#this applies to Queequeg too

[binah-beloved]

Binah would love to walk the shore with you.

a cloudy day, not sunny. there's no one else there, then- just you and her, strolling along the pebbles and sand. her fingers are laced with yours, loose and comfortable, and occasionally her thumb brushes over the back of your hand. a silent reassurance that she's here. if you're cold from the sea spray she pulls you in and tucks her arms around you, her cloak falling over your shoulders as you admire the dingy water and foam. it's dull. it's gray. yet you always seem to find something lovely. shells and sea glass, sand dollar and tiny bones. you delight in little things that fascinate the eye. Binah smiles quietly whenever you press something new into her hand, colorful and spiny and scuttling.

she keeps them all. bits of frosted glass and tips of shells, all arranged neatly on a shelf in her quarters, along with every other gift or precious tchotchke you've ever given her.

[randomfoggytiger]

"Regardless of His Actions Last Night"

(Fictober, Day 2)

Queequeg may have been an undisciplined little puffball allergic to six different brands of dog food, an indoor voice, and the realization of the near fatal consequences of his choice to chase after an alligator, but a disagreeable traveling companion (Scully asserted) he was not. 

Her mother managed him more during the last two years than she did-- not that Scully was thrilled with her own negligence, but the demands of the job kept her hopping from car to plane and coast to coast-- and had happily lugged Queequeg around with her wherever she went (empty-nester and solitary widow that she was.) As such, he was quite the seasoned traveler; and Maggie boasted about him so often that her daughter decided to bring him along on a much-needed vacation.  

So, one fine morning-- wind whipping through his fur as he tried to stretch his head further above the convertible door-- Queequeg found himself cruising shotgun along the highway, alive and dangerous and as eager for trouble as Scully was to escape it. 

*****

Scully could barely hear Mulder’s impish finger-wagging over the phone while Queequeg growled and barked and lunged ineffectually in his seat at a random cat lounging, unbothered, by the gas station entrance. 

“Queequeg, no-- no, he hasn’t, Mulder; and he won’t. He’s a good dog. Queequeg! Stop that.” 

Mulder made sure to caveat his very important statistic on vehicular decapitation with a cheeky footnote: "But I don't know if the data applies to two-foot cannibals, Scully. And if my guess is correct, it’s because those statisticians were clever enough to leave their yappers at home.”  

“I think you got the height of the yappers mixed up, Mulder.” And she hit the end button, hypothesizing that Queequeg was likely just hungry. “Lunch,” she muttered, glad that there was no one else around to be bothered until she’d paid and left. 

*****

Queequeg almost broke from Scully's grasp, yanking the full length of the leash in his attempts to run across the parking lot. His earlier disgruntled yaps shifted to lapdog spit-snarls; and he completely ignored her commands until one of the inconspicuous cars pulled out and away, a girl and her doll staring back blankly from their window. He calmed then, victorious; and followed Scully placidly to the door. 

Where they found chaos. 

While Scully attempted to sort the mayhem of injured, moaning customers and the arriving, superstitiously-inclined cops, Queequeg licked the blood dripping off the hand of the most unfortunate victim a little too eagerly.

***** 

At the police station, Scully split her attention in half: disproving Mulder’s assumptions of her assumptions (and deflecting his overblown proposal) while simultaneously keeping her eye on Queequeg. Content after chowing down his premium soggy lunch and bored from satisfying all his curiosities around the office, he clicked his little nails over to a pile of coats someone left for him and plunked eagerly down for an afternoon nap. She watched longingly as the little dog relaxed, not a care in the world as he stretched and shifted.

A bath. That would hit the spot. A long one. 

Hopefully Queequeg wouldn’t find something dirty and inconvenient to stick his nose into before the weekend was over. 

*****

The next morning, Scully had to leave him moaning and wailing outside the crime scene with a buoyantly even-keeled police officer. By the time her and Jack Bonsaint’s theories were interrupted by Mulder’s opportune phone call, Queequeg's howls had shifted from woefully complaining to bitterly angry. 

“I’m not going to feel sorry for him, Scully. He ate my Christmas hat.” 

“Might I remind you,” she replied, shoving one hand up to cover her other ear, “that you left it on the floor with your running clothes after I’d warned you he likes to sniff out and chew dirty socks?” 

The argument, they both knew, was unproductive: Mulder only clung to this particular grievance because the Lone Gunman still made snide remarks about him ‘tossing aside the gift of friendship’ every time they met up (especially Frohike, who had taken one look at the pin-striped monstrosity he'd called “a runner’s cap” and knew Mulder would like it. He had.) 

“Yeah? What about that new silk pajama set he tore into?” 

“I don’t know--” there was a short pause as Scully walked back outside and hunched down, “--ask him.” 

Queequeg bellowed full force into the phone. 

Mulder got the message. 

*****

The rest of the investigation was a repeat of their normal cohabitation-- Scully was roped into work and Queequeg was forced to stay behind with a third party. Mulder, of course, did not lose sight of that fact on their last call, teasing her about being a woman of routine.

He stopped the ribbing, however, when she didn't respond to his banter. “Scully? You there?”

She shook her head, trying to catch the thread of their conversation. “Yeah, yeah I heard you.” 

“Is there something wrong?”

After a moment of deliberation, Scully stepped out of the squad car and closed the door behind her. “It’s just… is it fair to him, Mulder?”

“...Fair to who?” 

“To Queequeg. I mean, I’ve owned him for nearly two years now, but I don’t really own him, do I? Mom cares for him while I'm out of town, and I only really see him between cases--”

“He tagged along with us that one time. And he seems to be eating up your trip.” 

“--But is it fair? After Christmas….” 

More silence settled-- weighty and somber-- while they both carefully readjusted to the turn of the conversation. 

“After Christmas, I was going to make changes in my life. I had made them. But even after--” Scully pivoted away from that consuming memory, “-- after Emily... I never considered keeping those changes for Queequeg's sake. Was that fair of me?” 

Jack Bonsaint knocked considerately on the windshield. “Agent Scully? Any leads?” 

***** 

Oblivious to the horror show unfolding across town, Queequeg tore away the plastic from a complimentary bar of soap and sank his teeth into the old lady smell of dime store lavender. He then decorated his triumph all over the floor. 

***** 

“Well-behaved” had turned into “good as new” had turned into “we’ll handle it”; and Scully’s weekend closed amicably, both professionally and financially. At least Jack and the force were pitching in to cop the damages.

She’d buy him a poster, she decided, securing her rascally co-pilot into place before striding to the driver’s side door. 

And she’d at least gotten her bath. 

But she’d never tell Mulder about what happened to her new tourist shirt.

*****

Dedicated to @welsharcher's curiosity about Mulder's strange... hat (here) in "Christmas Carol" and @agent-troi's generously donated prompt ("Queequeg tags along on cases and gets into mischief") that @perpetually-weirdening seconded.

Tagging @today-in-fic and @xffictober2023 and @fictober-event

**Note**: If the Tales of Queequeg becomes a series, I will call them The Remains of the Remains of the Day. That is all.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

[afterthegreatunknown]

random post of headcanons of mine for some asoue characters:

georgina orwell isn’t always hypnotizing people that come into her office; she has to find other sources of income after all. when she does her actual job of an optometrist, georgina is quite good. she even has the highest rating of all the optometrists in the land of districts.

larry isn’t too happy that almost everyone refers to him as larry, your waiter. ‘your waiter’ isn’t his surname. larry knows they know his surname, but they just never say it. larry wants to quit being a waiter as result, but can’t due to being the best volunteer for the role.

r’s first name isn’t ramona, like in ramona quimby. ramona is a nickname beatrice is a part of. the ramona quimby series has ramona having an older sister beatrice, nickname beezus. as such, r got the nickname of ‘ramona’, with beatrice getting the nickname of ‘beezus’.

phil is alive by the end. phil was dismiss of service from the queequeg and vfd by widdershins, who wanted phil to get out while having that chance. phil ends up becoming a library assistant, befriending the main librarian, an old man name hal.

sally is the oldest of the sebald siblings. sally isn’t sure how the reverse came to be, but sally hates getting mistaken for the younger sibling. she once hated it so badly, she kept a copy of both of their birth certificates whenever someone incorrectly assumes.

gustav is actually his middle name. gustav’s first name is in fact, shelby. gustav goes by gustav because he thinks it sounds nicer, as well as the fact that when applying for the directors guild and writers guild, there is already an existing shelby sebald as a member in both.

[penig]

The Pequod embarks on Christmas Day, which seems out of character from a modern perspective. Bildad and Peleg are still doing their pious comedy routine, after all, and a modern Aunt Charity would surely have organized a big Christmas dinner for her relatives and any sailors far from home on the holiday. But New England was a late adopter of Christmas- Thanksgiving was its holiday long before it became a national one - and high Holy Days are not a Quaker idiom. And a sailing ship must sail when the winds and tides allow, or remain in port indefinitely.

Meanwhile, Queequeg continues to tease Ishmael with outlandish leg pulls concerning the social habits of “savages” and it is impossible to tell whether Melville understands that. But we really needn’t concern ourselves with exactly what Melville was thinking. It is profoundly uncomfortable to read an author as deeply mired in systemic racism as most American white authors have been throughout history unless we allow ourselves to read their non-white characters as presenting themselves to white narrators in ironic ways. Queequeg is secure in his tattooed skin and too good a sailor and harpooner to mistreat, but no white coworker or boss will ever look at him and see another human being. If he’s stuck being an exotic he may as well have fun with it and give his husband a little thrill.

That, at any rate, is the best reading I can apply here, reading in the matrix of my own whiteness and the systemic racism of my own time.

[iam-sol-emnlyswear]

I’m reading Moby Dick for school and it is just... so. gay.

“With much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and hideously marred about the face—at least to my taste—his countenance yet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You cannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I saw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes, fiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a thousand devils.”

“Whilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be looking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my presence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but appeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous book. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night previous, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found thrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference of his very strange.”

“I began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a nature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland deceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that would have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus drew me. I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some friendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At first he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my referring to his last night’s hospitalities, he made out to ask me whether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I thought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.”

“If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan’s breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and unbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married; meaning, in his country’s phrase, that we were bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a countryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too premature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage those old rules would not apply.”

“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.”

“We had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and Queequeg now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs over mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free and easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what little nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like getting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.”

“Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them. For now I liked nothing better than to have Queequeg smoking by me, even in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy then. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord’s policy of insurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential comfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend. With our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the Tomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue hanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.”

“The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with.”

“Well, well, well! Stubb knows him best of all, and Stubb always says he’s queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer; he’s queer, says Stubb; he’s queer—queer, queer; and keeps dinning it into Mr. Starbuck all the time—queer—sir—queer, queer, very queer.”

“Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that [sperm whale fat] till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers’ hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,—Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.”

[weedhorse69]

"But as for Queequeg—why, Queequeg sat there among them—at the head of the table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I cannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him. But that was certainly very coolly done by him, and every one knows that in most people’s estimation, to do anything coolly is to do it genteelly.

We will not speak of all Queequeg’s peculiarities here; how he eschewed coffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to beefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew like the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was sitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat on, when I sallied out for a stroll."

-Moby Dick

[gellavonhamster]

My relationship with Snicketverse theories is basically *reads a theory* oh this makes sense, this must be true *reads another theory* on the other hand, this also seems plausible, could also be true *reads another theory* wait, this one also explains a lot, I could believe it too *reads another theory* oh

and sometimes the stuff I find convincing would contradict some other stuff I find equally convincing but that won't bother me because, quite honestly, I am undecided on many things and do not have a clear picture of many events in my mind. Did Jerome marry Esme a long time ago, or was it a recent event in relation to the events of ASOUE? Fuck if I knew. When did Lemony learn that Beatrice and Bertrand killed Olaf's parents, and did he know his sister was also involved? No idea. Is Lemony controlling the Bombinating Beast/the Great Unknown? I don't think so, but wow, on the other hand, he might. So I could easily apply Theory A for, say, writing a fic, then come up with a headcanon for Theory B that would contradict everything about Theory A. There are some things that I've definitely accepted to be canon in my mind, but, funnily enough, they're more on a headcanon side and are not really based on anything in canon (e. g. Moxie being the Editor, everyone on the Queequeg/mobile home surviving the Great Unknown) - I just want them to be true, that's all. And then there are some theories I dislike a lot (e. g. Beatrice surviving the fire, Miranda being Mrs. Widdershins) but I recognize that they, in contrast to the aforementioned things that are more of a headcanon, are actually well-supported by canon and idk idk there should be some conclusion to this post but I'm not sure what it should be. Possibly that when it comes to theories in this fandom, I have no opinion on my own, and with enough evidence, you could persuade me that almost anything is true, haha.

[the-golden-ghost]

QUEEASHMAEL

YES

who is more likely to hurt the other?

Neither, they are only ever good to each other

who is emotionally stronger?

I’m going to say Queequeg on this one, not because Ish is fragile but because he’s a little nerd who doesn’t really know anything about emotions, good or otherwise.

who is physically stronger?

Well... Queequeg

who is more likely to break a bone? 

Ishmael cause he can and will fall overboard, if he so chooses. He is also quite good at getting caught by whales. Queequeg has to keep pulling him back onto the boat.

who knows best what to say to upset the other? 

They don’t do this!

who is most likely to apologise first after an argument? 

Queequeg is already crying before the argument is over and will apologize on the spot

who treats who’s wounds more often? 

I like the idea of Queequeg doing this but also consider: the rare times Queequeg actually gets into an accident and Ishmael freaks out cause he doesn’t really know what to do in this situation? Queequeg’s so much more experienced with this kind of thing but Ishmael does his absolute best and Queequeg just loves him for it.

who is in constant need of comfort? 

Lowkey Ish. His life is sad

who gets more jealous? 

I’m gonna say Ishmael here too. Because Queequeg is just So Beautiful and the whole crew knows it. He’s also Very Taken but Ish doesn’t know if the crew knows THAT or not. 

who’s most likely to walk out on the other? 

Ish is great at storming away to cool down. He always comes back within two hours though. Usually crying. Sometimes drunk. Or both.

who will propose? 

Canonically I think it was Queequeg who was just like “hey we’re getting married now” and Ish went with it, the absolute madman

who has the most difficult parents?

Ishmael’s stepmom sounds like a piece of work but I think she’s dead? Not sure where Queequeg’s parents are. Probably back on his home island. But his dad was a chief so I guess if he’s difficult, it’s in his own way. I’m gonna go with “this doesn’t apply to them”

who initiates hand-holding when they’re out in public? 

QUEEQUEG, KING OF THE HAND-HOLDERS

who hogs the blankets? 

THEY BOTH DO TO THE POINT WHERE THEY NEED EXTRA BLANKETS SO THEY CAN EACH HOG THEIR OWN

who gets more sad? 

Ish, the lonely Whale Boy

who is better at cheering the other up? 

Queequeg is great at this. Ish is too actually, and he doesn’t get enough credit for his little impassioned rants that make Queequeg laugh so much.

who’s the one that playfully slaps the other all the time after they make silly jokes?

They will BOTH slap Stubb for making jokes at their expense, that’s for sure.

who is more streetwise?

I dunno, Queequeg’s a great navigator but doesn’t seem as good on land, and Ishmael knows the city but seems to get hopelessly lost a lot? So basically they’re both garbage at this?

who is more wise?

Hesitantly, Queequeg. But in reality neither of them, they are dorks.

who’s the shyest? 

Ishmael I guess? Except he’s not shy so much as he is Aloof and Indifferent to everyone and everything.

who boasts about the other more? 

Queequeg can and WILL tell everyone and their cousin about how amazing his husband is. Then again, Ishmael wrote a book about how wonderful Queequeg is and published it. So maybe he wins.

who sits on who’s lap?

If Ishmael is ever NOT on Queequeg’s lap, assume one or both of them are dead.

Or rather, don’t think about that

[mobydickmusical]

Every book chapter a song is named after: Knights And Squires (Ch 26 + 27)

Since most of the (most recent) tracklist is named after chapters of the book, I’m going to attempt to work through the whole of the show this way, talking a bit about my thoughts on each chapter’s translation into a song. Based on the tracklist chronology rather than the book chronology. Skipping the songs we’ve already heard, for obvious reasons.

Also fairly obvious, but even though I’m using the chapters to imagine the songs, I naturally can’t be sure how closely they’ll follow the text of that specific chapter (see, The Pacific, which actually follows completely different chapters). 

(I’ve making these actually shorter, and just some dot-pointed thoughts rather than going through everything in the chapter, because I’d still like to write them down but also don’t have the energy, so). 

The book chapters: these are two consecutive chapters that introduce most of the main players in the crew of the Pequod. (The mates as knights and their harpooners as squires). The first is dedicated entirely to the first mate, Starbuck, and focused around his relationship to courage. The second then goes through the second mate, Stubb; the third mate, Flask; the three harpooners belonging to each mate’s boat, Queequeg, Tashtego, and Daggoo; and an acknowledgment of the general make-up of the rest of the crew with a little shout-out to the cabin boy, Pip. 

This’ll be where that tiny clip from The Public Theater workshop of the cast all singing “Queequeg, Tashtego, Daggoo” comes from.

In the musical, this song occurs directly after Loomings, i.e. unlike the book, which dwells onland for a while first, we’re onboard very quickly! This makes me think that the musical either explicitly takes place entirely at sea, or (probably more likely) is loosely rooted to exactly where it is happening. 

A few songs in the musical are written in the tracklist as having multiple sections, K&S being the first song where this happens. I’m unsure if these sections are more likely to flow-on directly, or act more like seperated songs? But, in the case of Knights & Squires, the three sections are Knights & Squires I, Knights & Squires II, and Isolatoes. “Isolatoes” is a term which in the chapter is applied to the general crew of the boat, so I have to assume the first section is dedicated to Starbuck, the second to the other mates and harpooners, and the third to the rest of the crew:

They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too, I call such, not acknowledging the common continent of men, but each Isolato living on a separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel, what a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from all the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying Old Ahab in the Pequod to lay the world's grievances before that bar from which not very many of them ever come back. 

This term and quote also feel quite at home in what we know of Dave’s musical. Especially being “federated along one keel” and striving to  “lay the world's grievances before that bar...” 

Along similar lines but a bit more of stretch, I could maybe see “As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are” being shaped into lyrics in a way to refer to refugees and/or migrants in modern, capitalist America??

Queequeg is skipped over in this chapter because we already know who he is, but in the musical this is the first time we see him, so he does need an introduction. I feel like the obvious thing to do would be to just pull from Ch 12 Biographical?

Starbuck’s “Outward portents and inward presentiments were his” is a line I just really like. Also “What doom was his own father's? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could he find the torn limbs of his brother?” 

Also, literally just like how the phrases “momentous men” and “kingly commons” sound together. 

This song is an important moment in the show in regards to how you need the audience to pick up who all the "featured actors" are and get a first impression of their characters, one after another, in a short space of time. While you're not dealing with quite the amount of characters right from the get-go as Comet (literally) tells you to, there's obviously Some Degree of similar function making me think of Prologue. Which. On one hand, is a joking comparison because the way Prologue introduces the cast of characters is very silly, and the descriptions are intentionally both simplified and ironic. K&S has a lot more it needs to accomplish. On the other hand, Prologue has the structure it does because it's a great way to make people remember who characters are very quickly. Basically, more structured rhymes, repetition etc could definitely have a place in this song because it’d assist its function. Also, I could say you even see a little bit of that in the Public Workshop clip, with the cast all singing the harpooners names.

Can or could this be a more upbeat song? (Or part of it, w the three sections issue). At this point of the show we're three songs in, none of those songs nor the one directly after K&S really lend themselves to being upbeat at all, and it'd be the first time we hear from most of the characters so it's a spike in activity - a reasonable time to hit you with something more fast-paced, I feel. Also, in the workshop of Act I, this spot in the tracklist directly after Loomings is where the song The Ship was, which was pretty upbeat ("the Pequooood, she's a cannibal craft…" snippet one), but that song isn't in the tracklist anymore, so you're cutting that "please get pumped we're getting Into It now" moment, which maybe means K&S will have to make up for it in some way? Idk.

These chapters include a fair few moments of the heavy-handed foreshadowing/lack of the concept of spoilers which pervades this novel.  Not 100% sure how much this'll translate? But I think it'll come across a fair bit, since A) Dave's Melville + Ishmael, and The Sermon, both already lean that way, and B) when you’re reading Moby Dick, it very quickly becomes never a question of suspense around how it’s all going to end, because it's consistently made pretty blatant, and a lot of people know the ending anyway. It's more about the suspense you get from being emotionally caught up in the process, the spiralling to that point right before your eyes. It’s just the idea of “how do you replicate that emotion and pace in a musical?” 

[one-ishmael]

Chapter 13: Wheelbarrow

Today we’ve got another nice little chunk of narrative, after those low-key backstory and religious chapters. But, it also finds plenty of time for fun little asides and bits of philosophy here and there, so it ends up being quite long.

I’m trying to get out of the mode of going through the whole chapter point by point. There’s just too much in this book, and its very existence warns against that kind of close analysis as a sisyphean task. So, I will try to restrict myself to the points and observations I find most interesting.

SUMMARY: Ishmael and Queequeg have breakfast at the Spouter-Inn and then set off with all their luggage in a borrowed wheelbarrow to find the ferry over to Nantucket. They ramble through town and chat some more, exchanging anecdotes as they go. They board the ferry, a schooner called “the Moss”, and are revived by the sight and smell of the sea. On the trip to Nantucket, Queequeg is mocked by a couple of green country bumpkins, causing him to throw one into the air, flip him around, and land him on his feet. The bumpkin complains to the captain, who warns Queequeg against further mischief. That very same bumpkin falls in the water when a boom flies loose, and Queequeg then not only secures the boom but rescues the bumpkin, saving his life.

As I said, quite a bit going on here. Let’s hit some notable points.

There is a running theme in this chapter of people reacting to the close friendship of Ishmael and Queequeg, an ordinary New Yorker and a cannibal from the other side of the world. Even the other whalers in the Spouter-Inn mock them, and they really ought to be worldly enough to accept such things. They get stares on the streets of New Bedford, and then endure mockery at the hands of bumpkins aboard “the Moss”.

You can see a couple of interesting things here. One is that while we’ve been assured that the presence of strange folks from all over the world is considered No Big Deal in the whale fishery or on the streets of noted whaling town New Bedford, the friendship between one of them and a white sailor makes everyone look twice. It’s okay for “savages” to be around as long as they act and are treated properly, as outsiders. It is necessary to have them around, but they are not to be brought in and integrated into the social fabric. They must keep their own counsel, any actual mixing between races, even in friendship, is shocking and forbidden.

You can see where I’m going with this, it’s the old colonial/slave trade fear of miscegenation. It’s always struck me as very strange, something really “of the past”, but there are people still living who are violently opposed to it. It’s an ancient idea, really, the whole separation of in-groups and out-groups and whatnot, but the way it was applied to the scheme of racism in the colonial Americas is really particularly vile.

Ah, but I shouldn’t get too far off track. The purpose of these passages in this particular chapter is a little different. This mockery is there so that Queequeg can respond to it, and thus again prove his superiority.

You see, Queequeg doesn’t really care. He is above such petty concerns as what other people think of him. He is stoic in the face of this mockery, and takes a longer and wider view. After relating a story of not knowing how to use a wheelbarrow when he first arrived in America, he tells a story about some visiting traders in his own homeland were ignorant of dining customs. Everyone has something they can laugh at other people about. No need to get all riled up about it, it’s all in good fun.

Which is not to say that he will allow himself to be mocked, as we see on “the Moss” when he tosses that bumpkin into the air, but again it’s just teasing back and forth. The general rule, again, is to just take things in stride. Queequeg knows that he can rely on his physical power to make up for any social shortcomings. He walks around town with a razor sharp harpoon in his hand, those New Bedford townies can say whatever they like behind his back but they’re not going to disrespect him to his face.

Ishmael follows his lead, but instead of an inner confidence he’s simply too distracted by internal philosophizing and the joy of his new friendship to really care. When they arrive at the docks, both Ishmael and Queequeg are revived:

Gaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little Moss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his snortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!—how I spurned that turnpike earth!—that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish heels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea which will permit no records.

And we see here again that disdain for the land and love of the sea. The land is common and pedestrian, set in its ways, but the sea is mysterious and ever-changing. It allows escape from the boring everyday life, and even toil upon it is more exciting and inspiring. Remember that this book began with a description of the way that all humanity is drawn to water.

Anyway, this chapter also has one of my favorite bits of prose:

But there were some boobies and bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come from the heart and centre of all verdure.

Ishmael really has no patience for country bumpkins whatsoever. It is his one prejudice.

Ah, another long chapter down. Next time, we’ll finally get to Nantucket! And hoo boy does Ishmael have some things to say about that venerable speck of an island.

Until next time, shipmates!

Image credits:

A beggar carrying his wife in a wheelbarrow (1470-1490), by B x G

September (1638), by Paulus Furst

[binah-beloved]

Binah loves it if you're physically soft. it's such a contrast from her own cold, toned body, and a wonderful one in her eyes. softness makes you warm and comfortable, all that much better to hug and pull close to her chest. she can still pick you up no matter what. being an ex-Arbiter doesn't mean she's weak by any means. she enjoys lightly squishing or laying on top of you, using you as a soft pillow, or tugging you onto her lap and idly kneading her hands against your shoulders. softness is something Binah has little of, so she loves that you're the way that you are, no matter what, as you already bring such light and happiness to her life.

this applies to Queequeg too. and Outis for good measure because i like her.

[minipliny]

oh my GOD i hope readmore mobile doesn’t break again because i wrote more ??? moby dick ??? fanfiction??? aka pequod office comedy and i c a n n o t consign it yet to the open waters of AO3

It is an ironic circumstance, that men often receive the pleasures of life when they are least positioned to enjoy them; thus the Marquis de Lafayette, in the flourishing of his fortune and with an overladen table, received an abounding Nantucket cheese for lighting up the streets of Paris with whale oil, and was only inconvenienced by it. 

This was mighty bad timing; had but a crumb of that monstrous cheddar been lowered down to him in his prison-cell, that poor Frenchman would have wept! - and just the same, the fine cheese laid before Ahab at table could have been vermescent hard-tack; it penetrated him mechanically, but that inward Bastille of the heart received no provision. 

And so Ahab left his fare half-tasted, and his officers under the still spell of that silent glance no more thought of eating the remnants than of seizing the sextant from him.

The harpooners had a happier meal; they were all the brighter, for being at last in clean shirts upon a clean ship. To see the transformation wrought upon that oily deck, you should have thought our thirty hands willing and ready to take scrub-brooms to the Slough of Despond, and make light work of sixteen hundred years of filth. But something remained in their exhausted countenances of try-works ash; they looked fled from some new-fallen Troy, although, good Heavens! with an outlandish variety of household gods stowed in their trowsers-pockets. Besides, that narrow deliverance or delivery of Tashtego’s, from the whale’s case, had weighted a little on them; and Daggoo was doing what he could to make light upon it. 

“First I thought,” said Daggoo, “that’s an end to their infernal pipe-smoke belowdecks! How easy I’ll breathe; how sound I’ll sleep. But then I remembered, that they’d have to make harpooneers in your places - one of the boat crews, well! - and as soon as you’d hand them a harpoon, with their arm a-tremble, they’d dart it backwards and sideways, and I’d be stuck full of irons like a hedgehog.”

From the calm and straightforward way he voiced these grim imaginings, he seemed not to be skylarking at all; Tashtego said only - “It’s not that we smoke; it’s that the carpenter sneezes.”

“And why d'ye think he sneezes?” said Daggoo. 

Queequeg, having finished a trencher of salt-junk, expounded upon the excellence of tobacco for the constitution; as for being rid of Queequeg, they should have great trouble unless their captain became more inclined to social niceties, for the closest he had come to death was at the hands of a six-quart tub of molasses. This had been on his first voyage; he had been dispatched to row it over by way of sweetening a gam; a squall had blown up, the tub rocked on its bench, and pitching over had dashed poor Queequeg into the Pacific in its headlong rush. The other oarsman had made a grab for Queequeg, and disdained the tub, which wended on its lonely way.

“If I see a six-quart tub round Cape-Horn, I’ll sing out for molasses,” said Tashtego. “Hmm-mm-mm, so much for all this gamming and dancing. There was one of the crew missing when we were embarking from Honolulu - well - we thought, he’s deserted; diseased; died of dysentery; but the third mate said he’d declared a friend of his was aboard a Yankee whaler near us. He asked the captain if he’d seen the fellow - the captain turned pale - barged into the cabin. All right! there’s a muffled sound; the mate sprang open a sea-chest - there he is dead-drunk, that’s a way to recruit! More fool that captain, he was a slack fellow at the oar.”

“Oh, you don’t dance for you’re too busy yarning, Tashtego,” said Daggoo, “here! I don’t want any of this cheese.”

As for Tashtego, he had either made such short work of the salt-junk, or, having been made a harpooneer, was so relieved at being able to display any fastidiousness at all about his dinner, that he spurned that butt of cheese entirely; which left it to Queequeg, who contemplated it and then rolled the entire remnant in a pocket handkerchief and tucked it into his jacket. 

“You’ll burst, Queequeg,” Tashtego said, “just when we’ve scrubbed the decks clean again.” and he prodded Queequeg with his fork by way of emphasis. 

“O let him have it; when you are our Paul-Cuffe it will be a shame to be so exact about our provisions,” said Daggoo, “why, Tash! you’ll be summoned to meet the President, and he’ll say, what a dashing sort of whale-captain, but why d'ye starve your men of cheese?" 

"All right, oil your boat with it for all I care,” Tashtego said, blowing a spiral of smoke up to the heavens, though it stopped at the cabin-rafters, “there’s $200 advance on my pay sold already to an agent, for my wife in Gay-Head; there’s my ambition done." 

As for Daggoo, he slanted Queequeg a long look, but kept his own counsel. 

There, you may, say, what unprepossessing details of men who furnish forth such splendid feats for your narrative, Ishmael; what d'ye bother us with these for? Well, here are the Pagan harpooneers at rest, and therefore in miniature. I have seen the curious sort of theatre they have on the Java Islands, and the players for it. What possesses their makers, to paint their faces so intricately, and to adorn their clothing in queer chasings of gold and azure and vermilion, I know not; for, the stage being rigged in cotton cloth, the oil-lamps being kindled, what extraordinary, gigantic forms live and move before you! what supernatural shapes appear, from a little flat-leather puppet made by a mortal hand! but as for the detailing, you can’t see a scrap of it. 

As for that Paul Cuffe, who was entertained by no other than James Madison, I myself have not met him; but his son entertained me very hospitably at his estate near Stockbridge, having a Nantucket-friend in common with me, and being desirous of some briny reminiscences of the Atlantic from which he was now barred.  

How curiously are traced out the paths of a man’s fate! for that son was a Quaker by birth and conviction, a sober merchantmen and whaler; but when but a boy, the hour of national fate came upon him, his love of country pressed him to service, and in 1812 he shipped upon a vessel, with a letter of marque. 

God only knows, if one of the Englishmen who jailed him so cruelly as a Yankee, had a father who had been outraged that the elder Cuffe be jailed in Massachusetts as a Black Indian. 

He afterwards set out again in his former professions; lived very peacably among Catholics and South-Seas heathens; and by reason of a crippling of his foot, had lately turned yeoman-farmer to the family estate.

Let us leave that much-travelled mariner under his own vine and fig-tree, and turn ourselves to Queequeg; who had ventured up on deck, and hailed me where I sat leaning against the ship’s furniture. He cut a good figure, whether or no bloody, blubberous and dishevelled; but let us say that his ablutions had served to gild that lily, and that we greet our fellow-man more joyfully when that joy is unmixed with fright. The same, I am sure, applied to my own proper person. 

As for what I had been employed in doing for some hours, the answer is - nothing, but lose a game of dominoes to a Portugese sailor. Three cheers, then, to the grand old customs of whaling! for what confusion, what seas of ink have been spilled, what astrological ransackings between calendars Babylonian, Hindu, Hebrew, Parsi, Julian and Gregorian, upon fixing a rest-day. But the Sabbath, to be enjoyed upon a whale ship, is simply and according to the laws of hygiene and common-sense, fastened upon the day after trying out. For, aside from the scrubbing here mentioned, and setting men to the mast-heads and the wheel, which is a work of necessity, no duties are assigned. And for men who have laboured night and day so ceaselessly and amid such smoke and heat, what could be sweeter than rest! what more reasonable! 

These laws of whaling-Sabbath, however, are not so strict, as not to be revoked, the instant a whale should be spotted. 

So there we sat, exchanging pleasantries, when Queequeg took hold of my hand, turned it over, and deftly palmed something in it in a pocket-handkerchief.

At that instant, he declared to me, that it was a relief to him that the spermaceti was decanted entirely into barrels; since if I took a fancy to cast myself into it, he should only have to haul me out by the ankles. 

This thought astounded and distracted me; so that my countenance certainly did not display any culpability in the matter of the cheddar-cheese. In fact, upon quietly unwrapping it, I was filled with a sort of unnameable awe. It struck me very forcibly that it had been carved already; and carved at the captain’s table, and thus by the captain’s fork; so that graven upon it, and perhaps magnified homeopathically a hundred- or a thousand-fold, were the gloomy impressions of Ahab’s teeth! 

Nevertheless, in all my reveries, upon the tabooed nature of this cheddar-cheese, I was rapidly taking a bite from it; and would have continued, had I not heard the distinctive tread of the first mate. I stuffed the cheese into my jacket as fast as the Spartan-boy in the fable; it seemed to burn there. 

Now, Starbuck being a thoughtful first mate, he had noted, that in the entire practical business of whaling, Queequeg had been my preceptor; and that I had submitted to his experienced judgement countless and perhaps supernumerary queries on this subject. This struck Starbuck as laudable, inasfar as the responsibility of the harpooneers to the oarsmen went; and excellent, as to the safety of the boat. For certainly as a boy-whaler he had dogged the steps of his own elders, and, the hands aboard a whaler growing greener, with every year he was employed in this business, that instruction grew ever more necessary. 

But as to Queequeg, in the second dog-watch, having collapsed almost to the point of insensibility in retrieving his colleague out of a sperm whale head - as to Queequeg, who would be about again at one o'clock in the morning to superintend the watch - as to Queequeg having to be a schoolmaster at this hour, this was an excess. 

"There, that’s duty done and more than done,” said Starbuck, “rest ye, man." 

Queequeg being very cheerfully engaged in what he was doing, did what he could to convey, that these southern stars below the Equator had a sweet smack of home for him - being not so distant from the arrangement of constellations, that were at once making their storied motions over his parents and married sister - and that he should rather then rest on deck.  

All this had once furnished material for a domestic dispute between myself and Queequeg on the subject of the Milky Way; for, try as I might, I could not convince him that this being a lactatious splattering of a Greek goddess was not some freak or hobby-horse of my own, and the general belief of the Christian world. We had to call in the old Manxman for arbitration. 

Besides the meaning, there are the specifics of that starry almanac, which marked out for Queequeg so precisely the flourishings of different crops - I should have made a very poor gentleman-farmer, as I was too saddened that the cultivation even of yam and taro was so exacting a science, rather than being furnished forth without the attendant curse of Adam, to pay a very profound attention. 

As for these ideas being conveyed, which between boat-header and steerer were more usually along practical lines, the married-sister did materialise a moment in the mind of Starbuck; but in a very plain sort of guise! and without the peace-treaty, that had attended her betrothal. 

"Here’s one man’s stars my own reversed - well, Starbuck, but familiar all; never has my heart misgiven me before, to see the Bears sink out of view; I traverse one Creation. And how low swung and sank that whale-head - nearly to the very deeps, if not arrested! Is’t too clear a sign, to see a man brought out from it? And yet those sweet assurances I might have had from this seem most invisibly bright, and dipped beyond mine own horizon.”

And seeing Queequeg still stood patiently at his station, said “As seems well to you, Queequeg; but rest.”

Starbuck went briskly then about the decks, with an inspecting eye, as of a man heedless of his own advice, and bent upon wresting out of the good condition of the tackles, the boats, the rigging, and all the sundries, some plank of certainty. Queequeg however, as a man will when recalled to his own exhaustion, lent his head upon my shoulder, and closed his eyes. The reader may be familiar with this mingling of sensations; how there steals over that one furnishing himself for a pillow a most loving, amiable, and sweet feeling, and at that self-same moment, over that shoulder and then that arm a gradual numbness, so that Queequeg dozed upon a marmoreate flank of mine. 

I remained ten more minutes awake, in the quiet consumption of the cheese, which was as a foretaste of paradise after months of forking down bits of duff. As to the implications to the law of property, let it be said it was fairly the harpooneers’ to dispose of, and if Aristotle is right that two friends are but one soul, that inhabit different bodies, then Queequeg in one this occasion pasturing me on cheddar, was only pasturing himself. 

I was half-awake, and happily replete, when Starbuck passed me by again; and gave myself and Queequeg a brief and desolate glance. He had not meant, I think, to embark upon an idle conversation, but if you picture Achilles, after his chariot-horses had spoken that once to him, standing with curry-comb in hand, and without reason or expectation, still hoping for another word - so Starbuck, standing in silence upon the forecastle deck.

[afterthegreatunknown]

personal headcanons a go-go!

Widdershins Family Book-Verse Edition

VFD/Schism/General World Building Headcanons

The World of ASOUE is an alternate world that first diverge during World War I, and again around World War II. That divergence brought in “VFD’s golden era”. It’s really a subjective term. Still, for the late 1940’s to 1950’s the world was “quiet”. VFD members of this era are ‘The Golden (Quiet) Generation’.

The VFD United States branch in 1960 started to have internal conflict. It spread to other VFD headquarters/locations around the world because they found the same arguments. The Schism happened in the 60’s, just in different ‘phases’ that make it one whole.

Via a butterfly effect, the world enters a strange apocalyptic world until the mid-1970s where stability came back. The new world leaders look at the first half of the 20th century through rose tinted glasses, leading to the present ASOUE period of being “timeless”.

The City is located in a former state of the once United States, now know as the Land of Districts (the once former state is the Land of Districts, not the former country); the Kingdom of Arizona is one of its neighbors.

Captain (V.) Widdershins

Captain of the VFD Submarine Queequeg. The Queequeg was built by him and most of the STEM members of his generation, with Kit Snicket being the main one.

His decade long apprenticeship on a VFD submarine gave him navy skills. Captain isn’t referring to his rank. It’s referring to how he’s in command of a submarine.

(French) Chinese Cambodian on Father’s side, native Cambodian on Mother’s side; neither are part of VFD. The V is the initial of Widdershins’ first name; if anyone asks him what the ‘V’ stands for, he says not to bother, telling them to call him by his new surname instead.

Left Cambodia as a refugee with his mother. When he came of age, Widdershins applied for citizenship. He is a proper citizen by the time of ASOUE.

Due to a long apprenticeship, Widdershins has a habit of sneaking off to land to visit a few of his friends associates. He took a risk on informing Lemony what happened to Kit, as Widdershins got caught sneaking off last time (he got caught this time around too).

Alongside a minor interest of poetry, he has a minor interest in fringe science and mythology/folklore. Widdershins knows more about the Great Unknown than he lets on.

Widdershins was a former ‘patient’ of a VFD eye-doctor akin to Dr. Orwell’s. As it was the early years of hypnotism, it didn’t took hold of him, but it did left side effects. The main one that never went away is his inability to remember people’s names and events.

Near the end of his apprenticeship Widdershins was given the (non-paying) job of Fernald’s babysitter (later ‘chaperone’). Widdershins had a collection of poetry books he and Fernald would read together whenever Fernald’s parents were at work.

Parenting Skill Level: ‘Decent, Doting Stepfather’ to ‘Stepfather Who is Struggling; Why You Trying to get your Kid take a Minor Interest in your Job’ to canonical ‘You’re Not Going to Win Stepfather of the Year You Know That Right?’.

Widdershins realizes off-screen during the events of TPP he hurt his stepchildren many times in the past. As such Widdershins put family first for the first time in years over VFD, for he didn’t want to lose family again, and realize VFD gave him bad priorities.

Post-Canon, Widdershins takes a job at the docks in the Fish District, as well as delivering seafood to restaurants and other places. He has an expired driver license, so he had to get it renew upon returning to land.

Fernald (Jules Marie) Fernald 

The Baby-Sitting Charge of Nightmares; Fernald was the (then) child of two working VFD member parents. VFD didn’t elect to kidnap recruit him but sent babysitters, and Fernald would drive them away after a week or two. Three days was his best record.

Fernald once upon a time liked Widdershins; Widdershins survived Fernald’s antics, leading to Fernald to treat him as an older brother figure. When Mom and Widdershins began dating each other, Fernald was freak out at first, but soon calmed down.

Discovered his interest of poetry via Widdershins; the two would read poetry together. When it was time for Fernald to enter his “apprenticeship”, he managed to convince his parents to convince Widdershins to be the ‘chaperone’, stating VFD may not have one available (which was correct because VFD at this point is becoming a bigger mess).

Was absolutely excited when getting told by his parents they were going to have another child. Fernald hated being an only child and wanted a sibling who he can teach things.

His fashion senses of a [trench] coat came from admiring Jacques Snicket (from afar). Despite the article written about him and the broken pedestal, Fernald never did change fashion senses until surviving the Great Unknown (he ditched the trench coat).

Blames Widdershins for indirectly killing Mom in the Anwhistle Aquatic fire. He also believed at one point Fiona is his half sibling. At least until Post-TEE Pre-TVV, when Fernald accidentally learns something of Widdershins that has Fernald going, “Oh. Well fuck.”

Post-Awhistle Aquatic Fire, Fernald “agreed” to put up an act of ‘all is well’ when visitors show up, as well dance around the issue themselves. It’s only until Fernald turns 17 did the fights happened, as Jacques bringing up Gregor accidentally set Fernald off.

Fernald hates his surname. He had to deal with people going ‘Oh there’s Fernald Fernald!’ He blames his misery on his parents, who Fernald knows they consider the name ‘Friday’ for him. Granted, Fernald can’t see himself as a Friday.

Lost his hands after joining the fire-starting side: he had to set another fire to get rid of evidence (a body), and in the explosion, Fernald’s hand got injured to where they had to do a fast amputated. The hooks were used because it was what they had at the time.

Annoying had to fake a resume for TEE to pose as the 667 Dark Avenue door-man. But as luck would have it, he gets another door-man job Post-Canon.

Fernald’s ‘favorite’ Baudelaire is Sunny because he was amused with watching her struggle to bite or not bite his hooks in the cage. Fernald’s ‘favorite’ Quagmire is Duncan, for Fernald enjoys his spunk. Isadora is a close second due to her interest in poetry, but things got awkward when he almost accidentally stabbed her eye out.

Fiona (Una) Widdershins

Fiona as an infant never needed glasses. But when she became six, Fiona did needed glasses. Her stepfather allowed her to use the frames she got from him as an infant.

Lived the first five years of her life on land. The Queequeg during this period never went out to sea. At six, the Queequeg went out to sea, but always return back to land fast.

Likes to steal the grass from the sand playground to have a ‘garden’ on the Queequeg as a child. Fiona Post-Canon gets herself a green thumb in gardening.

Fiona has few memories of her mother. The memories Fiona think she recollect are a mixture of Fernald, her stepfather, and her own memories mix-match together.

Fiona had a VFD tutor who lived on the Queequeg to teach her, starting at six, ending at fourteen for her technical-apprenticeship (which is also when the Queequeg fully went out back to sea). Fiona’s interest in mycology came from reading mycology books she found hidden onboard when she should be listening to her tutor.

Did not like The Woman Who Turned Out to Be a Spy. The Spy join the Queequeg when Fiona was ten. The Spy was pleasant at first, but after a few days, the Spy begins trash talking about Fiona’s mother in the most passive-aggressive way possible (leading to Fiona doubting the manatee story) that’s almost borderline insulting to Fiona.

Fiona’s 13th and 16th birthday were wild. Fiona at 13 finally got evidence of the Spy being awful and the Spy trying to steal important VFD documents, leading to everyone play a game of hide and seek to find the Spy and throw her out. Fiona at 16 had her birthday cut short, as during the party the news of Gustav’s confirmed death broke out, which all happened during a storm out at sea.

Fiona has no idea how to socialize with her own peers since first grade. This resulted in her being rather shy and quiet around those her age. With most of her company being adults, Fiona ends up learning a few swear words (mostly via Stepfather), but she rarely uses them unless she feels it’s truly appropriate + actually wants to swears.

Fiona loves shore leave because she is allowed to visit the City (or Lake Lachrymose) for fun. She’s upset it shrinks with each passing year. Before, it was the whole month of April and September. By ASOUE, it just became one week in April and September.

Fiona genuinely likes Klaus, but it’s only after she and Fernald double-cross Olaf, did she finally asked herself if she like Klaus romantically or as a friend (with Fiona scared she may have just ruined his life if he didn’t like her romantically with their kiss).

Despite the mass complications between Fiona and her stepfather (not truly approving about her mycology interest, lack of peers her own age, keeping secrets from her, etc), Fiona still loves her stepfather (he just gets a nickname of trashcan and variations Post-Canon). Fiona honestly think he shouldn’t have left in the first place (the swimming woman is an explanation, not excuse), but the fact is, Fiona is glad he came back (and that’s important to her).

Bonus: The Once Happy Couple That Is...

Mrs. Widdershins (F) and Thursday

Mrs. Widdershins’ first name is Frigga (not Friga), maiden name McAlister. Thursday’s full name is Thursday Fernald. Fernald and Fiona’s naming scheme came from their mother.

In-between members. Both were 14 when the schism broke out

Both were 19 when Fernald was born (Frigga got pregnant at 18). They didn’t marry until Fernald was two. They were perfectly fine with staying girlfriend-boyfriend, but eventually had to get married or else Thursday’s mother (Monday) wouldn’t give him his inheritance

They originally wanted their son to be name ‘Friday’. ‘Fernald’ is a misunderstanding. 

F has a lot of jewelry, and she prefers necklaces more than anything else. In fact, Thursday proposed via necklace. F never took said necklace off until after she and Thursday started  the process of their divorce.

F was a mycologist; Thursday is a dendrologist (he studies trees; he hates getting calling a botanist). Before that, F was a teacher in the City, while Thursday was the principal’s secretary at Prufrock Prep.

F being a mycologist led to a rumor she went all ‘mad scientist’ and made psychedelic mushrooms. It’s true, but it was an accidental experiment. Said accident later got her involved in the creation of the Medusoid Mycelium, co-creator with Gregor Anwhistle.

Another (nasty) rumor is F cheated on Thursday with Gregor (work romance affair), and Fiona is Gregor’s daughter. This led to the divorce between F and Thursday.

Thursday believed the rumors because after Fernald’s birth; the couple swore to never have another child again because VFD’s recruitment methods could lead to their death and tried to take precaution since (mostly via condoms).

F quickly realize her decision to date Widdershins could make the rumors worse. She was scared the ‘news’ Widdershins wanted to tell her was the ‘Fiona being Gregor’s daughter’ rumor, and he wanted to break up. F was secretly relieved hearing it was about Lemony Snicket because Snicket’s problems finally took attention off her. 

Thursday is technically the only known (Original) Schism Generation member left alive; he’s 49 by ASOUE.

[doppelnatur]

@primelinchen said:

queer sailors and suicide by sailing is definitely a thing I agree! like I don't know enough about Moby dick to say if this applies to the book, but there's definitely a phenomenon of young queer people who know they'll never have a life here removing themselves from everything. physically but also mentally, because living on a ship is way different from living in a town. I've honestly considered going aboard myself for that reason, and know that's why my uncle became a sailor. lot of men from my family actually

so like, you're onto something

So there's a few quotes from Moby Dick that make me think specifically that it applies here. First quotes shortened because lists. This man doesn't ever shut up (which i love).

Chapter 1, first paragraph, about suicide:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses [...]—then, I account it high time tozz get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.

Chapter 1, some other paragraph, about loving the sea with a tint of self destruction:

Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

(I really tried shortening this but everything u take out changes the tone so much??? I'm sorry...)

I would like to note that he really wonders why a healthy person would go to see and then highlights narcissus drowning as the ultimate form of love of water. (The previous paragraphs are not exclusively about the sea) Narcissus also drowned himself because he fell in love with a man (himself but a man is a man is a man). Melville then goes on to say he and many other men chase the "phantom of life" which I would just like to say = the sea = the whale = the crewmates = the own homosexuality. He also positions kind of throughout the book (i know this is a strech pinning it on this quote alone) that queerness is something beautiful but dangerous and terrifying, that is likely to give you a death at sea (just like a spermwhale might).

I sadly can't quote directly from here on out because Gutenberg hates me.

Chapter 7 or 8

He is read, at church, a lot of names of people who vanished at sea and he first romanticizes disappearing at sea, as becoming an honorary immortal. This could be because no one will know if he's dead or alive, or because of fame though in the first chapter he explicitly says he wants no fame for himself and doesn't go for the fortune. And then he says the line that is something along the lines of "if will die, so be it, I will die. In fact take my body for it is not me, take it." (Except probably longer) Which i would like to note while being pretty suicidal again, I'm not the only person to note that "take my body" 👀👀 kinda a sexy line to say. Especially after just spending multiple chapters cuddling with his husband in "the honeymoon of their hearts". Which like I would like to say suicide chapter after gay chapter... Just saying. Also Queequeg, a noted non Christian is also here at the chapel so like there's some significance here.

There's a lot more that i could say about the whale representing queerness too, but I'm gonna just point to the chapter where they squeeze the "sperm" (from the spermwhale) and sometimes hold hands and it's Ishmaels most blissful moment, and he wishes they could all be more intimate all the time.

More Moby Dick Hot Takes (im so sorry)

So i think, part of what Moby Dick is about is just. Suicide. And specifically going to the sea as a suicidal repressed queer person, because it's incredibly dangerous and there's hot sailors there away from society. And then falling in love, not only with your crew mates but also with the sea and with the thing that you're trying to kill. (Whale/queerness)

This theme is not only present in Ishmael but also in Ahab, who speaks about marrying his wife and then immediately going to sea, leaving her a widow. Which is a statement about him not actually ever being interested in this life with a wife on land but also about him committing suicide by going to sea, even if he doesn't die, he no longer really ever will have a life on land.

There's also something about. Ishmael surviving because Queequeg chose to live that is super powerful and I wish queequeg had survived to bring that point home. But also queequeg dying i think is almost something he had to do to tone the gay down and again that really demonstrates what I'm saying doesn't it?

Am I saying obsessively hunting a spermwhale, saying you will go down with it is a metaphor for violently repressing your homosexuality? Absolutely.

[addams-beineke]

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: The X-Files Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully Characters: Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, Emily Sim, Queequeg (X-Files), Margaret Scully, Walter Skinner, The Lone Gunmen (X-Files) Additional Tags: Domestic Fluff, case files, it's not all fluff, eventual angst, Emily's not dead and neither is Queequeg, MSR dating, so many tropes happen in this oh my god, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, kind of established relationship MSR, starts between, Post-Episode: s06e07 Terms of Endearment, Episode: s06e08 The Rain King, this is a direct sequel to Emily's Christmas Wish, the rating is for smut in chapters that are not the first one unfortunately Series: Part 2 of Emily's Not Dead and Neither is Queequeg Summary:

Join Mulder and Scully as they take on their most challenging task to date: a committed relationship. It's something that's especially hard to manage when Scully's got an all-too-perceptive little girl whose origins are shrouded in mystery and when our favorite FBI agents still have a job to do.