I know you wrote, you have a ton of projects till the end of the year, but! I saw Ruki/Jeri in your poll and would you care share your two cents about them girls? Only if you have time. I loved them since Ruki was teaching Jeri to play the digimon card game 🥺 I think they are my fave f/f ship in digimon
First things first: You can ALWAYS drop messages in my ask box, I'm always happy and up to discuss and share my own meta about ships and characters!
While my personal favourite f/f ship in Digimon overall will always be Sora/Mimi, I can actually draw some parallels between their dynamics, particularly when it comes to the similarities between Sora and Ruki - I'll try to keep this as short as possible, but the main aspect here is: Both Sora and Ruki have incredible soft spots for Mimi and Juri respectively and thus break through the initial trope(s) you associate with them. You would not expect the more introverted tomboy (who start off actively rejecting typical femininity) to care so much, be so protective of and overall get along so well with the supposed girly-girl at first glance, would you? While Sora is having more of a big sister vibe going on towards the other/younger characters, it's less likely for someone like Ruki, who used to push everyone away and wasn't even seen interacting with girls prior to meeting Juri.
You would expect her to look down on "card game newbies" the same way she used to ridicule Takato and Jenrya for being "too soft" - luckily for Juri, Ruki had already started contemplating her approaches and view points and, probably for the first time ever, seemed to feel some kind of pride in being able to teach someone. It's interesting how she just... Immediately feels drawn to Juri, how softly she talks to and smiles at her and has all the patience in the world for her. Sometimes I feel like some scenes/moments didn't make it into the final product, because Ruki's softness increases a lot faster during the midpoint of the series (and it's really a shame because the more the cast grows, the less you see individual interactions between certain characters). Either way, looking at how she treats Juri, it's no surprise that, aside from mimicking Takato's card slash pose, Juri also copies Ruki's initial card holding pose. Juri is admiring Ruki greatly and through the course of the series, whenever possible, she does cling to her - whereas Ruki is there to protect and comfort her, but without EVER belittling her. She knows Juri isn't weak, but worries for her for very understandable reasons after the loss of Leomon.
Tamers overall has a very interesting framing theme when it comes to Ruki, her reltionship to her family (mostly influenced by female figures) and to Renamon - as mentioned, she is initially rejecting feminity due to a difficult relationship with her mother. Not only does she not want to be "like her" (a model obsessed with beauty and not having time for family anyway), but she's also obviously rebelling, lashing out due a sense of having to prove herself and displaying strength. We know she longs for the attention of her father and can assume that there is underlying trauma of feeling rejected as a daughter that causes her to bottle up. She appears incredibly detached and/or lashes out when others show her affection, which is why she is initially still tough towards all the boys around her. But she improves almost all her relationships upon accepting Renamon more and more as an equal partner and friend, culminating in their Matrix evolution to Sakuyamon, which definitely represents the beginning of Ruki being able to embrace her own sense of femininity. One might argue that there are also potentially romantic undertones in how her behaviour changes towards Takato and Ryo (which, as we know, is a typical trope in media to portray boyish girls becoming more feminine). But I'd really like to add that the first human character that brought out her gentle side was Juri. And thus, my verdict is - Ruki wouldn't even have gotten that far if it hadn't been for Juri contributing to her soft side coming to the surface. (Renamon still has the biggest impact here and despite being proof of Digimon having no gender, Renamon is still associated with the female gender and thus being another female influence.)
There is... A lot of wlw subtext here in my opinion (the RenaRuki subtext in particular is INSANE, if you think about it), but unfortunately, Digimon has never dared to cross that line officially. I do see the appeal in people shipping Ruki with the aforementioned Ryo and Takato (though I personally feel like the former is a little forced, disruptive of the group dynamics and also a bit too stereotypical - the latter is somewhat difficult when you see Juri as semi-official love interest for Takato, it makes the whole thing a little messy). But in my opinion, it would have been nice to at least show the girls being important to each other. Because they absolutely are, even if my memory on the final Tamers episodes is a bit rusty.
