#ride the whaletaur

[astridcookie]

oh god imagine being sunfish merguy.

he dedicates his WHOLE LIFE to this. He has all these rides and games and he spends all his time trying to turn centaurs away and distract them. Imagine every day- seeing centaur after centaur turn up, and trying so hard to distract them, but no matter what they choose to die anyway. He can't do anything, even though he really wants to. He's really set it up. He's trying so hard.

And you can SEE how empty and abandoned his park is. No one goes there! But in one day! We can see there are surely hundreds of centaurs that chose to 'ride the whaletaur'. So clearly lots of centaurs come each day, but they don't listen to sunfish. So many centaurs. And they just want to die. Imagine seeing that! Imagine seeing how many centaurs each day, of every condition, all with a LIFE!! Just seeing how many of them choose to die each day. We can see how many different centaurs are in there when Wammawink goes in. There are LITTLE CHILDREN IN THERE. adjugdjusgjusgku This poor guy

[fragilethingz]

[squirrilous]

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[lovemealiveblog]

She just puts in on without protest, sweet baby girl. Appreciating the thoughts her friends gbive her- I’m just such a soft weak bitch for found family.

[americassoldierboy]

They’re probably combing their glossy chest hair, flexing their rippling gils, laying their merman eggs but in a hot way 🥰🥰🥰🥰

[pisoprano]

I recently watched the first season of Centaurworld, and it was a trip that objectively was well-made, but it also gave me severe mood whiplash and I’m still not fully settled on what my opinion of the series thus far is.

But for right now, I just want delve into my conflicted feelings regarding one specific aspect of episode 8, “ Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!”

(spoilers for episode 8 below the cut, plus trigger warnings related to death and the very heavy topics that go with it)

If you clicked the Read More, you’re probably assuming I’m talking about the thinly-veiled allegory for suicide in this episode.  And you’d be right, but I was thrown by one specific decision that the writers made that is a bit less obvious: that the inside of the whaletaur was an environment of dreary conga lines and shuffleboard tournaments meant to evoke the stereotypical activities of retired senior citizens.

Now, I get why they didn’t have the inside of the whale be Horse literally being digested--this is an extremely heavy episode for a TV-Y7 show already and having the suicide attempt be 100% explicit would never get green-lit.  But it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the alternative was to make the terrible fate of people who choose to enter the whaletaur shaman was, essentially, to become old.

Ageism is one of those forms of discrimination that often doesn’t get taken very seriously, especially in children’s media.  There’s this underlying presumption that kids will only be interested in stories about characters who are also kids, meaning that elderly characters seldom get any meaningful focus outside of villain or mentor roles.  If a younger protagonist ever magically becomes old for some reason, it’s always treated as an awful thing that must be fixed.

In real life, though, senior citizens aren’t fundamentally broken--they’re pretty much just like everyone else.  They want to socialize with friends and family, they want to explore the world, they want to consume entertainment, they want to challenge themselves, and they overall just want to enjoy being alive.  How they want most to experience those things may sometimes differ depending on whatever they became comfortable with in their younger years, but having different tastes does not make them worth vilifying or mocking.  (Sidenote: senior citizens largely don’t like shuffleboard either, it came in dead last in a poll of the favorite activities of people in retirement homes).

This isn’t to say that there are no downsides to being old.  The main one is how one’s body becomes less manageable over time--constant aches and pains, loss of mobility, increased susceptibility to illness, loss of mental capacity, etc.  Often these issues will require intervention from doctors, nurses, and other carers (and almost as often those interventions will not be able to solve anything, just keep things from being even worse).  When you become unable to care for yourself and the family/friends in your life are unable to make up the difference, moving into a nursing home or retirement home may be the best way for you to be able to continue living your life.  When it becomes clear that you are close to dying, hospice/palliative care may be the best way to at least help make you comfortable until you pass on.  The people who are faced with one or both of these choices will usually be heartbroken at the thought of “giving up,” but having the help of trained healthcare professionals can make a world of difference for the elderly and dying when they really don’t have other viable options.  (I will be side-stepping the issues of neglect and abuse perpetuated by staff in assisted living facilities for the purpose of this post, but they are still important factors to address with this particular topic).

The whaletaur shaman in Centaurworld is generally considered to symbolize someone who assists others in committing suicide.  Physician-assisted suicide is not the same as hospice (the former is actively ending the patient’s life and is illegal in most states and countries, the latter is allowing terminal illness to run its course without intervention and is legal everywhere), but they are similar enough to be confused for one another, especially behind the veil of symbolism.

And what symbolism have we been given to the whaletaur’s stomach?  A place where the afflicted are given something to make them comfortable, participate in activities like shuffleboard with the other people there, and are allowed to eventually fade away over time.  That sounds a lot more like a nursing/retirement home or hospice facility than assisted suicide.  So when the whaletaur expels everyone she’s ever eaten, that isn’t her deciding to no longer perform euthanasia, that’s her closing a hospice facility under the assumption that she can now treat everyone who used to live there now that one person got better.  Which...no, that is extremely irresponsible to do if you don’t have other options lined up for the people who were once under your care.

Outside of the whaletaur’s stomach, circumstances better support the assisted suicide interpretation--people only come to her for relief from depression, not because they are already dying, and the fact that she eats them to give them their “final day” implies that she chooses to actively kill them--but because the writers decided to mesh this with a retirement home aesthetic, it ends up not just condemning voluntary euthanasia on those with mental illness, it’s now also stigmatizing the elderly and de-legitimizing the work performed by palliative healthcare workers to help the dying.

This is not to say this was a bad episode.  I mostly see it as (excepting for the bit about Wammawink’s creepy merman fetish) an exceptionally well-done episode that will likely help reinforce the important message to a lot of kids that if they experience depression and hopelessness, they don’t need to turn to oblivion to escape it.  I just wish that they didn’t have to rely on making senior citizens seem even more inhuman than kids already think they are to get the point across.

[oreasa]

That was a horrible idiom If only, Pinkie, if only Glendale has all the dirt I have no idea what's going on I would like some fried fish please Fish are food not friends She's a Gen3 pony that we don't talk about anymore . . . You ate the merdudes Pinkie, wai?? it's a trap. Trap. Trap. Trap. Called it. What the fuck happened to Giraffe??? It's going to get wet, Z How deep are we getting here? Found family song??? ✪ ω ✪ This is why we feel our feelings

[greenlakegalpals]

It's basically canon Centaurworld as a culture have never experienced horrifics of such a scale like a war. Their world is bright and sugar and cotton candy and everyone sings and dance and hold hands like any other goody kid show but instead of it being happy happy rainbows its all just a giant bandaid to mask the jagged oozing scar of being survivors and remnants of a war scarred by violence and death. (Heck, Glendale admits it herself in the very first episode!)

Whaletaur and Merguy are good examples of this. Whaletaur genuinely believed what she was doing was the ONLY way to help. She sacrificed her own mental health by doing something she wholly believed was the right thing. And MAYBE she was. Maybe she thought her methods were better then other alternative of centaurs finding...lonlier ways.

And Merguy tried HARD to help but even he couldnt understand why a playground with rides and games wasn't enough. The centaurs he's tried so hard to help needed so much more than bumper cars and prizes, but he couldn't comprehend it.

It's like if MLP grimdark'd but in a 'We're gonna keep dancing and singing and cotton candy and magic to cover our collective trauma cus we don't know any other way! What is therapy!!'

[wrongmha]

We are all just fragile things, soft and small And oh, I know, that life is full of suffering and pain But all the broken can find hope in the most unexpected places Love still finds us, family finds us, even if we can’t make out their faces

Source: Centaurworld ("Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!")

[windmill-ghost]

Centaurworld Episode 8: Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!

“If you’ve come to see the shaman, you might be waiting quite some time!” (“Could be a while.”) “Lucky you, at Sunfish Merguy’s, you’ll never wait in any line!” (“‘Cause there’s no one here!”)

[pawprintinthestars]

Some Centaurworld analysis, under the cut cause there will be spoilers for season 2

At its core, Centaurworld is a show partly about being the weird kid. And I’m not just talking about the obvious wacky hijinks of the Herd (tm) or the fact there is a whole song about farts sung by a character named “Durpleton”. Centaurworld is about embracing the qualities of yourself that others may reject and the assurance that you can find people who love you even after experiencing rejection/trauma, and one place in which this theme shines is in the parallel stories of Horse and the Nowhere King.

When I first watched the Last Lullaby, the Nowhere King’s assertion that Horse and him were the same struck me as hollow. It seemed simply like an edgy villain monologue trying to be deep and garner sympathy for our antagonist but the more I thought about it the more I realized he had a point, just not in the exact way he thought. You see Horse and The Nowhere King represent two paths of people dealing with the possibility of rejection.

First, we have the Nowhere King. We all have seen the show (and if you haven’t I suggest stopping now because you really don’t want to be spoiled about this) so I’m not going to do a huge recap but long story short, the Elktaur felt rejection from both humans and centaurs and responded by splitting himself in two in the hopes of assimilating himself into human society. He looked down on his body because it made him feel silly, and he felt like the princess could not accept him unless he isolated this silliness from his more serious personality.

Sound familiar …

Horse had a similar problem in “Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!”. While not the exact scenario, Horse had the same emotional conflict that the Elktaur did with the princess. She was scared that Rider would not be able to recognize her after Centaurworld made her more soft and silly and responded to the possibility of that rejection with drastic measures that ended up directly harming her. The main difference arises from the fact that Horse was able to face that fear of rejection head on and learn to love herself whereas the Elktaur descended into his self-hatred and perpetuated a whole ass war over it for years.

Again and again, this show emphasizes the importance of community and relying on others for help. It is because of Horse’s centaur friends and their love for her that she is able to face Rider in spite of her fear. In Centaurworld, you shouldn’t cut out the goofy, strange side of yourself in order to fit in because at the end of the day, there will be people who love you for who you are even if some do reject you. It’s a show about outcasts and being a weirdo with no shame and because of that, I think it embodies the lonely weird kid that so many of us have been at some point in our lives.

[fragilethingz]

[squirrilous]

Uhh...Horse? About that...

Glendale confirmed for mass murderer.

[lovemealiveblog]

I’m 90% certain this is the reason they made him a giraffe but don’t quote me on that.

[chaossmith2]

Okay because I know I would’ve liked this before watching, here’s the deal

If you DO plan on watching Centaurworld-!

TRIGGER WARNING FOR EPISODE 8: “RIDE THE WHALETAUR SHAMAN”

So, a (slight) spoiler for Episode 8 here but

-

There is a scene towards the halfway mark that depicts a “su*cide” of the main character. No, the action is not played up for laughs thankfully, but IT DOES come extremely suddenly. So be careful if things like this upset you or cause emotional distress (cos lord knows it did for me)

The main gimmick of the show is the jarring tonal shifts, yes, but up until this point it was scary/serious -> goofy/silly (and vice versa). SO THIS TONAL SHIFT WAS VERY “OFF BRAND” IF YOU GET WHAT I MEAN.

Everything leading up to the character’s “choice” during this scene is extremely disheartening (with her second guessing herself, singing a heartbreaking song, to talking about the pointlessness of it all, etc.) and it makes her “final decision” even worse.

Maybe it won’t be so bad for some of you? But I know it really caught me off guard (esp when I was caught in an extremely dark place just the other day OOF) and just wanted to give you all a fair warning!

[rogues-r-we]

MY TOP THREE MOMENTS FROM EVERY CENTAURWORLD EPISODE

S1E1: Hello, Rainbow Road

1. all of rider's lullaby bcuz i love jessie mueller's voice

2. wammawink's introduction (not the title song, but when she first appears on screen)

3. the way horse says "if only i had it" in hello rainbow road

S1E2: Fragile Things

1. all of fragile things, i love the counterpoint of the two melodies

2. "hints of *sniff sniff* fig and *sniff sniff* yep. murder."

3. the harmonies on taurnado as well as the art for it

S1E3: The Key

1. Glendale snipping a little bit of Waterbaby's red (maroon? purple?) carpet

2. "and sometimes my facial features get kinda meltyyyyy"

3. frustration tears! its a whole vibe

S1E4: What You Need

1. Wammawink's tiny meme face

2. the tree shamans being snarky bitches

3. glendale stealing a tree child

S1E5: It's Hiding Time

1. Glendale with a boot on her head

2. wammawink fighting the beartaur while simultaneously being asleep

3. MORE LEA SALONGA AS THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN

S1E6: Holes: Part 2

1. our introduction to comfortable doug

2. "i traded. with gary." "what did you trade.....wait. did you trade me? AGAIN?"

3. judge jacket's song bcuz i love santigold's voice (i must listen to more of her)

S1E7: Johnny Teatime's Be Best Competition: A Quest For the Sash

1. the fact that this entire flonking episode is a parody of Cats (bcuz it is literally that) (i could assign each actual cat from cats a cattaur)

2. all of i don't know him bcuz its a BOP and splendib is wonderful (yes if he was in cats he'd be rum tum tugger)

3. "do you always talk at the same time?" "yes." "yes." "we do."

S1E8: Ride the Whaletaur Shaman!

1. Wammawink being into eggpregg

2. Horse being a realistic example of the suicidal thought process

3. Wammawink's fragile things reprise

S1E9: The Rift Part 1

1. the whaletaur shaman going down the steps

2. THE STORY OF COMFORTABLE DOUG

3. wammawink dealing with attachment issues bcuz same

S1E10: The Rift Part 2

1. rider and horse together!!!! it's jenna and dawn!!!!!

2. LEA SALONGA. SINGS A SONG. I LOVE LEA SALONGA. SO MUCH.

3. brian stokes mitchell my beloved, also nowhere king you absolute bitch (i don't hate him but i dont love him either)

S2E1: Horsatia Wighair Beansz?

1. "can we make s'mores?" "not that kind of fire"

2. "mmmmm boulder shoulders"

3. the look of the horsetaurs

S2E2: All Herd All the Terd

1. the fact that it's a parody of 2014-2016 tumblr fandom culture (which i can talk about, i was there, just on a different account)

2. "i am the nowhere king babababumbumbumbabababum and i have come to do jerky things babababumbumbumbabababum"

3. zulius and his stage manager persona

S2E3: My Tummy, Your Hurts

1. the puffintaurs talking like 1940s gangsters

2. durpledrop! it's fun!

3. all of glendale's talk and song

S2E4: Holes: Part 3

1. becky apples song!!!!!!!!!!

2. more underground centaur types!

3. holes swag. that's all.

S2E5: Bunch 'O Scrunch

1. gurple durpleton being voiced by eda from the owl house

2. whyyyy does wammawink have a helicopter

3. gebbrey my beloved

S2E6: The Ballad of Becky Apples

1. waterbaby's minotaur looking more like a stuffed animal

2. becky apples killing far too many minotaurs

3. rider being rider

S2E7: The Hootenanny

1. guskin the gophertaur, look at him gooo

2. i feel so bad for the mysterious woman

3. when they all come together being wonderful :3

S2E8: The Last Lullaby

1. all

2. of

3. it