#from a devout ishy fan. obviously

[nettleshuttle]

OKAY SO: buckle up, let’s have a short (hopefully) thread on the two main characters of canto V, ishy and queequeg, in regards to their literary counterparts (ishmael and, uh, also queequeg. we’ll figure some handy naming out later). just as a disclaimer, i really like canto V’s character writing as it is, so this is not about finding flaws (until we get to the queequeg section, at least) but just pointing out some adaptation patterns that i find interesting!

starting off with ishy and ishmael (to restate, for clarity, game character = ishy, book character = ishmael): i see ishy as a complete reversal of ishmael’s personality traits and drives, which can (and will, in a second) be traced on a few levels

main motivation (what’s with the revenge?): up until the end of canto V, ishy’s main goal remains to find and kill ahab. essentially, the spite-fueled drive for revenge, wherein the person pits all of their rage against the whole wide world on one element and then aims to tear said element to pieces, is transposed from the ahab—whale relationship to the ishy—ahab one. funfact: that’s why canto V is called “evil-defining”! both ishy and ahab define evil for themselves and arrive at an image of either the pallid whale or in turn, ahab herself. importantly, the idea of this mechanism is the main engine behind moby dick’s plot, with (book)ahab considering the white whale as the embodiment for all the world’s wrongs (just like his game counterpart). importantly v2, ishmael as a narrator not only doesn’t share this ideology, but sees through it and can analyze it psychologically: he is 100% not a revenge guy, very much unlike canto V ishy, who is presented in a crystal-clear parallel to (game)ahab

character traits. the revenge line leads us to another significant thing: ishmael is, generally, a rather laid-back character. while he is traumatized as a narrator and distressed within the plot, he basically copes through a “it’s not that serious” mechanism. while it is an unconscious defense of his mind against near-death experiences, it sort of sticks: ishmael as a narrator approaches many events lightly, even jokingly, often making fun of his past self. in other cases, he openly admits to ignorance and lack of ability to do/explain something. well, in canto V ishy looks like she’d rather die than admit that someone may know something better than she does. she is absolutely serious (criticizes others for taking things too lightly, actually), hardy, uptight. in general, she’s not one of the open or joking sinners (even superficially), but in canto V her anxious rigidity that then borders on panic is more serious than ever. one of the crucial scenes for ishmael is when he writes a will and feels like from then-on death will not be a prospect that sends him into a frenzy (since he’s kinda dead already. ishmael logic much), while ishy, despite dante’s clock-winding, is clearly paralyzed with the idea that the whales will bring about some kind of dying that is irreversible. on the other hand, while her “we are so not ready” is much different from ishmael’s reactions to developments aboard the pequod, the two certainly share a sense of impending doom that they are fully aware of, but still can’t do shit about

okay, then how about the whales? in the book, ishmael is not only a sailor, but also a (self-proclaimed) scholar. while his ‘research’ on whales is as gap-ridden as it is wide-ranged (and that is to say, very much so), he exhibits a genuine interest in whales and his account of whale-hunting is actually compassionate towards the animals. in the game, animal-whales are replaced with monster-whales: dangerous, abject, hostile. while i’ve always considered ishy’s interest in corp pamphlets as a tiny link between her an ishmael’s bookishness, the element of empathy, compassion, or the plain “i’m not sure how to judge this” element is gone

last but not least, some comparison of details (i’m fond of trivia, sorry not sorry). #1, among the sinners, ishy is a skilled harpooneer-fighter and quick-minded organizer, that is perhaps closest in how she operates to outis’ military drill. however, whatever book ishmael did on pequod (he mentions a task offhandedly from time to time, but no specifics), it certainly was not a chief harpooning or leading position since his position in the ship hierarchy was pretty low and he had no useful skills or experience. #2, ishmael seems to share a lot a with the reader, but is actually ‘open’ without revealing much of substance about himself. ishy is an extremely closed-off person, but then when we do learn about her, we suddenly know all of the most important stuff. #3, both ish-s leave to sea because they are fed up with their daily lives: for ishmael, this was actually a regular thing (not the first time he left for a sea voyage to cope). #4, they both survive by clinging to queequeg’s coffin after pequod sinks. ouch

and, while we’re at that, some thoughts regarding queequeg. i was super excited to see her in the game (did i mention i started playing lcb specifically because of her and ishy? okay, now i’m mentioning it) and while her relationship with ishy and overall role in the plot both delivered, i felt very strongly (and not very positively) about her design:

what’s wrong with it? visually, nothing—i love it (and she’s stupidly hot too). still, the way queequeg’s tattoos and spoken language were handled left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. in the book, queequeg is of polynesian descent: he arrives in nantucket knowing little of the language (and thus communicates in simplified english) and even less of the customs, because he comes from a different region and culture. ishmael as the narrator underlines many times how people who ridiculed queequeg for his not fitting in were idiots, and he laughs at his own near-sightedness as he used to be quite afraid of queequeg-the-scary-cannibal himself. queeueg’s tattoos were, by the way, a symbol of identity and belonging to his native culture, to the point where he used their pattern as a signature

and was does canto V do with this? in-game queequeg speaks in a broken language—literally, because she mutilated her tongue to distort her speech. not a very cool take on the book source material of a polynesian native speaking a language that isn’t his own (nor does he want it to be), is it? moreover, game queequeg’s tattoos are a sign of her slavish belonging to the middle and she tries to get rid of them through self harm. i know lcb is, at best, loosely inspired by the literary sources and doesn’t aim to adapt them in any way, but seeing how they took basically the whole 1:1 plot of moby dick for ishy’s in-game backstory, i just feel like they could’ve managed better for queeuqeg’s character

the more i think about it, the more im convinced that the two major moby dick characters in canto 5: ish, obviously, and queequeg, are actually reversed versions of their book counterparts. 100% opposites. only ahab is just the same flavor of insane