(DISCLAIMER) Through writing this essay, I've realised that Mouthwashing is pretty damn brilliant --- it's just not what I like personally.  I still think that some of this essay has value.

I really hate Mouthwashing.  I watched a playthrough, and hey, I got it.  Capitalism tortures its employees into being envious, and men are shit and complacent.  I'm really surprised.  God, I'm so sick of it.  I feel like media now is bouncing back from the sanitised, bland slop it was to the edgy and unecessary.  It's nothing groundbreaking.  It's not groundbreaking to bring back PS3 graphics.  It's not groundbreaking to make the female body a subject of horror.  It's not groundbreaking to give no character to your characters.  I hate Mouthwashing out of my own sensibilities as a reader and as a woman.

Anya only exists to make you feel bad for her.  She is also the only character to have stylised eyes.  Hooray, eyelashes to signify that this character is a woman.  I think I missed sexual dimorphism in biology because I'm not amused.  ...No, I get it.  It's not a crime to make your characters pleasant to the eye.  It's not a crime to have bad things happen to your characters.  My issue is that the ONE bad thing is always the point(0.5).  It is the point, and it has been the point for millenia.  Ellen of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Julia of 1984, Medusa of Greek mythology(1).  In fact, there is a whole trope of women getting raped in antiquity, and there is, disgustingly, a whole following of people actively enjoying this trope.  Of course, I'm obvuscating the fact that the women may have had their revenge in the end.  There's Judith and Holefernes(1.5)... there's...  There's a whole slew of women who didn't get their revenge.  Anya is one of the women who don't get revenge.  She fails her entrance exams, she gets raped, she dies.  Curtain falls.
A buzzing sound, suddenly.  Left of stage.

"That's the point.  It is from Jimmy's perspective.  It takes a really dull person to ignore that a person may have a life outside of what is seen.  What about the 'dead pixel' scene?  Also, the story is representational.  She represents how women are cast away and hurt in society.  Daisuke, Swansea, and Curly don't have much character either --- they just illustrate the point.  You're fragile about this subject, and you should not be considering it if it upsets you so much.  What good does defending fictional women from fictional men do for REAL rape victims?  Seriously, it's nothing but performative."   I agree.  I guess.  I mean, I'm not happy about it, but you're right.  I get uncomfortable when assault is mentioned, and I don't get uncomfortable when murder is mentioned.  There's something deeply hypocritical about criticising media from any progressive lens.  If progress is so important, why am I being a keyboard warrior instead of volunteering at women's shelters?  You're right.  Sorry.  

Then again, I can do two things at once.  I can do the right thing and the petty thing because they don't contradict each other.  This could be a video about what art is allowed to be made, but I am here to definitively say you can make any type of art about any subject matter.  That doesn't mean that I enjoy it.  I can definitively say that I can hate whatever I want.  That doesn't mean you enjoy it.  There, we're even.  Mouthwashing tells a good story objectively, but I, subjectively, think that it's repetitive, bland, and worst of all, NOT SCARY.  You walk around in a flesh cavern for a while.  Were those nine months in the womb that bad?  Fat guy chases you with an axe.  What is this, Looney Tunes?  Woman gets raped.  Oh, now we're pulling out all the stops.  I'm so scared(2).  That sequence, where the horses come flying out ---  that's not only distasteful but incredibly funny.  I laughed.  That's supposed to represent the horror of being a father?  Of being a woman?  You shouldn't mix metaphors, you know.  Polle, the... antagonist?  Whatever, the juxtaposition of the innocent and the twisted doesn't work.  Oversaturated.  Trite(3).  Jimmy's jealousy is moderately interesting.  I liked that Curly is stripped of his autonomy.  That was really fun.  All the male characters don't give one shit about Anya.  That's fine.  Very realistic.  Sure, Swansea could be seen as a protective figure, but he was mostly pissed about the harm that Jimmy did to him personally, and to his psuedo-son.  Anya told Swansea... then what?  That was just a device to signal to the viewer, "this is seriouth guyths pay attention".  Girls are horrified, and men get to play good feminist(4)(5)(6).

Anya is complex.  Though... her fear of medicating Curly is really a segue for you, Jimmy, the rapist, to have your weird orally stimulating moment with your captain.  Her empathy and hope juxtaposes Jimmy's insecurity and dread.  It's very good that they mirror each other --- Anya takes charge by suicide, Jimmy leaves Curly to himself by suicide; Anya becomes pessimistic, Jimmy optimistic.  Jimmy, through his twisted abuse, sucks the life force out of her.  I appreciate the fact there's no gratuitous sexual violence.  The dead pixel scene shows Anya's attention to detail, noticing and forgiving, whereas Jimmy sees life as far out of his reach, a ladder (never good enough for him, and he's never high up enough).  Anya's character is inextricably tied to Jimmy.  Jimmy's character is inextricably tied to her, yes, but also Curly, Daisuke, and Swansea.  The men get to be tied in this matted knot, but Anya gets one line to her bane.  I think that's why this game made me angry.  Not sad or scared, but angry.  Anya, I think, is the second most complex character in the game.  She's interesting and pitiable, but there's really nothing I hate more than pitying, especially pitying a woman.  I hate feeling bad for Anya because I know that Anya is more than her assault.  I hate feeling bad for Anya because I know that her life was thrown off course, battered, because Jimmy couldn't keep it in his pants.  If anything, the men are the flattest, most obvious characters here.  Daisuke is stupid and upbeat (so yes, kill-off material).  Swansea is old and grumpy, Jimmy is power-hungry, and Curly is a doormat.  Anya?  It annoyed me that I couldn't clearly discern any personality the first time around, but she is the most remarkable thing about this game to me.  She's distilled tradegy.  All I want to do is protect her, but had she not been hurt, I wouldn't care about her journey through medical school or whatever it would have been.  It makes me angry that bad things, uncontrollable things, other people's things ... can be the most interesting thing about you.

I've discovered my complaints mostly lie with the fandom.  I understand that people gravitate to what is light (I mean, J.F.K. didn't know that the Great Depression was happening because 1, he was sheltered and 2, the media was all hopeful and cheesy even though America was troubled), but seeing them draw the characters in white voids, on the beach, in school... well, what's the point?  Ignoring Jimmy obvuscates what makes the work interesting.  It feels like they didn't even care about the game and read the QnAs instead.  Do you really need to make Anya the muse for your drawing of the day?  She's not doing anything.  She exists in no context.  She is miserable.  Put her out of her misery and erase her now(7).  It always feels bankrupt to me.  Draw Anya frowning?  Why would I want that if I could look at her sprite?  Draw Anya smiling?  Cool, you have made her human.  You have given her a larger range of emotions, softening her potency as a character.  Don't take this the wrong way.  Making fan art is something I support.  The Birth of Venus didn't spring out of the water; it was born out of myth.  I'm just wondering why the majority of the art created is comfort slop(8).  Though the media tries to be edgy, the people want fluff... Including me.  I forgot to add another type of fan art I see.  Draw Anya struggling with her relationship as a woman, isolated and moulded into something she has no control over?  It makes me angry for her.  

Make a game about it?  Now that makes me irate.


(0.5) "Bad and stressful things need to happen to characters.  Have you ever watched something with kids on Netflix --- kids shows --- and up pops the warning, 'fear'?  It is inevitable.  It's not that women are the only ones being screwed over; it's that women are raped more than men, and it impacts them deeply, whether you want to admit that or not.  This being the case, it fits in a narrative nicely.  It's a huge part of the trauma of women, and trauma is what propels stories."  Yeah, I just don't like it when the only interpersonal relationships major women and men have are romantic or rapist-victim or mothers or daughters or more than one of these.  A matter of immature personal opinion.  My bad.
(1) For the record, I like Julia and Medusa.  1984 is stellar, and mythology should always be considered from its time.  As for Helen, I haven't read IHNMAIMS.  The fact I know that her defining feature is her assault is... telling.  
(1.5) Gentileshi is a great artist.  The amount of depth and emotion, especially for the era, was phenomenal.  It was also a personal work.  I understand.  Still, Judith is only known for her rape and subsequent revenge.  
(2) It feels duplicitous of me to be offended in the second paragraph but flippant in the fourth.  This is the transition from my repulsion as a woman to my repulsion as a person of good taste.  Anyway, it's just fiction.  No opinions are ever concrete.  Nothing is real.  
(3) For what it's worth, I was sad when Swansea had to kill Daisuke.  You can argue I'm just a misogynist who can't empathise.  In fact, I argue that myself.  I'm so glad we agree.
(4) You may be disturbed by the fact that I REALLY treat rape flippantly here.  Tone is very important in a polemic.  People get bored when you get genuine.  
(5) It can be argued that Mouthwashing intends to make men scared of rape and its consequences.  If you need a game to tell you not to rape people, I have bad news.
(6) "Rape is supposed to be horrifying.  The very thought of it should be scary.  You're just unempathetic," one may argue.  I may have a cold heart, but many things are taken lightly when common sense argues against it.  Cannibalism?  A metaphor for love, apparently, even though the eater just shits the eatee out.  Murder?  A... metaphor for love, because one only kills who causes them strong emotion.  Rape has been a twisted, unfortunate, representation for "love going too far" for a while, which is why it's fine for women to want it.  That's what Natalie Wynn argues at least.  Rape is horrifying, yes, but culture goes its own way.  
(7) I draw meaningless busts of characters all the time.  When the fandom lifts up these meaningless busts instead of works acknowledging the meat of the game, it disgusts me.
(8) This is personal opinion.


Created 31 March 2025
Last updated 2 April 2025