#^ lola's canon mindset for salmon run btw

[voidscarredadjudicator]

Drizzle Season 2023 is out for Splatoon 3. You know what that means?

(Long post warning)

It means me having the totally normal immediate reaction of, "what new ingame content can I use as inspiration for Humanity's Endling and it's side stories?"

This post is gonna sorta double as both a very surface level analysis of new stuff in Splatoon 3 (mainly the new maps) and a brief look into my creative process for how I go about taking what's shown in the game and applying it to the canon of the world Kaleb finds himself in. One of my goals is to keep what happens in HE as close to the canon as presented in the game as possible, while still making very healthy use of the blank space that is things the games nor extended lore don't necessarily address, and quite obviously bending the rules a bit here and there to make the story... well, happen? 'Cause if I were 100% dedicated to preserving canon, the series would look something like this.

they wasn't lyin, them humanitys really do be endling

Jokes aside, basically what all that means is I enjoy filling in the blanks to make the game world feel more full. Like, if possible, I wanna have the series written in a way where you could easily headcanon it as something that's happening in the background of Splatoon 3 as you are playing it.

...At least until we get to the later acts. HE ain't just a slice of life. But let's not get too ahead of ourselves here :)

But as that statement ominously implies, I have a general idea of the overarching plot for all five acts, and the process of writing is basically me ironing out the details and stringing it together into a cohesive narrative. Luckily for me, details are sometimes filled in for me by Nintendo. Speaking of which, let's look at Crableg Capital!

You can kind of already see it just barely peeking from behind the crane on the right, but Hagglefish Market is visible from up here, and they actually added this stage into the background of Hagglefish as well, so you can actually see it from down there, too.

From up here, you can more or less make out the exact route Kaleb came from in Act I, Ch7

I know for certain Crableg wasn't there before; I spent a frankly weird amount of hours doing recon on Hagglefish for Act I. Can't wait for this to become some New Mandela Effect meme or something. Anyways, you can see from up here that there's a lot of green grass in this city that's meant to be in the middle of a desert, so I kinda have this feeling that an ungodly amount of the city's water supply is fed right into keeping that greenery. I can see Kaleb drawing a comparison to Dubai, or maybe even Las Vegas to a lesser extent. Speaking of Vegas, you know what it has? Tons of ads. You know what this stage also has? Tons of ads!

shoutout to the paragliding jellyfish btw

Okay, well, obviously it's nowhere near as bad as Vegas. But I needed a segue, dammit. Now to be fair, I can't read any of these signs, so they might not actually be ads. Like, clearly at least a couple of them are company logos on the bigger skyscrapers. But the concrete building at the end of the clip? I don't know what those signs would be otherwise.

Like, who are they advertising to? The people in the neighboring buildings? The ads face outward, so it couldn't be that. Maybe it's extremely cheap ad space because basically nobody would see it, but then whatever in-universe powers that be decide these stages decided, "yes. of course. the actively under construction highrise. the perfect spot." I'd imagine that ad space probably skyrocketed in value, because there's no way these ink sports aren't televised to at least some capacity in canon.

Speaking of absurd spots for stages...

Shipshape Cargo Co. At first, it looks like you're on some platform underneath an oil rig or something to that nature. Then you realize that you're somehow moving. Then you notice the bow of the ship on the far end of the stage, then it's like, "Oh shit I'm on one of those half-submersible cargo ships!"

So not only did the folks running these ink sports decide that an active construction zone was a good spot for a stage, but they also decided to set up a stage on the back of a presumably en-route freight ship. And it's far enough north for there to be goddamn icebergs floating around. If anything, this season's maps have convinced me that an organization equivalent to OSHA does not fucking exist in the Splatoon universe. I'm aware that culturally, turf wars were at first backstreet sports and very unofficial/disorganized, and also there were stages in Splatoon 1 and 2 that would raise the same concerns (i.e. old Hammerhead Bridge, Saltspray Rig, Piranha Pit, etc.), so I really shouldn't be surprised by all this, but... I dunno, it's almost 4 am at the time of writing.

I don't have much more to say about Shipshape, though. Like, it's a very cool concept for a map, and if for whatever reason I need Kaleb to freeze to death, I'll have it in mind. Crableg is... very helpful, though.

Y'know, isn't it interesting that a lot of stories end with the hero scaling a huge tower?

Just a thought. 🙂*

Oh yeah, I also spotted this in the catalogue!

Lola got to be a model! I'm so proud of her! 🥰

I don't have much else to say right now, though. I might do a follow-up for Big Run if Um'ami Ruins has a cool enough atmosphere to warrant it; otherwise Undertow Spillway having that alarm blaring during the last Big Run was the coolest shit ever and I can't believe I accidentally predicted it as a stage w/ it being half flooded in Act I.

By the way, I am going to be grinding the shit out of this upcoming Big Run for that gold helicopter figure, so if you wanna play with me, I'm still in the 'Endling' pool. Again, if you spot Lola herself, that's me! I tend to go pretty hard in Salmon Run though as it's actually my favorite mode, so uh... if you're not EVP and you join me, it might average out the hazard level to something a lot harder than you may be used to. So fair warning!

*all ominous foreshadowing is subject to change