#ok i can see the reblogs and the this @ also!

[dogsplayingpoker]

Ok weird it wasn't letting me reblog this properly. Anways hiiiii

I did read it (over a year ago when i reblogged this) and that isn't what I said, or my criticism of his point and, overall, the neo-liberal ancient-contemporary comparative perspective that Devereaux is routinely writing these articles in. It would be silly to be fully Pro-Rome, sure, but I'm not really accusing him of that persay. I do still think his general perspective is a silly and factually inaccurate one and disagree with it, so I therefor disagree with the arguments he makes starting from this perspective. In particular, I think that no matter how much he claims to actively be against it, Devereaux and the many historians that follow his same playbook end up: 1. romanticizing (I previously said "admiring," which may have been where we got mixed up) Rome by claiming it was a ghastly horrific slave state (true) while also being unable to help from looking to "the good parts" with a kind of breathless nostalgia, and here, overtly for guidance. This is of course a pretty common issue for classicists, unfortunately, including professors of mine that I've generally really respected. Usually the "good parts" = freedom of religion in occupied territories, civil rights afforded to slaves (+the way that pre-Race slavery functioned differently in general), and exactly what Devereaux says in the title of the article, i.e. their "Notion of authority" being likened, often, to a gentle but firm father figure who knows whats best for his children. It is absolutely hilarious to me how often historians, even ones that claim to have left-wing values, can believe in the noble pater familias rule of the romans with a smile and a tear in their eye. Does anyone else here remember 'the white man's burden'? Did anyone see that weird tucker carlson speech where he talks about daddy coming to spank the disobedient little girl that (assumably?) was supposed to be the Biden government? Anyways. Writers try to isolate only that there was religious self determination (in occupied territories of an expansionist empire), that they Ruled the horrible violent imperial war machine Fairly, and then don't even hide the fumble when they get to the slavery part, proudly saying YEAH, they were ENSLAVED, sure, and that's BAD, BUT........ This all ties into issue two, or the underlying issue:

2. Devereaux is a liberal American historian that is either unable to appreciate the full context of the country he lives in OR is actively obfuscating it AND/OR accepts it and thinks its just peachy outside of a few stubborn issues like police brutality and the like which he thinks can be handled in a vacuum by throwing enough good old fashioned liberal values at them. He fails to view issues from a systemic lens and therefor thinks anything he doesn't like is a weird flaw coming from some outside source. In that article (and I can't find this specific article again on Foreign Policy to pull examples from, I'm sorry) he was trying to 'learn from rome' for the sake of America. Even if he's saying Rome was a heavily flawed society, he is saying our empire can still learn a good thing from their empire. I disagree with that. I disagree with the empires staying empires in the first place, or that empires are things worth saving, or that they're even possible to save. My argument is also that we should actually definitely not look to Ancient Rome for advice on law enforcement, or indeed any of our policies point blank period. I personally think this kind of Rome-USA compare and contrast exercise is always fnny because the writer also never seems to reckon with how much we already, fundamentally, ARE Rome-- in all the worst ways, and in the ways he's claiming we can 'learn' from them. We already have. We've been romanticizing and following in their footsteps very intentionally the whole time, just as others were inspired to follow in ours in a horrific timeline of gore and human atrocities. Devereaux, per his website, is really into classical liberalism, liberal democracies, private property, free-market capitalism, and John Locke. (https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/). We simply have really different perspectives on politics that also inform how we view and would choose to write about things as historians.

I think this quote from that blog post on liberalism is especially funny in context: "And of course Cicero himself never fully absorbs the implications of his philosophy: a wealthy Roman slave-holder, it never occurs to Cicero that perhaps he daily violates the natural law by keeping people in bondage." Devereaux himself never fully absorbs the implications of his philosophy: a white well-to-do professor in an elite seat within American Academia, it never occurs to Devereaux that perhaps he daily violates the individual freedoms of liberalism by rationalizing and hiding away the dark parts of a fundamentally unjust empire relying on the slave labor of prisoners, the indentured servitude of sweatshop workers worldwide, the slaughter and subjugation of millions of in the global south and the underclasses within the empire itself, and the theft and hoarding of the world's resources. But okay. Cicero bad, John Locke good. Got it. My argument would of course be that they are both bad, both equally ignoring the reality of the society they lived in and their places within it. Devereaux is starting his argument from an already catastrophically flawed point of view that forces him to look past things like 'context' whenever it becomes inconvenient. He has to say in the post multiple times that like yeah, sure, Locke's view of who counted as a "person" worthy of having things like "rights" was, um...narrower than ours today, but he was still correct because I like him (and it's totally different from how other people cited, like Cicero, were incorrect hypocrites). Ignore the slavery and colonialism, same old same old, it is still correct and not at all laughable to claim that the United States was a nation formed on a defining principle of inalienable freedoms for every single person. He mentions that those things were obviously bad but doesn't see them as truly conflicting, more as growing pains. He even says the founding father's misogyny and racism (towards the enslaved specifically: indigenous people, and therefore the ACTUAL founding principles of the US colonial empire, go completely unmentioned) "[...] represented betrayals of the principles that otherwise document: the crime was common, the hypocrisy was special." American exceptionalism who? Obviously if he was saying we should instate a more 1:1 ancient roman government that would also be ridiculous. But my point is that he's asking the wrong questions about the society we have and what's wrong with it in the first place. He is often wrong about Rome and near-universally wrong about America.

Despite Sparta’s reputation for superior fighting, Spartan armies were as likely to lose battles as to win them, especially against peer opponents such as other Greek city-states. Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War—but only by accepting Persian money to do it, reopening the door to Persian influence in the Aegean, which Greek victories at Plataea and Salamis nearly a century early had closed. Famous Spartan victories at Plataea and Mantinea were matched by consequential defeats at Pylos, Arginusae, and ultimately Leuctra. That last defeat at Leuctra, delivered by Thebes a mere 33 years after Sparta’s triumph over Athens, broke the back of Spartan power permanently, reducing Sparta to the status of a second-class power from which it never recovered. Sparta was one of the largest Greek city-states in the classical period, yet it struggled to achieve meaningful political objectives; the result of Spartan arms abroad was mostly failure. Sparta was particularly poor at logistics; while Athens could maintain armies across the Eastern Mediterranean, Sparta repeatedly struggled to keep an army in the field even within Greece. Indeed, Sparta spent the entirety of the initial phase of the Peloponnesian War, the Archidamian War (431-421 B.C.), failing to solve the basic logistical problem of operating long term in Attica, less than 150 miles overland from Sparta and just a few days on foot from the nearest friendly major port and market, Corinth. The Spartans were at best tactically and strategically uncreative. Tactically, Sparta employed the phalanx, a close-order shield and spear formation. But while elements of the hoplite phalanx are often presented in popular culture as uniquely Spartan, the formation and its equipment were common among the Greeks from at least the early fifth century, if not earlier. And beyond the phalanx, the Spartans were not innovators, slow to experiment with new tactics, combined arms, and naval operations. Instead, Spartan leaders consistently tried to solve their military problems with pitched hoplite battles. Spartan efforts to compel friendship by hoplite battle were particularly unsuccessful, as with the failed Spartan efforts to compel Corinth to rejoin the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League by force during the Corinthian War. Sparta’s military mediocrity seems inexplicable given the city-state’s popular reputation as a highly militarized society, but modern scholarship has shown that this, too, is mostly a mirage. The agoge, Sparta’s rearing system for citizen boys, frequently represented in popular culture as akin to an intense military bootcamp, in fact included no arms training or military drills and was primarily designed to instill obedience and conformity rather than skill at arms or tactics. In order to instill that obedience, the older boys were encouraged to police the younger boys with violence, with the result that even in adulthood Spartan citizens were liable to settle disputes with their fists, a tendency that predictably made them poor diplomats. But while Sparta’s military performance was merely mediocre, no better or worse than its Greek neighbors, Spartan politics makes it an exceptionally bad example for citizens or soldiers in a modern free society. Modern scholars continue to debate the degree to which ancient Sparta exercised a unique tyranny of the state over the lives of individual Spartan citizens. However, the Spartan citizenry represented only a tiny minority of people in Sparta, likely never more than 15 percent, including women of citizen status (who could not vote or hold office). Instead, the vast majority of people in Sparta, between 65 and 85 percent, were enslaved helots. (The remainder of the population was confined to Sparta’s bewildering array of noncitizen underclasses.) The figure is staggering, far higher than any other ancient Mediterranean state or, for instance, the antebellum American South, rightly termed a slave society with a third of its people enslaved.

[stewyhosseini-bf]

they are literally brothers that's his little brother man!!!!!! you don't get it!!!!!!

[e-likes-bones]

so a couple months ago now i think? i decided on a whim to make a puppet since i figured i had enough supplies lying around to do it, which resulted in me being struck to make arguably one of the best members* of the rock-afire explosion into a marionette: looney bird!

(excuse the goofy looking puppetry, i don’t actually have any experience w/ marionettes. whoops!)

anyhow i know a couple people that have seen puppet looney were curious how i made him, so under the cut i’ll have my rambles about that!

making looney bird was super fun! so expect this section to be long because i do wanna explain everything as much as i can. i will divid this up into sections, which shall be:

body, head, & neck

face & plant/leaves

tail & wings

legs & feet

strings & control

anyhow! let me get to explaining lol

Section 1: body, head, & neck

this is where i began! i made a base for the head & body out of crayola air dry clay so i had base shapes to put the fur on top & so the puppet would have a decent little bit of weight to it. the head was just a small ball, while the body was larger & slightly more oblong. while the base & the other sculpted parts were drying, i had to color the fur i was going to use.

i only had white faux fur (2 different kinds, a soft, sort pile, & a less soft, longer pile; what i use for most of looney is the short pile) going into this project, & since this fella was made exclusively from craft materials i had lying around, i needed to find a way to color it. I attempted dying some of the fur w/ some old t-shirt dyes i had lying around, but when that didn't work i turned to my old alcohol markers to see if they worked, & they surprisingly did! really well too! (altho there are some areas that i struggled to get ink into, but overall the color isn't too too patchy)

once i had the dry clay & fur, i got to covering the bases w/ the fur! which. i did primarily by super glueing small sections of each piece of fur down, maneuvering the fabric to lay flush w/ the base & making sure to maintain the same direction of the fur, & repeating until the fur was completely attached.

the neck was simpler, i took some more of the red colored fur, folded it over into a flat tube shape, & glued either end to the head & body (still paying attention to the fur direction!) then i took some of the remaining uncolored (white) fur & made the ring of white around the base of looney's neck!

Section 2: face & plant/leaves

imo, this was the section i had the most fun w/ lol! i actually sculpted the face after making the head & body's clay bases so that they had extra time to dry. i made the entire face as a "faceplate" for easy attachment at the size i needed, plus sculpting the face as one thing allowed me to have the 3 extra bits i needed to attach looney's face feathers the best later on in the process. the face is also made of crayola air dry clay btw.

after the face was dry it was painting time! i just used some old art kit acrylic paints for all the base colors, & the eyes were possible using a nail art dotting tool. i went over looney's cheeks w/ chalk pastel dust to get the blush effect, then sealed everything in using mod podge.

now he needed his face feathers! remember how i had 2 different faux furs? well here's where the longer pile one gets used! i cut really small sections of the longer fur & trimmed them down to be just 3 little fuzzy bits essentially, then using another alcohol marker, i colored them green & glued them to the green side sections on looney's faceplate. from here, i attached looney's face to his head, then cut & pasted the surrounding small white feather sections on either side of his face & below his beak. it was after that i made the purple feathers, as those are just colored paper clippings that i glued to the back of looney's faceplate that didn't attach to his head. (picture of what i mean below)

anyhow! onto the plant on looney's head! the stem of the plant was just a jewelry wire that i twisted to make a bit thicker, then dipped in green paint to color it & smooth the twist out, then sealed w/ mod podge, & finally glues to the top of looney's head. the leaves, much like the purple feathers, are paper, but cut into leaf shapes & colored to roughly mimic looney's leaves, then they were very carefully super glued to the stem

Section 3: tail & wings

these bits were pretty simple imo, the tail is made of embroidery floss i cut & sectioned to create looney’s tail pattern, then i tied it together to create a base i could easily attach to his body. i also tried brushing it to make the individual threads smaller since i preferred the look & thought it made it look more like feathers? but either way, from there it got glued on & i moved on to the wings.

the wings are again the short pile fur i used on the body, but they were left white when i cut them, so once i got the wing shape formed i could color the sections that needed to be red & just leave the wingtips white how i wanted. the wings were 4 panels cut into a roughly triangular shape & glued together to create 2 wings

Section 4: legs & feet

the legs & feet were also relatively simple but i have never been the best at sculpting feet so i suffered just a tad. anyhow the feet are also sculpted from crayola air dry clay like other pieces, then painted & sealed the same as the faceplate.

the legs are pony beads & more embroidery floss. i used the beads to make the legs as full & patterned as i wanted & the string to make sure the legs are loose & easy to maneuver. 2 beads were glued to looney’s body & 2 to his feet, & the string was looped thru the body beads, down through the leg beads, & tied & secured to the feet beads

Section 5: strings & controls

finally! the last section!

the string is just some clear beading string. there are 4 strings, which were tied & glued to both foot beads, the base of the tail, & the base of the plant. i eyeballed the needed length for each string to keep the puppet at an upright position when held up regularly & cut them to size.

the control is just a pair of chopsticks i cut to the rough size of the puppet & glued the ends of the strings to: the head & back end strings to either side of one stick, & both feet strings to either end of the other stick.

& that was pretty much everything i had to do to make looney!! it took like. 2 days? i was very dedicated to finishing him in just a weekend. thank you to anyone who read all my extended rambles about how i made this guy!!! i appreciate it!! also please excuse any typos, i never make typos ever idk what y’all are talking about

[gangles-toybox]

It was glitching out so I wanted to reblog before it fucked up again but imma keep going. Also Tommy n Marionetta are platonic cuz I like the idea of them being besties 4 like no reason lol

Art Posabule x Clay Puppington- Self love is best love. Also they're both hot to me so. Yeah. Art Posabule x Bloberta Puppington- Would it be better or worse than Clay n Bloberta? Poppit Posabule x Clay Puppington- Better..or worse? Danielle Stopframe x Mr. Cartsen- Idk they both work with kids, maybe at a teacher conference they subtly flirt to each other or something. Mr. Cartsen x Dottie Trophywife- Much like Roger, Mr. Cartsen needs a girlboss to put him in his place, and Dottie is happy to serve!! Mr. Cartsen x Kim Latchkey- Same as above. She makes his glasses steam up x3 Miss Secondopionson x Bloberta Puppington- Such a rarepair but fanart has made me be like hmm...they are kinda cute...they're both basically mothers that would literally wanna be anything else. Of course more on Bloberta's end but still, as much as I love Joe, and I don't blame him, it has to be..a handful dealing with him. Principal Fakey x Dr. Potterswheel- They are both such awful little people. Maybe they can make each other worse??? Neutral Miss Censordoll x Clay Puppington- Eh it's a little interesting but it's not my cup of tea. I get the appeal tho esp since it's kinda canon lol. Clay Puppington x Danielle Stopframe- They are so wonderfully interesting on screen together but I could never really get into shipping them in the traditional sense of rooting for them, with Danielle being obsessive & Clay never fully allowing himself to be who he is or even kiss the damn guy. and then go and kiss miss censordoll right in his face. So I'm not rooting for them and I'm not throwing tomatoes at them either, I just wanna see what makes them tick really like a lab experiment. Roger Papermouth x Bloberta Puppington- I know it would have been canon later but eh. Maybe if we got s4 and s5 my mind would be changed a little more but right now it's ok. Danielle Stopframe x Reverend Putty- I like this on paper of Danielle likely being super obsessive over Putty and that making Putty feel a weird sort of validation or appreciation. Again not my cup of tea but I think it's interesting. Stephaine Putty x Dolly Forghetty- Seen some fanart. It's cute. I'm just not rooting for them or anything. NoTPs: Florence Papermouth x Roger Papermouth- Not me cup of tea. Florence Papermouth x Reverend Putty- I definitely like this a bit more after seeing the animatic for Narcissism but...idk the scene where they fuck seemed a bit awkward/forced. Plus idk I don't like the cliche of the heavy-set character only really getting with the love interest after they lost weight. I know it's not exactly like that because Revs was thinking abt her before he knew she lost so much weight but idk it just feels...hm. Not amazeballs. Reminds me a tiny bit of the end of the end of the Dick Figures movie where Red and the "go home" girl get together and he confesses to her when she's still fat but you only see them actually together when she's thin. Idk. It feels off. It's not awful of course but yeah. Nurse Bendy x Principal Fakey & Millie Fakey x Principal Fakey, - ...yeah. Nurse Bendy x Reverend Putty- This is just more so how sad it makes me that in Narcissism they get together after he calls her smart. It makes my heart hurt that she's that undervalued that she throws herself at a guy that gives her any validation :[ not revs fault tho cuz he was probably only trying to help Reverend Putty x Dottie Trophywife- He only likes her cuz of her appearance and ik they get together in Narcissism too but idk I don't think she really likes him that much, more like just getting back at Florence more than anything.

[wasteland-wrecker]

Jon Bernthal. You are Him.

[yoohyeon]

Hi ! This is an important post, especially if you are new on Tumblr !

Just a reminder that on Tumblr only reblogs help posts being seen ! Likes ? Useless ! It’s use for sorting blogs, reminders and Hugs for the mutuals ! Commenting ? Useless ! It’s just commenting, everyone can read it, but it does nothing else ! Tumblr as no algorithm, if you want everyone to see a post you have to reblog it ! Or else no one will see it ! So please reblog artists, content creators, fundraisers post if you want to support and help them cause if you don’t reblog it won’t be seen from your side ! Hope this help newcomers ! Thank you all 🫶

[wren-of-the-woods]

I've been seeing a lot of posts lately talking about how no one comments/reblogs/replies/etc anymore, and, as someone who comments regularly on a lot of fanworks, it sometimes makes me wonder if my efforts are worth anything. Then I remember how much happiness I get from comments on my own work/posts and how much the community of fandom can matter, and I remember the power that can be found in spreading joy instead of disappointment.

So -- to everyone who comments on fanfiction: thank you. You make the writing process worthwhile and so very rewarding. You make people happy every day.

To all the people who reblog art and gifsets and meta and anything else with enthusiastic tags: thank you. You make people smile and promote interesting conversations and make being on Tumblr so much more fun.

To anyone who sends people asks about their works, whether it's unprompted or part of an ask game: thank you. You give people reasons to talk about things they love and feel like a part of a community.

To the people who makes reclists: thank you. You give us more to read while showing the author how much their work is loved and appreciated, benefitting so many people.

To everyone who organizes events and groups and blogs and dedicated to fandom: thank you. You build community and love and excitement so effectively and it's wonderful.

To all the authors and artists who respond to comments and build community: thank you. You make people smile with your work and then again with your response.

To everyone who contributes to fandom and community in all the other beautiful, varied ways that I can't even begin to list: thank you. You are why we're here.

And, finally, to every writer, visual artist, gifmaker, cosplayer, maker of edits, writer of meta, or creator of art in any other form: thank you. Your work is wonderful and you make fandom what it is, regardless of who sees your art or how much response you recieve.

Keep going, everyone. You are a part of something beautiful.

[hollowslantern]

it's end of year art summary season again and I would just like to extend my love to all the artists who can't make a standard flashy "one big piece per month" review. if you've got months where you only did small pieces, or didnt finish anything, or didn't draw at all, or didnt draw "good enough". everyone whos left feeling a bit lackluster after comparing their "year of art" to those around them...this one's for YOU! we rule!

[saturnsickle]

Send me a number between 1-100 and I'll draw whoever it corresponds to in my LOCG reading stats.

[ichijokaoru]

sorry this idea possessed me

[percexe]

hiii! i’m IN LOVE with your characters. they’re literally perfect,,, my favs are ollie & ophelie

now, onto my question… how do you pronounce your username? in my brain i say ‘purse-e.x.e’ but idk. so is it…

purse-e.x.e.

pur-sexy (IDK WHY I THOUGHT THIS)

perk-ex

thank youu :)

AH THE QUESTION THATS PLAGUED THE NATION... its per-s-exe. or yeah purse-e.x.e! i kinda used to go by the name percy (shockingly unrelated to pjo i think) back when i made the username, so its just perc(y) + e.x.e. kinda sounds like percy if you squint. great coincidence once i started posting pjo art

[non-un-topo]

I love drawing fabric

[cpulysses]

Someone reposted my Whipped Cream Cookie headcanon doodle and said it was so real and I felt so honored I doodled this its 4am I have plans to be out all day I might be cooked but its ok.

Hit the gym (dancing with swans and being afraid of the ocean)

[winter-came]

“The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment may be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

silly guys that make me lose followers on tumblr dot com

[messier51]

"no other planet in our solar system gets total solar eclipses" ok so i guess jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune are not planets anymore

y'all thought the iau was mean to pluto and yet here we are demoting all the gas giants too