#anways that's why if i find kjh i'm challenging him to a fistfight. winner gets his company

[gootarts]

if you're reading canto v and wondered 'huh, ishmael and queequeg have pretty strong thing going on between them. i wonder if they played up gay subtext present in the original novel', you'd actually be wrong! limbus actually dumbs down the intimacy of their relationship a lot.

and by a lot, i mean a lot. these quotes are direct from moby dick.

Chapter 4, The Counterpane:

Upon waking next morning about daylight, I found Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife. [...] At length, by dint of much wriggling, and loud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style,

Chapter 10, A Bosom Friend:

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. [...] 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.

Chapter 11, Nightgown:

Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong repugnance to his [Queequeg's] smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.

there's some really interesting analysis of their relationship by richard norton here:

In the opening pages of Melville's greatest novel, Moby Dick (1851), the narrator Ishmael and the cannibal Queequeg go to bed together, and symbolically marry and even give birth. The bed in which they sleep at the Spouter Inn is the landlord's marriage bed; Ishmael plays the role of the terrified coy maiden, waiting in bed while the bridegroom gets undressed: "This accomplished, however, he turned round – when, good heaven, what a sight!" Queequeg springs under the covers with his tomahawk (!) and Ishmael "shrieks." There is some "kicking about" and Queequeg begins "feeling" Ishmael. Next morning Ishmael awakes with "Queequeg's arm thrown over me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost thought I had been his wife." Melville emphasizes the point by referring again to "his bridegroom clasp" and "hugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style." And they even bear offspring, rather more quickly than heterosexuals: "Throwing aside the quilt, there lay the tomahawk sleeping by the savage's side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby."

sadly, queequeg (and his relationship with ishmael) gets sidelined in the novel once ahab makes his appearance, but he still serves an important symbolic role.

#renaming the kjh misogyny dungeon to the kjh misogyny and homophobia dungeon #limbus company #seriously though a game published in 2023 has significantly less gay stuff than its original novel written 170 years ago. boggles the mind. #if you want some queer lit analysis: hero captain and stranger by robert martin has a chapter devoted to moby dick #anways that's why if i find kjh i'm challenging him to a fistfight. winner gets his company