Anyway elaborating on this and the potential for a Higgs redemption arc/reluctant ally arc/his chaotic ass pulling a Vegeta in DS2, I was finishing Mama's chapter today (spoilers if you haven't played the first Death Stranding yadda yadda) and a couple of things jumped at me:

When Lockne's soul merges with Mama's she does this, suggesting it's actually Mama embracing her/wiping her tears. Looks familiar:

(this actually doesn't have anything to do with Higgs' potential Vegeta arc - I don't think - but I feel it had to be pointed out. What is powering Fragile's second set of hands?)

Lockne does a bit of exposition about how Mama wasn't really alive because her soul went on to the afterlife while her body was kept "alive" by the soul of her unborn baby, so when Sam severed their link she started to die definitively. Something something what with the gut (but probably umbilical cord) window and him literally rising from a coffin, that's probably the state Higgs is going to be in in DS2. More or less. Somewhat. I have theories on how he might have manifested himself into the physical world again but they're very vague and also not the point of this post

But most of all what made me jump in my chair was this email you get after Mama's death:

Which honestly sounds like A Lot when applied to Mama because it's hard to see Mama's "betrayal" as even a betrayal at all - it's just her feeling guilty and traumatized, a big misunderstanding with no ill intent behind it. But who is the character who became a minion of the real adversary in this story and was tasked specifically with causing trouble for the hero...

And then there's that little aside about second chances at the end of the email which... Kojima I'm in your fucking walls. Why did you bury that in an email about Mama of all people. I might be reading too much into this (because it's explicitly about Mama), and Kojima said he heavily rewrote DS2 after the pandemic, so it's hard to tell how much of what is laid out in Death Stranding will end up paying off in the sequel. But... redeeming the villain from the first part of the story and/or making him a reluctant ally is a classic anime trope and something I actually thought about back when I finished my first playthrough because why keep Higgs alive (albeit stranded on the Beach) only to rehash the same storyline from the first game?

I'm trying not to get my hopes up but... the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me, especially because I got a feeling from the new trailer that the real antagonist is going to be Bridges (or whatever APAC is), so a sharp turn from the more metaphysical threat posed by Higgs, Amelie and Clifford in the first game.

Didn’t think cross country delivery boy simulator would make me emotional, but the twins proved me wrong

I made Death Stranding Valentines for the ladies this year!!

First Valentines post

Since I'm particularly proud of it, I want to post this edit of Mama/Målingen here too💚

Mama, the inverted stillmother

Kojima loves his parallels. Higgs and Sam (the "tom and jerry" archetype he made a tweet about), the two Lous (self explanatory), Amelie and Cliff (the parents at war). Mama herself already has a natural double in her twin, Lockne.

but she's also an inversion of a concept the game doesn't mention much: stillmothers.

a stillmother is where BBs come from, a pregnant brain-dead woman whose fetus is removed and sealed in a pod. this teetering between life and death, the unborn child taken from a functionally dead mother, is what allows the BBs to function like they do, making a bridge between the living and the dead and not only seeing BTs but allowing others to see them too via a connection with the umbilical cord. the stillmother and BB maintain their connection through womb data, which is essential to the BBs continued health, as it must always believe it is in its mother's womb.

Mama is the opposite: a mother birthing a child that dies in the same instance, a BT before the umbilical cord was even cut. this tethers the BT to her instead of the other side, but it also holds her in stasis. she's not dead but not really living either, and the tension of the cord pulling in both directions is the only thing that's keeping her breathing. once it's cut, the snap back kills her.

where BBs are in constant portable motion, facilitating connection, Mama is stationary, solitary, disconnected from her sister because of her condition. both metaphorically and literally, Mama lives for the dead. in a way, she's also a more extreme reflection of Sam, or maybe a warning to him, where reconnection with the living literally saves her soul.

the BT baby is literally an attempt at connection gone wrong. the baby that was meant to be raised by both Lockne and Malingen, that was meant to bridge the divide between living a dead by being made from what was left of Lockne's lover, died, severing all of those connections permanently. that this is practically the only other child character we see in the game apart from Sam and BB seems important. Sam and the BT baby were both children that were meant to create personal bonds at their birth/ removal from the pod, Cliff and Lisa (and even a severing of bonds if we consider Cliff Vs Bridget and in lesser part, John/ Die-Hardman), the BT connecting the the sisters and the dead husband. but BB 28 is collective child, impersonal, working for the future of the whole. only once BB 28 has completed her job and reconnected the whole of America is she allowed to become Lou, the personal child, only required to connect herself and Sam.

children connect the collective, but cannot be relied upon to connect the personal for anyone but their own sake, maybe?

in any case, Mama is fooling herself, same as the BB must be fooled to continue on. she knows her child must return to the other side, that she is no longer the BT baby's mother in anything but name only, but she holds onto that umbilical cord with both hands, until she literally can't anymore, until she realises that her connection with the living has to be rekindled for the sake of America and the chiral network, her life's work.

Death Stranding aesthetics:

Bridges: Military cargo. Useful and all-terrain. Fragile: Jean Paul Gaultier but waterproof. This swag can kill. Deadman: Hugo Boss? But surgeon. Die Hardman: Gala. Aristocrat. He has never worked a single day for anyone. Heartman: Office worker. Regular dude Mama: Mechanic. Sleeveless shirt, because the sleeves get in the way and get stained Amélie: Gucci, from the 70s, for a gala in Cannes, but walking through the mud and I respect her a lot.

mama and lockne

Målingen, Lockne

I love her so much, I think I might just implode alksjdflasdk#

Time to go for a little walk :D Well, more like, one hell of a long ass walk haha But at least I get to listen to Malingen chat away as we go <3 Very excited to meet Lockne properly as well <3 *heart eyes*

Top ten Video Game Characters of all time (in no particular order):

10. Fiona the Conartist- Tales from the Borderlands

9. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider

8. Arthur Morgan - Red Dead Redemption 2

7. Abby Anderson and Lev - The Last of us 2

6. Amanda Ripley - Alien Isolation

5.Steph Gingrich- Life is Strange: True Colors

4.Malingen and Lockne- Death Stranding

3. Summoner Yuna - Final Fantasy X

2. Dr. Liara T'Soni - Mass Effect

1. Lightning Farron- Final Fantasy XIII

She’s my daughter. And I’m her MAMA.

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

Happy holidays!!

Starting to think that the bots in the second trailer actually contain dead BBs, either in their abdominal cavities (since the light emitted from them is reminiscent to BB pods) or in the coffin-shaped containers on their backs because when you see one of the bots deploy that dog robot, the humanoid bot’s head turns into the shape of an odradek—which also shares the same shape as the robot samurai’s head—but also when Sam aims his gun at one of them his odradek starts spinning as well which in the first game indicates the presence of BTs, and we already saw Lou get killed and turn into what is probably a BT, so the bots are likely controlled by BB BTs. Maybe they’re the sacrificial BBs that Bridges used to connect each city, as is mentioned when we get to Edge Knot. Also since the first game focused more on bodies without souls (e.g. Amelie/Bridget, Deadman, Mama), I think the second game might focus on souls without bodies, and I think these souls will be anchored to the world of the living through artificial bodies, such as the puppet, the robots, and probably Higgs’ new body as well. One more thing with the odradeks, but during the fight with Higgs and the robot samurai in the closeup shot where their weapons cross we see the robot’s odradek-head start flapping which is what happened when BTs where in the area in the first game, so again thinking that Higgs’ soul has been placed in that new body and his real body is somewhere else.