#bendy the lost ones

okay so i finally read TLO and at some point when I can type more I’ll put together all my thoughts (I HAVE SEVERAL) but heres the silly TLO Ink thought I keep having:

In DCTL, Buddy describes the ink as “salty” at the end. In TLO, Brant explicitly says the ink does NOT taste salty. Constance describes the smell as “tangy” so let’s go with that for now; in TLO the ink is tangy.

in TLO, ink magnifies some part of your personality that you are intentionally hiding and cartoonishly exaggerates it, even if you only get a little bit splashed on you

in DCTL, Buddy gets splattered with ink early on and this does not happen. No emotion takes over Buddy; his anger is normal. Same for Jacob (assuming Jacob isnt normally suppressing a desire to murder), and same for Dot, who touches the thick ink at the closet – and DCTL takes place over months, while iirc TLO lasts only a few days, so there would have been plenty of time to see the effects.

Sammy, however, could fit the TLO trend. While getting covered in ink didnt transform him the way it does in TLO, his personality eventually shifts to something that was always hiding in him, and the desire for something safe and secure that could protect him becomes absurd and worshipful. His scrawled desire to “be free” matches Constance’s feelings about her social situation and makes much more sense in that context. And I’m pretty sure I’ve talked before about the Ink Demon Blood Theory where it seems like Sammy was drinking something different to the ink that was constantly flooding the studio, thus why he was able to run out of his fix.

so like………………….. you could make a not-unreasonable argument???? that the ink the TLO Teens encounter (tangy ink) is the same ink Sammy got addicted to, now being mass produced by the obviously updated machine, while most of the ink Sammy got dowsed by in DCTL was the ink from the pipes (salty ink), and thats what got all over Buddy when they crashed into each other, and also what he used for most of his weird cocoon ritual decorating, so thats why those things didn’t result in the tangy ink effects.

THIS IS QUITE A HALF-FORMED THOUGHT AND IT DOESNT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING BUT I KEEP TURNING IT OVER IN MY BRAIN REGARDLESS LMAO