#he/she butch ryuko is kind of my ideal but i think she can be a regular sauceless girl too if ya want

[skrunksthatwunk]

ok elaborating more sorry. i wanna emphasize/reiterate that it feeds a fantasy of her naturally being what a woman should be (in several layers a woman, a straight woman, and a gender-conforming cishet woman), of having a more traditionally feminine nature, and of having more prominent female guidance in her life.

she never really had older female role models or guides, and her dad was barely able to be a father to her, much less help her figure that whole mess out. she's a tomboy, y'know? she's kinda rough around the edges where other girls seem to have it all figured out. again, i think she likes being this way (see the more masc way she dresses when given choice over it), but junketsu's fantasy is one of never having to struggle with the consequences of nonconformity, chosen or inherent. (and i mean i would argue one's tomboyness or butchness isn't that much of a choice, but that's a tangent im not getting into)

fantasy-ragyo is someone who can give ryuko that being-a-proper-woman guidance, and who can nurture her like her father didn't. maybe if she got that kind of softer-touch attention ppl associate with mothers, she wouldn't have ended up like this. she could be feminine and delicate like every other girl. she could be normal. junketsu's fantasy is for typical femininity to be something ryuko doesn't have to struggle through alone and something that comes naturally to her. to have always been rather than to become, as i said in the first part.

im adding this because i think i jumped to the it's about being a lesbian thing a little too quickly and skimmed over the bits about gender performance that i think are very very interwoven with that.

the wedding scene could be about being butch. this could be about being a lesbian in general. this could be about being genderqueer. it could be a lot, honestly.

but i think it's important to note how it focuses on normative girlhood as part of the fantasy

i also think it's noteworthy how this is inseparable with marriage as what a woman should do, and as what a girl should look forward to. women's roles in patriarchal systems, and fascist systems in particular, are inseparable from marriage, from chaste reproduction (to make more cattle for the life fibers in-universe, and irl often things like making more soldiers/white babies for racial conflicts that are always just around the corner (and which they always, always start, because fascism relies on destruction and violence against an enemy to survive)). that normal girlhood must culminate in marriage to a man. there is no other way to be a normal girl. and you have to be a normal girl.

like i said in the first part, this self-determination pertaining to what it means for ryuko to be a woman could have been portrayed with the Strong Independent Woman version i described, in which the definition of womanhood is merely separated from marriage and romance, but that's not all that happens.

once again, it's not just that ryuko doesn't need this, it's that it cannot coexist with her.

she cannot still be ryuko and be this normal girlbride. the two are antithetical to each other because of something fundamental to her, something junketsu is helping her pretend doesn't exist. whatever that may be, the very essence of ryuko, or some key part of it, must be purged for this kind of life to be possible. and at that point, she's not ryuko anymore.

again, i think it's lesbianism, but it could be something else, something more vague and nebulous about identity, or something like genderqueerness (in particular think there's a pretty good trans man/transmasc reading in there somewhere) or aromanticism (i think each of these would be very powerful). the wedding scene is a lot of things, and can be about many more.

at the end of the day, it's mostly about being yourself and not what your mom wants you to be!! and devaluing the societal structures/roles/conventions around us bc they suck real bad!!! hell yeah 🤘🤘

man i think part of what fucks me up (/pos) about the wedding scene (klk) is how well it conveys that the fantasy junketsu puts on ryuko is not a romantic one.

like i think it would've been really easy to make it about her wanting to find a man who could take care of things for her or love her unconditionally and when mako busts her out the message is You Don't Need A Man! You're A Strong Independent Woman!! or something (which is a perfectly fine message btw. i bring it up because i suspect that's how some people read it, especially those who see ryuko as straight, in an utena-hetero-girlboss way (yes i HAVE encountered that reading before. head in my hands)). maybe there's a montage of the groom and her at romantic milestones (confession, proposal, dates, moving in, whatever), and mako busts in while they're exchanging rings or leaning in for a kiss or something. they could have done that.

but the show puts SO little focus on the groom, to the point of emphasizing his facelessness and lack of relevance to the fantasy and its appeal (see the door handle knocking him over and ryuko not noticing, too busy looking at mako), that i think it's impossible to read it that way. and that's great bc what's actually there is so much more interesting and thematically relevant.

ryuko wants a normal childhood with a mom who loves her and spends time with her doing typical family stuff, who sticks with her as she grows up. the fantasy is of a normal development and family structure, of assimilation into a typical path of life for a woman, with its typical milestones. that includes getting married to a man. the fantasy is being naturally what society wants her to be, what will allow her to connect most easily to others within it. she's always butted heads with others, never fitting in for reasons she can't really understand, or often because she thinks the rules themselves are stupid. that came with isolation. loneliness.

the fantasy of junketsu's wedding is of conformity. it is also of conformity without effort, without awareness.

she doesn't want to force herself to fit in, because she knows that feels like shit. she wants it to be seamless. second nature. that's what junketsu appeals to. not the fantasy of pretending to be straight or becoming straight, but simply being straight.

(if it isn't clear by now, i view ryuko as a lesbian. this scene is a big part of why.)

it's ryuko pretending to be (and to always have been) something that will never cause her trouble, that will never alienate her. (or junketsu making her pretend that, though i think it caters to a lingering insecurity of ryuko's, that lack of stability, connection, and conformity in her real life).

it's also part of why mako and senketsu's rescue is not about mako being the right one for ryuko, but about ryuko's identity. her core state of being. who she is as a person.

(personally i read ryuko and mako as romantic (and i believe the show does as well, hence, y'know, the date and the mako hallelujah imagery during her asking her out and mako hitting on her and and and. sorry but however you feel about them as a ship they are definitively canon), and the scene does have romantic appeal/a romantic angle to it. but i think that romance comes from mako understanding ryuko deeply, and from calling her back into the person she is, rather than the person she could have been were she to have lived a Completely Different Life, and showing her that she has community and companionship even without this. she can be part of a group without doing all this shit. she doesn't have to fight alone, and this wedding business isn't the only way out of that loneliness. it's a gesture of love and concern for her as a person, one that comes from senketsu and mako together, the people who love her the most.)

ragyo wants conformity. she is a fascist. she wants everybody to wear the same clothes, to be in their proper place in society, and to submit to those who have rightful power over them. A hierarchy with life fibers at the top and humans at the bottom. ragyo designs and distributes the roles (clothes) people ought to wear, talks about clothes that don't suit people, etc. she wants ryuko to conform like she is, and like she has. a feelingless marriage to some man for what she can get from him. fitting in. she wants to have daughters that fit in. she wants to fit in. she wants to fit in because she's fetishized her place above other humans (pigs in human clothing, in roles unbefitting their pig status), her place under life fibers.

it has nothing to do with love, so ragyo doesn't even bother with it. nor does junketsu. even though the guise of love could be a powerful aide here, the staff chose to leave the message unmuddied. it is about conformity.

for ryuko to fulfill this fantasy, she would have had to be a completely different person, with a completely different life.

ryuko could not be ryuko and still wear that wedding dress. so she tore it off to be herself again (something she'd been lamenting/resisting since finding out she was "a goddamned life fiber monster" shortly before getting put in junketsu).

also note that satsuki used this wedding dress for her own aims as well, though she is lucid through it. it pains her. it's a role she takes on to fight against ragyo (fire with fire). but she says she realizes she couldn't win using others like pawns. she couldn't win from inside the hierarchy, the establishment. she couldn't win using a groom and a dress for her own inauthentic reasons, nor using that clout to climb the ranks of something that was wholly rotten just to get closer to ragyo. the whole tree must be felled.

anyway