#about-ds

[sanctaignorantia]

Can you see the detail of the "invisible strings" on the guitar, which are actually more like those white puppet strings? I love Kojima…

[sanctaignorantia]

Didn't anyone stop to think that perhaps the other larger "cocoon" is Higgs' sarcophagus and that they may have scanned it before he came out?

Notice that the yellow spot on the larger cocoon is very reminiscent of his belly, while the smaller one, which is probably Elle's, doesn't have the same design.

And ok, maybe I am really delusional, but if we erase what I just said and just think that they found a chrysalis with "an adult body" or "a male body" to justify the size difference, well…

Or to say that the chrysalis was found at a smaller size and suddenly it grew? Okay, neither of which makes my mind any more relieved, really… '-'

[sanctaignorantia]

Starting another text about how my mind is deteriorating as I think more about Death Stranding 2. Here we go!

Today we're going to talk about how I believe Fragile will be the friend who betrays us in the sequel, but not because she's bad, but because she had no choice or because she's in a risky situation.

Let's start with a few points (which may be confusing because my memory isn't great, sorry). During my conversations with @love-bigboss1fan-me about Metal Gear and how Kojima's mind works within his worlds I came to a few conclusions. Let's get started!

-> Fragile and Higgs will be "on the same side".

If we were to put APAC as the common point between Higgs and Fragile then I could assume that both would be working "together", without knowing it, or knowing it, but still with a certain dislike between them.

How did I come to this conclusion? Coffin.

Coffin is the only thing that closely links Higgs to Fragile and I am very suspicious of the ease with which Fragile closed Fragile Express simply to open Drawbridge. The Qpid that Sam will now wear is basically the same design as the necklace that Coffin wore. Higgs' cool sarcophagus has the same ideas, so we have Coffin linking Fragile and Higgs here.

And you know what's bizarre? I was looking for these photos and then I thought "Fragile's father reminds me of Higgs…", the type of hair, the style, I don't know…

But then you ask yourself "why would Fragile be involved?" - Was the design of the new Qpid made by Drawbridge or APAC? The DHV Magellan is something that was given to Fragile by APAC so I assume that all the technology Drawbridge has is thanks to APAC, the ship, the Qpid and the "rings". And then we come to the second very funny thing that makes me think APAC has Coffin's finger in the middle.

I thought this new technology represented rings, but it could also be miçanga, remember?

A bead (miçanga in brazilian portuguese) is a small decorative object made from natural materials such as stones, bones, shells, wood or, in most cases, glass. They are usually used to decorate necklaces (or any other ornament made from glass), and are recognizable because they have a small hole in the center for threading or stringing. They are then attached to a string, chain or necklace. Their colors and different shapes are widely used in fashion, handicrafts and decoration to create unique pieces. The use of beads originated in South Africa and surrounding countries, where they have a spiritual value, since these necklaces were used in their early days for prayer or devotion, or perhaps to ward off evil spirits. For indigenous peoples, their meaning is not purely aesthetic, for them there is a question linked to ancestry and corporeality. x

Coffin hands the miçanga to her husband and then he hands it to Fragile. The object is purely a bridge between mother and daughter and then becomes a bridge between Sam and Fragile.

These new miçangas will be used by us (Sam) and the entire Drawbridge team, each miçanga is a "knot" that is joined by a large cord, leaving everyone united.

So we have the design of the coffins, we have the miçanga, we have APAC behind Drawbridge and Higgs (according to theories), then we have Coffin. "But ah… Coffin is dead!" - Cool, since when was that an impediment in Death Stranding? Since when, for Kojima, is killing someone the end of the line? And I'm talking now because I have knowledge of MGS and all the architecture behind "bringing people back to life through AIs" - here in Death Stranding 2 we'll be going into a world that's "very Metal Gear on Kojima's part" so I think it's important to take into account the fact that he's going to CONTINUE using Metal Gear references. And I say continue because DS1 already has a lot of references...

Coffin may be dead, but her ideals still survive somewhere, in someone, and just as we believe that Higgs raised this cult of Amelie as an extinction entity, we can assume that leaving Coffin with her ideals somewhere, germinating, would not be crazy. The next point would be to think that there is something behind Coffin, in case Coffin is "the face" of APAC? Probably. This is Kojima we're talking about, and in terms of manipulation, things work like an onion.

In DS1 Fragile tells Sam the "whole truth" that Higgs tells her, before she leaves him behind on the Beach. Knowing the unknown field that is Higgs Monaghan I would have thought that handsome son of a bitch had a card up his sleeve from the start. He had to. He didn't look like someone desperate in the face of imminent destruction. So taking on his big Hollywood starring role, because acting is also his "thing", it would be easy for him to keep telling truths that hurt and he obviously does with Fragile since he was "about to die", but what would stop him from telling her that he also worked with Coffin?

They are damaged goods and damaged goods with common points that hurt both parties, they are already deeply connected by the red thread of destiny, they are already part of that great string full of miçangas.

Assuming that in the trailer 1 when Fragile escapes with Lou, the vehicle she uses already contains the Drawbridge logo, then she will basically have had her team assembled since the beginning of DS2. I'm going to conclude that, in trailer 2, when we hear her telling Sam that she's closed down Fragile Express and set up Drawbridge, it's actually at the very beginning of the game, probably in one of the scenes where we have Fragile visiting Sam to look after Lou for a few moments. So these visits will be frequent in the same way that Fragile's insistence on Sam coming to work with her at Drawbridge will initially be frequent. When the trailer 1 comes to an end and Fragile invites Sam to meet her crew, that's Fragile's last attempt to convince Sam to work with her, and guess what? It works because Lou is gone… There's nothing left for Sam… AGAIN!

We have some points that I haven't been able to think about yet, like Higgs. If he's with APAC because there's Coffin's "face" behind it, then why is his cult for Amelie and not for her? That sort of thing. But let's leave it alone because I believe that, although Higgs and Fragile may have this much in common, they still have particularities that will set them apart.

-> Higgs is not so "bad".

Evil is a point of view, and in my honest opinion Higgs was never a villain, he was a victim.

As @love-bigboss1fan-me always reminds me, no robot/human character in MGS is a total villain. They always come across as "neither friend nor foe" (although most of them are more like friends, but they don't admit it). So I'm taking into account that Higgs in DS2 will be an anti-hero. Messing around and creating chaos is still his thing, he's there to do it and he enjoys it, but he's going to help us.

Higgs in DS1 wasn't afraid to get close to Sam, to look him in the eye, to break the safe distance of Sam's private zone. No, Higgs wasn't. Higgs would pierce any barrier Sam put between them. Higgs puts his tongue in Sam's cheek without trembling, he likes it. But in trailer 2 he simply keeps his distance, he hardly looks Sam in the eye. He touches the gun, a soulless husk, he touches the puppet, knowing that it is a soulless little husk, and then he touches Lou's empty pod.

But while Sam? Well, he only touches Sam with his words and, probably, with his truths. When he says later on that Sam will have to seek the truth and that the pain he's in will only get worse, I don't believe he's only talking about Lou because later on we have lines from Fragile indicating that "it wasn't her intention to string him along". And it's not as if Fragile is the villain, perhaps the lie she tells Sam is exactly the omitted truth "I didn't tell you because you never asked!".

If Fragile and Higgs have a link to APAC because APAC is linked to Coffin, then why should this be Sam's business? Sam doesn't seem to share his visions of Cliff out there, so "everyone take care of your family" and we'll be fine, but back to Kojima and his way of telling stories, we know that family isn't exactly what descends from our own blood or genes, family is what passes on and leaves a connection in us. And connections are what Death Stranding is all about. Humanity needs to connect, because humanity is the Great Family here…

-> Is it Higgs who "kills" Lou?

I can see Kojima saying "we need to set it up so that everyone thinks Higgs is the one who shoots. Maybe he shoots Fragile, maybe Lou. But actually Higgs is shooting at whoever is chasing Fragile and Lou. Higgs is helping them."

They don't look shot to me. The background isn't even the same color and for the situation to get to where it is, with this fire and destruction, then there was a lot of fighting, something that just one shot would have solved, one shot would have ended the show.

And Higgs, like a good son of a bitch, is going to help with his own intentions behind it. He's going to help Fragile and Lou, but maybe he's going to kill whoever's after them while acting as if he killed Lou and got Lou out of there (here comes the theory that Lou is closely linked to Amelie and then Higgs' interest with his EE cult). Higgs had opportunities to destroy Fragile and never did, Higgs had opportunities to destroy that baby in the pod and never did. Higgs talks too much, but he wouldn't kill them. Fragile gave him a choice, shoot or be trapped forever on the Beach. Fragile was merciful so I don't see Higgs wanting to get back at her.

So how could Fragile become the "villain", but not because she wants to but because she "had no choice" or "is at risk"? APAC is a new face, a new company, Kojima likes to deliver the new as friendly and then that's not really a very friendly thing. We'll have APAC vs UCA then we have the top of the pyramid. These are dangerous names because they are names that have power, so these are the names that will be in control. Seducing Fragile and Higgs using their deepest connections isn't something new for Kojima either, we're still treading the same minefield as DS1 and the entire MGS franchise. The big problem is what's behind those masks, what's behind all the curtains when the show is about to start and then when it's over, what only the people who have that power in their hands will be seeing. We are just puppets, pawns.

You seduce them, hand them a fraction of that power through weapons and soldiers (for Higgs) and technology (for Fragile) while they believe they are using it for THEIR OWN INTERESTS, when in fact they are bait, they are "the pawn bridges" for the purpose of these "kings".

I don't believe that Higgs becomes "the villain" in DS1 because he wants to, and I don't need to explain his reasons. So here I don't believe that Fragile would be the "villain" because he wishes it when everything is about manipulations and well-rehearsed lies. Fragile is at risk because she does again what she condemned in DS1, she will ally herself again with something "faceless" because it gives her powe/and or has things in common (technology, dhv magellan, connect the world, make deliveries) and that will lead her into the hole. In the same way that we have Higgs doing again what he did in DS1, letting himself be seduced by icons. And we have Sam doing exactly what he didn't want to do in DS1, teaming up with a "great idea" to connect the world, this time, because it's the only thing he believes he's good at, and because he has nothing else left and because someone told him that it would heal him. THE SAME CYCLE IS STARTING ALL OVER AGAIN.

And when I talk about cycles that repeat themselves, I talk about reincarnation, I talk about how a spirit needs to repeat the same things during its spiritual journey so that it learns from its mistakes and breaks this karmic cycle and thus evolves. We see this in MGS with Hal, for example, breaking the "karmic cycle" that his father Huey "started" and so on with "the future generations" or "descendants" that are placed in the story and that can also be interpreted as "future reincarnations" of the same "soul" = idea, ideal, character. And yet, we can compare the karmic cycle of all humanity, which, in both Death Stranding and Metal Gear, continue to practice/and or be part of the same "karmic cycle" that only generates its own destruction.

[sanctaignorantia]

Pathetic guitarist, where's the rest of your band?

Do you think the Musician will be responsible for providing us with a printout of the Higgs guitar? Or at least a similar technology? Can Sam play it? Fragile? Will we have music lessons? Lots of questions...

Maybe we'll have a redefinition of a musical battle.

It also reminds me of those flute players who play to hypnotize the snake in the basket, but here it's a guitar hihihi

[sanctaignorantia]

Hello… it's me again...

Thinking that Kojima could well have used Cliffs and Fragile as examples with that post from The Crow, since Fragile literally has tar dripping from his face just like Cliff in trailer2, but no, he opted to use Higgs as a second option, and Higgs in DS2 and then we have Troy "'saying" something about… Okay, don't let me go crazy.

Can we elaborate on how all this is going to work when Higgs in DS2 is technically an inspiration from The Crow?

We'll have a hero and a villain with every justification for taking revenge, and all because they love.

Higgs being devoted to Amelie to the point of creating a cult for her, wearing a mask of her face, feel her to the point of "becoming" her. That devotion is love. In the same way, his resentment, obsession and hatred for Sam is also love, and this kind of love is what Higgs will hide under lock and key and will fear everyone seeing.

Sam spent his life alone, having only the love and "freedom" that Amelie gave him, then came Lucy and Lou and the loss of both made Sam "broken" again. Finding out the whole truth about Amelie could break him even more, but at that point in the game we had new friends, new connections, new loves and as much as Sam had burned Bridges' handcuff in order to isolate himself again, having Lou alive by his side was enough, that love would be enough to sustain him. But now Sam no longer has Louise and the question is: will the love of his friends, these other connections, be enough for him to overcome this great loss, AGAIN? Sam has lost a lot of valuable things.

I would never say that one or the other has lost more or less. All the characters are built on trauma and the loss of people they loved. Death Stranding is about that, connections and love. You don't connect if there's no love. It's if there's love, there's connection.

So we have Sam who believes that Higgs killed Lou and I think he's going to lean on that for a long time. He'll put his energy into it no matter what Higgs tells him, so I wonder if Sam will become his father. If he's going to hold onto revenge so much that his emotions become toxic to himself and what that might create. We'll use more violence, more guns, so we'll have a more violent Sam. Sam will change with the loss of Lou, definitely.

The same way I think of Higgs. His love for Amelie (or whatever it is, because Higgs is still an mystery to all of us) will lead him to extreme situations because that's part of who Higgs is, no one has shown him the other side.

While Sam holds on to his sadness and gets caught up in grief and revenge and this makes him a bit "bad", could Higgs' situation make him a bit "good"? This is where I lose track because I don't know how Kojima works on developing his heroes and villains.

But I've been thinking for a long time about the possibility of Sam having an emotional relapse and not only becoming more aggressive, but also going into some kind of depression. And how much that would change him. And how that, combined with the desire for revenge, could unleash terrible things.

And now I play the other side of the coin. How much can Higgs' desire for revenge (if that's what it really is) make him see things in other ways and make him more... good?

Remembering that it's not directly romantic love that may be being talked about here, just as it is in The Crow, it's just love, because love is love…

And every time I think or talk about love, I remember a song we sing in my religion that literally goes like:

"Every disease has a cure, only love doesn't".

[sanctaignorantia]

Now that I've realized that the way Higgs comes out of the sarcophagus is similar to the way zombies, mummies or vampires used to "appear" in the movies, and all of them are living-dead creatures…

[sanctaignorantia]

Just adding a few things about this post here.

I think about it in two ways now. Because when we first thought of puppets, only the idea of being manipulated came to mind. But what if that's not all?

Higgs touches Fatih Akin's puppet directly and asks what it would be? Another soulless little husk? Another... Higgs has met a lot of them out there, Higgs knows what these things are.

Higgs is perhaps another one of those soulless little husks, in the same way that Lou's pod is a soulless little husk.

And then it makes me think that maybe that's why he knows more about Lou's condition than the rest of us, he knows because maybe they have something in common.

But back to the point about the puppets!

So it wouldn't just be the idea of being manipulated, it would be the idea of being a body, a husk without a soul, without desires, without love or thoughts and which is trapped by these cords that are supposed to signify some kind of connection, but which are actually used to manipulate these little husks like puppets in a theater show, telling or not telling true stories, entertaining or terrifying the audience.

We can research the origin and history of puppets and puppetry throughout history just to be sure (puppet|puppetry).

I could also add dolls, which can basically be what puppets are, but without strings to manipulate them, without anything to give them "life". But just to make it clear how much the idea of puppets can expand to these "little" things that can bring symbolic/metaphorical meanings into the narrative.

And then I'll remind you that there are 3 basic ways of using puppets and manipulating them:

-> with strings:

-> with sticks:

-> with your hands:

x

You can't say that this has nothing to do with Death Stranding. The string, the stick and the hand. Even here I'm thinking "my madness makes sense because it makes sense with the universe, but how far is Kojima going to take this?" - 2025 is a long way off. T_T

I could say that the idea is about manipulation, but it's not just manipulation.

It's about empty husks yearning for something and being manipulated by someone in order to tell a rehearsed lie to fool those watching.

And all because the red lines remind me of theater curtains too. We need to sit down and stop being crazy about this game!!! (self-criticism).

Another thing I noticed. Fatih Akin's character has a stop-motion effect, as Kojima told us, which is basically dolls moved by hand if you look at any creation of this kind, people basically use their hands to position them throughout the process, but it's not just this that I want to point out, it's the effect that these behind-the-camera videos give us: the sensation of time distortion. And with this sensation of distorted time we get the idea that the puppet is moving too slowly while the person manipulating it is moving too quickly, temporal distortion or the feeling that each one belongs to a different space-time.

So I take this and combine it with Death Stranding, where we have the idea of a multiverse and spiritual and carnal dimensions, what I get is the feeling that what controls Fatih Akin's puppet is not only somewhere else, but that this place could be another dimension, and another dimension with different temporal issues from the one the puppet is in. So would that dimension be the Beach? Maybe yes, maybe no. We don't know these soulless husks, we don't know where they came from and what moves them, so we couldn't assume they're BTs controlling receptacles (although I'll stick to that theory to the end).

If the theory is that Higgs is trapped on the Beach and this new body on earth is being controlled by his Beach Self, then wouldn't it make sense to say that the same happens to Fatih Akin's character because only he is moving in a distorted way and Higgs isn't?

And now to finish, I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in DS2 our dear Higgs appears singing Master of Puppets.

Master of puppets, I'm pulling your strings Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams Blinded by me, you can't see a thing Just call my name 'cause I'll hear you scream

[sanctaignorantia]

Is it just me or are the scene where Higgs comes out of the sarcophagus and the one where he takes off his mask not literally connected?

When he comes out of the sarcophagus, the ground is wet, probably from tar, and the acolytes are all dressed in tunics and masks.

When we get to the next scene, the ground is dry and the other robots are "naked", there is no sarcophagus…

He takes off his mask and can anyone tell me where it goes? Does he keep it in the middle of his robotic ass? (Love you Higgs :D)