you know what’s interesting-slash-hilarious about the ‘doesn’t play well with others’ epithet, tony is actually one of about two avengers that has an established relationship with Every Single Member of the team. and this superficial childish concept of a dynamic where everything has to be sunshine and rainbows as opposed to adult relationships where teammates, and god forbid even friends, can have differences and opposing views on something but still, at the end of the day, be friends has completely overriden any significance that could have for his characterisation.
‘doesn’t play well with others’ was a statement SHIELD made in a personality profile of him. and tony read this. and you can sEE from how easily he accepted the ‘textbook narcissism’ and his supposed ‘volatility’ that he essentially internalised that analysis of him. (deSPITE it being conducted by someone with no psychological expertise, despite it being written under observation during arguably one of the ultimate low points of his life i.e. dying.) except in this exact same film he’s the first to establish a friendship with a stranger he’s never met before, he’s the first that finds common ground with this stranger and empathises with him to the extent that bruce as the hulk ‘uncontrollable monster fuelled by rage’ saves his life. in aou, they have two extREMEly lengthy montages of them doing science together, creating a problem and then solving said problem. they built veronica. i don’t think i have to explain just how much trust and faith that would have taken.
then there’s natasha and clint. natasha and tony have a history from IM2, she helped saved his company as well as his life despite his grievances over her deception. natasha is actually the first person in canon to give tony his famous ‘shellhead’ nickname. in the first film, tony and clint work together seamlessly under steve’s direction, trading banter the same way they do throughout the second. tony was part of the planning process when clint thought of using his old-school spy messages to locate natasha after she’d disappeared with ultron.
‘following’s not really my style’ comes from his tony’s own mouth and yet you have a succession of instances where he cedes authority to steve, as captain and team leader, without question. he doesn’t fight it, doesn’t argue against it, doesn’t even attempt to assert himself as a potential leader. which is exactly how all of these judgements and preconceived notions about ‘how tony stark functions on a team’ would suggest he’d act. what about the helicarrier scene??? i hear the non-believers screaming. well 1) influence under loki’s scepter / mind gem which is the Canonical Fact that everyone loves to forget and 2) the moment steve and tony leave the helicarrier in the first movie there’s pretty much ??? zero ??? arguing ??? they suit up; they single-handedly fix the helicarrier thus saving thousands of lives onboard; they execute a perfect mid-battle move that would take extraordinary amounts of trust and telepathic communication most likely. the second film honestly erodes a lot of that dynamic away (feel free to disagree, but most likely as precursor / hidden trailer for civil war). the point is, having differences of opinion and disagreements ≠ some ridiculous hate-hate relationship. i might not go as far to say they’re bffls in the mcu, but they’re teammates that respect each other and value the other person’s strengths and insights –– especially ones that balance out their weaknesses.
and finally thor, bc that one scene in the aftermath of the party in aou would, as a critic might believe, be enough to topple this entire thesis i’m putting forth. weLL FRIEND, let me tell u why you are wrong. the first film sets them up with minor confrontations in battle and again this back-and-forth of humor which is tony’s default communicative strategy with people he doesn’t know. in the second film, you have thor physically threatening him. why tho? easy. in his view, tony was attempting to harness a weapon that he had no right to. if u were watching aou and were conveniently not asleep in the scene where wanda does her magic thing and influences tony to take the scepter you’ll have noticed he didn’t reach for it of his own volition. who knows if the argument (let alone ultron) would even have happened if not for her interference…?) their second disagreement comes while tony’s attempting to frankenstein vision to life. thor, again, perceives this as extremely risky and beyond the limits of what tony should be able to experiment with, but he actually ends up adding the final ingredient in vision’s creation.
and noTE once vision has proven himself non-villainous and worthy of wielding mjolnir thor is heard saying ‘stark was right’. not right about the need to create artificial intelligence with the mind gem and messing with mad science but right about needing to counteract ultron with a being that would actually pose a threat to him. (if ultron is the product of all the destruction tony is capable of creating that vision is the product of all that is good, he sacrificed jarvis to give vision life ffs.) in the final few scenes, tony actually mentions missing thor, multiple times and even asks about him staying on earth. and we have thor joking around with him, too, about their conflicting natures. and really, thor and tony do not have to be the perfect friendship in order for them to still be a friendship. friends argue, and disagree, and often come in opposites. just because they aren’t the cookie cutter ideal of a bromance doesn’t make that relationship any less valuable, any less significant in bringing about character development.
and that ladies and gentleman is why ‘doesn’t play well with others’ needs to die. a slow death of painful mischaracterisation. tony stark may not be the ultimate people person but he has also never been fundamentally antagonistic towards his teammates. he respects them and likely considers his place amongst them on the team one of the most important things he’s ever done in his life. he rebuilt the tower with custom-designed rooms to house all of them. he gave his home to serve as the avengers headquarters. don’t be goddamn fooled by his casual little ‘i just pay for everything, design everything, make everyone look cooler’. that is his time and his livelihood, his talents and genius invested into building his team equipment, quinjets, vehicles, weapons, anything under the goddamn sun they could possibly need. he pays for the tower, for meals, for everything. nobody TOLD him to do this, nobody asked him to. he did it because he wanted to. because the avengers are so, sO important to him, contrary to what anyone says or wants to claim.
tony stark loves his team. he loves them. how can i say that with such certainty? his worst fear is watching them die and not being able to save them. the worst fear of person everyone believed to be the leAST capable of functioning on a team and working alongside people is letting his friends down, failing them, letting them die because he couldn’t protect and save them in time.
doesn’t play well with others my ass.
I think people seriously underestimate how incredible Tony Stark’s arc reactor is. As someone who has a fairly good understanding of the functionality of nuclear reactors, I can say that a self-sustaining nuclear reactor is theoretically possible, but it would have to run at ridiculously high temperatures at the same time as taking in more heat than it puts out. So Tony not only managed to make this work, but he managed to make it work within a survivable temperature range (very difficult to do)
How did I not see this the other night omg. But yes you are totally right… in fact sometimes I get myself worked up (who, me??????) over how freaking amazingly BRILLIANT Tony is, because he IS, his mind just blows me away sometimes like wow.
#okay but now I’m picturing scientists fangirling/boying over tony stark #but having to pause the conversation occasionally #(to their non-scientist friends continued frustration) #and go #‘BUT WHAT EVEN IS THAT THING???’ #‘what does it matter karen c’mon’ #‘HE SHOULD BE BURNING ALIVE IN FRONT OF US’ #‘karen seriously-’ #‘YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW DID HE DO THAT’#‘i do understand you do this every time-’#‘AND IN MINIATURE! HE MINIATURIZED IT! AND PUT IT IN HIS CHEST’ #‘karen’ #‘HOW’ #‘karen pls’ #‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND HIS GENIUS IS IMPOSSIBLE SOMEONE NEEDS TO TELL HIM THAT THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE’ #‘karen it’s a pic of shirtless tony stark FOCUS PLS’ #karen does not focus (via hurricane-in-a-teacup)
the ‘he should be burning alive’ is a serious understatement honestly. to expand on the ask i sent, an arc reactor would work by combining a fission and a fusion reactor, probably in separate chambers. fission is pretty normal, only a couple of hundred degrees above human temperature usually. FUSION, however, is easiest sustained at temperatures of over 150 million degrees (celsius). and on top of that, to make the reactor self-sustaining without having to refuel it, it has to contain all of that 150 million degree heat within a tiny volume AND intake a ridiculous quantity of environmental temperature from the center of the light (the only place that would stop it from flash-freezing Tony’s flesh), because that temperature is what gets converted into the energy output.
with temperature ranges like that, Tony Stark has managed to find a way of avoiding simultaneously getting frozen and vaporized by the reactor.
It’s not an exaggeration to say he stuck a star in his chest.
People keep adding to this and it’s making me more and more emotional every time omg.
Tony having learned his “I rule everything, nothing fazes me” attitude from Aunt Angie. When he was young, the constant reporters and cameras that came with being the Stark heir terrified him. Angie the performer taught him to hide his nervousness, exude confidence even when he didn’t feel it. Fast forward a couple decades, Peggy wryly telling Angie that she may have done a bit too good of a job there.
