Once I performed Mouthwashing, Unsuitable Organ’s psychological horror recreation and shock darkish horse within the 2024 Sport of the Yr race, I couldn’t have anticipated it might attain the extent of fandom during which it acquired 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 happening this path. I suppose it shouldn’t be too stunning, then, that its characters are getting stuffed toys, regardless of the horrible issues all of them undergo in Mouthwashing’s temporary runtime. What’s stunning is that in any case this time, the neighborhood just isn’t 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 all the pieces that goes down, suffice it to say Mouthwashing is a fairly harrowing story involving a number of the worst issues people are able to, and Jimmy is the perpetrator of loads 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 doable redemption.
Jimmy does loads of reprehensible issues in Mouthwashing, and the one which’s maybe most notable is that the sport implies he raped Anya, the lone lady on the ship, who’s now pregnant. We don’t must get into all of the repercussions of this act right here, however as you’ll be able to think about, loads of Mouthwashing followers usually are not followers of Jimmy’s. In actual fact, 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 proper 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 loads of depth. For some who discover his actions unforgivable, even believing him an attention-grabbing centerpiece in Mouthwashing’s story goes past what they consider to be morally acceptable.
Quick ahead to August 2025, and a collectible producer referred to as Plushshop is making a cat-shaped plush of Jimmy. The shop has stuffed cats based mostly on characters from anime, TV reveals, and video video games, starting from Squid Sport to One Piece. When the corporate first introduced plans to make Mouthwashing plushes, these plans didn’t embrace 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 go away damaging consumer opinions saying that given Jimmy’s true nature, he shouldn’t be made right into a cute cat plush. That alone is possibly a dialog price having, however the feedback rapidly devolved right into a poisonous cesspool, with some individuals claiming that those that purchased the plush had been rape apologists and a number of other feedback that, for some cause, included racial slurs. I went to go have 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 opinions 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 placing visuals, am I thrilled that its characters are being made into plushes? Not notably. I do suppose it’s a bit bizarre to make these characters cute cats and even simply common toys. It turns a fairly horrific story into an nearly absurdist show prop, and even the formally licensed plush of a man wrapped up in bandages along with his painkillers made into an adjunct sort 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 sort of “placing fictional characters on trial” nonsense that has plagued discussions round video games like The Final of Us or Nier and that I can’t consider 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 some of the vile issues an individual is able to. However he isn’t an actual individual, and he isn’t on trial. Liking a narrative during which individuals do horrible issues just isn’t 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 a minimum of a few of these individuals placing Jimmy on trial have bigger points than a scarcity of media literacy.
The foundation of those sorts of arguments is that there’ll at all times be individuals who don’t perceive that others interact with artwork otherwise than they do. One factor I’ve realized in my years of writing, studying, watching, and listening to criticism is that you just’ll discover that there are some individuals who have totally different expectations after they voice an opinion a couple of 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 suppose is ok. When some followers voice a criticism a couple of recreation, they count on the builders to deal with it in a patch, and so after they see one other individual 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 individuals interact with characters. Some individuals solely “like” characters in the event that they help all the pieces they do and may stand by them ultimately, so the idea of having fun with a personality who does reprehensible shit is so international to them that it’s one way or the other an ethical failing to derive any form of satisfaction from them, even from dissecting their actions. As a result of persons 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, somewhat than a way of exploring probably difficult or uncomfortable themes. The curtains had been blue. Jimmy was a nasty man. That’s all there may be to it.
I didn’t count on to rant about this on a random Friday in August, and I definitely didn’t count on it to be over a toy cat. I actually loved Mouthwashing, however I assume it’s 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 interact with the sport they’re purportedly followers of.
