#whale weekly

[the-most-sublime-fool]

mrs hussey thank u for ur service

[plaguedocboi]

I think Ishmael Mobydick would really flip out if he learned how sperm whales sleep

[hotcinnamonsunset]

a whale of a good time🐋

[shattersaurus]

Old foes

Always been a sucker for whales

[my-name-is-not-kimmy]

[even-in-arcadia]

neither alive nor dead but a secret third thing (at sea)

[monstercollection]

Today, almost three centuries after Melville wrote that you could no longer see whales from the shores of Nantucket, I sat on a beach just 80 miles from that island and watched a humpback whale breach the surface.

It’s such a common sight now that my mother-in-law was surprised that in all my years of coming here (and the few where I lived here) I hadn’t seen it before.

There is something so hopeful and remarkable about that.

Edit: I extremely bad at math, it was almost 200 years. In my defense I’d just hiked 5 miles to the beach and was very tired! I was also an English Major, we don’t do math!

[kafkastan]

at the request of @fierifreak, here is a chart i originally posted on twitter that inexplicably did numbers (credit to OP of the blank graph in the corner!)

[stjohnstarling]

We really don’t talk enough about the spleen these days. People used to talk about the spleen like it was the king of organs, Shakespeare wrote it verse, these days you’re lucky if someone even knows they have one. Moby Dick opens with Ishmael going to sea to drive off the spleen, what have you done for your spleen lately? I want to be complemented on the splendour of my spleen, just once. I want to taste splenetic delights.

[the-golden-vanity]

I can't be the first person to make this observation, but it's just struck me that Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick and Thomas Blanky from The Terror represent the opposite ends of a spectrum—"How well do you cope with losing your leg to a huge white beast that destroys hubristic seafaring men?"

[string-star-lights]

laid in bed last night thinking about how herman melville died before humans knew about whale songs, or how they sleep, or about whale falls, or that they can be gay… he would have loved them so much

[saranilssonbooks]

Since my serotonin is in the midst of a deadly duel with pollen. That and possibly a little procrastination.

[plaguedocboi]

I think Moby Dick artists could use how objectively crazy-looking whale eyes are to their advantage

[3meninaboat]

Moby Dick

Have you always wanted to read Moby Dick? Or maybe you didn't know you want to read Moby Dick BUT YOU DO. We are reading it together in time with novel over the next few years, one chapter at a time. We start TODAY! Join us! @whaleweekly

[shattersaurus]

Old bones

[nammikisulora]

I recently finished Moby Dick and since then I've been contemplating what I'd want from a "perfect" adaptation of it. this is what I've got so far:

first off it needs to be a tv show, not a movie. the book is so big 'cause it needs to fit a whale in it, thus an adaptation ought to do the same

Ishmael needs to narrate this baby. give me voiceover ffs, this is absolutely essential

keep the infodumps. for the love god keep the fucking infodumps. condensed, sure, but they need to be there! everyone who watches needs to know exactly how Very Normal™️ our boy is about whales and whale hunting

also tbh i feel like the whole whale phrenology thing is pretty essential to the vibe of Ishmael. do not make this guy normal about this shit

for this to work, some kind of framing device is probably best. easiest is probably to have Old Ishmael writing The Book and figure out some way to segue between infodump documentary style and Plot

oh and also include the side stories of the ships they meet somehow

make. it. gay. I need Ishmael and Queequeg to be banging on screen, okay? at the inn in the beginning, on the Pequod after the whale flensing scene… it needs to be there

HOWEVER this must not be acknowledged in the narration. look, they're just really good friends, snuggling in bed during their hearts' honeymoon, 'kay? and checking out how hot your friend is while he's stomping around on a dead whale, cutting it up and fending off the sharks, clad in only shirt and stockings, is just what anyone would do!

what about all the things Ishmael can't possibly know about, then? like private conversations between Ahab and Starbuck and such? I mean I guess our guy could be eavesdropping, but eh - Melville didn't care, so the hypothetical show could just as well handwave it too

keep the whole end sequence as close to the book as possible. top tier imagery there

obviously there's more needed, especially in regards to the characters but eh. if anyone's got anything to add I'd love to hear it!