#Side Order

[azure-aeon-dragonica]

I don't play Splatoon

Made this in the middle of 2:30 am

But seriously though these Mfs are annoying as hell

[dr-spectre]

I heard about how in Bancala Walker there was a short story about Marina and Acht and their time in the domes. And I'm gonna be 100% honest with you. It kinda makes me mad, and it really highlights a massive problem with Splatoon as a whole, and that's how it treats its stories.

(Yep I'm rambling about Splatoon's storytelling for the 500th time, welcome to my blog.)

Since Splatoon 2, the series has had a weird relationship with its storytelling, the main stories of each campaign are very simplistic and are very video game like plots. "Go get the Great Zapfish back and save Captain Cuttlefish. Go get the Great Zapfish again and find Callie. Find the thangs and get out. GO GET THE ZAPFISH AGAIN AND SAVE CAPTAIN CUTTLEFISH AGAIN!!! Climb up the tower." Splatoon 1 got away with this because it's clearly the most "tutorial" mode out of any of the single player campaigns and it doesn't really try to say any deeper messages or express a character arc.

Now, obviously video game stories must have goals for the player to work towards, I'm not complaining about that, you gotta have that stuff in games to motivate the player, however, what really drives me up a wall is when they decide to add depth and interesting things relating to the characters and world, yet they intentionally throw away that same depth and chuck it to the side. Hell they sometimes retcon the optional hard to find lore or make it more confusing just because!! If you're gonna add depth and something else to these stories, you HAVE to actually explore it and expand upon it WITHIN THE STORY! You cannot add it as "extra lore" when it's stuff that should have been in the main storyline to begin with. It's like not adding seasoning to chicken and that you boiled the fucking chicken and wrapped it in lettuce and mayonnaise.

I could obviously talk about the elephant in the room... you know... this little goober right here. This freak.

And I'm going to.

From the concept art we were given, we know that Callie was originally gonna have more exploration into her troubling mental health issues as seen by her being in the shadows and being comforted by Octarians. It's a significantly different tone compared to the final product.

However in the final game, they tossed MOST of this shit away and say in the game as well as in official media, "naw she was kidnapped and brainwashed forcefully because she's a dumb clutz lmao." They tried to backtrack with an obscure relationship chart, the sunken scrolls and Squid Sisters web prequel series, but then they backtracked AGAIN with the Splatoon 3 artbook that states that she was "brainwashed." It's an incredibly simplified and frankly insulting version of events that are TECHNICALLY canon but Nintendo and others don't treat it as such and i don't know why. I dont know why they treat Callie like this. Is it because she's silly?

Wouldn't it be more interesting and more powerful as a story if they made Callie had more control and awareness of her actions? That she was truly acting upon her mental illness and isolation? Putting DJ Octavio, the fucking funny octopus guy on the same level as Talon from Overwatch and Hydra from Marvel, the literal nazis who damaged Bucky Barnes' brain and removed all of his memories, making him into the Winter Solider, is fucking psychotic and actually insane of Nintendo to do.

There is also Acht and how they were shown between Octo Expansion and Side Order.

Some of the most powerful stories in media have strong character arcs and characters overcoming their struggles and pain. It is inspirating and incredibly real to see a loved one reach out to a person that they care about who have lost their way, either from mental illness or drugs. Trying to bring them back and help them go through their pain together. When someone is under distress and mental health troubles, they can act like a completely different person and the fact that Nintendo half assed serious topics like this and made shit WAY WORSE boils my blood to no end.

In Octo Expansion, we were told that they went under Sanitization willingly in order to remove doubts in their mind and put their all into music. Now due to the unknowns of Sanitization at the time, this made for a really interesting character and brought up a lot of interesting questions as to why they would do this and who they are.

However, in Side Order when they explained Sanitization further and told us that Acht lost all of their free will and were FORCED to make music for Tartar, it kinda damaged their story a little bit. Like sure, Acht still probably wanted to go under Sanitization to clear their doubts and remove emotion, but the added information kinda goes against the interesting story they were trying to tell with Acht. Acht doesn't even mention why they went under Sanitization in Side Order and their reasoning is only found IN A SOCIAL MEDIA POST BACK IN 2018!!! THEY DON'T RESTATE IT AT ALL WHEN IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPORTANT TO DO SO! They kinda tell us via their letters, but guess when you get those, IN THE POST GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This leads me to another big talking point, most of the lore is hidden and hard to find. You have to go out of your way to find most of the shit Splatoon has to offer. Sunken Scrolls are hidden collectables and most people don't wanna go through the effort of finding them all in the stages, the chat logs in Octo Expansion are completely optional due to entries being tied to specific stations and you can choose to easily skip them, the dev diaries are locked behind lockers and some people may complete Side Order in a manner where they can get to the final boss and be done with the main campaign before seeing most of the entries. Now I'm not saying that there cannot be extra lore tidbits for players to find, hell no, i love extra stuff like that, i think Splatoon 1 and 3's hero modes did a really job of that. BUT WHEN YOU HIDE AWAY IMPORTANT DETAILS LIKE CALLIE'S MOTIVATION IN SPLATOON 2 AND MARINA'S AND PEARL'S BACKSTORIES!?!? YEAH I GOT A FUCKING PROBLEM RIGHT THERE!

In other games, these would be cutscenes or a bunch of mandatory dialogue, BUT NOPE! THEY ARE IN HARD TO FIND SPOTS!

Some of the other lore details are found on social media posts and some of them are YEARS old or on Splatoon's dead Tumblr account. Most people would rather go to Inkipedia and even they can sometimes make vital mistakes or have wording that gives people the wrong idea on what happened in particular events, which heavily impacts the community and discussion. When i talk about my perspective on what happened to Callie in Splatoon 2, I've seen people say to me "wait really? Huh?! I didn't know that." The amount of research you gotta do to go into these characters is an absolute nightmare, AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE SPLATBANDS!!! Their lore is literally locked behind Japanese exclusive expensive artbooks!!! WHY?!?!

I really do wanna stress again, is it cool to get cool lore outside of the games and as collectables?! ABSOLUTELY! You know how awesome it was to read the Alterna logs for the first time? The smile on my face seeing Pearl and Marina back in the Final Fest in Side Order. But when the main stories suffer because of important information being tossed to the side and not applied to the main games... I dont know man, it just becomes incredibly frustrating to me personally. Especially with all the misconceptions and other things that occur within the community, the fandom has an information problem and honestly, it's Nintendo's fault. Imagine if Side Order had flashbacks to a younger Marina and Acht, it would have helped with the middle chunk of the story being so... nothing.

[pad-wubbo]

OBSCURE SPLATOON LORE FACT OF THE DAY:

Commander Tartar is alive.

No, seriously. It's not going to reunite with the Professor any time soon.

How do I know this?

Well, Chaos vs. Order, the 2019 Splatfest, takes place after Octo Expansion does.

Pearl mentions Eight and Cap'n Whoeverthefuckitwas in the announcement dialogue, and the special stage MC.Princess Diaries features the sunken NILS Statue that would later show up on Hammerhead Bridge.

What does this have to do with Tartar?

Well, it participated. On Marina's team.

This is official artwork of the Telephone and C.Q. Cumber as members of Team Order. Tartar has the tentacle emerging from the sanitized ink dripping out of the telephone box. This is its appearance after Agent 3 busts up the phone box. This suggests further that the picture is from after OE.

Tartar's quote for Team Order is "THESE FAILED PROTOTYPES, ENDLESSLY WARRING FOR TURF...". It still speaks, and it's powerless to destroy Inkopolis now, but it still very much mentions its distaste for inkfish society - it is capable of speaking, and as much it detests the fact that inkfish kill each other for fun (humans would never, right?), it still chooses the shiniest of two turds, Marina's Team Order.

The Splatfest promotional artworks are 100% canon.

One thing I will say, whether intentional or not on the writers' part, is that Marina accidentally fulfilled Tartar's dream. Tartar wanted to mash everyone up into one consciousness to stop them from fighting each other (as per Nogami interview Oct. 2018, and its dialogue about "blend[ing] into the perfect world").

That's, I think, the most interesting thing about its character. It's not a generic "evil empire" supervillain, not really a "mad AI" at all. It's still following its programming and genuinely trying to help everyone by mashing them into living slime.

How do I know that the slime is conscious? Well, you can hear voices coming from it (as per blender cutscene, they sing Auld Lang Syne backwards), it has a will of its own that overrides Octarians' minds (that's how sanitization works), and Marina mentions in her dev diaries in Side Order that sometimes the same mem cake (conscious thought) belongs to multiple Octoling bodies mixed together.

Marina accidentally fulfilled Tartar's dream in creating the Memverse, a world where all consciousness is mixed together as a collective, emotionless hivemind of calm. She mentions in the Chaos vs. Order announcement that she started working on her "perfect world", suggesting that Marina might have been inspired by Tartar after defeating it.

That's some food for thought.

[gatoburr0]

WAAAH WAAH WAAAH WAAAHH

[littledemon55]

but you didn't have to cuuuuut me off!- 🗣️

somebody that i used to know

my ko-fi!

[goomyloid]

something something Memories

[traumarina]

Marina Ida, and I mean this in the most loving way, is the worst dancer of all idols. She's just submerged in her autistic trance and I respect her for that.

[taffybuns]

🦑💥🐙

[stupjam]

Virtual Marina

[flanphiptere]

Bro this new side order DLC is fuckin' weird man

[diehand-number-1]

i liked the way pearl swung her feetsies so i turned her into a gif

[shibascrem]

World Tour Confessions B-SIDE

I recommend you read A-SIDE first. The rest of the comic is under the read more.

Brittanic bold = Octarian language

Arial = Inkling language

I think OtH would challenge their guests to a rap off as reception entertainment.

[g0lddaze]

Side order drawing from a while back

[sharpdim]

Can you hear me?

[magulon]

Parallel canon is looking… different

[gatoburr0]

Squids with guns.