#amelie death stranding

[reichant]

– you want to go home?

[konnestrasketch]

The fifth time...?

[myaoiboy]

Death Stranding gender talk you say? Count me in.

Oh, I'm so glad someone asked about MPreg: A Hideo Kojima Game :3c

I'm going to put a quick CW in here for a medical-setting image of an umbilical cord. It's pretty mild, but I think doing side-by-side images will be helpful for illustrating what I'm talking about. Also, big spoilers for anyone that hasn't finished the game, obviously

Literally everything in Death Stranding is so very tied to parenthood and especially the pregnancy and birth parts. Yes it's technically a metaphor for the creative process but also it's, uh, incredibly visceral. So I'm gonna start here with Sam, but damn everyone in this game has some gender going on.

Can we talk about how Bridget chose the same name for both her other half/fictional daughter AND for her adopted son? I feel like not enough people mention the fact that "Amelie's" "real" name is Samantha America Strand, and everyone just calls her Amelie. Maybe because it's fucking weird to have two kids named Sam and Samantha?

The fact is too, that the two Sams aren't the only ones with gender-ambiguous names in the game...we don't know Lou's gender until the very end! The use of gender-ambiguous names for the only two main characters that you as the player can actually interact with feels hella meaningful.

In fact, the game intentionally lets us think that Lou/BB is a boy for most of the game! Cliff refers to his BB as "him" in one of the first cutscenes we see of him, very early on. The game also lets us believe, for some time at least, that there's a chance that the memories are BB/Lou's, and that Lou is Cliff's baby. We don't know this isn't true until near the end of the game! Why didn't any of the characters point out this contradiction before then? I'm not sure, at least not yet. Very open to thoughts on this. It doesn't feel like the MO of the game to have a gender reveal at the end for shock value.

Anyways, let's get in on point one obvious: like I already said, this is an mpreg game. There's...there's no way around it. A dudes carry a fetus attached to them by an umbilical cord (which they make VERY viscerally look like a real umbilical cord btw, between the color/texture/the additional cable along the outside).

I feel like "haha it's the mpreg game" has probably been done to death but I love it so much specifically because of the implications that it makes and the puns that it plays on.

Sam is a delivery man. He's called "The Great Deliverer" or "The Man Who Delivers." And the last scene of the game, the last line before we flash-back for the postgame, is...?

Literally childbirth! It's...delivery. It's Sam delivering his own child, after making a trek by foot across the continental US carrying a difficult pregnancy. "The Man Who Delivers" is a double entendre throughout the game, just like "strand" is ('strand' like rope or hair, 'strand' as in a portion of a larger network, 'strand' as in stranding, like the beach, etc).

So like, what the fuck, right? Why do we have Mpreg: Hiking Simulator? What the HELL is going on in there?

So. America, right?

If there's anything Kojima really loves to talk about, it's America. American identity, imperialism, national myth, etc. Death Stranding is just the most recent and blatant of these. And, of course, one of the most popular American Myths are the story of the founding fathers, right up there with manifest destiny.

So we have this game where Sam is both literally becoming a father after carrying a surrogate pregnancy, and also metaphorically becoming a father by re-founding America. In that way we can see, through his experience of pregnancy, the trials of (re-)founding America.

Okay, great, cool, Sam is a male mom, wonderful, so glad that technology has progressed to this point, we stan. Maybe we don't stan the use of American nationalism as a tool so much but look at the healthy baby glow <3.

But I also want to contrast this with the only other BB we really see in the game. Yeah, baby, it's Higgs time!!! And I am going to make a comparison that is going to seem batshit insane. Bear with me:

I was skeptical myself when I first saw this comparison, but I've been converted into a believer for a few reasons.

The visual. While imo it wouldn't be enough on its own to make a case, I have to admit that his hood is similar to some popular depictions of Mary

Higgs is literally a male prophet of a goddess of extinction. He essentially considers himself her messenger,

While Sam gets his BB from another person, and it's also a live fetus, Higgs gets his from Amelie, as how god gives mary jesus immaculately

Much like Amelie's reveal that her "soul is a lie," the "baby" that she gives higgs is a twisted effigy. He carries his god(dess)'s physical form, but as she is a goddess of extinction with no remaining soul of her own, it will never grow.

i'm willing to believe higgs is a virgin, for the bit.

Okay okay I gotta stop for now because it's 1 AM but like, consider it, mayhaps.

[higgs-the-god]

Trying so hard to upload this… internet …. Pls…..

[yukichouji]

Sam, buddy, you done fucked up.

[redpool]

I fucking hate Amelie.

[creatureesque]

the gang when the death strands ^-^ big long ver under cut

[rej11]

[raiden-brannigan]

wake up babe new meme format just dropped

[little-red-fool]

MY QUEENS (I need to see them in a fistfight)

[ashkav]

Lou theory time

elle fanning, who i'm assuming is adult Lou, always has these very faint threads on her. at first i though it was just when she was floating:

(not sure if you can see it but it's clearest near Fragile)

but later when she's eavesdropping you can also see them as she walks away:

(near her shoulders)

what are these things? obviously, the clearest connection i can make, especially since that puppet character featured so prominently in the trailer, is puppet strings.

but puppets need a puppeteer. who do the strings lead back to?

my theory for where Lou went is that she grew up on the beach, which is why she's older and Sam and Fragile are seemingly the same age and why she was found in a chrysalis covered in tar. let's not forget she seems to bleed tar with timefall effects from her suckers (?):

all relating back to tar and chiralium and cephalapods, three things we know are indicative of a connection to the beach.

(and it seems like Lou's inherited her dad's aphenphosmphobia too. her skin goes red and gets hives the closer the doctor gets to her arm.)

but the beach is famously a solitary place. and Lou can't have been alone since toddlerhood (this is assumption based on the first trailer. it's possible that she 'died' and disappeared later on in life, but likely she got shot the same time Fragile did) and on top of all that she's got clothes! who dressed her?

so far we're aware of only a few characters who can travel to and from the beach:

Sam (with Amelie's help). it cant be him because obvious reasons.

Fragile. unlikely. she apologizes for 'misleading' Sam but i think it's more likely she was talking about the nature of the 're-connection' rather than Lou.

Higgs. getting warmer. he obviously knows something, and his hair floats when he touches the empty pod, but it's inconclusive.

Amelie. the only one for sure still on the beach. the only other character witch weird bodily shit going on (eternal umbilical cord, the Bridget/ Amelie split).

and then we have the masks:

the gold chiral mask is Higgs's staple, but let's not forget who gave him the idea. in both the skeletal half mask from the first game and the full face red mask from this game, Amelie did it first. the gold is based on her black skeleton mask Die-Hardman wears for most of the game and the red is just her face, like a pharaoh's death mask.

Lou and Amelie are linked somehow. and the puppet strings make me feel like that connection is not going to be a happy one.

[skys-metro]

HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY DEATH STRANDING!!!

[konnestrasketch]

Bridges Tennis part 1 !?

[bidonicart]

Timefall

(where else to find me)

[beefosaur]

happy mother’s day!

[yukichouji]

So this was for sure one of the more awkward experiences a video game has offered me thus far...

dear sir, what? The? F*ck?

Anyway xD Love this game 10/10 just for the experience so far

And I have a feeling it’s just going to get weirder from here on out :D