reproduction lore posting 🔥🔥🔥
i see them as egg layers. maybe them being ovoviviparous could work maybe but??? idk, eggs have to be involved. also them being egg layers is weird and i like when inkfish are Weird.
I've gotten into this topic before on this blog but it's been a couple years and i think it's worth rehashing
First thing to address: bellybuttons. They have them and I hate it almost as much as i hate that they have breasts. i think both are just a result of "imitating" humans in universe, and for design reasons so they don't come off as too uncanny to us, the human playerbase. which is just cowardice to me but okay.<3
In this concept art for Callie in the Art of Splatoon 2 i think this is the only time bellybuttons are addressed, in the top right corner:
"I realized this while drawing, but inklings have bellybuttons..."
that really sounds like it was a design choice that wasn't thought about that deeply...
now there's 2 things that make me believe they have to come from eggs. first from the first artbook:
This is the growth cycle of a squid from its larval to juvenile stages.
Of course, when we talk about these girls, we can't leave out the "Calamari Inkantation" which is both heavenly to listen to and heavenly to sing. This song, which is also used as the train melody for the Inkopolis Line, is imprinted in the DNA of all Inklings. The sea is our mother, the place where all of life hatched from, and the place where there is no way to return. Since ancient times, this song has been filled with the swirling feelings of "love" and "reverence" towards the sea.
I translated this myself, the word there is specifically "hatched" like from an egg, and not a general term for being born.
One could argue that since this is referring to the squids of the past, it might not apply to modern inkfish. But still real life cephalopods lay eggs, and I don't think it'd be out of the question for modern inkfish to do the same. There are other sapient species that didn't "evolve out" of egg-laying, evidenced by Nishida's 247 siblings and this scroll on coconut crabs.
Regarding Octarians, Octolings develop in the same way Inklings do. so they too would likely come from eggs.
we're ignoring this because 1. it's clearly just concept art that 2. has more recent evidence going against this being the norm for octoling development. I think this is just a weird edge case or just straight up not canon.
baby marina matching the 3rd stage of inkling development shown on the above chart while paul looks like the 4th stage. There's also smollusk that looks like the first stage/ a real octopus paralarva, but since it's a digital entity, who knows how valid that is? Also, Mashup/Warabi from Diss-pair was also confirmed in Ordertune to have come from the same hometown as Acht (the underground) and was described in Haikara Walker as having parents. So Octoling development=Inkling development=eggs???
finally, not 100% if this is what you're asking but as for cut-tentacle Octarians, but with Inklings, this has come up...once
-- But the Octarians like the Octotroopers...?
Amano: That's a different thing.
Inoue: All together they're part of the Octarian species, but Octarians like the Octotroopers are a separate thing.
--Does that mean that there are some squids that can't take a humanoid form?
Inoue: So far, none have been discovered. There may be some somewhere, though
I think the "there may be some somewhere" is just keeping it vague in case they wanna use that idea. but i seriously doubt they will at this point. the concept behind octarians is that octopuses have basically tiny brains in each of their arms, so those tentacle octarians are like if their arms grew into a separate being. Real squids are not built like that, and we even see in game inklings having less movement in their tentacles, and use more styles that cut into their tentacles compared to octolings.
ok that's all TL;DR EGG SUPREMACY 🔥🔥🔥
