Welcome to the Table (Statehumans) Fanart and Ramblings with some extras on the side. This blog may contain adult content; minors please use discretion. Fanart Tag: #mur art
I ran out of space for links in Part 1 so it's time for a continuation! All my recent(ish) Welcome to the Table/Ben Brainard-verse art, sorted by topic and character. WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!
(GEN) COMICS/MULTI-CHARACTER SCENES:
--> "5 Things You Did Last Week" (a.k.a. the time DOGE took over the government. Video format; multiple characters including Gov, "Gov," California, Texas, Wisconsin, New York, Oregon, Arizona, Canada, "DOGE," Florida, and...Russia??)
---> "Unnatural Disasters" (About nuclear testing in Nevada; includes Nevada and Gov; TW for heavy subject matter)
--> Grapes of (California's) Wrath (Arkansas, Oklahoma, and California- for wttt week)
INDIVIDUAL WTTT CHARACTERS:
Alaska
--> It's FUCKIN' DENALI!
--> Sweater Weather (feat. Maine)
Arizona
--> HOT TO GO!
--> "To the Town of Agua Fria Rode a Stranger One Fine Day..." (a.k.a. Texas is literally Texas Red in the song "Big Iron")
Canada
--> "Hey Gov, Remember the War of 1812?"
California
--> "Did you think I wouldn’t fight back?"
Colorado
---> Sleepin' With Peaches (Colorado/Georgia)
--> Rocky Mountain HIGH
Florida
--> Florida!!! (Mur's Version)
Gov
--> "I picked the wrong week to quit smoking"
Jefferson
--> "Bigfoot is Real and I Helped Him Commit Tax Fraud"
Louisiana
(See Florida/Louisiana section below)
Maine
--> Sweater Weather (feat. Alaska)
Maryland
--> "Like What You See?"
Nevada (One guess as to where I live now-- I am only *slightly* biased!)
—> Cheating at Uno?!?!? (feat. Utah)
--> 2 am at the Diner, Plotting Murder (Nevada/New Jersey)
--> Half-Broke Horse (a.k.a. Nevada is a Horse Girl)
--> "Bitch, You Made My Mascara Run"
--> "I Was a Dam Builder, Across the River Deep and Wide" (also feat. Arizona)
--> "And if I Pave My Streets With Good Times, Will the Mountain Keep on Giving?" (Drawing for Nevada Day 2024!)
--> Nevada Drivers... (feat. California)
--> Playing the Slot(Canyon)s (feat. Utah)
New Jersey
--> 2 am at the Diner, Plotting Murder (Nevada/New Jersey)
New York
--> Smoke Break
--> "Excuse me, these are my emotional support pigeons"
Ohio
--> Expression Practice feat. Wyoming, Ohio, and Texas
Texas
--> Expression Practice feat. Wyoming, Ohio, and Texas
--> "To the Town of Agua Fria Rode a Stranger One Fine Day..." (a.k.a. Texas is literally Texas Red in the song "Big Iron")
Utah
—> Just Me, My Husband, and his 135-million year old Dinosaur (Utah/Illythia)
--> Cheating at Uno?!?!? (feat. Nevada)
--> Dr. Pepper Creamy Coconut (a.k.a. Utah parties too hard)
--> Playing the Slot(Canyon)s (feat. Nevada)
Washington
---> Judgy Washing Machine (v. 2)
Wyoming
--> Expression Practice feat. Wyoming, Ohio, and Texas
SHIPS/DUOS:
Texas/California
--> Red and Blue Gays
--> Mechanical Bull...'Nough Said. (Part of a series of illustrations inspired by the fic "Shakdown" by Lune)
--> That HAT... (Part of a series of illustrations inspired by the fic "Shakdown" by Lune)
(Psst... Ask about the *super secret* third drawing in the "Shakedown" series and I *might* share ;)
Florida/Louisiana
--> "Forever." (for wttt week)
--> Road to Flor-dorado (a.k.a. Floui as Miguel and Tulio from "Road to El Dorado"
--> Snow Day!
--> MERRY CRISIS (feat. Gov)
California/Nevada
—> Mafia Queen(s)
--> "Most of My Sins Were Born in a Kiss on a Night Like This" (Historical Calivada!)
--> Nevada Drivers
California/New York
--> "When someone is so hateful it inspires you to be kinder"/"When someone is so kind it actually disgusts you"
I generally believe that Country Personificationers agree that personified countries are supernatural entities.
But what TYPE of supernatural entity do you believe them to be? What do you think is the most accurate being to describe them?
(more of a generalized category thing, very specific powers are not taken into account)
This is important, I think.
Generalized Spirit/Ghost/Noncorporeal entity
Typically Malicious entity like a Fae/Demon/Youkai of some kind.
Typically Benevolent entity like an Angel/Fairy or similar.
Some kind of hyper-specific, location-based cryptid
Some kind of mixed-species chimera or homunculus
Robotic, not necessarily supernatural but close enough.
More silly* city OC art! In honor of the first day of Pride Month (let’s pretend I planned it this way), have a vaguely historical-but-still-queer-AF San Francisco, feat. Emperor Norton.
*This started off as a sketch of a “silly” historical figure but then I ended up researching the guy and bit and getting actual feels. Buckle up yall.
Normally when I research historical figures I prepare myself for disappointment—and I don’t even expect much in the first place. Emperor Norton kind of surprised me in a good way. I didn’t know much about him other than that he was supposedly “crazy” and “eccentric.” Then I learned that unlike, well, pretty much everyone in actual power at the time, he was empathetic to Chinese immigrants, and issued at least 18 Proclamations advocating for the dignity and rights of the Chinese population in San Francisco. This was during a time when mobs would regularly harass and commit violence toward Chinese communities.
My interpretation of San Francisco is that they are of Chinese heritage, so I imagine having someone on their side would mean so much to them.
Alas, apparently he never actually said the quote in the comic—even though it’s often attributed to him. But why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
I haven’t quite settled on a final design for SF. The only thing I’m pretty set on is that they have medical chimerism, which is where someone has 2 different sets of DNA in different parts of their body. This manifests itself in different ways, like a different hair color on one side, and slightly different eye colors. This is inspired by the fact that SF is located on the boundary of two different tectonic plates. These features become even more prominent after 1906, which is still a couple decades in the future as of the setting of this comic…
reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics
Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.
And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!
Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.
this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.
my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.
so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.
the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.
also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:
it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.
#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass
On a Watsonian level, sure.
On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.
I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."
I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.
LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)
Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.
#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains
I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:
Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?
I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.
There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.
Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.
(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)
new tumblr feature of being able to seach your likes from oldest to newest came out...... and you were apparently my first ever like. congrats i think!
- Frog and Toad get stomped immediately. They’re lovers, not fighters. They have no idea what to do in the situation, AND they’re soft and squishy. Toad is probably poisonous, so he may have some ramifications later in the battle if he gets chomped on, but he won’t be alive to see it.
- Curious George, while he has some buffed agility stats, is still narratively and functionally a human toddler. He’s one of the first to go down.
- Arthur could normally hold his ground for a good bit, but against these specific opponents, he’s toast.
- Pooh could put up a good struggle, but he couldn’t keep it up. He doesn’t have the heart for it.
- Babar has enough bulk to take a good few hits, but he’s too small and slow to deal any good damage and would eventually get chipped down.
- The Berenstain Bears actually last for quite a while. This isn’t because they’re bears, as you may think (their teeth and claws give them some advantages, yes, but the rest of them have the size and shape of regular human beings), but because there’s four of them. Couple that with Mama and Papa’s children being on the line AND the power of God on their side, and they’re the first on the list that actually mean business.
- Clifford can stay in the game due to his sheer size. Everyone above him here has literally no way to touch him, and could be easily crushed by a simple belly flop.
- Amelia Bedelia lasts almost until the end. Every attack directed towards her is dodged or deflected through a variety of contrived circumstances that Bedelia isn’t aware of. She also doesn’t even know that this is a fight.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to the Cat and Mz. Frizzle. Honestly, I can see either of them pulling through, but my money’s on the Friz. However, the Cat is the only one with an actual taste for blood.
Here, have a Silly self-indulgent comic featuring my Nevada Cities OCs (Reno and Vegas).
There’s a running joke on local Reno social media that planting tomatoes before all the snow is melted off the surrounding mountains in the spring will cause late season snowstorms. It’s treated almost like some kind of weather voodoo. Some examples:
And of course Las Vegas is upset because this isn’t the kind of *juicy* drama she signed up for…
(She misses when Reno was a world-famous divorce hotspot. Now THAT was good drama! Now she just has to listen to Reno talk about traffic jams, Californians, and the weather! When did her sister get so boring? As if that’s not the exact same things *she* complains about…)
Here, have a Silly self-indulgent comic featuring my Nevada Cities OCs (Reno and Vegas).
There’s a running joke on local Reno social media that planting tomatoes before all the snow is melted off the surrounding mountains in the spring will cause late season snowstorms. It’s treated almost like some kind of weather voodoo. Some examples:
And of course Las Vegas is upset because this isn’t the kind of *juicy* drama she signed up for…
(She misses when Reno was a world-famous divorce hotspot. Now THAT was good drama! Now she just has to listen to Reno talk about traffic jams, Californians, and the weather! When did her sister get so boring? As if that’s not the exact same things *she* complains about…)
Y’all remember that “you’d be my seven minutes” trend (based on how it takes 7 minutes for the brain to shut off after death).
Yeah?
Well I’d like you to picture this, because I can’t draw it. Cal, slumped against a wall, for some reason he’s dying, and the next image is some picture of Texas (Tejas), probably from when they were vaqueros, with text that reads “You’re my seven minutes.” And then it repeats 3 more times but with Cal dying at different times, each memory is different too, and each memory panel has different words “You’ll always”/“be my”/“seven minutes.”
