gunsandspaceships

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Tier-list of Ships for MCU Tony Stark

Here is my personal list:

Feel free to reblog with your own, which you can create here.

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On Tony Stark's sexual orientation in the MCU

I've posted something about this before, and based on the results of this poll, about 70% of my audience remembers it or figured it out by themselves. But this time, mostly for skeptics, we're not looking for subtle hints that Tony isn't all that heterosexual, but instead for confirmation that he's exclusively heterosexual.

*watching the MCU*

Hmm, looks like there is none.

Here's the thing: Even though Tony has only had sexual relationships with women on screen and his only real relationship was with a woman, it's never shown, said, or otherwise stated that he is 100% straight.

I'll get into the reasons and the aforementioned signs later, but here I just want to say that even if we ignore them, your headcanons about him being bi- or pansexual are perfectly valid. They're not directly confirmed or denied by canon.

What is confirmed by canon, however, is that Tony is not homosexual (his sexual partners have clearly not been exclusively men), not asexual (he is shown to be sexually attracted to others), not autosexual (there is no indication that he is sexually attracted to himself), not demisexual (strong emotional connection was not a prerequisite for his one-night stands), and not skoliosexual (all of his known sexual encounters have been with cisgender people). He is also probably not sapiosexual (there is no evidence that all of his sexual encounters have been with highly intelligent people).

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Garden State, 04/07/1970

While watching Endgame, did you ever wonder how Tony knew that Howard and Hank Pym were both at SHIELD's first HQ in New Jersey in April 7, 1970?

In the film itself, this explanation is omitted; apparently, there was not a second in the running time for this shot from the script:

The photo is actually in the movie:

But: a) it's in the background and not in the spotlight so we can't see it and connect the dots; b) there's one man and two women, not the other way around. So we can only assume that the man is Howard (otherwise why would it be in Tony's house), one of the women is probably Peggy, and the other could be Janet van Dyne. Unless Hank is secretly transgender, this is the only connection to him that can be imagined here.

So Tony had a picture of Howard, Peggy, and Janet in his living room, and it apparently had a place and a date on it. That's how Tony got his "vaguely exact" idea of where he and Steve could get the Tesseract and the particles.

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Mister Softee

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Heart of Eternity

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July update

Navigation v7

I will update this thing every month and highlight new stuff with blue color, but for the newest posts - please just scroll down. Subcategories are highlighted in bold.

Fandom dictionary, Some rules

So far we found out:

Tony - Prometheus

What he accomplished: Achievements, Saved the whole universe, Marksman, PhDs, Magician, Medals, Cave, Sakaarian junkyard

His health condition

That he doesn't have a drinking problem in the MCU

But a cocktail was named after him

He never used drugs (+about stereotyping)

Behavioral Analysis

Relationships

Tony's Ancestry

MCU Viewing Order

MCU Timeline: The Infinity Saga

Update, How not to Timeline, Spider-Man: Homecoming issue

Classification of Timeline consistency, Updated, Tier list

MCU Dates of Birth, Age

Review of Official MCU Timelines: Phase One, The Wakanda Files

Fury's Big Week: Conclusion, The Timeline

MCU Fandom Wiki timeline, There's more, "Stane's office"

MCU is not 616 and how Multiverse works: MCU is not 616, FAQ, Multiverse, For Kevin Feige, MCU is not one universe?, MCM

Canon?: Agent Carter, Team Thor, IM3 "Tony, Harley and E.J." deleted scene, IM3 "Maya's Sacrifice" deleted scene, Iron Man (novelization)

Celebrities

Summary of the MCU, Tony's life motto, Dead fandom, Hyperfixation

Speed

Who is the nicest guy of the OG6

War, military and weapon manufacturing

AI: Don't trust bots, Seriously, Cranberry

Civil War

Other MCU characters

OG6: Who can draw

Right/Left-handed MCU characters

MCU Gif Collections

Tony's appearance (for artists and ficwriters): Skin tone

Biker Tony

Tony's handwriting

Chinese Zodiac

Games: Marvel Rivals, Assassin's Creed Odyssey

Elon Musk

Experiment with communism

Marvel Studios: To Marvel Studios, Final destination. What If, I am Groot

"Hydra Tony"

Tony's missed superpower

Lego

Doomsday & Secret Wars

About this blog, RDJ and Genre discrimination in movies

Polls

MCU Fandom Study

The Daily Bugle

Fanfic recommendations:

Acute Stress Response series (Belis): Over the Wall Camp, Fine or Faint, Ghosts of Christmas Past

Revision (Kadigan)

Readers waiting for a new chapter

Mass Effect + MCU:

Tony - Garrus Vakarian, Plot similarities, Clint about Natasha

Harry Potter + MCU:

Sorting MCU characters, Half-Blood Tony

Other:

Psychology, Truth, Scam

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MCU Characters: Right or Left-handed?

(the list will be updated)

Polls: Team Iron Man, Team Cap

Peter Parker - Right-handed

Steve Rogers - Right-handed

James Rhodes - Right-handed

Tony Stark - Right-handed

Clint Barton - Left-handed (can use a bow and knife with his right hand, but in practice he has only done this a couple of times, which does not make him truly ambidextrous)

Bucky Barnes - Right-handed

Natasha Romanova - Left-handed (can use right hand but prefers left hand about 2/3 of the time. The use of the right hand was most likely imposed in childhood, but did not fully take hold)

Scott Lang - Right-handed

Vision - Right-handed

Sam Wilson - Right-handed

Wanda Maximoff - Right-handed

T'Challa - Right-handed

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In addition to "Missed whump opportunities"

Tony Stark: *has a serious medical condition, which is a great opportunity to represent people with heart and respiratory problems, which they don't have other characters for*

Marvel Comics: *forget about it and instead give him some other, unrelated problems for which they already have enough representative characters*

Yes, I'm talking about you, "Demon in a Bottle".

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they spent billions on this

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More spoilers from RDJ?

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How to Use Russian Names. Instruction for Marvel Studios

#1. Do not use OFF in Russian surnames.

The use of the suffix -off instead of -ov/ova in Russian surnames is an outdated form of French transliteration.

It was used in the 19th and early 20th centuries by Russian emigrants in Europe and the United States, but is no longer used (yes, for several decades now). So unless the character comes from a family that immigrated due to the Russian Revolution (1917–23) or earlier, giving them -off instead of ov/ova doesn't make sense.

How these Russian surnames actually work: there are a few different suffixes in Russian surnames. The most common are -in/ina (e.g. Kalinin/Kalinina) and -ov/ova (e.g. Smirnov/Smirnova). Why two options for each: in Russian, words change according to gender. So typical Russian surnames (with the aforementioned suffixes) have options for each traditional gender: ov/in for males and ova/ina for females.

Example: Natasha Romanoff shouldn't be a Romanoff at all. She's not from a family of immigrants who came to the United States in 1918. She was born in Russia. Her legal last name on her birth certificate is "Romanova." That's her correct last name.

P.S. No, there is no information that she officially changed her name after defecting from the Red Room. This is simply a gap in the knowledge of people working at Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. It is long overdue for this error to be corrected. Also note that Yelena's last name is Belova, not Beloff.

The same applies to another victim of this absurdity - Melina Vostokoff. She is Vostokova.

What about other suffixes that we see in Russian characters? They are also used, but less common and usually indicate foreign origin (for example, -ko indicates Ukrainian origin), and some of them are not gender differentiated.

By the way, "Vanko" is a made-up name derived from the Russian name "Ivan" that is overused in the US. It sounds weird to a Russian speaker. Please, don't make up names. At least Google the real ones.

#2. Use short names.

Yelena Belova, Alexei Shostakov... They are always called by their full names: "Yelena" and "Alexei". Even among family and friends.

In the real world it would not be like this. In Eastern Europe, people use shortened versions of names more often than full ones. "Natasha" is a "shortened" version of "Natalia". It is not a different name. The same applies to Yelena. The shortened version of the name is "Lena". This is what her friends and family would call her. Or those who do not respect her very much, like Dreykov. Alexei's shortened name is "Lyosha" (Melina would call him this) or "Lekha" (his male pals would most likely use this version).

By the way, Marvel put the stress in the name "Alexei" incorrectly. It's not AlExei, it's AlexEi.

Here are other variations of the name Natasha that can be used: "Nat", "Nata", "Natalie", "Natashka".

For Yelena: "Lenka", "Lenochka".

But be careful when using versions whose specifics you are not familiar with.

In addition: in official settings among Russians, patronymics are used. For example, Ivan Antonovich Vanko or Natalia Alianovna Romanova (by the way, Alian is also not a real Russian name).

P.S. Natasha's real father's name was Ivan, so it would be more correct to use Natalia Ivanovna Romanova and forget about this terrible "Alian".

#3. Learn surnames other than those of famous people.

It's not only Marvel's issue, but of other companies too (recall Chekov from Star Trek, for example).

Stop using names like Rasputin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Lermontov, etc. for Russian characters in movies. When Russian speakers hear these names, they think they are watching, for example, Russian mafia AU with famous writers of the 19th-20th centuries. It's just ridiculous. These are not common Russian names. Google more common ones, those that gang members might have (but try to avoid the most common, like Ivanov, because they are overused).

And no, changing one letter won't fix it.

#4. Avoid rare and foreign names.

Marvel uses too many names for Russian characters that aren't actually Russian. Often they're made up or so rare that you'd never hear them in the country itself.

I have already mentioned a few made-up names, such as Vanko or Alian. Illyana is another one (the mutant Magik). Names like Melina or Antonia are real, but not of Russian origin and are not commonly used in Russia (instead, there are local versions of them, such as "Antonina").

In conclusion: I don't really understand how these mistakes came about. It's not that there weren't enough Russians in the States to ask how to use elements specific to a particular country in comics and movies. Rather, it's the abundance of indifference and laziness. Remember, it's always better to ask an expert for help than to do simple things wrong and make a fool of yourself.

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Missed whump opportunities

I'll show you a picture and ask you to tell me what it is:

That's right. This is the walking embodiment of whump. If you take into account both the movies and the comics, you can collect (almost) every possible illness, injury, and mental trauma this guy and his variants have suffered from. Endless possibilities for dramatic storylines and fuel for angst and hurt/comfort fanfiction.

Tony had shrapnel in and around his heart, cardiac arrhythmia, a huge hole in his chest with all sorts of implants in it, was poisoned with radioactive heavy metal (twice, the first time probably in college), suffered from PTSD, migraines, was stubbed, tortured, was dying from an infection and starvation, and suffered countless blast injuries and beatings in the MCU. Additionally, in the comics, he had quadriplegia (paralysis from the neck down), traumatic brain injuries, a "brain tumor", depression, and many other sad things.

Unfortunately, most attempts to show these conditions (especially in the movies) were half-assed. Largely because the genre of Marvel movies is not a medical drama. The filmmakers were primarily focused on action. As a result, we got some insight into these health issues, but if they showed up and affected the events, it was because the action demanded it. And if some condition interfered with the action or took up too much screen time, Marvel always had magical space technology to quickly fix it, effectively killing any attempt at real drama (which, by the way, has the serious side effect of making it hard for anyone to believe that a character could inevitably die while surrounded by all sorts of healing artifacts).

However, I found it quite interesting that some of the people on the set did think about the medical part. While they skipped major things, like showing symptoms, they still included minor ones that most viewers could easily miss.

Here's an example:

IVs and bottles of unidentified pills have appeared around Tony quite often throughout his superhero career. But they were never emphasized enough to show the audience their importance to the character, and they had no specific function in the films. However, filmmakers still put them there. To do this, they had to think about adding them, they had to bring them to the set and position them so that they were in the background but still visible. Simply put, they put some effort into showing us these details.

Or take this:

Tony's "peeve" was borrowed from Howard Hughes (who originally inspired the character in the comics), who suffered from germaphobia due to his OCD. For Tony, it's not just germaphobia. He has a HOLE in his chest. Because of it, his immune system is compromised, and any infection, even a minor one, can lead to a serious (and potentially fatal) illness.

But the movies don't say that directly. They only hint at it like this, and you have to have some (actually, pretty basic) knowledge of biology to understand what's going on. And of course, most people get it wrong.

From this fact follows my main complaint: the Studio did a very poor job of showing what the character is going through in the story (and Tony is not the only victim here). In my opinion, it is extremely important to show the state in which a character has to overcome his trials in a story. This shows his strength like nothing else and adds depth and drama to the plot that superhero movies often lack.

Instead of adding scenes that don't add anything to the plot, like Scott's humiliation at the diner in Endgame, Marvel could have easily added something ACTUALLY important that would have helped the audience understand, for example, Tony's "peeve", or why he had an IV in his lab, or that he needed a box of different medications just to survive his injury. Instead, we only got vague clues.

And you know what could be a reasonable explanation for adding these details to the movies, even if they are not used in the plot? I think Marvel just left the hard (and most interesting) work to us — it was done so that fans would notice them, and expand the MCU by exploring the character's experiences in a way that allows for it to be done in depth without sacrificing commercial potential (via fanfiction). Like the decision not to use the Sherlock joke in Infinity War:

While it’s unrealistic to expect completely accurate and detailed depictions of illnesses in superhero movies made for action, it’s still important to show the vulnerabilities and struggles of characters. Marvel Studios should not forget this simple truth. And we, as fans, should not forget what is left for us to explore. Instead of polishing and making sense of what we've already been given in the canon (and we've been given so many ideas), we often squander them and miss opportunities to create great works. The fact that fandom doesn't pay enough attention to the details given to us by canon sends a signal to filmmakers that their thoughtful efforts are wasted, and at some point they'll stop thinking about putting them altogether.

So please, use the opportunities. They're right in front of you, in the movies and the comics. We don't have enough fanfics that explore Tony's canon medical conditions: we don't have enough fanfics with Tony being completely paralyzed, which is, again, canon in the comics; I've never seen a fanfic where Tony has to take a bunch of pills every day, despite it being canon in the movies:

Creating works that actually use medical conditions and make them an important part of the characters and plot can show filmmakers that it is something that audiences are interested in and that they have the potential to make money from it. Attention is the only way to reward filmmakers for their thoughtfulness and attention to detail. Showing interest in something is the only way to get it into commercial projects. Remember that.

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Liaison of Dysfunctional relationships

US military in IM2: *forgot how to do their job and completely relied on Iron Man. Too proud to ask for help, so they demand it (despite the fact that Tony is not bound to them by any contracts and does not owe them anything) or threaten to take the suits by force.*

Liaison Rhodey:

*Proudly steals the suit that ends up being hijacked by villains (with him inside)*

Tony in IM3: *offers help, suit and bomb disposal tech to reduce casualties*.

US military and Liaison Rhodey: "Nope, we'll do it ourselves".

*Proudly continue to be useless. Rhodey's suit (with him inside) ends up being hijacked by villains*

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First (actual) look at Dr. Doom

Spoiler for those who haven't seen F4: First Steps yet (people like me).

No, it's not AI. And no, I didn't take the screenshot myself. I just saved it and the post-credits scene. Posting here for reference.