Once I performed Mouthwashing, Fallacious Organ’s psychological horror recreation and shock darkish horse within the 2024 Game of the Year race, I couldn’t have anticipated it will attain the extent of fandom wherein it received cute, marketable plushies. Its material may be very darkish, however then once more, that’s by no means actually stopped horror video games and films from taking place this path. I suppose it shouldn’t be too shocking, then, that its characters are getting stuffed toys, regardless of the horrible issues all of them undergo in Mouthwashing’s transient runtime. What’s shocking is that in any case this time, the neighborhood shouldn’t be solely nonetheless debating the sport’s horrors and morality…however now, they’ve devolved into going for one another’s throats over a luxurious of a personality named Jimmy reimagined as a cute cat.
Content material warning: Sexual assault
Jimmy is the first participant character in Mouthwashing. He and his crew have been stranded in house after their freight ship collided with an asteroid, and the sport goes over the fallout of the crash and the months that adopted. With out getting too into every thing that goes down, suffice it to say Mouthwashing is a reasonably harrowing story involving a number of the worst issues people are able to, and Jimmy is the perpetrator of a variety of these crimes. He’s additionally an unreliable narrator making an attempt to cowl up what he’s finished, and the issues he’s revealed to have finished on the ship put him far past any attainable redemption.
Jimmy does a variety of reprehensible issues in Mouthwashing, and the one which’s maybe most notable is that the sport implies he raped Anya, the lone girl on the ship, who’s now pregnant. We don’t have to get into all of the repercussions of this act right here, however as you possibly can think about, a variety of Mouthwashing followers should not followers of Jimmy’s. In reality, I’d argue the sport’s whole level is to make you hate this man. He’s the villain of this story, and even when he makes an attempt to do the correct factor on the finish of the sport, that’s not going to be sufficient for some. Others, in the meantime, do discover him compelling as a personality whose layered story has a variety of depth. For some who discover his actions unforgivable, even believing him an fascinating centerpiece in Mouthwashing’s story goes past what they imagine to be morally acceptable.
Quick ahead to August 2025, and a collectible producer known as Plushshop is making a cat-shaped plush of Jimmy. The shop has stuffed cats based mostly on characters from anime, TV exhibits, and video video games, starting from Squid Recreation to One Piece. When the corporate first introduced plans to make Mouthwashing plushes, these plans didn’t embody one for Jimmy, which led to backlash from followers. The corporate has since eliminated these preliminary Mouthwashing plushes from its retailer and deleted any point out of them from its social media accounts.
Nonetheless, after the store introduced its Jimmy plush as a separate launch, Mouthwashing followers jumped on the web site to depart unfavorable consumer critiques saying that given Jimmy’s true nature, he shouldn’t be made right into a cute cat plush. That alone is possibly a dialog value having, however the feedback shortly devolved right into a poisonous cesspool, with some folks claiming that those that purchased the plush have been rape apologists and a number of other feedback that, for some purpose, included racial slurs. I went to go take a look at them myself on PlusShop’s web site, however the Jimmy plush appears to have been eliminated. We’ve reached out to PlushShop for touch upon the scenario and can replace the story if we hear again. Within the meantime, screenshots of the critiques have begun circulating on locations like X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit, however do be warned that there’s some foul language in these hyperlinks.
As somebody who actually loved Mouthwashing for its exploration of the human psyche and its putting visuals, am I thrilled that its characters are being made into plushes? Not significantly. I do assume it’s a bit bizarre to make these characters cute cats and even simply common toys. It turns a reasonably horrific story into an nearly absurdist show prop, and even the formally licensed plush of a man wrapped up in bandages together with his painkillers made into an adjunct form of looks like a parody or shitpost, turning a number of the most memorable, horrific imagery within the recreation right into a purchasable gag. All that mentioned, the response to this cat plush is so ludicrously overblown and reeks of the form of “putting fictional characters on trial” nonsense that has plagued discussions round video games like The Final of Us or Nier and that I can’t imagine we’re nonetheless coping with in 2025.
Good tales are constructed round battle, and in a few of these tales, the perpetrators of that battle are reprehensible individuals who can’t be redeemed within the eyes of the beholder. Sure, in Mouthwashing, one character has dedicated probably the most vile issues an individual is able to. However he’s not an actual particular person, and he’s not on trial. Liking a narrative wherein folks do horrible issues shouldn’t be the identical as endorsing their actions, and if that goes over somebody’s head, I’m shocked they’re partaking with Mouthwashing to start with contemplating a number of of its characters are morally doubtful, to say the least. Since a number of the feedback weighing in on this use racial slurs, I think about not less than a few of these folks placing Jimmy on trial have bigger points than an absence of media literacy.
The foundation of those sorts of arguments is that there’ll all the time be individuals who don’t perceive that others interact with artwork in a different way than they do. One factor I’ve realized in my years of writing, studying, watching, and listening to criticism is that you simply’ll discover that there are some individuals who have totally different expectations once they voice an opinion a few work. For instance, when somebody lashes out at a critique, it’s typically underneath the pretense {that a} critic is attempting to “change” one thing they assume is okay. When some followers voice a criticism a few recreation, they anticipate the builders to handle it in a patch, and so once they see one other particular person criticizing something, that is the one framework they’ve for understanding that critique: as, successfully, a criticism to administration over a problem they want to see rectified.
The identical factor occurs with how folks interact with characters. Some folks solely “like” characters in the event that they assist every thing they do and might stand by them ultimately, so the idea of having fun with a personality who does reprehensible shit is so overseas to them that it’s one way or the other an ethical failing to derive any kind of satisfaction from them, even from dissecting their actions. As a result of individuals are so fixated on their very own media literacy framework, artwork that engages in uncomfortable subjects won’t ever be free from Tumblr-era moralizing. To individuals who make these arguments, “problematic” storylines are simply issues to be solved, fairly than a way of exploring probably difficult or uncomfortable themes. The curtains have been blue. Jimmy was a nasty man. That’s all there may be to it.
I didn’t anticipate to rant about this on a random Friday in August, and I definitely didn’t anticipate it to be over a toy cat. I actually loved Mouthwashing, however I suppose it’s a very good factor I didn’t get too concerned with its neighborhood, as a result of it positive looks as if there are lots of people in that neighborhood who’re ill-equipped to have interaction with the sport they’re purportedly followers of.
