Character and lore notes

[flyoctofly]

This is a quick and dirty character guide as I've put together from official materials, the mem cake poems, and Marina's Dev Diary. I'm posting it here in the interests of a) it being fun to read about people's interpretations of characters and b) the hosting site I was using wasn't exactly...reliable all the time. I consider the CoroCoro manga version a separate continuity and therefore a separate character, largely because I...don't like that manga. Whenever I pull character beats from the manga, I will note it.

 

Shy: Eight seems to hate being put on the spot. When asked to say a few words to Smollosk in the Side Order DLC, he freezes, prompting Marina to comment that she forgot how shy he is. His silent protagonist status is implied to be the result of his discomfort with social situations, though the fact that Marina forgot this was the case suggests that he can open up as he gets to know people. This doesn't seem to be an issue for him when he's on missions, perhaps because it gives him something to focus on.

Eight also prefers following to leading, which I guess isn't necessarily about shyness but uh the game only gives me so much to work with. He instantly agrees to team up with Cuttlefish when they first meet, even though he'd ordered Agent 3 to attack him hours ago and woke Eight up by prodding him with his cane and calling him names. He accepts Pearl and Marina as his Mission Control even though the only thing he knows about them is that they hacked into Cuttlefish's radio. He also has tendencies towards hero worship: the official character guide says that he "wants to be" Marina and has a deep admiration for Pearl specifically because Marina looks up to her. He also thinks Agent 3 is just the coolest. Also worth noting that Agents 3, 4, and Neo 3, were all marked out as being somehow "special" when they joined the NSBS, but Eight was just in the right place at the right time. I choose to play him as having some hang-ups about his self-confidence, feeling like he's "just" a foot soldier surrounded by people better than him. After all, he was only a trainee when he was trapped in the Metro, and had to hone himself into a fighting machine there, whereas everyone he knows was already awesome when he first met them.

There's a bit of fanon that Inkfish society as a whole is at least a little matriarchal as the vast majority of the important movers and shakers are female or female-presenting, and the player characters default to female in most of the marketing materials. The Octarian enemies that are marked out as "elite" all use the female model. I like the flavor this sort of mild internalized sexism adds, so I'm going with it. Girls are just bigger and stronger, he's made his peace with that.

(I also must confess: I'm using male Eight just because I think he's a little bit cuter than the female model. The tentacle mohawk is very adorable.)

Overly cautious: The timeline is shaky but we know Eight waited two years to defect, at a time where his friends and peers were leaving for the surface en mass. 10007 Octolings already arrived at Kamabo before he arrived, implying significant time has passed since they started arriving, even assuming very few actually completed the full trial. Marina avoiding Kamabo entirely implies that number is much higher than we see and many Octolings took alternate routes. It's reasonable to assume Octoling society as he knew it was collapsing around him, but he still took his sweet time to decide to leave. This suggests that Eight is slow to decide when he feels the decision is important or momentous in some way.

In the manga, Eight carries extra ice packs "just in case." He cares about sprains, y'all.

Sensitive: Considering I had to commission icons for him because he barely fucking emotes in cutscenes, Eight is extremely emotional. He's got a poet's soul and seems to find everyday life inspiring, probably because he was denied so much of it for so long. The poems he writes reveal a deep well of feelings that can come out at some odd times. For instance, losing a tiny bit of ground in Tower Control should probably not cause one to "choke back tears" (Line D, Tower Control) and being a little better than you in Rainmaker is not a "crime" (Line D, Rainmaker)

Eight also seems to really not like fighting or violence, even for all his accomplishments in that sphere. Same distinction between a boxing match and a fistfight I suppose. He's constantly asking if the violence against and committed by Inklings is justified or necessary. ("At last we meet, my so-called foe./But is our fate to spray this hate?" Line A, Inkling Squid) He also spends a lot of time chastising the rest of the Octarian army for their own violence (Most of the poems in the Line B series, I'm not going to list them out, there's too many.)

Orderly: The official Splatoon Tumblr states that "Agent 8 can’t sleep at night until every nearby weapon has been methodically cleaned and checked." If Splatoon wasn't such a cartoon-y game, this would indicate some kind of unresolved PTSD from his time in the Metro or in Octo Valley. And because I'm role playing him, I say he totally does. He was in the army, inspections are a thing. He was in the Metro, if your weapon fails at a critical moment, you get splatted.

The Splatoon Manga also states that he supported Team Order during the Final Fest. "Order" isn't well defined in that fest, but Eight wanting a heavy amount of stability in his life tracks with apparently taking two years to leave Octo Valley (see above about the state Octo Valley was in). This suggests someone who's not good with change, needs considerable time to accept it and becomes anxious to control what he can about his environment if he's forced into it.

Determined: Clearing all of Kamabo's grueling challenges, escaping their death trap, and climbing all the way up through the seven-story industrial complex he was trespassing in shows a high level of grit. While Eight was extremely lucky, in that his capture by Kamabo coincided with two separate groups investigating the Metro who offered him a lot of assistance, the bulk of the extremely difficult legwork fell on Eight. Though there's no indication of how long it took to complete the trials, Eight seemed to make the whole trek on very little food, water, or rest. When he has a goal, he locks in.

Helpful: In the Side Order DLC, Eight eagerly agreed to be a gofer/roadie for Off the Hook at basically the last minute because Pearl asked him to. ("Oh, speaking of the tour, Pearl let me know we're taking Agent 8 with us! Agent 8 seems psyched to join up." -Marina's Dev Diaries) He also allowed Marina to upload his brain to the Memverse as a first test subject. While Eight and Off the Hook have a strong bond of friendship and love, dropping everything to travel around the world in a high-pressure, high-stress music tour is still a huge ask. Also Eight didn't seem to have any objections about being used as a test subject, probably because his success meant everyone who fell victim to Kamabo had a way out too.

Eight's shy personality belies the fact that he seems to just like people in general, being especially drawn to people with intense passion. Pearl is one of his closest friends even though she threatened him at one point early on in their relationship ("Don't step to me," Line F, Pearl) He has a connection with Sheldon, a person who every other character in the game seems to find annoying for his habit of infodumping. Eight, on the other hand, seems to enjoy listening to him immensely. He mentions that Flow and Craymond have two opposite personalities and yet he "[loves] them both with all my heart." (Line F, Flow) He was also glad to hear Marina made it to the surface safely, even though he didn't know her personally at the time. (Line F, Marina)

Sporty: Hi my name is Eight and I have a clam blitz game tomorrooooow

Eight's first experience with the most popular sport in Inkadia was not a little match between two groups of fun-seeking friends, but a life or death struggle against a super-weapon powerful enough to cause a mass extinction event...and he LOVED it, so much so that it became his main hobby after he got established on the surface, he dove into basically all its variations, and he borrowed his roommate's gear to do it. The vast majority of his poems have to do with SOME aspect of sport and he expresses strong emotions about them, be it opponents, weapons, gear, and formats. Even the ode to a tree he wrote was inspired by the fact that some of the arenas have trees in them. (Line A, D, E, G, H)

The other activity he seems to enjoy is camping (Line G, Inkline), and he apparently loves being at the sea entirely for the sea even though he hates the beach. After 14 years of living underground looking at screens projecting the world, Eight wants to make up as much time as he can in the outdoors.

Fashionable: Agent 8 has written several odes to individual clothing brands and individual pieces from his wardrobe (G and J lines), highlighting individual qualities of each In addition, his fantasies about living about Inkopolis were primarily informed by an old fashion magazine he found on the Metro. (The "imagine Inkopolis item") There isn't much information on what kind of clothes he gravitates towards, considering he has something positive to say about every brand he writes about, but we know he's drawn towards a combo of bright colors and functionality, dismissing the White Tee as "bland" and questioning if the Takaroka Mesh can protect against enemy fire ("But does it guard against ink spray?")

I also speculate that Octolings as a whole are drawn to more mature looks. Eight's standard issue military uniform shows his midriff and he's 14 when we meet him. Shiver wears a sarashi and a shawl that seems designed to fall off her shoulder, Acht is basically wearing an over-sized sleep shirt that also exposes her shoulder just so, and the timid Marina goes around in her bra in every outfit we see her wear.

The White Tee has a line that I find very intriguing: "It's more for squids or little kids..." This could mean quite a few things. Does Eight have some anti-squid prejudice he hasn't unpacked that leads him to equate squids with children? Does he view their unobservant nature as charming in a childlike way? Does he feel lonely as a minority expat and is lashing out a little bit?

Or is it that he's just put out that he was trained to fight in a race war only to discover that the opponents he was taught to hate and fear all his life forgot what his people looked like, to the point where they don't remember that his race exists, even though Octolings are living freely and openly with Squids in a town close enough to be on the train line?

I mean... I'd feel weird.

Misc notes:

-The mem cakes make for a great video game collectible, but they make absolutely no fucking sense as a plot point. Agent 8 is driven to recover memories of things he couldn't possibly have experienced yet, but they are explicitly his...BUT THEN in Marina's Dev Diary she hucks a curve-ball directly at the back of my skull by saying she analyzed the memories of both Eight AND Cuttlefish???? Those cakes were things that Cuttlefish would have remembered, but Cuttlefish didn't lose any memories to turn into memcakes? These mementos are really only for the player's benefit, but they set up a weird little continuity snarl that I'll have to work around.

-Eight's name got a little lost in translation. In the Japanese, Marina calling him Hachi rather than Hachi-go is a huge moment because Hachi-Go means "Number 8" but Hachi is a perfectly normal name and Eight finally feels acknowledged as a person rather than just a soldier or a test subject. This doesn't really work at all in the English localization because "Eight" isn't a name, even though Marina is enough of a dork to call him "Agent 8" as a formal title for five years even after they become close personal friends. I'm invoking Perrito clause here and saying that he prefers Eight because it's what all his close friends call him and whatever his name was before Kamabo just wouldn't have the same connection.

-Eight's connection to the rest of the NSBS is sort of necessarily in flux because those are player characters who are meant to be blank slates. Eight actually has an absurd amount of characterization in comparison. This leads to some hiccups where Eight and Four are roommates and close friends and also don't know each other at all. I say fuck that, it's not a happy ending unless Eight has tons of close friends. So Captain Three is his mentor. Eight and Four are clearly besties, we have art of them enjoying each other's company. And Neo Three is...uh, actually he wouldn't have met Neo Three at that point and all we know about Neo is that they're a weird desert-dwelling drifter who befriends fish.