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arobertswrites.com
Abby
@arobertswrites.com
6.6K followers 700 following 39K posts
SFF writer and essayist you’ve never heard of. SocDem/progressive. Tolkien nerd. Armchair medievalist. She/her. Header by beloved.moe.

Website: arobertswrites.com
Newsletter: buttondown.email/arobertswrites
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arobertswrites.com
Batman looking at the bat sign, except it’s the face of the guy from the Sickos meme instead of a bat shape.
August 14, 2025 at 11:41 PM
arobertswrites.com
Screenshot of a tweet by AboboCop: “It's 1925. I'm leanin' against this lamppost on the lookout for dames who are lookin for trouble. I start flipping a quarter. I catch her eye. I fumble the quarter and it rolls into a sewer grate. I have lost the equivalent of thirty thousand dollars.”
August 14, 2025 at 1:16 PM
arobertswrites.com
Batman looking at the bat beacon thing but instead of the bat sigil it’s the Face ID the guy from the sickos meme.
August 14, 2025 at 12:13 PM
arobertswrites.com
Lactantius’ poem about a mythical bird that dies and resurrects itself might be a Christian allegory, big if true.
From the Wikipedia article on Lactantius: Also often attributed to Lactantius is the poem The Phoenix, which is based on the myth of the phoenix from Egypt and Arabia. Though the poem is not clearly Christian in its motifs, modern scholars have found some literary evidence in the text to suggest the author had a Christian interpretation of the eastern myth as a symbol of resurrection.
August 13, 2025 at 7:38 PM
arobertswrites.com
Lots to unpack here.
Armchair analysts were quick to start assigning blame in the creator's split, and not just to Landon. They speculated that Liz was "in her masculine energy" or that she'd chosen a man too weak to lead. Even fans who don't blame her are wondering what they could do differently to avoid Liz's fate themselves, as if betrayal is their responsibility to prevent. The culture of self optimization in this space often curdles into self-blame. Liz has said in her own videos, "Only what I allow will happen. This is my reality and I allow what comes in and what goes out."
August 13, 2025 at 7:10 PM
arobertswrites.com
Urban equivalent of this.
Humpherdink’s castle in The Princess Bride with an absurd number of guards standing outside of the gate.
August 13, 2025 at 12:08 PM
arobertswrites.com
Blocked now but screenshotted for posterity.
I posted: “I mean I also think there's a proportion of fans who just want to see the version of LotR that exists in their head over and over again, a proportion that also exists for eg Star Wars, but these fans can't be pleased and so any future adapters will have to either accept that or give up.” Kara the Sneppider quote reposted: “@arobertswrites.com, I take it you're one of those "Tolkien fans" who skips half the book while reading it? Assuming, of course, you actually bother with reading.”
August 13, 2025 at 12:27 AM
arobertswrites.com
Hank Hill looking depressed.
August 12, 2025 at 11:28 PM
arobertswrites.com
When Basil II aka “the Bulgar-Slayer” defeated the Bulgars he was alleged to have blinded 99 out of every 100 of the captured enemy, leaving a one-eyed man to lead each group back to their ruler, so he was no bleeding heart idealist, and yet he decreed this.
We have observed with our own eyes (when we traversed the themes of our empire and set out on campaigns) the avarice and injustice every day perpetrated against the poor ... The powerful who desire to aggrandize [their lands] and to enjoy in full ownership what they had wrongly expropriated at the expense of the poor .. will be stripped of the property belonging to others. From the Law of Basil II, 996, quoted in Byzantium by Judith Herrin.
August 12, 2025 at 5:53 PM
arobertswrites.com
Another great big hunk of yarn.
My hand holding a large amount of hand spun gray yarn wrapped around a spindle shaft.
August 11, 2025 at 12:50 AM
arobertswrites.com
Not even the most important part of this essay but it did grate on me, in the way that people being loudly wrong about things you know about is grating.
In one interminable entry, Dawkins insists that "science advances," while other disciplines, like "theology, philosophy, sociology," do not.
August 10, 2025 at 2:54 PM
arobertswrites.com
Like so.
Illustration from the 8th century Codex Amiatinus showing the prophet Ezra revising the books of the Hebrew Bible. He is sitting on a wooden stool, his feet propped up on a footrest, using a quill to write in a book open on his knees. Behind him is a case of books, all laying flat on their sides with their spines facing outwards.
August 10, 2025 at 4:11 AM
arobertswrites.com
Also I don’t think yall have seen me in my veil yet.
Awkward bathroom selfie of me in 10th century dress, a white veil and a dark green cloak over a gray dress. Yes the glasses are anachronistic but I can’t see without them.
August 10, 2025 at 4:01 AM
arobertswrites.com
I am trying
Me wearing a dark green cloak fastened with a metal brooch over a gray dress belted at the waist.
August 10, 2025 at 3:58 AM
arobertswrites.com
The account that made me post this has a background photo that says “sola scriptura.”
Hank Hill looking weary.
August 9, 2025 at 10:10 PM
arobertswrites.com
My favorite doctor and companion
Gandalf and Frodo in Moria.
August 8, 2025 at 11:53 PM
arobertswrites.com
The modern discipline of paleography was invented to settle an argument between nerds.
Here we want only to remember that the academic and methodological structure of this discipline was essentially defined in the 17th century by the Benedictine monk of the Congregation of Saint Maur (Maurin) Jean Mabillon, in the fifth book of the De re diplomatica (Paris 1681). As part of the ongoing dispute between the Jesuit Bollandists and the Benedictine Maurini about the authenticity of documents kept in St. Denis, Mabillon laid the foundations for classifying the scripts according to their own forms.
August 8, 2025 at 11:15 PM
arobertswrites.com
Every time ughhhhhhhb
Top panel: Fred from the Scooby-Doo cartoon about to remove the mask from a person disguised as a ghost, labeled “Why do I feel bad?” Bottom panel: Fred is holding the mask, revealing that the “ghost” is actually a perfectly alive, mustachioed man, labeled “Because I stayed up till 1 am.”
August 8, 2025 at 9:48 PM
arobertswrites.com
The rescue told us that Violet is a bluetick hound/Australian shepherd mix, and she looks it.

She has three brain cells, albeit overactive ones.
A gray and black dog with fluffy, medium length fur lays on her side so that my hand can scratch her belly.
August 8, 2025 at 12:20 PM
arobertswrites.com
Aelfric saying that monks have the most important job in the colloquy.
Photo that’s been edited to make it appear as if former U.S. President Barack Obama is giving a medal to himself.
August 8, 2025 at 3:22 AM
arobertswrites.com
Apparently monks had really bad posture.
Illustrations copied from a medieval index of monastic sign language, showing two slouching monks. One of them holds his right hand in front of him in a loose claw shape; the other holds his right hand straight out in front, with the fingers together, and his left hand pressed to his stomach.
August 8, 2025 at 3:01 AM
arobertswrites.com
Popcorn wanter.
A gray and black dog resting her chin on a gray sofa cushion, looking up at the camera with beseeching eyes.
August 7, 2025 at 9:45 PM
arobertswrites.com
*Hipster voice* Martin Luther? He’s too mainstream. I prefer Gennadios Scholarios, who wrote a tract in opposition to the pope and nailed it to a door before it was cool.
Nuns, he said, were particularly hostile and they implored Gennadios Scholarios of the Pantokrator monastery in Constantinople to support them. He finally wrote his tract in opposition to the Union and nailed it to his door: 'Wretched Romans, how you have been deceived ... Together with the city which will soon be destroyed, you have lost your piety.' From Byzantium by Judith Herrin.
August 7, 2025 at 9:11 PM
arobertswrites.com
I know these are Serious Historical Events but this is what I imagine when I read about John VIII Palaiologos reluctantly congratulating Murad II on his victory at Varna.
Although Hunyadi remained committed to the policy of assisting Byzantium, and Brankovic, who had not participated in the attack, remained a Christian ally, Constantinople's essential weakness was symbolized when John VIII Palaiologos was forced to congratulate the sultan on his victory. From Byzantium by Judith Herrin. A grumpy child scowls a series of studio photos. The captions say “Congrats. Happy for you. Nice.”
August 7, 2025 at 9:04 PM
arobertswrites.com
This meeting (between John VIII Palaiologos’ delegation and the pope in 1438) could have been an email (series of passive aggressive letters).
Patriarch Joseph was so incensed at the demand that he, like all officials, kiss the pope's foot that he refused to leave the ship until the issue was resolved. As a result, Pope Eugenius IV accorded him only a private reception rather than a grand public ceremony. The Council opened officially on 9 April after twenty days of debate over where the thrones for the leading figures should be placed. After many delays and inconclusive meetings, an outbreak of plague and shortage of money forced the parties in January 1439 to move to Florence, where the Medici family supported the Council. From Byzantium by Judith Herrin.
August 7, 2025 at 4:32 PM