beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
[personal profile] beccaelizabeth
Impression I got from watching Iron Man films: Tony Stark has three friends, two of them his employees. Happy, Rhodey and Pepper. They talk different amounts about different things, but they're there, in his life, having conversations, sparring with him, and intermittently yelling at him when he has done something legitimately deeply stupid. Which, lets face it, is a not inconsiderable amount of time. Tony is shiny, but he is not wise.

Impression from Avengers fic?
Well, there's some of it that also has Pepper in. A tiny bit of Rhodey. And little to none of Happy, to the point he's pretty much just a taxi. Not even a taxi driver, they talk more.

I realise it's a side effect of the kind of fic I read that it usually gets rid of The Girlfriend (though, really, there should be more poly fic, there's all kinds of awesome possibilities), but getting rid of all his friends? For why?

JARVIS and the bots feature more than Happy. And while bots are indeed awesome, it's kind of bugging me.

New friends do not mean old friends are stinky.



Also, I started out liking that everyone moves into Avengers Tower together, but the more I think about it the more it isn't everyone. I have very rarely seen Thor bring Jane and Darcy, but mostly it just isolates these people so the Avengers are their whole life. That's... not good.

Granted for some of them we have so little canon to work with it might be accurate, they maybe don't exist outside their SHIELD assignments and only have the one friend in the universe who happens to be their team mate now, but... creepy.

And for people where we do know they've got this network, small but been through everything with them, that shouldn't just fall away because they've got new toys now.



Also? Breaking up with Pepper? Irritates me in familiar ways. Because all the ways are familiar from other fics. Girlfriend is jealous, girlfriend never supports him, girlfriend never really understood him.
This is Pepper Potts. She has been with Tony for a bit of a while now. Tony trusts her absolutely. With his life, and his bots, and his company, and his money, and everything that is good and decent in his world.
Making her suddenly the shrew that never supported him? Say what?
And it's not even like she doesn't know what she's getting into by the end of Iron Man 2 / after The Avengers. He's been Iron Man for a while by then. Hmmm, over six months by the official Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline, the one that puts almost everyone's movies happening in the same week and The Avengers right after that. If she can't cope with him being shot at, she's probably noticed before she starts dating him. If she can't cope with being shot at, she's had a couple of chances to find out. I can see how one can reach the end of one's tether on those issues, but it shouldn't be new to her.
Also? Trying to get your boyfriend to get shot at slightly less? Not actually a sign of not caring.
And quite likely something that would get her to support the whole Avengers thing, with the chances for someone to have his back.
Further, if the issue is them not finding time to be together, you have just dissed the scheduling skills of super PA. Don't even.

I watch the films and kind of want to advise Pepper to run while the getting is good, because the failure modes, they are all right there in the open. But that's the thing, they're right there in front of her, she has had a ring side seat for far longer than we have, she knows what she's getting into.

Honestly the fics that have them in a happy poly/open arrangement where she schedules world travel to meet up with sex friends and leaves Tony to play with the Avengers seem a lot more plausible to me than the ones where she breaks up with him. Especially where she breaks up with him for continuing to be Tony Stark.

... I know people do that, find out things just don't work out when they change how they interact, but reading a stack of them that assume that just kind of annoyed me.


Basically, Avengers fic: The more the merrier.

(And I say this as someone who only reads the ones where Tony ends up with Steve.)

Date: 2012-07-24 05:06 pm (UTC)
baronjanus: I was searching for the answer, it turns out it's rock and roll. Hugh Dillon Works Well With Others (hcl suffer for his art)
From: [personal profile] baronjanus
I like Pepper, which is precisely why I like it better when she's the great friend and support system and basically his family, rather than being The Girlfriend. I don't see it working much as a romantic relationship. Open/poly, maybe, yeah, but even so. Way I see it - way I write it at the moment anyway, though you know I can go all ways with that in other configurations - she'll stay by his side and be awesome and Peppery all through. But she needs someone who's an actual boyfriend. And he needs someone, something, else. (I plan to end up 'shipping her into a good pairing, do not worry)

Date: 2012-07-26 04:38 pm (UTC)
baronjanus: I was searching for the answer, it turns out it's rock and roll. Hugh Dillon Works Well With Others (loki hulk my secret always fannish)
From: [personal profile] baronjanus
I want to believe she would be a good friend and support all his future dumbass relationships like she had in the past. Buddies-like.

Date: 2012-07-24 07:40 pm (UTC)
melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
From: [personal profile] melannen
To some extent, the "where is everybody else" problem is a carryover from the comics - I think it's less so now, but traditionally you could read all the Avengers comics and barely know Happy or Jane exsisted, just like you could read the Justice League comics and not ever hear about Batman's and Superman's supporting casts - you need the support cast for the individual titles, but trying to bring them all into the team titles means your cast gets out of hand fast.

It's more realistic that way, because in RL the cast does get out of hand sometimes, but it's way easier to write the other way. You can kind of see that in the fic, in that people are still writing Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America fic that uses the people from those movies, and it's different from the Avengers fic. So I call it one more neat way the movieverse is managing to replicate the comics and live with it (as much as I do want more Darcy and Rhodey and Happy and Jane and Erik and Betty and Samson.)

Date: 2012-07-25 12:19 am (UTC)
kickair8p: Hulk grins at the order to SMASH! (HulkGrin)
From: [personal profile] kickair8p
Awwwww, but Pepper/Tony/Bruce OT3!!!

Writing is hard, but yeah, I like the fics that bring in all the peeps. The happier the better.

~

Date: 2012-07-25 04:19 pm (UTC)
kickair8p: Hulk grins at the order to SMASH! (HulkGrin)
From: [personal profile] kickair8p
To each their own -- I considered Tony/Steve the most believable pairing before I saw Avengers.

~

Date: 2012-07-24 05:03 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] jeriendhal.livejournal.com
Thanks for making me aware of a fault in the Avengers fic I'm currently writing (actually inspired by a fanficriants entry from yesterday). I've already covered Thor & Jane (they're offscreen being busy together) but I'd forgotten about Happy.

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beccaelizabeth: my Watcher tattoo in blue, plus Be in red Buffy style font (Default)
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