#it's disappointing to see him so shoehorned into woobieness

[silentwalrus1]

For the commentary thingy: "'...He called to tell me I should have pulled him into this last week. Then I asked him for weapons and money.' Which Tony is all too happy to give, if it’s for one of his alien-fighting buddies who eat shawarma together once and never call again." Or really anything about how you write Tony because I really like your interpretation of him and I'd love to know how you got there. I love your writing and art so much! Thank you for creating!!!!

when iron man came out in 2009 (i think 2009??) i really loved it - from being such an incredibly fun movie to the fuckin FLYING METAL ARMOR SUIT, HELL YES. i read a lot of avengers fic from 2009-12 and got exposed to a lot of different characterizations of tstark, a lot of which were informed (i assume) by the comics which ive never read. personally, i’m not thrilled per se with how i executed ithlyn tony - i largely used him as ex machina + package deal that came with rhodey - but i’m glad his appearance resonated!  

in general, though, i depart entirely from canon, partly bc it’s butchered his character so badly and partly bc a deep dive on tstark would be.... like, okay, if i take it seriously, we’re going to get a character that i don’t have a lot of interest in exploring. he’s a badly spoiled billionaire trying to right his wrongs and while he gets a lot of it right - GREEN ENERGY, CHANGING INDUSTRY - he gets a lot of other things wrong. and much like in real life, i’m not interested in midwifing a man through his journey to not being an oblivious asshole 

that said, i AM doing a deep dive on pepper potts, who i find to be a much more fascinating character - she occupies, ostensibly, the same position tony does, only she’s a woman. i refuse to believe that potts doesn’t have at least SOME engineering background, and you bet your bippy she taught herself more the further she went in stark industries (also? she’s not a PA. that just is not possible. she’s chief of staff equivalent, PAs cannot become CEOs even in marvel verse, it’s just - the worst decision ever, i am excising it from canon, potts was never a PA ever for anyone). 

so while i have to admit i’ve never fleshed out tstark too deeply, i have thought a lot about him in relation to potts - essentially, why is potts with him? they care about each other, and clearly stark has to be bringing SOMETHING to the table for potts to be willing to tie herself to that personally as well as professionally. And i refuse to do the whole “ohh she mommies him, she explains to him How People Work, she does every ounce of emotional labor and runs cleanup for him whenever he DGAF’s people around him”. firstly, tstark knows damn well how people work, hes not an idiot, and secondly, i won’t demean potts like that, and thirdly, what a boring fucking relationship that would be. what an utter misery to write!! what a tired misogynistic trope!!! 

so yeah, i’m gonna say that potts and stark are a couple of born-rich assholes, they’re both richer than god, they’re both insane workaholics, they bitch incessantly to each other, they shop, they appreciate the finer things, they make each other laugh. they are INSUFFERABLE snobs, they both do insane rich people shit like weird diets and cryotherapy or whatever and they are the only people theyve met who can keep up with each other, tit for tat, not just in intelligence, expertise and pursuits but also in personality. tstark gave potts the leg up she needed bc he is a himbo but values competence over gender & recognizes and promotes talent/skill; potts actually loves doing all the structural and organizational and social company running shit that tstark rather wouldnt do. they are both, objectively, the kind of person who thinks nothing of 36 hour work days, has the mercenary confidence of the rich-from-birth, sports an entire walk-in closet of fake personalities and an even bigger warehouse of issues. Nice people? sure, when they decide to be. 

potts, swallowing an entire palmful of inch-long vitamins dry while on a headset conference call listening to a SME report on nanotech while doing 20 mph on her specially designed soulcycle: yes - yes - wonderful, thank you, gary - great, let’s turn it over to nasreen - [HITS MUTE] tony when are you going to hire a project manager that can tell a pym particle from a pancreas, i told you a thousand times - jesus fuck i better lose these last six ounces before the fucking met gala - 

stark, on his back on the floor, carefully smearing scented beeswax around his arc reactor from a $1,200 home chest waxing kit while trying to finish a line of code by poking at a holo-keyboard with his left big toe: can you at least TELL ME when you’re on mute so i can turn dictation on, jarvis, quick, take this down - 

jarvis: [reroutes pepper’s call so it’s on the suite sound system and they all experience gary at 200 decibels]