The people who love it, however, will almost all get irrationally angry when anyone questions the “loving and healthy relationship” that they impose on the two of them, save for a small subsect that are here solely for the barely-legal sugar daddy kink fics.
So I’m here to look at what it is exactly that makes half the fandom look at this relationship and go “yeah no, this is not okay.”
Oh, and this is about the point where the Tony stans might want to bail. It gets a bit long, and you all seem to have difficulty with lengthy posts.
He’s established to be massively profiting from cleaning up the mess of his own battles. The injustice of this arrangement along with the carelessness in the actual management of this damage control provides the motive and means for the Vulture to become a villain, making this yet another marvel villain created by Tony Stark. Not that Stark is responsible for Toomes’s choices–but his own choices have consequences and this is one of them.
In fact Toomes directly parallels Tony Stark by scavenging the wreckage of Avenger’s battles and becoming an arms dealer. (Think–Tony creating Ultron out of Chitari tech).
He made a sexual comment about Peter’s aunt, which clearly made him uncomfortable.
He leaves Peter, a child who he has just equipped with a weapons-grade super-suit, to his own devices (under the light supervision of Happy Hogan to be fair) without communicating to Peter his actual expectations for him. He leaves him with the inaccurate impression that he might be called to join the avengers at any time, so when he is silent and distant, Peter, a child, naturally concludes that he must simply “work hard enough” to get his approval.
When Peter starts tracking the weapons and trying to tell him about it, Tony acts dismissively–he tell’s Peter to drop it, but gives no indication that he takes Peter’s concerns seriously or will follow up on the problem. He states that the weapons–which come from tech that he is responsible for–are “below the Avenger’s pay grade.”
He did send the FBI, but honestly he sent those agents to their deaths at the hand of futuristic tech (again, tech he is responsible for safely disposing of!!) if Peter hadn’t been there to save them.
He put a tracker in Peter’s suit without his knowledge or consent–yes, to be able save his life but also to monitor if/when he left the city. When Peter first asks about it, he distracts and evades the question. When Peter makes it clear he objects later, he is told that the choice is not up to him. At no time do they have an honest conversation about how closely Peter is or should be watched—this encourages Peter to keep his own secrets and to go behind their back.
He programs suit he gave Peter to default to insta-kill mode at the drop of a hat. This feature was, admittedly deactivated under the “training wheel’s protocol,” but this only makes it clear that Tony’s idea of who Peter will become and grow into with experience is basically a killer who works for him on his Avengers team.
So Peter get’s in over his head, and people could have died of the Ferry if Stark didn’t come save the day. Is it time for a lecture? yes. It’s time to finally communicate to Peter that he is being heard, explain what his expectations for Peter’s behavior are, encourage him to ask for help when he needs it. It is not time to shame Peter, to place the guilt of all those endangered lives upon his (young) shoulders, to remove all the support he had initially given him, fire him with no warning or second chance, and tell him “I was the only one who believed in you–the other’s thought I was crazy for recruiting a kid” (as if??? everyone criticizing Tony’s Choice to recruit a kid into Civil War meant that they didn’t think that the kid had talent or potential?!?!)
There is zero (0) indication that that lecture and firing was the “tough love moment he needed to pull through” that Tony later spins it as. Nothing about that lecture inspired or motivated; Peter lost the will and the means to continue searching for the Vulture until it literally smacked him in the face by pure coincidence. Instead, it is pretty clear that in the wake of loosing Stark’s support Peter gains confidence in his identity as Spider-man and a hero independent of Stark’s validation and technology.
So Peter saves Tony’s butt by preventing all his crap from being stolen and this earns him back Tony’s favor. So what does Tony do?? Well, he arranges to make Peter, a minor, a part of his team and move him up state away from his aunt and school without his aunt, his legal guardian’s, knowledge or permission.
So yeah. you know in the end, even if Tony Stark is, like, the worst superhero out there, I actually think he is an interesting character if his flaws are actually treated like flaws. My reading of Spider-man Homecoming is that the movie is actually pretty honest about Tony’s character flaws while preserving many of the things people actually like about the character–so I really appreciate the movie for that. Spider-man’s ultimate rejection of Stark’s offer to join the Avengers was sweet, sweet music to my ears lol.
So, I’ve ranted a lot about T/ony recruiting a 14 year old Peter Parker to fight in his personal war with Steve, and how in the process he literally kidnapped said 14 year old (because yes that is absolutely what taking a minor to another fucking country without his legal guardian’s knowledge or permission is, like lol, there are no extenuating circumstances which make that okay, if she wanted to May Parker could press criminal freaking charges against Tony for that and she’d be one hundred percent in the right and warranted for that).
And how since then, T/ony has not only enabled Peter’s crime-fighting and the amount of physical danger it puts him in (at least when it suits T/ony’s mood), but has also enabled Peter keeping this a secret from his legal guardian, up to and including giving him a cover story of having an internship to explain his absences. Again, this is only for when it suits T/ony’s personal agenda and moods to do so, as we all know at other times he’s perfectly willing to play the “I’ll tell your aunt” card to get Peter to fall in line or do what he’s told. The spokesperson for oversight and accountability has actively and with deliberate intent circumvented the legal guardian of a 14-15 year old boy and made it physically impossible for her to fulfill her moral and legal responsibilities to her nephew and make decisions about his physical safety.
I mean, I’ve ranted about all that before, yeah?
But you know what I personally haven’t seen anyone talk about in regards to Spiderman: Homecoming yet?
Peter’s suit.
I want to talk about the suit T/ony designed for Peter and gave to him, without any kind of official overview of the suit’s capabilities or you know, an instruction manual. I want to talk about how Homecoming showed that the suit had built in LETHAL CAPABILITIES that Peter had absolutely no knowledge of, whatsoever. T/ony designed a suit that could literally kill people, and then gave it to a teenage prodigy with no warning. For as long as Peter’s had that suit, he’s been walking around with the equivalent of a loaded gun, and absolutely ZERO idea he was doing so. Not to mention, he also had no idea that along with all the tracking and surveillance capabilities S/tark had built into it to let him know where Peter was and what he was doing, there was an AI built into it as well. The very same technology that has in the past massively backfired and either been hacked by villains or hell, evolved to BECOME the villain, was literally laced into the very fiber of Peter’s suit without his knowledge. His suit could have been hacked, its weapons capabilities subverted and used to harm someone without Peter having any way to prevent it, because Peter didn’t even know TO prevent it.
But that didn’t happen, you might say. Just hypotheticals, you can do that with anything. Of course T/ony installed safeguards, took preventative measures to make sure no one could do that, because he’s learned from his mistakes, its not like he was going to make something that could evolve into Ultron again, that someone could hijack again like any of his own villains. You just hate T/ony, you might say, and so you’re coming up with imaginary worst cast scenarios to vilify him. Sure, that COULD have happened, but it didn’t. Right?
Umm.
Except, y’see.
It DID happen.
PETER hacked his own suit. Peter undid the safeguards T/ony installed, found a way around them, because not unreasonably, once he knew there was more to the thing he was literally wearing on his body, he wanted to know what the fuck it was. T/ony’s own fifteen year old protege hacked through his safeguards and unlocked his suit’s deadly capabilities because it never occurred to him to let him know why that might possibly be a terrible idea.
And sure, if you were really determined, you could argue Peter shouldn’t have done that. That he should have trusted that those safeguards were there for a reason and left them alone until T/ony saw fit to tell him about them. I mean, I personally think that’s a completely fucking stupid argument, because if you’re going to give someone a suit you wear like a literal second skin and make it capable of killing people, that’s absolutely something the person wearing it has a right to know, so he can like, decide if he even fucking WANTS it at that point.
But all that aside, even with you making that argument about how Peter was wrong to hack it or whatever, it still misses the point. That point being, that if Peter hacked it, then ipso facto….IT COULD BE HACKED. T/ony’s vaunted safeguards were once again not up to the task, just like they haven’t been each and every time before when his technology has been turned to criminal enterprises. And this is why some of us say he hasn’t evolved at all, has never learned a damn thing. Because he’s still making the exact same mistakes he made in his first solo movie. He’s still utterly convinced of his own genius to the point where he’s confident he has accounted for the various possibilities and made sure they won’t be an issue. He decides what he wants to do without informing others, even when they have a personal stake in whatever it is he’s doing, and then rests confident in his own plans and countermeasures despite the fact that they have been proven insufficient in literally every single one of his previous experiences.
T/ony designed a suit with lethal weapons capabilities and put it in the hands of an underage teenager who had absolutely ZERO idea he had lethal ordinance literally at his fingertips. He designed his own safeguards to keep those capabilities from being unlocked until he decided Peter was ready to access them – when Peter hadn’t even expressed that he wanted them in the first place – and then relied on Peter’s ignorance of his own suit’s potential to keep him from messing with it. His entire ‘make sure this lethal suit doesn’t accidentally kill people’ stratagem was based on the idea that no one, let alone Peter himself, could find a way around his safeguards – even though that was proven untrue, just as anyone whose seen every I/ron M/an movie ever could have predicted.
It never occurred to T/ony to use the actual superhero-in-training’s own morality as a safeguard to keep its harmful potential locked for the time being. Like, maybe if he’d ever actually told Peter what the suit was potentially capable of, Peter, being a pretty fucking brilliant kid and someone who absolutely does not want to hurt people, could’ve been trusted not to mess with it. He was extremely quick to shut down any chance of his suit killing someone once he knew that capability was there, after all. And yeah, granted, its not like Peter is a mindless automaton who blindly does everything T/ony tells him to throughout the movie, so maybe you could argue that there was no guarantee that if T/ony told him about the suit’s potential, he wouldn’t still try and hack it out of curiosity.
But again, that misses the point by a mile. Because hey, thought – but if I’m T/ony S/tark, super genius, and I don’t completely, one hundred percent trust that this superhero in training is up to the responsibility of respecting this suit’s awesome deadly potential….MAYBE I SHOULDN’T FUCKING GIVE IT TO HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE. If he’s not ready for some of its capabilities yet, here’s an idea….don’t build them into the suit, just upgrade the suit once he IS ready.
But there’s absolutely no justification for sending a fifteen year old out onto the streets with an actual arsenal of deadly weaponry at his disposal, when he has zero idea he’s toting around that arsenal at all. It was only Peter’s own quick thinking and reflexes that kept him from accidentally killing someone with his suit once he unlocked features he had no way of being prepared for. Again, if you’re like, SUPER DETERMINED to hold a fifteen year old more accountable than a forty something billionaire super genius with actual experience, then you could potentially argue that if Peter had accidentally killed one of the robbers at the gas station, it would have been his fault for hacking the suit.
But even with that, the majority of the responsibility must still lie with the dude who put a loaded gun in the hands of a minor and then essentially told him ‘oh by the way, that’s a water pistol’.
Like, imagine if the worst had happened there. If Peter had (in his eyes) found himself responsible for killing a man by virtue of technology he didn’t even know he had. What do you think that would have done to him?
And that is why all of T/ony’s extended introspective mea culpa scenes in AoU, CW, and any other movie mean jackshit to me, because he never learns. He’s still doing the same thing, making the exact same mistake, making decisions for other people he has no right to be making for them, and refusing to acknowledge that even when he is willing to admit some small measure of responsibility after things go wrong, that isn’t exactly a big fucking comfort to the people who are made unwitting accomplices to his ego and end up shouldering a hell of a lot more of the burden when all’s said and done.
Tony Stark
• manufactured weapons and profited off people’s deaths
• decided to stop only when his own safety was disrupted
• made fun of Bruce turning into Hulk, knowing it was not the kind of a joke Bruce would enjoy
• made fun of Steve being frozen for 70 years, knowing it was not the kind of a joke Steve would enjoy
• made fun of the fact that Nick Fury had only one eye, knowing it was not the kind of a joke Nick would enjoy
• made a rape joke
• created Ultron
• kept the fact that he was creating Ultron in secret, although the Avengers deserved to know it
• laughed when it turned out that Ultron was about to destroy the world
• after his first attempt at creating Ultron had gone horribly wrong, he decided to create another, more powerful version of Ultron, having no idea whether it would be on their side
• and he did it in secret again
• after the creation of Ultron resulted in many deaths, it took a woman to confront him about it for him to start feeling guilty about it
• instead of owning up to his mistake and trying to make up for it properly, he guilt trips Avengers into “being responsible” and signing the Accords (as if it weren’t him and only him who continuously messed everything up and who needed supervision)
• called Wanda Maximoff a weapon of mass destruction
• locked Wanda Maximoff in the house with Vision, preferring not to ask for her consent or even warn her beforehand
• brought Peter Parker, a 14 year old child, into a fight with highly skilled adults who could have easily killed him
• didn’t even tell him what the fight was about and purposefully manipulated him into not listening to Steve or anyone else on his team by saying that they’re just wrong
• ignored Steve’s warning about Zemo’s plan and about many more Winter Soldiers out there
• started the fight with Team Cap, yet acted like he was betrayed
• blasted Sam Willson away after his team tried to kill him and accidentally hurt Rhodey, when Sam got down to say he was SORRY (for not dying?)
• yet wasn’t shown to be even remotely angry at Vision
• fought so hard for the accords (which even led to Avengers being imprisoned in the Raft under horrible conditions), broke the rules in about three days to go after Steve and Bucky
• knowing that Bucky was brainwashed and tortured and didn’t control himself when he killed Tony’s parents, still tried to kill him
• after he blasted Bucky’s arm off, and Steve picked him up to leave, he started screaming about how “his father made that shield” and how “Steve didn’t deserve it” (when from the very beginning it was Tony who was starting things, and Steve was defending himself and his friend)
• made sexual comments about Aunt May in front of Peter to make him uncomfortable
• after giving Peter hope that he’d become an Avenger one day, Tony ignored him and didn’t show any interest in what he was doing, letting Peter, a CHILD, think that he’d just have to be “good enough”, which was the reason Peter got into a lot of dangerous things
• installed an instant kill mode in Peter’s suit
• installed a bud into Peter’s suit without his permission or knowledge
• gave no indication that he actually listened to Peter when he told him about the villains, sent FBI to fight against Chitauri weapons (which would have been a suicide mission) and later, finding out that it didn’t work out, showed up, blaming Peter that he didn’t have faith in him
• took away Peter’s suit for no reason but the fact that Peter didn’t think Tony would have listened and decided to save hundreds of lives himself (what a hideous thing to do)
• later wanted Peter, a 15 year old, to join the Avengers and live with him, obviously hiding the whole thing from his legal guardian.
tony stark works in a vaccuum. he isolates himself and acts unilaterally because he believes he knows better than all the people who surround him. (for example, ‘i didn’t tell the team because i didn’t want to hear the man wasn’t meant to meddle medley’). t’challa works collaboratively, listening to his fellow council members, his family, and his community. t’challa doesn’t shut shuri out; he accepts her help and her good natured teasing.
tony stark only does things that benefit him in some way. tony does not have an overarching moral compass. he is not altruistic. tony supports the accords not because he believes its best for the world; he does it because he thinks it will help him get pepper back. we can take it back to literally the core of the creation of ironman. tony does not stop dealing weapons until that dealing had a direct negative effect on his life. tony does not build ironman out of altruism. he does it because he wants revenge. tony tries to kill bucky, knowing bucky’s actions as the winter soldier were coerced through mind control, because his need for revenge is more important.
t’challa is the opposite. t’challa has spent his entire life training to be a good man and good ruler for his people. t’challa does initially go after bucky and is motivated by revenge, but t’challa ends up literally taking bucky in as a refugee. and when t’challa finds the man responsible for his father’s death, he does not let revenge consume him. he takes zemo in alive to be held responsible for his actions. t’challa’s story arc in black panther is in many ways about t’challa fearing that he is not ready to lead his people, learning terrible things about his family history, working through it, and coming out on the other side confident and ready to use wakanda’s resources as a force for good across the world.
and let’s just talk about tony and t’challa’s relationships with women. tony repeatedly lies to pepper. tony puts pepper in danger. tony hits on his female employee at first sight (natalie/natasha). let’s not even talk about maya hansen. he bangs christine (reporter) and has pepper toss her out the next morning saying ‘i also take out his trash’. he hit’s on peter’s caretaker. what other interactions does he have with women for more than a few sentences? and, to be clear, all of these interactions are sexualized. he does not treat any of these women as his peers.
the contrast with t’challa is astonishing. t’challa’s closest confidantes are primarily women including his sister Shuri, his mother, Okoye, and Nakia. Only Nakia is a love interest, and he listens to her and ultimately follows her advice to use wakanda’s resources to help the world. he is surrounded by women who excel in their fields and he treats them, their opinions, and their bodies with respect.
i just don’t understand how people are trying to draw positive comparisons between tony and t’challa. if you respect t’challa’s values, then tony stark should disgust you. and dear jesus fucking christ if i see one single goddamn tony stan saying ‘tony should adopt shuri’ or ‘tony can teach shuri’ i swear to god i will find u and chop off your fingers so you can’t type this bullshit again.
– t’challa does not like tony stank. neither does shuri. in fact im sure after the shit he pulled in AoU and CW all of wakanda hate his lily white ass and have every single right to hate him
– steve was fully in his right to tell tony to fuck off and save his friend who was being falsely accused of crimes he did not commit or was brainwashed into doing. bucky is innocent no matter what twisting of canon yall want to do
– the accords are legally wrong and tony broke them literally fifteen minutes after signing them anyway so hes a hypocrite in one of many regards
– stop trying to force tony into every single goddamn movie. steve and natasha would have no reason to check up on him in cap 2. literally why wpuld thor care in any of his three movies. tony shouldn’t have been in cap 3, he shouldn’t have been in homecoming, he shouldn’t be in any movie beyond his own and the avengers movies.
– the guardians would not and probably wont like him. i personally hope gamora kick him in the head at some point.
– stop throwing around “rape” to demonize steve or wanda. steve beating tony up or wanda showing tony a ~bad image~ isnt rape. yall are literally removing the context of a horrible crime to make tony be a victim which he very much is not
– shuri is 100% smarter than tony. i know you people just HATE the idea that a young black girl would be smarter than your white fave but she is. she’s also selfless and cares for others without being a complete jackass about it
– aunt may is peter’s guardian no matter what! tony kidnapping him to germany then giving him a suit with a kill option and trying to coerice him into the avengers does not make him peter’s dad! thats so blantantly rude to aunt may also it only makes it clear tony would be a shit parent anway considering he manipulated peter through hero worship and almost got him KILLED because he dragged him into a fight against trained adults who didnt know he was a 15 year old to begin with (HE MADE HIM A CHILD SOLIDER?????)
– bruce, if he was in cw, wouldn’t be on tony’s side because he wouldn’t ever let ross control him or his actions, so jot that down
– the other avengers arent “abusing” tony because they call him out on his shit. steve’s reasoning is obvious in why he hates tony. thor had every reason to choke tony for going behind his back to make dangerous AI. natasha is actually friends with steve and sam and it makes sense she’d help them out in the end. tony literally EXPOSED CLINT’S FAMILY so of course he’d be against tony?? scott has never like tony so that’s obvious. wanda lost ALL of her family to tony so she has a very real beef with him. why would sam EVER like tony after he shot him point blank for something THE VISION DID???
– t’challa, literally only DAYS after seeing his father die in front of him, figured out the truth about bucky and decided to forgive him and take him in so him and shuri could get him back to his old self. in contrast, tony, who was twenty years removed from his parents dying in a plot he didnt even see, still decided after finding out the truth that he wanted to murder bucky for a crime he did not willingly do. the directors CONFIRMED THIS. he was not “subduing” him, tony was trying to KILL HIM.
– tony in all mcu canon thus far has never faced any consequences for his actions. even after he broke the accords he pushed for he ran off into the sunset problem free while everyone else has to hide for their safety. name ONE TIME in ANY of the mcu that tony ever faced repercussions for actions? hecause i can’t find a single example
– stank is ugly and pepper deserves better
– hes a bad friend and rhody and happy deserve better
– hes a literal war mongerer who makes bank off of damage HE CREATES. stan lee purposely designed him to be a fucking asshole war enabling capitalist and yet none of you seem to care??
– tony is not PoC or progressive or “female-coded”. he’s literally designed to be a white man power fantasty who lbr here would probably vote libertarian (if at all) after shitting on the idea of universal healthcare or reduced military spending. just because he has one (1) black friend doesn’t make him a beacon of modern values.
– steve, bucky, and sam are all war veterens with bucky literally being brainwashed and both him and steve having to live during the great depression. natasha was made into a child solider and neutered against her will. clint was also brainwashed. wanda saw both her parents die, felt her brother being killed, and was experimented on til her breaking point. t’challa saw his father be killed right in front of him. bruce tried to KILL HIMSELF. and yet despite the obvious PTSD they may have, all of them still do their best to be good people and do the right thing. tony on the other hand gets excused left and right for his right on brand bullshit that has actually harmed others because of his PTSD while every other character is demonized to hell and back when they do the right thing??
– tony has a lot of fucking nerve calling wanda a “weapon of mass destruction” when he made millions (maybe even billions) off of selling actual weapons of mass destruction that has destroyed countless undocumented lives in the mcu for a good chunk of his adult life.
stans: do an entire gynastics routine to say he didnt writes 800 page essays as to why he wasnt not really responsible some to the point of dating it back to Thor 2011
Cheloneuniverse 