Soon after Nintendo revealed a bunch of Splatoon 3 info this month, a vocal group of users began insisting a new character, Shiver, is nonbinary. Nintendo has officially confirmed the humanoid squid creature is actually female.
Users on various platforms like Twitter and websites masquerading as news outlets immediately assumed Shiver, who is actually a far-future descendant from modern day squids, was nonbinary.
The primary fuel for this fan theory was the character didn’t have its pronouns explicitly stated in the trailer or the game’s media.
This is a common argument made in this context across genres and industries, and it gets more confusing in fiction where the characters are non-human.
Some users clung to the nonbinary theory with simple colors used for Shiver’s group – the Deep Cut – using the colors of the “nonbinary flag” in their designs.
Nintendo SVP of developent Nate Bihldorff confirmed to The Verge that Shiver identifies as female, and that the “she/her” pronouns are indeed used in the game.
It’s worth reiterating the world of Splatoon takes place on Earth at least 12,000 years in the future, where humans and mammals were wiped out.
Regardless, Nintendo has thus confirmed the inklings in Splatoon 3 reproduce sexually just like their current-day squid ancestors. The concept of being nonbinary thus makes no sense despite whatever something/one “identifies as”, considering squid reproduce sexually via females producing eggs that males fertilize with their sperm.
Splatoon 3 is set to launch on September 9, 2022 for Nintendo Switch.