Tag: tony stark needs a hug

knightinironarmor:

knightinironarmor:

kayvsworld:

Hey so quick question: I was taking to a pal about this and I can’t actually believe it if this were true so just. Pls help me out

Did any member of the avengers at any point in time openly on screen express appreciation or gratitude for tony housing, funding, or building stuff (etc??) for the team

alternatively: did any of them openly on screen express appreciation for tony as a person this is super general just. pls help me

I can’t think of anything but,,,,like,,,,This Clearly Must Have Happened we have had 3 movies abt this team?

i can’t think of anything besides steve’s “i will miss you” lol

as far as acknowledging his physical contribution i just remember the one tony line “he’s the boss, i just pay for everything, design everything, make everyone look cooler” and people seem to take that as evidence of tony being a Dick

i don’t know if it’s just my bitterness ™ but i also can’t think of a time anyone (bar rhodey and steve with the “i will miss you”) in any other way openly expressed appreciation for him either – again maybe i’m just bitter at this point but certainly nothing compared to the things tony did, i.e. take the heat for johannesburg, make medical arrangements for clint, offer to pilot the jet so clint could rest, make people smoothies, echo steve’s lines back at him, help laura barton with house chores, brag about every single avenger (but himself) to loki on the way to coining their Catch Phrase, literally every interaction he has with bruce, and i’m not even gonna get into everything he did and openly expressed for this team in cap 3 (like i feel that the quote “you’re gonna come with us, now, because it’s US!” says a lot about where his heart was, ofc, besides the super obvious “i’m trying to keep you from tearing the avengers apart”)

hahahahah

i think writers have this weird blockage when it comes to having characters acknowledge tony in a positive light, it’s like it’s taboo because of his ~ego or whatever? like ohhhh you can’t feed his Ego and you have to show that the narrative Acknowledges The Problem Of His Ego by having literally everyone be an embodiment of “ugh can’t put up with your shit”

(it’s one of the reasons why i like his cap 3 bitterness – the snappy comment about coffee grounds, when natasha agrees with him and he’s basically like “wow! wow! unprecedented!” i am reminded of one of those early interviews with RDJ re: cap 3 [by entertainment weekly i think?] where the interviewer is kinda like “well tony’s an ass who wants to be the star lol rite” and RDJ is like “lol rite i think he’s actually been pretty civil all things considered”)

like not to be forever bitter but

ok i’ve been thinking about this because it was kind of low key fucking me up and here’s what i got

natasha’s shows of attachment were mostly silent and in tony’s absence until cap 3. she was the “smiling crookedly while tony talks over the comm” type (im2, avengers) and she whispers that “come on stark” when tony does the whole missile thing. she’s also the one founding avenger who offers tony any level of emotional support during the civil war

steve does have the “i will miss you” line which is as direct and targeted a statement of attachment as tony has ever gotten from any founding avenger as far as i can recall. steve is also the only one to ever ask tony about his personal life on screen (he asks about pepper in cap 3, comments on howard) (i was gonna count bruce but that after credits scene came across more as tony wanting to talk/bruce not being receptive than bruce showing interest in how tony’s doing). and i know this is kind of a Hot Topic but yes steve’s letter is the first time a founding avenger acknowledged tony had been hurt by them

in aou thor says tony did a “good job” with vision, and he has that bit about how he’s going to miss “these talks of ours [his, tony’s and steve’s]” or something. he also says that besides tony, anything can be explained? or something like that? and it does come across as a kind of endearment

bruce doesn’t openly express much attachment (to anyone but natasha? lol) but i think the movies do show that he and tony have a bond and that bond continued offscreen

tony’s relationship with clint actually turned out to be the most brutally one-sided imo? in aou, tony is shown, 1) making medical arrangements for clint when he’s injured at that first hydra raid, 2) giving him one of those weird smoothies, 3) initiating chatter with him specifically during the mjolnir bit, 4) offering to pilot the quinjet after johannesburg so clint could rest, 5) doing actual house chores in clint’s farm, 6) tipping clint off to help him locate natasha – whereas clint… basically…. never seems to have reciprocated much and well yeah we all saw cap 3 lol

tony and steve are actually the only two avengers who have an acknowledged and dynamic on screen relationship with every other founding member – clint and bruce, for instance, don’t have much of anything that was ever acknowledged on screen, thor and clint, natasha and thor – though this evidently has more to do with the screentime allotted to the development of relationships in the team and the place of each member in the overarching plot

i think that what ends up making tony’s case particularly jarring is 1) as i said above, writers seem to have a problem allowing other characters to acknowledge tony positively?? and 2) tony’s also the single avenger who’s been personally attacked or insulted by every single founding member, by which i mean, every founding avenger has said or done something that hurt tony personally and specifically in some way (steve and clint are the most obvious ones, natasha in that final exchange with him in cap 3, thor chokes him in aou, bruce steps out and lets him take the heat for ultron)

on the other hand, tony is also the single avenger who has antagonized every other founding member in some way, although always arguably out of discomfort/defensiveness because he already felt personally attacked/rejected by them (with steve’s case being the weird exception-but-not-really, because in avengers tony was fairly condescending to him from the get-go but it seemed to be because he felt defensive in response to steve’s very presence? the guy his dad never shut up about etc. so naturally steve got all annoyed with him right back and everything escalated from there)

bear in mind that any “justice served” kind of equivalence between “tony hurting everyone” and “everyone hurting tony” is a false equivalence because 1) as i mentioned, most times tony’s antagonistic tendencies come in response to the way he’s already being treated, and 2) there’s a huge difference between the harm one person can cause when they’re firing at several targets versus what happens to a single target when several people fire at it – it’s worth noting that tony’s also the only avenger that was ever singled out and held under negative group scrutiny (the confrontation re: ultron, and at the raft, and both times he was, at the very least, not the only one “responsible” for whatever sins at hand, but was still the only one who had to answer for himself and endure the emotional beating) (you could argue something similar happened to fury as well, to count him as a founding avenger, when it was all the avengers against him re: phase 2 weapons – but even that argument quickly went from “everyone vs fury” to “everyone vs everyone,” and there were no real personal attacks comparable to what tony experienced at the raft or the scorn during the ultron confrontation [people sighing in aggravation when he tries to explain himself using new york] plus the outright physical attack [thor and the whole choking thing])

basically. tony’s at an extremely emotionally taxing place in the team and his relationship with individual avengers will never improve for as long as he’s singled out as the problem