#along with the 180 splatoon oc questions

[giomagnetism]

180 splat questions for spencer: [tier 0] 12; [tier 2] 10, 27; [tier 4] 3, 30; [tier 5] 5, 20

180 Splatoon OC Questions

12. Favorite type of music?

I think the best answer I can give to this one's "evocative". She doesn't really care about the quality or the genre—though of course she likes high-intensity driving stuff in line with what she makes—and her choice is about as performative as it isn't. Yeah, she unironically likes Taylor Swift. That's because Taylor Swift and especially her early music epitomizes a certain type of femininity and relationship with it, someone with a particular type of girlhood, that hits her where it hurts. Same reason why there's a lot of Avril Lavigne and the like in her library. They might not be "good", but they give her access to a yearning she doesn't usually allow herself, which is what she wants out of music in the first place. Sometimes it's good to scream her lungs out in anger, sometimes it's better to strum along to a life she didn't get to live without a caveat.

She pingpongs around eras as well; while you wouldn't catch her listening to anything but tiktok musicians and girl power anthem bullshit in public, she has a respectable familiarity with 60s/70s/80s music that she draws on for her own compositions. Some of her family got her listening and she figured out she liked the type of musical ideas on display.

10. How often are they in swim form? How does it feel to them?

Spencer's one of those weirdos who would rather be in basal form if she can help it. Who wouldn't want to just fold over and lay on the ground after a bad shift. When she's such an active runner and using it often as she does it's just easier, both to hold together and drop the act of being "put-together" while she's in it. Which is to say it's a comfort to her personally, and she's in it almost about as often as she isn't—given she isn't nursing a wound or anything, ahem, sometimes she'll just lounge around in basal form when she isn't doing anything otherwise.

27. Any body modifications they have or want to get? What’s the story behind them?

Wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy—most of them are hard to find for a reason! Right now Spencer has septum and eyebrow piercings, and by the time she's thirty, a tongue piercing and four tattoos. I'm sure she'll acquire a lip piercing and more ink at some point past that tbh. Not all of them have remarkable stories behind them (yet, at least) because she kind of just went "I can do whatever the fuck I want, now" and then did whatever the fuck she wanted. One of her tattoos was acquired to match with Bernadine and Dacey, a music note behind her left ear; she has another miniature one, a simplified crow, on her right ankle. Later she gets a tramp stamp another at the base of her spine and then a decorative Salmonid glyph-inspired pair of fish on top of her ribs. (For lack of a better anatomical term?)

3. Any scars? How did they get them?

Plenty—at least temporarily. She collects ink-stains and bite marks like she's magnetized to attract them, but the nature of Inkling regeneration is, they tend to fade. I'm sure she has some nicks and more permanent bites but I just haven't bothered to draw them.

And then of course there's the one that circumnavigates her right thigh because it turns out maws bite, actually. But the specifics of how she got that you'll have to wait around and find out!

30. Who do they text or call most often?

Question that's stupidly funny for secret reasons, godbless. It's definitely one of the band members (although I wouldn't be surprised if Grizzco. had some form of texting service to update runners on announcements, emergency notices, that sort of thing? or if it'd have a Splatnet-type widget that updated automatically... whichever way, she opts into those) but... you know, they and her parents are literally the only people who even have her contact info. I'd wager Bernadine but Spencer's just as often in her physical company, so it very well might be Steve, who is the band's main organizer and coordinator and Spencer's go-to person to ask for favors in the unlikely event she doesn't just do it herself.

Yeah, sure, eventually it's Shiloh, but why bother with giving someone your number when fate just glues you together? It's not like either of them are just gonna up and vanish!

5. Anything from their childhood that they still have?

That's. hmm. I don't think she had a lot of things in her childhood to begin with, not that didn't belong to another person or place and she had little more than liberty to borrow. The room in her parents' house which technically belongs to her has plenty of memorabilia they bought for her as a child that has sat collecting dust for a very long time. I'm sure there's a few things she brought with her when she moved out—the start of her collections, stuff she never put up on walls—but most of them were likely more recent acquisitions. Plane tickets, maybe, or knickknacks from some of the towns she lived in, markers of how many times she's walked through a place she couldn't linger. (If you're asking this because you remember something I don't and I do have an answer for this... my bad!)

20. What’s their favorite place they’ve been to? What makes it special?

If asked this to her face, she'd tell you she had no attachment or affection for anywhere she'd stayed, and she'd mean it. Spencer does not cultivate ties. Not to persons, not to places; she tells herself she wants for nothing and does not think about things long enough to do so. But she does, of course; things leave her mark on them whether or not she's cognizant of it. Her hometown and the radius in which her family spread out around it means a lot to her, more than she realizes (nevermind is able to admit) for quite a long time—she's bitter about her childhood, but it wasn't actually miserable, and given the chance to revisit it (with the benefit of hindsight, a little loosening up, and a life she now likes living)... she comes to terms with that.

Basically, it snows up there, and she really does yearn to stuff snow down someone's shirt again.

The answer does change again, though, after she spends awhile traveling—there's a lot of really pretty and interesting and memorable places out there, after all, and she'd never balk at the chance to go visit them again. Though in either case, she has to admit: it isn't so much the physical spot which makes it "special" as it is having someone with her she doesn't mind sticking around.

[cosmicheartz]

10 12 and 20 for the splatbands ask game?

10: i dont rlly think i have one outside of like proship bs

12: not 100% hate/dislike but i feel like ppl only see Harmony as the surface level funny weed girl when i feel like theres a lot more to her than that

20: idk if it counts but the lore surrounding bisk/dj real sole is rlly interesting to me and i hope they officially confirm that he is dj real sole. outside of that i think the fact bibi graduated from a famous music academy but plays the fucking kazoo is super funny to me along with yoko having a mutation that lets her have multiple different tentacle colors.

[giomagnetism]

7, 15, 29 for Marlo

180 Splatoon OC Questions

7. Do they take part in ink battles? What kind and how often?

Nope! Like I just kind of half-answered Marlo’s just not built for them. Sometimes he’ll tag along with Rome but he’s enormously out of practice and unfamiliar with the new meta; to give you an idea, he quit just after the specials ban, over five years ago. He’s a solid C rank in all Ranked modes so that should tell you which he’ll opt for.

15. What is their main weapon? How did they pick it, and is it customized?

He’s had a few over the years; his first real main was the Splash-o-matic, but he changed it out for the Aerospray RG after the campaign. Nowadays he uses the Neo Sploosh-o-matic (or, well, just the Sploosh so far in Splatsville) only. You might think he’d be an excellent backliner with his favor for slow movement and high damage output, but he both strongly dislikes and is now physically incapable of using a lot of those qualifying weapons. I.E., he has all the strength to use a Dynamo, but no stability, and even if he hasn’t loathed Splatlings all his life (and for no particular reason) he can’t aim with them. You might convince him to use an Explosher?

Marlo actually prioritizes ink coverage and a high fire-rate, mostly thanks to the Hero Shot and how adjusted he got to its ridiculous ink capacity and everything. He didn’t know anything about kits or stats when he picked the Splash, so that one was just because it felt good to use, and the RG because for those aforementioned traits and its Inkstrikes (still his favorite special). But the Neo Sploosh was definitely the most deliberate choice; its low range’s suited to his bad depth perception, and its kit (Squid Beakons and Tenta Missiles) is both the least physically taxing and best back-up of the trio. It best reflects his actual fighting style, in which you have to be very close for him to be effective, but he’s savage once you are, and he relies heavily on stage control in order to get there.

His RG had some stickers on it thanks to his teammates but none of his other weapons are customized. He’s just not that kind of guy.

29. What’s a situation that would make them cry? Do they cry easily?

I’m gonna be honest, if Marlo’s crying it’s crocodile tears. It takes a lot for them to cry out of genuine emotion; Marlo pins it back until they snap, until nothing within their power could shore them back up. Like although it’s true that Marlo doesn’t like to cry in front of others, in practice it doesn’t matter, because if they’ve reached that breaking point they could be on a podium and still not find it in themself to stop.

Marlo’s a manipulator. Full stop; they’re reliant on folks owing a debt of sympathy to them. Combine that with the fact that their persona is almost entirely manufactured, and you have a person with very few qualms about and a great familiarity with crying just to make someone go along with them. So that’s the type of situation in which most others would know them to cry, though still, it’s usually a last resort.

I don’t know if I could name one in which Marlo‘d cry out of genuine emotion because it’s often a compilation of factors at the end of a long road of other factors. I can tell you they’d often burst into tears with Leit, because their physical and emotional fragility post-Metro and the unbearable reality of being loved pushed them over easily. Marlo was crying while Ness brought them back from Hozuki estate and tried to treat them. But they didn’t cry when they lost their eye, and they didn’t cry over the campaign until months later, when it finally sank in.

Marlo doesn’t cry often not because they’re especially resilient or emotionally constipated; it’s because if they let themself, they’d never stop. Their misery would consume them. Marlo has so thoroughly fucked themself over and knows it that to admit it would render them immobile: they’re an embodiment of grief and rage, and they manage to function only on the strength of their conviction that they’re not. Even the fact that they’re manipulative compounds that; reinforces their own belief that they’re fundamentally evil, but they don’t think they can be loved using another method. Marlo cries when the reality of that breaks through. It isn’t very often, but it is a raw wound.

[giomagnetism]

[kicking open the door] TELL ME ABOUT ALTO NOW (please). tier 0: 17 and 24, tier 1: 8 and 25, tier 2: 5 and 10

180 Splatoon OC Questions

17. What is THE THING that they’re recognized as being good at by others?

Here’s the funny thing about Alto. He’s one of those guys who learns stupid quick and puts a lot of time and effort into learning, especially the niche complexities of things that most others don’t pay attention to. He’s good at just about everything he bothers with, and failing that he’s good at educated guesses.

But he’s not good at the modern zeitgeist; things that are second-nature to him are bonkers strange to others, and things that others take for granted are alien to him. Ergo, a lot of that former trait’s lost in translation. Meaning he isn’t really recognized as Especially Good at anything. His common sense and use of that intelligence leaves something to be desired. He’s fine at things, or at least all the things which’d be notable or useful to his contemporaries; it isn’t even that he’s unremarkable, just that it goes unnoticed.

Alto doesn’t fit in with the pack but doesn’t stray far from it either, and that’s got its pros and its cons.

24. What would their Splashtag title be?

I mean, why not The Final Fish Print!! But he wouldn’t go for something really funny, or boastful, or outstanding in the first place. More things along the lines of So-Called All-Arounder, Just Another Big Deal, Absentminded Flotsam... And he’d have Low-Key, Alternan, and Risk-Taker and Octopus Ink floating around in there, to name a few others.

8. Everyday skill they DO NOT have

He’s like. 15. He can’t do shit. He doesn’t cook and he can’t drive and he forgets to do his own laundry. Well, he could, and he knows how to do all those things to some extent but he’s a little behind the Inkling standard, because his aunt would rather he go out and do something rather than bother with chores. He doesn’t know how to budget at all, because Salmon Run’s made him rich.

25. How do they handle crowds or groups of people?

Get swallowed up. He doesn’t talk much and doesn’t like drawing attention to himself—not that folks tend to pay him much in the first place—but he isn’t predisposed to be high-strung or scared in them. Though he will do his best to leave if it gets too thick or rowdy, once it becomes disorienting.

He doesn’t like to be alone though, and takes all the company he gets—he’s not like Marlo or Ness, who will take hours of silence just to be alone with their thoughts and melancholy. Kind of the type to prefer the company of animals, not because he’s misanthropic or even all that socially awkward but because they’re often easier to sit on the same ground with. Him and his Salmonid partner have that in common—they don’t relate to their native paradigm, but not for lack of trying.

For that matter he isn’t like Rome, either, who would be more than content to never talk to another person in her life. Of course she’s offered an olive branch to him and’s learning ISL, but he does kind of annoy her because he doesn’t like to be out of her company. If it weren’t for her and his cohock he’d have gone insane in Alterna; I don’t think he would get along with Callie and Marie in the same way. Marlo wouldn’t mind him sticking around at all, though.

5. Any phobias?

Well, isolation. I think that’s part of what motivates him to pick up and go find the Octarian military’s remnants despite having literally no personal stake in it. It’d also be a point of tension within himself given his tendency to get jealous, which is an isolating trait in itself. He doesn’t have a fear of abandonment; he’s afraid of having no anchor point, like sensory deprivation. In a physical sense, I’d bet that informs a fear of the ocean as well, especially after getting dunked a trillion times in thick Salmonid water.

[story-mode spoilers] Incidentally, he has a hell of a scare after the rocket blows up and he’s left floating in space for a minute.

I don’t think he’s actually afraid of space, though. He’s like. ‘Well, there’s no chance of that happening again so I think I’ll get on with my life.’

10. How often are they in swim form? How does it feel to them?

Quite often—after Alterna and with a long history in Salmon Run he’s in top [swim] form. I think he’s the type to nap in it rather than his uprighted form because it’s more comfortable, or shift just to indicate a pout or frustration.