Project Moon games are in a bit of an odd spot for me where I love the games to bit, but I don't really have much to say about them because I feel like the games are very explicit about their themes and symbolisms. Like, yes, I could do a full character analysis on Yi Sang's clinical depression, but you could also just read Canto 4 and understand. Yes, I could talk about the interplay between human & nonhuman in Library of Ruina and how that relates to Angela, or you could just play Library of Ruina. You don't need me to tell you that Ahab is a whale. Ishmael already textually calls Ahab a whale.
Anyways, speaking of. Ishmael's fucking problem is that she wants to have sex with the sea so bad it makes her stupid.
To elaborate: Ishmael wants to be part of something grander than herself. That's why she quits her office job so readily. Ishmael wants to be part of something bigger, and perhaps more importantly- she wants to be the equal of this grander thing. She wants to be intimate with the sea and for the sea to be intimate back, she wants to say she's the person who knows the sea better than anyone else, that the sea sees her and respects her. She wants a relationship with the sea. Any relationship. Love. Hate. Fear. She'll take anything, so long as it has meaning.
Unfortunately She Is Not Getting That, because the sea, the world, is wide and uncaring. The only intimacy it knows of is consumption. It will gladly meld its body into Ishmael's, but it will not be as equals- it will be as food.
The Pequod is the next best thing, and the idea of hunting for the Pallid Whale must be alluring for this very reason. What better way to prove yourself the sea's equal than by proving yourself a threat to it? What better way to catch its attention?
But the Pequod, too, is large and uncaring and only capable of consumption. Ahab never tried to have a relationship with the sea in the first place- what she wanted was to absorb and to be the sea, and she can brag about being the closest anyone has ever been to understanding that Lake, but she, too, was doomed to fail from the start. The world is simply too big to care about one little bloke.
Ishmael wants to have sex with the sea. And she is So Mad About It. Because she's not getting that, and if she did, it'd make her worse.