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are you in the opinion that inkfish (ig really just inklings) are viviporus, oviparus, or ovoviviparous? ovoviviparous would make sense seeing theyre trying to "imitate" humans to some respect but still have squidlike features... but as far as i know we only have proof as to where octarians come from and no proof as to if inklings do the same

reproduction lore posting 🔥🔥🔥 i see them as egg layers. maybe them being ovoviviparous could work maybe but??? idk, eggs have to be involved. also them being egg layers is weird and i like when inkfish are Weird. I've gotten into this topic before on this blog but it's been a couple years and i think it's worth rehashing First thing to address: bellybuttons. They have them and I hate it almost as much as i hate that they have breasts. i think both are just a result of "imitating" humans in universe, and for design reasons so they don't come off as too uncanny to us, the human playerbase. which is just cowardice to me but okay.<3 In this concept art for Callie in the Art of Splatoon 2 i think this is the only time bellybuttons are addressed, in the top right corner:

"I realized this while drawing, but inklings have bellybuttons..."

that really sounds like it was a design choice that wasn't thought about that deeply...

now there's 2 things that make me believe they have to come from eggs. first from the first artbook:

This is the growth cycle of a squid from its larval to juvenile stages.

larvae come from eggs.

second, this excerpt from the Splatune album jacket about the Calamari Inkantation.

Of course, when we talk about these girls, we can't leave out the "Calamari Inkantation" which is both heavenly to listen to and heavenly to sing. This song, which is also used as the train melody for the Inkopolis Line, is imprinted in the DNA of all Inklings. The sea is our mother, the place where all of life hatched from, and the place where there is no way to return. Since ancient times, this song has been filled with the swirling feelings of "love" and "reverence" towards the sea.

I translated this myself, the word there is specifically "hatched" like from an egg, and not a general term for being born.

One could argue that since this is referring to the squids of the past, it might not apply to modern inkfish. But still real life cephalopods lay eggs, and I don't think it'd be out of the question for modern inkfish to do the same. There are other sapient species that didn't "evolve out" of egg-laying, evidenced by Nishida's 247 siblings and this scroll on coconut crabs.

Regarding Octarians, Octolings develop in the same way Inklings do. so they too would likely come from eggs.

we're ignoring this because 1. it's clearly just concept art that 2. has more recent evidence going against this being the norm for octoling development. I think this is just a weird edge case or just straight up not canon.

baby marina matching the 3rd stage of inkling development shown on the above chart while paul looks like the 4th stage. There's also smollusk that looks like the first stage/ a real octopus paralarva, but since it's a digital entity, who knows how valid that is? Also, Mashup/Warabi from Diss-pair was also confirmed in Ordertune to have come from the same hometown as Acht (the underground) and was described in Haikara Walker as having parents. So Octoling development=Inkling development=eggs??? finally, not 100% if this is what you're asking but as for cut-tentacle Octarians, but with Inklings, this has come up...once

-- But the Octarians like the Octotroopers...? Amano: That's a different thing. Inoue: All together they're part of the Octarian species, but Octarians like the Octotroopers are a separate thing.  --Does that mean that there are some squids that can't take a humanoid form? Inoue: So far, none have been discovered. There may be some somewhere, though

I think the "there may be some somewhere" is just keeping it vague in case they wanna use that idea. but i seriously doubt they will at this point. the concept behind octarians is that octopuses have basically tiny brains in each of their arms, so those tentacle octarians are like if their arms grew into a separate being. Real squids are not built like that, and we even see in game inklings having less movement in their tentacles, and use more styles that cut into their tentacles compared to octolings.

ok that's all TL;DR EGG SUPREMACY 🔥🔥🔥

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There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people. 

A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.

Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.    

Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast  – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.                          

That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.

I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?

It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.      

And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.                            

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they hate each other.

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horseshoe theory is real for AI art discourse because 100% of both the most fanatic haters and boosters of it have zero idea how it works or what it even does

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no h8 but thats an absurdly high number for this type of question. there's not an album on earth that I wouldn't listen to in one sitting for 20k. and if you need my qualifications on this I have adhd and Im kind of an art snob

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Is this anything

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bojack couldve probbably become charlotte and her husbands third so easily, but no he had to be fucking crazy and stupid instead😩

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i feel like we don't appreciate these days how much the twin towers sucked, like, design-wise

they were contemporarily hated for just being these giant grey monoliths

like there probably could've been an easier way to get rid of them, but they probably needed to go either way

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nowhere else

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a bart simpson has just spawned in downtown philadelphia. residents advised to stay indoors, do not approach

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You can always spot which Tumblr users migrated over here from LiveJournal because we consistently call the Read More button ‘the cut’.

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i think if selfcest didn't have cest in its name 70% of people's issues with it would disappear. that's what i think

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super rough pb doodle from the other day

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Have you ever put ice cubes on your shoes? It would change your life!

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indeedee redesign + prevo concept

more thoughts under the cut

instead of being gender based theyre just called "pink form" and "blue form" or something and probably have different stats depending on which form idk.

their arms are hardly used and they mainly rely on their psychic abilities

pink form can use their horns to cradle or carry things while they use their psychic abilities to help around the house.

blue form is more outside of the house work. again relies on psychic powers. also their horns make a good hat rack.

the prevo is always trying to help wherever they can(key word trying)

probably evolves based on stat stuff