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Apr 23, 2023

I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk about the Whales and after the most recent episode, I think I have enough to have a proper discussion about them. I’m going to try and keep this streamlined, but there’s a good chance I’ll end up jumping from one topic to another that I think have relations to the Whales.

I hope you guys are in the mood for reading cause this is probably going to be a long post

[trigger warning for mentions of suicide ahead]

What we know about the whales

We first learn about the Whales in the season 2 finale, where it’s revealed that Lord Ogo had met Shoal once in the past, with Shoal offering some of his blood in exchange for directions to the whales. Kappa explains to Siren how ‘they’re giants, said to be hundreds of years old, and the only people alive who could reach the surface’. He then goes on about how they disappeared, with no one knowing where they went. Thanks to Lord Ogo’s information, the group head towards the Forest of Kelp and find the whales and, oh boy, do they make a big impression. Fizz explains how the whales used to live at the surface and that unlike normal mers, they sustain themselves by feeding on energy from the surface (a line I will be getting back to). However, because of currently unknown reasons, they were forced to leave, causing them to fall into a permanent rest due to their lack of access to the surface, with them being asleep for hundreds of years.

In episode 141, it’s revealed that the Forest of Kelp was created by the Whales. As Galoo explains, legends say that this area of the sea was completely inhabitable, being a barren field of sand. However, after the whales fell and their bodies found rest on the sand beds, they released an abundance of golden light and the sand below them bursted with life. For those who don’t know, this is actually a real life phenomenon, referred to as whale fall. A whale fall occurs when the carcass of a whale has fallen onto the ocean floor, in the bathyal or abyssal zones. On the sea floor, these carcasses can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep-sea organisms for decades.

Finally, we learnt that four years ago, the whales fell under a mysterious illness, but thanks to the help of Shoal, the Sluggi were able to stabilize their condition and now have medicine that can cure the whales when their symptoms return. Although, it’s important to mention that the cause of their failing health was never discovered.

Why did the whales fall?

At this point in time, I don’t think we have enough information to make any solid guess on what happened. However, I do have some ideas, most stemming from what we have recently learnt about the surface. Hearing about the surface and it’s ‘abundance of energy’ was very interesting, especially since our information on the surface has been…limited for some time now. The first time the surface was really talked about was in season one, extra episode four, where we first learn about Kappa’s attempt to reach the surface. During the episode, Kappa talks about how people told him the surface is the afterlife, a place for God and the dead, and how people who attempt to reach it will disappear and never come back. However, this season has revealed that mers have lived at the surface, with the rumor of it being a afterlife coming from how swimming straight up is one of the easiest ways to die. Back to the topic of the surface’s energy, one idea I have is that the reason the Whales fell was because someone wanted to take advantage of this energy.

Let me explain. If the surface really is this place with an abundance of energy, where giants like the Whales can be sustained by solely feeding on it, anyone power hungry enough would see it as a gold mine of potential. If that turns out to be the case, it’s possible that the Whales attempted to stop them, and fell from the surface as a result, or these people struck first to have more energy to themselves and/or before the Whales could figure out what was going on. In this scenario, who would want to take advantage of the surface’s energy? My best guesses are either the Narwhal twins’s people or the ancient people.

While they’ve only appeared in one episode, we can pick up some details. They’re one of the first mers we’ve seen that have made use of the fossil, being able to shoot magic (ice?) out of their swords, them seemingly coming from the same place as Orakos, who is already suspected to be from the surface (with their unknown age, them being new to the sea and their knowledge about fossils and the ancient people), and of course, narwhals being medium-sized, toothed whales. Plus, they have the ruthlessness that would be would come the type of people in this scenario.

With the ancient people, we don’t have a solid enough time line to confirm or deny if they could have been around when the whales fell, so I don’t think they’re the best option. If we were to further consider this, with them likely having created the machine like magic we’ve seen from the mini gods, the twins and Orakos and the likelihood of them having a Icarus like fate with the development of their technology, the possibility of them stealing energy at the surface could fit.

I have seen ideas that the God of the Surface could have some involvement with the Whales falling. This idea definitely has potential since the Surface God would definitely have the powers to due something like this. Although, I have no idea why they would do this. While I say that, from what we’ve seen of how the Surface God has treated Kappa…they don’t seem to be the most omnibenevolent being, so I could see it.

One last idea before we get to the real meat of this post. We know that before the Forest of Kelp started to grow, the Whales released ‘an abundance of golden light’. What if this golden light they released is energy from the surface? With the Whales bodies releasing what remaining energy they had in order in protect themselves? It’s an idea I’ve had for a bit that I didn’t really have evidence to support until we saw this image in episode 147:

The Whales and the Flyfins at the surface, both surrounded in gold lighting. Not to mention, Kappa, you know, child of the surface god, is the same yellow/goldish colour in this area of the sea. Additionally, though it could be a coincidence, when Fizz talks about the surface’s energy and Galoo talks the golden light, they both use the word abundance when describing them.

Maybe some points here are a stretch, but yeah, it’s at least food for thought.

The Flyfin and the Sluggi

While I may not have a solid idea about what went down with the Whales, I feel much more confident to talk about the conflict going on between the Flyfin and the Sluggi. While there’s a lot to consider, I think at the end of the day, it can be summarised a conflict centered around opposing desires for a home.

Out of the two groups, I’m going to discuss the Flyfin first, since we have their reasons for wanting to awaken the Whales clearly stated, while with the Sluggi, we’ll have to do some speculation. As we learnt in episode 146, the Flyfins want to swim to the surface and believe awaking the whales is the only way they’ll be able to. Fizz explains that along with the Whales, the Flyfin used to live at the surface, swimming along side the whales as companions. However, when the Whales fell, the Flyfin fell with them, causing them to be stuck at the bottom of the ocean. For hundreds of years, they helped care for the Whales, waiting for them to wake up so they could return home. But as time passed, the Flyfin started to give up, venturing out to make new homes for themselves and abandoning the idea of returning to the surface, leaving Fizz, Fean and Finley to be the last Flyfin waiting for the whales to awaken.

From the Flyfins’s perspective, it’s very understandable why they would want to awaken the Whales. Their people were forced away from their home by some unknown force and as we’ve seen and heard, the Sluggi treat the Flyfins coldly because of their desire to awaken the whales, forcing them to hunt for their own meals since the Sluggi never give them extra food to cover their required diets and have seemingly banned them from entering the archive, seeing as they mention sneaking in there. Why wouldn’t they want to return somewhere they could call home?

Although, there are certain things about this explanation that don’t feel…complete or per say. Firstly, despite the Flyfin falling with the whales, they have no explanation to why the whales fell in the first. You would think that they would have some idea about what happened, as the apparent companions to the whales, so either what happened was so sudden/occurred in such a way that Flyfin weren’t able to get a proper grasp on what was going on, or details what happened got lost through the generations. Secondly, when do the Sluggi come into this story? We see in the flashback that the Sluggi and Flyfin have been working together to care for the whales for generations, but when did this start? We see in present day that the Sluggi are the heads of the sanctuary, but was this always the case? Since the Flyfin fell with the whales, it would make sense of the Flyfin first created the sanctuary, with the Sluggi coming along later down the line. Did the Flyfin get separated from the whales when they fell, with the Sluggi being the first people to find the whales after their fall? Did the Sluggi just gain more authority after the Flyfin started to leave? There is a clear tension between the Sluggi and the Flyfin siblings, is this something that built over time or has it always been present? We can’t be sure for now.

Since Fizz wants to get Kappa’s help to awaken the Whales, I doubt he would be deliberately hiding important information, especially with how taken he is with Kappa. If he is though, it could be because he thinks Kappa knowing certain information would cause him to refuse to help (YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT ANYMORE BUDDY), or because Siren was there listening. Speaking of Fizz though, it’s interesting that he focuses on returning to their ‘true home’ when talking about their goal. Throughout episode 147, we see him say things like ‘they’ll guide us back to our home’, expecting the surface to be ‘A place where you feel like you belong. A place where you feel safe and fulfilled in every way’. While I can definitely see this being a result of living with the Sluggi, this seems to be more personal, with there being more to the story. While I don’t know the specifics yet, I have a good idea.

When reading about Fizz and his siblings’s backstory, one main question arose for me: if they’re the only flyfin left who are waiting for the whales to awaken, then where are their parents? From the flashback panel we’ve seen of the flyfin, it looks like it’s just been the three of them since Finley was very young (I want to say he looks around 4-5 years old?). There are two main options I’m considering at the moment for what happened with their parents: either they died, or they abandoned them to find a new home for themselves. Now, one of these options is much more loaded than the other, but either case could help inform why Fizz is so desperate to find a home at the surface.

Now we’re going to move on to the Sluggi, who have the complete opposite view of the Flyfin. While none of the Sluggi have outright said it, Kappa is able to pick up very quickly that they don’t want to awaken the Whales, with them dedicating their lives towards caring for the whales and showing hostility towards anyone they believe has intentions to awaken them. Despite their treatment of him and his siblings, Fizz still thinks they’re good people, so the question is, what is their deal? With what we know and the speculations I have so far, I think I have some decent ideas to why the Sluggi wouldn’t want the Whales to wake up. If it was the Whales falling from the surface that created the Kelp Forest, with them being an energy source for the forest, it would be reasonable for them to fear that the Whales waking up could cause the forest to start dying. Not only would the Sluggi be out of a home, but additionally, all the creatures that live in the forest would be too, with them possibly dying out after losing their natural habitat.

Since we’re on the topic of the Sluggi, it would be wrong if I didn’t talk about one of my favourite new characters from the season so far, Galoo. Asides from just being a sweetheart, Galoo’s character is already being a set up in a way that can lead to some intriguing scenes. There’s one panel that really caught my attention when I first saw it.

With the inedible of the whales being woken up some point down the line, witches’s goal to find a new purpose and the blooming romance between Mono and Galoo, this could cause some interesting feelings of confliction. While we don’t know loads about Galoo yet, we do know a decent amount. She clearly has a very important role in the sanctuary, with her being the one that shows new comers the ins and outs of the sanctuary and her working as the Seer for the sanctuary. With her seeing ability being unique to her (out of the Sluggi at least) and her differencing appearance from the rest of the Sluggi, there’s the possibility that this is a role that has been passed down through her family/relatives, with her being raised to take over this position once she was old enough or when the previous Seer died. If (or really when) the discussion on whether or not the whales should be awakened comes around, I can see a lot of confliction from Galoo depending on how things go. At the moment, she obviously leans towards simply caring for the whales, it’s both what she was raised to do and the mindset of her culture. She views it as her purpose. However, if it becomes clear that awakening the whales is the better choice, I can totally see her battling feelings wanting to do what’s best for the whales, while also fearing what she will do with herself if the whales are gone. When it comes to the witches and this possible discussion, the idea that they could lead to people losing their purpose, while they’re looking for a new purpose themselves, could definitely cause some interesting feelings, especially with Mono as she grows closer to Galoo.

While we’re still on Galoo, I’m very interested to see how her memory ability is going to play into the Whales plot. As we learnt when we first met Galoo, she has the ability to see people’s memories by touching them. With the existence of such an ability, a reasonable question has been raised: could Galoo use her ability on the whales to see what happened? Is there were previous seerings, have any of them tried before, or have they never considered it because they have no intention to try and awaken the whales? We know this ability can be used with or without someone’s knowledge, as we can see in episode 127, with Orakos appearing to have the same ability. If Galoo ends up helping with awakening the whales, we could see her try to see into their memories. Although, even if Galoo wanted, it’s possible that she isn’t able to because they’re asleep. We’ve learnt quite a bit about what Galoo can do with her powers (seeing people’s memories, reading people’s thoughts and helping people recover memories), but we don’t really know what limitations it could have. It’s possible that she is unable to use her powers on someone if they’re not conscious. We’ll have to wait and see for now.

Treatment of Siren and Kappa

Now that we’ve covered why each party would either want to awaken the whales or keep them asleep, let’s move on to their differencing treatments of Siren and Kappa cause, oh boy, I do have some strong feelings about it. I’m going to start with the Sluggi this time around since my feelings on the Flyfin are a bit…stronger this time around.

With the Sluggi’s treatment of Siren, what they’re doing, in their eyes at least, is probably less special treatment and more repaying a debt. As we learnt, Shoal saved the whales from illness during his time there. Considering how important the Whales are to the sluggi, this is a VERY big fucking deal. Even if we don’t consider that and just look at the act itself, what Shoal did was remarkable. I mean, this man was able to successfully save these hundreds, maybe even thousands years old beings from the surface (you know, that place where the main God of this world is from) from an unknown illness they don’t know the cause of. If there is no complications in this story, god damn does Shoal seem to be a good ass healer. Additionally, if episode 148 is anything to go off on, the Sluggi likely learnt about the details surrounding the sharks prophecy during Shoal’s stay. Now, after four years since they’ve seen Shoal, his only son arrives looking for information? Yeah, it’s more than understandable that they would want to make sure he is treated well. However, despite the well meaning intentions, their actions have been causing Siren far more discomfort and anger, with Siren’s baggage of being treated as special/different at the shark castle and their blatant mistreatment of his boyfriend.

When it comes to the Sluggi’s treatment of Kappa…let’s just say my view on it went from understanding to absolute dogshit after a certain event. When we first meet the Sluggi, they meet both the boys with the same amount of understandable suspicion and hostility, considering they’re both strangers in the sanctuary. When Kappa reveals he’s the beacon while covering for the Flyfin, the Sluggi tell him how they don’t give special privileges to anyone there, including the beacon, which is just music to Kappa’s ears (so far so good). After the group has been approved by Galoo and they’ve agreed to clean the Whales, one of the Sluggi step in, telling Kappa to keep his distance from the Whales and not to touch them under any circumstances.

Now, on a surface level, I would say that’s a fair enough demand from the Sluggi. Kappa is the child of the Surface God after all, and as they explain, they don’t know how the whales would react to a god-like influence, especially with them being from the surface and their fragile state. Best to be on the cautious side than risk the Whale’s safety. However, it becomes clear that their treatment of Kappa is being less fueled by understandable caution, and more by a disdain for anyone interested in waking up the Whales. This can be clearly seen with them coldly glaring at Kappa when he tried to ask if there was anything he could do to help and, most importantly, how they refused to give him food since he didn’t do any actual work, despite them telling him to stay away from the whales while refusing to give him an alternative task to do in the meantime.

There is reasonable caution, and there is this, especially since Kappa completely fine to follow the rules they set and would be more than happy to do any possible alternative work set for him. Even though their treatment of Kappa would be unacceptable regardless, Kappa hasn’t even expressed a clear desire to awaken the Whales! All of this is likely coming from the potential they think Kappa has to successfully awaken the whales. I don’t think their treatment of Kappa is going to get better any time soon unless there is a serious talk with them, Galoo and Siren, though there might be some hope after what happened in episode 148, with Kappa cutting off Fizz (trust me, we will get FULLY into that). Furthermore, there’s something inevitably upcoming that the Sluggi will definitely blame Kappa for. Orakos and the Narwhal twins finding Kappa, and as an inconsequential result of this, them finding the sanctuary. Yeah, things aren’t looking good for him.

When it comes to the Flyfins’s treatment of Kappa, like with the Sluggi’s treatment of Siren, it’s very easy to see where it’s coming from. Like many people in the sea, they grew up with the idea that beacon was this grand god-like figure, completely unlike anyone or anything they have ever known. When they hear about how the boys are looking for the whales, they all go wide eyed, with Fizz asking if he’s here to awaken them. This reaction is quite interesting looking back at, since it made me question something that I’m surprised I didn’t think about sooner. If the Flyfin have been waiting for the whales to awaken for so long, why have they never form a prophecy surrounding awakening the Whales? If it really has been hundreds of years, you would think at least one generation would have considered it. Did they not want to be solely dependent on a prophecy or is there something stopping them from making one around the whales? We don’t know much about how prophecies work at the moment, so we can’t say for sure.

From this point onwards, the Flyfin then start trying to get Kappa to help with awakening the whales, with Fizz soon steamrolling ahead after he heard Kappa’s attempted journey to the surface, claiming that it was destiny that they met and that he’ll be the one to awaken the whales, with him never actually asking if Kappa would be willing to help them. With Fizz, it seems like that admiration for Kappa as the beacon goes a lot further than his siblings, and have turned somewhat fanatic and into some sort of crush on Kappa, although it doesn’t seem like he’s really aware of that yet, considering his reaction when Kappa asked if he was hitting on him. This possible crush alone have gotten him flak from some readers, but here’s the thing: there’s nothing wrong with Fizz just having feelings for Kappa. However, depending on how he acts as a result of those feelings, while knowing Kappa is already in a relationship with Siren, is where problems can occur, and BOY have problems occurred.

This brings me onto the Flyfins’s, but more accurately, Fizz’s treatment of Siren. God…where do I even start with this? In episode 137, we first start to see Fizz’s weird behaviour towards Siren, specifically after he learn that Siren is Kappa’s boyfriend. We see him have this really weird look on his face, blanking staring out while his siblings talked to Kappa and cutting Kappa off when he started to talk about Siren. It was really strange to see during my first read through, but with Fean’s knowing look at Fizz and more episodes, it’s clear that this was the start of jealousy about Siren and Kappa’s relationship on Fizz’s end.

Although, this idea didn’t truly stick with me until episode 142, where we see Fizz backhandedly say hi to Siren after being extremely warm and welcoming to Kappa. After this, we have his less than pleased reaction to seeing that Kappa brought Siren with him to dinner in episode 146, and finally, the condescending why he asked Siren’s question in episode 147. These little events might not seem like much on their own, but all together, it paints a clear picture of Fizz having some unfounded problem with Siren, likely fueled by jealousy. All of this, along with some additional feelings from Fizz, leads us to the shit storm that occurred in episode 148. After Fizz steamrolls Kappa with talk about destiny and how he’ll be the one to awaken the Whales, without even stopping to see how Kappa feels about this, Siren steps in to say that no, Kappa isn’t there to fulfill the dreams of the Flyfin. He’s there because he has his own dreams and goals to he wants to achieve, with Siren going on to say how if they want their dreams to come true, they should make it happen on their own. Fizz, being as headstrong about his dreams as he is, does not take kindly to this, trying to shut Siren off. Siren then responds with ‘You have a responsibility to your own people, right? Why should Kappa be the one to carry the burden?’, and OH BOY, does Fizz not respond well to this, questioning what Siren knows about responsibility while revealing he knows about the sharks’s prophecy.

After this horrible and uncalled for response, Fizz talks about how he knew Shoal when he stayed there and overheard him venting about his troubles, using Shoal’s guilt as a weapon against Siren before claiming that Siren must not think his people are important enough, considering how he’s still alive. All of this from Fizz was completely vile. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I first read the episode. Essentially saying that if Siren (who mind you, he has only known for a SINGLE DAY) cared about his people, he would have killed himself already. We know how much Siren is struggling with whether he deserves to live this season, with him trying to ask Kappa to kill him if they don’t find an alternative solution before the curse returns, so I can’t imagine how badly this is going to affect him moving forward. What the hell happened to Fizz that he turned out like this, while his siblings turned out to be well adjusted enough people to recognise how fucked this all was and were telling him to stop? To the shock of no one with a functioning brain, Kappa defends Siren, telling Fizz to stay away from both of them and that he won’t be helping Fizz with anything. It’s going to be interesting (and worrying) to see how Fizz will react from this, considering how desperate he is to achieve his goal and has no one but himself to blame for this situation.

Considering how Siren is, I think he’s going to want to keep this all on the down low (which isn’t going to be good for his unstable heart) while Kappa, though wanting to support him, is going to try and encourage him to tell someone about this. If the witches find out, Fizz is going to immediately end up on their shit list, especially with Neth, who I think would definitely want to keep a closer eye on Siren, with her knowing all too well about what it feels like to not feel deserving of being alive compared to your people. If the Sluggi find out? Fizz might as well start packing cause there would undoubtedly be harsh consequences for saying something that cruel to Shoal’s son.

I’m really intrigued with how Fean and Finley are going to deal with this situation. With Fizz fucking up any chances of Kappa willingly helping them, I wonder how they’ll feel about Fizz after all this and how they’ll interact with Kappa and Siren in the future. Since Fean is really giving off the vibe of ‘oldest sibling that had to raise their younger siblings’, I’m expecting a full scene of her yelling at Fizz. I’m not sure what Finley’s first actions will be though. I don’t think I have enough of a read of him yet to make a proper call. Either way, they’re probably do their best to apologise on their brother’s part, though I’m not sure how well that will go for them.

The clear irony of this whole situation, as we’ve seen, is that the more each group mistreats Siren and Kappa respectively, the more they will push away the one they care about, while also be placing both of them in dangers because of their hearts. As we learnt at the beginning of the season, because their new hearts aren’t completely theirs yet and they’re unable to control their magic, any strong emotions can cause them to react, and if the emotion is strong enough, all three hearts will be affected, putting the boys in danger.

Now…with constant mistreatment from one party while another party constantly mistreatments your boyfriend? Especially after what happened in episode 148? They may or may not give the finally push, but they definitely will feed into the build up of possible emotional outbursts from both the boys.

Shoal and the whales’s illness

To end things off, I’m going do what is becoming one of my favourite things in regards to Castle Swimmer: talking about Shoal. Since we learnt that Shoal saved the whales from illness four years ago, we’re coming closer to catching up with Shoal’s trail from the last ten years. To quickly lay out what we know so far:

10 years ago - Shoal first left to find an alternative solution to the curse, with Siren being nine at the time

6 years ago - Herm last saw Shoal, with him being injured but insisting on leaving right after. Since he’s in the Purple Peaks at this time, we can assume he met Lord Ogo around this time too

4 years ago - Shoal stayed at the sanctuary and treated the whales

We don’t know why exactly Shoal wanted to find the whales, but considering how we know that if they want to break the shark’s curse an alternative way, they also need to get rid of their prophecy, it’s possible that Shoal was hoping they would have answers about prophecies. It would make sense, since they are surface beings and prophecies are connected to Kappa and the Surface God.

I’m curious about what were the first reactions to Shoal when he first arrived at the sanctuary. While we know he ended up very beloved after saving the whales, how did the Sluggi treat him before? And what about the Flyfin? Fizz claimed he knew Shoal during his time there, but considering he only overheard Shoal venting about his problems, rather then hearing directly from Shoal, it doesn’t seem like they were very close. It doesn’t seem like any of the Flyfin recognised Siren as Shoal’s son either, likely finding out with the Sluggi, though we don’t see their reaction to this information, which is something we could keep in mind. The fact that Shoal is venting to someone at all interesting to seeing, since Herm said Shoal didn’t talk about himself much while he was with them. Back on topic, considering Shoal’s possible goal with the whales, did the Flyfin ever try to get support from Shoal in their goal to awaken the whales? Who knows at the moment.

Moving onto the whales’s illness, there’s a small detail I noticed when re-reading that might be nothing, but caught my eye. When talking about how Shoal helped supply medicine for the whales, Galoo specifically says ‘when their symptoms return’ not ‘if their symptoms return’, suggesting that they know it’s only a matter of until this illness returns.

When it comes to what caused the whales’s illness? No idea, but I do have quite a bit of paranoia surrounding it. Maybe it has something to do with them being away from the surface as long as they have? If the whales are working as a sort of energy source for the forest, maybe they’re coming to their limit, similar how whale carcasses in actual whale falls can only supply sustenance for so long.

I think that’s all I have for now. If other people have more ideas I would love to hear them!

#castle swimmer

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