In which I have opinions

[selenak]

Goofiest fannish thing of the month I did: going to the Star Wars: Identies exhibition which is currently here in Munich and taking pictures of the Ahsoka Tano part of it.

Comments

[abigail_n]

SociallyAwkward!Tony has got to be one of the most annoying headcannons fandom has come up with in order to justify stuff like Tony nearly destroying the world, or trying to kill people for lying to him. If anything, the impression the films overwhelmingly create is of a man who is very socially aware, who knows exactly where the line is and how far he can push people. Tony isn't annoying because he's oblivious to people around him or unable to understand them. He's annoying because he's a rich, powerful white man who has spent his life getting his own way

[selenak]

But it's not because he's incapable of interacting with people, or unaware of their emotions.

Oh absolutely. I mean, I do think he's become more aware post Afghanistan than pre Afghanistan, but not because pre-Afghanistan, he was incapable of it. Plus it's pretty clear he uses the obliviousness thing when it suits him. Minor case in point: when Maya first shows up on his doorstep, he pretends not to know her, but a moment later introduces her by name to Pepper (without Maya having said her name in between) but by saying "please tell me there's no twelve years boy in the car outside" shows he knows exactly when he'd last seen her. And the fanon that he didn't have friendships pre Avengers, or only one sided relationships with people on his payroll, is just bewildering. Rhodey has known Tony since they were at MIT together (i.e. late teenage years), never worked for him, frequently disagrees with him and in fact has retained far more of a non-Tony life than Sam has been shown to have a non-Steve life post Winter Soldier. Even with

[abigail_n]

Oh god, the "Tony doesn't have any friends!" business. Don't remind me.

In terms of Tony's actions at the end of the movie, I think that if you're trying to get through Steve Rogers with the intent of killing his best friend, you're pretty much by definition trying to kill him. I agree that Tony probably didn't articulate that intention to himself, but I also think he knew what he was about - that fight doesn't look as if either of them is holding back, because they're not the sort of people who do hold back. (This, by the way, is my big problem with involving Peter in his fight - not so much that Peter is a child, though that is also a huge problem, but that everyone else in that fight is a killer, and except for Scott and maybe T'Challa, they're all people who are very comfortable with killing. That puts Peter at a huge disadvantage that he probably wasn't even aware of.)

[selenak]

Having watched the movie twice now, I think it's pretty clear that other than T'Challa, who intends to kill Bucky, and only Bucky, right until the Zemo reveal throughout the movie, nobody at the airport has the intention of killing anyone else. In fact, that's why Tony, Natasha etc. are at the air port to begin with. In order of chronology: Ross tells Tony that after Steve and Bucky got several people in the hospital during Bucky's escape, he's sending troops after them with a shoot on sight order. Tony says he'll bring in Steve & Co. instead, Ross after some humiliation conga ("why should I trust you do do any better etc.") gives him 36 hours to do so. Tony and Natasha then talk tactics, she says they're severaly underpowered, we get the Bruce reference, and they have their mutual lightning bulbs ("My idea is in the building, where's yours?" "Queens"), heading off to their respective recruitments

[lokifan]

Oh, it's so irritating when explicit canon is ignored in order to woobify a character. It reminds me of how often I've seen fic where Thor either tortures Loki or is complicit with torture as punishment, despite the fact that Fury explicitly suggests torturing Loki during Avengers - and in order to find out time-sensitive information, not for punishment (much as it's still awful) - and Thor is just not down for that at all.

Plus, I think the socially-inept Tony thing kind of tries to whitewash away some of his treatment of other people - in particular, his behaviour towards women ("she did a big spread on Tony last year" / "and she wrote an article on me too.")

[selenak]

Oh, TortureHappyThor definitely hails from the same school of whitewashing and excusing (Loki, obv., not Thor) thought as SociallyIneptTony. In both cases, I suspect it's also a symptom of overidentification and, ironically, lack of imagination. Because if you do want to explore roots of Tony's behavior, well, this is an incredibly famous man who not only grew up as the son of an incredibly famous man but as famous in his own right (as in, making headlines as something other than Son Of Howard) since the time he was eight. (According to the retrospective montage early in Iron Man 1; Tony was eight when first gaining an boy wonder inventor headline.) He's never NOT lived in the public spotlight 24/7. It's pretty telling that when he has a life changing epiphany during three months of captivity, the first thing he does when he's free again is giving a press conference about it. (Which is why I didn't find him sharing his last memory/altered memory of his parents with an audience of hundreds at the university in CW ooc at all.) This isn