#fedallah

[mossy-rainfrog]

Ahab alone is enough to die.

[ID: A digital illustration for Moby Dick, based on the Twelfth Night Anne Hathaway photoshoot. Captain Ahab stands in the center, looking horrified as Starbuck, Fedallah, and Pip all grasp at him from different angles. All characters are tangled in a bright red harpoon line, except for Ahab, who is unharmed. Starbuck’s right hand holds the end of the harpoon line, with a heavy, sharp dart on the end, and the cord wraps around his hand and then throat as he leans in to kiss Ahab with a hand under his chin. Ahab’s eyes and mouth are open, as if he has been caught off guard, and he stares at Starbuck with a devastated concern. A bright red crown sits atop Ahab’s head and bleeds onto his face and collar. A drop of blood rests on Starbuck’s chin. The harpoon line passes in front of Ahab’s chest, and is grabbed by Fedallah, who holds the cord close to his chest, and buries his face in Ahab’s shoulder with an anguished expression. The line is tangled around Fedallah the most; wrapping twice around his neck and tangled all over his chest. With his free hand, Fedallah grasps onto Ahab’s waist. The line finally wraps around Pip, who is clinging to Ahab’s sleeve, and pulling at the line in front of Ahab’s chest. Pip’s mouth is open as if he is calling out, and the harpoon line circles around his shoulders, and finally hangs from his arm. Behind all of the characters looms the massive shape of the whale, Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick’s skin is wrinkled and scarred, and one massive eye stares down at the scene before him.

The next three images are all closeups of the drawing.

Character designs: Ahab is a large Arab man with short, curly, dark, greying hair, a pointed beard, and scars across the bridge of his nose, and over his lip. He wears a long, maroon coat with gold buttons. Starbuck is a thin white man with short red hair, a short mustache, and many freckles. He wears a dark waistcoat over a white shirt. Fedallah is a thin Persian man with a mustache and short beard. He wears a white turban and a dark long shirt. Pip is a teenaged Black boy with short curly hair, and he wears a light colored shirt. End ID.]

the ID for this is long enough already, so I’ll keep this brief, but hi I have spent weeks on this piece and it genuinely feels like a magnum opus or something. this is possibly my favorite thing I’ve drawn all year. designs as always from the delightful @pocketsizedquasar ‘s Moby Dick comic!

anyways I am constantly anguishing about the fact that Ahab thinks of himself as the lone sacrifice in his doomed journey, the one “enough to die”, but in reality, everyone who loves him, who tries to save him, faces his punishment first. Ahab ISN’T alone, despite what he thinks, and that connection directly gets the three closest people in his life killed. how am i ever supposed to recover from that.

[saltavenegar]

!!PEOQUOD LINEUP!!

or as many of them as I could reasonably fit

[pocketsizedquasar]

hi i’m sahar pocketsizedquasar and i keep forgetting to post art i made weeks and weeks ago

patreon saw it first 💖 check me out over there for early access + exclusive sketchbook art + WIPs of comic pages

[ID: First image— three watercolor sketches of Ahab and Starbuck embracing. the first one is in a teal and orange color palette. Starbuck has his face buried in Ahab’s hair and is holding him tightly, while Ahab looks forlornly off to the side, saying “I miss him.” Starbuck says, “I know.” the second sketch is in dark blue and yellow, and has Ahab leaning forward into Starbuck’s chest with his eyes pressed closed, while Starbuck holds him and looks off. The last sketch is in yellows, pinks, and purples, and shows them both lying down, Ahab laying on top of Starbuck’s shirtless chest, with Starbuck resting his cheek on top of Ahab’s head.

Starbuck is a thin and lean white man with freckles, short curly hair, and a mustache. In the first two sketches he is wearing a collared shirt, and in the last he is shirtless and wearing only pants. Ahab is a chubby and muscular Persian man with short curly hair and a thick beard, and scars on his face. He wears a collared shirt.

Second image— A watercolor sketch of Ahab and Fedallah, walking together with linked arms.

Ahab and Fedallah are both middle aged Persian men, Ahab taller and broader, and slightly darker skinned than Fedallah. Ahab has a thick beard and long curly hair in a ponytail, while Fedallah has both a mustache and beard. Fedallah is wearing a white tunic and white topi and headscarf, and carrying a harpoon. Ahab is wearing a bright maroon coat over a teal vest and light cream colored shirt and pants, with a dark cravat.

The third and fourth images are different photos of the same drawing.]

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

i cannot stop thinking about Fedallah mobydick. the first description in the book calls him a phantom. he's the first major character to die. he's from a group of people that melville initially seems to admire and then spends the rest of the book being viciously racist about. Ahab trusts him enough to ask him to do seafaring crime for him and Fedallah likes him enough to agree to it. we never learn their history. he spends the whole story ostracized and under the suspicion of everyone around him and never does anything even remotely unkind. he tries to save his friend and fails. he can't save himself. he suffers the most gruesome death in the narrative. he is one of the only two people Ahab is willing to take any sort of council from. he's a skilled harpooner but doesn't get to bond with the other harpooners and we never see why. he's stuck on a doomed voyage thousands of miles from home surrounded by people who think he's the literal devil, and his only friend is hell bent on a suicide quest. he must be unbelievably lonely. he is despised by the narrative despite being objectively right about everything. he makes me so sad to think about in any capacity and i want to be his best friend

[saltwife]

this one was too good not to do.

[twofoursixohjuan]

honourable mentions may include Steelkilt, Bildad and Peleg, or Moby Dick himself

[paulgadzikowski]

Starbuck's boat's crew, or Stubb's, or Flask's, or a secret fourth mate's crew

[charaznablunt]

Thar she blows!

It's a podcast surfacing! Hello, Whale Weekly, how are you enjoying the shocking twist of Ahab's secret boat crew? Want to hear more about the aesthetic and racial implications of that imagery? Or do you want to thrill along with us to the dramas of the chase for the whale, as finally presented to us in its full glory? Join me on another episode of Higgledy-Piggledy Whale Statements, discussing chapters 47-50!

[jorrmungandr]

Chapter 100: Leg and Arm

Ahhhhhhhhh, a hundred chapters! Hard to believe I’ve made it this far. It’s very funny to me how the first 75 ot so posts were written in about a year, while the latter 25 have taken… significantly longer, shall we say. The events of the last, oh, three years have not exactly been conducive to my creative endeavors, or those of many others, I imagine. Speaking of, I must apologize for the gap…

[plaguedocboi]

It still really gets me that Ahab’s prophetic bestie is like “hey I just had a vision that you die by rope” and Ahab goes “oh so I commit a crime and get sentenced to death by hanging? Yeah that sounds like something I would do”. Like yes of course that’s what he meant. It’s not like whaling ships have literally miles of rope stored on them at all times. I’m sure it’ll be the gallows and not a Tragic Whaling Accident.

[wulfhalls]

Well I gotta know what did you think of Moby dick? Is it truly top tier man becomes obsessed and it eventually destroys him?

Congrats to finishing moby dick😹 i read it in january and the only reason I was able to finish was that half way i started listening to the audio book along with reading it… even though I really enjoyed the book and was impressed. Perhaps it was also cause English isn‘t my first language. There really isn’t a book like it..

THANK U. well seeing how it took me like. two years to get thru I can safely say its not one of my fav reading experiences ever 😭 half of it is just melville going I've done a tone of fucking research on wales and u will fucking hear about it. soooo much nautical terminology I had to switch to german because there were just strings of sentences in there I couldn't understand a fucking word of (couldnt understand them in german either but i just felt saver regardless lmaoo). the like ⅓ of actual story and exploration of obsession to the detriment of everything else and the breakdown of one man's psyche and his conscious descent into his own destruction and that of everyone else around him was 👍👍👍 but unfortunately it felt like this took up approximately 12% of the book. so. yeah. some really nice language use in those sections as well tho

[mossy-rainfrog]

hello everyone, I made a series of doodles to put inside of my copy of MobyDick and I would like to share them :3 pls enjoy:

[ID: Two traditional drawings. Ahab shows off his new pegleg with a flourish. Ishmael infodumps about whales to a fond Queequeg. End ID.] [More detailed ID in ALT.]

New Leg Goofin is for chapters 108-9, when Ahab gets fitted with his new leg! it's right before a super devastating chapter so i needed to make myself laugh lmao

Wikipedia Page About Every Whale is for the whole goddamn book, honestly, but I chose to put it at the beginning of ch.32, Cetology, where Ishmael really does try to explain every whale ever

[ID: A comic of Stubb and Flask bursting into Ahab's quarters, thinking the Captain is in danger, only to find Ahab and Fedallah playing a game of cards. End ID.] [More detailed ID in ALT.]

This gem belongs to p.344 where Stubb wonders if Fedallah means to kidnap Ahab, which was such a baffling ridiculous concept that I couldn't help but make fun of it. literally Ahab snuck this man on board bro, what the fuck is fedallah going to do to him. they're playing uno. shut up

[ID: Two drawings, with the first showing Pip after being cast away, haunted and alone on the deck of the Pequod. The other shows Ishmael and Queequeg homoerotically grasping hands while processing whale sperm. End ID.] [More detailed ID in ALT.]

this goes out to chapters 93-95, because the UNREAL whiplash from "a child was just abandoned at sea" to "hey let's be horny about whale sperm" is still the most insane transition of all time. Ish, what the fuck

[ID: A simply doodled meme diagram for how to greet a fellow amputee. The "wrong" answer shows Captains Ahab and Boomer shaking hands, while the "right" answers show Ahab in a handstand and then kicking his leg up high, both times to cross his prosthetic with Boomer's. End ID.] [More detailed ID in ALT.]

this goes out to p. 454. every interaction between these two absolutely delighted me but my mental image for the specific line about them "crossing ivory limbs" got. very silly.

[ID: A small comic of Ahab asking the Harpooners to give him blood to temper his harpoon in. They stare back at him with varying expressions of confused, uncomfortable disbelief. End ID.]

the last one, for p.504. yknow that feel when your boss just walks up and asks you to bleed on his custom made harpoon??? yeah uh. normal workday things

anyways thank you for reading, I had a delightful time making these and am so very fond of them all, so yea :3

credit as always for the designs goes to the darling @pocketsizedquasar , as well as credit for pricelessly annotating my copy of MD and thus getting me to actually read it, love youuuu💙💙

[dolokhoded]

thinking about song of the ocean from dimitris papadimitriou's moby dick musical... girl.....girl.....

[pocketsizedquasar]

another patreon saw it first! judging ahab for his taste in men /lh. it’s ok buddy

[ID: A 2-drawing pencil & ink sketch comic of Ahab and Fedallah. They are standing together and looking off to the side, Ahab with a tired expression, and Fedallah slightly curious. Ahab is saying “I can’t believe i’m gonna fuck that white man,” with a small doodle of Starbuck’s face in the speech bubble. Fedallah replies, “You don’t have to.” In the next drawing, Ahab looks up in exasperation while Fedallah glances back at him incredulously. Ahab says “No, I’m gonna.”

Both of them are middle aged Persian men. Ahab is taller and bulkier, with short curly hair and a thick beard and wearing a large coat. Fedallah is shorter and his hair is concealed with a skullcap over a head wrap, and he has a wide mustache and beard. He is wearing a buttoned up tunic.]

[coulson-is-an-avenger]

trying to make a playlist for a character with a very specific vibe is so humbling. it’s like sorry my entire music library cannot match this person actually i need to go find 30 new playlists of never before heard indie bands to accurately portray them. actually. or i will combust. and then it takes 7 years

[supercantaloupe]

i really really hope dave malloy’s moby dick musical gets revised and restaged at some point because i think it has some of dave’s best songwriting yet. but also some of the script is. really really bad