Curly And Anya

“So, why do you like this character so much?”

Uh, listen man, I can explain why, but it requires a deep dive into my traumas, illnesses, and unhealthy brain mechanisms, sooooo...

Inktober 2024 - Rust

Two versions wooooo, because I like both very much. The first one rusted, the second one not rusted~

Something something metaphor, something something symbolism~ Yo, this looks a bit darker and more serious than the rest of my Inktober xD I blame a tummy hurts. Guys, they're not dead, just eepy

This could be a fun use of the theme, cause the rabbitthing name is Stal, which means steel in Polish. As you can see, this particular Stal is not stainless xd

People with children, pointing at my lack of offspring: “Aren't you afraid that in a few years you'll regret this decision?” Me, pointing at their little offspring: ”Aren't you afraid that in a few years you'll regret this decision?”

gonna start telling people who say they want kids "well you're still young" see how they like it

AU where Floch lives, returns to his old hairstyle, and bird Eren makes a nest out of it??

It makes so much more sense and is so stupidly funny XDD

Eren: In the future, people will invent an electrical device that uses suction, and often agitation, in order to remove dirt and other debris from carpets, hard floors, and other surfaces and some folks will call it your last name.

Bertholdt: WHAT.

Sometimes, when I'm worn out, I use an automatic translator when reading longer English texts. Sometimes the translator translates Bertholdt's last name. Translates it into “odkurzacz”. Which means “vacuum cleaner” in Polish.

Bertholdt Vacuum Cleaner.

I think this is important. I love the automatic translator.

I need opinions

I wrote this perhaps unnecessary bit for a touch of humor and now I have headcanon that Moblit has made every effort to get Hange a horse that will be able to take them to safety on its own if needed and WILL NOT run after the titans at Hange's every command LOL Moblit Junior is the smartest mare in existence, and GOD, she pays the ultimate price for it!

The Colossal's so silly I lowkey want him ngl

Why does AliExpress have so many stupid things? 😭

Erwin, explaing that although many people died during the operation to capture Female Titan, at least she was not actually captured and they did not learn anything useful:

was looking for aot stuff on ali again, dunno how I got there lmao

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.

Inktober 2024 - Navigator

Fatty Snail, you let her lead a tour of Europe and you landed on Jupiter's moon, WHY IN THE WORLD did you think she would do better at sea? xDDD