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So I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Moby Dick in my downtime, and omg this book is weird. Like prepare yourself for it being super racist, but it’s also intensely gay??? The main character gets gay married to his Pacific Islander roomie like the night after he meets him???? Also I just got to the part with Captain Ahab and omg he is so Extra™ like he actually throws his pipe overboard because it doesn’t fit with his ~*~aesthetic~*~ Let me tell you Great American Literature is wild

UPDATE in this chapter the narrator can’t shut up about how hot his particular friend  boyfriend Queequeg is and describes in loving detail how they’re tied together by this rope while he holds Queequeg over the side of the boat (actually he says “wedded,” WEDDED, i ask you) and he’s never felt more intimate with another human being in his life

JUST WHALERS BEING BROS

FURTHER FUCKING UPDATE OH MY GOD

okay so item 1: this book recently went from “somewhat racist at brief intervals” to “let’s have a whole chapter of unremitting racism” so like. be aware of that if you ever plan on reading this? it was not fun times

ITEM TWO 

Y’ALL.

There is a whole chapter about Our Hero holding hands with his fellow whalers.

WHILE THEY MASSAGE WHALE SPERM.

I could not make this shit up. Here it is, in all its slimy glory, Chapter 94: A Squeeze of the Hand – 

“Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm 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.”

THIS IS THE GAYEST THING I’VE EVER READ. MELVILLE IS LEGITIMATELY JUST TAUNTING ME NOW. HE’S CREEPILY ROLLING HIS LITTLE WHALER HANDS IN WHALE SPERM AND DARING ME TO SAY SOMETHING WHILE I JUST STAND THERE WITH MY FUCKING JAW ON THE FLOOR. THIS BISEXUAL ADMITS DEFEAT. I HAVE BEEN OUTFLANKED BY HERMAN FUCKING MELVILLE AND HIS GAY-ASS WHALE SPERM

FINAL. FUCKING. UPDATE.

this is what i said to @manicpanic88 earlier today, so naïvely: i said, “Meville is straight up thirsty for whales.” I added, “This man truly wants to fuck a whale.” 

Let me be clear (and by the way SPOILERS up to antepenultimate chapter of the book follow this parenthetical): I am now on chapter one hundred thirty-something and we have only just now found the whale. Like. This book has been one hundred and thirty chapters of Real Nantucket Whale Thirst™ and almost no actual (Moby) Dick, do you get me? You out there who like pining fic, THIS BOOK IS THE ULTIMATE. Melville did it first, but GAYER, and WITH WHALES.

Anyway so this whole book everyone who has seen or even heard about Moby Dick is like “whoa my sweet fancy aunts, don’t go lookin’ for that there whippersnapper” (this is my attempt at imitating Melville’s weird imitation of a Nantucket accent, it’s not going well for me but it didn’t go well for him either), “whoa, THAT’S A BAD FISH, I heard he took someone’s head clean off / killed his twelve best mates / blew up a ship with the power of his LASER FLUKES!!” i mean no one actually says “laser flukes” but THIS IS THE LEVEL OF BADNESS WE ARE DEALING WITH. THIS IS NOT A NICE WHALE. YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE THIS WHALE HOME TO MEET YOUR PARENTS AT SPRING BREAK, HE WILL DRINK ALL YOUR BEER AND LEAVE THE HOUSE SOMEHOW FULL OF DOG POOP, WHILE IT IS ALSO ON FIRE.

and yet.

here is what Melville has to say about this bad motherfucker when we finally, finally see him for the very first time:

“A gentle joyousness – a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested the gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with ravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering eyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness, rippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that great majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so divinely swam.”

RAVISHED EUROPA. STRAIGHT FOR THE NUPTIAL BOWER. WE GET IT, HERMAN. WE GET IT. YOU WANNA FUCK A WHALE. YOU WROTE A WHOLE ENTIRE BOOK ABOUT WANTING TO FUCK THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WHITE WHALE IN THE WORLD, WHO PROBABLY ALSO HAS PURPLE EYES AND PUTS ITS FLUKES UP WHEN SOME PREPS STARE AT HIM. WE GET IT.

reader, i hope he married it.

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