Splatoon Lore - Tumblr Posts

Kaya lore under cut :3

i had fun writing this!! woohoo!

recovered radio message - found march 8 - relaying transmission.

" this-this is Kaya Inkfort, T-33-L. I've-I've lived, miraculously.. but im on the run from..something? some..one? it..it could be anything. im not sure..i'm trying-i'm trying to stay away from it. they're..looking for me.

okay..hold on.. last-last thing i remember is being knocked out. i think i was..hit? whatever it was, it got me good.

squit..Mei..she..she was there with me. i..she thinks i'm dead. oh cod, or even worse, she's...

i..good cod. i don't know..where i am. my gps broke when i hit the ground..cod damn it..

i need to find Mei. i..(sigh) K-I, T-33-L. over. "

cut transmission.

Wait so were the rival octolings mind controlled trough the glasses or not?

nope. Ive gotten quite a few asks about this topic, understandably so! this is something Ive been kind of wanting to talk about in a video in depth, but putting it together cohesively is Hard and i wanna wait for Splatoon 3 to really clear things up with Octavio. anyway, ill try to put the evidence i got in this post. The idea that Octolings all wear mind-controlling eye wear is...basically just deeply rooted fanon. just because Octavio has a special pair for Callie, doesn't mean all Octolings are equipped with the same tech.

look at that. goggles off, she wants it back. (art from the splatoon 1 end credits)

what we know about the Octoling's eyewear is that the red dot on terminator-style shades they wear in s2 is just a UI (i assume to aid them in combat).

The S1 goggles are called something to the effect of 'Octoling Scope' in JP, which i believe implies they assist with aiming. Nothing has been said about their eyewear having mind-controlling properties. Additionally, the Octoling shades and goggles that we players can wear, unlike the agent gear, are not stated to be replicas. One may ask then, what's the deal with the Calamari Inkantation? with Callie being freed from her mind control by the Inkantation, plus lines like this:

its easy to come to the conclusion that it's some mind-control breaking song. While it may have had that kind of effect on Callie, that's not really what the song does. As always, things got changed in localization. here's that above piece of dialogue, retranslated from japanese

Different nuance there, no? The inkantation seems to be more like a song of inspiration and empowerment. it inspires some Octolings, who have spent their militaristic lives living in domes devoid of natural sunlight, to seek out something more. its moreso implied that the Octarians are fed propaganda and militarized from a young age: so the more realistic kind of brainwashing, and not outright scifi mind controlled like callie or agent 3 was. The Octolings in the military don't need goggles to mind-control them into following Octavio: they have a sense of loyalty towards his cause and their own kind. Octavio isnt the greatest guy, but he has a good reason to resent the Inklings: his people were forced underground, and he does what he does (stealing the Zapfish) to try and keep the crumbling Octarian domes, and his people, alive. Seems like a worthy cause to me. Another huge issue with the 'all Octolings have hypnotic eyewear' theory is this: after listening to the Inkantation, if the Octolings were to supposedly become aware that DJ Octavio was straight-up mind controlling them, then you would expect that they would hate his guts. The thing is though...they don't. Because they were never mind controlled. From both Marina and Agent 8, its implied that both of them still hold some respect for DJ Octavio despite leaving the Octarian world.   Exhibit A: 8's apologetic mem cake poem about Octavio

Exhibit B: Marina's laptop covered in stickers. theres 3 squid sisters stickers, but alongside that are some Turquoise October stickers and a huge DJ Octavio sticker.

if she really did hate him (which is something she has never expressed), i think she would put more effort into covering up or removing that sticker.

Ok there's my mountain of evidence to disprove the hypnotic eyewear theory! In short: Yes Octavio is controlling the Octarian populace, but only through propaganda and typical military control, and not literal sci-fi mind control.

i’m fine until i remember there was a full on fuckin deadly race war in the canon lore of splatoon

I've gotten a hold of a very rare issue of Nintendo Dream from October 2017, containing an interview with the Splatoon developers. like seriously, i hadn't seen any documentation of this anywhere. HUGE huge thanks to @squidhominid, who spent Too Much Money to buy a copy and scan it!! Since a lot of it is formatted in blurbs like what's pictured above, I'd been unsure how to organize and share translations...I've decided I will gradually share snippets of it like so and compile it all later. Please be patient. Translation under the cut.

In relation to the characters from Story Mode The Rule-abiding Octarian Army

---Is Octavio a DJ and a general? Inoue: Well, his name is General DJ Octavio (laughs). He commands the Octarian army, so naturally he's a general. [[TN: Octavio's JP name includes "General" rather than just "DJ Octavio" like in english.]] ---Going off of that, there are other ranks, right? Amano: That's right. The Octarians as a species act seriously, so if they didn't have ranks they wouldn't be able to work properly. (laughs) Inoue: Originally, we made Octavio as a character as a pair to Cap'n Cuttlefish on the Inkling's side. Now as for why Octavio is an octopus that holds wasabi sticks... the act of "grating" wasabi made us think of "scratching", and "scratching" made us think of "DJ"...So he came to be both a general and a DJ. [[TN: takowasa, or octopus and wasabi paired together, is a popular izakaya snack. Same goes for atarime, (cuttlefish's JP name) dried squid. It's supposed to be like a snack showdown.]] Nogami: The Octarians are led by music. Octavio makes his own music to control them. Inoue: The music tells them to move and work according to the rules (laughs). ---So, for him as a general, is the music just for controlling the Octarians? Or does he enjoy it? Amano: It is for leadership, with that 'duntz duntz' sort of tempo. So I think for him, he sees the popularity and influence of the Squid Sisters as something that has a military-like controlling power. ---Is Cap'n Cuttlefish unable to turn into squid form, and can Octavio not turn into humanoid form? Amano: Cuttlefish can probably transform and produce some ink, but not like he could in his younger years. It's like when your grandpa says he's gonna do a squat, and he can kind of do it, but not really... it's like that. Inoue: Octavio became unable to take on his humanoid form due to an injury he got long ago. In a Sunken Scroll in S1, you can see a figure who appears to be Octavio before he was injured.

[[TN: This has to be the true origin to the information of Octavio being unable to take on humanoid form! I was troubled by the fact that when this info was brought up by the writers of nintendo dream in that 2018 issue in a way that made it sound like obvious information, they didn't say when or where they heard it...but this is it.]]