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

4. Use at least three of the characters listed below to discuss ways people try to attain comfortableness. Be sure to address the effectiveness of their technique. Characters: Ched, Comfortable Doug, Elk, Gebbrey, General, Glendale, Horse, Sunfish Merguy, Tree Shamans, Wamawink, Whale Shaman, Zulius

Ched:

When Ched was younger he wanted to become a tulip stepping champion. Despite him being actually pretty good at it, he gets rejected by the CentaursTM because he’s a Birdtaur (and then gets treated as a ball after). For the rest of the show we see him trying to heal from this trauma by hating all CentaursTM (and horses) and becoming hypermasculine. He tries to become comfortable two ways: 1) rejecting everyone who reminds him of the ones who treated him poorly (before they can reject him) and 2) leaving the person he was back then as far behind as possible and creating a new persona for himself.

The first point works to a default. It’s good that he removed himself from the toxic situation in which the CentaursTM abused and belittled him. He also doesn’t cut himself off from other people completely and he seems to be quite happy with the herd as his new friends. However, it is unjust of him to be so hostile towards Horse just because she reminds him of the CentaursTM. It’s not even because of her behaviour, it’s just because of looks and thus borderline racist. He invests a lot of time and energy into being mean towards Horse eversince she joins the group and I don’t think someone who spends this much time being angry can be truly comfortable and happy at the same time. If he instead made an effort to see that Horse is nothing like the CentaursTM in any way that matters, I think he might have spent the journey much happier.

Onto the second point: I don’t think changing everything about himself made Ched comfortable either. We see in the final battle that he’s still really fond of (and good at) tulip stepping, so denying himself the fun of doing it for years (possibly decades) must have been hard. While I don’t think he could have competed without going back to the toxic environment of the CentaursTM, he could have still done it in his freetime just for fun. He basically internalised the CentaursTM’s cruel judgement that he couldn’t do tulip stepping just because he was a Birdtaur and instead turned himself into a buff gym-dude. It’s not that this doesn’t seem to bring him some joy as well, but we never see him quite as happy as when he is tulip stepping.

I think to become truly comfortable, Ched would need to learn that what the CentaursTM did was cruel and unjust. He doesn’t have to accept their gatekeeping and can find friends without hiding who he is. In turn, he should try to do better than them and judge a person not by their species, but by who they are.

Comfortable Doug:

When we get introduced to Comfortable Doug he works as a nightguard in the Moletaur jail. At this point in his life he takes his job very serious (e.g. he doesn’t allow for parties in prison) to the point where he even does stuff that’s not in his job description (like acting as a bailiff) but also isn’t overly invested (e.g. doesn’t care in which order the herd goes inside the hole). The biggest comfort he seems to have at this point is that Mary always backs him up and that they „see eye to tiny eye on everything“.

His life changes when he wins Johnny Teatime’s Be Best Competition (hereafter referred to as JTBBC) on accident after getting food poisoning. In The Rift Part 1 he sings that this was when he realized he never did what he wanted or went to find something to make him happy. Winning the sash made him realize that that needed to change and that he didn’t wanna go back to his job as a nightguard in the Moletaur jail where he only ever lived for other people’s wishes.

He says that he has always been called comfortable (because it’s in his name) which could be interpreted as him just never questioning whether he was happy/comfortable or not because everyone else just assumed he was, so he did the same. But now he knows he wasn’t. He tries not to make the same mistake that was done to him – just assuming that everyone is comfortable – and starts asking people whether they are comfortable. However this attempt to do better than people did to him seems kinda superficial since he pretty much just ignores Gebbrey when he’s telling him that he is not actually comfortable. Similarly his final message to Horse in season 1 is to „be comfortable“ which is extremely vague and not really helpful.

In season 2 Doug’s attempt at comfortableness mostly consists of him only doing what he is comfortable doing and nothing beyond that. He seems to have enjoyed JTBBC enough to go back there (according tot he Birdtaurs in S2E2), but we don’t get to see that. What we do see is that he sometimes shows up to be helpful, but as I said never beyond his comfort level. He gives helpful tips about the Coldtaurs and points out the herd forgot Glendale but when asked to dig a tunnel to the Coldtaurs, he refuses. Similarly he is comfortable taking a message from Waterbaby to Rider and from Rider to Horse, but not with helping to free Waterbaby.

Throughout season 2 Comfortable Doug also seems to look for things that help him be more comfortable. For one, he takes a vacation to visit exotic jail cells, maybe to find inspiration or to reclaim some passion that he once might have felt towards his job. He also starts to define himself by being different from all the other Holetaurs; he says he’s the only one who’s curious, with a dynamic mind and refers to himself as beyond physical laws at least twice. With his new attitude seems to come a rise in popularity in the underground, seeing as there is a „Doug 4 Prez“ poster in the hallway when Durpleton looks for Stabby.

In the season finale, we see Comfortable Doug on the battlefield as Flat Dallas. This is interesting because he has spent this season not doing anything that makes him uncomfortable. Yet he claims that war is never comfortable, so here he is back to doing something that makes him uncomfortable. According to the song lyrics he’s „the champion of the little guys“, so he is also back to being the hero of someone else’s story.

While we don’t see what got him to this point, I think this might be him finding a balance between just living for others vs just living for his own comfort. If he was purely acting for comfort and thus avoid the battle, it may have terrible consequences. All the tiny versions would be without a leader in the battlefield and every soldier could make the difference between winning or losing the war. If the Nowhere King wins, then there’s nothing Comfortable Doug can do to ever become comfortable again. So he has to take on this duty, even if it might make him uncomfortable, to guarantee a better future.

Overall I think Comfortable Doug’s attempt at comfort works rather well. He figures out he isn’t comfortable with his life the way it is, tries to figure out ways to remedy that while also trying to learn not to assume other people are comfortable the same way it has been assumed about him all his life, learns to set healthy boundaries but in the end also realizes that sometimes there are things more important than your own comfort.

Elk:

With Elk we see several different attempts at comfort. In the time after his creation he tries to get comfortable just living his day to day life. Even as he reviews this time in his backstory, he remembers that he enjoyed the food. But this attempt is unsuccessful. He grows weary of the loneliness that comes with what he is, half a person and with noone like him. He still loves the Woman and begs his other half to go back to how things used to be.

This is followed by what is probably the most uncomfortable time in his life. After the General tries and fails to kill him, he is locked away in a dungeon cell for ten years, so small he could barely stand and he looks awful when he gets out. He still thinks that the Woman could be what will make him comfortable, mesmerised that she came for him and even willing to get captured again if that means he can stay with her. But she makes it clear that he has to leave and that he should not wait for her. I think it’s because of this moment that we later see him blame her for what he becomes hereafter.

His next attempt at comfortableness is creating the Minotaurs. They are meant as a found family, but this doesn’t work. The Elk creates more and more and more of them, seemingly unaware that he loses more and more of himself in the process. But no matter how many Minotaurs he creates, it does not fill the hole in his soul and slowly he turns into the Nowhere King.

As the Nowhere King, Elk has seemingly accepted that he will never be comfortable, that there is no happy ending for him. „And now, more suffering. It’s all that’s left for us“ he says in the final battle. None of his attempts at comfort have worked out and he is tired of trying. If he cannot be as comfortable as everyone else seemingly is, then at least he can make everyone else as miserable as he is.

His attempt at comfortableness fails, I think, because he never stops to do any introspection. Why does he see the Woman as his only way out of being lonely? Why do the Minotaurs not feel like family? What is the root cause of his unhappiness? Instead of putting in the work to answer these questions for himself, he gives up and takes his frustration out on the world. In his eyes, it has failed to provide him the comfort he asked for, the comfort he deserved. And if he doesn’t get it, then noone else will.

Gebbrey:

Gebbrey spends most of the show being cold. He is in constant discomfort and mentions it pretty much every chance he gets. Most of the time, his discomfort is not even the main point he brings up, but instead that he misses his jacket. To him, the jacket is the only solution to his discomfort. Yet when he gets it back from Glendale, it makes him too hot. So hot in fact that it sets him on fire. He says „Not again“ as this happens, meaning this has happened before. And yet, even as he’s on fire he does not get rid of the jacket. He has idealized this jacket as a solution to his problem to the point where he doesn’t care that it doesn’t work and that it’s actively harming him. Hell, even to a point where he ignored that it already didn’t work in the past. Yet he refuses to look for other options.

Finding another option that could actually satisfy his needs without hurting him would probably take time and effort. He may stumble accross a lot of other options that also don’t work. If you do that for long enough, chances are you start to get hopeless and frustrated. What Gebbrey does instead is pinning all his hopes on an unreachable object. He doesn’t wanna try other things that could warm him up, he wants his jacket specifically. He can ignore the fact that the jacket didn’t work out in the past. Maybe he tells himself it was the circumstances, or maybe he knows that yes, the jacket made him too warm, but being cold now is so much worse, so really, how bad could it be to going back to being too warm?

This mindset is not affective for Gebbrey getting comfortable. He spends all his time in misery being cold. Yes, trying anything but the jacket might take time, but would it really take more time than hoping for something he might never get back? Something that never really served his specific needs to begin with? With this specific jacket he will only ever have the choice between two uncomfortable extremes: too hot or too cold. Gebbrey should learn to let go of that jacket and start looking for something that actually meets his needs.

General:

The General is obsessed with being the ideal human man. As half of the Elktaur he spent a lot of his life being seen as lesser, and instead of realizing that the people who excluded him were cruel and unjust, he decided to turn himself into the perfect human. This includes marrying a Princess and becoming a war hero. But it’s all just an act.

When we first get introduced to the General, he’s making fun of Rider for being nervous. He leads her on for a bit before he reveals his identity to her. Under normal circumstances this would be perceived as being a fun and charasmatic guy, especially since he’s acting very cool about the stuff she said before she realized who he was. (On first watch of the series it even might seem this way to the viewer.) But if you think about it: They’re at war and this just costs valuable time, especially since he knows she’s there to speak to him on important matters.

He then lies not only about his past but about knowing Centaurworld in general. As we learn in later episodes, this is so that his cover won’t blow. Making sure that everyone thinks he’s human (and always has been) is one of the two things he holds onto for his comfort. The second one is making sure that everyone assumes he’s a hero and overall a good guy.

To secure this second one, he has become a general. Not only does he lead this war, he leads it in a way that makes sure he looks good, without actually doing the thing that would be best. He leads an attack at the Nowhere King’s castle – something that was predictably a bad idea – and loses an entire battalion. After that, he would of course look like a bad leader if he tried that again (with probably similar results), so he immediatly decides that the human army will go from offence to defense. Only when Waterbaby holds her speech and he sees his army cheer for her does he change his opinion again, likely to not fall into his men’s disgrace. If the concerns he listed to Rider to justify his decision on going into defense were genuine, he would stand by them and accept that this might make him unpopular. But his opinion swings with the masses.

His need to be seen as the hero is however still trumped by his need tob e seen as a „real human“. He risks being seen openly killing Rider on the battlefield (which would for sure make him look like a bad guy instead of a hero) to maintain his human cover. And he doesn’t end the war – which would most certainly be seen as heroic – because that would immediatly betray his none-humanness. He would need to either go back to being the Elktaur by reuniting himself with his other half or he would need to kill himself, knowing that the Nowhere King could not survive with his other half dead. But both of these would betray his connection, and reduce him back to the status of centaur, which he avoids at all costs.

Speaking of which: Despite having been a centaur and being on the receiving end of distrust and resentment, the General now perpetuates those things himself, claiming that he cannot trust the centaurs. He has rejected everything Centaurworld stands for so hard and for so long that he is completely devoid of empathy – not for his soldiers, not for Rider, not for his other half, not even for the Woman, seeing as he still tries to manipulate her after all that’s happened.

This attempt at comfortableness works for him. He enjoys his new life and what he has become, even if it hurts everyone else and he can’t be truely close with anyone. Not once do we see him doubt that he’s exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to do. I doubt that he would realize that this is not a good way to find comfort even once he is revealed to be neither human nor a hero. He would just be angry that he lost everything he fought for. I think it would take him a lot of introspection (that he is unlikely to be willing to do) to figure out another way to become happy.

(Also, isn’t it fucked up that the only being in whose presence he seems to be genuinly happy is a horse that enjoys committing war crimes?)

Glendale:

Glendale (according to herself) steals to feel more comfortable. However, in her backstory she admits that stealing makes her feel both free and nervous. This means she is aware that stealing doesn’t actually help with her anxiety. In fact I think it adds to it because thanks to the stealing she’s constantly suspicious people might wanna take back what she stole and try to arrest her. I think the reason she still does it is that she would feel anxious regardless, but when she steals she also feels free in addition to that (which has to be better than feeling just anxious).

The reason she starts stealing is unclear but I think there are two possibilities based on what we learn in the backstory episode. For one, she claims that her tummy tells her to do it. This could mean a couple of things – Glendale might have an undiagnosed mental illness that manifests as the voice of her tummy. Or maybe the voice comes with the portal tummy magic and she’s the only one who hears / understands it (like Durpleton with his farts). Or maybe it’s not even meant literally and Glendale just has a gut feeling that tells her when / what to steal.

The other possible reason that Glendale starts stealing (and I think this one’s slightly more substancial) is that stolen objects can’t leave her. When she first meets Wammawink she tells her that she used to have parents (but doesn’t anymore) and that everyone just leaves her after a while. But stolen stuff (that she stores in her tummy no less, where it can’t really be taken back from unless she allows for it) can’t leave her.

The other thing we see her use to try and calm her anxiety is breathing in a bag. It’s something Wammawink introduced her to and that she in turn introduces to the Coldtaurs. What I find a bit odd about it is that it doesn’t really seem to help her. She never stops stealing throughout the entire series. I think maybe to completely feel comfortable she should have explored other safe methods that work against her anxiety and gradually understand that they are better for her than stealing. Also maybe she should have reflected on why she feels the need to steal in the first place and do something against the root problem.

Overall I don’t think Glendale’s attempt at comfortableness works very well, because the stealing just adds to her anxiety in the long run. I think she should instead follow her own advice that she gives the Coldtaurs and find healthy coping mechanisms that work for her and don’t hurt others.

Horse:

Horse’s sense of comfort is closely tied to her abilities as a soldier and her relationship with Rider. At the beginning of the show we see her very confident in the former, while the latter has been disturbed by her unwilling travel to Centaurworld. She aims to get back to what she thinks of as her personal comfort situation: fighting side by side with Rider in the human world.

At this point, Horse loves fighting, the „crushing of skulls beneath [her] hoves“, and she misses Rider „like a phantom limb“. Throughout her journey she learns she can be – is in fact – more than just a war horse. She gets more in touch with her emotional side, learns to defend herself with other strategies than just brute force and confrontation, discovers her magic and learns to joke and perform show-stopping musical numbers. These new parts of her however don’t add to her comfort (yet), but stress her out. She worries that with them, her two most defining characteristics are gone.

It’s only when she realizes that they’re not that she starts becoming more accepting of herslef as she is now. With The Rift Part 2 she has demonstrated both that she is still capable of fighting and that Rider still is her closest friend and loves her. Now that she knows her new parts don’t take away from that, she seems a lot more comfortable with them. Still, by the end of the episode she defines herself as „the horse who is going to build an army of Centaurs“. Her need to be seen as a good soldier still trumps her wish to be reunited with Rider.

I doubt that being comfortable has ever been on Horse’s priority list. In the world she lives in, having your comfortable dream life is just not a realistic option and so she never even allows herself to imagine it or strive for it, to the point that at the beginning of the series it seems like she doesn’t even know what she’s fighting for. She has convinced herself that killing is fun and that being a good war horse is what Rider expects of her.

In season 2 we see her struggle with this once again as she feels incapable when assembling an army. While she has accepted her new parts, she still needs to be a soldier so that she can hold onto her past identity. She has such a fixed mindset that being a good soldier would mean being the one who assembles the army on her own without any help that she can’t even register how well she works as a team with the herd and what she contributes, just because she isn’t doing it all by herself. For example, she is the one who strategically thinks of which centaurs would make good allies and which war strategies could prove effective. But her friends are the ones who are better at selling this idea to the specific centaur groups in a way that’ll make them actually agree.

What helps her become more comfortable here is seeing that she’s not the only one who struggles or who didn’t get what she was hoping for, by stepping through the herd’s backstories. But only when she jumps into the Nowhere King’s backstory in the final episode does she fully realize that she doesn’t need to be this old version of herself to be comfortable. For one, suddenly getting her old body back might have helped with this realization – she is horrified by it, not comforted as she might have expected before. But also the circumstances – namely that she thinks she will never be able to get back to her friends – give her a new perspective, and she realizes that living up to the exepectations that you and others may have for yourself isn’t a guarantee for happiness, but finding people who love you as you are might be.

After this realization we see that Horse doesn’t fight in the final battle. She instead stays with Rider. Being the perfect battle horse is no longer important, instead she’s comforting her best friend as she’s in pain. Not even when it’s down to just the Woman against the General and the Nowhere King does she leave Rider’s side now. And after the war is won, she decides her comfortable life is one surrounded by her friends, living together in Centaurworld.

Horse’s attempt at comfortableness is for the most part an unconcious one. She has never stopped to think what comfort would look like to her, let alone tried to persue it. (Unlike Rider, who in the Becky Apples episode remarks that she wishes she could just enjoy riding out with Horse „because we want to, not because we have to“.) She has internalized that she needs to be the perfect soldier and the show depicts her journey of unlearning that, of realizing she can be other things, that she can do things that bring her fun and joy and that she can spend time with loved ones even if it’s not for a battle mission. She only „attempts“ this life as the series‘ finale, so it’s hard to judge if it’s successfull in the long run. But it has a better chance at success than trying to be perfect at something that you only became out of neccessity.

Sunfish Merguy:

Sunfish Merguy’s attempt at comfortableness seems to be to just go with the flow / create as little conflict as possible. We see this right from his introduction, where he says he intentionally calls himself Sunfish Merguy because his real name is too hard to pronounce for others. He seems to have no problem with adapting his name, even prefering it to simply teaching people how to pronounce his name. He’s very friendly to the herd and invites them to play games and ride rides while they’re waiting. According to himself (saying so in Comfortable Doug’s song in S1E9) he is fairly comfortable with his way of living.

However, this chill, go-with-the-flow attitude is harmfull to the people around him. He doesn’t say what the Whaletaur will do, doesn’t try to prevent it once the Whaletaur shows up and can just casually ignore it once it’s happened. All this because it would make him uncomfortable (we see his discomfort as the Whaletaur shows up). And the herd is (understandably) disturbed by this attitude. For his own comfort’s sake he interupted Horse when she was trying to talk about her problems and thus made them worse.

His idea of helping others to become more comfortable is the arcade he’s built. There they can play silly games instead of adressing whatever problem the visitors may have. However, you can’t solve problems by ignoring them and even the most fun games will get dull after a while, if you’re even in a mood to test them to begin with. But talking about problems goes against his fun, relaxed attitude, so when the Whaletaur comes he just gives up and afterwise pretends like nothing happened.

I could also see this avoidant tendencies causing relationship problems for him in the future. We can see in S1E8 that he’s something between friendly and flirty with Wammawink, matching her energy. While I don’t think he’s actively trying to cheat on Jeffica (he is very casual when he mentions that he’s in a relationship in the end and never does anything with Wammawink), he also doesn’t stop Wammawink’s constant flirting. While I think it might be possible that he’s just very bad at reading social clues and thus doesn’t understand that Wammawink is flirting, I think it’s more likely that he just ignores it to not kill the flow. The fact that he doesn’t bring up that Wammawink’s objectification of Mertaurs disturbs him (despite his initial disgusted reaction to her magazine) speaks for this idea. Both Wammawink and Jeffica end up being hurt by this, and both of them „blame“ the other one instead of Sunfish Merguy.

Tree Shamans:

The Tree Shamans try to make people comfortable by giving them what they need, even if they themselves don’t know what that is yet. While I think this is a good approach, I also think it could be handled better.

What I like about the approach is going for needs instead of wants. For example, if someone came who wanted all the riches in the world and they’d just give that to them, eventually that person would just want more and more and more. However if they searched for the need that’s at the root of this want, they can figure out a more permanent solution. (It also prevents harm because many might come to them with a wish to hurt others but I doubt that anyone needs to hurt others.)

The first example I wanna use for this is Wammawink. She comes to the Tree Shamans after her village got destroyed and everyone she knew and loved died. I’m not sure they were actually right in saying that what Wammawink requested wasn’t what she needed. She was still really small and she clearly was in need of company, both to have someone to comfort her but also because meeting their social needs are really important for children (hell, even for adults). Wammawink didn’t just loose her parents, she lost everyone and everything. I doubt that the Tree Shamans could have brought her family back (I doubt anyone in Centaurworld has any ressurection magic), but she would have definitely needed adult guidance and friends (and probably therapy). And the Tree Shamans weren’t even all that compassionate in their refusal, which just makes this all the sadder.

The other example is Ched getting turned into a horse. Yes, he has horse-related trauma that he needed to work on. However, turning him into a horse without consent is not going to do that. For one it clearly gives him body dysmorphia. He struggles even with walking after he is turned. Then there’s also the fact that it changed absolutely nothing; Ched is no more compassionate with Horse after than he was before. He also never seems to understand why he was turned, which defeats the point. What he might have needed was something like therapy.

I think the major problem with the Tree Shamans attempt at helping people become more comfortable is that they may be able to tell what someone needs. But instead of telling the person and working out something together that helps with that, they simply decide that they know best and then don’t even ask for consent before magicking their solution.

Wammawink:

Wammawink suffered a great loss as a child. She loses not only her parents but her entire village in the Great War. As a result of that, her attempt at being comfortable is making sure she will never again lose her loved ones, her found family. Even when she is still a small child she becomes overprotective after her loss, trying to make sure that the Ladybugtaur doesn’t leave her and practicing her protective bubble magic. It’s the same magic she uses when we are first introduced to her, at that point used to keep everyone she loves under a huge protective dome.

This attempt to ensure her trauma doesn’t repeat itself works from her point of view. She is good enough at magic to protect her found family from most of the dangers in Centaurworld. She is under the impression that as long as they don’t fight, they are not in danger, and that their life together under the dome is a perfect paradise. In the backstory episode we see that she even encourages Glendale’s stealing as a (poor) coping mechanism if that means she will stay with her.

However, the herd sees this differently. They are bored with doing the same things every day and jump at the opportunity to be more adventurous when Horse suggests it. The Beartaur episode proves furthermore that Wammawink’s overprotectiveness has left the herd unable to survive on their own. With Wammawink out of the picture they don’t even know how to get food and are incapable of fighting the Beartaur, leading to them leaving Horse to fend for herself. This issue is unfortunately never brought up again in a meaningful way and we don’t see how the herd grows out of Wammawink’s infantilisation, they are just suddenly capable, seemingly out of nowhere.

Beyond her overprotectiveness, Wammawink also tries to make Horse her best friend, she even seems to not only want but need this to happen. She seems disappointed whenever Horse points out that she and Rider have been best friends her entire life and that Wammawink will not be able to take up that position.

Overall I think once again this is an attempt at comfortableness that works to a point. It’s good that Wammawink created her own found family instead of swearing off of love after her loss. I also think it’s positive that she learns to fight / defend so that she wouldn’t feel so helpless if anything bad happened again. But her need to mother everyone and protect them from everything is overbearing to a point where it might have easily cost her everything. Who knows how long the herd would have put up with living the boring life under the dome before they would have finally had enough and demanded to leave? Wammawink’s overprotectiveness also brought them in a situation where they were just as helpless as she used to be (if not more) and that might have cost them their lives one way or another if Wammawink had been knocked out for much longer. Lastly, it’s a surprise that her constant pushing at Horse to become best friends and to value her as much as if not more than Rider didn’t push Horse further away from her.

It seems as though by the end of the series Wammawink has found a more evenly balanced way to treat her found family. They are allowed lives outside of interacting with her and she trusts them to be able to fight for themselves should they need to.

Whale Shaman:

The Whale Shaman tries to give other people comfort by taking away their pain. In theory that sounds really good and very nice oft he Whaletaur to do, however it comes with a whole lot of problems.

For a start, the Whaletaur will only come to see you when your problems have become so severe that you basically sit at the bay crying. Anything that might have been an easy to solve problem is thereby getting worse and worse until you reach a point where you accept the idea of getting swallowed, having your pain absorbed and never returning to your life.

That leads to the next problem. While the Whale Shaman might take away the pain, it thereby also removes your memories and personality. You might forget all the bad stuff, but you also forget all the happy memories until your an empty, unfeeling shell of the person you used to be. And in the end you also die in there, with no chance to ever get your life back on track and possibly (from your loved ones‘ point of view) vanished without a trace and forever missed. Which also opens the possibility that the Whaletaur, by trying to take away the pain, actually creates new one. How many people might have gone there to be swallowed because they thought their loved ones were gone forever and they couldn’t deal with the grieve?

Lastly, the swallowing does not only bring the ones being swallowed just a very shallow, twisted kind of comfort, but it’s also bad for the Whaletaur herself. She has to feel the pain of all those people and is constantly crying because of it.

What the Whaletaur Shaman could do instead is encourage them / help them solve the problem. We see that she vaguely tries this with Horse, although just like the herd she doesn’t really find the right words. I think what the Whaletaur does could be interpreted as giving out very strong antidepressants in the wrong dosage without any additional help to deal with the depression (like therapy, support groups etc.), which is not a good way to actually help or give comfort. We see with Wammawink’s rescue mission that even just acknowledging the pain and the fact that it sucks could be a good first step to make someone feel heared. Brainstorming solutions together could be another great step. This way the Whaletaur could help others get more comfortable with their lives in a more productive way and without having to sacrifice her own peace of mind for it.

Zulius:

Zulius actually seems extremely comfortable in his skin most of the time. The only time he isn’t is in Cattaur Valley. I think that’s because he’s usually being himself, not over- or underperforming anything for the benefit of others, but in Cattaur Valley he suddenly feels the need to conform to their standards. He’s clearly upset the Cattaurs don’t value him as beautiful, that he never won the sash, that not even his efforts were valued and that he’s seen as old by Splendib and the Glitter Cats.

He then overcompensates by wearing an outfit that very much gives „What’s up fellow kids?“-vibes (given that we see in the Durpleton backstory that Zulius is at least a few years older than him and that Durpleton is about 47 at that point, Zulius would at least be in his 50s). For the rest of the episode he seems to both enjoy being Horse’s trainer for the competition but also overly stressed about it and projects the same ideals that hurt him on Horse way too hard (even going so far as to slap her when she doesn’t see the point). He seems to have internalized that just trying / having fun / being yourself isn’t good enough. However when Horse sings that she „just can’t even right now“ he snaps out of it and nods at her in support.

When Comfortable Doug gets awarded the sash he seems to actually get (instead of just trying to convonce himself before) that JTBBC is just arbitrary bullshit. For the rest of the series he goes back to just being himself. He has the most fun and seems the most comfortable when he gets to produce something (the show for the Birdtaurs, the hootenanny). It’s through being his authentic self that he then also gets (back?) together with Splendib.

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