Sing to me, 'cause I can't hear myself @porter-wren - Tumblr Blog

HI!!! The brain worms are getting me again so fuck it. My first fandom-specific sideblog. YAY!! There will be spoilers for both games, of course.

Asks and DMs open PLEASEEE interact I need more people to yap with!!!

Recommended reading for before you follow below the cut

Updated: 7/31/2026

#pinned post #rambles #<- my posting tag

cryingcow

Writing a fic set in the Death Stranding universe and not writing about all the walking and driving through challenging terrain is crazy in hindsight. Why did I do that.

vanillssugar

Higgs 🫦

shurikmeh

Yeah, Sam.. be more tolerant 🌹

bitched-thing

Finishing DS2 and the plot is just an undercover indian outsource story.

A new gen AI that utilises the time flow of the world of the dead to supercompute the survival of the living at miraculous speeds and with unparalleled precision ? Wrong

4000 dudes stuck on a beach

meowmusicforever

tachypleusgigas

i love how if you near-miss porters while in a vehicle they get absolutely fucking pissed at sam. girls i’m so sorry it’s literally comically dark in the mouth of the distro centers this is a genuine workplace hazard. bridges can’t afford lightbulbs because all of their resources are going towards the baby crushing factory or whatever

#their jump-out-of-the-way animation locks in so early that i can be perfectly confident about my coffinboarding skills #and turn to go around them #and then watch in horror as a porter faceplants directly into the front of my coffin board #and then because this happened right outside of a delivery point and i was working on getting all my stars #i was forced to go past this guy passed out on the ground for multiple ingame days getting increasingly concerned for their wellbeing #feel free to dm me if anyone wants to see the clip #also off topic but related i had a porter glitch under the map a play session or two later which was fascinating

bunnymoder

talked abt this on my priv twt but im kinda scared to play death stranding 2 cause of my experience with the first game.

i loved it but my autism kinda got in the way of truly connecting with the games main themes. connection, community, togetherness... i want these things but i thrive alone. i loved the lonely isolation of delivering cargo and getting good grades for doing a good job (something most people criticize the game for) and kinda shrunk away from connecting w/ the other characters stories (except higgs and deadman). even at the last mission, i never even considered not trying to shoot amalie, i did almost everything else but i needed a guide to figure out how to stop the last stranding and that made me feel both dumb and a little embarrassed!

even though i understood the themes logically its another thing to feel it and let that guide my decision-making. i felt kinda disappointed in a way because it feels almost like i was missing out on this great thing that everyone gets to experience which... isn't a foreign concept to me i just. really wanted to love it... the way everyone else does. and i do love it, just in my own way which weirdly feels like its not enough? like im not getting it really. idk. there's a strange guilt i feel about it and im worried it'll alter the way i play and process the second part, especially now that sammy has a family and friends now. will i like them too or will i kinda shy away from connecting to them like everyone else? im overthinking it because its just a video game but it really did remind me that... yeah im different than other people and not always in a positive way. this thing does affect how i navigate the world, even another world.

but ill be damned if i don't get to see higgs again so ill just keep on keeping on.

tachypleusgigas

You fail to understand how thoroughly you have appropriately grasped the thematics of the first game. That uncertainty and lack of true connection which you feel is wholly intentional/by design; you are not the odd one out and that is not your autism preventing you from understanding — that is essentially your autism cueing you in on understanding. I’m autistic as well for added context, death stranding is my primary interest haha. (It’s probably important to note that Kojima is very likely autistic as well, in a literal/non-guess-y sense.) You see, you’re not supposed to feel positively about the connections made in DS1 — though many characters in the game want Sam to and continually pressure/will him to. Sam is being used, he is a tool. This is first referenced in the opening sequence of the game, before we even see Sam, and is reinforced throughout the narrative going forward. The connections in DS1 are forced, imposed. Sam is a means to an end, and is isolated intentionally to further a specific plan while the false concept of ‘connection’/‘human connection’/‘social connection’ is paraded around him, itself intangible and predominantly ‘seen’ through the all-spanning chiral network… which, as we know, was itself aiding in drawing the final stranding closer. forced ‘connections’ as an end to all connections — just one aspect of many which can be broken down/extrapolated and analyzed from that. (We also see themes of nationalism, manifest destiny, and more. Negative items!) Bridges is an antagonistic force! They are not the ‘good guys’. Sam, by collaborating with them under a belief that he has no choice, is complicit — he is not a ‘good guy’ either, per se. Amelie is not good. so on and so forth. This is the nuance and complicity and manipulation and denial and guilt game.

Only feeling a true connection with Higgs (& Deadman) is intentional. There is good reason for that! Nobody forced Sam to ‘connect’ with Higgs; Higgs is another tool — likewise alluded to in the intro and beyond. Higgs is used, othered, and forcibly ensnared in a plot that far exceeds his own role. This is Sam’s case as well, they are parallels/mirrors. They were both groomed from infancy/childhood and onward by Amelie/Bridget to play the role of pawns on her proverbial chessboard. Deadman is another character who you are likely to connect to, as he is also othered!

Not so much as having the thought of Not shooting Amelie is wholly understandable and was true for me as well. The thing is, that decision to hug her is a very Sam decision. Sam thinks he needs to fulfill the roles enforced upon him. Sam thinks he needs to ‘love’ certain people. Sam sees himself as a tool, and therefore perpetuates his usage as one. You, on the other hand, are watching this and going ‘oh my god, no’ because you’re NOT Sam and you do not share his specific flaws! you are not trapped in his mentality! But, you are the player. You play as Sam. you are thusly bound to his rigidity, to his failures, and to the cycles he perpetuates. you cannot save Sam in this way, only watch him. you cannot win, so to speak. So in order to proceed, Sam does what Sam would do; what he knows how to do. (Note: Also — you are aware that the game continues after you hug Amelie and get stuck on the Beach, right? That is not the last mission at all. just verifying as the way you phrased that gave me pause. that’s the fake ending/the pseudo-ending, Sam runs around a bit as credits pop up and then Amelie monologues and then Sam gets yanked off the Beach and other things happen from there. Important things.)

Death Stranding intentionally and frequently presents you with information which is untrue and incomplete, as you are seeing the world from Sam’s limited perspective and essentially breaking things down and learning them as he does (or doesn’t). It is your task to make sense of the falsehoods, omitted information, incomplete information, etc. and the truth, both. You are, in an overwhelming number of instances, told xyz is true, or xyz is good, and those will be lies! This is the nature of the company which Sam keeps. So the game wants you to go about playing it by holding a high level of caution and scrutiny and really getting to the bottom of ‘who is saying this and why? who does this claim benefit? what information am i NOT being given?’ etc. etc. Or; Death Stranding is THE analysis game, and impossible to overthink.

Do not feel guilty over how you understand and engage with DS1, you’re doing it on the intended axis (skepticism/uncertainty/no true value found in the connections made). You are doing your analysis correctly, and then unfortunately doubting yourself/falling into the hole of ‘well, everyone else thinks…’ which is a poor situation as you must hold in mind that the average video game player is NOT engaging with the themes as they should be. (instead they’re getting mad that the game punishes them for killing & patently ignoring the plot & so on and so forth.) so when you compare your reading to the general/popular reading and become confused, that’s because the general reading is (was..? there’s luckily been a shift slightly after DS2 spelled it out more explicitly and painstakingly towards its own conclusion — but even then, it (intentionally) falls back into complicity mode #MyUnbreakableNarrativeLoop) facing the wrong direction, so to speak.

I haven’t played DS2 myself yet, either, as i was put off because from what i had seen, i felt like it strayed away from its own thematics too much. and that made me upset (autism). BUT i should have trusted the process because the game does address this directly and painstakingly and makes it egregiously clear that the items which had drawn my suspicion were intentionally made suspicious as they are literally supposed to be a criticism LOL. whoops. the thematics continue directly, and… the way they are presented continues directly. Sam’s complicity and denial and all. The omitted information and the false information. et cetera. This, that something is ‘up’, is really made most clear towards the ending, to my knowledge. i’m being vague in case you don’t like spoilers! i like spoilers lol but i know that’s not everyone’s thing. Sam does not exactly have a ‘family’ and ‘friends’ though…. cough. same as it ever was! Sam, our lovely tool #MyTool…

anyway. believe in yourself and hold confidence in your ideas instantly.

#to add on to your concerns about the second game op:#without getting into spoilers #sam's alienation from the others and the sort of forcedness of the connection stuff is at the VERY LEAST one supported reading

tacgnologist

My quipu showed up today, crafted by the AMAZING @plant-ghoul. (Maya/Indigenous artist!) When I tell you I cried for a solid hour straight when I unboxed it. I can't WAIT to get the rest of this cosplay done so I can show it off!

wondurrland

I have a confession

I actually love that Genshin Impact 7.0 added Death Stranding mechanics. I like seeing my favourite game ripped off in the game I'm most addicted to :3

#hi i know almost nothing about genshin. what?