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Why Is Art Twitter Drawing Ashley From 'Resident Evil 4' As A Mouse All Of A Sudden?
Art Twitter is like a box of chocolates in that you never know what you're going to get when you check it out, and there's a significant chance that whatever you find could be horrible, but sometimes it's pretty sweet.
Luckily, artists on Twitter have coalesced around a rather adorable meme this week by drawing Ashley Graham from Resident Evil 4 as a mouse.
This wholesome trend has spread widely over the past few days, and if you're feeling out of the loop on the dense lore that inspired so many artists, we've got you covered with the incredible story of how "Moushly" became a meme. Get ready, because this one's a doozy.
How Did "Mouse Ashley" Become A Meme?
Someone thought it would be funny if Ashley were a mouse.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Twitter user @agrimmora tweeted the hypothetical scenario that upon booting up the Resident Evil 4 remake, players would find that Ashley, the President's daughter and the subject of Leon Kennedy's mission, was just a tiny little mouse. Then people started drawing that.
That's essentially the entire story. Artists on Twitter were tickled by the concept of Ashley, noted for having a needy personality in the original game, being a mouse that Leon needed to protect.
The art trend was aided by the fact that mice characters have had small bursts of memetic popularity in recent years. Recent mice-centric memes include "Cheesed to meet you" and "For you, it's on the mouse", both of which were easily adapted into the growing "Moushley" meme.
"Moushley" makes some amount of sense — her English voice actress in the original game is Carolyn Lawrence, who also voices Sandy Cheeks from SpongeBob SquarePants. Lawrence dialing her Sandy voice a few notches away from "squirrel" and towards "mouse" gave us Ashley, so it's not much of a stretch to imagine the character's lines coming out of a tiny little pipsqueak.
It's also one of the few times an art Twitter trend hasn't instantly become filled with NSFW examples, and any time that happens is worth celebrating.
For more information, check out the Know Your Meme entry on Ashley Graham as a mouse.
