#speciesism against octolings

[inkantation-arch]

okay i’ve had these fun world building hcs for a while, so i’m just going to force them upon all of you.  they’re not entirely coherent so feel free to just. throw that on me.

throughout this post, the word octarian will be used to refer to the specific subset of octolings who follow octavio.  not entirely lore compliant, but uh, the best i can do to keep things clear and coherent in this post.  octoling will refer to the species as a whole. if i’m correct in reading the map for splatoon, inkadia is the name of the continent that inkopolis is on, and the splatlands are the continent that splatsville is on. 

as has been basically confirmed in dev interviews, the octolings who live in splatsville were seemingly unaffected by the great turf war, which likely means that splatsville and inkopolis either did not know the other existed, or, during the time of waters rising, they lost contact and presumed the other civilization lost.  given all the evidence on the map of inkadia,  we can presume the land bridge between the two was underwater, and by the time the sea receded, well, we know what happened. 

inkadia’s government...  seems to lack an opinion.  rather than passing structural laws one way or another, they seem to allow things to resolve themselves.  this is how a para-miliatary, unofficial group ran by an ancient veteran even gets into the position to be the only people fighting active invasion.   this is a double edged sword.  it allows octarians to escape as they feel fit, come to the surface and partake in the excess of resources, and lead lives outside of the structured hierarchy of military.  it... also means that there’s no laws against discrimination, no recourse for that.  this applies for other groups - though i doubt the patriarchal hegemony exists as we see it in our world. 

this inability to commit any laws also affects other species as well.  discrimination against non-octarians is less common, but it’s certainly there.  and when the most one can do is only a personal level, it’s distressing.

escaping octarians are not a brand new phenomenon, but they are certainly new in the grand scheme of time.  a good mark of time would be the land bridge between splatsville and inkopolis becoming passable again.  the first escapees likely would not have gone to inkopolis, but passed through to splatsville.  i imagine this would have been about 50 years before the start of splatoon 1.  escapees turned towards inkopolis more and more as, well, more and more word got loose that they didn’t seem to care, and if one avoided the smaller towns, one could avoid the worst of the speciesism.  ( of course, this would be completely mitigated if the inkadia government ever did anything in an official capacity, but most everyone has given up on that ship.  may as well just work around them. )

octarian culture places a great deal of importance on physical touch.  while using the word ‘cuddly’ is rather funny, well, it’s also rather true.  communal living spaces are very common, and extended family ( and those considered family ) live together for most of one’s life.  this is great, for people with good families.  however, for those without, the expectation of physical touch can become emotionally demanding.

the inklings of inkopolis, however, place great value on independence.  they move out almost as soon as they can, and it’s a mark of pride to be a teenager with a job and school.  now, that does also come with the expectation that the first few years of this independence, they are still supported by their parents / guardians.  which, again, only works for people with family that cares.  it also excludes disabled people, fiercely. 

tl;dr: inkopolis’ government refuses to have an opinion, splatsville’s culture is almost entirely different wrt to species relations, octarians are cuddly communal, inkopolis inklings value self sufficiency.