You know Ashley from Resident Evil 4 (open in new tab)? She's a rat now. Yeah, I'm not sure either, but I need to get the image of the President's daughter being an actual human female out of my head. Because the Internet has determined that she is an adorable, cheese-loving rodent who is no taller than your ankles, and now Capcom has admitted it. It's not hard to imagine a patch for this game being released within the next few weeks.

It all started just about a week ago when a Twitter user named Agrimmora posted some nondescript fan art on his personal account. Asking "What would you do if you launched "resident evil 4 remake" and Ashley was just a little mouse?", Agrimmora inadvertently sparked one of the most powerful and puzzling memes in recent memory.

"Moushly" fan art has flooded the world, and I can say with confidence that it must now surpass the amount of Ashley art from the "normal" RE4 remake. There's Moushly finding cheese (opens in new tab), Moushly recreating memes (opens in new tab), Pixel Moushly (opens in new tab), and so much more. The limits of human taste are truly limitless.

I am not a social scientist, nor do I own Farsona. But, if I may be so bold, Agrimora's brief sketch included a design that was easy to replicate, instantly recognizable, and (let's be honest) very endearing; Moushly has the feel of a beloved Saturday morning cartoon character, and the "RE4 Ashley the Rat to be a rat."

While the brainy AtoB is a little hard to understand, the popularity of the Moushly character is intuitively easy to understand.

Furthermore, like the Ghibli-esque trailer for "RE4" (opens in new tab), the gap between the game's actual subject matter (an evil cult that uses parasites to convert humans into bioweapons) and the meme (Ashley is a cute little mouse who wants cheese) is fascinating.

But as I said, even Capcom has gone so far as to comment on this trend, albeit in a rather oblique way. Last Friday, the official Resident Evil Twitter account posted a rat emoji and a cheese emoji (open in new tab), which understandably got thousands of people excited. No clue "what it means for a rodent version of a video game character to be canon," but whatever it means, it's true.

Anyway, enough about me. Here's some of my favorite Mushrie fan art: