It’s The Thing Mock Turtle Soup is Made From!
Now I know technically this week’s subject should be classified as a “fictional beast”, but I’m going to trust you can get over it, cause dammit there just aren’t that many mythical turtle beasts and as the internet says “I like turtles”!
The mock turtle is a beast encountered by Alice in Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” First mentioned by the Red Queen in passing:
Then the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, “Have you seen the Mock Turtle yet?”
“No,” said Alice. “I don’t even know what a Mock Turtle is.”
“It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,” said the Queen.
Later in the story our hero was actually encountered by Alice and the Gryphon, where he is described as melancholy and tells a long, rambling, pun rich, story using the double meaning of school to describe his learning and life in the ocean and playing on the similarity or the words “tortoise” and “taught us”. Mostly… he sounds like he’s into dad humor… mostly…
As for physical characteristics, he’s relatively straight forward in beast terms. Body and front fins of a giant sea turtle and head, legs and tail of a calf (cause those are the weird cuts of calf meat mock turtle soup is made from)… And I think this bears repeating: don’t forget the melancholy! I wanna see some melancholy in those eyes!
Our judge this week is veteran Mythical Beast Drawing champion, continuing contributor, part of the famed Neurauter clan, and as her portfolio site says: “teacher, artist, traveler, photographer, daughter, sister, aunt, girlfriend, business partner, love love, chef, gardener, dreamer.” Rumor has it that she just got her first gig as an art teacher so I offer my congratulations for that!
