#lou bridges

[skys-metro]

final batch will come tomorrow

(credit would be awesome if you use any of these 💜💜💜 I'm glad people enjoy these photos 🥺😭)

[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.

[ansu-gurleht]

also i am REALLY CURIOUS about

1) whatever was going on with the chrysalis lady (elle fanning’s character?) and how she seems to either be a) life created by the beach/tar or b) somehow returned from the beach to our world by the tar (maybe this is how higgs returned as well if so?). either option is highly intriguing tbh. if it’s b then that means at some point she was bodily transported to the beach, right? like how ee brought higgs there.

2) whatever that recording of deadman was talking about at the end, something about bb28 (lou) having been retired 4 years before sam ever encounters her?????? what the fuck is that supposed to mean. is lou not the original bb28??????

3) this is probably easily explained but why were fragile and sam in beach blue when she was showing him around the ship at the beginning? that would seem to imply that the magellan travels through the beach, but iirc you only turn beach blue in the beach if you’re “dead” (like in heartman’s flashback to the voidout that killed his family, he’s technically “dead” bc his heart stopped so he’s beach blue). so idk what’s going on with that

[theskyisbrighthere]

I'm so damn excited

Should we have connected? A HIDEO KOJIMA’S GAME DEATH STRANDING 2

[fantasykiri5]

Fabian Seacaster, Maximum Legend that you are

[lewalrus]

For some time now I wanted to make a Deadsam AU like the satyr!Deadman one, but where Sam is the big creature. So yeah, have a minotaur!Sam lol Lou is Sam's biological daughter on this one, so she is a minotaur too because why not? x3 "Sam was hunted by the villagers after Lou's mother, a human named Lucy, died while giving birth, they blamed Lou and Sam for her death and Sam had to run away with Lou before they killed his baby. Sam had a hard time trusting another human again. Deadman, one of the village's doctors, managed to find the cave where Sam was hiding and, after a scary controntation with the enraged and hurt minotaur, he convinced Sam to let him take care of his wounds."

[cheetyuwu]

[bidonicart]

Walking simulator

where else to find me

[hippano]

This year's pumpkin is a bb baby!

[creatureesque]

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

[konnestrasketch]

Bridges Tennis part 1 !?

[skys-metro]

Not done yet :)

[bidonica]

so much going on in the new Death Stranding trailer but personally I keep thinking about these nine seconds of Sam cooking for Lou 🫶

[ansu-gurleht]

fuck higgs. if your favorite character in death stranding isn’t lou you’re playing the game wrong

[zeeckz]

[chiralcrystallization]