#also also sometimes he just forgets to blink (or doesn't blink due to actual war flashbacks)

[tabbyrocks]

tw for mentions of ptsd and depression, yahoo!

A monoma AU where he gets mad PTSD after the final war and it fucks him up so bad that he has to quit the hero course and move to general studies, which in turn shatters his dreams making him violently depressed

[deerskewl]

Mrow meow talk about your guys

thank you i love you its squid time. this got long so its all under the read more

Three Cuttlefish

pov you are craig cuttlefish. you find a weird autistically nonverbal 14yo orphan boything. you bring him to your grandchildren and say "this is your new brother". your granddaughters once again remind you that they're cousins, not siblings, despite being called the Squid Sisters. they adopt him as their shared brother anyway

it's more surprising that he has no idea who the Squid Sisters are to begin with and doesn't even blink when he finds out their idol identities

Three didn't even really have a name he just chose to take his agent number as his name because he thought it was cool

his day-to-day outfits are either bougie shit that Callie and Marie bought for him or literally the most threadbare clothing that he's worn to death because its comfy

he needs to wear a Special limiter, as he has access to multiple Special Moves naturally, instead of most inkfish having only one or two and needing Canned Specials in Turf Wars and such. because of this he gets tired so so easily. he can and will just lay down anywhere to sleep

he gets paparazzi a lot due to his idol persona DJ SANGO. if he's approached in public by fans he will just swim form into the nearest drain. he gets uncomfortable with the attention unless he's with Callie and Marie.

has a permanent Sanitization scar over the right side of his head and right shoulder

Macaroni "Mac" Tako

Grizzco survivor. Worked there for 3 years until his entire crew got killed in a thunderstorm on the way back and it was ruled an accident, despite them being forced to work through the storm. a then undiscovered King Salmonid breached the surface of the water, dressed in the thunderstorm's electricity, and sunk their ship. with no spawnpoints to catch them and bring them back, and too much electric interference to even bring them back to begin with, they were all lost at sea. it's unknown how Mac even survived to wash up on shore, heavily injured by a direct lightning strike. He's still covered in the scars from the incident to this day.

Anyway now he's so much happier screwing around in Turf War and doing odd jobs :)

has the biggest fucking crush ever on Lanark and even made his own Lure to wear around and show that he's available, though since Lanark didn't wear one, he figured that he wasn't interested in relationships. in reality, Mac has no idea that it was a Inkling Culture tradition, not an Octoling Culture thing. we love himbo gays here

also had no idea who the Squid Sisters are. didn't even listen to music until after meeting Marie. now he just listens to Everything Anytime without even learning lyrics or anything, he just listens to nice tunes.

he collects cool cloth facemasks and has been learning how to make his own!

Lanark Pierce

the only agent who ACTUALLY knows who the Squid Sisters are and idolises them so much to the point that he forgets that Pearl and Marina are like, also famous, and gets surprised when he's hanging out with them and suddenly fans are wanting pictures????

trans gender <3 and amnesia

he still doesn't have all his memories back, but writing poetry helps with this, especially with the Deepsea Metro PTSD

like Three, he has a permanent Sanitization scar on his back from being exploded when he fails tests

he still has panic attacks whenever he screws something up, but they've gotten better over time. especially with help from his friends.

pining so fucking hard for Mac but he doesn't know how to initiate anything. he can and will ramble to anyone about Mac if they even give him a moment of time.

probably has the most weapon experience out of all the agents, since he was part of weapons testing back in the Octarian Army. he even has experience in fixing them! he hangs out with Sheldon sometimes and they come up with the MOST illegal weapon designs ever

Cube, "The Faithful Inkfish Born of Two Worlds"

Half octoling, half inkling, raised by salmonids after being discovered abandoned in the Splatlands as a young whelp. They were hidden from the Octarian Army during arms trades, just in case they'd try to take them away from their family.

They're completely fluent in Salmonid, and when speaking to other Inkfish, they use a barbaric mix of Inkling and Octoling, much to everyone's dismay. Big Man offered to be their tutor, despite not having much free time himself, since he knew that Shiver and Frye would teach them every single swear word possible first, but thankfully the other agents took over that responsibility.

Covered in various scars and thinks it makes them look cool as fuck. Claims they're from battles with other Salmonids, but they're mostly from getting injured while scavenging for materials.

Smallfry is their little brother, especially so after being given ward of him due to his advanced ability to switch forms like an inkfish.

Every time they see anything to do with Grizzco they either destroy it (signs and the like) or spit on it (buildings). Doesn't actually care that Mac used to work there since he's aware of how fucked up and corrupt it is.

Smallfry, "The Youngling Smallfry of the Ascended Generation"

literally just a tiny baby man. who devoured a bear. he's so talented <3

the first discovered Salmoling, at least in his and Cube's tribe. like young inkfish, he struggles to go between swim and humanoid form, and tends to stay in swim form and snooze in his big sibling's backpack

got those big autistic eyes and loves putting inedible things in his mouth much to Cube's dismay. he has been banned from many stores.

loves to just worm his way into anyone's arms or lap and take a nap like a big cat. has often been spotted flopped on Three while he naps. Cube has SO MANY PICTURES OF THIS

sometimes sits in Cube's locker while they're off playing Turf War eating cheese snacks and watching splatoon-version-of-youtube. splattube??

[thoughts-about-robots]

Thoughts About the Second Hour

Yesterday I finally finished up my play-through of the Switch version and yes I cried during the very final cutscene lol

But then I went back to my new PS4 save and continued on...

Here we are starting to get into the longer prologues... I was able to blast through three of them + tutorial battles in the first hour, here we slow down a little

I'm not sure why exactly the English localization was unable to use H.G. Wells's name in-game but the whole "that one author" thing is awkward as hell, especially with the JP voice track on. when I said in my last thoughts post that the localization was dodgy, well... this is kinda what I mean lmao. I figure this is some copyright-based limitation but it's still silly, especially when the allusions to The War of the Worlds are so explicit otherwise

that said I find it interesting that the world of 13 Sentinels has stand-in fake names for movies from our own, but The War of the Worlds (and its author) is explicitly name-dropped. I just find this interesting because you know what movies they're "not" talking about otherwise (Godzilla, E.T., Terminator, etc.). this may perhaps be due to something we find out later

I love Minami, honestly... this game has really great female characters. I think most of the guys are actually kinda boring (their scenarios are much more interesting than they themselves are, let's put it that way) but the girls are all *chef's kiss*

I also love BJ... you can tell, after he gets oriented, that he thinks Minami is kind of A LOT

I was playing this and going through the last part of Minami's prologue thinking, wow I just love all of this... honestly the end with the Hi-Quads looming in the background (and the one suddenly standing up to look at her on the ridge) is one of the best moments of the early game

this isn't the first time Lonely Struggle is played but I really love this track and its use here... the whole soundtrack is pretty great but sometimes it's easy to forget it's a game soundtrack. Lonely Struggle in particular sounds like it came straight out of a Godzilla movie

Ogata showed up before in Hijiyama's prologue and I didn't like him there, either lmao

finally getting to the battle tutorial section... out of all the sentinels, the 2nd gen and 3rd gen are the ones where I'm reminded, oh yeah, these things are basically walking tanks. 3rd gen in particular are slow as fuck for most of the main campaign

I'll talk about Miura more when I get to his prologue but I think he is actually one of the better-written guys in the game... out of all of the boys I think he has the most nuance, unfortunately on the surface he's kinda boring lmao

another blink and you'll miss it bit of foreshadowing: "this was his last gift to me"

then we get to Yakushiji's prologue, which has to be my favorite in the entire game... all the scenes are really well put-together and memorable, from Kurabe showing up in the sentinel right up to the "contract" scene with Fluffy

another thing we are shown very casually: Kisaragi comes from the same "time" as Yakushiji

I remember this being the first part of the game where I was really truly disoriented... you go from 2024 (hmm) to 1985 (hmmmm) with a flashback to 2025 (hmmmmmm) and I was like wow there's just something kinda cray cray about this. the time traveling seemed very significant when it was shown in Hijiyama's and Minami's prologues but here it's happened so casually and without comment lmao so when the talking cat shows up it doesn't even seem that weird tbqh

when I said the game doesn't spoon feed you information, this is all what I'm kind of talking about... you already got shown that there's something up with Kurabe in his prologue (the documents in Morimura's office), but here we find out three things: he's a time traveler (and from very, very far into the future), he actually was Juro Izumi, and he's suffering memory loss. Kisaragi is also from Yakushiji's time period but we know she's also in 1985 at the same time, as shown in Fuyusaka's prologue. time travel was introduced in Hijiyama's prologue and now everyone can apparently do it lmao. the game does eventually provide explanations for all this but the explanations are usually only stated once and never brought up again

I love the scene with Fluffy, he's honestly a great character. once you know who he actually is all of this is very funny and also note that he never once lies to Yakushiji lmao

do note that no matter what you pick during the "choice" Yakushiji actually refuses to make a contract with Fluffy... she either sarcastically "accepts" or just straight up says no

two great pieces of music play in this prologue, Impending Doom (which was first played in Kurabe's prologue) and A Clause with Claws, one of my favorite tracks in the story sections

finally, the battle segment... we're introduced to sentinel recovery here but during my first play through, I never used it. I forgot it was even a thing to be quite honest until I was browsing YT comment sections and someone mentioned how they almost got a game over in one part of the game... and I was like "oh yeah :o"

I don't like Ogata but I do think he and Kisaragi are a good couple lmao

little tangent: if I ever harp on about how I forgot some significant detail in the tutorial section it's because... the second time I picked this up I believe I played up to a certain point and then put it down for a couple weeks . as much as I love this game, for me it didn't really pick up until a certain series of events several hours into it. the early game is equal parts entertaining, confusing, and honestly kinda boring (which is why I didn't zip through it when it launched, and even back in 2020 I only got about 8 hours into it before I stopped playing). but on a repeat play through you can see just how tight and well-written the narrative actually is. it's just the game is really really invested in getting you to think it's about one thing when it's actually about something else entirely :v

Miscellanea:

I really love the little drone icon on BJ's projected screen.... bless