ray’s vault!

they named her nikki fucking FREEMAN.

quick refresher for those who missed it: you may slowly start to realize there’s not a lot going on yet. this is true. Port Mackerel is literally horrifying though—so horrifying, in fact, that everyone left this Inkspedition a little more traumatized. my focus here isn’t necessarily on the map itself or anything that happens within the episode, but in these early stages, the behind-the-scenes aspect is so curious.

i’m gonna go a bit out of order here because most of the jokes about Travis’s pay are towards the end but GOD those make me laugh so hard. especially combined with the fact that he does in fact get a raise!! 5 years later, but we’re working on it!!

again, unclear if this is considered employment yet, but after this episode, he’s gonna need money for a therapist…. a Splatoon Therapist perhaps (kidding but please make him canon)

it’s possible that maybe they split the money they made from the videos but if Splatube is anything like YouTube in real life they probably get like 5 cents each (i choose to believe they pay better in Splatoon 🙏)

this does make me wonder though if Travis started getting paid when the transition from shits n gigs to actual tv show became more clear or if he got actually paid sooner and perhaps the transition was more gradual than we think. he starts calling Apollo “the boss” very early on but maybe that’s just because he doesn’t know his real name

wait actually how did Alpha excuse that one to Travis-

now moving backwards and onto the real lore stuff:

so i debated when i should mention this. it’ll come back around again later (subtle foreshadowing), but this thought came to me as i was watching this episode so i’ll talk about it now.

did people like… not know the Host of the Inkspedition was a separate person?

i mean if you think about it, there was no attempt to make him seem like a different person from Alpha. which, i meannnnnn-

but he was created as a separate person obviously, so people should recognize him as such, right? well, if this isn’t professionally produced there might not even be in-universe credits (and let’s be real even if there was no one sticks around for credits)

he looks exactly like Alpha, and the only difference is that he’s wearing a different outfit but THAT IS IT. no other indication, no mention of him and Alpha being two different people, the Inkspedition has always been hosted on Alpha’s channel so really why would anyone assume they’re different people??

even with other characters on the channel like Billy, if you assume Alpha isn’t the Host, your next assumption is probably that he’s playing a character again (even though Billy was also real by this point)

the in-universe audience wouldn’t see Alpha and Apollo “in the same room” until MONTHS later, so why would anyone have any reason to assume they were different people from the get-go? why wouldn’t Alpha appear in his own series?