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vampirepunks · 3 months

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I’m curious what do you think about Higgs and Lou having a connection? Something about her pod gets his attention and how Sam says “he said you don’t know a goddamn thing about Lou.” Sure he doesn’t clearly say Higgs said it but knowing Kojima use of the He usually means a important character.

okay okay okay so I have Thoughts™ about this. Let's start with textual analysis and then shift towards wild speculations. It's messy, but bear with me.

So, body language, tone of voice, facial expressions. Those things say a lot. Higgs' overall demeanor is very familiar overall, not all that different from how he behaves in DS1, but there are a few subtleties that give him away.

Firstly, how he moves his guitar to his back as soon as he initiates conversation with Sam. He could have done this a few moments later to free up his hands, but he specifically chooses to move it aside at what appears to be the very start of the interaction. He's removing a barrier between them by doing so, consciously or not. His shoulders fall slack and he starts off with very open, unguarded gestures (hands at his sides, head held high) and shifts to a self-protective stance after noticing Sam's gun (arms folded in front of himself, hands folded, head tipped lower to focus more intently on Sam.)

This brings us to the moment he takes note of the BB pod. He doesn't hesitate to make a move for it, arms once again held in an open position as he stands up and goes to take it. When he does grab it, he isn't rough about it, using only as much force as necessary to dislodge it from its carrier. Now, this is where it gets interesting: he immediately turns his back to Sam. Whatever his reaction, Higgs doesn't want him to see it. He's anticipating something and he doesn't want Sam to pick up on whatever that is. He holds the pod carefully--tenderly, even--and cradles it in his hands, touching the front of it with a very delicate gesture. The tone conveys a very private, almost intimate moment. The camera lingers, the music softens. We see the little whoosh of air when he does so. My guess is, that phenomenon is related to his DOOMS; he's sensing the ghostly presence in the pod.

When he speaks, his voice is slower, gentler. He takes a moment, ponders his observations, and his eye motions reveal a deep thought process. The very subtle, quick, back-and-forth motions of his eyes as he reacts is... interesting. Psychologically, those kinds of side-to-side micro-movements typically indicate memory recall in the brain, a sign of bilateral activation for information processing and consolidation from long-term memory. Whatever he's thinking about, he's remembering something and contrasting it with the situation in front of him. He's snapped out of it, of course, by Sam asking if he killed Lou. His immediate reaction says it all: the second he hears it, his brow goes up, his mouth presses tight, and he turns his head. That conveys genuine surprise, maybe even confusion too. Not the likely reaction of someone who murdered the child in question. That stone-faced expression sticks for a moment. When he says, "You still don't know, do you?" nothing about his posture, tone, or expression indicates mockery or ill will. In fact, it's almost sympathetic. Again, using a softer voice, and he turns his full body back towards Sam. His brow lowers and his overall countenance remains tense, as though he's somehow bothered by the situation. Hell, he seems tired, as though he's exhausted of Sam not understanding. Contrast this with DS1's "You just don't get it, do you?" which is spoken in a highly aggressive manner. Higgs never lies to Sam (thank you, higgssupremacy, for reminding me of this!) and repeatedly tries to bait him, get him to listen, and observe the truth for himself, separate of his established assumptions. Higgs isn't content with telling Sam the whole story, he needs him to actually see.

The scene cuts away here, as in the next shot, he's no longer holding the BB pod and he's standing quite a bit further away from Sam. So, we'll focus on that first interaction.

Things I've taken away from this:

Higgs didn't kill Lou. If he was involved in her death, it wasn't intentional and harming Lou was not his objective.

He doesn't intend to harm Sam either, at least not at this moment.

Based on this and the lullaby in the teaser, his relationship to Lou is a caring one, potentially parental.

So, naturally, this isn't the first time he's interacted with Lou separately from Sam.

Now, I might be reaching, but I could almost swear if you listen closely when he touches the pod, you can hear a very faint sound reminiscent of ocean waves. (If somebody who works with audio wants to try and isolate the background ambiance, I'll kiss you on the mouth sloppy-style.) So, two things: 1) Did Higgs interact with Lou on the Beach? If so, when? 2) Is his ka still on the Beach? If so, how disconnected are his soul and body? Does he remotely "pilot" his physical body, or was his very being cleaved in half in a similar manner to Bridget and Amelie?

Now, I'm gonna put on my tinfoil hat and make an absolutely batshit leap of logic. I'm considering this a possibility, not a certainty, but... What if it wasn't Amelie that sent Lou back from the Beach when Sam took her out of the pod at the end of DS1? What if it was Higgs?

There are two potential explanations I can think of for how this would be possible, especially given the presence of the quipu when Amelie was the last one to have it: 1) Higgs and Amelie spoke again sometime after the ending, at which time she either gave it back to him or he took it. Not the most likely answer, as we're led to believe she died when she blew up her Beach (to "be the sacrifice"), which we see her do with seemingly no time in between, and she had the quipu in that final scene. However, time works differently on the Beach (aka, it doesn't) and she could have taken a moment to speak with him/kick him off her Beach and send him back to his own. 2) Higgs was still on Amelie's Beach when she razed it. Through yet indeterminate means, he survived this and either inherited what was left or was irreparably changed by such a world-bending event when he landed back on his own Beach.

So, that leaves Higgs alone on the Beach, whereupon Lou washes up on the shore. In this scenario, this is the moment in which Higgs sings to Lou. He repeats the same choice that started the Stranding to begin with: save a child, create a repatriate. Cosmic consequences ensue.

Reasons I think this theory works:

Saying "I'll always be with you" to Lou carries a lot of weight. Whatever happened between the two of them, it was enough that he felt he'd always be a part of her story in some way or another.

Several things happen when Lou repatriates - the timefall stops, the rainbow is no longer inverted, the sun shines without the cover of chiral clouds, the baby BTs in that final scene are suddenly white. The world has been changed. Healed, it seems, but at what cost? If Higgs' new theme is creation + redemption, it stands to reason that this could have begun with saving a life and inadvertently reversing the course of the Stranding, at least partially.

In the first dream sequence in DS1, Sam is shown connected to Lou by a black, synthetic-looking umbilical cord, before she turns into a BT and heads towards the Seam. In the trailer, Higgs has an umbilical cord that is almost exactly identical to that one.

Eternal recurrence. Always, always, eternal recurrence. Higgs repeats the decision Amelie made with Sam and irreversibly changes the course of the world and fate of humanity in the process, just as she did. A choice made out of compassion, regret, and a need for connection. He didn't know any better, how could he know better?

Higgs textually parallels Lady Macbeth. If we assume Lady Macbeth is both villain and victim, and that she (and Higgs) did not in fact die off-screen/stage as the audience is led to believe, how does that narrative continue? Lady Macbeth's guilt is heavily tied up in her involvement with the death of children (and the loss of her own child in some readings) and her inability to rid herself of her bloodguilt ("What's done cannot be undone") and this aligns with Higgs' acts of terrorism after meeting Amelie (an explicit example being Mama's baby) and his act of violence towards Lou in Edge Knot City, in stark contrast with his original reasons for becoming a terrorist ("How tender ’tis to love the babe[...] I would, while it was smiling in my face[...] dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to").

Higgs having turned Lou into a repatriate (and possibly have been accidentally responsible for "taking" her from Sam?) mirrors the conflict between Amelie/Bridget and Cliff. Someone who was (maybe, in Higgs' case!) responsible for a child's death, severing their natural connection to death, and proceeding to claim and love that child as their own, while the father rages on and demands to be given back his BB, trapped by grief for his stolen/lost child. Could that story end differently, this time? In a narrative about disconnection and opposition, could these two people choose to unite--to connect--instead, when it comes down to it? After all, Kojima implied that Higgs and Sam need each other. They are each the other's chiral counterpart, inseparable by their very natures and fates.

If Higgs was the one who said, "You don't know a goddamn thing about Lou," that sounds awfully defensive, doesn't it? Perhaps even protective/possessive? Like a parent defending their claim on their child?

I've also adopted GameLargo's theory that Higgs was the infant of the c-section in which the first true voidout occurred, inspiring the BB experiments to begin with. In this scenario, Higgs would have been "born" from a voidout. It can be inferred that BBs can possibly repatriate, in a sense, as long as they're in the pod, because they're not truly alive or dead and belong neither to this world or the other side. The world of the living staked its claim on him when he came back from the Seam, but his unique means of starting life inherently fractured his place in the usual order of things, thus turning him into a "natural" repatriate and explaining why his DOOMS powers are so different from anyone else's. Again, life from death. Logically, Bridges might have recovered dear baby Peter from the incident site when they investigated, studied him, and adopted him out when he wasn't of use to them, concealing/erasing the records of his existence as part of the BB experiment conspiracy. This overall concept further strengthens Higgs' ties to the human sacrifices committed by Bridges, his relationship to the extinction, as well as his potential to subvert these things and embody a creative force rather than a destructive one. A sudden connection with Lou makes a lot of sense in this context.

Ghost Lou possessing the samurai bot (the working theory among the fandom, as we're all familiar with by now) laughs joyfully while fighting Higgs, as if she's playing with him. He doesn't seem particularly scared, either, at facing such a clear threat, he's just alarmed and vaguely frustrated, like "wtf is happening right now, why is this thing attacking me, etc." You ever seen a baby throw things at their dad and squeal with glee at how he reacts? Yeah, this gives off that vibe.

...so yeah that's my absolutely unhinged take from what we know so far. Guess we'll see!

#this is peak insanity but i've been thinking about this nonstop for months and the full trailer only made me Worse #sorry this is so long 😅 it's giving 'oh good i get to explain this to you. you will regret this.' lmao #i've been studying higgs under a microscope for about a year now #just observing him in his natural habitat with a pair of binoculars. and taking notes #also thank you SO much for asking!!#ds2 theories #higgs monaghan #death stranding #ds2 #logan answers #love-bigboss1fan-me #logan.txt

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