of Curly. He caused Daisuke's death by trying to get into medical (and I don't believe he was trying to save Anya. He just didn't want her to use all the painkillers). He killed Swansea. You'd maybe believe that out of some sort of guilt he finally came to terms with him being a piece of shit. But. No.
You see, he won.
Jimmy, good ol' god damn Jimmy, won.
He wanted everyone to die from the beginning, after all. He crashed the ship with the plans to kill everyone on board, including himself. Sure, it took four hours of gameplay but he eventually got what he wanted.
"But Geist," you say, "He saved Curly!"
I mean. Sure. He did. But he didn't do it out of altruism. I don't think he even did it because he liked Curly. We, as the player, know that he actually feels rather complicated feelings toward the captain. He envies him. He wants to be him. He probably feels like Curly pities him and that's why he got him that job. Probably realizes that the reason he's lasted this long, what with him dismissing psych evals and assaulting co-workers, is because Curly vouches for him. In a way, his life has been in Curly's hands from the moment he started working for Pony Express.
And so, he puts Curly in the cryopod. Not because he wants his friend to survive. But rather because he wants us to think he wants Curly to survive. He wants Curly to think he wants him to survive. The entire game is about Jimmy's image -- about how he wants to be the hero, wants to be the captain, wants to be the protagonist. In his last moments, he's thinking of the camera and of his ego. There's no feelings there. Nothing genuine. He knows the kind of man he is, more so than any of us. But if he can trick just one person in the end, he'll be remembered as the hero who saved his friend.
If you think that I'm wrong, let me just ask you this: With the knowledge that there's one functional cryopod, why did he feed Curly his own leg and pretend it was for his own good? Why was the plate in front of himself empty? It wasn't for survival. It was performative. He knows one of them will die and one of them will go into the cryopod. There's no reason for both of them to feast. There's no reason for a feast at all. Knowing that he's putting Curly in the pod, why force feed him his own flesh if not to inflict torment on the the man he wants so hard to blame for everything that is actually his fault and pretend to the invisible audience it was a tragic sacrifice for them to keep on living?
Those who know me know I don't fuck with horror -- I'm notorious for being the person who stares at the wall and lets whatever monster the game has kill me and then use it as an excuse to quietly exit out of the game and never touch it again. I'm very glad I didn't write this game off as just another horror in a sea of jump scares and over-the-top gore.
Beware, for there be spoilers ahead --
I want to talk about Jimmy as a character. Good ol' Jimmy. Such a simple and yet villain because he could really be any of us (in varying degrees.) And I do label him a villain, despite him being advertised as the protagonist. It feels wrong to give him such a label, as I very strongly believe that's the label he would want and therefore does not deserve.
When the game starts and the prologue passes with the ship crashing, you (as Jimmy) assume the role of Captain despite no one actually seeming to agree with that idea or being comfortable with it. As you find out later that Jimmy is actually the one who crashed the ship and blamed Curly for it, you start to realize his "take charge, fix everything" attitude is a farce just for himself. Everyone else? They already know Jimmy is a fuck up. They know he's dangerous.
With that thought in mind, from the perspective of the other characters it becomes obvious in hindsight that they aren't protesting him as captain for a reason -- survival. They know that Jimmy is more likely than not to snap, and may even have guessed that he was the one responsible for the crash anyway. After all, they keep Curly alive. If they really thought that he tried to kill all of them, would they use all their painkillers to keep him going? Would Anya change his bandages to the point they have none left for anyone else's injuries?
At first, I thought about that with mostly Anya's point of view in mind. Jimmy did, after all, assault her and impregnate her as a result. Throughout the game, she seems afraid to interact with him the most -- shaking, looking away, but also praising him often as if she's trying to keep him happy. Because of how prominent Anya's fear of Jimmy is, it was more something I noticed later that made me feel like the others were also untrusting of him. Swansea as an example seemed like a generally grumpy person and you definitely think, "oh, he just is the kind of person that talks to everyone like that" -- and he is. But with Jimmy it's different.
Swansea talks down to Daisuke but still tries to teach him. Tries to keep him safe and mentor him. And, as it turns out, tried to save him over everyone else. With Anya, he is gruff and a pessimist but never outright cruel to her. They clearly have a good enough relationship that Anya is willing to talk to him one-on-one and confide in him her worries about the situation. With Curly you can tell that there's a mutual respect there (even if Swansea is clearly unhappy having to be responsible for Daisuke, or having to get the captain's approval to do certain things.)
But with Jimmy? That good ol' Jimmy. Swansea is actively dismissive towards him, clearly does not respect him, and is sarcastic basically any time Jimmy tries to assert his authority. Perhaps the only reason Swansea goes along with it is because it's some sort of company policy that the co-pilot is in command if the captain is incapacitated? If anything, Swansea actually seems to care about his job so this is plausible to me. In my mind, he was holding back because he wanted Anya and Daisuke to be safe -- but once that was no longer possible he had no reason to let Jimmy get away with things anymore. So he attacked him and (sadly) was killed in the process.
Jimmy never once thought he had done anything wrong. Sure, he says he's taking responsibility but I don't believe for one second he ever actually believed it was because he did something wrong. And this is where Jimmy's thought process kind of gets to me. Because I think we all want to believe we're not capable of things like this -- and that, if we are, there's some extenuating excuse because we'd never do something like that otherwise.
Jimmy -- GOOD OL' JIMMY -- can do no wrong. Well, he can, but its not his fault. Well, it is his fault, but he wouldn't have done it if they weren't losing their jobs! It wouldn't have hit him as hard if Anya was good at her job. She's supposed to catch these risks of psychotic breaks. Well, she could have caught it if he took it seriously. But he didn't take it seriously, because it's a silly notion to begin with. After all, crazy? Only crazy people are crazy. And Jimmy, certainly, is not crazy. It's not his fault he's at the bottom of the ladder. It's not his fault that Curly is at the top, reaching his hand down to pull him up with him. Who even asked Curly for help, anyway?
When people say it's all about mindset, it's not just your mind in that moment. It's everything leading up to it. Everything that can become an excuse to avoid taking ownership of the things you've done even when you know it's wrong. If you can convince yourself that action #1 isn't bad, then action #2 may be bad, but is less bad because you can excuse action #1. Of course, Jimmy is an extreme example of this but I think we can all say there's been times where we've done something we'd prefer to not take responsibility for that end up snowballing out of control until we finally own up to it.
I found myself thinking about things I regret a lot while playing Mouthwashing. Things I'd done or said to others that I knew weren't good but either enough time had passed or I got away with it smoothly enough that I convinced myself that it wasn't as bad as it actually was. We like to see ourselves as the heroes of our story after all. The ability to reflect and regret is more of a learned behavior than I think a lot of people realize -- you can't feel bad about something you've done until you see how it affects others, and people rarely pause to observe the consequences of their actions that deeply.
Getting back to Jimmy. Near the end of the game, he takes responsibility. He places Curly in the cryopod and ends his own life. I feel like, on the surface, this is supposed to be him really understanding what he's done in the grand scheme. He raped Anya, and that ultimately resulted in her killing herself in front of Curly. He caused Daisuke's death by trying to get into medical (and I don't believe he was trying to save Anya. He just didn't want her to use all the painkillers). He killed Swansea. You'd maybe believe that out of some sort of guilt he finally came to terms with him being a piece of shit. But. No.
You see, he won.
Jimmy, good ol' god damn Jimmy, won.
He wanted everyone to die from the beginning, after all. He crashed the ship with the plans to kill everyone on board, including himself. Sure, it took four hours of gameplay but he eventually got what he wanted.
"But Geist," you say, "He saved Curly!"
I mean. Sure. He did. But he didn't do it out of altruism. I don't think he even did it because he liked Curly. We, as the player, know that he actually feels rather complicated feelings toward the captain. He envies him. He wants to be him. He probably feels like Curly pities him and that's why he got him that job. Probably realizes that the reason he's lasted this long, what with him dismissing psych evals and assaulting co-workers, is because Curly vouches for him. In a way, his life has been in Curly's hands from the moment he started working for Pony Express.
And so, he puts Curly in the cryopod. Not because he wants his friend to survive. But rather because he wants us to think he wants Curly to survive. He wants Curly to think he wants him to survive. The entire game is about Jimmy's image -- about how he wants to be the hero, wants to be the captain, wants to be the protagonist. In his last moments, he's thinking of the camera and of his ego. There's no feelings there. Nothing genuine. He knows the kind of man he is, more so than any of us. But if he can trick just one person in the end, he'll be remembered as the hero who saved his friend.
If you think that I'm wrong, let me just ask you this: With the knowledge that there's one functional cryopod, why did he feed Curly his own leg and pretend it was for his own good? Why was the plate in front of himself empty? It wasn't for survival. It was performative. He knows one of them will die and one of them will go into the cryopod. There's no reason for both of them to feast. There's no reason for a feast at all. Knowing that he's putting Curly in the pod, why force feed him his own flesh if not to inflict torment on the the man he wants so hard to blame for everything that is actually his fault and pretend to the invisible audience it was a tragic sacrifice for them to keep on living?
