MouthWashing
I'm not going to spend much time describing events as I feel it is a lot like trying to discuss the importance or impact of a painting by painstakingly detailing its subject matter and construction. In the end, you'll just have to play Mouthwashing in order to get the most out of it, as well as this meditation on it.
Discussion has been ongoing in the ensuing months, and I think I finally have settled on what I think about this game.
0. The Illusion of Certainty
On March 24th, 2015, GermanWings flight 2025 had been in the air for 30 minutes when the captain needed to go to the bathroom. It was a fleeting decision, but one that proved to be consequential. He left control of the Airbus A320 with 150 souls aboard to his copilot. He did not know, nor could he have known, that his coworker had been declared unfit to fly for psychological reasons years before. The door to the cockpit is closed when he leaves.
Investigators know exactly what happened afterward, because the black box captured it all in the cockpit microphone. The co-pilot locks the door at some point, which we know because we hear the captain request to be let back in, which goes unheeded. The black box records the autopilot set to descend rapidly while accelerating, and also records the captain feeling these course-changes and attempting to break the door down. Banging can be heard as he tries to get back inside, which was an impossible feat given the post 9-11 modifications to those doors built exactly for a different version of these circumstances.
10 minutes after leaving for the bathroom, all 150 people on that flight were dead.
We have a good idea of the vague bounds as to the co-pilot's motives for doing what he did, but we actually know less about this than we do what happened poking through the mangled wreckage that burned in the German mountainside. The generally accepted narrative is that he was afraid of going blind, had suicidal tendencies, and could not imagine a world where he was alive and not allowed to fly.
There is a sort of justice in the world that death in this circumstance was instant.
But, here's the thing, do we know that? Do we know literally anything about any of the passengers before they were shredded by rocks and metal and jet-fuel?
Do we know what prayers were spoken when the plane shuddered violently? Do we know if anyone tried to assist the captain breaking the door down? Do we understand the magnitude of the plans canceled forever?
The narrative in reports is where a lot of discussions of disasters like this begin and end, our need for a linear progression of cause and effect and intention blind us to the intricate constellation of the plans of side-actors, interactions, wants, needs, history and alternatives to how things played out.
Mouthwashing is a fascinating thing. Despite playing out the roles of two of the instigators of a lethal accident and aftermath, we still fall prey to this way of thinking, and blind ourselves to other important observations and conclusions.
So... Lets look at those, shall we?
1. The First Vision, the Most and Least Important
The first scene of Mouthwashing involves you, the player, assisting in a mass murder.
You lock yourself into a spaceship cockpit, the Tulpar, a manned (outdated) shipping vessel. "I can't let anyone else inside," your character murmurs if you try to open the door. The autopilot wants your attention.
"Please apply a 1.2 degree course correction port-side," the ship's computer says, alerting you to an asteroid that needs navigating around. Your only option is to turn right. "Autopilot corrections engaged," which you promptly dig out a key, unlock a cover, and punch the big red "autopilot disengage" button.
Things go off the rails when you try to leave, immediately getting lost in a maze of pipe and metal in a hallucinatory sequence. A baby wails insistently, following you along with Polle the Donkey, Pony Express's company mascot. There is no escaping what you did. Nobody is going to escape this whatsoever.
Pulling the trigger is weirdly the least important part of the act when it comes to murder in terms of law, morality, and consequence. First Degree Murder, in America anyway, is defined as manslaughter with the presence of intent and premeditation. The fact that the criminal thought about the act, understood how wrong it was, and went through with it anyway we have culturally determined to be odious and unforgivable.
Americans find self-destruction questionable at best, but taking others down with you is especially evil. The kamikaze fighter is forever locked into our collective imaginations and suicide bombers are considered the height of cowardice.
Back to the hallucination: it can't make sense until the rest of the game is played, but it is pretty straightforward as metaphors are concerned. Our person is trapped both by the ship itself, and the job (as represented by Polle).
But more interesting to consider is why we are experiencing this nightmare. When we find Jimmy during this event from a different perspective, he is cowering on the ground right outside the cockpit door. All the running that is done during the original sequence clearly never happened. I think that it is mostly to set expectations; primarily that things that we see are not always to be taken on their face.
Games are fairly literal in their portrayal of events, especially in playable sections. It is important to establish now, and early, that not everything is as it seems.
2. The Second Vision: Short Ladders and Red Flags
The first section that we play with a verifiable perspective is as Curly, a full seven days before the "accident." Curly is the captain of the ship and has taken the responsibility (hmm. hmmm.) of doing Jimmy's psych eval. Anya does not want to perform it, as it would mean being alone with him (hmmmmmm.) so Curly has offered to do it in her stead.
On the way to interview, after dealing with some hijinks involving Daisuke and Swansea in engineering, the hallways to the cockpit become... long. Curly suddenly finds himself in an ocean of blood, and red warning signs appear in the sky while broken metal ladders rise from the blood. The stars fill the sky and the red warning signs fight for your attention.
At the vision's crescendo, everything is consumed by a star and a flash to white. In the white void, all you can do is walk toward the final door to the cockpit. Passing through the door begins the interview as it likely happened.
This hallucination makes no sense the first time through. It isn't until the discussion after the psych eval that the player has the pieces in places to even begin to make sense of things. During the fairly vulnerable exchange between Curly and Jimmy, Curly relates that he is unsure if being a captain of a shipping vessel is really the height of his capability. Jimmy, who has needed help from Curly to even get this job, takes this as a personal affront.
It's important to note that at this juncture of the story, we are under the impression that Curly crashed the ship. If you are trying to pick things apart as you were playing, it would be logical to assume that we are seeing a representation of the hopelessness Curly was feeling which is what drove him to do what he did.
A disclaimer: Metaphor is an emotional language that is attempting to hit at a truth that words cannot. Me attempting to spell it out with words feels dirty and wrong. Emotional truths are flexible such that they can hit at different angles for different people. I am coming at this from the perspective of a a young-ish working technical professional who draws monsters on the ineternet. I encourage you to come to your own conclusions.
With that out of the way, I think there are two takeaways from this one. The first is not really arguable: we are experiencing a recounting of events. Someone is thinking/experiencing/telling the last voyage of the Tulpar very much after the fact, and that person is very likely Curly in this case. This also means that there is a layer of hindsight and regret that colors this recounting. This will come up again.
The other conclusion involves connecting some dots but I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here. Curly is reflecting on the last moment he had where he could have nipped the problem in the bud, confronted it, and certainly saw it festering. It is where he made the mistake of valuing a frienship over the safety of his crew and a victim of sexual violence. It is where all of his "ladders" of oppourtunity are bent and broken, and his everything is burned away by the fires of an interstellar accident. I am also pretty sure this is the only vision we see from Curly's perspective.
Well, at least explicitly. During the company mandated standardized birthday party, after the breaking of the bad news, Curly cuts the cake. But he does it strangely. Despite using a huge, sharp blade, he saws it back and forth, over and over, slowly. He probably has intermingled this memory with Jimmy dismembering him for consumption on that same table. Probably has strong feelings on that knife, which is coloring other memories.
3. Swansea
Swansea is not a vision or hallucination, but is the subject of several. He is probably one of the more complicated videogame characters out there, and I'm about to complicate it a bit more.
For starters: what the fuck happened to Swansea?
We know Jimmy kills Swansea, probably with a shot to the head, but maybe earlier with the mixed drink.
The package of the disinfectant is very reminiscent of American rubbing alcohol, which is not drinkable but there is known precendense of people drinking whole bottles. In general, a healthy adult will survive drinking a whole bottle, and alcoholics will take it better, but they won't exactly be running.
Keep that in mind, because we spend a significant amount of time with Swansea on his feet, hunting Jimmy with an axe.
We play Jimmy trying to barricade himself in the cockpit while Swansea tries to force his way in, but that doesn't really square with the another sequence right after Swansea dispatches Daisuke, where Swansea attacks Jimmy after retrieving the hidden gun.
Putting aside how this doesn't really make sense at a detail level, lets focus on the cat and mouse game in the cemetery.
The Cemetery
In that bit, you play as Jimmy using the captain's revolver to hunt Swansea, who attempts to rush you from behind with the axe. You can only walk, and you must aim and cock the revolver before taking a shot, which takes a little time. Swansea will not initiate an attack from your range of vision, but will commit to a swing if he catches you looking away. If he hits, the sequence begins anew.
There is no way this happened, in any way, shape or form. We are fairly sure Swansea was executed tied to a chair with a shot to the head. There is obviously no cemetery in this godforsaken ship. There is an altar to Daisuke. So... why? Why show this at all?
Ok, bear with me, this is a slight reach. This is not a battle for survival, everyone is dead on this ship. This is the battle for the right to grieve. Jimmy killed Daisuke through his position as captain, represented via the gun. Swansea killed Daisuke through his responsibility to his underling, via an axe. From Jimmy's perspective, Swansea is always trying to back-stab him and catch him unawares.
...To Jimmy's discredit, probably subconciously in whatever mindspace hell we see this from, Swansea is the one taking initiative. Jimmy does not move fast enough to do anything other than react to Swansea's attacks. This reflects Jimmy's attitude as life as something that happens to someone.
Swansea brings that idea home with his final speech. Pretty soon after, Swansea (who is not shown as tied to the chair, but he definitely was) tells us his general life arc from drunkard to worker to family man to jaded, trapped animal. He tells us about the choices he made, their consequences, the pros and the cons, and the acceptance of their outcomes. He is not mad or sad that it turned out this way, his chief regret being he couldn't do better for Daisuke and having a subtle hand in doing him in. Scenes of domestic life flash by as he relates these ideas, culminating in the declaration that in an overall sense, he was happier when he was drunk. He owns that. Unlike Jimmy, who yearns for the prestige of responsibility without the actual responsibility, Swansea recognizes that true responsibility sucks.
Everyone Else
The game focuses on Swansea due to how he contrasts with Jimmy and Curly, but I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the two other souls on board. Contrasting them now to Swansea is the bigger thing I can add to the discourse now at large now that the game has been out for a few months.
Anya
Anya is the most important character of the story. But, like the pull of the trigger or the crash of the ship, Anya is also (tragically) the point of impact where its core is scorched black, leaving the area around it with more detail to look at and talk about. Anya is painfully aware of this.
It is her (heavily, heavily implied) rape and resulting pregnancy that begin turning the slow wheels of fate. However, it was Jimmy's choice to perpetuate that violence.
It is her pleas to help for Curly that make something change, but it is Curly's choice to ultimately do nothing.
It is her attempt to hide the gun so Jimmy wont get it, but the ship is only so big and Pony Express's procedures made the gun fated to go to Jimmy anyway.
The weight of unemployment with the desperation of pregnancy eventually leads to Anya breaking the news to Jimmy. In response to being informed of the consequences of his own actions, and impending fatherhood, Jimmy chooses to do a kamikaze run on a stellar object. Anya could never have forseen this because it is an absolutely inconcievable course of action to take.
Anya is what Jimmy thinks he is: a victim of circumstance. There is a long chain of people she interacts with (Swansea and Daisuke included!) who could have helped and stopped the avalanche of events that took place. Despite this, she knows she always has cards to play. Like Swansea, she understands that the zone of control always exists in arms reach.
Daisuke
I think Daisuke's primary role in the story is bringing the tragedy to the tale. His primary sin the entire game is being party to his superior's designs and being a little annoying to his boss.
I've been in Daisuke's position before; being too naive to know what is going on and your co-workers attempting to shield you from the realities just beyond your sight. Only for years later for you to figure out what was actually going on either through realization or someone telling you half drunkenly over some beers. Daisuke is fated to never have that experience.
Swansea finds Daisuke a sort of annoying enigma. Swansea is doing this job because it pays and it is steady and he is supporting his family. Daisuke is doing it because his mother told him to? Baffling. Swansea, to his credit, attempts to teach him the ropes but his jaded nature sometimes causes his patience to wear thin.
Ultimately, Daisuke is the only one who dies to actions not purely his own. He is done in by going into a sharp vent, sure, but the literal captain ordered him to do it and he is incapable of saying no. Swansea is shot by Jimmy, but I think Swansea saw it more as part suicide by jackass (and part kill-the-jackass if he didn't pull the trigger).
Daisuke is a prop to Jimmy. Once he is dead, his presence is reduced to a flower, resembling those of Daisuke's shirt.
4. Mouthwash
I don't think Wrong Organ realized how genius their selection of Mouthwash is.
It is a product predicated on lies and misunderstanding. Dentist are generally so-so when it comes to the usage of mouthwash. It's generally only recommended as a treatment for something specific (bad breath, dry socket, plaque, etc), not as part of daily routine. Some brands burn because of the marketing research that consumers think it's working when it does. Alcoholic mouthwash tends to run 8% alcohol (11% in the ingame brand: Dragonbreath X), giving it a similar ABV to beer. The flavorings, colorings, and stabilizers make it a poor disinfectant, noted by Anya early on and becoming a plot point later.
Its packaging and presentation make it more difficult for Swansea to consume. Daisuke tries some, but only seems to do so socially. Anya doesn't partake because she needs to keep her wits about her because of... reasons... It is unclear if Jimmy samples any.
The crew's response to finding their hold full of mouthwash is telling. The stuff is useless, and was always useless. The knife begins to twist when they are fired, making their final voyage insultingly trivial, and the blade is snapped off once their cargo becomes the only thing to consume. When it is poured into Daisuke's wounds, it does nothing, but it still hurts due to the alcohol.
Kills 99% of the germs. Even when they're people sized.
The visions, when they are leaning in on the hopelessness of the situation, will feature piles of bottles of empty mouthwash. Sometimes the empty bottles tumble down the stairs, other times there are boxes full of them. The only thing worse than having a ton of a useless thing, is having none of it.
In the last set of dream-sequences, Polle stands atop a mountain of empty mouthwash bottles.
I've said a lot of stuff, arguing about slight twists about metaphor and perspective and internal/external narrative. We are hostage to the story teller, but we are not helpless to them. So I want to leave you with this:
Polle stands atop a mountain of empty mouthwash bottles, illuminated by a massive moon. He taunts and belittles Jimmy, and questions what he should do with "Him".
So, in other words;
Jimmy is such a pathetic person that he is threatened by empty bottles of useless liquid and a mascot for a dead company.
God Jimmy sucks.