#so I’m gonna project that onto Naruto that he’s been aware of being genderfluid for a long time

[theshadowrealmitself]

One of my really self indulgent Naruto au is Tsunade still being Hokage while the Konoha 12 are young adults and Tsunade treats Karin and Naruto like her grandkids

And because so many of her loved ones have died and Tsunade has a bit of a complex about it, part of her treating those two like her actual grandkids is being hella overprotective of them (which both of them have no idea how to feel about that since no one was overprotective of them as kids)

Unfortunately I have no idea how canonically they’d treat each other as family, but my version of it for Karin and Naruto is that they call each other cousins and they’re protective of each other in different ways

Because this is my au: Naruto is genderfluid and actually a bit sad that he doesn’t have much connecting him to the Uzumaki clan, and Karin knows a lot about the Uzumaki clan

So Karin is protective of Naruto in that way older relatives can be, she sees Naruto as her sweet younger cousin who’s a bit too oblivious for his own good and obviously insecure about his lack of ties to the clan, so she’ll constantly tell Naruto how great he is at being an Uzumaki and is wary about who he befriends cause she doesn’t want people to take advantage of him

Naruto, meanwhile, is protective of her in a loud way, if anyone’s got a problem with Karin, they gotta go through Naruto first (also I like to imagine that Karin is still taller than Naruto, standing behind him while he’s like the “excuse me, she asked for fries!” meme)

Main thing I like to think about for this is people on the outside thinking that Karin would be struggling with finding her place, because Tsunade is kinda like the Uzumaki/Senju “head” of the family (which is just like,, 5 of them, I count Shizune and Iruka), and Naruto looks more like Tsunade, got her necklace passed down to him, has always been a part of the village, would probably be the next in line to be clan head, etc

But actually Naruto’s the one who’s super insecure about his place, with not knowing anything about the Uzumaki clan, looking a ton like his dad and not having the signature red hair, not having the chains, etc, and Karin is just constantly comforting him

Also, this is my own hc, but I think the Uzumaki clan would probably have more women than men in it and (if I’m not in a bad headspace where it sends me spiraling down my own dysphoria) that would be another thing Naruto would struggle with