This is a mess of thoughts about Hashirama in the Hashi Tobi office talk. The words in blockquotes don’t belong to me, but to a Tobirama writer on Discord. I won’t refine this too much because of brain melt tbh. Mainly, if you get me and you get what my blog is about, you’ll get us too.
i always thought about how the Founders Era that we are shown, the characters might actually be OOC in the canon. because if we think about it, 1) it’s supposed to be shippuuden pandering 2) there was the cringe reveal of how Kurozetsu / Kaguya plot was manipulating “both sides of the Senju-Uchiha war”. i think alooot of elements were introduced as a mesh, and that’s why the timeline is so jarring. and the lack of resolution is possibly laziness or just want to get back to the “uchiha bad, shippuuden plot” of the Fourth war. I reckon this is mainly why I ( and the pro-Uchiha side of the Naruto Founders fandom? ) will tend to paint the shippuuden authorial intent onto the Founders Era as well. Not only because of Tobirama’s canon one / two liner, but because it is what could make sense as a timeline as a whole.
Remember, this is all fanfiction. This is about coherent storytelling. This is called trying to linear a non-linear timeline so that we can have coherence and series continuity where the canon failed us, and a lot of AUs and canon fix-its / divergents build from a basic framework of identifying where the problem was, where the kink in the machine was, and try to build something more whole, fulfilling, perhaps I dare say more accurately working towards a peaceful era.
Fanfic and headcanon also thrives on the resolution of conflict because we want to give happy ending to our faves after what they gone through – and that can only be done if the past is acknowledged and worked on! We need to know what that past is, so here we are.
If this is not your type of fanfiction, then just look away and ignore please. Tons of other things elsewhere, and it is all about curating your own experience. Moving on to what I wanted to talk about!
A major disconnect between Warring States and Founders Era is the portrayal of Hashirama in terms of series continuity and storytelling. ( That actually might shine a better light on Tobirama. ) And I’ll try to put here why.
Look at the mess of trying to fit so many genre of things into one year of Madara being in the village:
The village seems quite built already when Hashirama and Madara were on the cliff, so it seems Konohagakure got a lot of funds BEFORE a Hokage was elected.
We have to assume, at the very least, it is Hashirama, Madara, and Tobirama working their asses off ( clearing forests, building stuff, piping, etc you know all that renovation and economics stuff. I’m sure trade, diplomacy, contracts, and policies must be in this category too because how do you get so much resources to build so much? )
If we want to be generous, we can put in the Senju, Uchiha, and whatever clans as well ( though at the time of the cliff scene, it seemed clans are still newly joining ) putting in the work as well.
If we want to be prejudiced, we can say only Senju put in the work because “Uchiha can’t be trusted” this is very sad though, but eh I could accept it as plausible.
Hashirama and Madara seems to be on good terms, they’re joking with each other. But where it counts about the village, it is mostly Hashirama talking and Madara finding out things from Hashirama + Madara being weak hearted.
I sometimes think the office talk wouldn’t have happened the way it did had Hashirama not been too obvious with his favouritism ( or if Tobirama didn’t find out about it hm... ) If Hashirama had drafted some kind of proposal or speech about his view of Madara’s / Uchiha clan’s qualities, it might have gone better. In the Warring States just probably months before, Hashirama seems very sure of Madara. Hashirama knows exactly what he wants, what he can see working, and Hashirama says it in front of many people, even in front of Tobirama. Then we come to the Founders Era and there’s kind of none of that. In terms of series continuity, it’s very?? I really draw blanks and can’t make sense of this one and it is always the main gripe I have with the portrayal of Hashirama. As an extension of that, I personally can’t really find joy in the flag ship HashiMada. There’s really no nugget that I can expand from, other than they could be cool sparing partners.
The fact stands that Hashirama and Madara must have been separated for at least 15 years. Hashirama doesnt know Madara much at all in terms of Madara’s personal qualities, or even the Uchiha clan let’s be real. so Hashirama probably couldn’t come up with any thing more than “He’s very kind and we vibe about village.” and that would never be enough in Tobirama’s eyes.
I also think that possibly Tobirama taking Hashirama aside maaay be because Tobirama doesn’t want to hurt Madara’s feelings OR he’s afraid Madara will lash out at him because… Tobirama’s words are still very prejudiced and very harsh against Uchiha. There’s definitely A Little consideration for propriety. A little. But it’s there, and I can at least take that as a nugget of canon divergence to explore, in another world where the two sensitive individuals are working together ^_^.
A friend of mine from the Founders Discord server:
But that is legit tho, they were separated for a good amount of years, and even with the fact of Hashirama wanting Madara to be the Hokage, even in a vote Madara would have lost because of his reputation and the fear that surrounds him and the Uchiha in general.
Hashirama possibly could have done something, but you are right. There could have been little he could say or do with the fact that he truly doesn’t know Madara past their collective desire for the village, which in the end seemed to be more on Hashiramas part than Madaras.
Then we go back to the points I said about village building before Hokage’s election. So were Hashirama and Madara actually friends or not? Did they get to know each other more through work? I’m literally drawing blanks from the disconnect here.
It will actually look better on Hashirama if they weren’t that close, because the series will continue easier. They don’t owe each other anything.
If they were close, well, I just want to say I have more normal standards of friendship than that. The series continuity is very fractured like that.
Lastly, I’m not saying friends owe each other anything. But I think there is some level of expectations when people bond with each other, for sure. Otherwise, why should anyone call it a friendship? They can just remain nothing more than allies or professional colleagues, then. Where’s the distinction, you get what I mean? A friend to all is a friend to none.
I used far too many words to say ❝I don’t think Hashirama and Madara were besties.❞
