Wait so were the rival octolings mind controlled trough the glasses or not?
nope.
Ive gotten quite a few asks about this topic, understandably so! this is something Ive been kind of wanting to talk about in a video in depth, but putting it together cohesively is Hard and i wanna wait for Splatoon 3 to really clear things up with Octavio. anyway, ill try to put the evidence i got in this post.
The idea that Octolings all wear mind-controlling eye wear is...basically just deeply rooted fanon. just because Octavio has a special pair for Callie, doesn't mean all Octolings are equipped with the same tech.
look at that. goggles off, she wants it back. (art from the splatoon 1 end credits)
what we know about the Octoling's eyewear is that the red dot on terminator-style shades they wear in s2 is just a UI (i assume to aid them in combat).
The S1 goggles are called something to the effect of 'Octoling Scope' in JP, which i believe implies they assist with aiming. Nothing has been said about their eyewear having mind-controlling properties.
Additionally, the Octoling shades and goggles that we players can wear, unlike the agent gear, are not stated to be replicas.
One may ask then, what's the deal with the Calamari Inkantation?
with Callie being freed from her mind control by the Inkantation, plus lines like this:
its easy to come to the conclusion that it's some mind-control breaking song. While it may have had that kind of effect on Callie, that's not really what the song does. As always, things got changed in localization.
here's that above piece of dialogue, retranslated from japanese
Different nuance there, no?
The inkantation seems to be more like a song of inspiration and empowerment. it inspires some Octolings, who have spent their militaristic lives living in domes devoid of natural sunlight, to seek out something more.
its moreso implied that the Octarians are fed propaganda and militarized from a young age: so the more realistic kind of brainwashing, and not outright scifi mind controlled like callie or agent 3 was. The Octolings in the military don't need goggles to mind-control them into following Octavio: they have a sense of loyalty towards his cause and their own kind. Octavio isnt the greatest guy, but he has a good reason to resent the Inklings: his people were forced underground, and he does what he does (stealing the Zapfish) to try and keep the crumbling Octarian domes, and his people, alive. Seems like a worthy cause to me.
Another huge issue with the 'all Octolings have hypnotic eyewear' theory is this: after listening to the Inkantation, if the Octolings were to supposedly become aware that DJ Octavio was straight-up mind controlling them, then you would expect that they would hate his guts.
The thing is though...they don't.
Because they were never mind controlled.
From both Marina and Agent 8, its implied that both of them still hold some respect for DJ Octavio despite leaving the Octarian world.
Exhibit A: 8's apologetic mem cake poem about Octavio
Exhibit B: Marina's laptop covered in stickers. theres 3 squid sisters stickers, but alongside that are some Turquoise October stickers and a huge DJ Octavio sticker.
if she really did hate him (which is something she has never expressed), i think she would put more effort into covering up or removing that sticker.
Ok there's my mountain of evidence to disprove the hypnotic eyewear theory! In short: Yes Octavio is controlling the Octarian populace, but only through propaganda and typical military control, and not literal sci-fi mind control.
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