#centaurworld essay

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

4. Elk is cast away both by the General and the Woman at different parts of the story. Compare and contrast the circumstances that drove each to cast him away, and the ultimate consequences of those actions on both the General and the Woman as well as on those around them.

The General is the first one to cast away Elk. He seems to go no contact directly after they are seperated from each other. By the time he is willing to meet him again, he is already married to the Woman and his only intention is to rid himself of Elk for good, first by trying to murder him and when that doesn’t work he orders his men to capture him and lock him into the deepest dungeon. He has tricked his way to get everything he ever wanted and is terrified of losing it. That’s why he shuts Elk out of his life. When Elk threatens to go to the Woman and tell her everything, the General uses more drastic meassures.

This works pretty well for him for the first decade while Elk is still locked up. However, once the Woman freed Elk, I imagine she might not have been quite as loving with the General afterwards, now that she knew what he was capable. None the less, she returns to him, so for now everything is still alright. Only when Elk starts attacking the human world with his Minotaurs the General’s pleasant life is interrupted. As the Woman confronts both of them in the rift, he still doesn’t feel guilty about what he did to his other half however.

As the key explodes, trapping the Nowhere King in the rift, the Woman in Centaurworld and the General in the human world, the General is (at least in part) spared the consequences of his actions. He doesn’t have to deal with his wife being mad at him for keeping this secret. He wasn’t forced to turn back into a centaur. He doesn’t even have to worry about the Nowhere King anymore. The only consequence that remains is the war in the human world and he doesn’t care about that. It doesn’t weigh on his conscience or else he would end it by killing himself. Quite the opposite, he sees it as a chance to distinguish himself as a hero, even if that means leading hundreds of soldiers to their deaths. He avoids the consequences of his actions and instead makes them everyone else’s problem.

As for the Woman: She casts away Elk after she frees him from his prison. While Elk insists that her freeing him must mean she loves him and wants to stay with her, she tells him to run away and not wait for her. She has now seen firsthand what her husband is capable of, and yet she decides to return to him. We see that even in the last episode after the great battle she has trouble not falling for his pretty words, despite being confronted with his inhumane actions. This lingering sense of loyalty, this hope that maybe he means what he says and not what he does is what causes her to cast away Elk.

As for him, this is the final straw. He cannot fit anywhere in society, he has been horribly abused by his own other half and now even the Woman has rejected him. In a last attempt to fit anywhere he creates the Minotaurs, but when they too don’t feel like family he starts treating the world as it has treated him. He starts the war, killing anyone in his way, not caring how it affects him and with no intention to stop. He becomes the Nowhere King.

When the Woman finds out what she has contributed to, she tries to make it up, tries to force the Nowhere King and the General back into one body. But the key explodes and she gets trapped in Centaurworld. The about 20 years until the main part of the series takes place change her. She is deadly afraid of re-opening the rift, despite once being so in favour of traveling between the worlds. Her fear of the Nowhere King has only grown and I think deep down she already knows that she doesn’t have what it takes to finish him. She also has lost her trust in the good in the world; in „Nothing good is meant to stay“ we see that she is now paranoid that anyone you love could turn out to have terrible secrets and to be a monster. After the rift is re-opened she falls into a deep depression, seeing no hope to win the war.

The Woman casts away Elk to protect him while the General casts him away to protect himself. While the General doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions, the Woman cares a lot. She doesn’t want anyone else to die, while the General is happy to let this war go on forever if it means he gets to keep his status. He has become heartless to the point where nothing is important to him, where he will gladly lie in her face if it means he can keep being human. Meanwhile she doesn’t trust herself to let anyone else in her heart again because of how badly she was betrayed the last time. Yet she can’t help but feel compassion, even towards her abuser. It takes all her strength to go against her loving and forgiving nature and kill him in the end. Meanwhile, those who deserve her kindness she now views with distrust.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

1. Discuss the portrayal of the Nowhere King and all his various counterparts as a metaphor for toxic masculinity.

Let’s start at the beginning with the Elktaur. He is upset that he isn’t a human and it’s his deepest desire to become one, to the point that he constructs the rift key to split himself. He has this notion that noone will like him, let alone love him, if he is not a human. However the difference between humans and centaurs is looks only. They are equally intelligent creatures and have the same emotional capacities. If anything the biggest difference is that the centaurs seem to be more naturally talented with magic, seeing as every centaur we meet can do magic but the only human who seems to be able to do it is the Woman. So, the only thing that really sets the Elktaur apart from a human is the way he is perceived. We could thus see his desire to become human as a metaphor for a guy in the real world who knows he doesn’t meet gender expectations and has convinced himself that as long as he won’t change that, he is undeserving of and will not get any love.

It is important to note that this doesn’t come from nowhere. (I admittedly didn’t think of the following point myself, but saw it ages ago on another post here on tumblr that talked about the Nowhere King’s backstory as a metaphor for racism. Unfortunately I can’t recall who posted it, otherwise I would have linked it. Maybe someone in the comments will know.) The Elktaur got these believes from the society he lives in and his life experiences. Humans coming through the rift constantly talk of Centaurworld and the centaurs as lesser. As a riftworker the Elktaur is forced to hear their criticism all the time. Furthermore he is not close with his coworkers (or anyone else, as far as we see), so he doesn’t have a support system to reassure him that he is good enough as he is and that the humans are the ones in the wrong here. He thus internalises the idea that to be a real person (or in our metaphor, a real man) you have to be so-and-so.

This goes so far that when he meets the Woman, he can’t believe that she likes him the way he is. He feels the need to hide, the need to perform humanity (in the metaphor: the need to perform society’s standard of what a man has to be like) in order to win her love. He takes this to the extreme when he finally splits himself in half, denying his animal-half any chance of ever fitting in anywhere or of being loved for who he is, and returning to the human world as just his human-half. In a man who embraces the idea that one would need to perform a traditional gender role, this might express itself in different ways – casting aside hobbys and interests that don’t fit the idea, surpressing your emotions, mistreating women, acting more aggressive, changing your clothing style and working out, perhaps taking more drugs than you usually would.

We are now left with the Elktaurs two halves, Elk and the General.

The General fullfills his idea of what a man should be like. We see him act charming and he gets the Woman to marry him. Meanwhile he acts aggressive towards any threat to his new status, especially Elk. Elk is the only one who could expose he is not a „real“ human and thus needs to be silenced. Similarly, someone who has embraced traditional masculinity to the point of toxicity and changed everything about himself might turn on former friends and bully them to prove that he is no longer like them, might throw away anything relating to his „none-masculine“ past or randomly start picking fights with strangers for no reason just to prove he can win them.

We see with the General that holding on to toxic masculinity can lead to a blatant loss in empathy. Not only does he prove himself capable of locking his other half away in a tiny cell for a decade. He also performs to be a great war hero, claiming to care for the fate of the human world and the lives of his soldiers. However, if he truely cared, he would have dropped the act long ago and reunited with his other half, seeing as he knows this would be the fastest and safest way to end the war. But he is committed to living this lie, to the point where he stabs Rider as she is about to end the war.

Now on to the Elk. He is unfortunately not free of toxicity either. He gets cast aside and then captured and tortured by his other half and it’s easy to feel sorry for him at first. However, he also falls down the incel rabbit hole. We see him obsessed with the Woman, despite the fact that she has found someone else to love and tells him that he should not wait for her. He interprets even the smallest kindness from her as prove that she is actually secretly in love with him. Even at the rift at the end of season 1 he is still under the impression that she came for him.

Elk is even more an outsider than the Elktaur was. As far as we know, at this point there aren’t any other animals that have human-level intelligence or can talk, just humans and centaurs. Elk fits nowhere, but once again mostly on a surface level. He is still capable of talking, so theoretically he could find others who share his interests and make friends. However instead, he decides he needs others to become like him. If they don’t also feel/look like freaks, they couldn’t possibly like him. So he creates the Minotaurs, creatures melted together against their will. We can see that the more often he does this (and presumably notices it doesn’t work), the worse he gets. After a time this stops being about making himself a new family and starts to be an army in the making. In season 2 we can even see him eating the Minotaurs to sustain himself. In the final episode, the Nowhere King states clearly what it is about for him by then: bringing about more suffering. The world was cruel to him, so now he is cruel back.

This can be viewed as a metaphor for someone who might have internalised toxic ideas about masculinity, but can (for whatever reason) not perform them. He cannot escape being seen as not „manly enough“. He might first look for people with similar experiences, maybe in the hopes of bonding through the trauma of being seen this way by society. But shared trauma alone is not a good foundation for relationships. Or (like Elk/the Nowhere King) he might perpetuate the trauma he experienced, bullying others for not living up to the standards, the same way it was done to him. (Maybe not peers, because someone like that would not neccessarily be in a position where he can bully others, but maybe younger students (if he’s still in school) or one’s own children, random customer service workers or subordinates at one’s work place.) And as time goes on, this would only get worse. Meanwhile, such people get more and more convinced that their continued isolation is society’s fault, when at that point, it’s mostly due to their cruelness towards others.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

I ran across this post by @pancake-breakfast a while ago (actually quite a few months) and finally got around to write my own answers. I'll be posting them one at a time because they're rather long and I kinda want people to actually read them.

1. In the last episode, Elk claims he and Horse are the same. What evidence is there to support his claim? What evidence is there to refute it?

Let’s start with the similarities. Both Elk and Horse are unique in Centaurworld as well as in the human world. They are the only beings who are neither centaur nor human, but still possess a similar intellect and the ability to talk. They both find it difficult to find their place in society. Elk tries to console himself with food, but can’t stand the loneliness and eventually begs the General to reunite with him into one being. Meanwhile Horse struggles to come to terms with her changes in Centaurworld too, feeling like none of her friends truely understand her and fearing that not even Rider will anymore.

Both of them also (for the longest time) depend on the love of one specific human, Woman and Rider respectively. You could even say they both get unreasonably jealous at some point. Horse of course when she hears about Becky Apples, thinking that Rider wants to replace her. And Elk back when he was still the Elktaur is jealous of all the humans at the ball who get to spend time with the princess, even though he could just go back in and rejoin them. Elk also gets jealous of his human-half, when he finds that the General managed to marry the Woman.

Both of them went to drastic measures to assure they would be (re-)united with their respective human. The Elktaur split himself in half – unfortunately this only worked out for his human-half, not for Elk. Horse crossed Centaurworld, reassambled the rift key and fought the Nowhere King to reunite with Rider.

Neither of them where happy with their centaur-like traits (at least in the beginning). Horse hates her wibbly-wobbly physique almost the entire first season and is not a fan of her tail’s magic. Elk wishes to be human just as much as he did when he was still the Elktaur, having internalized the human’s opinion that centaurs are lesser.

Both have spent time trapped, though for Elk it was much longer and much lonlier. He spent ten years locked away in a cell so small he couldn’t even stand and (probably at least) another 20 years alone in the rift. (The timeline is a bit weird here. The war in Centaurworld probably only ended after the rift was closed. Wammawink’s village was killed in the war when she was still a child. She seems like a young adult when she meets the rest of the herd (maybe 20 or so). Durpleton seems to be about ten at that point. During the final battle he is confirmed to be 47, meaning Wammawink would be in her late 50s to early 60s, meaning the rift would have been closed for about 50 years. However that doesn’t add up with how old the Woman and the General would need to be at this point, let alone with how in S2E8 at about 46:55 we see that Rider was born before the rift closed and she’s at best in her 20s. Maybe Centaurs just age faster, and Durpleton’s age is in giraffe-years or something?) Anyway, Horse on the other hand is only ever trapped shortly and usually with company (with the herd in the Moletaur jail, with Rider at the rift, with Elk in the Nowhere King’s mind).

They both have been traumatized, Elk mostly by his captivity, but also by his other half trying to drown him and by the Woman’s rejection. Back when he was the Elktaur, he was also traumatized by being treated as a second-class being by most humans. Horse on the other hand is mostly traumatized by the war she grew up fighting in and by being so abruptly seperated from her closest friend Rider. Elk deals with this by forcing trauma back onto other people and at the start of the show, Horse is similar. She enjoys murder and she has no problem risking the herd’s safety and lives if it brings her closer to what she wants.

Here is where their differences start though. Horse, through the course of the series, learns how to properly deal with her trauma instead of surpressing it and traumatizing others. It takes her time and hard work to do so. One of the important aspects here is that she has the herd – especially Wammawink – to rely upon to help her. She trusts them to tell her when she’s acting wrong and (although it often takes her a while to accept it) to reassure her about her changes and her inherent worth.

Elk does not have that. Back when he was still the Elktaur he might have had it; the Woman could have been reassuring to him the same way the herd is to Horse and convinced him of his worth. But he couldn’t trust her, wouldn’t trust that she was genuine in her kindness and split himself into two. Instead of accepting and learning to live with this change, he starts to become evermore desperate to go back to how things were. After his imprisonment he then tries to forcibly create himself a support system, but it doesn’t work. Horse never needed the herd to fundamentally change who or what they are to feel like they could support her; the Elk thought he needed to create the Minotaurs so they would understand what it was to be like him.

Horse over the two seasons learns to shake off the societal expectation of what she can and can’t be – a friend, a shaman, a warrior, a singer, a strategist etc. instead of just a war horse – and to redefine what friendship means to her – wanting to be with someone instead of needing to be with someone. But Elk is trapped in the mindset that as long as he isn’t human, he is noone, and he needs the Woman to reciprocate his love to the point that he interprets every little kindness from her as a sign that she does.

Another fundamental difference is how Horse reacts to a disagreement with Rider vs how Elk reacts to a disagreement with the General. Rider basically tells Horse that she doesn’t trust her enough even after Horse was willing to give her life to buy them more time. Horse is hurt but tries to go on with what she knows is right. And when Rider gets stabbed, Horse isn’t glad or rubs it in that she was right. She is concerned about her friend’s life and stays by her side thereafter. She trusts that they can work through this and that they only have each other’s best interests at heart. Meanwhile when the Elk and the General disagree about whether they should reunite, Elk immediatly threatens the General. The General escalates things and tries to drown his other half. When that doesn’t work, Elk rubs it in the General’s face. Neither of them cares at all about the other’s wellbeing.

Horse bravely leaves everything she loves behind in an attempt to stop the Nowhere King. The Elk has nothing more to lose, and if he was just concerned about the General hurting his (supposed) love (e.g. by lying), he could have sacrificed himself, knowing it would take out the General as well. (Same goes the other way around if the General was truly interested in saving the world from the Nowhere King.)

The two of them may have started out very similar, but where Horse changed and grew the Elk remained stagnant, was obsessed with the past and became increasingly cruel.

(I’m also working on a song-based comparison of Horse and the Nowhere King, I’ll link it here and in my pinned post once I have completed it.)

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

2. Do you think the final choice the Woman made at the end was the right one? Why or why not?

From the Woman’s perspective I don’t think it was about making the right or wrong choice. It was about finally closing this chapter of her life. We already see this at the end of season 1 when Wammawink asks her to „think of the fragile things“ and Woman replies with „No“. Not „That’s what I’m doing“ or „I try to protect all fragile things by keeping the Nowhere King locked up“. Just a No. She’s not thinking about anyone but herself anymore and having the Nowhere King locked up between the worlds keeps him conviniently out of sight and out of mind. By the end of season 2 she has learned just how much the Nowhere King and the General fooled her. She also knows now that nothing will stop him from trying again and again to manipulate her into being with him. I think she knows she won’t be able to resist forever – it took Horse pointing out how fucked up this all is on the battlefield for her to even get properly mad at him for what he’s done. I think she sees killing him as her only escape, for she knows if she doesn’t, she will have pity with him and let herself get hurt again. „What a pity to behold; rest now tormented soul. Don’t you know I would have loved you the way you were – whole?“ is what she sings right before that final decision. I think, even at this point, she has not grasped that the Elktaur was never whole – not even as one being. He was already at war with himself and being in one body didn’t change that. But she doesn’t recognize this, so from her point of view he is now whole „again“ – so what could stop her from loving him again? But she knows she has to hold him accountable for what he did and this is the only way she knows how to, the only way to ensure they won’t fall back into their toxic codependency.

From a more general point of view I think it’s more debatable. She had already used the key to put his halves back together – the Nowhere King only exists inside the Elktaur now, not as a big, powerful being with insane mind control powers. He could simply be locked up.

Most importantly I think the Elktaur was okay with it, wanted it even. He wants to be put out of his misery already and probably doesn’t trust himself not to repeat his mistakes.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

Bonus: What’s up with West Covina and/or Becky Apples?

I actually think I thought about West Covina’s purpose in the story for way too long. I believe she is mostly just meant as a joke because you expect her to be Glendale in disguise but then she isn’t. But here’s an overanalysis anyway if you want one:

West Covina, despite not being Glendale and therefore not wanted by the Moletaurs, acts really suspicious throughout the episode. After she introduces herself to Wammawink she points to Horse with a „What’s happened there?“ and then leaves while Wammawink’s distracted.

In her song she seems to understand Glendale because she points out that holes are good for hiding stuff, but at the same time she assumes Glendale must be a criminal if she’s „probably in jail“ and calls her a liar. Before she gets arrested she says that she likes Hootenannies.

I have two theories about her purpose beyond just a joke in this episode and both are not really solid. One ist hat she’s supposed to represent how people – especially in law enforcement – seemingly can’t differenciate POC very well. She’s confused with Glendale because they’re the same species, even though unlike Glendale West Covina has a mustache and wears glasses. Though I feel like if that was the supposed message the writers might have taken it more seriously.

My other theory ist hat West Covina might be related to Glendale. Glendale sings in S2E5 that she doesn’t have parents but used to and it’s unclear if they’re dead, left her because of the stealing or if she „stole“ them (and they’re lost somewhere in her portal tummy). Seeing as West Covina and Glendale look so similar they get mistaken for one another even by Glendale’s closest friends this could be why. Though once again I think if that was the intention then the writers would probably have made it clearer.

As for Becky Apples, I think she examplifies what Horse could have been if she never realized her trauma and worked through it. She doesn’t seem to care who is giving her orders, does her own thing (in battle) without coordinating with others first and is an efficient killing machine. She will listen to commands from (probably) anyone if she knows she gets an apple for it and is paranoid to the point of sleeping with her eyes open.

The only time we don’t see her cool and collected is when Comfortable Doug appears. While this might just be because it was sudden, I think it could also be because she is Gary’s horse and Gary died imprisoned by the Moletaurs. Who knows, maybe he was for her what Rider is for Horse and what we see of her in the show is just what she became after Gary’s imprisonment/death.

Also, she works as a first hint that the General is not actually as good as he appears. Knowing that she went on a murder spree is the only time we see him genuinly happy. Any normal person would have been just as freaked out about this as Rider.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

5. In episode 3 of season 1 Horse tells the herd they can’t just build a houseboat from decoration, but instead must make sure they build something of substance first, with decoration being the last step. Discuss how the creators of the show reflect (or perhaps don’t reflect) this philosophy in their approach to the series as a whole.

Okay, so I think I’ll first go through a few of the establishing episodes and then through some overall points that are not just specifically set-up in just one episode.

Episode 1

The first episode is supposed to establish the main characters and the basics of the setting and to grab one’s interest enough that one would continue to watch. The last one is I think the thing it succeeds best at in that regard. We start the episode with Horse and Rider in the human world. While most people are probably not personally familiar with a medieval-esc war zone, it still seems pretty familiar to the viewer. For one, even if most have never lived through anything like it, a setting with warriors on horses riding into battle and a war-stricken environment is pretty familiar. And also, real-world laws apply – there is no magic yet. It makes it easy for the viewer to see things from Horse’s perspective once we get to Centaurworld. This new world is bright, colourful and full of strange creatures and magic, and we don’t know the rules any more than Horse does at that point.

On to the characters. I think here it does a pretty solid job, even if I think it could have been a little better. The character we get a pretty good foundation for is Horse. Thanks to starting with her and Rider it is very understandable why she is so desperate to get back. In a very short time it becomes very clear how close they are, why Horse (having lived her whole life in this awful environment) doesn’t easily trust others and, since (just like Horse) we don’t get to see what happens with Rider after Horse falls through the portal, we understand why she’s so stressed out about getting back as fast as possible.

With the herd it’s not quite as well done, but I think that’s because of just how many they are. Yes, through their one-liners we become somewhat a feeling for each character, but it’s not quite as enticing as with Horse. And everyone’s (but Wammawink) wish to leave the dome at the end of the episode seems kinda out of nowhere, since none of them seem even vaguely uncomfortable with their situation beforehand.

Now to the world. Here, I once again think the show lays a very solid foundation. The herd shows off a lot of the magic possible in Centaurworld in just one song, which is very effective, and since it’s in answer to Horse’s (logical) confusion at the concept of magic it doesn’t seem forced at all. I don’t think that any magic past this point is crazy different from the things established possible in that song, so it actually is a very solid foundation.

Episode 2

Episode 2 is supposed to establish the difference between Horse’s character and Wammawink’s character and their worldviews and reasons for their actions. The song at the beginning sets this up very brilliantly I think. They don’t go into why they think the way they do, but you can see that their views are fundamentally opposed. Horse thinks you have to be able to go through every hardship on your own, you have to be tough or you might as well not try at all, and everyone has to look out for themselves. Meanwhile Wammawink wants to protect the people she loves from any possible harm, even if that means they’ll never learn how to defend themselves. It makes for an interesting conflict and is also thankfully something you could actually find a middle ground on.

In later episodes we even get to see how they came into that mindset. Wammawink lost everyone she knew in the war, so she’s determined to never let that happen again. Meanwhile, Horse is used to  constant survival mode, where she has to function perfectly at her job (finding a way out and then running as fast as possible plus maybe some maneuvers so Rider can fight better). She cannot look after Rider, too, she has to trust that Rider does her job just as well as Horse does hers or they won’t make it out. Neither can she expect to get coddled by Rider for the same reasons.

Unfortunately I’m not sure this conflict is properly resolved on screen. Yes, in the final battle Wammawink has stopped trying to protect the herd from everything and they are allowed to fight. And yes, in the final fight Horse is more mindfull of her companions than in episode 2.

BUT

I don’t recall a single scene where Wammawink makes an active decision to step back and give the herd a chance to speak up for themselves.

Glandale is left behind on accident both when she finds her own way out of the underground and when she gives her speach to the Coldtaurs. It’s not because Wammawink chooses to stop her overprotectiveness and for the latter most of that time Wammawink is convinced Glendale won’t be able to do anything on her own.

Ched is turned into a horse while Wammawink is asleep, and before that she was too scared to register anything at all, let alone to protest and keep anyone safe, so it’s not really her choice to stop her overprotectiveness here. And the only other bit of character development (if you can call it that) he gets is when Horse jumps into his memories, and Wammawink is actively against that.

Zulius… let’s be real, he never gets anything to do and therefor no chance for Wammawink to let him do it.

Durpleton also gets a „wish“ from the Treetaurs, once again Wammawink is not in a state to actively decide to not be overprotective. The other part of his character development is fathering Stabby. I mean I guess she doesn’t overbearingly try to teach him how to be a pretend-father to an adult so maybe that counts as her dialing it back a bit?

It’s not that I think those are bad developements, I just think there could have been more of an emphasis on Wammawink actively choosing to give them a chance to do stuff for themselves instead of just happening to step back basically by accident.

In quite the other direction, it feels like Horse learned her lesson maybe a little too quick. By the end of episode 2 she apologizes for not looking out better for the other members of the herd. And I get it, it would be somewhat unbelievable if they decided to get back to helping her after what happened with the Taurnado if she didn’t apologize. But I feel like if seeing them all directly after, completely shaken up and everything didn’t make her remorseful, then just Wammawink telling her „my herd is as important to me as Rider is to you“ wouldn’t suddenly change her mind either. A lot of Horse’s journey is about her healing from the trauma of constantly living in a war and it would have been nice if she learned through that journey that she should care more for the (mental) well-being of her teammates. Or learn how to work with them as a team as well as she did with Rider, because either she will still try to do things on her own (the Beartaur, the recruitment in season 2, the Nowhere King’s memories) or work mostly with Rider (in the rift, in the final battle).

Episode 3

Episode 3 basically lays the foundation for the rest of season 1. Horse starts to open up emotionally after she thinks she saw Rider. I think it’s a good starting point. For one, Rider is the only thing she really cares about (at that point), so it makes sense that seeing her but finding out it wasn’t really her would make her emotional. It also makes sense, since it’s still the beginning of her journey, that she doesn’t wanna admit to her feelings, that she still upholds the toxic idea that a soldier can never cry, that she’s embarrased about her tears and is angry with everyone who tries to comfort her. Her emotional journey hereafter builds on that perfectly.

Wammawink learns serious magic. While I think it’s a bit of a rushed arc for her in just one episode, it makes sense for the rest of the show. It’s a good reason why she would take up a bigger role than the other members of the herd (especially in fight scenes) and the few pieces of background information that come with it (namely her unfinished Shaman training) are a solid reason for why she always seems to know more about Centaurworld than all the others.

This episode gives us the goal of forming the key to the rift. It maps out where the heroes need to go and gives us a reason why. It ties nicely with Horse’s already established goal of wanting to get back to Rider by telling us how to do so.

Last but not least, we first meet Woman at the end of this episode. That not only uppens the stakes a little, because we don’t know who she is or if she’s good or bad. What we do get to know is that she doesn’t want the herd to succeed. But it also sets up the events at the rift in the end of season 1. Though I do find it somewhat disappointing that she never tries to intervene before that point. I think even just having her be the one to ask the Beartaur to capture the herd (instead of it being his idea) would have done a lot to make her seem more like an active threat. (And it could have worked since especially in season 2 we see that they are pretty close.)

General foundational things

One thing I really like in looking at the show through the lense of „Is it a solid foundation or just decoration?“ is the art style. Centaurworld is colourful and cartoony and whimsical and I think it’s easy to get the impression that that’s decorational. But it actually serves several story-purposes and I really like that:

Because it’s so different to the more „normal“ human world it helps get into Horse’s mind, just as mentioned above. And just like Horse, you get used to it after a while.

It’s fundamental to the Nowhere King’s backstory. We can see the human seeing Centaurworld as stupid and childish and not worth taking seriously just because it is this whimsical. A huge part of the Nowhere King’s problem was the feeling of not being taken seriously just because he comes from this world instead of the more sober human world.

It’s fundamental to the story’s theme of connecting with your inner child. Yes, it’s whimsical and colourful, so what? It’s also fun and a neccessary part of yourself that you shouldn’t cut yourself off from.

It underlines Horse’s change to a more well-rounded and balanced character. The more she accepts her centaur-like parts (like her magic, her emotional needs etc.) the more centaur-like her appearance becomes. One of my favourite parts is how she mourns the version of her that just stubbornly ignored those parts in season 1, but by the end of season 2 she’s devestated to be back to her human world body because she has grown past this trauma mask.

The character foundations of Glendale, Ched, Zulius and Durpleton are not established quite as fast and deep as Horse’s and Wammawink’s which is why I put them in this segment. For them I don’t think the foundation work was handled quite as well. A lot of their backgrounds is only explored in the middle of season 2 when Horse jumps into their backstories, which is pretty late. It’s also not paid off super well except with Durpleton. I imagine it’s probably due to limited time and the fact that they’re not quite as much in the foreground as Horse and Wammawink. It makes the herd feel like background characters when they should be of equal importance.

Glendale says she steals because she’s anxious. We see very briefly at the start of season 1 how Wammawink tries to help her with it, but it doesn’t seem to be a very reliable help because as we know Glendale keeps stealing stuff as a coping mechanism throughout the entire show. I guess that’s because it’s a usefull plot-device (need something? Oh, Glendale has it in her belly, don’t worry), but I think that could have still worked even after she stopped stealing everything in sight. (Think of it as using the portal tummy as an organized weapon storage room instead of the chaotic towers of trash we see in the show.) But without any sign that she has gotten better at dealing with her own anxiety she can suddenly help the Coldtaurs with theirs. And she gives them the advice that didn’t actually work for her.

Ched hates horses. Yet neither getting turned into a horse nor Horse’s confirmation that the Centaur’sTM treatment was fucked up help him in any way. He still hates horses by the end of the series. There’s not even a milder version where he might be like „All the other horses still suck, but not you Horse“. Or even just his jabs gradually becoming rarer as a non-explicit, subtle sign for character development.

Zulius gets the least of anyone. We have no idea about his backstory, about why it’s so important to him to be pretty or about the extent of what happend with Splendib (did he just lose the contest to him? Are they exes?). His development is equally shallow: Splendib makes some good suggestions for the Hootenanny and suddenly everything is resolved. I could actually die mad about this because Zulius is one of my favourite characters.

With Durpleton I’m not sure if they intended his background to be so serious from the start or if that was an afterthought. I’m not a fan of fart jokes, but with the added background from the Bunch O‘ Scrunch episode and having Stabby as his character developement it works really well.

Now onto the Nowhere King. I think he has a really good foundation. The combination of being a centaur (and thus viewed as lesser by the humans), internalized centaur-phobia, working in a job where noone understands him, the fear of getting rejected for who he is by the one person who has been nice to him so far, turning himself into just half a person, then getting almost killed and locked up for 10 years by his other half once they’re split and trying to force a found family in all the wrong ways just makes sense as to why he is how he is. And the teasing of how horrible he would be is very well done; the song is creepy, vague enough to get afraid of something unknown but not so vague that it’s none-threatening and once you get to know his background story the lyrics fit perfectly. I also liked that his appearances in season 2 are very sparse even though he’s now free, because it keeps the suspense high – you don’t get too used to him.

Some things that I think lack any foundation and are purely there as „decoration“:

Rider’s and Horse’s fight in the last episode. They are so close to each other. Rider didn’t even wanna get another horse because Horse was a friend to her, not just an animal on which she could ride. Her saying „You’re just a horse“ and basically trusting the General over her best friend after it’s been so long established just how much they value each other made no sense and was just for shock reason / to add drama with Rider getting stabbed.

The Birdtaur’s social media addiction. I understand that it makes for some interesting points, but it just doesn’t fit the world setting and imo it doesn’t even make sense. The tweets are baby birds. They fall on the ground. There is no logical way anyone else should know what that tweet says. And unless they all hover like directly over the herd the entire time, how do they watch them? If it’s some kind of magic, could we at least get to see it?

The setup and payoff for Horse in Bunch O‘ Scrunch don’t really match. She feels like she left Rider alone for nothing and that she has no value in winning this war and the solution is to learn that her friends have trauma. I think both of these things are worth exploring, just one is not really a solution for the other.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

3. Utelize the Who Is She/Who Was She song series to discuss how Horse’s way of defining herself changes throughout the series.

In the beginning of Who Is She Horse pretends to be super confident and to be an impressive singer and dancer. This is insofar a lie that she feels super uncomfortable with the situation and doesn’t actually wanna perform for the Cattaurs. She actually is a genuinly good singer and dancer and seems to have no problem performing at other times, so it’s not that much of a lie. She also claims that her magic is very inspired, which is probably the biggest lie in this beginning part because so far she only has one spell (as far as she knows) and she hates it.

After the Glitter Cats make her trip, she decides to be honest. She says „she is strong, but she hides her fears inside“ and „she won’t stop ‘til she’s home“. This is true since we spent the last few episodes watching her trying not to cry in front of others, surpressing her frustration and overall just very determined to go home. What is most interesting here is that she says she’s „strong but she hides her fears“ and not, for example, she’s „strong ‘cause she hides her fears“. I think this already shows a change in mindset from the beginning of the show where she was convinced that surpressing emotions is neccessary to be a strong warrior. Now she says she’s strong despite hiding her fears, almost as if she’s aware that sharing them and trying to work through them would make her stronger than surpressing them ever could.

The song continues with „she’s a warrior, she has stared the darkness in the eye“. Horse defines herself via her ability to fight even more clearly here. It’s in character for her since that’s what she’s done throughout the entire season so far and even later it’s still a huge part of how she sees herself. What’s new is the next line: „She is flawed but she’s learning, she is awed but she’s yearning for someone worth it.“ Horse acknowledges that even though she is a tough warrior, this doesn’t mean that she doesn’t also have flaws she needs to work on, although she doesn’t go into detail about what she thinks those flaws are. She also admits to being awed (which I interpret as being awed with Centaurworld), which isn’t a side of her we get to see very often because usually she complains about how weird Centaurworld is and how much she hates it there. Here she admits that she likes Centaurworld, yet in the same sentence she also makes it clear that this doesn’t matter. No matter how much she is awed by Centaurworld, her yearning to get back to Rider is stronger. When she then sings „This is hard, but she’s worth it“ it could be seen as her admitting that leaving Centaurworld and her new friends and all the things she’s figuring out about herself behind might be hard for her, but at this point her friendship with Rider is more important than all of these things combined.

All in all, in this first version of Who Is She Horse defines herself primarily by her ability to fight and her relationship with Rider. We see hints that that’s not all there is to her, but she would rather leave the other parts of her personality behind than risk losing those big two things.

Next is the reprise of Who Is She that Horse sings to the Whaletaur. It starts with Horse asking for help. This is already a big change from Horse at the beginning of the season where she insisted everyone had to fight for themselves. This change comes from the fact that she doesn’t recognize herself anymore. „I think I’m far too gone and my reflection has become an unfamiliar someone.“ Her physique has changed quite drastically and she is under the impression that this has cost her her ability to fight and will furthermore cost her her relationship with Rider. We see in later episodes that the former isn’t true. Horse can still perform her manouver with Rider in The Rift Part 2 and in season 2 it’s very clear that she is also still very capable of coming up with good battle strategies and thinking like a warrior. However, Horse has at this point no way to know that. What she does know is that her defined muscles have been replaced with a wibbly-wobbly Centaurworld-like body. With these changes she has also begun to forget Rider’s face.

„So close but I think I’m stuck in place. I don’t deserve you now that I forgot your face.“ Now that one of the two aspects she defined herself by is gone and she worries that the other one is at least fading as well, she gives up fighting. Her morale is at rock bottom and she’d rather give up than risk another disappointment. It also contrasts with the first version of the song: According to Horse, Rider is worth it (aka the trouble of getting back to her) but Horse doesn’t deserve her.

„She’s the ghost of the girl I used to know, she’s the echo I am chasing.“ This part is interesting because in the context of the song (especially with the visuals) it is clear that she’s referring to Rider here. This once again empathizes how much Horse defines herself by her relationship with Rider. However, these lyrics also apply to Horse herself. She’s chasing the echo of the warrior she used to be, of who she was before Centaurworld. She longs to go back to being the Horse Rider knew. This isn’t possible because she has learned and grown and changed since then. The changes are so fresh however that Horse cannot see yet that they didn’t take anything away from her, but helped her become a better person.

The next part of the song is a reflection on her journey so far. Horse is in such a depressed state during this song, and here we see that emphasized with how she distorts the events: She didn’t go on her own and she is not alone right now. She may feel lost and panicked, but she made new friends who all try to help her (to the best of their abilities) and even the Whaletaur (whom she’s singing to), who is technically a stranger, just wants to help her. But she feels as though she’s on her own with all her worries. In the end she feels so crushed by all these changes and so alone in dealing with them that she choses to give up on even trying to deal with it and jumps into the Whaletaur.

The final version of this song is Who Was She. Now this song is set right after Horse sacrifices herself to buy the others some time. It starts with a spoken part where Horse apologizes to Rider for leaving her behind like this. I think it’s noteworthy that she only addresses Rider here, which shows that she is still her closest friend and her first thought. Only after the apology does she wonder what everyone thinks of her now.

As the actual singing begins, Horse realizes her situation, gone from both worlds. This time she acknowledges that it’s not just Rider she couldn’t properly say her farewells to, but all of her friends. She regrets that she had to hurt them this way, but at the same time is sure it was the right decision. In opposition to the other songs, other people’s perception of her is not the only focus anymore, but coexists with her thoughts and feelings about her own actions and a certainty that they were correct.

„She was a soldier, and an orphan, she was tough for so long. But she had to open herself up to others to truely be strong.“ In that first sentence, Horse reiterates how she saw herself for most of her life; someone who had been traumatized and had to face that every day to survive, someone who took their self-worth from being capable of facing it bravely. In the second sentence we see that she has grown from that mindset. Yes, she deserves to be proud of herself for her admirable fight in the war, but to truely be strong she had to learn to rely on others as well, to let people in, to actually understand what she was fighting for.

This time, when she recounts her trip through Centaurworld, it’s not in the context of feeling alone. Rather it evokes a feeling of „I did it, I went above and beyond to get where I am now. It was a hard journey but so worth it.“ The melody gives Horse’s (word-wise rather neutral) recollecting this triumphant feeling.

And then she finishes this song, saying she was loved. Yes, she went through this incredible journey, she made it to the other side, she improved upon herself along the way. But all this pales in comparison to the fact that she had people who cared for her, to the point that she claims that nothing but that love mattered. Before, Horse was anxious that who she was wasn’t good enough and that if she wasn’t the best soldier she could be, she was undeserving of love and would end up alone. Now she is sure that she is loved, all her flaws included. She is still proud of who she is and how much she grew, but she no longer relies on that to be the thing that defines her and her worth (to herself and others).

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

2. Compare and contrast the jealousy Wamawink displays for Jeffica with the jealousy Horse displays for Becky Apples.

So I think I first wanna talk about both of those things individually before I compare them. Starting with Wammawink’s feelings:

By the end of S1E8 we see that Wammawink is convinced she liked Sunfish Merguy for his personality (she claims „that’s what I get for liking someone for their personality“). However she barely knew him and very much objectified him throughout the entire episode (portraited him in a way that better fit her own preferences when we see in the drawing she made for Horse that she is very much capable of drawing people „realistically“, overly sexualizes Mertaurs in general). She then is upset that he already has a girlfriend and starts comparing herself to Jeffica, becoming jealous because she feels Jeffica is superior. She remains jealous throughout the entire rest of the show and displays great hatred for Jeffica, whom she doesn’t even know beyond looks. Wammawink also doesn’t like any of her friends to interact with Jeffica, as we see when she gets angry at Ched for having a massage appointment with Jeffica (S1E9).

In S2E4 Comfortable Doug tells Horse about Becky Apples. It is worth noting that Comfortable Doug exaggerates when he talks about her, telling Horse that Rider and Becky Apples „ride across the battlefield as one“, when in reality they don’t get along super well. However Horse barely seems to need his exaggerations to immediatly get jealous at Becky Apples and upset with Rider. In her court hearing with the Moletaurs she wonders if Becky Apples is hot, which always struck me as a little weird because that’s something you might wonder if you’re betrayed sexually/romantically and not usually when you best friend might have a new friend. (Does Horse maybe want more with Rider?) Anyway, in the hearing Horse also gets extremely angry and aggressive towards innocent bystanders because she thinks Becky Apples is undermining her relationship with Rider. Horse very quickly spirals to saying „Love is a lie“ and running away crying.

In comparison, we see that both Horse and Wammawink have very intense emotional reactions to finding out about Becky Apples / Jeffica. However that seems to be the only uniting factor. For Wammawink it’s about a romantic relationship while for Horse it’s (as far as we know) about a friendship. For Wammawink it’s about a crush on a guy she barely knew who is already in a long, loving relationship while for Horse it’s about her lifelong best friend potentially replacing her with someone new. Both of them overreact for oposing reasons: Wammawink barely knows Sunfish Merguy. She has no reason to feel betrayed by him having a girlfriend. Horse on the other hand has known Rider her whole life. She should have faith that Rider will not just replace her on a whim and is also a bit of a hypocrite, seeing as she made tons of new friends in Centaurworld, but flips as soon as it seems like Rider makes one new friend in the human world.

If anything, Horse should feel sympathy for Jeffica and Wammawink should feel sympathy for Becky Apples. They are both in the position of each other’s „nemisis“ (Horse in an established relationship with Rider, just like Jeffica is with Sunfish Merguy, and Wammawink being the „new person“ that Sunfish Merguy got to know a bit, just like Becky Apples is for Rider). They could realize that Becky Apples is about as likely to replace Horse as Wammawink was to replace Jeffica, and that instead of feeling entitled to date Sunfish Merguy Wammawink should respect his relationship just like Becky Apples should with Rider. (Which, to be clear, she already does. Becky Apples is actually not at all interested in getting in between Rider and Horse, which makes Horse’s reaction all the more unreasonable.) At least Wammawink and Horse both agree that their hatred towards Jeffica / Becky Apples isn’t helpful or healthy at the end of their duet.