Robin Oak
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robinjoak.bsky.social
Robin Oak
@robinjoak.bsky.social
560 followers 1.1K following 2K posts
He/they

Making worlds with words and fighting with my brain.

Expect art and book things I enjoy, incl. some spicy stuff, the odd bit of politics.

🔞, plus swears a lot.

STORIES: https://robinoak.itch.io/

BLOG https://akornboi.wordpress.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
robinjoak.bsky.social
"Employees must smile if lees than 10 feet from a customer."
November 9, 2025 at 9:24 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
How it's going thus far today
An image of a possum and a sign that says 'my brain has many things to hold and no pockets'. The background is an action blur centred on the possum's head and the sign occupies all of the top right quadrant, with the possum in the bottom left.
October 28, 2025 at 1:44 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
What's it like inside your head?

(possibly one of the sillier things I've ever made)
A picture of hand flipping the bird at a small tortoiseshell cat that's been editing to look like it's got big watery eyes. White text next to the cat says 'cool ideas, dreams, basic human functioning' and black text over the hand giving the cat the finger says 'Executive dysfunction'.
October 23, 2025 at 9:37 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Hahaha what

50-60 people came to see a friend's band play once and that was mindblowing to me.

What does 500 people in person even look like?

It's fun and weird and I know it's cringe to be sincere or whatever but thank you for following me :D
A close crop of my profile showing 500 followers highlighted in yellow.
October 9, 2025 at 9:23 AM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Oh.

Bummer.
A screen cap showing a black background splattered with dark read and white text that reads 'First to Die'
October 8, 2025 at 9:30 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
What's your sign?

(Stumbled on this saved randomly on my phone today and *immediately* thought of this)
Picutre of a road sign against a blue sky with white clouds. The sign has white text on a green background and a white border. The text reads "entering tangent".
September 29, 2025 at 10:01 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
"Oh, this is cute, wonder what I'll get. Something classic, or maybe a bit edgy?"

😐

Internet quiz just called me a slut.

uquiz.com/quiz/vNQPkn/...
A screen shot of a quiz result that reads: "Your result: porn without a plot. Forget losing the plot, you never even tried to find it! You know exactly who you are (a slut) and what you want (filthy filthy smut)"
September 18, 2025 at 7:15 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Quote the energy you bring to bluesky
September 16, 2025 at 10:01 AM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Totally forgot that I had this open in a tab while I was doing some writing research (I'm writing A Monster) and jumpscared myself when I was closing tabs.

So now I'm sharing it with you. Ain't that nice? It's a male gharial. Cute, huh?
A photgraph of a male gharial; it's a brown-grey crocodillian with a long thin shout and rows of long thin teeth that protrude just outside its jaw. It has a large protuberance on the end of its snout, which is how you know it's a male.
August 25, 2025 at 9:32 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
I also need to work out how to fuck with the camera settings on my phone more, because I took a photo of this *gorgeous* flower (hibiscus? Maybe? cba to google it) and it turned it into this flat paper cut out. I *think* this is a white balance thing; I don't know.
A landscape photograph of a bright red flower, with a black drop of broad dark green leaves and tree-trunks. The flower has been flattened by the camera's processing to look like a cut out; it's all one flat colour.
August 16, 2025 at 5:05 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Starting to go through the photos from the botanical gardens, and there's some really nice ones, even if they're a bit janky in places.

They need cropping to be a bit more interesting, and I've fucked up the focal point on *many*, but the colours are gorgeous. I particularly like these.
A photograph of some wine-coloured dhalias; a number of flower heads cluster int he centre of the picture, with more in the background. To the right is a large swathe of stems and leaves.
August 16, 2025 at 4:59 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Spent the last few weeks bouncing back and forth between POSSUM JOY and OH GOD WHY.
A picture of someone holding a baby possum in two hands. Its little paws stick out over the hands and its mouth is open, eyes wide, making it look like it's expression is intensely joyful. A still image of Lisa Simpson, who sits at the kitchen table in front of a glass fronted cabinet filled with crockery. There's a glass and a plate on the table in front of her. She stares into the middle distance in front of her, her eyes wide with horror, mouth agape, as she contemplates a terror and bafflement that we can't see.
August 15, 2025 at 11:08 AM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Plont. Pitchur plot. Plont pitchur.
A picture of a pitcher plant, with a big green leaf above its open mouth, which is striped different colours of red.
August 14, 2025 at 12:44 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Tangentially related:
A screen shot of a tumblr post by lakevida, that says "the way 'nice dichotomy idiot what lies outside it' has saved me so many hours of being insane with my thought patterns"
August 3, 2025 at 9:35 AM
robinjoak.bsky.social
This doesn't fit a game today, but I really like it so I'm sharing it anyway. It rounds out the 1st chapter.

Rose was accused of witchcraft because of her feelings for Allia, so she's bound to have a lil' internal conflict when similar ones reappear.

#HeartBloodSacrifice #Writesky #Snippet
A long tendril grew from between two smooth grey rocks streaked with quartz. It sprouted deep green serrated leaves as it wound its way into the empty air, climbing until it was six inches long. The bud at the tip grew heavy as they watched, and burst open, the waxy, almost black, green of the sepals split by white, like teeth split a smile, revealing a broad petalled flower. It was pale pink on the edges, snow white in the centre. A dog rose. Rourke unconsciously thrust the knife into her hands, and she clutched it to her chest like a talisman, both hands white knuckled on the black leather sheathe. He knelt to the examine the flower that had sprung from nothing in moments. He moved the two rocks aside and there it was, anchored deeply in the earth. “Did you do this?” he asked, pulling off his glove to gently cup the bloom in his broad, strong fingers. She was baffled. “How?” was all she could manage. When she had done any sort of magic before, there had at least been some sort of intention behind it, and she felt it move inside her, like she was drawing something in from somewhere unseen, through her and out into the world. There was none of that. “I don’t understand where it could have come from,” he said, his amazement plain in his voice. “This obviously wasn’t natural.” He didn’t seem scared, which reassured her, but a feeling of gnawing doubt that it was some sort of sign, a portent, and its sudden appearance, dismayed her. The light of dawn broke across the lip of the valley, spilling blazing red-gold light over the choppy surface of the lake and the smooth pebbled shore. Rourke knelt before her, limned in the fiery light, his hair shining like polished oak. She realised with uncomfortable surprise that she was fighting the impulse to run her hand through his hair. A warm, magnetic urge curled slowly in the depths of her, and she tried to ignore it, despising it, terrified of it, cursing it, the same blameless urge that made her reach out and kiss Allia. She wanted to scream, or to cry. She stood there wide-eyed in faint terror, the cool fresh wind off the lake brushing the top of the hood of the pale furred cloak and her cheek. She forced herself to look away from the curve of his neck as he inspected the bloom. The tips of the waves on the lake danced like red and orange pennants, their riders’ grey mounts marching row by row to the shore. Red sky in the morning, she thought glumly to herself, leaving the rhyme unfinished. Her eye wandered back to his still, attentive form. “It’s beautiful,” he said, smiling up at her from his knees. And it was.
July 29, 2025 at 1:22 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Ain't got no Thrive (yet!), but... antonyms are ok, right?

Rose, now rescued, grapples with what it might mean to have to live, and isn't sure she likes the calculus.

[Graphic warning for suicidal ideation]

Of course, it's grim, but don't forget. It's a romance.

#Writesky #WIPSnips #Writing
Another man – Betterton? She was unsure – smashed hardtack and fed it into a small black pot that boiled on a tripod over the fire. He was a ruddy man with an imposing black beard that tapered to a neat point. He smiled at her kindly, too, when he saw her watching him cook. She slowly drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her and watched him. He cut salt pork on a rock that he wiped clean with a glove, and dropped that into the pot, too. It shouldn’t be allowed, this mundane domesticity, after such harrowing flight. It felt like an anticlimax and insult rolled into one; she wasn’t being burned alive, and had been – gratefully! Really! – rescued, and here she was, waiting for dinner. Or breakfast. Because no matter the ordeal – the torture, the shame, the abject fury at the helplessness and injustice of it all – she still had to eat. She still had to feed herself, and find some way of acquiring that food in the first place. It just seemed like a bad joke. You’ve survived a great ordeal, life seemed to say, and yet you must still go on with the rude mundanities of living. Eat, sleep, defecate, clean one’s self, and eat and sleep again. Maybe you’ll learn to do more than survive, maybe survive is all you’ll ever be able to do, but like the animals that stalk the wood and burrow beneath the cities, you’ll still need to live. Have a great love, bring down the unjust, make a great work, or have a family, this will always be there, needing tending, needing care. So tired and defeated was she, that it was almost enough to snuff out the tiny spark of independence that quailed at her core. She saw an endless procession of meals laid out before her, each one demanding to be eaten if she wanted another day. It was too hard. Too much effort, for too little gain. Because what was there for her? Uncertainty and strife, that was all. Maybe it would have been better if they just let her burn. It would have been horrific, but at least it would have ended, and ended all of… this. All the flickering orange tongues of the fire, and the smell of the woodsmoke, and all the cold, fresh breeze of the morning off the lake, and the all the sound of lapping shore, and all of the vast broken gulf inside her where she knew that one day, the pain and anger would come back and it would consume her. She could have died, and then she wouldn’t have to have it back again.
July 25, 2025 at 5:11 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
From Heart Blood Sacrifice - Rose reflects briefly on the enormous crimes that get her branded a heretic and witch; queer smoochin'.

The irony is, she actually *is* a witch; her persecuters are just too stupid to realise it.

#Writing #WIPSnips #WriteSky
What had she done to deserve this? She had tried to live; that was all. It was deep in the still, dusty quiet of the library at Forvante House that she had grasped at that dream, hemmed in by the mutterings and whispers of the oppressive dead. While they still proffered their opinions, though their hearts had ceased to beat and their lips had ceased to murmur, she had pressed her lips to Allia’s and the other young woman had kissed her back. She had kissed her back, and her soft lips had been perfect, warm and caring, caressing her in return. Rose slid her hand around her solid, warm waist, sighing as she realised that her friend, her gorgeous, intelligent, thoughtful friend felt the same way she did. For a brief instant, she had her hand on her dream and it wasn’t ephemeral smoke, the false colour cast by stained glass. Instead it was substantial and, for a second, it bore her weight. Rose had admired Allia secretly from her close vantage point as her friend; her stunning russet hair, her pale rosy skin, her forest green eyes. She had assumed it was simply the day dream of a fool. The longing that piqued in her, as she watched her friend frown as she read, knowing she was silently disagreeing with whatever it was the author had said, was a silent folly. She thought it was just a private, lonely sensation, the shiver of warmth she felt, when her friend let her help put on her tan calfskin gloves in the winter. It was a secret, unshared thrill when she felt the tender softness of her hands and the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrists. She longed to press them to her cheek, to her lips. It never occurred to her that she had never seen such indulgences between other young women. It never occurred to her that her friend might say bemusedly, ‘I can do this myself, you know,” and reject her. She never thought that Allia tolerating such fussing care might actually be a sign that she rather enjoyed the small service, too. These observations were hidden to her, occluded by a vast cloud of shame. All she felt was the shame, that she was some how taking advantage of her friend, that she was secretly taking something that she was not entitled to. And yet she couldn’t have stopped if she wanted to, which she didn’t. Then their hands closed over the spine of the same book of poetry in the library. Allia’s hand was on the leather of the book, and her hand was on Allia’s, the silk and soft honey of it lighting Rose from within. Their hands had touched a hundred times, but something was different. Neither of them moved. They were so close, her friend’s shoulder almost between her breasts, her warmth a dim suggestion through their pale linen dresses. She couldn’t help it any more. She drew them both together and tucked her hand into her cheek, and they were kissing.
July 25, 2025 at 4:07 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
A picture of the tumblr meme 'apollo distributing the gift of prophecy via dodgeball'. It shows a picture of a marble statue of the greek god Apollo, holding a dodge ball with glowing yellow eyes.
April 13, 2025 at 12:09 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Advertise your account with one image
April 6, 2025 at 11:38 AM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Très drôle, Bluesky, très drôle.
A screen cap of a pop up in Bluesky that announces a new character limit. It reads "We're listening to your feedback and updating the character count. Posts are now limited to 299 characters!" and beneath that it says in a slightly lighter font and italics, "For a limited time - just today ;)"
April 1, 2025 at 1:20 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Google tells me the correct name is actually 'spiral ratchet screwdriver', but that's not as cool. You push on the handle and it spins the driver. It was The Best Thing when I was like... eight lol
A picture of a chrome spiral ratchet screw driver with a blue plastic handle.
March 22, 2025 at 11:09 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Bonus: sometimes I am wont to do real bad sketches.

Bloop.
A black and white very rough pencil sketch of a platesnail, a humanoid snail covered in iron-chitin scales. They have a large glass bowl on their head, filled with water and connected to a machine that rests on their shell. They are wearing armour and holding a spear and shield. They are saying 'Bloop?'
February 18, 2025 at 4:25 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Platesnails?

Humanoid snaily-bois with sclerites and fishbowls on their 'eads?

You better believe it.
A screen capture of text about platesnails that reads: Platesnails are humanoid snails covered in iron plates called sclerites. They live beneath Mainspring in the Undersea. They built their cities around the hydrothermal vents that litter the continent-sized cavern the Undersea fills. They cannot breathe air, so when they want to leave the Undersea to adventure, they must do so in slosh-helms. Slosh-helms are tall crystal domes with a brass sealing ring at the bottom, that fits around the platesnail’s neck, and a hinged opening at the top, to add food and water. • Night Sight: Accustomed to the impenetrable gloom of the Undersea, platesnails can see in the dark. • Iron hide: Platesnails are covered in a thick layer of sclerites, thick natural plates made of iron. This overlapping natural protection provides them with +1 armour. This armour cannot be removed. • Alchemical Resistance: Platesnails are naturally resistant to poisons, as a result of originating in the alchemical soup that surrounds hydrothermal vents. They have advantage on checks made to resist the effects of alchemicals. • Iron Shell: Platesnails can retreat into their shells in an instant. Their armour becomes 7, (this supersedes their armour bonus from their sclerites) and they can remain that way indefinitely, but cannot take any actions. When they do this, they drop anything that they are carrying or wearing, including their slosh-helm. • Aquatic: Platesnails can only breathe in water. They must wear a slosh-helm to adventure in air. • Food and Water: Platesnails don’t need to drink water, but they still need to eat and sleep, and use water to top up their slosh-helms. A scren capture of text about slosh-helms that reads: • Platesnails don’t need to drink water, but they still need to eat and to top-up the water in their slosh-helm. This involves opening the top of the helm and pouring in some water and sprinkling in some food. • Slosh-helms are nearly indestructible, because they’re grown from special crystal minerals produced by the hydrothermal vents that Platesnails’ homes are built around. Unfortunately, the water inside the helms still transfers concussive force to the soft squashy platesnail head within, so while they’re nearly impossible to damage themselves, they don’t provide any protection, unlike the platesnail’s sclerites.
February 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
Friendship with ancestries or race ended, friendship with Origins begun.

(Not 100% on the world name, so that might change, but I like it fine for now.)

#TTRPG
A screen capture of text that reads: Kir-Ayareth is filled with all manner of peoples. Not all of them were born, or have parents, so they refer to the source their existence, and the resultant form they take, as their Origin. Your character’s Origin represents where they started. It’s the first step on their very long journey. It doesn’t have to define them, nor do they have to feel strongly about it. Their relationship between their Origin and their personal sense of identity is down to you. It does tell you something about their fundamental structure and functioning, like how many limbs they have, how often they sleep (or don’t) and what their bodies are made of. These can be changed, but it is uncommon and usually must be sort out, i.e. through some form of magical transformation. Your character’s origin says nothing of their personality or capacities. You’re just as likely to find a platesnail that loves order and precision as you are a clockwork eidolon whose personality is the same.
February 18, 2025 at 4:11 PM
robinjoak.bsky.social
This slide from IBM in 1979 seems appropriate again. If they shouldn't make management decisions (they shouldn't) then they shouldn't be allowed to decide who lives and dies.
A photograph of a slide from a presentation by IBM in 1979. It's black text on white paper and at the top it reads in block capitals, "A computer can enver be held accountable" and below it reads "Therefore a computer must never make a management decision".
February 5, 2025 at 10:04 AM