#pequod mirror world

[citroncynique]

You will not die, Heathcliff, not as long as you put your entire faith in me. I swear upon my honor as Captain that I will bring you back to shore, safe and sound, into the arms of you dear, beloved Cathy. You will not die because I will not allow you to die.

[throughpatchesofviolet]

You know it's dire when I start referring to Heathcliff with pet names.

[desperateknot]

It will take a long while for me to fill all of this out.

I can exclude a few that I don't want to do (yet). That being: Edgar Family Butler and Zwei West for being almost the same as Ishmael's; Solemn Lament because I didn't play Lob Corp and thus can't write its uptie story; NCorp for having very similar flavour of despair to Middle and Bloodfiend Queequeg and I don't feel like it right now; Pequod for being the same as her canon self (people already know what happens); Yurodiviye for being too hard to write; Fluid Sac for being a bit boring to draw; Snagharpoon for the voiceline contains a bit of spoiler to my own fic; Pursuance is still pending (although I think with the direction I am going with her, I will keep it).

So we have:

Dieci Association ID already has an uptie story written. It's very wholesome and contains a tiny bit of Rodya/Queequeg.

I have ideas for Hex Nail's corrosion animation a while ago, and I think Hex Nail Queequeg is really smart in general. However, its smartness won't be understood until I write that Canto V for the swap AU. But I also posted the Middle Queequeg ID already, so it will be fine.

The idea of Yearning-Mircalla Queequeg is very simple, straightforward, and obvious to me. Lesbian vampire yearner and obligatory red flowers. That's it. That is her.

You may notice that Blind Obsession is not there :]

I might ditch it. I just might. Let her seasonal E.G.O be Garden of Thorns or something. This mirror world is my oyster. I can throw a random Sign of Roses in the Canto V dungeon if I want. Obsession just isn't that much of her thing in the direction I am going with her, but sins very much is.

[seeking-for-rtrt]

limbus company canto VI spoilers

imagining harpooner heathcliff carving cathy's name into his skin. the harpooner of the pequod in that mirror world was still from the middle, still held that guilt along with heathcliff's own from his family. i imagine that is where he went instead of the dead rabbits, nearly becoming a big brother, and feeling that same guilt of killing for praise and satisfaction in the middle. knowing he was becoming what wuthering heights was making him into, exactly what they all told him he was fundamentally

so heathcliff left, he ran away like he did from wuthering heights. he left scars in his skin where the tattoos were as reminders and as penance. he cut up his brain to forget and get away from the middle. but he didn't want to forget cathy. so he cut cathy's initials into his skin. but then. after canto VI occured in our mirror world, he didn't remember even cathy. he lost his purpose. he had nowhere to go back to, just the promise that the voyage would end.

[insomnicbypasser]

Hiiiii speaking my thoughts on a certain thing about the newest limbus event make sure to avoid incase of spoilers! I am offically yapping about rodion in this one also so be warned.

You know im constantly thinking about rodion and how she just, doesnt have a yurodivy identity. Its always been a thought in my head how every identity that we get in the game is a possiblility a sinner could have gone down, not just an overlap with exsisting characters. They are afterall from mirror worlds.

Theres n corp sinclair, who gave into his inital disgust of prosthetics and went fully into that realm of dark. The pequod captain ishmael who found herself an almost exact mirror of ahab, fully taken by the madness to hunt what she deemed to be the root of all evil that we saw and the later portion of her canto. Literally most of dons identities share a similar theme of her going into an organization and having her beliefs tested as shown in her n corp, w corp, and her shi association ids.

So why didnt rodion get a yurodivy id instead of her t corp id? The opportunity was right there for the taking, however there was somethings stopping her from getting it. There was the fact that she felt like she did anything to help in actually catching the time ripper, so she didnt get a district 20 yurodivy id bescause hong lu and ryoshu were ACTUALLY like them with their detective work, however i dont think its like that as seen above several sinners have gotten ids that directly go against their current arcs ie: captain ishmael and n corp sinclair. I also think this is the same reason she got a TAX COLLECTOR id of all things, finding herself not only stagnating but also becoming the type of person she would havr MURDERD in cold blood previously.

To me there are two reasons project moon is holding back on a yurodivy id for rodion. Either A: theyre saving it for a theoretical redo of rpdions canto, this time where she actually stands her ground to fully face sonya and give him her true awnser on where she stands, most likely telling him she'll be following the path that dante is leading her down towards instead of the path sonya had laid out for her with the yurodivy. With this she could potentially get either a id where she instead had taken sonya up on his offer, or the most interesting option where rodion had taken up the role of saint for the yurodivy instead of sonya in a sort of captain ishmael or spicebrush yi sang type of id.

And then theres option B: where rodion has yet to get a yurodivy id because there arent any plans to give her a yurodivy id because in EVERY mirror world rodion is always destined to give up her life with the yurodivy. Maybe there will always be a reason for her to leave, a flaw she can never let slide, maybe even a feeling she wont ever address that she wasnt and wont ever be for the yurodivy because they were never ment to be, either they were never doing enough or she could never be enough.

I havent read the book rodion is from, i dont know the first thing about rodions journey through it. All i know is that rodion is a gambling addict, he kills someone, and that sonya helps(?) him get past his vices and sins and even then none of that might not be true i have no idea. What i do know is that in limbus company, rodion has had the constant need to be something. She tried to lead a life in the yurodivy to feel as though she was doing something larger then herself, and when she felt as though they didnt meet her expectations she decided to take things into her own hands and when she looked back on her decisions, she couldnt even tell who she had done them for or whether she was only acting apon her base selfish desires. Then she joined limbus company bus, supposedly to maybe have a wish granted, but also because maybe in this group of losers and vagabonds, she could finally take a large role then what she felt she had when she was in the yurodivy, maybe she could finally make use of her time instead of this rotting stagnation she had been suffering from since she left the yurodivy. But then they fail in their first two missions, she sees sonya for the first time in a while as she plays her first major role in a mission and he is the cause for her failure, even extending an olive branch to her and a place back inside the group she had so quickly left behind when things didnt go so well for her. Then they finally start seeing successes but they come at great losses, being forced to face your traumas, to kill your previous loved ones, to give up your entire motivations for the sake of moving forward and finding your place in the world.

And then we come to t corp itself, rodion finds herself being hand picked for a mission that surely other sinners are more capable of completing. Rodion has lost some of her previous confidence in her place in the bus. She didnt face her trauma like sinclair did, she didnt fight against sonya with all her might like yi sang had, she didnt push through her flaws and learn from her behavior like idhmael and heathcliff had done. Rodion ran, and she hadnt even gained anything from it.

As the event went on, we saw slowly as rodions compossure dropped, especially when the yurodivy got involved. We got to see rodion start to look back on her decision to leave the yurodivy when she interacts with them in district 20. She questions herself as soon as she sees that they actually managed to make something of themselves, that if she had actually been patient they would have been able to give her the kind of change that she had wanted in her life.

Her struggle to define what she wants and how she wants to get it is so interesting, it seems to me like rodion is constantly setting bars too high, either for others or herself, never wanting to settle her bet always wanting to push just a bit further and always crashing hard when she looses it all. The case of time killing time is showing the cracks in her resolve, and i think that eventually itll all come to a boiling point where shell get a rerun of her canto.

Anyways thanks for coming to my tedtalk every single one of the sinners make me mentally ill in ways i will never recover from, not just rodion. Trust me i WILL be making a 20 page essay on don once her canto is fully out i will NOT be normal about her. Sorry if i got a bit off track btw this was absolutely a full character study mostly on rodion rather then being me talking about the new event like i said and had quite a bit about me talking about how i think ids work inuniverse beside being things dante can use on sinners for combat. ALSO! If anyone can tell me how rodion and sonya are in the book it would be cery appreciated! Knowing about how moby dick, wuthering heights, and the metamorphsis play out really shaped my experiences of their cantos and id like to see how its themes played into canto 2.

[melonisopod]

On a slightly more meta note, I'm pretty certain about Erlking being playable soon. They keep alluding to him through the WH IDs and most recently refer to him by name in Nellyshu's ID voice, plus his shadow/reflection are in her Uptie artwork.

He's still out there and killing in the Mirror World and we have no idea what's happening, just that there's now a Cathy-shaped hole in the multiverse. Maybe he remembers her. Maybe he doesn't. I can't decide which is worse.

But in any case, one Sinner will occasionally get a featured rate-up banner for all their current roster of IDs and EGOs, and right now Heathcliff has a rate-up for his. Generally, these are good for gathering up egoshards (maybe? If you're a megawhale or lucky?)

Why would they allude to Erlking so much? Why would they drop a banner specifically for Heathcliff right now? Sure, it's his Canto, but most everyone else in LCB has gotten a specific 000 ID related to their Canto, the one exception so far being Rodya.

G. Corp. Gregor. The One Who Shall Grip Sinclair. Spicebush Yi Sang. Pequod Captain Ishmael.

And now we have Erlking Heathcliff, known for his dimension-hopping and obsession with self-destruction through the multiverse over his self-hatred and guilt at Catherine's demise, but now Catherine is gone, so what is he up to? What is he doing? With the IDs thus far detailing a plotline unto itself in the Mirror World, but there is a missing puzzle piece...

...and it's him. Its Heathcliff. We don't know why he's still out there and what he's doing, what his motivations are currently. But will we? Can we know, possibly, if we were to get another ID?

[m-zai]

I may be a little late on the train, but so far i've noticed that there are a few bad ending identities in the game.

To name a few, we have 'The One Who Shall Grip' Sinclair, 'G Corp Manager' Gregor, and 'Pequod Captain' Ishmael.

I have a few predictions for the bad end identities of the other sinners. These predictions are either them further down the spiral they are going(i.e Nclair and GregBug), or them in the position of a character that they oppose, be it in the story of the game or the original story(i.e AhabMael and SpiceSang). Or maybe just them in a place where it would make sense when compared to their original inspiration.

Up first we have Ryoshu, based on Yoshihide from Hell Screen.

This one is pretty easy. Yoshihide was depicted as a cruel artist that will go far lengths just to acheive the perfect depiction for his art. This easily brings us to an ID from The Ring. The artist and morbid art motif is quite easily spotted.

Meursault is quite confusing because there's not a lot of ways amorality can reach a bad end, unless that bad end is either as someone who executes people with cold logic, or as someone who's taken the far side of a certain ideology, wich could make N corp Meursault a bad end ID.

Outis could have two potential bad ends. As someone who took part in perpetrating the smoke war(paris/one of the gods), or as someone rampaging during the smoke wars(acchiles). The story of this mirror world would be an interesting one nonetheless.

That's all for now, i'll post more if i get ideas. Cheers

[7association-was-here]

//The ultimate Seven blog “#Lore?” timeline list (from oldest to latest). Posts marked with “bonus” aren’t necessarily important to the main plot but have additional information in them or just silly mini-arcs and interactions.

//Also I couldn’t get every little mini arc in here since scrolling through about 100+ posts and nitpicking them is tricky without accidentally missing one or two, so apologies if I missed a few sillies or infos here and there.

The First Hunt arc

Seven’s Tumblr Debut

L.O.L (bonus)

Cookies

Cookies part 2

Cookies part 3

Cookies part 4

SnakeHead’s ask Debut

SnakeHead’s ask Debut part 2

The Dessert Agents Debut

The Dessert Agents cheesecake incident

Faust’s Encounter

Heathcliff’s Encounter

SnakeHead’s tip

Workshop Murder

Jinx (bonus)

Heathcliffs?

Heathcliffs? part 2

Clock friend (bonus) (technically)

Clock friend learns of tumblr (bonus)

Clock puppy (bonus)

Clock puppy part 2 (bonus)

Durante Buttercream Sigye the 10th (bonus)

Heathcliff’s report

Catfished

Gal-pals (bonus)

Heathcliff update

Best boi blog Debut?? (bonus)

Golf Cart unlocked

Durante status (bonus)

On the way

A big oopsies

The First Hunt

Random Interval Moment

Mirror identities (bonus)

Thoughts (bonus)

Clock conundrum (bonus)

Clock conundrum part 2 kind of (bonus)

The R.B. (bonus)

S.A.D. (bonus)

S.A.D. part 2 kind of (bonus)

That one with the isopods (bonus)

That one with the isopods part 2 (bonus)

That one with the isopods part 3 (bonus)

That one with the isopods part 4 (bonus)

That one with the isopods part 5 (bonus)

That one with the isopods part 6 (bonus)

Raccoons VS. Isopods (bonus)

Current arc

Instagram Grandma’s Debut

“Why are workshop owners getting killed?”

Normal prescript outing

Normal mailbox delivery

Normal cat

Do not contact the normal cat

SnakeHead’s blog Debut

The beach cruise episode

Outis’ first report

Coincidence?

Exchange

Umbrellas?

Beginning of a war (bonus)

War initiated (bonus)

Hostage (bonus)

Hostage part 2 (bonus)

The End of the war..? (or is it) (bonus)

Just a silly guy, whimsical even

Number 111

Walking adventure

Walking adventure gone wrong

H.R.B.M, or Birds of a feather

Whistleblower

Walking adventure conclusion

All aboard the Pequod

Yellow flowers?

Indecisive clues (bonus)

Strange encounter (bonus)

Bird friend (bonus)

Back on track

Inquiry (bonus)

That sounds bad

Chicken wing detour

Fox Hunt

Catherine

Words from another world (bonus)

Another expedition

Expedition complete

“Yaoi revenge”

Whistleblower returns

Whistleblower returns part 2

A very bad feeling

”Don’t eat those! Oops!”

Boat shenanigans

The end of the cruise episode

[aihaloos]

As funny as the "The fault lies with you, Ahab!!" memes are, I gotta say that Cathy probably took Ishmael's place in the Pequod Captain Fishmael Mirror world.

There's not much backing for this theory, but I think it makes the most sense, mostly once you see the CG with Queecliff in Canto VI's ending and with the... [ahem] Queequeg×Ishmael implications and the fact that Heathcliff×Cathy would be real if it weren't for their lack of communication. (< I would rant about these 2 but this is this and that's that.)

(I would put a "The fault lies with you, ___!" but I don't feel like thinking up a version of it that would make sense in this context, sorry.)

[texasthoughtsaboutnothing]

So, Canto 5. Spoilers.

Peak fiction, utterly incredible. My following thoughts will be jumbled but forgive me.

I've sadly not finished the source material, so I won't analyze it from that POV, but just to discuss the continued building of the world of the City, the Great Lake is so well conceived as a setting. The individual Lakes and their Waves, and the Whales that cause them, the variable coordinates and U Corp's monopoly on written data of Laws. You could make a whole damn RPG on the back of this stuff alone, I know TTRPG heads are looking at this and coming up with some homebrews.

I wonder if the Lakes are actually the result of the Whales changing the waters around them? Ishmael theorizes that the Whales parasitize humans out of loneliness, to make others like them (which of course reflects on Ahab as a Whale) and I wonder if the waters of the lake are similarly changed to reflect the Whale? And then I think about how Ahab turned the inside of the Pallid Whale into Pequod Town gah the subtext.

I'm also thinking more about the Sinners as a found family. While they've gotten on well enough since Verg put his foot down it's becoming clearer as time goes on that real bonds are forming. Ishmael was certainly straining those bonds but its a testament to them that they grew stronger after she found peace. I was pleasantly surprised she and Outis found a dynamic as fellow seawomen leading to mutual respect, not to mention what's going on between Heath and Ish (I have never shipped anything harder in my life). And then there's the individual relationships to Dante. Dante and Ish have gotten over the hump, and while she says that if they ever go in the wrong direction "she'll drop a skiff and depart" I feel like Ish is invested in Dante as a friend and will be there for them no matter what, including steering them back on the right course.

We saw it in S.E.A., but it's dawning on me that we get to experience characters post arc and that there are consequences to that. It didn't feel that way as strongly with Canto 1 - 3 because Gregor and Rodya are thoroughly still cooking on their issues and Sinclair feels like he's started his arc to becoming more confident and capable (the part where he actually threatens that guy is just chef's kiss). But we saw a Yi Sang who's actively trying to preserve his new friend group and find the bright side of things. Now we'll have a collected Ishmael who can keep it together and is firmly on Dante's side, which will be amazing come the Heartbreaking if the Heathmael dream is real.

Rapid fire thoughts in no particular order:

Ahab VA is perfect casting, her character is phenomenal, and I can't wait to see how she'll do on Hermann's team. PM is carrying the torch of insane old ladies.

I'm increasingly certain that the plot of Limbus will be ultimately about the multiverse (IN A GOOD WAY) and the goals of the villains and other groups deals with mirror worlds in some way.

I'm thinking about the other 3 Calamities of the Lake, Whales that attack without rhyme or reason. I have to imagine them as other great beasts of literature, so one surely is the Crocodile from Peter Pan. Possibly another is the Dogfish from Pinocchio (adapted as Monstro in the Disney version). Then I don't know, the Giant Squid from 20'000 Leagues Under the Sea (or maybe the "Narwhal" itself)? There's many possibilities.

I enjoy the Middle as a faction, they fit in with the deeply absurdist nature of the City and feel distinct from the other Fingers we know about. Makes me wonder what the actual fuck the Pinky's deal is if they're the worst Finger (iirc).

Love the feeling of Faust and Verg as outsiders Red Fraud Alert there's no way it doesn't come to a head at some point where Vergilius and the group are fundamentally at odds but the group is strong enough that threats won't cut it.

Compass is fire. Love that we're seeing different fan remixes combining the vocal and instrumentals in interesting ways, though I worry for the official version. Fly, Broken Wings doesn't work as well when it just goes through the whole thing without repeating the Broken Wings part, I much prefer an edit that matches the in game version more. I hope Mili sees what people are doing and gives us the heartbeat.

Praying to god we get a Stubb or Pip Outis ID with Pequod Captain Ishmael, but that will likely be end of season. I predict Ish ID to be a powerful SP support ID and will likely be as meta as Nclair (which is cool but also kinda unfortunate narratively, there are some downsides to the Gacha format).

Sentences like "Ishmael totally tops Heathcliff, that guy would turn into a puppy dog at the slightest hint of affection" are insane things I believe wholeheartedly and I love every time a literature person stumbles upon it and has to wrestle with this surprisingly valid crackship not knowing its origin.

All for now but I'm sure I'll think of something else later, can't wait for the Christmas Event (which will likely drop after Christmas but c'est la vie).

[pobopolybius]

I like to think, considering Gregor's arm varies depending on IDs, and Ishmael loses a leg like Ahab when using the Pequod Captain identity, that the sinners tend to have still slightly similar but varying body types depending on what ID they have equipped.

Maybe Spicebush Yi Sang has a frailer body in comparison to Starbuck Yi Sang who is more muscular, or Boatworks Sinclair has an overall stronger upper body than Jefe Sinclair due to swinging around that fuckass huge chainsaw. Dieci Rodya could be more buff-fat leaning than Mittelhammer Rodion who probably is more just muscle.

I think this would be a fun little worldbuilding thing, giving us more little insights into their lives in the other mirror worlds....

[tortoisesshells]

top 5 ships (as in boats)?? :')

I'm going with fictional ships for the sake of argument, but:

(1) The Flying Dutchman (potc)- Dead Man's Chest knocked me off my chair (and onto the grimy floor of the theater in [town name redacted]) several times, but the sudden appearance of the Dutchman surging out of the water really set a new standard for "oh now that's a fucking haunted ship". She's decaying. She's got a massive pipe organ that's purely there for the drama. She's a cursed ship of the dead and damned. Who among us can best her?

(2) The Kerberos (1899)- ship of NIGHTMARES. Massive props to the member of the production team who said they wanted the Kerberos to feel like the anti-Titanic: you clever bastards succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. Dark, menacing, incomprehensibly portentously decorated even in the first class dining saloon, subject of wildly unethical science experiments, complete with mysterious trauma oubliettes, hundreds of miles from anything, and the command structure conveniently pre-disintegrated! I'm booking passage aboard as we speak.

(3) USS Constitution (Fallout 4 vintage) - you know, I don't think enough people have asked the most important question of our time, which is (to whit): what if we allowed robots (who apparently believe themselves to be Isaac Hull and his crew) to strap moonshot rockets to the sides of the USS Constitution? The answer is: well, thank goodness for live oak sides, even 200+ years after the end of the world. Anyway, my good friend Captain Ironsides has never let me down.

(4) USS Tiger Shark (Below) - HAUNTED. SO HAUNTED. What if you were on a submarine that wanted you to die, as well as, you know, the whole of the Kriegsmarine operating in the Atlantic, as well? It would suck, but the record player with a mind of its own (and the mirror that's displaced in time?) were undoubtedly rad. A+ submarine.

(5) The Pequod (Moby-Dick) - "[...]you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. [...] She was a thing of trophies. [...] tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were garnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the sperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews and tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood, but deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile wheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller was in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her hereditary foe." bless Ishmael for finding this cool, and even sexy, as opposed to running back to the green hills of New England.

Ask me my "Top 5" anything!

[throughpatchesofviolet]

✨️✨️✨️ requesting sherry facts pls and thank you :3 <3

Sherry facts coming right up!!

✨ If she appeared in canon, Sherry would (currently) have ten Identities--sorted as follows:

- R. Corp Commander ~ 000 - Rosespanner Workshop Fixer ~ 000 - Seven Association South Section 4 Director ~ 000 - Night Awl Right-Hand (Walpurgisnacht ID) ~ 000 - T. Corp Class 3 Collection Staff ~ 000 - Zwei Association South Section 5 ~ 00 - Cinq Association West Section 3 ~ 00 - Öufi Association South Section 3 ~ 00 - Devyat' Association North Section 3 ~ 00 - LCB Sinner ~ 0

I think it's amusing she has so many Association IDs, especially since she's critical of them in her LCB ID--she does lend a hand when certain Associations request her service, but she isn't fond of them.

✨ Since I'm talking about what she'd have in-game, I also want to share the finalized list of Sherry's (current) E.G.O!

- Default (Currently Unnamed) ~ ZAYIN - Lasso ~ TETH - Bygone Days ~ TETH - Pursuance ~ HE - AEDD ~ HE - Frost Splinter (Walpurgisnacht E.G.O) ~ HE - Everlasting ~ WAW

✨ Sherry does appear in a handful of Mirror Worlds as an NPC of sorts--notably in the Pequod and MultiCrack Mirror Worlds, where she works as an innkeeper and a Workshop Fixer, respectively.

However, in some Mirror Worlds, she appears as a manifestation of one of her E.G.O--for example, Lasso!Sherry appears in the same Mirror World as Wild Hunt!Heathcliff.

[reallyawesomecostumes]

Dean Winchester in his Coffin

A comparison between Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Dean’s coffin in Supernatural

(screencap from Home of the Nutty)

In Supernatural 14x11 ‘Damaged Goods’, Dean Winchester builds his own coffin. 

It’s not really a coffin, it just looks like one. The box is a ma’lak box designed by Death herself to secure Dean and AU-Michael at the bottom of the Pacific for all eternity*. We as viewers of a long-running episodic television show are pretty sure the  Winchester boys will find a way out of this mess in the next couple episodes, but Dean built it, so we have to talk about it. 

There are closet metaphors inherent in this coffin-building (I recommend @drsilverfish here); there are show-internal parallels to Amara being locked away, Adam’s current fate in The Cage, the wall in Sam’s mind in season 6; the list goes on. I wanted to talk instead about how Dean’s coffin-building compares to some coffin-building in classic American literature: the story of Queequeg’s coffin in Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.” 

Moby-Dick, published 1851, is a book that many of us were forced to read in high school or college. I escaped this fate but had to read “The Scarlet Letter” and “Bartleby the Scrivener” instead. I did watch the Patrick Stewart TV miniseries version as a teenager, of course. For some dumb reason** I became a Moby-Dick reader because I was a Queequeg/Ishmael shipper, so know that I have a fairly biased perspective on the book as a whole.

In Moby-Dick, our narrator Ishmael (a depressed unemployed Yankee) meets Queequeg, a cannibal

(Queequeg as a character is a jumble of noble savage tropes, the author’s own knowledge of Pacific Islanders met during his whaling experience, and ideas pulled from other contemporary books both fiction and non-fiction), when they become accidental bedfellows at Peter Coffin’s inn (Coffin is a prominent name among the whalers of Nantucket, in real life and in the world of the story). Ishmael wants to go whaling, and Queequeg’s a guy who is very good at whaling. They have similar life goals, if not similar life experiences . They’re textually married***. 

Queequeg catches a chill crawling around belowdecks on the Pequod moving barrels to find a leak (the hold is described as an ice-box). While he’s dying Queequeg says he doesn’t want his body to be wrapped up in his hammock before being thrown overboard like an ordinary sailor, but put in a canoe-style coffin like the harpooneers from Nantucket use. He convinces the ship’s carpenter to make one for him. Queequeg kits the coffin out with food and water and his (most precious possessions) harpoon and paddle, and puts earth from the hold at the foot of it . He lays in it, and Pip the cabin boy sings nonsense briefly (a la the Fool in King Lear). Ishmael sort-of suggests that watching this guy die would make him start a religion. But then Queequeg decides not to die. He throws off the fever with his own will, and recovers (for plot reasons, but also so Melville could add more Noble Savage tropes). He uses the coffin as a clothes-chest. He starts carving the lid with the pattern of the tattoos on his body (these tattoos are religious in nature, but are unknown and unknowable, ‘a complete theory of the heavens and the earth’), making it into a sort-of body double for him.

Some time passes. A guy falls from the rigging, and the stern life-buoy is thrown to him, and both the man and the old, rotting cask that serves as a buoy sink and drown. It is suggested that the nice new well-built no longer needed coffin can be made into a new life-buoy. This re-purposing is lampshaded in text:

“Here now’s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A life-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some spiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver! I’ll think of that.”

-Captain Ahab, in a theatrical aside, Chapter 127: The Deck.

After the whale drags Captain Ahab down and sinks the Pequod, the very well-made coffin/life-buoy shoots to the surface, and the only surviving crewmember (Ishmael, our narrator) clings to it until another ship picks him up. 

While Queequeg’s coffin is intended for mundane use (to preserve his body from sharks after death) and is eventually used for mundane purpose (Ishmael’s life preserver), Dean’s pseudo-coffin-building serves a more esoteric purpose - to lock himself and his angel double away from the world said angel wants to destroy (“for all angel is not’ing more dan de shark well goberned” - Fleece the cook, Moby-Dick). The ma’lak box is Dean and Michael’s “immortality-preserver”. We have two pairs of characters, and two death-coded vessels that serve to preserve them.

Remember that time Ishmael and Queequeg got married? Some authors have characterized this wedding as "the first portrait of same-sex marriage in American literature". That it causes some readers 'uneasiness'. The line 'our heart's honeymoon', describing the time post-marriage, was censored in the original publication. Other readers have taken the marriage esoterically, relating Ishmael and Queequeg's earthly marriage to the internal marriage of the self to the Jungian shadow-self.

Shadows**** follow the two protagonists of Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Ahab. Ishmael accepts and marries his shadow, Queequeg the cannibal, and learns the customs of the whaling-ship from him. He admires the unknowableness of the ocean and sky as well as Queequeg's unknowable tattoos. He frees himself from his initial depression, and is literally saved at the novel's conclusion by Queequeg's pseudo-body. Ahab, conversely, pushes away Pip the cabin boy (who serves as Lear's fool through the story, and speaks unknowably) and turns towards Fedallah the Parsee (described as Ahab's shadow in the book) who speaks concrete but awful truths. Ahab rejects reality and stays on a path of revenge even though warned multiple times that he will fail. He eventually dies, and brings most of his crew down with him. His lack of acceptance of his good shadow and of his true place in the world brings about destruction. Self-actualization results in being saved.

The (current) protagonists of Supernatural have shadow selves as well. Again @drsilverfish has an excellent post about this. Castiel's shadow is The Shadow/The Empty, which has appeared in his own form, and wishes only for sleep and nothingness. Dean's shadow, AU!Michael, only wants to destroy the world that Dean keeps sacrificing himself to protect. Sam's shadow, Nick, went through the same dark experiences Sam did, but unlike Sam wound up horribly twisted and murderous. We haven't seen Jack's shadow-self yet, but I suspect current sweet and kind graceless!Jack will have a foil in future uncaring soulless!Jack. The idea of marrying oneself to one's shadow, in Supernatural, is nearly unthinkable: they are destructive, inhuman entities. However, in 14x11 Sam managed to accept the reality of his shadow self and release himself from responsibility for Nick.

At this point Dean's plan is to death-wed himself to Michael for eternity, sharing one body and one coffin-bed at the bottom of the Pacific. We know from Jung and from Melville that the only way to survive the confrontation with the shadow is to accept it - to 'Know Thyself', without misconceptions about your place in the world. 'Gain[ing] the perspective on [your] soul and the universe that will make balance possible.' The coffin will become a life-buoy.

I suspect the ma'lak box will be used to trap something other than Dean or Michael (soulless!Jack, probably) at the end of this season. Even if it's current purpose is untenable, it is a tool that can be used in the future.

Comparison between Moby-Dick and Supernatural can occur on a number of different levels. Ishmael and Dean (and Castiel whose human vessel, Jimmy Novak, is of the line of Biblical Ishmael) are the heroes of the bildungsroman part of the story and are hangers on to Ahab/John/Sam's Shakespearean revenge quest. Each story is a very American depiction of a masculine world. Each mirror the world in a smaller vessel, a ship and a car. Jung's concept of the shadow self, however, holds as the key to this season through all of these eleven episodes, and the shadow self is one of many keys that promote understanding of Melville's Moby-Dick. Self-actualization saves the day.

* Note that geologists cry whenever people suggest indestructible things sent to the bottom of the ocean will stay there for all eternity.

** It was Yuletide, and I’d just binge-read the entire Aubrey-Maturin series.

*** I wrote about this last year when Yockey dropped Led Zeppelin’s Moby Dick into the story. Moby Dick, song, has nothing to do with Moby-Dick, book, except their mutual length, but Supernatural and Moby-Dick share quite a few themes. 

**** yes, Melville does make the shadows of his white protagonists literally dark-skinned

References:

@drsilverfish, “A Fridge-Locker, An Enochian Puzzle Box, a Ma’lak Box… and the Closet (14x11 Damaged Goods)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182296360214/a-fridge-locker-an-enochian-puzzle-box-a-malak 

@drsilverfish​, “The Shadow (14x08)”, http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

Brashers, H.C., 1962, "Ishmael's Tattoos": The Sewanee Review, v.70, n.1, p.137-154, http://wwww.jstor.org/stable/27540756

Halverson, John, 1963, "The Shadow in Moby-Dick": American Quarterly, v.15, n.3, p.436-446, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711373

Horton, Margy Thomas, 2012, "Melville's Unfolding Selves: Identity Formation in Mardi, Moby-Dick, and Pierre": doctoral dissertation, Baylor University

Melville, Herman, “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale”, project Gutenberg ebook, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm

[thisyearswords]

half finite variety

to the Cass on keyboards in a punk rainbow mirror: you can have my apathy and scream it into harder things of lengthier lifespans. to the point-eared fantasy whose name I can’t pronounce, whose hair is green because they love the trees so much: you have my tattered tennis shoes and the compound bow I never shoot anymore. to the Collin in grad school with a face shining like a hundred myths of seeing God and gods and the circle come full: you can have my perpetual panic over running out of time - and contrariwise, to the Doctorate-holder spoken to with a surname I have yet to choose, wearing patches over your elbows like I have, pettily, always dreamed of, you can have all my dread that I’ll last forever. I think you both know better. to the Cassie in another life’s Virginia, never tangled over girls and always answering to ‘Ma’am’ with an ease I’ll never get the hang of, I give the colt-legged joy of running your fingers through your own soul and accepting that the tangles will never come out, and that the only true name you own is the one in the white stone.

to the Mx. Collin in a world fifty years fast, with dust in your nose and fingernails and old, bulging shelves bastioning you in, I have to ask: Can you draw a map of this future on pages of Flannery O’Connor and Lewis? Can I find you if I follow Beloved to “The Dead” to the Pequod to Good Omens to The Martian Chronicles to the O Henry stories I never liked and finally to the blue and gray copy of The Tempest and find out if we are Miranda or Prospero or Ariel?

from the kid with the pomegranate tattoo behind a coffee shop counter, I take the courage to look a stranger in the eye. from the silent tourist drinking illicit wine on a balcony in Paris, exchanging the silence of obedience for the riotous reward of a single taken chance, I take that certain holy discomfort in seeing the world from somewhere off my accustomary rails. from the hey-Collin in an office, blue-faced with computer glow, paying through the nose for a graphics program that, in turn, pays for oil paint and cat food, I take a hardscrabble grinning strung-out willingness to not care.

to the Mx. Collin in a world fifty years too far away, tending the counter with a book in hand because we have always been too tall to drown in them, no matter how many books there may be, I have to ask: When do you meet me? Where is the station where I get off and you get on?

to the Collin in the wardrobe wedged down a rabbit hole, I give the advice I’ve always wanted to take, you lucky bastard: when they ask you what your name is, ask them for cocoa and pomegranate seeds and a good sturdy bow, and they can decide for themselves what to call you.

to the Mx. Collin in a world that may or may not be near, in a room that is familiar but clean, tall, black-tea sunny, smelling of bergamot and every kind of poem but the sonnet: of all the bookstores in all the realities in all my one-day daydreams, I had to walk into yours.

[melonisopod]

Tbh I do love that ever since Canto 6 we have the implication of much more happening with the Mirror Worlds than just "exactly the same but the Sinners are replacing individual roles within those timelines"

It helps that the main antagonist of the plot *is* an Identity from a Mirror World interacting directly with *our* world, and a major conflict is one that spans across the multiverse. But we also get glimpses of various IDs of Heathcliff, some of which he doesn't even *have* yet (iirc only Sunshower and Pequod IDs are the only two we immediately recognize)

I think there's another ID of his that we see, where he's a Medieval knight in plate armor, and Cathy is a nun in that timeline. I wonder if we'll see that one since the Zwei Association West division is said to look similar to Medieval knights? (Plus a certain knight-themed Sinner's Canto is just around the corner...it would be bonkers if Heath got an ID based on a certain knight, and with his lover in the convent I guess he'd have to love.... pure and chaste, from afar....)

We also see what look like Abnormalities, whether it's Heath and Catherine *as* those Abnos or maybe wearing/overtaken by E.G.O.s. I do wonder if we'll see Apocalypse Bird Heathcliff sometime in the future (probably for Walpurgisnacht).

Not that I mind Heathmael shippers at all (heck I even ship them) but no, that one glimpse of Cathy in Erlking's intro vid is not Sloshing E.G.O. that's her literally melting from K. Corp. ampules.