Arrowika (documentation)

History

In April 2018, my roommates at the time and I had recently purchased a Switch to share (which would later become mine) and browsed some games for us to buy. I knew right away that I wanted Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

In the GameStop with a roommate, she suggested that we get Splatoon 2. She and our other roommate had played the first Splatoon game on a friend's Wii U and enjoyed it, so she figured it'd be a good idea for us to get the second game as well, if only just for fun. I shrugged and agreed since she was going to pay for it, and I was going to pay for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, since as a household we usually split and shared a lot. Later, she and our other roommate convinced me to try Splatoon 2 for the first time, so I played it a little bit. I was confused and insisted on using stick controls, though. The only thing I really remember from my first few games was that I was playing on Moray Towers.

Later, in June, apropos of nothing, I had a sudden burst of motivation to try Splatoon 2 again. It had been a few months since I tried it the first time, but at the time I hadn't had a hyperfixation, so I felt like just playing it until I got bored of it. Except then upon throwing myself into more and more games, and as my brain adapted to the game, I realized the gameplay of Splatoon was incredibly stimulating for me.

I don't know how else to explain it, but I always describe Splatoon like this because it still stimulates me in the same way. The combination of the sound effects, the visual effects, the music, the bright colors, the cartoon-y art style, the shortness from each game and the high I get from simply by playing... It's addicting and makes all my visual senses and my ADHD-addled brain happy, I guess. I've never considered myself the type to play shooters or online multiplayer games, much less an online multiplayer shooter. But I suppose if you throw in an art style that speaks to my inner child (who loves cartoons) and make like 30% of the gameplay a literal dollmaker, then it'll turn into my favorite game ever.

June 2018 is when I discovered my Splatoon addiction. I played for hours on end every day, often staying up far too late because I was only playing Turf War, which are 3-minute long games, and always wanted to end on a win that felt good to end on. I even posted on my IRL Instagram later that month that I played for 100 hours in Splatoon 2 after a few weeks or so. It was quickly becoming an obsession that I couldn't get enough of.

I was only playing Turf War, though. Soon after I hit up my friend Rae, who I've known since late 2014, because I logged into my old Twitter account to lurk and to see if any other friends were playing Splatoon 2. I couldn't play with my roommates because we'd need another Switch for it, so I was mostly playing with random people through matchups - or, in other words, by myself. Rae and I were decently close so she asked me if I wanted to play together sometime. Of course, I agreed.

We played together; Rae mentioned playing Ranked, which I hadn't touched. To be honest, I was initially scared of it, and then completely forgot about it. I don't know if we played League before I played Ranked, but both happened in quick succession, because at that point I was at level 40 - having played only Turf War (and I guess Salmon Run) for 40 levels - so I was a little above my rank when I jumped in for the first time.

I initially favored quick and easy weapons, the type you'd expect any brain-off casual to enjoy. Though I used the Custom Dualie Squelchers a lot in Turf War, my first ranked main weapon was the Sploosh-o-matic. I loved getting close to kill people, particularly while taking advantage of the Ninja Squid ability. It balanced out Rae, who's more cautious by nature and favored backline weapons. (In retrospect, it is hilarious how much my playstyle has changed.) Once I got the hang of the ranked modes (except Clam Blitz), we played a lot of League together. Not to mention Splatfests when they happened, Salmon Run when it was open, Private Battles to 1v1 and practice sniping, and Turf War when we felt like dicking around. I even switched to the gyro controls a short month later, in July 2018, because I realized they were far more flexible, and now I live and die by them.

In October 2018, I played the single player campaign for the first time. It felt stupid easy and mundane, despite my poor platforming skills, but maybe that's because I didn't play it first thing. Still, through the single player campaign I realized how much I favored the splatling class, so once I had beaten it (and then some), I decided to try out all the splatlings and see which ones I liked.

I liked all of them, admittedly. The standard Heavy Splatling had Stingray, which was a fun (and slightly overpowered) Special Weapon to use. At the same time, I liked the Heavy Splatling Deco a lot: its kit supported its main weapon better than its role, so I favored it because I liked the main weapon more than the role. But ultimately I fell in love with the Custom Hydra Splatling: a slow heavy weapon with an excruciating charge time and an insane fire rate for several seconds at a range that could match a sniper's. It was difficult but felt intuitive to me, and at this rate I'd spent enough time playing Splatoon to actively enjoy the challenge of having a slower-paced and longer range weapon.

It wasn't long before November 2018, when I declared the Custom Hydra Splatling my main weapon. The kit was better with what I wanted to do, and I was tearing through Ranked with it. I was making outfits for all the different ways I wanted to play it; I was making outfits for all of the weapons I liked, really. I started feeling more confident with snipers, compiled clips into weapon-specific montages, and met some people just out of my desire to play Splatoon with even more people.

At one point, when I was on Tumblr, I saw this image:

A picture of a Splatoon character with the text 'Thanks to Nintendo, a game about squids with guns is a fundamental part of my personality'

And now I constantly quote it because from that moment on, I knew it was irreversibly true.

My obsession with Splatoon along with Rae's had us consider, plan, and then establish a YouTube channel/streaming accounts to teach casuals how to play Splatoon as well as being an excuse for us to play together even more. This project was later retired in 2024 since neither of us were ever that interested in it as a serious venture; still, it spoke to how obsessed we were at the time. Regardless, through this brief project, we also streamed some Pokémon Sword/Shield raid dens and met our friends Knife and Ra - who also plays Splatoon - that way. One Discord server led to another and then we were playing a lot of Salmon Run together and decided to give our little group a name, especially since Rae and I had matching team tags in our names by that point (.ink, signaling being both halves of our YouTube/stream project, Array Ink) and we all wanted to match. Thus, the .ink Kurimeku Alliance - or .iKA - was born.

As it happens with any hyperfixation of mine, the obsession eventually started to tone down, or at least became more manageable. By a little bit.

In August of 2019, I achieved my first X rank in Splat Zones. It was shortly after the Heavy Splatling Remix had come out, I remember, because the game I got my first X rank was Splat Zones on Inkblot Art Academy while I had the Remix equipped. I was so fucking happy. I'd been grinding out ranked for a little over a year at that point, and wanted to catch up to Rae, who had two X ranks. After getting my first X rank, I decided that I wanted to get X rank in all the other modes in a year's time.

And then I did. It might've been in the middle of fucking Covid, but a year later in July 2020, just like I wanted, I had X ranks in Tower Control, Rainmaker, and even Clam Blitz. With a newfound confidence in my abilities, I had a short Squiffer phase where my charger mechanics improved drastically once I realized that the Squiffer was my favorite charger. Then, a little less than a year after getting all X ranks, I got my highest X power on my birthday, the only good thing about my birthday in 2021. Getting a 2300 X power felt like a dream, even if it was because the game was dying after being over 4 years old and having not gotten any significant updates for 2. I was proud of myself anyway.

In September 2022, Splatoon 3 came out. I was hooked from the first trailer; I watched compilations of Splatubers I like (like Jaymoji and ThatSRB2Dude) reacting to it over and over again, even though I had been in Jaymoji's stream while it had happened, and quickly looked for Dude's reaction right afterward. Then it came out: it wasn't that different from Splatoon 2 in some ways, but it was drastically different in others. Despite its flaws, I still say I love it, because Salmon Run is open 24/7 (and Big Runs!!!!!) and replays fit my vanity much better than 30 second clips on Twitter do.

I was using the same weapons, though. The Custom Hydra Splatling hadn't technically been added yet so I was playing with the vanilla Hydra Splatling. The Custom's kit in Splatoon 3 would be different anyway, I knew, because the game has different special weapons. I liked the vanilla quite a bit in Splatoon 3, since it felt like a combination of the Hydra Splatling's main weapon and the Remix's kit from Splatoon 2, which is the strongest Splat 2 Heavy kit, in my opinion. Still, with limited wardrobe options (curses!) and playing the same weapons, it didn't take long for Splatoon 3 to, unfortunately, become stale to me after a few short months.

Then in January 2023, after a few months of not playing, I decided to give the new weapons another go. In Hero Mode (which I beat day 2), in multiplayer, in the training room, whatever. I don't remember the precise moment I picked up the tri-stringer and thought to myself, wow, I want to get good at this weapon. All I remember is that it happened. The tri-stringer is difficult because of its precision, but it has the long range and wind up/release that I like, and an unconventional and not super effective but still existing short range option if the situation calls for it. It felt difficult to use, but when I did something right, the satisfaction of getting a kill with a tri-stringer - or even better, a direct shot - was more stimulating than anything else in the game.

My most impressive direct shot with the bow (so far.) RIP bluey `_`

I practiced my mechanical skill with the tri-stringer in the hero mode level, "One-Way Ride Through Target Town", which is also one of the most difficult levels in Splatoon 3's overall more challenging single player campaign. (It is still the single player campaign, though.) It was my warmup before I would hop into multiplayer, and it was my warm-down, too. I stopped practicing in Target Town once I felt like the warmups weren't improving my mechanical skill much anymore, but sometimes I go back in and practice the tri-stringer in it, just for fun.

After this, I decided that the tri-stringer was going to be my new main weapon. Its motif fits with my name (Arrow), it's long-range which I now favor, and it's incredibly difficult but effective, like the custom hydra was once in Splatoon 2. The hydra is difficult and far less effective in Splatoon 3 as it no longer has Ink Armor, and despite my love for it, I wanted a weapon that would outclass it while still giving me the challenge and ego boost at being good with a hard weapon. And the bow does just that.

I'm analytical by nature, too. The more I felt that I understood about Splatoon, the more I had the urge to try to be on a competitive team. At least once. Rae and I discussed it casually a few times - at least, to play in a tournament together - but since she's a fellow bitch with ADHD I didn't want to hold her to a serious commitment when she wasn't playing as much Splatoon as I was anymore. So I went team shopping.

It took a bit for me to find a team that appealed to me (all adults, low-level, only backline/support needed, gives me good vibes), but eventually in September after browsing through Discord servers I found one: Inkblot Dropouts, a low-level team with a specific gimmick around all the members being artists/creative in some way. I thought to myself, hey, I'm a creative! (I write.) Plus, I had literally dropped out of college twice at that point. I applied and tried out, and got in.

Being a serious competitive Splatoon player was never really a goal I set. Instead, I wanted to see how far I could take my own abilities. For the next several months, despite some scuffed scheduling, I was practicing and playing scrimmages and tournaments nearly weekly, amidst starting a new full time job and moving to a new apartment. I enjoyed it, but at the same time another part of me started noticing how poorly I was managing my emotions with it. On top of that, playing competitively didn't give me the same excitement that playing casually did. Despite how good it felt to win and improve when I was winning and improving, I started dreading practices because of knowing the potential negative emotional effect it could have on me. I was getting in the way of myself in my own head.

So after eleven months of throwing myself at it over and over again to see if my feelings could eventually change, I decided that competitive Splatoon wasn't for me. At least, not this team at this time in my life.

I withdrew from Inkblot Dropouts in August 2024, but I still hold a lot of happy memories from the experience, and a lot of love for my former teammates. That's why half of my team gallery is dedicated to them. I've since been replaced, and hope that my beloved Dropouts find success where I could not ♥

Since then, I've been taking a several months-long break, due to the burnout that playing comp for nearly a year gave me. But this isn't anything new; I was burnt out after I got all my X ranks in 2020, too. Still, much like my infrequency with playing Pokémon games, Splatoon remains to be a part of my brain and my heart and identity, even if I spend long periods of time not playing it. I have perhaps an embarrassing amount of merchandise, most notably a scalped IRL Moby Knit (my main sweater) and 3D printed tri-stringer from PurplepumaPrints on Etsy, so I can cosplay my own octoling. I actually did, when Rae and I met up for Katsucon in 2025, and we always got excited whenever we saw and bought Splatoon merch, which happened often, particularly with the same or matching things, like our Salmon Run t-shirts. Knife also made me my Anchor Sweat from my Heavy Edit outfit, so I have that IRL too.

And I know that every time I take a break from Splatoon, that's all it really is - a break. No matter what games come out in the future, no matter what I think about them, and no matter what weapons I'll try and like later, Splatoon will always be one of my favorite games.

Player Info

I got into Splatoon 2 in June 2018, but Octo Expansion came out in July 2018. As soon as I saw the designs for the playable octolings, I felt more inclined toward them, and I've been mostly been playing as one ever since. I consider octolings to be my splatsona's canon species.

As an inkling I favor the feminine long hair side shave hairstyle, but my character's eye and skin color remain the same.

I'm aware that "ika" means squid in Japanese despite my character being an octopus. I think the irony is funny.

I like Off the Hook the most as a group because it's just Pearl and Marina being lesbians in love. My favorite idol generally though is Callie, as of Splatoon 3 - she was the highlight of the hero mode for me. I also like Shiver a lot, particularly her design. I'm inclined to ship anything gay; after Pearlina, Agent 8/3 is one of my favorites. I don't really read or write Splatoon fanfiction, but I really like seeing the art.

Splatoon has also:

My phone and laptop background has been the art piece of my octosona and Kingdra fighting together ever since the commission was finished in September 2024.

I'm relatively familiar with high-level competitive Splatoon despite mostly being a lurker and outsider. I know less of the low level teams because there are more of them - and new ones practically every season - but I like to keep up with competitive news and the community, especially through YouTube.

I've read and own a lot of the Splatoon manga, though I haven't caught up since I first read it in 2019. As these things happen. My main opinion of the manga is that I think Rider/Goggles is a new generation of Sasuke/Naruto.

Some other Splatoon-related fun facts or notable moments during my Splatoon career that didn't fit in the history section nicely:

I have over 2000 hours in Splatoon 2, and over 2600 in Splatoon 3. I consider myself decent with every weapon class at this point, particularly as a Salmon Run enthusiast. But I think blasters are my weakest class.

My favorite mode is Rainmaker because I like the satisfaction of team synergy. I'm most consistent with Tower Control as a backliner, though. The Rainmaker is my wife and the Tower is my girlfriend. You get it.

YouTube Recommendations

Most of Splatoon's content and competitive community is on YouTube; as a result, I've become someone who practically lives on YouTube. I recommend trawling Splatoon YouTubers for people who wish to engage in fannish content or with other players. Below are the ones that I've spent a lot of time watching and enjoying.

The competitive players I watch the most regularly are:

Other people I watch are:

And here's a list of my favorite Splatoon video analyses and essays:

Ultimately, my goats are Jaymoji, DUDE/ThatSRB2Dude, and Kiver :)

Site Info

If you know me, you know I love making a website. I've been meaning to make some sort of personal Splatoon site for years, in the same spirit of my Pokémon site. But my relationship with each game is different: I like Pokémon because of my history with the franchise, but I like Splatoon because it caters to all of my senses and tastes. Particularly the dollmaker aspect.

This page initially started as a joke for my still in-progress Trick House project, but in making it I realized I liked the design a lot unironically, so I adopted it out and reworked it into this. It started as a one-page project, but really the main thing I wanted to showcase was the weapon-outfit selector. I felt that its presentation would make the most sense on separate pages, so here we are.

My interest in making a Splatoon site for myself was always the vanity aspect, but I suppose that makes it the same as any of my other websites. I want to show off my achievements (ranks and badges), as well as all the cute little outfits I've made, even though I only really play two or three weapons consistently. On top of that - and as you can see - I'm addicted to commissioning artists for art of my splatsona. So this page is a little less archival than it is about showing off all of my favorite elements of this game (the dollmaker), and myself.

I do refer to and think of my Splatsona as me, by the way. Kind of like how furries have fursonas.

Sectional Walkthrough

The info page showcases an overview of my skill, experience, and rankings in the Splatoon games. It displays a random selected piece of artwork I had commissioned of my octoling, as well as my Splatoon 3 locker in a clickable PNG (you can click it to open it).

My mains are my outfits for my main weapons: the tri-stringer, inkline tri-stringer (since it has a different outfit), both hydra splatlings, and the heavy edit splatling, because I prefer its tacticooler kit to its crab one. I occasionally use the Order Bow for aesthetic reasons, but not often. I do have 5 stars on it, though. But I also have 5 stars on all of the other bows (and the hydra splatling), and I prefer the basic tri-stringer's look with my outfit.

My outfits are outfits I've made for other weapons that I enjoy playing, however infrequently. They are divided into "favorite weapons" and "other weapons," to distinguish weapons I'm more inclined to picking after my main weapons, from ones I certainly like but wouldn't pick first or feel that my mechanical skill is lesser with. But as I've stated several times, playing the actual game is only a little bit more than half my enjoyment with it. The rest is just making cutesy outfits.

There is some discrepancy between the weapons listed here and the index page in terms of being my favorites due to how I think about it technically:

The maps are my favorite maps of each mode and game. I have feelings for the maps in the sense that I think a lot about how they play and how I feel about them and why. But they're not that special - my favorites make me a stereotypical backliner more than anything.

The gallery is art of my octoling that I've commissioned or that friends have drawn for me out of their own generosity. The page is divided between Splatoon 3 and Splatoon 2 art, as my outfits are different between each game.

Team pics is a small gallery of artwork and select screenshots of the respective teams I'm in or have been on. This one is not divided, because it's less substantial and I don't prioritize these in the same way I do for weapons or the game division in art.

And here, you're at the documentation! This is everything I want to yap about in my relationship with Splatoon as well as the construction of this site, all on one page because that's how I like sharing this type of information.

(This website was also an exercise in Javascript.)

Thanks for reading!

Credits

I hand-coded this website with Visual Studio Code and through XAMPP. Obvious editing in graphics and PNGs were done by me in Photoshop.

Graphics of weapons, maps, and badges come from the ever-resourceful Inkipedia. Outfit builders showcasing gear slots are done on sendou.ink. Splat bulletpoints were made with these brushes by InuKawaiiLover. The cursor and footer Pearl & Marina are from inkposting (previous cursor from rw-designer). The splashtag at the bottom was made at splashtagmaker.com.

All art is also displayed and properly attributed in my gifts directory, but here's a rundown of art credits:

Splatoon 3 Art

Splatoon 2 Art