#whale things

I can’t reply with a video so posting it here but… yes. Seen a few of those incredible gentle giants, and sometimes we even get visitors pretty close to home! But this one takes the cake 🤩

Baby was practicing breaching just off to one side and, well, I guess Mama Whale decided to show us all how it was done 😌

there is quite a variety of cetaceans who have been put through this, one way or another. of course, there's a wealth of orca, but there's also a minke whale, a common dolphin, a beluga, a PWSD (hi!), and certainly more (we, admittedly, aren't all that observant in the variety of species lol). we ourselves are a mix of PWSD and humpback whale, although we tend to be most focused on PWSD as that's the most realistic to "return" to for us.

not to mention, there's at least two methods, although by far the most common we've seen is transmogrification--the transformation of a cetacean directly into a human-appearing shape. as far as we know, we're the only one who wasn't transformed through that, or not directly; stem cells (both PWSD and humpback) were implanted, which replaced or merged with many of our pre-existing internals, and there was a partial brain transplant (as far as evidence suggests; only PWSD so far as we can tell), giving us memories and instincts and a distinct mental map of what we should be. or, feel we should be. it's possible that the stem cells affected our brain as well, but they wouldn't have given us memories as a cetacean.

we've yet to see anyone else who has undergone what we did, even partially (stem cells or brain transplant). whether this is because the method we went through is just not used often for one reason or another, or because the method we went through was new at the time and so others who also experienced it simply haven't realized, or--as in our case--there are others who believe they were transmogrified but actually went through what we did, etc. we will note that we also do not have the same experience of feeling directly under humans' control, as other cetaceans have discussed--we don't know if that's a quirk unique to us, if it has to do with the method, or if it's something else.

our hope is that the theorized program was shut down within a few years of our operations. that we were one of the last ones. whether because of costs, the realization of ethical issues, the risk of classified information finding its way to the public if they continued, or whatever other reason they might have had. our guess is that this program was/is still in its very early stages, with lots of experimentation, trying to find the perfect species and the perfect method to create the perfect subjects. however, with how scattered the research is, we doubt they've done that yet. at most, they've found good candidates for species and workable methods to make adequate subjects, but possibly not even that. more accurate speculation will have to wait for others and their stories, most likely.

sometimes we wonder if we weren't swapped, but merged. much easier that way to get past the things that would be difficult to replicate, the patches on our scalp that don't have melanin being the most visibly evident, but other things, too.

we wonder why they would need cetaceans to do that. Kala mentioned that it might have to do with our large bodies--that the transformation from animal to human might take so much energy, the larger body is necessary. would it be the same with merging a cetacean (two cetaceans, in our case) into an already-living human infant? perhaps the already existing infant was needed to map the transformation down to each detail.

because of just... how the human was when it was born, it was in and out of hospitals for testing--namely because of the aforementioned patches on our scalp, leading to health concerns. later, by the time we were here (if we were swapped, that is), developing our own memories, we had a severe infection in our toe. it seemed as though we had ear infections constantly, including three back-to-back in the fifth grade. at some point, when the human must have been very young... is it so much of a stretch to think some experiment was performed behind its parents' backs? (it wouldn't be anywhere near the last time something similar happened to it, in any case.)

if we were merged/mapped onto an already existing human infant, that would make our history somewhat simpler. if that's the case, whatever would have existed of a human mind (one that identified itself as human, that is), whatever might have been of the original human personality, is gone. whatever exists now is simply just... two cetaceans, a humpback whale and a pacific white-sided dolphin, are stuck in a human shape.

maybe we're looking too much into the past. but we can't help but feel that we won't be able to understand our future meaningfully if we don't grasp our past first.

being a humpback whale might come up now and again, but it's not going to be the focus of the blog by any means. just... a part of us that exists that we're no longer able to suppress. (man, we do a lot of suppression, don't we?)

stem cells have the ability to (A) self-renew, and (B) (re)create functional cells. stem cells are the basis for how the body and its bits are made.

we wonder if (likely gene-edited, to prevent overt traits from showing up on the outside*) stem cells from a whale and a dolphin could have been implanted into a human fetus and infant, propagating whale and dolphin cells and genetics inside--what is effectively--a human skin suit.

* almost certainly not done perfectly, however. this could very easily be the cause of our neurological issues; if they were implanted as a fetus, it's possible it could be the cause of the missing melanin on our head. if that were the case, it could also be the cause of some issues that were apparent then, as well as--perhaps--influencing our genetic disorder(s) to show up so much more severely than they have in others in the human family, if they've showed up at all (eg, we believe the EDS comes from the human mother's side, but we're the only one--including in extended family that show signs--who needs any sort of mobility aid for it, and only one other person in extended family needed any sort of aids for it (specifically a knee brace because she damaged her knee by constantly overextending it as a kid; she (afaik) no longer uses it and only used it as a kid/teenager)).

we could frame it as "in a past life", since, in a sense, it's not wrong. we just didn't die in between the two, technically three lives we've had. one life lived as a pacific white-sided dolphin, one life lived as a humpback whale, and upon them being merged and forced into human form, a third now lived in that human form.

"i've known since i was small that i was a cetacean. that i have a cetacean mind and soul in this human body. even if those were past lives, even if i look like a human now, i still feel like i should be a cetacean, and most preferably either the pacific white-sided dolphin or the humpback whale, since they're familiar bodies and i have an idea of what i look like as them, and i feel a lot of happiness in the idea of being either." something like that.

we doubt the human father or brother would ever accept it (especially the human father), but the human mother is very spiritual. and depending on her response, we maybe would get to talk about our nonhuman friends more openly--not completely, i doubt even she would be accepting of being literally physically nonhuman the way we are, but we wouldn't have to hide it. we'd get to talk about Sonar the short-beaked common dolphin, Kala the minke whale, Molly the puma. she's probably the closest we'd get to in-person acceptance of being a dolphin, even if we couldn't be completely truthful.

for some reason, dolphin and whale stem cells were placed in us. we believe something about being an alien influenced how they grew; we may look the way we do, but this is an alien exterior to hide the cetacean interior that has built itself inside of us. at this point, we are "more" dolphin(+) than we are alien. we know what we should appear like as a cetacean, we know what species. we can see and feel how our body should be. what it wants to be, but is prevented from.

there is no chance at going back to our home planet. in all likelihood, we were sent here to live out our life, and then die. i doubt we were even meant to know about our origins. they must be surprised that we've figured this much out. and since only a small part of us is definitively alien (our origins, what others see, what prevents others from seeing the dolphin in us), since most of us--at this point--is cetacean, it's not something we're too concerned about. we miss our siblings, yes; we miss our parents, yes. but we're never getting that back, most likely, and we can be happy as a dolphin. we've proved as much over the past few months, in that being a dolphin makes us actually happy.

but in terms of importance to our identity and how we perceive ourselves? mmm. (innermost to outermost) cetacean (dolphin) -> cetacean (whale) -> alien -> werecanid & bunny (at same level, sometimes swap between which is more or less important. right now bunny is very slightly more important but obv that's not always the case)