TW: rape mention (it's mouthwashing so...), mentions of manipulation
I've got some opinions on Curly, and they're not part of the majority (unless the majority is changing again). I heard initially when the game came out people were taking responsibility away from curly and calling him innocent when he isn't. Then when I got into the game (around its 1 year anniversary) I was hearing the opposite and felt like there was a lot of hate for the guy.
While I agree he should've done more, could've done a little more, I do think it's reasonable in game that he didn't because of his flaws. There's a lot that's not entirely surface level: his depression, his existential crisis and the loss of sleep, Jimmy's manipulation: all these things to me did affect his decision making in the moment.
And I want to emphasize, this is is not to excuse curly but to explain him.
People say if he had done more the crash wouldn't have happened. And sure, you can think of it that way. If he had done more for Anya (like move her to medical, talked to her about it and promise more thoroughly to keep her safe then throwing out vague platitudes - I think this is part of his character too), Anya likely wouldn't have told Jimmy and Jimmy wouldn't have crashed the ship.
But then, if Jimmy hadn't raped Anya, none if this would have happened. If pony express cares more about it's people and made the appropriate preparation for this trip - installing locks on sleeping quarter doors, adding an extra cryppod for Daisuke - none of this would have happened. When it comes to responsibility, I feel like curlyy lower down than PE and Jimmy, and holds less responsibility. This isn't to absolve him, because I love curly but I do think he plays a part. But it's also not fair to say he's entirely at fault when there are others factors that played a bigger part (Jimmy's right there guys).
I think he's tragic, because it's not that he didn't want to help. He just really didn't know what to do. Curlys kinda of shown to be scared of Jimmy: even though they're friendly casual at the beginning, the hallucination right before the cockpit talk is kinda telling, and like people have described it kinda feels like anxiety;
we've seen he can't argue back to jimmy because jimmy doesn't let him, they've been friends for years but this is how they communicate. Jimmy tells at curly until he stops talking, he twists his words in front of others and bring up curly personal troubles he brought up in confidence Jimmy wouldn't tell others;
Doesn't help that the crew doesn't point out how awful Jimmy is being which probably cemented in curlys mind that they believe what Jimmy says;
Jimmy can read curly but isn't good at helping him, he immediately makes curlys worries about his future and place about himself and curly has to pivot to comfort him;
curlys the one who helped Jimmy get a job so he clearly feels responsible for his friend and has been helping Jimmy for years presumably;
I imagine Jimmy manipulated curly into not leaving despite Jimmy not being a good friend, with how he struggled curly probably felt like he had to help. He's a nice guy, so he wanted to do what he probably felt was right, only for someone like Jimmy to twist that and take advantage. Curly mentions that Jimmy struggled back in earth, and we can extrapolate that curly helped him in that time
Sorry quick tangent: I feel like people forget that curly did not have it good with Jimmy as his friend. Jimmy is quick to anger, explosive with that anger, he's rude and makes nasty jokes, he's dangerously insecure and jealous.. being his friend sounds awful but curly stuck to him because they're best friends and curly wanted to help; part of me thinks based in the dlc that curly wanted ti believe si bad that Jimmy could get better because then ut meant he could change from his stagnating life. "We said would change tomorrow, and the day after that and another". It's linda if admirable because I feel like most people leave when a friend is hurtful and mean and kind of abusive, but that's also where it's a problem because curly staying by Jimmy's side enables Jimmy to keep acting the way he does, until curly can no longer fight back or out his foot down. Victim turned enabler. Because victims aren't perfect flawless people either.
Edit 2: Another to add that invisibleeldritchdragon brought to my attention is that I'm putting too much onto Jimmy manipulating curly into staying friends. That's not the only thing that makes up their friendship. I do genuinely believe before PE they were just good friends. In the dlc, curly talks about how lonely it was, how he felt isolated and far from everyone and everything on earth. And I imagine, like they said, that inviting jimmy was to make himself feel less alone. It was for himself as much as it was for Jimmy. But, that doesn't take away from Jimmy being not good, in fact, like I've seen a few people say, it made it easier for Jimmy's manipulation and generally toxic nature to get to curly. Curly probably thought he could vent to Jimmy instead of holding it all in, and as captain he probably felt as though he couldn't go to the crew and burden them. But Jimmy isn't really the best to vent too, as we've seen.
Tangent done back to main point, which is: things are really complicated. It's not as simple as "curlys at fault" and "Jimmy's evil" (not to say I don't think he is, but the scariest thing to me is that he's the worst of humanity balled up into a person, but that still means he's human. Some people are capable of being this awful). So, curlys scared of Jimmy, he's shown to feel responsible for him and Jimmy has shown himself to be abrasive and manipulative. Doesn't set the best tone for captain and co-pilot and their dynamic, even with their official rankings in the crew. There's also the fact that PE sucks so bad any action taken by curly would've have resulted in lost credits, and at the time they'd just gotten fired and people like Anya were really screwed with no back up plans.
So curly had a huge, very fragile responsibility on his shoulders. Jimmy is explosive, and curly is on some level scared of Jimmy, so he wouldn't want to confront him (especially after the birthday party blowupTM) directly fearing what Jimmy might say or do. There are only 4 cryopods (and 5 people) meant for worst case emergencies and this isn't really one of them (or at least, at the time it wouldn't have seemed so). Jimmy is needed as copilot too, it's an important role they can't afford to just throw away even if Jimmy is a problem. This and, curly was probably having a brain jam at trying to come to terms that Jimmy hurt Anya after knowing her for a while (since they've done trips like these before), that Jimmy was not getting better, that Jimmy did what he did and curly never realised or noticed. He was frozen with everything, it was an awful situation to be in, and an awful one to be responsible for. And really curly wasn't in the right mindset to be captain with his mental health issues.
Also, the scene right before the crash is a difficult one I didn't understand initially. The problem is taking is surface level: yes, curly says he's going to try and fix this, that he and Jimmy cannget through this like they have before, and it sounds like he wants to help Jimmy get away with it. But I ask you this: if curly was going to defend Jimmy, then why did Jimmy still crash the ship? Jimmy did that, because at this point he believed he had nothing else. No job on earth, probably not a lot of friends or family to rely on, and now he's going to be persecuted for raping Anya, especially since there's "evidence" with the baby (so f***ed up that jimmy thinks it's only problematic because she's pregnant, not because he raped her). But curly could've have easily hidden this as captain, he would've protected Jimmy. And yet Jimmy still crashed the ship, which tells me he knew curly wasn't going to stand by him. So, this is why I agree that curly was having a fawn response, desperately trying to clam Jimmy from doing something drastic, which he feared the entire time. He throws a bunch of empty platitudes like he has to Anya when she first told him. It's so bad, that when Anya is shown visibly, emotionally hurt and scared after telling Jimmy she's pregnant, Curly completely ignores her turmoil and rushes to the cockpit. The music is scratchy and anxiety inducing, because it's how curly felt. You can't do anything else but run to the cockpit, and trying to interact with anything else gives a line like "I've got to find him." Or "I've got to get to the cockpit." And it shows a great deal of urgency. Curly is f***ing terrified of what Jimmy is going to do, the subconscious fear has risen up in the face of everything. I don't think he was going to stand by curly, nor that he didn't care that Jimmy raped Anya, even if Jimmy is his best friend. I'm more on the boat that he would've done something when they'd gotten back rather than nothing, that if he'd had the time he would've been able to come up with a plan after getting over the initial stress that probably froze him. But time isn't really something they had.
Edit 3: That and the way he reacted to Jimmy placing the blame on him is misunderstood too. It does seem like he just let Jimmy crash the ship. For whatever reason he completely shuts down. @raining-anonymously made a really good post on how the birthday scene as curly could be seen as curly dissociating. We know his mental health is quite low and he's very sleep deprived, which can lead to dissociating. I do think that when Jimmy placed the blame of him raping Anya I'm curlys shoulders, everything was just too much and be started dissociating. He barely seems present until Jimmy pats him and just watches him go, but moments ago he was panicked and stress and terrified because he knew Jimmy would do something rash. Him dissociating from the intense stress makes sense, personally. Again, not to absolve Curly but this is just really tragic. And given in the post made by @raining-anonymously that the team minus Daisuke know how to help curly while he's dissociating, like they mentioned is very messed up that jimmy knowing curly through this basically used curlys moment of dissociating to the crash the ship, and then blames it on Curly because when has that man ever known to take responsibility
So, there's not a huge amount he could've done. Because someone would have suffered, likely Anya, and the last thing curly wanted was to make things worse. He wanted to, understandably, hold out until they got back so things could be appropriately handled in a safer environment. But, that doesn't mean I don't think he could've done other things.
Mainly, to make Anya feels safer. I think because he didn't do more for Anya, she felt she had to take things in her own hands, bearing in mind she's been dealing with this alone for months now, and her captain while likely showing horror and sympathy, does not immediately punish Jimmy not tell her why he isn't, which then lead to Jimmy acting the way he did. He could've let her sleep in medical and said her room was busted. if he had communicated why he didn't go to jimmy asap - because jimmy is dangerous when angry - she would've probably been more understanding. But this one is harder because while I've discussed why curly is likely afraid, curly himself doesn't seem to think that. He isn't consciously aware of how Jimmy scares him, so I don't think he'd have been able to properly verbalise why he didn't immediately punish Jimmy. But he definitely could have communicated a better plan for Anya which would have made her feel heard and a little bit safer.
Also, I remember someone mentioning another thing that curly fails to do, and it's to notice the misogyny Jimmy throws at Anya. We see an instance of this when Anya mentions Jimmy doesn't take psych evals seriously and makes nasty comments, but curly at the time just sees it as jimmy horsing around. And while he's able to realise Anya doesn't want to to do Jimmy's psych eval, he doesn't notice the misogyny in how Jimmy acts and that that's why Anya doesn't feel comfortable (among the other things Jimmy did). I do believe this wasn't a one time occurence, that Jimmy got progressively worse around Anya but no one, including Swansea (Daisuke was young and new so I don't really blame him. Plus he felt like he was in the way and not part of the gang so he probably hesitated to call out anything) and curly, noticed until Anya explicitly states Jimmy raped her. And that's a flaw on these people. I remember seeing this comedy stand up turned into important talk thing where a guy plainly stated to other guys, if you think you know your make friends you don't. If they do something, stand by the woman, not them. Because he thought he knew his friend until the guy raped someone and the guy just didn't know because men don't know how to recognise these signs that women know intimately. I feel like that's curly, in fact that's exactly what happened. He was completely blindsided even though he knew Jimmy wasn't stable.
So yeah, this game is really nuanced. Someone else once said "mouthwashing is about human folly" which is really accurate because both pre crash and post crash, everyone's flaws and mistakes slowly played into the tragedy that occured. It wasn't just one person that caused it, it wasn't just one person that perpetuated it, it was everyone, with differing amounts of responsibility: the main ones being Jimmy, pony express and curly (in that order, with curly have a smaller amount than the other two). We're all people with flaws, and sometimes our flaws get the better of us.
I like curly because I think hes tragic. He's sort of relatable with the people pleasing and inability to confront Jimmy, he's warning for men an their perception of male friends. And gosh, post crash? I don't even want to think about it. He undoubtedly had it the worst, even with characters like daisuke and Anya who were dealt an awful hand. He's disfigured and hurt terribly, has to live with the fact that he could've stopped this while soaked in his own blood, and can't do anything anymore. It is very ironic that before the crash curly didn't do anything (in time) and now he can't. Anya unknowingly let's Jimmy abuse curly to the point curly doesn't cry out in pain until his leg is getting sawed off. He has to watch and hear everyone die one by one before Jimmy goes insane and does everything he does before being frozen (presumably to death) and knowing truly everyone is dead, that Jimmy escaped responsibility, and while it isn't entirely his fault, you can bet he believes it is. It's just so cruel and awful. He's a nice guy, but being a nice guy isn't always enough.
Edit 1: I probably got some things wrong or didn't explain them right, and im happy to discuss but I just ask for kindness and respect if you do decide to comment. I might come back and edit things that I forgot
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