Probably late, but figure I may as well necropost.
Something I've imagined is that an inkling's fourteenth birthday is sort of... a special birthday for them, like a Quinceañera. The birthday would mark a step into adulthood, and maybe it'd be customary to have a large party, too!
From that one sunken scroll featuring young Callie and Marie, I'd imagine that most inklings would have a mostly developed humanoid form before then, so this date is more of a rite of passage before inklings start ink battling.
I wonder about other traditions or special days in Splatoon-verse. Squidmas is a thing apparently, and Splatfest is pretty much just an excuse to party. Maybe there was a festival or something connected to Calamari Inkantation?
I could see the Inklings having some special significance around their 14th birthdays, although rather than a 'step' I think that it's just around when an Inkling is mature, thus they just grow up faster than Humans. I'd even be willing to wager they set 14 as the legal age of suffrage in whatever society Inkopolis is located. (For the purposes of my post, the same biological and legal rules apply to Octolings as well; but its hard to say on their culture)
Think about it, the celebrities we know like the SS and OTH are usually stated to be older than the player character by years. But they never actually look older whilst a Human at 14 is only just starting puberty. And we've never seen Inkling 'adults', we just assume they exist based on the squid/kid terminology. In world though, evidence seems to point towards the player character being as mature as Inklings ever appear.
They might even have a shorter lifespan in general judging by how young both the average Inkling and the general population seem compared to Humans. (not sure how to rectify that with Cap'n Cuttlefish though, but he may just be the exception judging by the distinct lack of other 'senior' Ink/Octolings) Based on what we can actually observe, I think the more rational assumption is that they just use the term 'kid' in place of 'humanoid'.
Hello! Anyone mind if I jump in- I'm a little dazed about what the chat's talking about right now but I thought I'd toss in my two cents on some more domestic, small things that amuse me. These tend to be something more akin to fan-fiction consistency.
We all know that inklings change ink for terf wars and splatfest, but that would require changing all the pigmentation in their bodies... So that being said, I giggle thinking about inkling sitting around in a locker room like place as their ink is being switched out- either by some sort of "medication" or like a blood transfusion.
Also what if everyone had a "natural" ink color and that color usually returned naturally after time and inklings can accidentally spread their colors. Like, if someones does something intimate and just generally spends a lot of time together, how cute would it be if their yellow tentacles were tinted pink at the ends where the usually is.
That begin said, it then moves the notion that they could simply jump into a large ink vat instead of some hour long medical stuff. And that raises the idea that what if they don't have to do all that because body ink and war/terf ink are different? I think war/terf would be thicker but less persistent than natural ink, maybe like goop that dries and sticks everywhere when it dries but was really liquidus before hand.
I think the natural ink colors makes sense.
But meh, just some INKuiries.
I would concur that having a 'natural' ink color makes sense. After all, what color is an Inkling when it's hatched, before having any opportunity to change color? Can an Inkling potentially not have a color, and what would that look like? Would they default to the black we see in real squids, or would they just not have ink?
Can they not have ink, and can they survive if so or is that life-threatening? (I don't mean 'out of ink' in the out-of-ammo sense. The 'hair' still retains color and if you stand still without swimming you'll replenish ammo at a slower rate. Clearly that's coming from somewhere)