(no subject)

[camwyn]

"What d'ye see?" cried Ahab, flattening his face to the sky.

"Nothing, nothing, Sir!" was the sound hailing down in reply.

"T'gallant sails! - stunsails! alow and aloft, on both sides!"

In a few moments they were hoisting him to the main royal-mast head; and then, while but two-thirds of the way aloft, he raised a gull-like cry in the air. "There she blows! - there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill!"

Fired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three look-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous whale they had so long sought. But there were no further words, no cries of notice nor claims of credit. For the waters that roiled and parted on either side of the high sparkling hump that rose some mile or so ahead, silently lifting into the air, almost fled from that hump as if it were some thing never meant to touch upon matter of this world. Had it been the White Whale we must surely have seen his silent spout jetting into the air, or his form dipping below and between the waves - but we did not. That hump, that whiteness unnatural, continued to surface as we watched, struck by an awe and a horror we none of us dared name.

And thus, through the serene tranquilities of the tropical sea, among waves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding terror, the great thing rose on. Some mercy withheld from sight the full terrors of that submerged trunk, the wrenched hideousness of that form - but ah, God, that vast shadowed bulk must surely have been beneath us even at so great a distance! That self-same thought came to every man in that moment, and we were frozen in place with horror-chilled blood save one man.

"Turn back, Captain!" cried Queequeg. I tore my eyes from that unspeakable Cyclopean mass to stare his way. His complexion had gone quite near as livid as that dreadful hump ahead of us, and the tattoos writhed upon his skin as if they were living things themselves. That terror which gripped us all must surely have granted him fluency, just as fear of losing her child may grant a mother strength in her direst moments, for he shrieked, "For the love of all goodness, turn back now!"

Ahead of us, the water around that swelling hump began to writhe with tentacles- and then, oh, great and merciful God, then arose that awful eye...

-- Howard Phillips Melville, The Pequod Horror, ch. 133, The Flight - First Day

Comments

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

Gold. Brilliant.

[camwyn]

So many Hells to go to, so little eternity to do it in...

[batyatoon]

... You're some kind of wrong person.

The BEST kind.

[camwyn]

I knew, yesterday- I knew- that while the headache that was seizing me all afternoon and evening was probably the precursor to a cold, what it TRULY meant was:

"Head hurt. Brain dirty."

The only cure for that is to get whatever-it-is out of my noggin. I'd say that's what happened here, yeah?

[batyatoon]

I'd say so.

... And it's a damn good thing I'm not more familiar with the works of either Melville or Lovecraft, because I would be tempted to start a chain.

[camwyn]

*glances at her collection of Lovecraft short stories*

*says nothing*

Melville's a little too stiff and formal for me to imitate for long, so I tend to err in the direction of HPL where I can.

[batyatoon]

yeah, and for a chain, I properly ought to either take a third author's plot and write it in a Melville style, or take a Lovecraft plot and write it in a third author's style.

You've seen the original chain I played in, haven't you?

[camwyn]

Yeah, you showed me once. Very nice.

[genarti]

And now I'm all nostalgic.

We should do an LJ game of this.

[batyatoon]

We totally should.





How would we set it up?

[genarti]

Somebody set up a post with the rules and the first fic. People chain in the comments. Multiple subthreads allowed, I should think, to allow for dysfractionation and for irresistable inspiration.

[batyatoon]

...you realize that is the beyond-perfect icon for this game.

[genarti]

*giggles*

Tiny bit.

[blackswanevent.livejournal.com]

....o_o. You wrote that?

this isn't like some sort of spoof author who-
O_O.

*points and flails *CAAAM! Just go off an' get published already! pleeease?

That terror which gripped us all must surely have granted him fluency, just as fear of losing her child may grant a mother strength in her direst moments, for he shrieked, "For the love of all goodness, turn back now!"

Sheer motherlovin' brilliance.

[camwyn]

I didn't write all of it. The first few lines and a couple of turns of phrase were cut-and-paste from Moby-Dick, chapter 133, "The Chase - First Day". You can find that here.

And I'm working on getting published, honest. I've got three rejection letters from Weird Tales so far.

[nesmith.livejournal.com]

*suddenly gets flashbacks to my grad school paper where I snuck in a comparison of Moby Dick to Jaws*

[genarti]

This is ever so beautifully wrong.

[kaikias.livejournal.com]

*dies of the sheer glorious wrongness*

[the_croupier]

Ok, now you're starting to scare me. XD


Brilliant!

[bodldops.livejournal.com]

I love you Cam, truly I do.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

You are wonderful

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

Jekyll & Hyde line: so inspiring.

[camwyn]

.... I quoted Jekyll and Hyde? Where?

[nepheliad.livejournal.com]

I meant that we discussed this in the line. At the restaurant. *makes sense?*

[camwyn]

Oh! Okay.

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

Augh!

<subsides into whimpering incoherence>

Nice work!

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

You're brilliant.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

*cough* Trpical sea? *cough*

Also: does it make me a bad person that after realizing it wasn't just a passage copied out of Moby Dick for no good reason, and starting to reread, I expected the non-whale to be a giant marine disembodied penis?

[camwyn]

Dude, the tropical sea is in the Melville.

.... okay, yeah, the trpical sea is not. I'll go fix.

As for the non-whale, the prospect of genitalia never occurred to me.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

Well, it was described as big and round and white and not a whale. "Massive set of disembodied genitals" is obviously the next logical possibility. [/irony]

[ymfaery]

...I'm both scared and in awe of your brain. Mostly awe, actually. Well done. :D

[isustrikanda.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just... Wow. that is bloody brilliant. :)

[(Anonymous)]

That is splendid and it is also suitably weird. Impressed again.

[cousin-jack.livejournal.com]

Um, whoops, that was me being impressed by the splendidness of it. Specifically eg how you have even Queequeg jibbing rather than Mr Starbuck, say. Nice.