#sfm Erythronium seed

[roughsketch2010]

I made a few random doodles for smile for me that have no purpose and were mostly me doodling to try to come up with better drawing ideas, but I ended up liking how they came out.

[puppyluver256]

OKAY SO NOW I HAVE SOME DESIGN CONCEPTS FOR MY SFMxSPLATOON AU HERE YOU GO and now I’m gonna try to run down what this is all about outside of the braindump post that I kept adding onto.

Splat For Me - A Summary

The basic gist is that Habit owns a flower shop in Inkopolis and Kamal is his partner of both the business and romance types. Habit’s a shark, specifically a porbeagle (I’m gonna refer to him as a “Sharkling” due to working on similar logic to Inklings and Octolings), and Kamal’s an octo. The flower shop would have an in-game function kinda like a combination of the Crust Bucket (in that they have floral accessories that players could add to their hat/clothing for exp boosts, cash boosts, and temporary ability add-ons) and Salmon Run (in that you’d get another play mode where you fight weird enemies, more details below).

Sharkling Habit

I had a hard time makin him not look like Garbage so my efforts should be appreciated at some level. I know the only precedent for sharks in the Splatoon universe is Fuka Bottom of the Bottom Feeders (one of the in-universe music groups that AREN’T Squid Sisters or Off the Hook, look ‘em up), but they’ve got that “I’ve turned this shark vertically and am now looking at their mouth and underbelly” look to ‘em that I most definitely did not want, but I managed to make something more in my vision yaaaaay

Habit managed to get away from his nasty abusive parents before becoming a dentist in this AU (besides, being a dentist isn’t THAT lucrative when the dominant species doesn’t even have bones let alone proper teeth), so he’s not Dr. Habit here, he’s just Boris the flower shark. He’s gotten a lot of attention for his little flower shop, partly because the kids participating in turf war are getting some really good use out of the shop’s floral accessories and partly because they like coming around just to see Habit. S’not every day that you get to hang around vertebrates in this society, and they think his teeth are cool. Yup, that’s why I made him a shark, to make the too-many-teeth face not so unnatural. And being a shark, sometimes those extra teeth push themselves forward and knock out the old ones, which if still in decent condition never go to waste. The really nice-looking ones get turned into authentic shark tooth necklaces (after they’ve gone through a good wash, of course, don’t wanna give the customers his mouth germs), the others that don’t have any significant wear and tear get either ground into bone meal for his flowers or occasionally just shoved whole into the soil, with the erythronium responding to these treatments the best.

While there is some flower growth going on in the shop itself, most of the work there is keeping them healthy for sale and the major growth time for the flowers are off-site in various greenhouses that he refers to as Habitats. (before he had these set up, he was caught several times trying to grow flowers in the Kelp Dome and subsequently removed, took five times for him to realize that maybe he shouldn’t be doing that and also maybe don’t try to swipe a nearly-ripe artichoke on your way out gdi) They’re a bit more than just a normal greenhouse, actually; they’re self-contained areas that seem to be made with materials and techniques that are incredibly similar to Octarian technology. How’d he get ahold of that stuff? No one knows, not even Kamal, and he’s the most likely source of such tech who’d be close to him. One thing that is for certain is that he’s procured something that lets non-inking beings use ink-based weapons, and it’s been incredibly helpful given certain recent developments...

Turns out that his Habitats are starting to come under fire from some very tricky troublemakers. Weird little crafts somehow breaking in from the skies, piloted by...snails? Are they really snails? They certainly don’t look like the Super Sea Snails that everyone’s used to, they look more like the typical image of a UFO piloted by snail-like creatures (snailiens?), but they’re here and they’re hungry and they’ve got a taste for flowers. And Habit’s friggin’ pissed. That’s where the player would come in if this were a real game element: once you’d get to a certain freshness level, you’d make your way to the flower shop only to see Kamal manning the counter instead of Habit, and he’d suggest you go help Habit deal with his pest problem because you “look like you’re pretty capable with slingin’ ink”. After a tutorial where you learn how to deal with the big boy snailiens, you could join up with some other players and take ‘em on. You would, of course, be rewarded handsomely for your help.

Funny little image I also had in mind: he’s been known to get stuck in shark form at inopportune moments, and when this happens he’ll need someone to crack his back to make it easier to shift back into humanoid form. No one knows how to handle this unless they’ve done it at least once because no one else around him has booooones XD (also his humanoid form is prolly gonna still have green skin despite no part of the porbeagle being green because I don’t currently feel comfortable assigning natural skintones to any of the SFM characters who are canonically green/blue/purple/etc, unless their canon design makes it Very Obvious what natural skintone would be most likely, ie. Tiff)

Octoling Kamal

Kamal was significantly easier to work with due to my experience with drawing Octolings already hahaha

Kamal’s the assistant manager at Habit’s flower shop, which is basically a fancy way of saying he’s the only other person there who could legally be a full-time employee. He handles most of the logistics of keeping the shop stable, because as much passion the boss has for their work, passion alone can’t pay the bills and he’s often a tad too distracted to deal with the numbers and paperwork. They work pretty well together, even if they do both have a tendency to goof off on the job.

I seriously doubt that Marina and the various incarnations of Agent 8 were the only Octolings to migrate topside after the events of the first game, so Kamal was probably one of several who found a way out. I haven’t hammered this part out yet entirely, but I’m pretty sure that he would’ve been on staff for a weapons/tech r-n-d group before leaving at his first opportunity and grabbing some random gadget in the process. He hated the place he ended up emerging in because it was near a small town where everyone was so spread out and him being used to (not necessarily comfortable with, just used to) constant sounds at all hours made the silence of just the first night unbearable. So he tried to hop a train to any urban area that he came across but in his haste to get topside he forgot to bring any moneeeyyy, not even Octarian money just no money at all, left it all behind like a goof. He ends up freaking out to himself because even though he’s got a valuable Thing on him it’s not like the train people are gonna recognize it as anything but junk or even be able/willing to accept it as replacement for standard currency, then out of nowhere this huge-ass shark man just shows up and buys a ticket to Inkopolis for him? Okay, sure, he’ll take what he can get, even if the guy was all “u owe me a ‘favor’ ;-)” once they were on their way. And of course that’s how he met his future boss and bf. ;P

At some point Kamal gets a little jealous of all the kids having fun with the turf war stuff and kinda wishes he could try it out at least once, but of course that’s kid stuff and he’s got Adult Responsibilities to worry about... Oh wait, there’s actually an adults’ league? And Habit’s insisting on giving him time off to go try it and see how it is? 

(also those flower seed bags say “bloomy” in one of the Inkling alphabets, and yes it WAS a “woomy” joke on my part)

Other details (to be expanded upon)

Putunia and Flower Kid are often seen at the flower shop, even though I don’t have any designs for them yet). Putunia is there so often because she’s Habit and Kamal’s adopted kid, and while she REALLY wants to get into turf war she’s far too young. (if you’ve ever seen the Inkling growth chart, she’s at stage 3 of growth) Flower Kid’s there because they are a part-time employee, often delivering products around town, but they spend enough time with their employers and Putunia that they might as well be their honorary child as well. They’re old enough to participate in turf war, they’re just not interested in doing so.