#but this adaptation comes the closest to touching greatness. i just 😭i need it to be Better in the parts where its lacking. bc it has-

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

man. the most persistently irritating thing about daniel emond's "kill the whale" is how fucking GOOD it is at times.

every day I think about The Quarterdeck and how phenomenally it portrays that scene and the magnetism of agreeing to Ahab's quest even despite fear, and Dusk and the subplot of Starbuck falling in love with Ahab and being terrified of what that means, but ESPECIALLY Fedallah's introduction song where Fedallah is presented as a woman with agency, who looks the audience in the face and dares us to judge her for the life she has chosen.

Fedallah is presented as the captain's lover, the captain's party trick and pleasure, and owns the shitshow she lives in, and only chooses to reject that life once she tires of Ahab's fetishization and exotification of her, and then uses the very thing Ahab fetishizes so much (her prophecies) as a way to spell her own doom and drag Ahab down with her, freeing herself. The shivers I still feel when I hear Fedallah's triumphant crow of "come back here" as she sinks below the waves and Ahab watches in horror, knowing she is next.

that fucking ruled to a degree that shook me!!!!!!!!! and hearing Grace McLean and Amber Gray (and Danielle McKnight) duke it the fuck out through song was just genuinely magnificent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and then the narrative kicks you right in the throat by calling queequeg "q" for two hours straight and making his marriage to ishmael lowkey racist hate sex