wait okay i DID fall asleep days ago when i said i would post about this and then was too busy to Blog. but here are some points on the tori/minato au
it is time travel late game plasticity!tori. so just assume she can basically do anything she wants with fuinjutsu (with sufficient time/resources) but she's not a ninja. instead she's just in ame midway through the third shinobi war one day. which SUCKS-- ame is a fucking mess and tori is essentially homeless and no one knows her. so tori's first idea is that she'll LEAVE ame, get to the coast, and then take a boat somewhere with no war. unfortunately this is means crossing through active ninja war zones
the Mood for tori in this is: imagine her muddy and damp at all times. she is floundering around the elemental nations mainly by attaching herself to other civilian groups trying to relocate and, when necessary, scamming ninja. her ability to take down ninja is all over the place, but if she tricks you into making the wrong move, you WILL end up stuck in an unbreakable barrier or dying horribly and she will take your things.
and then the mood for minato is: he's like 19-20, so he's young and more reckless with less direction than i usually write him. he is only JUST now getting an international reputation for hiraishin related shenanigans. he feels dusty and overworked all the time, but also he currently has no strong ties to konoha as a physical place (jiraiya and his genin teammates are rarely there due to war, he and kushina are buddies but not dating, and he hasn't been assigned team 7 yet). so basically he's loyal to konoha but he's not like.... eager to get back or anything. he's fine fucking around in weird corners of the world during his down time. he is basically a Nice Guy but he has no problem with murder as the quickest and easier solution.
the meetcute:
tori is good at what she does but her scams/lies/manipulations obviously don't always work, and failing to trick a ninja can end with dire consequences. she has 'died' a couple times, been imprisoned and moved by ninja and civilian groups AWAY from her goals and had to escape, etc
she is currently having a Very Bad Time. she's been captured by ninja and they're actively harassing/humiliating her. she doesn't have an opportunity to DO anything bout this so she is quite upset
minato shows up and murders the ninja. this has nothing to do with tori's presence-- it's his mission to clear enemies in the area.
minato doesn't care THAT much about helping random civilians who aren't even fire country, but he IS very good and smiling prettily and asking people if they're okay.
he asks tori if she has a safe place to go. she lies and says yes bc she doesn't want to find out what happens if the fucking YELLOW FLASH talks to her for longer than necessary.
but also she is. she is very flustered. she's not used to being saved with no strings attached. he's handsome and being kind to her. she's SO upset
they part ways. tori stomps off into the woods and she's COLD and LOST ALL HER SUPPLIES because she ran away before she could LOOT THE CORPSES.
and! the worst part is!! she keeps having idle fantasies about if she HAD said she needed help and minato? helping her?? WHY WOULD HE HELP HER. how would he 'help' her. she bets it would feel good
she INTENTIONALLY gets herself recaptured while she knows he's in the area just to be saved again. except this time she's a small group of people and he gives the same exact speech and offers help to everyone? he does not seem to recognize her even though she keeps thinking about him? tori NOT special???
tori: okay so he's psychological torturing me
tori: guess i should.... kill him....?
tori: only if we ever meet again though.
tori: which we probably won't
so while this interaction will haunt tori for months, minato mostly forgets about it immediately. however there ARE mounting rumors that SOMEONE has a fuinjutsu master running around. it's unclear which village is responsible for it. jiraiya's investigations indicate it's probably a wandering-nin because the things this person is doing make no SENSE from a 'village at war' perspective, because he's following around tori's wildly inconsistent path of destruction. jiraiya only even cares because a few times she's been forced to leave behind active seals, and they're? insane looking???
so the sequence of events that ends up happening is:
minato is in the same area as tori, because he's helping hunt down this mysterious fuinjutsu user. he ends up chasing a bunch of ninja out of a civilian village because it is, in fact, more convenient to him if civilians like him and let him use their resources. he gives them the same speech he always does about are they okay and everyone is safe now. one of the villagers, a young woman, approaches him and is like "hey can you help with this weird ninja technique down by the river, it's killing the fish?" and minato is like "yeah sure" and he follows her down the river and voila! one of the weird seals he's looking for!
and then? somehow?? he ends up IN the river AND the river is fucking BOILING. he gets out because he can fucking teleport, but he hasn't been spamming his hiraishin as much as he will in the future and he ends up having to teleport pretty far away. he's decently injured because BOILING so he seeks medical attention and doesn't go back for a few days. but when he DOES the girl is gone and the villagers are like "oh yeah we have no idea who that was"
tori: hi sorry, you seem to have not noticed i'm the main character. die horribly, i guess
minato: i think the renegade fuinjutsu user is..... a random civilian?
jiraiya: proposterous
jiraiya: that makes no sense
all of konoha leadership: nope, sounds wrong
so now it's minato's personal mission to refind tori, despite konoha leadership's orders to drop it, because he's 100% sure SHE is the mysterious fuinjutsu user. i don't think it would actually take him that long because he is a highly competent ninja and tori is tricksy but she's also... a walking disaster. (basically, she's good at getting herself out of immediate problems, but she's bad at long-term problems, so she does things like "flee before hiding evidence of insane fuinjutsu" and "gives her name as Cup Noodles to more than one person")
meanwhile, tori is wandering around backwater hot water country like, "i did it. i fixed my feelings on the yellow flash. u_u" and he shows up again like "hello!!!" and she's like "NO FUCK"
the problems minato immediately runs into are:
he doesn't actually have specific orders on what to DO about tori, on account of konoha thinking she has to be some sort of bad ass ninja. the game plan for the mysterious fuinjutsu master is basically just "identify and then report back" and he already did that
he COULD just drag her in and sit her down with a yamanaka, and then probably jiraiya would be like "huh, good work, kid" and he would get another accolade for excellent service he doesn't care about. but, consider: he wants to know WTF is up with her, how her seals work, and also how is she doing them if she's not a ninja
he figures out pretty quickly that they HAVE met before, twice, and she targeted him specifically to try and boil him alive. he's had ninja fixate on him before but.... the disconnect between tori's perceived threat and how close she got to boiling him alive is absurd
he's
he's kind of into it?
so the mood then is: tori is being casually stalked by the yellow flash because he just thinks she's neat. she's wildly conflicted about this because she enjoys his attention way too much, but also, she hates how he makes her feel. she hates that her life is 90% being uncomfortable and terrified of being randomly murdered, and she HATES how minato being around makes all of that go away. she hates that she likes fucking around with fuinjutsu with him. she starts doing stuff that will self-sabotage her own quest to LEAVE THE CONTINENT just to get his attention.
the get-together:
tori gets herself into hot water that makes her go "oh, hmm, i may have fucked up for good this time"
current scenario i'm imagining (some rotating needed): iwa is ALSO onto Insane Rando Fuinjutsu User running around, and they end up grabbing tori and moving her into like. an actual field prison for ninja, in a major iwa camp in one of the smaller countries. the rumor among the other captives (mostly konoha ninja) is that they'll be moved to iwa proper eventually, and tori is.... pretty sure she's actually fucked forever if she ends up in iwa
but! she has other prisoners! who are ninja! and she's like: "look, despite knowing i can do fuinjutsu, they don't seem to have the slightest idea HOW i've been doing it, because i can still make a blood seal whenever" and she gets to be an integral part of an escape plan!
but she gets left behind/immediately recaptured because no one ACTUALLY cares about her and helping her >:(
i might change this but ONE concept i have for how this pans out is that hiruzen's non-asuma child (konohamaru's parent) is one of the captives. so it's a VERY politically important captive who isn't necessarily very badass by themselves. so the mood is like "this person needs to be rescued, but they're not like some A-tier person who can rescue themselves," which is why minato himself gets sent in
tori, while she's being smacked around by iwa leadership for being a part of the escape attempt that lost them their most valuable captive, realizes that she did actually fuck up in attempting to escape, because she HAD a shot at Konoha rescuing her if she stuck with the other captives, but now those captives are free, and no one is coming for her
MEANWHILE, minato has connected witht he escaped konoha-nin and pieced together that tori was with them but they left her behind
minato: oh
minato: BRB
and i've decided in THIS au, THIS is minato's "kills 1000+ Iwa-nin in one shot" moment
so he shows up, covered in blood, kills the guy who's been torturing her, and is like "tori, are you okay?" and it's his speech he gives everyone except he's not using his pretty smile she now KNOWS is fake and he's tenderly wiping blood off her face
and tori is just. SO fucking weak to this. you became the most lethal ninja in history? for h e r?! 🥺🥺🥺
and then they make out 😌
i'm not sure how the rest of the story goes. i think minato's preferred way forward would be for tori to go into konoha's employment, but i don't think she'd like that. but also she suddenly is less interested in leaving the continent so now she maybe has to fix some things?
tori: oh you have a genin team now? um unrelated but there is a cave near kannabi bridge with an old man you must kill
minato: wh
minato: why do you sound like like a wizard giving me a quest
minato, a month later, finding Uchiha Madara in a cave:
minato:
minato: TORI WHAT THE FUCK
but anyway after that when she's like "we have to find a plant guy and kill him too" then minato is 100% on board because she is. some sort of witch?
also she lets him draws a hiraishin marker on her For Safety and he's weirdly horny about it
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There isn't much discourse about how Mike went from saying that El was a weapon in s1, even encouraging the others to use El's powers when she was still recuperating after finding Will in the void, to then in s3 accusing the others of being reckless with her powers, saying she's risking her life for no reason.
Now, I want to make clear that I'm not bashing Mike here, this has less to do with what he's doing being right or wrong. What this is about is how Mike went from doing something himself, to calling out other people for doing it, without acknowledging that fact and why the writers chose to frame it all this way.
You might think it's insignificant, but these two following scenes are clearly being paralleled to each other. And so the fact that Mike himself is acknowledging this as something to be critical of, makes me wonder what exactly is going on in his mind...
I want to preface this scene from s1 by saying that Mike is giving very off vibes here. I know that I certainly viewed this scene as romantic the first time I saw it, but since rewatching it recently, I was getting completely different vibes.
They literally make a point to focus on Mike being distracted, on the verge of impatience. Then, the way El reacts upon Mike getting up abruptly, gives this feeling of uncertainty about Mike's consideration for her in this moment, as she's clearly not what's on the top of his mind right now. And it just makes you wonder, are we truly supposed to be feeling peak romance rn?
I never realized how out of place this scene was until now (or is it...). It's just such an odd choice to have El resting her head on Mike's shoulder for comfort, only for Mike to cut it short with him being distracted, and with Dustin and El looking awkwardly at Mike like "Okay?...", then followed by a scene where he's trying to convince the others to use El's powers to help.
Here we have s1 Mike displaying behavior that s3 Mike was calling out the others for displaying:
Here we have Lucas, who was very, very critical of El being dangerous ALL of s1, and yet now in complete contrast to that, he is showing more consideration and common sense for El's well being than Mike, the supposed love (at first sight) interest ...
'That's the most important thing, remember?'
A question, followed by Mike just standing there in silence, like he's only just now really thinking about El being safe as their main priority... This is something that combined with everything else unfolding over the course of this season and the seasons after, that makes Mike's behavior a whole lot easier to understand.
I'll have to make several other posts about this, because there are a lot of aspects to it, but for now I'm just going to focus on these two parallels.
Here we have what happens in s3, with Mike being critical of the others doing something he himself literally did in s1:
In fact, how careless all of you are.
THIS. When Mike makes it a big deal to call out everyone for doing something he himself has already done, he's outright admitting that it's something that he believes is wrong, and by not even slightly acknowledging his role in doing something similar in the past, it's very likely that he feels guilty about it.
This was probably his way of trying to make it right, by standing up for El in a way that he didn't before because he was treating her like some superhero and not a real person back then.
It's just that the word love slipped out, in the heat of the moment. And El, upon overhearing this, is seeing this development of Mike herself, with s1 Mike going from, yes being more kind and considerate than the other 2 boys in the beginning, but still sort of expecting stuff from her without her being able to verbally agree to it, to now having developed and changed to saying that one of his big priorities is her safety.
El is taking this as being evidence he went from not loving her, to loving her. Another reason why it's pretty obvious El didn't believe Mike's monologue, bc she herself witnessed Mike develop his apparent romantic feelings for her over time, and so him saying it was love at first sight, was probably the catalyst that made it abundantly clear to her that he wasn't being truthful, bc she knows it's not the truth. She's not stupid.
Again this isn't about Mike doing this back then or even the others doing it now as being bad vs. good, this is about the writers going about it this way, sending a message that Mike feels guilt, enough to try to make things right, but is apparently not ready to unpack the actual guilt that is beneath the surface which lead him to this point.
And then there's this scene, which... it's actually terrifying how obvious it is they instructed Sadie and Caleb to lean out of that shot with Will and Mike reacting to El entering the room... Like... It's SOO obvious when you watch it now what they're trying to hint at without saying it.
Not only are they hinting at Will's feelings, because that is part of it, they're also hinting at Mike's internal struggle. Will is always on the back of his mind whether he's willing to address it or not. And all while that is happening, he is feeling unaddressed guilt about how he treated El when they first met and spent that one week together helping her run away from the bad guys while also looking for Will, something Mike viewed as being worthy of El using her powers...
I'll have to make the other posts regarding this soon, because it all starts to click what's going on with Mike when you look at all of these things together.
While Mike is just a kid like pretty much everyone else in this story, and while he didn't mean any harm by asking El to help them find Will (none of them did), I think that's kind of the whole point?
I think that he got lucky superman landed on his doorstep, who just so happened to be in danger herself, giving him his own purpose to help her too, with her needing him as well, and so it became a situation where they both needed each other.
But because El could literally not speak, it's not like she could really voice her feelings about things they were doing, beyond yes and no. She had Lucas sort of being critical of her, with Mike encouraging El to do things that would make the others see her as being worthy of sticking around so they can find Will. It goes without saying she felt obligated to do these things, even if they didn't outright tell her she had to or else. We literally see almost all of these scenes with her doing stuff for the others being instantly juxtaposed with scenes of Brenner doing the same. It's not the same scale of severity, but it is an acknowledgment that although she is outside of the lab, she still feels like her powers are what define her and it's all people want from her.
I think what it comes down to, is that in that moment when she is sacrificing herself to the demogorgan at the end of s1, we are seeing in real time Mike realizing what he and the other's have been asking of her this whole time, without outright asking her.
And you can literally see the retaliation and devastation hit him all at once. The instant regret, where he's backtracking and El stops him from even trying.
'Goodbye Mike' singles him out, because while he was the one out of the three that showed her the most kindness from the start, he was also the one who at the end of it all, was still expecting her to risk her life for them...
And that just makes it hit so much harder when you think about how that made Mike feel in that moment.
And then in s2 how that impacts Mike and his journey going forward.
His breakdown at the end of s2 upon her return.
His behavior in s3-4, in relation to him juggling his relationship with Will and El, now that they are both in his life at the same time.
It all starts to make sense.
I won't go too much into it because those other posts are bound to be long with a bunch of pictures too!
But on that note, there's at least one thing Mike isn't acknowledging, and it's literally what led up to the unintentional love confession that then led us to 10 more episodes of miscommunication because of it...
It's going to be important for him to address this guilt for him to fulfill his arc and to also close off his expectations that he has to have a romantic relationship with El in order to keep her in his life at all.
The audience themselves seeing this and being forced to face it is also going to make it a lot easier for them understand why Mike did what he did, not only because he's a queer kid in the 80's who has every reason to doubt and repress, but also because he understandably feels sort of indebted to El after everything.
It's more complex than him just falling out of love with her and falling in love with Will because of XYZ.
I think there is a lot of guilt and shame and trauma connected to their meeting and the events that followed. And addressing that is going to give a lot of closure to the ending of the story and also the beginning.
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