get up, coward

[I'm not really on Tumblr much anymore but I'm okay!!] Void. They/he/it. Greyrose. 20’s. (banner and icon art are original) Real life engineer TM >This blog may contain spiders, snakes, and other such creatures. Continue at your own risk<

[slow-drowned-angels]

Hi, I'm Void!

I block/delete asks for donations. I don’t have an income atm so you will get nowhere with asking me for money anyways. Please do not attempt to.

This is a general-purpose personal blog with minimal fandom theming and a lot of queer content. No queue we die like men.

I am an adult. All other lore has to be obtained the old-fashioned way because I am bad at describing myself.

Note: I am no longer tagging NSFW because it’s such a vague term. Please let me know if there is something specific you want tagged!

Common Content:

My art! #void.png

My Chemical Romance: #mcr

Drawfee: #drawfee

Disability advocacy: #disability

Engineering: #engineerposting

For blacklist:

US politics: #usa politics

Long posts: #long post

Transphobia: #transphobia

Queer(phobic) discourse: #the discourse

Fandom bullshit: #fandom bullshit

Death: #death

Videos/gifs with flashing: #flashing

Vent posts: #vent

[psychotic-gerard]

knew this woman who used to be a gay man and when he was a gay man he liked ‘ironically’ referring to himself as she/her and so when he came out as a woman he decided the next logical step was to also switch his pronouns to he/him.

[skarnish]

[tammog]

[finelytaylored]

#mcrliverpool

[natalieironside]

Shout out to trans women who aren’t computer scientists or musicians or avant-garde artists or whatever.

Shout-out to tgirls who work at Taco Bell. Thank u queen, society would collapse without you

[snkrfnd]

Over twenty years ago my big brother got me a job at a Taco Bell in the St. Louis suburbs-West County. He warned me that it was the “gay Taco Bell”, but since I was coming from the “gay Howard Johnson’s” I wasn’t shocked. It turns out it was the black trans women Taco Bell complete with black trans women in management. And they’d worked out an arrangement with the local teen Narcotics Anonymous group so that twice a week we would shut down the drive thru and the dining room and exclusively serve 60+ teens in various stages of recovery. And many of the women I worked with were in various stages of being out or transitioning and they were from all generations from teens to over 50. One woman I worked with had a regular corporate job presenting as a man 9-5 Mon-Fri and then came to Taco Bell and worked 6pm -2am Friday and Saturday night so she could be herself surrounded by other black transwomen in those stolen weekends. And we had customers come from all over the metro area because they knew they could be themselves in the dining room. I only worked there from 1999-2001 but for young me, this was a vital, formative experience. Some of the girls came from north city all the way out to the “gay Taco Bell” on Manchester in west county because they heard it was safe to work there. Like- I know times have changed but they haven’t changed much in 20 years. I’m still convinced that for lgbt youth, finding a job at your city’s version of the “gay Taco Bell” is key to survival.

[natalieironside]

Thank u for sharing this with us

[arcade-confetti]

Oh youre "nonbinary"? Can i put you in a box please. Can i pleaseeeee put you in a box. We have two boxes and i really wanna put you in one. But dont worry. My boxes are very Woke and Nuanced. So its fine to put you in one. Pleaseeeee. Wow... youre such a bitch... not letting me put into one of two nuanced and essential necessary boxes... you obviously go into the box all those evil bitches end up in

[tppart]

"First Lady", my first successful colored pencil portrait and now my first successful paint portrait

Oil on canvas

[thickness-protection-program]

Extra pics in the sunlight bc sunlight is the best light

[ilovecoelacanths]

went to a new optometrist today wearing my squid facts ‘save our freaks’ shirt from @sarahmackattack that has a strawberry squid on it. and i wasn’t even thinking about it but the optometrist walked in and he was like ‘oh what does your shirt say’ so i showed him and he was like ‘oh that’s neat!’ and then i thought he might like to know about strawberry squid eyes since they have weird eyes and he is an optometrist and all. so i was like ‘yeah it’s actually a real kind of squid called a strawberry squid, their eyes are really cool because they have one big yellow-green one and one small blue one’ and he kind of gasped and went ‘oh my god that’s so interesting i wonder why they have that. do you know what their retina composition is like?’ and i watched as he minimized my chart on the computer and started looking up images of strawberry squid and then he googled ‘strawberry squid retina composition’ and he was like ‘sorry we’ll get to your eye exam in a moment i just really want to find out’ LMAO 10/10 optometrist experience will be returning

[sarahmackattack]

Hell yeah

[yesornopolls]

If you’re neurodivergent, do you consider the term “neurospicy” offensive or overly obnoxious?

If you’re neurodivergent, do you consider the term “neurospicy” offensive or overly obnoxious?

Yes

No

See results

Voting ended onMay 26

[creekfiend]

I understand that there is discussion of masking by autistic people that is much more honest and in-depth, but so much of the stuff I see sort of leans on the assumption that masking is something one chooses to do in order to appear "normal"

In reality, I think the behavior pattern that we name as "masking" is the natural behavioral and psychological result of being consistently punished for attempting to acknowledge your own reality during formative developmental periods. And I'm not sure that "masking" is a clarifying word to use for this

[creekfiend]

OK OK OK, someone in the tags said that they don't know the degree to which they are masking, bc they don't know what is normal/expected and therefore have no way of knowing how much they're altering themselves to fit into that expectation (thank you for articulating that!!) and I think that clarified a lot for me about my problems with the framing of masking.

Because that method of trying to "unmask" will always fail, bc it hinges on the assumption that there is a core underlying Self that is being Covered Up with the mask.

In reality, one does not have a chance to develop a true "self" due to the circumstances of their development. this is broadly true for almost all humans (SHOW ME AN UNALTERED TRUE HUMAN SELF,) because of the heavily social nature of how our selfhood intersects with other people's perception of us, but in some people it is much more marked and detrimental than others. What I think is the issue at hand is not the Self, but rather the internal experience. The Self is a construction we build to understand ourselves as beings, and it is heavily informed by our understanding of our own experiencs. understanding of those experiences is the actual issue. Being able to identify and name the effects that moving thru the world have on you. And teasing out how those acknowledgements of one's internal experience have been punished out of us.

The "recovering from burnout as a high masking person" post does use this framework, but I think that referring to people whose sense of their own internal reality has been so warped and shattered that they have to completely learn from scratch as "high masking" is just not intuitive and that it communicates what is being discussed... Poorly. I understand that that is the language that is used by the community broadly rn, and I don't object to individual instances of its use, but I do think that we would be better served in these conversations by framing it differently than "masking"

[grison-in-space]

I also see people framing even the most basic social skills (things like "tolerating mild discomfort" and "avoiding offensive phrasing of desires") as masking. At a certain point I think we have to be aware that there is a degree of curtailing one's personal self expression inherent in existing within a society, and that autistic people are not the only people who have to be aware of societal norms and contort selves to exist within them as part of experiencing that society. The difference is of course in the degree of contortion required to fit neatly into the society, not the phenomenon of having to contort in the first place.

It bugs me! And I think it creates unnecessary friction among communities of people first discovering autism and is susceptible to a weird kind of reverse curb cut effect where unmasking (== "stretching out and de-contorting from the society in which you live into a more comfortable shape") is set aside as something Just For Autistics, as if there aren't lots of groups of people whose existence is policed and shaped and bonsai-trimmed into painfully stunted or twisted shapes. Which, of course there are, and not all of them are groups where a mental health framework is remotely appropriate (e.g. constraints on the acceptable behavior of black people especially in gendered contexts), so why are we framing so much advocacy this way?

[creekfiend]

YESSSSSS

[creekfiend]

so many ppl are tagging this "ik not autistic but-" or "i havent been diagnosed but-" and then describing the exact thing i am talking about. which i think illustrates in real time why the framing of this as "autistic masking" is not serving a lot of people well. its bonsai kitten shit. its cptsd shit

[its-time-to-be-silly]

This discussion reminded me of hermeneutical injustice, and when I looked it up I came across the term 'tightlacing', which seems apt here:

Tightlacing consists in inducing a mistaken self-conception in others that licenses overburdening demands on them such that victims apply those demands to themselves. ... Tightlacing targets their basic sense of who they are and their sense of entitlement to conduct themselves as who they really are.

It does still centre the sense of self, but I think it speaks to the sense of 'pruning the branches of undesirable behaviour' well.

In this paper, we introduce a distinctive kind of psychological abuse we call Tightlacing. We begin by presenting four examples and argue th

[creekfiend]

ohhhh thats basically my bonsai kitten framework!!! i lpve convergent evolution!!!

[kosmogrl]

[malewifesband]

its always helpful imo to remember theres a cis person with whatever problem you have as a trans person 9/10 times. theres a cis man as short as you, a cis woman as tall as you, with hands and feet as big or small as yours. theres a cis woman scared to go out without shaving twice a day, theres a cis man whos upset bc he will never grow a beard. theres a cis woman who worries her infertility makes her less of a woman, and theres a cis man feeling similarly about his lack of potency. theres cis women who dilate and cis men with phalloplasty. theres a cis man scared that painting his nails will make people think hes not really a man and a cis woman whos exhausted with spending hours grooming just so people treat her like she wants to be treated as a woman. they dont put it in the terms we do but theyre worried that these problems make them inadequate at the gender they want people to see them as. our patriarchal system has made the boxes were supposed to fit into so small and you arent alone in not fitting it--nobody really fits

[anarchistmemedistro]

[creekfiend]

hey! if this is a better time, I'd still love to hear about how you encourage your house spiders :)

tbh most of it is like... varioations on leaving them alone! rescuing them from pets/not letting pets eat em, leaving webs alone unless they're very obviously abandoned, even if they look a lil messy. particularly I like to see the active hunting spiders like wolf spiders and southern house spiders (the species we get here) bc they'll roam around and get bigger bugs, but the lil ceiling corner spiders are also friends.

much of it is not using insecticides* anywhere in the house or yard as well. or at least as much as possible! I've used some ant bait traps when we had an active infestation of those, but that's it so far. knock wood, lol

*A NOTE: diatomaceous earth is not poison (it kills bugs with a mechanical action by piercing their exoskeletons and drying them out,) but it CAN kill any small arthropods just the same, so be careful with that if you have some critters you want to encourage in your home -- using it in specific locations and vacuuming it up promptly can help avoid accidentally dessicating any spider friends.

anyone else who has some tips about encouraging your friendly neighborhood predatory bugs, pls feel free to add tips!

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

Every time OP dances, her parrot flies along with her. OP says she never trained it on purpose and her parrot just loves doing this naturally. Sometimes it’ll just hop right onto her face. (cr 月下郭城)

[curseofmeatthawsmoth]

Y'all - the Catholic Church is not only a conservative institution, it is a strong contender for the most conservative institution in the world. I don't say that (here) in a disparaging way, I mean it in a neutral, literal sense. The Church's entire modus operandi is that it seeks to conserve what it believes to be apostolic teaching - disciplines, practices, and prudential judgements vary across place and time, but the teachings themselves never ever change. Hailing the Pope or a bishop as some kind of progressive icon is nonsensical, and is hard for me to see as anything other than a very worrying sign of the reactionary period we're living in.

[curseofmeatthawsmoth]

The President of the United States is to the right of the head of the most conservative institution in the world (the Pope) and instead of viewing that as an extremely worrying sign of the reactionary period we're in, people have decided the Pope and the Church are progressive

[bananonbinary]

tony's chocolonely mildly pisses me off every time i eat it. like yeah i get it ur doing a whole symbolism thing about unfairness and whatever, but its actually SO DIFFICULT to eat fucking. gerrymandered chocolate. your symbolism is ruining my chocolate experience.

who approved this.

[bananonbinary]

like. ur already more expensive. i understand this. i am willing to pay more money to have slave-free delicious chocolate. why must you punish me further by making it a goddamn puzzle to break a piece off.

[closet-keys]

Tony's Chocolonely does not ensure a living wage for cocoa workers in West Africa (see 2020 report by Voice Network).

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

this isn't perfect, obviously, but it is much more grounded in the rights of workers than the various certifications (e.g. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, etc.) you'll see on product packaging

[aloofraven]

I think it should be noted that the Food Empowerment Project specifically only lists companies making "at least one vegan chocolate product" and that they only ask about the companies' vegan chocolates specifically. Their list is not an exhaustive resource for every type of chocolate.

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

Before I found that link I was curious as to why I didn't see any Norwegian manufacturers on their list(which makes sense now, as their chocolates are almost exclusively milk chocolate) and looked up where our companies source their chocolate from and found Nidar gets theirs from the Rainforest Alliance and Freia from Cocoa Life, both of which have been under scrutiny for not preventing child labour and not paying farmers a living wage among other things. So it appears Norwegian chocolate is out of the ethical picture.

[roninnozlo]

I stated this in the comments of the post already, but it’d probably be better to add it as a reblog, so it’s more visible and doesn’t need to be restated by anyone else in the future.

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

Below is a list of chocolate companies that only use ethically grown&nbsp;cocoa. &nbsp;Find out how you can tell if the chocolate you are ea

And it doesn’t have the vegan product restriction the other list has, which solves @aloofraven’s issue.

[krebkrebkreb]

if your favorite oc ever broke containment and developed their own fandom, what would the most pervasive discourse about them be?

too beautiful/smart/skilled/strong/perfect/etc

blatantly evil in some way

was mean to someone once

the unforgivable crime of just being kind of annoying

“in the way” of a popular ship

age gap relationship (2-10 years)

age gap relationship (10-30 years)

age gap relationship (30+ years)

a stereotype/“bad representation”

female

op you forgot ______

character is bald / im bald / see answers

Voting ended onMay 6

(i’m not giving a “multiple apply” option on this one. pick the most applicable/what you think would be the most argued about.)

[krebkrebkreb]

incredibly pleased that everyone is following the instructions i forgot to give and reblogging to explain their choice in the tags 🙏 more of that please i want to know about your ocs and also i love you

[heyitskoye]

How I cope with being european and unable to get drawfee merch