I’m playing Death Stranding

[feotakahari]

Other folks have written about why “An Asexual World” is offensive, but I’ve seen multiple statements that it doesn’t have any relationship to the rest of the game. I’m not sure that’s true. The writer thinks an “asexual” is someone who doesn’t want any form of physical intimacy, and physical intimacy seems to be important to what the game wants to say. The main character has a phobia of being touched. The chiral network doesn’t allow people to touch each other. Chiralium messes with oxytocin, and the lore talks a lot about getting oxytocin from being touched. BB can’t survive outside its pod, so it can never be touched. The triumph of the Junk Dealer’s storyline is touching his lover again.

I think the game is saying something about people pursuing futile or destructive methods of generating oxytocin rather than letting yourself be touched, ranging from drugs to social media likes to whatever’s going on with the MULEs. I’m not asexual, but I do have a phobia of being touched, so my offense is personal.