#god please nobody mistake this for ship hate they are just different flavors

[agoddamn]

IMO...

The MadaTobi vibe is "destiny took a hard left." Madara and Tobirama are not the fated pair set up by the story and an eon of reincarnation. Hashirama is the one who's Madara's equal in battle, he's Madara's meaningful friend, Madara is his man of destiny. Hashirama and Madara are mutually obsessed. Their relationship is set up as a Huge Thing.

So MadaTobi is at its best leaning into that narrative asymmetry, I think. The curious contradictions. The feeling of "this wasn't meant to happen." They were clearly never meant to really interact in a narrative sense, so you wonder--what if they did get to talk?

They've got those interesting little bits where they espouse ideas that are similar, they have a massive unresolved beef, they have a strange binary star kind of orbit where they're linked in each other's gravity well without an immediate connection. Plenty to build on there. You can even get cute with some (likely unintended) thematic parallels like fire/water, red/blue, black/white.

TobiIzu is more out-of-the-box prepped for you by the narrative (last younger brothers, both left behind by big bro, close in strength, doomed to end in violence), but I think it's actually harder to nail down. Maybe because we have so little canon info on Izuna? And while Madara and Tobirama got to hiss and spit at each other on-page like bitter divorcees Izuna and Tobirama only interact in battle. They can easily fall into a pair-the-spares sitch; you're pairing up Hashirama and Madara so you may as well pair off the other brothers while you're at it.

But Tobirama and Izuna...they're parallels, but they're tainted parallels. Everything that makes the Hashirama-Madara relationship fairytale makes the Tobirama-Izuna relationship tragic. The destiny narrative dooms them to be tools of the story--dooms Tobirama to be Hashirama's bloodied right hand and Izuna to be Madara's tragic backstory.

Because of that I feel like the relationship only truly works when Hashirama and Madara aren't together. Narratively, Tobirama and Izuna need to be in a story where they're finally the important ones. Their relationship working is inextricably tied with the idea of them making selfish choices over their brothers, I think--both are improbable and need to be carefully set up.

They are otherwise bound to live--narratively and literally--in service of their brothers. The traditional supporting character relationship is more like codependency when looked at with a more realistic lens, and Tobirama and Izuna are prime examples of that. They need to be hewn away from their fraternal supports in order to develop something new. They cannot be retreading the ground of Hashirama and Madara.

(Personally I think some tbiz goes too far in the fanon 'poor little meow meow Tobirama' direction...although, I have to admit that in a world where Izuna somehow fell in love with Tobirama, I think that his perspective on Tobirama would definitely be "my poor little meow meow" lmao that sort of disproportionate "everyone is bullying MY poor woobie" kinda possessive protectiveness)

Without a Softness Showing is my gold standard for Tobirama and Izuna interaction. Blew my tits clean off and it's not even romantic.

(This post brought to you by a lengthy mental ramble of mine where I bemoaned the lack of porn where twink Izuna mating presses 6-ft Tobirama and lamented that I don't have the chops to pull it off myself.)

(Anyway, someone ought to write that.)