Where's My Giant Robot Car?

"Extraordinary feats of surf swimming by Sandwich Islanders." Marvelous wonders of the whole world. 1886.

So what a golden core does is basically refine and produce spiritual energy more or less automatically for the cultivator, right? Like a heart pumping blood, just more mystical. The more pure the core is, the more refined the qi it can circulate, and subsequently the health and power of the cultivator also improves. Though the qi still requires techniques in order to be properly manipulated. But Jiang Cheng already knows those, and the rest of his body is already conditioned to handle refined qi, he just needs something to do the basic production & refinement of the core.

So first Wei Wuxian starts out with talismans, which can be used to store qi and subsequently allow Jiang Cheng to access it. The problem there is that the talismans can't hold a ton of qi, and there is always a delay to access, and it means Jiang Cheng has to be carting around a library's worth of paper and they usually burn up after use. So making/using them has issues. Also, the talismans for refining qi don't work on live bodies and usually can only refine qi after it's been put into the talisman, so that's another layer of inconvenience and it's not going to help Jiang Cheng further his cultivation or ascend or anything.

Like it's nowhere near sufficient to replace a golden core, so Wei Wuxian moves on. What he needs is one object or maybe two objects that will do both the storage and refinement tasks, small and portable, and preferably extremely difficult to separate from Jiang Cheng. Sourcing and experimenting with the necessary materials is a challenge, but war times do produce extraordinary situations and some opportunities, and eventually Wei Wuxian creates a sort of xianxia arc reactor.

In order to get it to work as it should, one component needs to be surgically implanted into Jiang Cheng's body, with another component that is external. The internal component refines and helps cycle the qi within Jiang Cheng's body, but only stores a small amount, while the external component can store a much larger repository of pure power. Since this device still needs to be bigger and heavier than a normal core, the external component is detachable (makes it easier to sleep or rest without it), but the upshot is that it can actually hold a lot more energy than a body would normally be able to sustain. And though it contains a lot of energy, even if someone steals it or it gets destroyed it's not the end of the world since it won't really function without the internal component. To further augment the dual artificial cores, Wei Wuxian works with some armorers united by the war effort and creates a suit of armor that can attach to the external core, and can be imbued and empowered with spiritual energy.

The suit can do most things a spiritual weapon can. Jiang Cheng can command pieces of it to come to him, or send gauntlets flying off of his hands to strike enemies. It can empower energy blasts, shield against the same, work with zidian, and eventually Jiang Cheng can even command the whole suit like a secondary extension of himself on the battlefield (not always advisable, however, since his attention still can't be in two places at once).

Even better, the innovations Wei Wuxian makes for the internal core can be applied to others who have lost cores or the opportunity to create them. Wei Wuxian confirms this when his shijie becomes the recipient of his second model, which doesn't have the same military overkill applications, but does help her actually utilize her cultivation in ways her illness previously impeded.

Unfortunately, though, the cultivation world still is what it is, and there are many people who would kill for the ability to make whoever they pleased into a battlefield cultivator. There are also individuals in the great sects who see this development as an inherent threat to their authority, and want all of it destroyed.

TFW you go on an incognito fun outing to assasinate future Yiling Patriarch but he imprints on you

From @benevolenterrancy's fic The Weight We Carry chapter 4

Nav: Presentation // Intro // Southern Song 南宋 // Yuan 蒙元 // Early Ming 明初 // Mid-Early Ming 明中前 // Mid-Late Ming 明中後 // Late Ming 晚明 // Fabrics Pt 1 // Fabrics Pt 2 // Set Easter Eggs // Conclusion

Patting myself on the back for finally finishing the six main design posts, but still got two more to go!!! This is the fabric design post, arguably the most symbolic part of these six sets with the most juicy lore behind it, so if your thing is Chinese cosmology and symbolism this'll be your jam.

This section is very long (what a surprise), so I'll be dividing it into two posts.

Part one, which is this post, will talk about the mythology and folktale inspiration behind the design elements, and introduce the different parts of the skirt design. I will do a deep dive into the main part of the design with the longma dragon-horse that appears on the latter three time period's skirt designs.

Part two will expand on the rest of the skirt sections, which are smaller and less detailed. I'll also talk a bit about the variation of the skirt designs through the different time periods, and the technical parts of mamianqun fabric manufacturing that I had to go through to make these fabrics happen.

～The Lore～

The Chinese name for the Metamorphosis set is 龍馬負圖 / long2 ma3 fu4 tu2 / "Dragon-Horse Bearing the Diagram." This is a reference to the story of the 河圖洛書 / he2 tu2 luo4 shu1 / "River Diagram and Luo Book," more commonly known as the Yellow River Map and Luo River Square. These are two visual diagrams that appear in very very early Chinese legends and mythology about the beginning of Dynastic China. They look like this:

Src: 河圖洛書, 2017

I will explain more on what exactly these represent later, but for now, just know that they appear in a number of legends recounted by very famous early writings such as thing 易經 / yi4 jing1 / "I'Ching" text, most of which share similar elements. The one that stuck out to me most was the legend of 大禹治水 / da4 yu2 zhi4 shui3 / "Yu the Great Tames the Waters," which can be considered somewhat of a secondary creation myth.

There's no evidence of this guy's existence, but the story goes that pre-dynastic China often suffered from devastating floods from the Yellow River, which kept them from advancing very far. The worst of these was the Great Flood, a massive flood that extended over at least two generations. The emperor at the time, Yao, had been trying to solve this problem for a long time, but the first person who tried, 鯀 / Gun—Yu the Great's father, also called 白馬 / bai2 ma3 / White Horse—failed to control the waters, so the task was passed down to his son.

L: Standing Portrait of King Yu of Xia, National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, 中畫000257N000000000 // R: Yellow River, whose watershed covers most of northern China and drains to the Yellow Sea, Wikimedia Commons

It's said that Yu dedicated most of his life to solving this problem. A number of stories related to this process have been told, one of which being the legend of the Yellow River Map and Luo River Square. Seeing that Yu was going in the wrong direction, the gods sent a great dragon-horse and a giant tortoise as messengers to the earth, who emerged from the waters bearing these diagrams on their backs, revealing clues about divination and geomancy to Yu the Great.

After consulting the diagrams, he realized that he had been mistaken and changed direction, ultimately succeeding in his goal after many years. Some other variations have different animals or people revealing the diagrams to different people, but for the year of the horse I focused on the version that has the dragon-horse bearing the Yellow River Map on its coat.

Src: ​龍馬負河圖洛書, CADAL06200462 古本小說集成：開闢衍繹通俗志傳,1685, Wikimedia Commons

Eventually Yu tamed the waters through a complex irrigation system and opening an artificial channel out to sea, which made him so popular with the people that the emperor declared him his heir. He allegedly took the throne in his 50s, establishing the Xia Dynasty, the very first dynasty in Chinese historiography.

From a broader level, deluge myths are extremely common in early history across the world (although the nuwa story matches them more closely than this one tbh). I feel like almost everyone has their own version of a massive flood that ended up leading to some sort of new beginning.

I think this legend takes place in a grey area between myth and history, too far back to have much evidence of existence, but recent enough to be relatively acceptable when considered a dramatized version of events. At any rate it's an extremely significant part of Chinese folklore, and while the dragon-horse only plays a small part in it, I latched onto this as the primary inspiration for this set.

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～The Fabric Design～

Since most of the mamianqun fabrics are just variations of the same central design, I’ll use the most complex one as the visual example since it already contains all of the elements found in the other skirt designs. That would be the mid-early Ming mamianqun. At the end of this section I will talk briefly about how this design was modified for the other time periods' skirts.

We can first separate this into a few distinct repeating horizontal pattern sections. If we regard the pattern covering a majority of the area as the ‘base’ pattern (B), there are four distinct pattern sections (1,2,3,4), plus a divider pattern (D) that appears multiple times between them.

(1): Hem Block 底襴

The lowest pattern block near the hem of the skirt is also the widest and the one that appears in both of the other colored mamianqun designs (mid-late and late Ming). Some of the elements were moved around a bit to compress the block proportions for the other designs, but most of them remain the same. I regard this as the “main” design block, as most of the storytelling elements are concentrated here.

The primary scene depicted is a longma dragon-horse galloping through the waves, but every design element included has a meaning to it. 

The Longma

First the creature itself. This is a somewhat modern interpretation of a dragon-horse, with some modern aesthetics prioritized. The legs, hooves, body shape, and tail are all very horse-like, with some added dragon features like the flaming mane, belly scales, straight-back horns, whiskers, and wrinkled nose. The spiral patterns on the horse’s chest and flank as well as the fire wheels coming off of the hind leg joints were also elements taken from usual depictions of eastern dragons, who often have similar flaming wheels on their ankles. 

Src: Imperial Encyclopaedia - Animal Kingdom - pic210 - 龍馬圖.svg, 《古今圖書集成》, Wikimedia Commons

There are a couple different ways this creature can be interpreted. One is as the longma dragon-horse from the legend of this set’s namesake, as one of the two creatures that surfaced from the Yellow River as witnessed by Yu the Great, as described before. The Classic of the Mountains and Seas describe longma as being able to walk on water without sinking and as a sign of a divine ruler.

Src: 图：武官常服补子纹样, 明代群臣之服：常服 // Sea-Horse ninth rank is the lower right square (武九品）

Another is as the 海馬 / hai3 ma3 / "Sea-Horse" (not the fish), a dragon-like horse which is depicted on the ninth-rank martial officer rank badge in the Ming Dynasty official uniform system, used specifically to contrast against the five-clawed imperial dragon buzi badge on the mid-late Ming set’s round-collar robe, as a representation of the wild disarray and constant flouting of fashion rules during that time period.

Src: JourneytotheWest.jpg, Tang Sanzang riding on the White Dragon Horse, Wikimedia Commons

Last is as the 白龍馬 / bai2 long2 ma3 / white dragon-horse (that's literally his name) from the famous Ming Dynasty novel 西遊記 / xi1 you2 ji4 / "Journey to the West" (you may also know it as the Monkey King), a dragon prince originally living in a river who shapeshifts into the party’s steed (after accidentally eating their horse, as you do). You’ll notice that even though they have slightly different names and contexts, all of these depictions are actually quite consistent with each other: there’s always some sort of very powerful horse-dragon mix that has something to do with a body of water.

The Waves

The top and bottom of this block are lined with a wave pattern, crested with white foam. Waves are often depicted in a very circular, spiraling manner, adding a sort of rolling motion to them. This is helped by the repeated parallel lines giving them dimension, plus the white seafoam that helps partition some of the different wave sections from each other.

Src: 武官九品海馬補子, National Digital Archive Program, Taiwan (Qing Dynasty)

The original haima sea-horse buzi depicts a horse galloping over repeated waves, so I kept that framing in the composition of this piece, though the waves are more organic and less repetitive. They also come down from the top, which is more of an aesthetic decision than a symbolic one, but I did notice that the waves look remarkably similar to clouds if you color them white, which makes sense given the Chinese term 雲海 / yun2 hai3 / “sea of clouds,” which refers to the view you often get on Asian mountaintops where the clouds are so dense and thick that they look like a white ocean sprawling out in front of you. You could say that, with the celestial nature of dragons, this horse could be either galloping over the water or treading over the clouds—you just don’t know!

河圖洛書

Next I want to go over these two repeated symbols, the former of which you’ll see in the base pattern as well. These are a continuation of the 河圖洛書 story: they’re visual representations of the 河圖 and the 洛書.

The traditional depictions of these two ‘maps’ look like this. They’re arrangements of black and white dots in kind of a square array. It’s somewhat debated what they actually represent, and their exact functional role in the legends is vague, but they’re generally considered divination or cosmology maps that have to do with the bagua eight trigrams, the five elements, and five cardinal Chinese directions.

洛書 / The Luoshu Square

Src: Luo Square, Wikipedia (various imaged pieced together by me to fool tumblr's image limit)

Upon a closer look we can see that the Luoshu has nine objects arranged in a 3x3 matrix. Each object is made up of a different number of dots: the ones with an even number of dots are black, and the ones with an odd number of dots are white. If we convert the numbers of dots into numbers, we will get a matrix that looks like this: (4, 9, 2; 3, 5, 7; 8, 1, 6).

An extremely important observation is that this arrangement constitutes what we call a third order normal magic square: if you add up the three numbers in any row, column, or diagonal of the array, you will get the same number (try it yourself—what’s the magic sum?) You might also notice that each of the integers 1 through 9 are used once—this is what we call a normal magic square.

I’d previously only encountered magic squares when playing with AMC problems in middle school, so it was really interesting to see it pop up here. Remarkably, the luoshu is the smallest possible normal magic square (reflections and rotations of the same square are not considered distinct, and squares with repeated number entries don’t count). Every possible 3x3 normal magic square is a transformation of this one.

If you look closely at each shape you will recognize that each one has a number of “lobes” or “sections.” The even-numbered shapes are filled in with red, and the odd-numbered shapes are teal and have negatives corresponding to their number. For example, the shape on the left has three spokes, and the one in the middle contains five compartments. Each of them exhibit some sort of repetition, imagery, or sectioning that has to do with their number, and they’re arranged in the same way as the Luo square, so that any row, column, or diagonal will add up to 15.

河圖 / The Yellow River Map

Src: 河圖與洛書

The Yellow River Map is a little more confusing in what exactly it is—there doesn’t seem to be an agreed-upon mathematical relationship like in its counterpart, and it’s a bit more complex. Some think that the version that we have now may not be the same as the original, and that if we had the original then the relationship would be equally obvious. It does have some established linkages to ideas in Chinese cosmology, but they won’t make much sense unless you’ve got somewhat of a background in that (which is not me).

As in the Luoshu, some of the dots (even arrangements) are filled in and some (odd arrangements) are blank. The integers 1-10 also appear once each, with 10 uniquely wrapping all the way around the central 5.

Culturally, this was the primary map that helped Yu the Great construct his irrigation and drainage system. While the myths vary in the form and identity of the person, deity, or spirit that actually gave him the map, it's generally hinted at that this was some sort of directional mapping of the surrounding land and topology, which helped Yu figure out how to build channels through what he later established as the Nine Provinces.

The visual symbol I came up with for this one is a little less abstract, preserving the dots on the outside and most of the structure, although I neglected to include the lines. The 3 and 4 I turned into a fan shape instead of just dots, and the outer four numbers were arranged in a curved shape to make the footprint of the whole symbol a bit more interesting. The top and bottom halves of the 10 are disconnected but represented by 5 teardrop shapes above and 5 below, as some other depictions have the dots split up in this way but connected by lines.

The Silk Moths

If you thought these were butterflies, you thought wrong—these are silk moths! Specifically bombyx mori, the domesticated silk moth.

Why include them? While it's not super common anymore, silkworms did have a connection to horses in older Chinese folklore, apparently stemming from the fact that the silkworm's head is shaped similarly to a horse's head. The more popular origin story of sericulture stems from Leizu, the Empress of the Yellow Emperor, who discovered silk after a cocoon fell into her hot tea and invented the art of sericulture and weaving.

Src: Silkworms, Invertebrate Welfare

An alternative is the story of 馬頭娘 / ma3 tou2 niang2 / "Horse-Headed Maiden," a girl who promised to marry her family's white horse if he brought her father home from war/kidnapping/going to the store for milk, which he did. Her father, not wanting a horse for a son-in-law, killed the horse, but when he hung its hide up to dry, it flew up, wrapped around the girl, and carried her away into a mulberry tree, where she was transformed into a silk-spitting, horse-headed silkworm. She then eventually ascended to the heavens and was worshipped as the goddess of silkworms. Records of this story appear in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Taiping Guangji, the Rites of Zhou, etc.

Beyond that story I'm sure I don't have to elaborate on the whole silk-clothes-hanfu thing :p

L: Domestic silkmoth, Bombyx Mori, Photo 369978040, (c) GD, all rights reserved, uploaded by GD, iNaturalist, April 2024 // R: Wild silkmoth, Photo 517391659, no rights reserved, iNaturalist, June 2025

In terms of design elements, domestic silk moths (bombyx mori) are leucistic, in comparison to wild silk moths (bombyx mandarina), which are brown. I tried to mimic the textured veins of the wings of the silkmoth in my design, as well as the fuzzy antennae, the thicker thorax, and the resting angle/general silhouette of the wings. Overall, I'm not sure how recognizable they are as silk moths, but I like that I was able to include this bit of detail.

Bird / Bat

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a... bat?

Regardless of what it is, it's flying! I kept this shape ambiguous on purpose. Gulls flying over the sea are one option, given the ocean setting—the pointed tail and head would lend themselves to the shape of a beak and narrower tail feathers.

However, another possibility is bats. While they may seem like an odd choice, bats are also good-luck systems often depicted on woven fabrics and embroidery in Chinese clothing in varying levels of simplification.

Src: 乾隆青花粉彩桃蝠纹双耳抱月瓶, 满清文物中的传统吉祥纹样——蝠纹, Prince Kung's Palace Museum

Bats are considered lucky because of their name in Chinese, 蝙蝠 / bian1 fu2, or just 蝠 / fu2 in its bound form, which is pronounced the same as the character for good luck, 福 / fu2. They're incorporated into ceramics, textiles, carvings, paintings etc. in various levels of simplification and abstraction. I find that the most common indicator of a bat being depicted is the forward angled point of the wrist joint on its wing, which is sometimes pointed and sometimes just curved. My design does have a forward curve, but it's not very exaggerated, so it's sort of up to the viewer.

壽字 / The "Shou" Character

Above the longma there's a red circle representing the sun (Chinese depictions of the sun are usually more red than yellow) and the Oracle Bone Script (really old) version of the character 壽 / shou4. Shou is a word that means everlasting, long-lived, etc. It's technically a combination of a phono-semantic character (形聲字 / xing2 sheng1 zi4, aka one part of the character represents its sound, and another part represents its meaning) and a compound ideogram (multiple pictograms combined to create a scene related to the meaning).

Src: 寿字的源字形, 雲美名網

We can divide the character into two pieces: the top part, which is the character 老 / lao3 / "old," and the bottom part, which is an archaic form of the character 疇 / chou2 / "field." The 老 character represents the meaning, and it is a pictogram of an old person with a hunched back. In this ideogram, the person is leaning over the 疇 character like a cane. 疇 in this case functions as a phonetic indicator of the pronunciation of the whole character, shou, which is similar to chou. Later on the 壽 character became more common and culturally significant than 疇, so 疇 was retroactively changed into its own self-referential phonogram: 田 / tian2 / "crops" to denote its meaning and 壽 to denote its sound.

Culturally, the 壽 character is one of the most common good-luck character motifs used in Chinese designs, just like the 福 / fu2 / "luck" character (Chinese people just really wanna get rich, live a long time, and have good luck). The character is often stylized into three types of patterns: 長壽紋 / chang2 shou4 wen2 / "long shou pattern," 花壽紋 / hua1 shou4 wen2 / "flower shou pattern, "and 團壽紋 / tuan2 shou4 wen2 / "round shou pattern." They often appear on embroidery and fabric patterns throughout history as well.

L: 明 缂丝“十二章纹”皇帝衮服（复原件） 十三陵特区办事处藏, 理解自己的文明（16）：华服锦绣（下）｜图鉴, October 2024 // R: 壽字紋, 燎泽文创｜中国传统纹样之寿字纹, November 2025

The other thing is that 壽 is a homophone for the character 獸 / shou4 / "beast." In the Ming Dynasty nine-rank badge system, there are two categories of officials—civil and martial—with nine ranks each. Each rank/category combination was represented by an animal depicted on a badge they wore on their uniforms. The animals depicted for the civil ranks were all heavenly animals, like birds. The animals for the martial ranks, however, were earthly animals, or 獸. The dragon-like 海馬 haima sea-horse, representing the ninth rank martial official, is one of those—tying it all back together.

Okay I'm tired now, saving the rest for the next post!!! Hopefully won't put it off for like three months again x-x

Okay we're almost done! Just a fabric design post + concluding comments left! Also sorry for lack of pics in the first half making it really dense lol, the 30 image limit is lowkey killing me

labs that are also churches. to me

linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)

President Mahama has said he must scrutinise it before signing it, which would make it law. But the pressure that's been placed has already caused sentences to be reduced and exemptions to be made comparatively to previous versions. More pressure is important even if this latest update was made because of the way the President, facing much pressure, has assented. The last time a similar bill was passed it did not end up getting signed (by Ghana's last president President Nana Akufo-Addo), so this pressure is definitely not meaningless or without hope.

"Women can be masculine" and it's like. A woman wearing pants, and the women pictured are not even wearing men's pants it's like women's pants which are custom built different from men's pants to emphasizes her curves. Even "boyfriend jeans" are high waisted and all the models advertising them are overtly feminine.

"Women can be masculine" but then it's a woman in a pantsuit made to accentuate her femininity and it looks distinctly different from men's suits. And she's still almost always with long hair and/or makeup and jewelry on.

"Women can be masculine" and it's a woman dressed down in a tshirt and jeans or a hoodie and she's not even trying to be masc but she's got like "no makeup look" makeup on

"Women can be masculine" and the woman in question is almost certainly clean shaven on her whole body without a glance of body hair.

"Women can be masculine" and she's just slightly punk or goth and still has a full face of makeup but maybe a pixie cut and a leather jacket or something.

"Women can be masculine" and the clothes she's wearing that are modeled after men's clothes have the fucking cinched waist and have noticeably softened the silhouette so she's still curvy and identifiably a woman

"Women can be masculine" but any women's fashion inspired by masculine clothing must be modeled by beautiful overtly feminine women

"Women can be masculine" but any time you go to the damn hairdresser when you ask for a men's haircut they'll give you a pixie cut or some shit. Even when you show them the picture. Because Pixie cut is as masc as you can go, or maybe the notorious side shave.

"Women can be masculine" but almost every example of masculine women's fashion you see pulled up, even when you literally look up "masculine women's fashion," REFUSES to compromise on maintaining a level of feminine beauty standards- which adds florals and delicate fem accessories and long luscious hair and form fitting clothes and full faces of makeup because you NEED TO BE BEAUTIFUL!!! YOU MUST REMAIN BEAUTIFUL YOU MUST BE IDENTIFIABLY WOMAN!!! If you are not still soft and accessible and appealing to cishet men then ??????????

I find if you want to see genuinely overtly masculine presenting women you have to go looking for examples of butches and studs and people who are openly gnc in identity. Because their nonconformity, their masculinity, makes a tangible impact on their lives and experience of self, because being masculine women actually means something to their experience of the world. Because being a masc woman is not treated as completely unnoteworthy and totally acceptable- it is a statement that garners reaction, because society has serious fucking issues with masculine women.

The fact that the threshold for what is considered masculine on women is so low, that they can be dressed in ways that would be seen as overtly effeminate on a cis man, or are totally feminine if not for the mildest masculine or non-traditional gendered signifier, this is exactly a product of how sincerely unacceptable masculine gender nonconformity is on femininely assigned subjects.

The wholesale refusal of femininity and an overt expression of masculinity conflicts so harshly with society's ideas of womanhood, and the ideas of who we feel gets to be masculine, that most people literally cannot even conceive of a genuinely masculine woman without feminizing her in some way. At least, they cannot image such a masculine woman in a positive way.

If she's cis having a level of masculinity similar to cis men's is literally an impossibility, if she's trans and not committing to a feminine (often hyperfeminine) presentation she gets called a man and if she's masc then "whats the point in being trans then" because being masc and being a woman is just inconceivable. Wanting both is seen as a contradiction, as impossible.

And you know what? That femininity imposed onto these sort of masc women- it's forgiving.

That femininity is the thing that keeps her marked as a woman, not some gender ambiguous thing. It is forgiving as she is still containing something that which makes her valuable as a woman. Femininity: Beauty, desirability, softness, etc. She retains a noticeable difference to delineate her from the presentation of men, even when wearing something masculinely inspired- she must be identifiably different. Identifiably woman. Put her in that suit but make sure she is slender and non-imposing and perfectly coifed.

You see it in the way people talk about treading traditionally masculine associated things as a woman. As much as there is positive intent in the affirmations you often see of "you can still do (traditionally masculine thing) and be feminine!!" lying beneath this reassurance is an anxiety. Of being unfeminine, of actually being interpreted as overtly masculine.

Looking up masculine women's fashion I very quickly encountered two separate posts containing statements of "you can still be feminine while dressing masculine." There is this unsaid rule simmering everywhere that being genuinely perceived as a masculine woman is not a good thing. It's not "it's okay to be masculine" its honestly never that. It's "you're still feminine if you like/do/wear masculine things." Because being feminine means being a woman. It is saying "you're not less of a woman." It's why it's so important to perform feminine signifiers to balance out even vaguely masculine traits. Reassure, reassert, your womanhood.

"You can still be a feminine woman and do masculine things" can very much bleed into gender expectations of women's performance of femininity even when vocalized through a well intentioned, feminist lens. Because femininity and womanhood get so wrapped up together, that when uplifting femininity and feminine women in the face of misogyny, it can carry a veiled, unspoken rejection of gender nonconformity.

It is still internalized that masculinity on women is derogatory, and so the masculine realms women wish to traverse must first be altered, must have feminine allowance created, in order for women to have a space to participate. It empowers femininity, but it also requires it. Some may be familiar with how sometimes your capacity for femininity is not just being reassured, but insisted upon you.

Rejecting femininity then is rejecting womanhood itself. Unacceptable within patriarchal society, and yet sometimes even unacceptable within what would otherwise be feminist spaces. You see this historically in feminist movements, a rejection of gender nonconformity, ironically echoing patriarchy's rules on gender performance.

Refusing being palatably feminine is refusing forgiveness for your masculinity.

Masculinity on women represents ugliness, unwantedness, disgust, being loud and intrusive (not submissive and servile and quiet), they're unhygienic, aggressive, ill-mannered/unpolite (untamed), they are unworthy and worthless to a patriarchal society.

"Woman can be masculine" but the acceptably masculine woman you imagine is not hairy, not broad, not muscular, not fat (in a non slim-thicc way), not physically imposing, not with a deep voice, not speaking gruffly or with monotone. Maybe her voice is raspy and that's okay because it's sexy and you can forget that if she doesn't perform an overly friendly demeanor she's gonna get called a bitch. The specter of that acceptable masculine woman still retains delicate facial features and plucked/shaped eyebrows and clear skin and a slender body and she's beautiful oh yes she's still attractive.

In fact, she's hot. Her masculine gestures in her appearance are not neutral they are a sexual curiosity, never spoiling the fact she is still such a beautiful woman in all the ways that matter. Masculinity is acceptable on women, yes of course, you're so right. Because people want to fuck a tomboy whose masculinity is a non-threatening exterior you can remove to explore and conquer the feminine desirability beneath.

"Women can be masculine" just as long as you're acceptably feminine enough to have sex with. Or else you're treated like a hideous troll that gets no right to human dignity and is the punchline of jokes- and oh the horror and revulsion of it all.

It's part of why trans women are seen as unable to be "real" women to transphobes, because they're stained by the masculinity projected onto them, which conflicts with what a woman is expected to be. Many caricatures focus on the clashing of masculine traits with femininity attire because to be a masculine woman is like an oxymoron, it is an absurdity. Masculinity on women is degraded and disgusting and a trans woman is assumed to be automatically and inherently masculine. It's not just that theyre seen as men demeaning themselves to be feminine and to be women, but they're rejected under the pretense that because they must be masculine they would make terrible women. No one wants a masculine woman.

It's why it's so horrifying and disgusting the prospect of those gullible insane women and girls mutilating their bodies to try and become men 😟 because they're eviscerating their entire worth to society as women by rejecting femininity and destroying their fertility and becoming completely garbage as sexual objects and reproduction labor !!! I don't even want to fuck them !!! We have to detrans them lickity split on the double to repossess as a society !!! If not then they are a nonentity to be crushed under the boot of society with no regard! No one wants a masculine woman!

"Women can be masculi-" I am STRIKING YOU WITH 10000000 LASER BEAMS ‼️‼️‼️ I AM BLOWING YOU UP WITH 70000 MILLION ATOM BOMBS ‼️‼️LISTEN TO LITERALLY ANY BUTCHES

ALSO.

Even those women with the pixie cuts and the leather jackets? People are assholes to them too actually

I mean literally even Princess Peach can't wear pants without some dudebro getting in your ear bitching about how the woke mob is making her too masculine