Fay Roberts
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fayroberts.bsky.social
Fay Roberts
@fayroberts.bsky.social
1.6K followers 1.1K following 830 posts
Queer, disabled, Welsh(ish), progressive performance poet/ musician/ project manager/ event host/ musician/ award-winning voice actor. Lover of spreadsheets and creative writing. ze/zir or they/them/their https://linktr.ee/fayroberts
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fayroberts.bsky.social
Actual horror writers have described my jack o'lanterns as terrifying, while another friend went with "nightmare fuel". I may have bossed too close to Uncanny Valley…
Two carved pumpkins in the dark, with orange light inside. They appear to be on a mildly reflective surface. The one on the left looks quite chill, though its teeth are disturbingly realistic. The one on the right has pointy teeth and appears to be squinting. Its nostrils look more like the nasal holes in skulls. Both jacks have little holes in the sides of their heads, like earholes. The same two carved pumpkins in the light, on a mildly reflective white table, with some clutter behind them, including a wooden mug tree with a disposable face mask hanging from it. The teeth look markedly more realistic like this, as the rind has been peeled off them. Similarly, the whites of their eyes have been peeled.
November 1, 2025 at 12:48 AM
fayroberts.bsky.social
I'm out here baffling/ scaring small children who come to the house for some reason.

(cw: flickering light)
October 31, 2025 at 7:00 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Created this for the recent @shoutitzine.bsky.social submission but went with the fugue state poem instead. So I get to share this here. Look out for the zine - it's going to be awesome (and in aid of a really good cause, to boot). #nonbinary #queer #PrideMonth #HappyPride #lgbtqia+
Simple digital graphic of words and numbers - in the foreground, the words "I am nonbinary" written in a curving handwriting font with a thing, black outline, filled with the nonbinary pride colours of black, white, yellow, and purple on a smooth gradient, so that the outer edges of "I" and "nonbinary" are black and dark purple, shading into lighter purple and white, then yellow in the centre, so that the "am" is yellow and white. There is a subtle shadow under the words, so that the letters look a little like they're floating. The backdrop is white, with a series of ones and zeroes in a typewriter font in pale grey, in differing strings of eight digits across five columns. I'm sure you'll be shocked to discover that the binary code in the background spells out "I am nonbinary" when translated. 😉
June 3, 2025 at 3:52 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Look, okay, I know that continuity wasn't as strict a thing in 60s TV and all, but why does the 30s recap at the beginning of the next episode show a completely different fucking alien?!
Photo of a black and white TV screen image with THE UNWILLING WARRIORS superimposed across the middle. We can see the edge of a white person's face with short, dark hair gazing out away from us through a spaceship viewport where a creature with a bald dome, no visible ears, and a symmetrical, mouthless face gazes back, hands out of sight below the sill.
April 23, 2025 at 9:50 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Sinister and Dramatic Music and "Look, Doctor!" and a Sensorite appears at the porthole.

Me: "Aww, hello!"
Photo of a black and white TV screen image of a bald-domed creature with outrageously pointy ears and a twisted face, hands flat on thr outside of a spaceship viewport, for all the world like a kid peering in through a shop window.
April 23, 2025 at 9:42 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
So, uh, someone just signed @allographica.bsky.social up to this DELIGHTFUL mailing list.

Thanks so much - I haven't laughed this hard at an email in a long time.

Yes, all the underlined bits appear to be links. No, I did not click them.

Wow.
Screenshot of a MailChimp email with a link at the top to View this email in your browser. Transcription below: Announcing the end of the great tribulation. Proclaiming the Day of the Lord and the year of the Lord’s favour as described in humanity’s bestseller the Holy Bible. TL;DR Antichrist - Hassan bin Talal Abomination of Desolation - Science and Technology Higher Education is full of spiritually desolate late-teenage to early-twenties nihilists/anarchists with drug addictions and they can neither reason nor read. Institutions proclaiming to dedicate their time and resources to the truth are interested in nothing other than more drugs (a.k.a. money and business schools), the school of philosophy has already fallen under the four horsemen existentialism, nihilism, antinatalism and death as always, and the stupid egomaniacs hiding behind jargon and publications have the audacity to compare theology with the study of unicorns and fairy-tales. Note that I’m not saying we should ditch science and reason. The key is the order of precedence. It should be God before reason, rather than reason alone. We end up losing reason if we reason without God. We cannot derive good and evil with reason alone and we end up with idiots who cannot tell if reality is real. How about you do your part, I do mine, He does His and let’s find out on the other side what we are? FYI, the 144,000 are probably gay men. Their hearts are ironically way cleaner than heterosexuals because they speak from the heart whether you are their best friend or worst enemy.
February 24, 2025 at 3:47 AM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Quick reminder that it's a week until Valentine's Day, I'm skint, and I love writing poems to order. You can order haiku/ senryū (£7.50+) or sonnets (£25+) via my ko-fi: ko-fi.com/fayroberts/c... (the +s are for if you want them looking pretty or if you want an audio recording of me reading them).
A Shakespearean sonnet entitled "The Flirt" by Fay Roberts - cream letters on a dark red background. Transcript follows: You walk downstairs then pause, and all talk stops; it’s clear to see who’s in command round here. The chatter rises, hotter than before – in its own way, it’s almost like a cheer. No music moves your hips from left to right, but somehow all our chests reflect the beat, and though no word is said, we know whose night this is, and whose command instructs our heat. “So, Happy Birthday, Chris,” you purr at last; the lucky target swallows, breathes your scent, and no-one thinks to wonder how you’re cast as benefactor, or from where you’re sent. Though edible, there’s no-one dares to touch, in case one taste of you is one too much. A haiku entitled "Late February" by Fay Roberts in gold letters on a green background. Transcript follows: Daffodils are out; cool air is hopeful; sun shines on my springing step
February 7, 2025 at 6:00 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Found on the Book of Faces and ohhh, it's a mood...
Meme in the form of a set of three images from the first scene in the first Indiana Jones movie - Jones, labelled "writer", is staring, stroking his chin, at a shiny, golden idol labelled "a cool new idea" on a stony plinth. In the next image he's intent on swapping in a bag of sand labelled "my current wip (I haven't touched it in weeks)" for the shiny, cool new idea. In the final shot, he's racing frantically down a stony tunnel, idol clutched in one arm, being chased by an enormous boulder labelled "the other 82 projects I'm 'working on'".
January 29, 2025 at 6:04 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Enjoying the @tincanaudio.co.uk #ADDQ chaos of the evening. If anyone's wondering, this is the teeshirt I mentioned.

(Gé is Gaelic for goose, btw.)
Fay, a white, bearded, middle-aged person, is wearing a black teeshirt under a black fleece with a Horrible Goose style graphic only the handle is rainbow-coloured and the slogan is "Be Gé Do Crimes".
January 27, 2025 at 8:19 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Don't want to come over all conspiracy theorist here, but what if the reason why the tariffs thing happened was the inevitable rise in prices so that foreigners and foreign countries could be blamed and war justified?

Just a thought… I'm sure I'm wrong…
Screenshot from subreddit r/Boomers Being Fools posted by u/666throw_away69420 entitled: "My boomer boss just learned tariff applied to him too and he's mad." Transcript follows: My boomer boss thought tariffs would mean his competition would be taken out and he'd be raking in all that profit from them going under. He thought it couldn't affect him because he voted for Trump and Trump will take care of him. Well 90% of our materials and parts comes from Mexico. Not just that, but some aren't produced anywhere else. Some are so old they're no longer manufactured normally and we already paid a premium for. Now when he realized that tariff was going to apply to him too, he lost it. He has been writing Trump and Vance on his personal and business Facebook page begging for an exception. Telling people that there's just been a misunderstanding, HE wasn't supposed to be affected by this it's supposed to hurt Mexico and liberals. It isn't supposed to hurt American businesses! Yeah it sucks, we tried to explain this to him multiple times. He's been celebrating telling us all we're getting raises because so much money is coming in and now he can't afford even enough employees to produce at average output, let alone enough to make profit to keep everyone currently here. We're all fucked and he thinks we're just in a hard place and need to wait until Trump reads his Facebook message because he'll fix this. The post had 6,165 upvotes and 423 comments at the time of capture.
January 25, 2025 at 6:16 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Not altogether coincidentally, this is exactly the right size for a Twitter account banner.
A mockup of a slightly patchy red banner with a black, mimeographed logo of an outstretched palm in the classic "stop!" sign sign, surrounded by the words "No Pasaràn"
January 22, 2025 at 2:55 AM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Not just once. A BUNCH of times. I'm somewhat shocked at how quickly this escalated… Not even 12 hours in and here we are.

Apparently he was "just extending his heart" to the crowd. Sure. Nothing to see here.
January 21, 2025 at 3:24 AM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Oh, Rowling may think that she's smart,
but she's muddled her output with "art".
The lesson she fails
is that hate won't prevail,
which was in her own books from the start.
Screenshot of tweet from J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling retweeting someone else. Transcript follows of a two-part limerick 'A woman', said some random prick, 'Is a sense or a pathway you pick.' He felt very clever He'd solved the dilemma Of how to do 'girl' with a dick. A woman replied 'Run along. 'You've set your parameters wrong 'I've lived it, you see, 'So can tell you for free, 'You can't be a girl with a dong.' The post she's attempting to pillory is transcribed below: "A woman is a sense of self deeply attached to the core of the psych it contains a set of parameters on how one behave different person to person learning can add to it path allowing a person to learn more about themselves" It's worth noting that the original had 8 Views and Rowling's 274.5K.
January 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Final stage of the cycle and I'm so pleased with how Butterfly turned out. Also feel like I learned a lot. And the task of creating 5 stage illustrations is done, all in service of my first ever #Patreon. Aaaah! Check out this link and let me know what you think! patreon.com/fayroberts
A slightly impressionistic digital drawing of a red butterfly with large eyespots in black, blue, and white sitting on a nettle leaf, basking in bright sunshine. The thick, green foliage beneath and beyond the insect ranges in detail from a fair amount to just green blobs, so we'll assume that's roughly what was in the reference image, huh? The capital letter I in a slightly serifed font with a faint shadow behind. It is outlined in black and the fill shades from red at the top through blue in the middle to green at the bottom, to match several of the colours found in the butterfly drawing.
December 6, 2024 at 12:29 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Next step is pupation, time for the tiny creature to swaddle itself, transform, and emerge from the Chrysalis thoroughly different! I was intrigued by the translucent nature of the Peacock Butterfly chrysalis* and did my best to reproduce that, along with the feeling of calm expectation.

(cont...)
A slightly cartoonish digital drawing of a yellowish chrysalis with a translucent green sheaf around the left-hand side of it, connected at the top to a not-particularly-identifiable greenish structure. The backdrop is vague impressions of large, greenish blue and bluish-green objects, slightly out of focus. The capital letters II in a slightly serifed font with a faint shadow behind. It is in two of the same shades of colours as in the drawing (green and yellow).
December 5, 2024 at 12:30 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
I went deep into research mode for this one, because I really wanted British butterflies (yep, that's the life cycle in question), and I needed the Caterpillar to both appeal to my aesthetic sense AND be something I could draw relatively easily.

(cont...)
A digital drawing of a black caterpillar with red legs striding across a nettle leaf from right to left. It has white spots on its body and numerous fine, black hairs. The capital letters III in a slightly serifed font with a faint shadow behind. It is in two of the same shades of colours as in the drawing (black and red).
December 4, 2024 at 1:19 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Having said "Oh, it's okay, I'll just stick with cartoonish as a vibe for these drawings," I then went and tried for naturalistic. I'm still not convinced! The thing is: this is a very small object, so its surroundings immediately became very... impressionistic.

(cont...)
A digital drawing of something that looks like a yellowish gooseberry or a very blunt sea urchin nestled in a field of scribbled greens of various shades. The capital letters IV in a slightly serifed font with a faint shadow behind. It is in two of the same shades of colours as in the drawing.
December 3, 2024 at 12:50 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
I've started drawing again, and for Reasons, I'm exploring a natural life cycle. (The Reasons may or may not become clear over the course of this week.) This first, slightly cartoonish effort, is Leaf. A solid start, but I reckon I can do better. (And even if I don't, to be fair, that's also fine!)
A digital cartoon of a green nettle leaf on its side. The veins are sketched out in dark green The capital letter V in a slightly serifed font with a faint shadow behind. It is in the same shades of colours as in the drawing.
December 2, 2024 at 12:44 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
It's funny you should say that, because I made a snow kitten!
In a snowy garden, a dark, concrete plinth on a pillar breaking up a low, red brick wall. On the plinth snow has been scraped together to roughly form a small bunny, lying on its belly with its little fluffy tail in the air and paws splayed out in front and behind it. Its ears are a modest length to counter the effects of gravity. Facing the bunny a snow kitten, sitting on its chubby haunches with its little paws in front and ears perked up. Untidy straggles of snow-heavy pampas grass play from the background, and a wooden fence (left) and small, circular table (right) are visible in the background.
November 19, 2024 at 3:50 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
The promised snow sculptures!
In a snowy garden, a dark, concrete plinth on a pillar breaking up a low, red brick wall. On the plinth snow has been scraped together to roughly form a small bunny, lying on its belly with its little fluffy tail in the air and paws splayed out in front and behind it. Its ears are a modest length to counter the effects of gravity. Facing the bunny a snow kitten, sitting on its chubby haunches with its little paws in front and ears perked up. Untidy straggles of snow-heavy pampas grass play from the background, and a wooden fence (left) and small, circular table (right) are visible in the background. A legless snowman stands with his back to a low, red brick wall, on top of which can be seen a snow bunny and snow kitten. The snowman has broad shoulders and appears to be holding his arms behind his back. His slightly tilted, somewhat lumpy head shows eye sockets, a smile, and a modest nose. Around him on the scraped-clear, trampled, slightly muddy grass, are scattered bright red Japanese maple leaves, and his chest is decorated with one, almost like a very fancy necktie. In the background, a red brick house can be seen, with white PVC patio door, kitchen extension, and some green waste bags under a layer of snow.
November 19, 2024 at 3:48 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Semi-obligatory First Day of Snow photo. Excited!
Picture of a snowy, suburban garden in dim, morning light from an upstairs window. Visible are several inches of snow covering the rooftop of the extension to the left, the large, brick outhouse, the bushes, small lawn, and sheds at the back of my and neighbouring gardens. There is a low, red brick wall next to the patio, and a small, round table with a hole for a parasol. Next door's shed has faded, multicoloured bunting across it, and a large stack of red fertiliser bags. There are glimpses of the gardens beyond the bottom of our gardens.
November 19, 2024 at 10:07 AM
fayroberts.bsky.social
So, blatant own-horn-blowing here - this photo by Solid Imagery and feedback quote from the talk I gave at Bournemouth Writing Festival:

"Fay Roberts' talk was encouraging and grounding and vital to the underrepresented voices of the performance poetry community."

#ARisingTide
Fay, a white, bearded, slender, light-eyed person with light brown or dark blonde, curly, shoulder-length hair is standing in front of a white table with bottles of water and a carton of coconut water on it. Ze is wearing a long, black teeshirt with a silver-white, geometric design on it like a winged helmet, over charcoal hiking trousers. Ze is speaking into a microphone on a stand, eyes a little distant and expression neutral, gesticulating with both arms, pale hands cupped upwards. The wall beyond the table is white-painted brick, and there's the edge of a large, shiny, black tv screen visible at the side of the photo. At the bottom of the shot is a multicoloured logo reading SOLID (©Baily Moore solidimagery.co.uk and another, yellow background with a cartoon of an open book, looking a little like the pavilion, reading Bournemouth Writing Festival.
May 29, 2024 at 9:30 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
So far the best thing coming out of this election are the memes. Some absolute fucking corkers. (Feel free to drop some of your favourites here.)
screenshot of tweet by Mark Cockerton @CockertonMark "He's gone where? Oh my god, to Morrisons! To do a fucking photoshoot sniffing a loaf of fucking bread! You know they'll keep moving him until they get a photo of the twat in front of a sign reading 'moron'?" There are three photos attached as if Malcolm Tucker of In The Thick of It is on the phone, watching tv with horror as the other two photos show Rishi Sunak literally sniffing a loaf while smiling Morrison's employees herd him gently so that he does, in fact, appear to be in front of a sign proclaiming him a moron. As of 10:15 25 May 24 the tweet has had 34.2K Views
May 27, 2024 at 4:07 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
Appeal to Hive Mind:

Rental house has this smeg range; literally EVERY SINGLE marking is erased. There's no storage drawer, so can't Google instructions - can't find product code. Just want to bake and roast things and need to know temperatures!

Any useful clues v gratefully received.
Photo of a shiny metallic front of a double oven cooker range by smeg. The digital clock reads 6:39 and the third dial from the left has been tuened to the half past five position, while all the others are off at midnight. There are three dials on the left of the clock and four to the right. You can see the black-clad legs of the photographer and the wood laminate floor reflected in the metal and glass.
May 17, 2024 at 5:51 PM
fayroberts.bsky.social
May I present for your amazement and amusement, Elon Musk [checks notes] yep, Musk telling JK Rowling that she's being a bit one-note about trans people and should get a new hobby maybe? twitter.com/elonmusk/sta...
screenshot of tweet by Elon Musk in reply to JK Rowling. Her original tweet from 06 April 2024 says You've asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes. I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It's irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not... The post is so long it's truncated with a Show more link. There's a screenshot of another tweet to which Rowling appears to be replying: So ONLY equipment makes one a woman? That seems a very narrow view of what makes a person a woman. What if you have female equipment but never have children...are you still a woman? Is it JUST having the equipment or must you use it? What if you have both sets of equipment? Elon Musk's reply on 4 May 2024 reads: While I heartily agree with your points regarding sex/gender, may I suggest also posting interesting and positive content on other matters?
May 4, 2024 at 11:51 PM