Mouthwashing

Fandom
Name:	Mouthwashing
Abbreviation(s):
Creator:	Wrong Organ, published by CRITICAL REFLEX
Date(s):	Sept 26, 2024
Medium:	Video game
Country of Origin:
External Links:
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Mouthwashing is a 2024 sci-fi psychological horror video game created by Wrong Organ.

Canon

The game tells the story of five crewmates aboard the Tulpar, a freighting vessel that hits an asteroid partway through its year-long delivery trip. The plot is shown non-linearly, exploring what led up to the crash and how the crew deal with its aftermath.

Characters

• Curly: the captain of the Tulpar, and the player character for scenes set before the crash.
• Jimmy: the co-pilot, who becomes the acting captain after the crash. He is the player character for scenes set after the crash.
• Anya: the ship's soft-spoken nurse.
• Swansea: the ship's acerbic engineer.
• Daisuke: a perpetually optimistic intern and Swansea's apprentice.

Fandom

Shortly after Mouthwashing's release, the game garnered a large fanbase. As is the case with many horror fandoms, much of the fanac is quite light-hearted in contrast to the game itself; however, some fans do tackle the horror aspects head-on in their work.

Controversies

Many fans see ships between the central characters Jimmy and Curly as inappropriate due of the main theme of the story, though a significant minority of the fanbase still ships them and doesn't mind the ship exists.

ngl, yaoi for mouthwashing is funny because curly covering for jimmy is commentary to me that sometimes even well-meaning men will cover for their male friends even when its clear said male friends committed a heinous act like SA, but ppl have taken it to be shipping material lol

_azzym 

Another controversy is a certain fan animation depicting post crash!Curly using dog buttons to speak, while the video itself was well-liked, many fans concerned about the ableist implications of said animation.

Common Tropes and Headcanons

• Using Headlock by Imogen Heap for edits and in the background of cosplay videos
• Fanworks with Jimmy getting his just desserts, usually with Anya killing him with an axe
• Post canon scenarios, usually with Curly being rescued from Tulpar and fanarts depicting him with prosthetics.
• Fix-it scenarios in general, sometimes involving time travel
• Swansea being the "dad" of the crew

Jimmy Hate

Jimmy's actions within the game's canon have led him to becoming one of the most widely hated fictional characters in recent fannish memory. Jimmy-bashing is one of the fandom's most widespread practices. Fans will often purposefully misspell his name as a sign of disrespect, leave him out of art depicting the other four characters, or write/draw scenarios in which he is either unable to assault Anya or faces violent consequences for doing so.

Some fans take issue with the sheer ubiquity of Jimmy-hate. For as despised as he is, Jimmy is the most consequential character in Mouthwashing's story and is the POV character for most of it. Some fans argue that in order to truly appreciate Mouthwashing for what it is, fans should engage with Jimmy's character (flaws and all) and not simply ignore him to focus on fix-its for everyone else.

No no no u guys don’t understand. Thinking of Jimmy as 100% a monster, an inhuman evil with no good inside him, dehumanizing him and making him out to be this incomprehensible monster, doesn’t make you better than the people who choose to seriously engage with him as a character. It just means that if u ever had someone like jimmy in your life, you wouldn’t see it because you’re too used to thinking of rapists as these 1-dimensional monsters that largely don’t actually exist like that in real life.

i-reblog-everything44

obviously i’m kinda sowing what i’ve reaped here but im on tiktok and everyone is completely ignoring [Jimmy] and im not saying he’s not a terrible person but he’s also an excellent character. “oh no so sorry you had to draw him!!!” and they always draw the other four crew members having fun and being silly pre-crash like first of all if curly was ugly none of you would like him. second of all jimmy’s role in the story is both massively important and NOT uniquely terrible! the whole appeal of the character (again, NOT the person) is that he doesn’t believe himself to be evil. he feels entitled because of an inflated ego, sure, whether that be to anya’s body or the captain’s chair, but it’s not like he crashed the ship to kill everybody for fun. he saw a way out of his current predicament (anya’s pregnancy) and managed to warp it enough that he believed it was a good thing for everyone involved. his journey towards the end of the game is realizing how hard curly had it and how wrong he was, and again still erring in how to “fix” anything because he again wanted control of the narrative and to die as a “hero”, believing that saving curly was the best way to do so. HES A MENTALLY UNSTABLE, SELFISH IDIOT!!! AND HES A GREAT CHARACTER!!!!!

buscemifan

Common Pairings

The most popular ships in the fandom appear to be Curly/Jimmy and Anya/Curly. Platonic versions of these pairings are also popular. The canon mentee-mentor relationship between Daisuke & Swansea is also a common focus on fanworks, with many adding a somewhat familial dynamic to it.

Example Fanworks

Fanart

• Cork ‘im Daisuke‼️‼️‼️‼️, ^{Archived on 22 February 2025} by orobeori

• Curly's Biggest Mistake, ^{Archived on 22 February 2025} by nikatoon
• dead pixel, ^{Archived on 22 February 2025} by michiiilada
• untitled, ^{Archived on 22 February 2025} by crossan

Animation

• Made a mouthwashing animation yayyy by izbnart

• MOUTHWASHING / HEADLOCK / animation by mads sherrick

Meta

• "I genuinely think Mouthwashing fandom is a good example on how real life misogyny is very wired on people brains and influenced how they engage with fictional misogyny.", ^{Archived on 22 February 2025} by zzxid

Archives and Other Links

• Mouthwashing (Video Game) on Archive of our Own
• Tumblr tags: mouthwashing, mouthwashing game