THIS IS ALL SPECULATIVE ANALYSIS!!! 🌸🍒
WLW!Komahina and the potential to explore internalized misogyny in their dynamic
As much as I’d want to headcanon a WLW/Sapphic Komahina as butchfemme, I can’t in my right mind headcanon Hajime as a butch/masc At least not HPA!Hajime or SDR2!Hajime. Post!NWP Hajime yes. Maybe. She’ll grow into it.
Anyways, allow me to explain. Hajime is deeply, deeply insecure of himself in canon. He undergoes medical torture/a lobotomy in an attempt to change himself into something more presentable and desirable. Something more than himself. He’s naturally insecure about himself and it’s worsened by the standards that Hope’s Peak Academy has set for its students, and probably even worse with how there’s a change for reserve course students to join the main course students which already creates a toxic and competitive environment.
Now adding onto the fact that she’s a woman in the sapphic!Komahina AU not only would fem!Hajime be plagued by insecurities of her being talentless by HPA, as a teenager growing into herself, she’d probably be extremely insecure about her self image especially considering talents like Ultimate Fashionestia / Model exist.
However beauty standards aren’t necessarily a measure of beauty, just what the people in charge of skincare, makeup, clothing and social media companies find attractive at that point in time. Hajime herself probably looks fine but would feel the need to make herself look like a woman to conform to those beauty standards. Not only is she incredibly insecure about her talents but also about her body and appearance.
The Kamukura project wouldn’t be any different obviously. Canon Hajime most likely asked for aesthetic changes so the steering committee gave him those + changed his body in general to fit current beauty standards. Fem Hajime would ask for the same.
Fem!Hajime would have a lot of deeply ingrained beliefs about womanhood, gender and how women should look like, and I think she’d take it out on fem!Nagito. Obviously not force her to present a certain way but still have her thoughts about it.
Tbh Fem!Nagito to me would be a femme. But a gender non conforming fem in the way where she wouldn’t feel the need to wear 1000 pounds of makeup, put on ill fitting clothes, shave or some other beauty standards that the current society would impose on women but it’s still obvious that she’s a femme lesbian. I think she’d hate herself but it’s not because of misogyny but just in general. I just don’t think Nagito would put too much thought into her appearance.
Hajime would consider Nagito a freak for how she acts in general. (In game nagito is… a drama queen for lack of a better word) but being a woman and living with an extreme set standards of how women should look and present themselves, you tend to judge and criticize other women. As women, we tend to be more critical with each other than we are with men, and that would probably reflect in the WLW!Komahina relationship.
Nagito and Hajime are both deeply insecure people with very fragile self worth. But I think while canon Komahina has Nagito have beef with Hajime over being talentless, undergoing the Kamukura project to become the ultimate hope just to become despair, WLW!Komahina would have the additional trait of Hajime’s internalized misogyny reflected back on Nagito.
But going back to the beginning about how I think that butch/masc Hajime would be possible post NWP, I think that everything that occurs in SDR2 would pave the way for Fem!Hajime to begin reintegrating herself. It would not only include the trauma of the Kamukura project and killing game, her insecurities from being talentless, letting go of the belief that her whole entire self is inadequate and learning that her womanhood doesn’t depend on how she presents and she can exist in her own skin.