#mewnimilitary

[dogtoling]

Much appreciated!

I’ve seen a fair share of theories and headcannons regarding a cephaling’s ink tank.

Care if you’d share your own thoughts on it? I’d certainly be interested.

I’ve been thinking about Turf War equipment headcanons lately, but even still they’re not really coherent or finalized. XD I can probably put down some right here though.

- Inklings probably borrow ink tanks from the lobby, hence why you don’t really see them carrying them outside. After all, it’s not ideal that teenagers walk around town with ink guns AND a full tank of ammo at all times

- Ink tanks primarily use artificial ink, they might be filled at the spawn plate. This is because if a player only used their own ink they would realistically have enough for like 2 tanks for the entire match and that is not ideal.

- The ink tank connects to the weapon with a tube, unless we’re really into the idea of teleportation tech being so mainstream that it’s used in sports but not logistics and all other aspects of technology...

- The ink tank itself calculates the player’s points by the amount of ink that leaves the tank. The points are primarily used for determining prize money.

- Sub weapons attach to the ink tank cap. This is pretty much canon, but it hasn’t been built up much at all and is only in concept art.. but it’s in concept art repeatedly:

- The Ink Tank is likely refilled at spawn, which is how you get to start each respawn with a full tank. It does change the structure of a basic match but you have to make sacrifices sometimes.

- Of course, the Ink Tank can also be refilled in the field with your own ink, but it’s better to use the spawn ink since personal ink has limits, but well..

(From The Art of Splatoon end-of-book comics. These are meant to be satire, but this is probably the closest ACTUAL explanation we’ve gotten to how they refill the tank :| ) 

Well, that’s probably about it for everything I can think of to share. Hope it was interesting!

[dogtoling]

Hello, it’s me again! So, I was wondering. Why is it that the Octolings evolved claws at the end of their fingers, but not Inklings? You’d think it would be an invaluable hunting tool for a cave squid to have.

Also, I hope you like these surprisingly interesting and sometimes deep questions as much as I do, because it’s fun thinking of stuff like this.

If not, I can stop if you’d like.

Hi, thanks for the ask! Also no worries, I love random and oddly specific questions lol.

Well to start out it’s important to point out that Octolings don’t actually really have claws, and their whole design path has been inconsistent as hell and is STILL inconsistent. Let’s take a look at where this whole thing started from in the first place.

Marina’s mountain dew fingers. This is the first time we actually saw Octolings with “claws”, and colored fingertips. Although people collectively do refer to these as “claws”, it’s important to remember that these AREN’T (to my knowledge) confirmed in any form to be claws, just merely differently shaped fingers as opposed to the marvelous French Fries that our squids have.

Anyway let’s get into the mess that this whole thing is.

Marina is actually, again, to my knowledge the ONLY Octoling with “claws”. However what is notable is that in Splatoon 2, they edited the enemy Octoling model and added a dark tint to the fingers (though no points). 

Additionally, Warabi from Diss-Pair has these colored fingertips, which makes me assume these are an intentional, consistent design choice when it comes to Octolings,

EXCEPT THEY’RE NOT. I HATE THIS INCONSISTENCY SO MUCH. ROLL IT IN FOLKS

Playable Octolings crap on this WHOLE SCHEME by having VERY normal average hands with no claws OR GRADIENT. I even dug into the Splatoon 3 trailer to double check if this was an oversight, but nope.

They did NOT change the Octolings’ fingers in Splatoon 3 to be any more consistent, which is devastating, BUT we can now tell that they do have pointed tips like we’re used to seeing in Octolings. Or like, what we’ve seen in like one Octoling and now expect to see on all the others. 

Either way, it makes me think that the gradient is a nod to the octopus form arm gradients in general, where the arms turn darker (or another color) at the ends. The pointiness might just be a general design element they added to mirror the natural taper of octopus arms, or, since thematically Octolings are just Evil Inklings, it’s there to make them look like Evil Inklings except it’s not because it’s incredibly inconsistent.

Okay so while these aren’t canonically claws, I’m going to look at that option anyway. There is actually a good reason why Octolings could develop claws, and that is because they don’t... have any....! But squids DO. kind of

Here’s some octopus suckers:

Smooth as butter. As we know, Inkling- and presumably also Octoling fingers evolved from their suckers. (And this isn’t something that i’m pulling out of my ass)

We still don’t precisely know what kind of squid Inklings are primarily based on (my guess is either a type of flying squid or firefly squid) but boy howdy do a lot, if not MOST SQUID have this kind of crap on their suckers.

(This is a Humboldt squid arm, so not exactly what we’re looking for, but a LOT of squid have sucker rings that are just much, much, MUCH smaller.)

When hunting on land, all Cephalopods totally do have their beak and venom to utilize, but in addition, squid especially have crazy mad armature (which they don’t have in their official design obviously but i find it hard to believe that they would just evolve away from like every single defensive measure they have except their beaks and ink). So squids already have claws! Just in a pretty different form. If you imagine their fingers as actually being suction cups rather than flat french fries it’s really quite simple why they wouldn’t need external claws.

Octopuses then? Their suckers are built for grip in a less destructive bloody way, so they don’t have any sucker teeth. So if you wrap your head around the idea that claws would be really useful on land, it makes sense that they would evolve different, more vertebrate-like claws on the tips of their fingers independently from squid, who already have murder teeth on their hands.

Okay, and as a side note to this, if you really hate the idea of squids having sucker fingers, they still have suckers on their hunting tentacles, and those are called hunting tentacles for a reason (well, feeding tentacles, but it sounds weirder on a sentient squid). So on another hypothesis, squid don’t need to evolve external claws because they already have a great offensive tool in the shape of their tentacles, both extremely long-reaching and strong.

Hope this helps and isn’t like completely incomprehensible gibberish xD

[dogtoling]

That would explain a bit. Interesting, too. I never knew suction cups on squid were abrasive and could be used in hunting.

Anyway, last question before I can’t think of anything else until I inevitably do. Can Cephalings (squid and Octo) squirt ink from their beak in humanoid form?

glad the last post was interesting! i’m like unimaginably tired right now but this is such an interesting question that i’ll try to go for it right now. even though i’m basically falling asleep at my desk right now. (you can tell i’m tired by the fact that i typed “right now” three times in a row unintentionally and am just catching that while proofreading this...)

Really, there’s no answer to this until there IS a canon answer. We still literally don’t have anything that straight up confirms where the ink of Inklings is NATURALLY supposed to come out of. I don’t think it’s mentioned ever AT ALL in the game’s canon. 

Biologically speaking, absolutely not! Ink coming out of their mouth would make zero sense. Not only would it obstruct eating AND make it very easy to accidentally drown by inhaling your own ink, the ink sac in squid is nowhere near the mouth... let’s see it..

here’s some Generalized Squid Anatomy. The ink sac is almost as far away from the mouth as possible, as it connects to the siphon, which.... yeah it’s also the ass. biologically speaking, the ink could and should still come from there considering it’s just really good positioning for a defensive measure and it wouldn’t obstruct the face. (Obviously this is not the case in Inklings because it is not marketable at all.)

well remember when i said No There’s No Way It’s Out of their Mouth? well i lied. there IS actually some (quite a lot?) of evidence for Inklings actually shooting ink through their mouth, even though it makes like no sense biologically. First off, that’s basically their ONLY body cavity we ever see, which obviously doesn’t mean there’s no other ones, but eh. It basically means that at the very least this is not a thing that’s been considered or considered relevant or important enough to be included in the game. THIS however IS included in the game

X-ray of an Inkling’s ink sac, and oddly enough, it seems to connect UP towards the head. That does imply that the ink comes out somewhere in the head. So really, it COULD BE the mouth, considering it’s the other accentuated thing in the image that we see. 

(It could also be the nose, which still doesn’t actually have a clear reason for being there other than to make the face more human-shaped. invertebrates don’t have a nose. even most vertebrate “noses” are just the nostrils with no nose bridge. anyway)

But yeah, there was actually another thing that VERY CLEARLY hints towards the ink coming out of the mouth (or at least the general area) in the form of like every Octarian ever but specifically the Octosniper and -commander:

these bad boys literally spit out the ink from their mouths. 

now, we don’t exactly know how they’re created and what kind of body plan Octarians follow, but if we assume that they anatomically mimic the body plan of Octolings at least to some point, THEN SURELY there is a reason that the ink comes out of their MOUTH. it kind of implies that it also comes out of the mouth in the case of Octolings (and by extension, Inklings)

tl;dr while it makes zero sense biologically for Cephalings to have evolved to shoot ink out of their mouth, the only canon evidence as to where their ink comes out of points towards that being the case, and a specific organ just for that has clearly not even been considered or it would’ve surely been shown or at least mentioned in the games, so really it probably IS the mouth. (maybe in Splatoon 5: World War the Inklings fill their ink tanks on the field using a straw.)

[dogtoling]

What’s the range and height limit to a cephaling’s super jump? In hero mode, 4 was able to jump to Tentakeel Outpost, at the top of Octo Canyon, from Cephalon HQ, which rests at ground level. That’s a considerable distance.

Oh geez that has to really vary. First it’s important to remember that they kind of have to be able to do that in order for the gameplay to work seamlessly, even if it’s not really realistic. But considering they launch themselves like rockets using high-pressure ink, and squids are very aerodynamic, I would imagine they can zoom a PRETTY considerable distance, especially if you consider species with fins and/or bodies better suited for gliding (although that doesn’t really add to the height, just the airtime). I would imagine it’s not a stretch for a squid to be able to launch themself across a stage like Flounder Heights. The entirety of Octo Canyon given that it’s mostly vertical is a bit of a stretch. 

When it comes to the jumps, though, the individual abilities probably depend not only on species (squids are most likely the best super jumpers due to their very aerodynamic form and fins that can be used in maneuvering) but also the individual Cephaling’s abilities, and factors such as size and experience. Hope this helps! 

[dogtoling]

I just read your post detailing Inkling evolution. Love the analysis, by the way.

Have you theorized how Octolings would have evolved? I, and I’m sure a few others, would be interested in your thoughts. I know I would!

Hi! Thanks for the ask, I appreciate it!

I don’t think Octoling evolution is remarkably interesting because due to how similar they are to the squid, one has to assume that they underwent a lot of convergent evolution (there’s a better term for this that describes evolution ALONGSIDE other species, which is likely more precisely what happened) and a lot of the steps are the same... so Octolings, much like the squid, evolved to be social animals that utilize ink in pretty much the same way and gave up their complex camouflage for the more niche but convenient ink-camouflage business.

The biggest difference here is probably that while squid are social animals already, octopuses are solitary, which means that they had to have evolved to be social somewhere down the line - although even in our day we have records of “octopus societies” - Octlantis, a shared area of residence among a bunch of Gloomy Octopus, as one example, so it’s not entirely far-fetched. So that’s probably the biggest difference, but since the species are very similar, there’s not much else that stands out. Octopuses are more ambush predators than pursuit predators (i don’t know the actual terminology) but you can still do that from the ink i guess. 

[dogtoling]

Why do you think splatting occurs? If you think about it, since there’s no body left, the implications are a bit... messy.

Well, as per the game, since their bodies are composed of liquid, they come apart when hit by different liquid and lose their form. It’s pretty much like a water balloon, once the balance is messed up it just all goes up in the air. The essence of the Inkling is the “ghost” we see in the game and the way spawn points and the Salmon Run lifesavers work is by getting together a lot of ink for the squid to rebuild their body out of. 

According to an interview, the actual base reason for Inklings dying in water comes directly from just needing a solid out-of-bounds area in the game (and water is infinitely easier to justify in a city environment than something like magma). So really, the whole dissolving in water -thing was implemented to make water as stage boundaries make sense.

Since this is one of the rarer things in canon for which we can actually pinpoint HOW and WHY it happens, and doesn’t leave much room for speculation, I’ve just explained the actual in-game reasoning.

[dogtoling]

In earlier posts, you mentioned invaluable hunting tools early Inklings developed, such as the squid form.

While those would without a doubt make them earth’s most competent hunters, how did they develop the necessary intelligence to develop civilization?

Intelligence and specifically sentience is one of those things in Splatoon that you kind of just have to roll with. Squid and especially octopuses actually have very developed brains for being molluscs, with octopuses being infamously pretty intelligent and good learners. Squids are social animals with some of them pretty much having visual languages. Cephalopods evolving to be incredibly intelligent animals isn’t a stretch at all in my opinion, but it’s not really something that exists because it makes sense in Splatoon.... case in point anemones and urchins are also BIPEDAL (???????????) and SENTIENT despite being really simple animals from our point of view, whose ecological niche is just sitting around and having like 2 senses maybe. Also jellyfish. And the clam.... yeah... and the seaweed guy.... tl;dr the Inklings totally make sense and basically nothing else does, so it’s not really something you can easily explain.

[dogtoling]

I’ve come around to the idea of Cephaling ink being ludicrously sticky instead of venomous. Still helpful, and has potentially creative uses.

How did early Cephalings hunt with it? Did they spray it on the ground so their adversary would get stuck and immobile and then physically attack them?

Likely both! Sticky ink on the ground offers an advantage to Cephalings that don’t stick to it themselves, while other creatures would. This means that prey wandering into the ink would likely get stuck, which would make it function much like a spiderweb in that it’s passive hunting. Predators instead wouldn’t be able to pursue Cephalings deeper into their territory due to having much worse mobility, and those who would still brave the ink might fall prey themselves.

But yeah, essentially, the main use would probably be to immobilize the prey and then strike with their venomous bite! It would work on prey and predators alike, although with very small and/or slow prey no ink would be necessary at all, I think. It’s infinitely easier to pursue prey when they’re covered in sticky, bright mucus which cuts their speed, not to mention trying to hide with neon-colored goop on them. I feel like the sticky ink would’ve been a key step in turning birds into prey rather than predators - it’s hard to combat a predator attacking from the air, but an eagle trying to grab a squid snack and instead getting a face full of ink and becoming unable to fly anywhere is a full 360 

[dogtoling]

I’ve been thinking recently.

Before I say this, know that I absolutely love your head cannons and the thought you put into every one of them.

But in regards to the mechanics of things like how ink weaponry seems to literally melt into the ink and how the ink itself seems to have a depth that affects Cephaling technology but little else, it occurred to me that some Cephaling equipment may just be more advanced than anything humans are used to.

For example, staple Octarian equipment includes invisible platforms, floating platforms, and invisible floating platforms. Because of this, could it be possible to take this into account for future headcannons?

Forgive the lack of grace with this ask, my head feels a little hazy.

Thanks for the ask and the thoughts! This is actually interesting stuff and something I have thought of before. There are reasons for specifically why I exclude them from my headcanons, though, and I will go into them here.

I try to go with the general approach of “a type of technology only exists if we clearly see it in game”, and even then, take it with a grain of salt. As this is a GAME world we are dealing with, a lot of things are implemented for game mechanics and simplicity. If it’s seen in use outside of gameplay purposes or makes up the majority of an environment, I say it’s probably a safe bet that it’s just futuristic technology (for example the aforementioned anti-gravity technology and some kind of invisibility)! So I’m specifically going to talk about hammerspace here because it is without question the hottest topic when it comes to sci-fi in Splatoon.

It’s an interesting thought that the Splatoon world would have technology that makes objects soluble into ink. It is shown a LOT, but obviously I have a lot of problems with it. One theory I see thrown around a lot is that all gear and weapons are made of hardened ink (which is a plastic-like material that’s mentioned at least once in concept art) or just ink as a whole. This doesn’t work for multiple reasons,

A. Many of the weapons DO have plastic-y parts that could be ink, but they also have metals, cogs, rubber, stickers and whatnot, all things that would not melt into ink if we were talking about a hypothetical scenario where ink melts inside ink... for some reason

B. If there indeed was a way to make all materials soluble into ink, it still means they would not only melt within milliseconds, but also pull out and reform into exactly what they were before within some other milliseconds. This is like melting an ice sculpture (or since we’re doing regardless of material, a WHOLE LAPTOP OR SOMETHING) into a lake and expecting it to reform itself when pulled out... and you can’t even pull it out because it’s just water molecules now within the other 150 million water molecules that were in that square meter of water before that (i dont know how many water molecules fit into a square meter but it is probably a lot)

C. Since the object literally turning into liquid ink is out of the question at this point, this leaves ink as a hammerspace entity. As we see in the game, things just dip under the surface of the ink. This is a cool gameplay mechanic but in practice it means that this random liquid of a random animal has physics-breaking abilities.

Hammerspace as a whole is one of those plot crutch things where it’s implemented to make things play out smoother, for example Turf Wars in video game form would likely be a NIGHTMARE if your weapons and gear did not conveniently slide out of existence when you need them to do so. You can also pretty easily tell when it’s implemented for gameplay reasons and not because the world is MEANT to have it.

Aside from the INK being hammerspace which just makes no sense whatsoever but IS definitely cool, I would be down for hammerspace to generally exist. HOWEVER, The sole reason the Splatoon world is not meant to have hammerspace technology (and this could literally change any time who knows what lore curveballs they throw) is because it Does Not Have Any. And when I say that, I mean specifically OUTSIDE of when it’s a necessary tool for gameplay, for example:

We see hammerspace technology in the game when it’s needed and used for flavor, convenience or game mechanic purposes. Gear and weapons disappearing into ink, Sting Ray from a lunch ration bag that couldn’t even fit a sandwich in it, 15 Cohocks popping out of one cooler box during Mothership (and we have to note these are probably 1,500lbs+ vertebrates with bones and muscles, NOT entities like Inklings that can squeeze into a jar or possibly even be made of liquid considering how closely you follow the game), THE ENTIRETY OF MAWS, secret boxes through the single player, Octobosses.... list goes on.

This might look bad because I’ve just laid down like 5+ examples of hammerspace indeed BEING in the game while trying to explain how it’s not. Looking back at all of these, they all specifically exist to enable something that the game does. Because it is convenient in a Game. You wouldn’t realistically have a Sting Ray in a Salmon Run because nobody is dragging a pressure washer into a fish mob where you’ll get your limbs ripped off, it’s there to add strategy and fun into the GAMEPLAY.

Now, how does this in any way imply that the world itself has no hammerspace tech? Well this is when we look past the gameplay and look at the WORLD itself.

Technology is usually developed to either make something pre-existing more effective or convenient. What does hammerspace make more convenient? It makes things fit into a smaller space, obviously. It would be an absolute turning point for logistics and cargo business everywhere. You basically wouldn’t need cargo ships, containers, delivery trucks. Or maybe you still would if you were to transport x200000% items as opposed to what they would fit in them before, so small scale is where this comparison makes more sense:

If hammerspace existed, we would KNOW. Space-warping technology would turn the entire society on its head. Inklings’ society is very human-like, meaning their technology has to be much like ours. Having hammerspace only in a sport and NOT in something like logistics and literally everywhere else, with the implication that it’s mainstream enough to be used in a kids’ sport and a crappy part-time job company, just does not work. That’s like if we invented the wheel and ONLY used it in like, uni-cycle races for people in their 30′s meanwhile Larry from downtown is still dragging home lumber on a plastic bag through the snow because no one puts wheels on things that they would be useful on.

Hammerspace is BIG technology and basically, if it existed, it would be the new mainstream. You can buy your house in a can and just unleash it onto some random plain if you want to. Buy your car inside a bottle and just uncork it when you want it. Nobody needs a backpack to school, just put your books inside a locket. Want a new couch? Put it in a bag. Bought a bunk bed? Put it in your pocket. Want to move the entirety of the Ruins of Ark Polaris into a nicer spot so it can be a tourist attraction? You can take it!

TL;DR Hammerspace is WAY too powerful and to make it “make sense” there have to be tons of unspoken rules about what it can or can’t engulf, how, or how long for. Also the point of this post was that while the Splatoon era and especially Octarians definitely have more advanced technology, hammerspace is not one of them. We would know.

[dogtoling]

I though to something.

We know the Bamboozler is the oldest ink weapon model we know of, being in use for at least a century.

I’ve been thinking. What do you think was the first weapon to be used on a wide scale to substitute squirting ink and when would it have been invented? Any thoughts or headcanons?

Well, we have this sunken scroll in Splatoon 1 that is supposedly 2,000 years old. 

It shows a depiction of a Turf War between two teams in a 4v4 style. It shows the Inklings using something some sort of narrow, tube-like weapon to spray their ink. So it might have been something akin to a Bamboozler already, it seems like they might’ve started developing weapons for inking to be able to do better-precision aiming, fire the ink further and at a higher pressure. 

Interestingly enough this scroll also depicts what looks like squids Super Jumping, a Splat Roller, imagery of bombs, a Spawn Point and ink tank meters (and one octopus). It’s obviously heavily stylized and I doubt much of this could actually be used to decode Mollusc Era history (it is more than likely something that the developers threw together for fun and just tossed in a lot of references to the actual game), but we can at least tell that Inklings’ first weapons were already developed over 2,000 years ago!

[dogtoling]

Here’s a new type of question. In an implausible but hypothetical scenario in which humans and cephalings engaged in a military conflict, who do you think would win?

Personally, I would imagine humans would score early victories with the superior range and power of ballistic weaponry, but if Sheldon and the Octos develop such weaponry of their own, coupled with the adaptable color and stickiness of their ink (laying green ink on a grassy field, for instance), cephalings would win. Also, in the scenario, Weapons of Mass Destruction like hydrogen bombs are not used.

What are your thoughts?

Cephalings no doubt about it. From what we can tell in the game, they not only have the capabilities to use basically all of the same technology that humans do (but opt for ink a lot of the time), they also have technology that is miles above those of humans (for example the levitation- and hi-tech invisibility tech that Octolings have). When it comes to physical combat, pretty much any Cephaling could probably tear a human limb from limb in roughly 20 seconds, they have superior regenerative powers, and the abilities to easily infiltrate pretty much any human military base... yeah i’ll just leave it at that, lol. 

Humans are much more fragile than any Cephaling, and outside of that realm, it comes down to fighting each other with basically the same technology (except that Cephalings have better technology too from what we can tell.) 

Oh yeah also this is completely flipped on its head if you follow through with the game canon of inklings dying in water. All the humans need is to get a really big hose and hook it up to the ocean. 

[dogtoling]

That was a fun thought experiment.

Now, if I may share something, I have a head cannon based on something you said in your Cephaling evolution post, namely it’s not exactly water that causes the splat, but the copious pollution in it—pollution left from the previous civilization that the land-dwelling Cephalings haven’t had to get used to since before the first squids and octopi took to land.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but then again, so is the logic of Splatoon. What are your thoughts?

We don’t really know exactly what the water, specifically the ocean, is like in Splatoon but as a rule of thumb the water definitely has to be a bit warmer. Salmonids are notably mentioned to have adapted to the pollutants of their environment and while it might just be those specific areas, I feel like the oceans as a whole are chock full of stuff that really shouldn’t be there, following the human world wars and everything that’s definitely ended up and broken down in the ocean following the great floods. So yeah, if there’s something in water that hurts Cephalings, for me it’s got to be the pollution and irritants and even then it would likely display as irritation and possible infections rather than just Dying at the spot.

I do also hold the pollutants as a potential reason for like every sea creature and their mother legging it out of the oceans as fast as possible but it’s not really foolproof, because seafood is clearly still a big thing and there is life in the oceans, so it may have been a coincidence since there were a LOT of ecological niches left behind from the extinction of like half of all land animals

[dogtoling]

It just occurred to me I may eventually run out of questions pertaining to Cephaling biology alone.

Do I have the green light to ask stuff about culture and equipment?

Yeah sure! I’m much less knowledgeable in that aspect but it’s good to think about things like society.