#sbsp lore

I made a thing :3

In Sea Star culture, physical touch and affection is the main thing behind their customs and everyday life. Things like hugs, cuddles, and anything to do with physical contact are pretty much commonplace between any Sea Stars that know each other, whether they’re family or friends or just acquaintances. You can say something or perform some kind of gesture to get an emotion across, sure, but if you REALLY want to show someone you care in Sea Star culture? A bone-crushing hug will always speak volumes more to them than a sentence. (It mainly comes from the fact that Sea Stars technically have eyes on the ends of their points instead of yk where eyes on them are in the show. I kind of picture it as it being their own way of TRULY seeing each other.)

Between family members or incredibly close friends, it’s even common for there to be little intimate touches and gestures that they have with no one else, like secret handshakes or a certain kind of hug. It also goes the other way around with hate as well as love— the main way to let someone know you hate them? Throw hands or refuse a hug. From this, fistfights and major things like that are kind of common whenever there’s bad blood between two Sea Stars, and usually due to Sea Stars not having the best abilities of comprehension and language, it happens often. Sea Stars may have customs and traditions like other species under the water, but that still doesn’t mean they’re that smart. Or smart in the usual ways, at least. Going along with that though, Sea Stars have a surprising degree of forgiveness and mercy in their culture, and the ultimate gesture of apologizing/asking for forgiveness is helping patch someone up after a fight.

The other main thing in Sea Star culture is, without a doubt, food. They’re shown to be constant eaters and love snacking in the show, so it only makes sense with their appetites (or a certain Sea Star we all know lol) that food and meals play an important role in their lives. Notably in their traditions, I like to picture they have a specific dish in mind for EVERY occasion, whether it’s a funeral or a minor holiday celebrating the day a Sea Star learned to drive. These meals are ONLY reserved for those specific days, making it the only strict thing about their cultures besides physical touch. Everything is pretty loose- INCLUDING something similar to how I pictured sponges having views on gender identity. There ARE male and female Sea Stars, but also intersex ones, and everyone is kinda just too lazy to care much about both gender and sexuality. With how Sea Stars can divide and grow into new Sea Stars from getting their limbs cut off, I imagine single parents are actually more common than married couples, and Sea Stars can have up to TENS of kids due to how clumsy said kids can be, lol. So, yeah, the main things in Sea Star culture I headcanon are hugs, comfort, and food.

Final thing is how these headcanons apply to my favorite pink boi, Pat. Of course with what I just said, it explains why he’s so touchy and huggy with everyone, other than it’s Patrick and I just think his main love language is physical contact. This probably leads him to sometimes touch people when they don’t really want to be, but he doesn’t mean anything bad about it- it just comes as second-hand instinct to him from growing up a Sea Star. Especially with SpongeBob, however, I think Patrick is aware of how differently SpongeBob interprets touch and physical affection, due to said sponge being autistic and more sensitive to things like that, so he only really hugs/touches SpongeBob like that ONLY when he knows it’s fine or if SpongeBob is possibly in trouble and he NEEDS to grab him. After all, it’s HEAVILY shown they grew up together, so it makes sense that they’d know each other like that. (I REALLY like to picture that before they got together romantically in my timeline, there were times where Patrick just did these little things, like cup SpongeBob’s face or rest his hands on his hips, and SpongeBob definitely got SUPER flustered meanwhile Pat just thought he had a fever and got worried.) A REALLY big headcanon I’ve always had for Patrick was that while he’s not that logically intelligent, he’s very EMOTIONALLY intelligent, and can inference things like other people’s love languages or if they’re hiding something when he can focus on what’s being said.

I mean….it depends. I DO like that theory and especially the “eldritch horror vibes” one could get from sea creatures fighting literal humans, but…in other episodes it shows they were fighting other fish, and WHY other fish would be on the humans’ side is a huge plot hole to me.

In what I use for the lore in my Main SpongeBob AU and Merfolk AU on YouTube, I actually go more with the idea it was a war between Poseidon and Neptune over who was the real ruler of the sea. I’ve talked about this before but the way it’s hinted at is that Neptune is both the god AND also a Title passed down in the royal family (hence, the Movie Neptune and why he’s so different.) from father to son, like Ancient Egyptian pharaohs. With that, it also works for Poseidon in my SpongeBob world too.

In what I had planned out, Poseidon was the original ruler of everything, but then when Krabs and Plankton were still children, Neptune showed up and basically challenged him for the throne. One rich man thing led to another, and a war erupted between those who preferred the “old ways” with Poseidon, and those who wanted more of a change with Neptune. Krabs was drafted when he was about 16 on Neptune’s side, and obviously years later, Neptune won.