What Tony Stark could do for me
Sep. 30th, 2017 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI was reading an AU where it felt like only Tony was in character. Steve was just this pretty guy in a bar. Didn't even keep the art.
The hook for the relationship was that Steve didn't recognise him, started out communicating in a format where they didn't see each other, so initially he treated him like any other human. Which was the foundation even after they figured out who they were.
And then Tony asked what he wanted from him.
And you know, with that as a start, the answer has to be stuff he could get from anyone else on the planet, to treat him like an ordinary guy, and definitely not want to use his money.
Except... that's not the foundation of Steve and Tony.
I mean, Steve gets to skip a lot of the background gossip and form his own opinion from experience, in 616, or SHIELD briefings and experience, in MCU. He doesn't have that response to celebrity anyone else with a tv in the Marvel multiverse would. He's a fanboy in a lot of noir AUs because Marvels, but usually it's Tony that's a fan of Steve.
So for one, they don't start out anon, that feels like stripping them too far, but it could make an okay start.
But the other is, what Steve wants with Stark money is extensive. He doesn't feel entitled to it or, where I've seen, talk him into it, but the entire base of their early relationship is Stark funding the Avengers, and Steve's assorted reactions to it.
Back off from that plus giving him an unrelated background? It's not Steve and Tony any more. Because this is where a lot of their chewier issues come from, that Steve, like every other close friend Tony has, is varying degrees of on the payroll, uses Stark equipment, and wants a whole lot from his genius and his money. Even before adding Iron Man into the mix. Tony seems eager to spend it, but Steve is getting spent on, and wow is that a lot of layers of Stuff to work through, if they want a romantic as well as business and team relationship.
... team seems an inadequate word for the getting shot at together parts. Mutual defense is pretty key there too.
Tony absolutely has issues where he expects everyone is only into him for his money, and could feel quite relieved to be anonymous interesting guy to someone.
But once it gets to the point of asking, what do they want from Tony?
I'm not sure having no ideas would be passing, let alone optimal.
Tony works with driven brilliant people who are dedicated to their causes. Through SI, through Rhodey's air force connection back before, through his charity work, and absolutely through the Avengers. Tony works hard and plays hard, but it has been a while in canon since he played with anyone he didn't work with, and even before that picking up big brain researchers and pretty for the night were apparently closely connected.
Tony *wants* to do things with his money. Grand and interesting things. Things he would not have thought of doing, and could not achieve, alone.
And if he's looking for pretty to spend tome with, that's cool, but if he's looking for a partner? In what way is being completely oblivious to his work a plus?
If Tony asked me... well I'd want a friend. I am not awesome at getting friends, if I had somehow a friend that interesting I would want to check parameters before risking the connection.
But after that?
I want to build space colonies.
And superhero teams, and find a legal role for them, integrate them at more levels of society, make sure they stay connected to the communities they protect, work on their legal rights and responsibilities, get into mutant rights and inhuman rights along with critiquing the whole gifted and enhanced program... I'm interested in his work, and would want to help improve it. Don't have the qualifications, do have ideas, would want to organise a team... and find someone to lead it since I'm not good at that either.
But also I want to build space colonies, and to do that is a complex engineering task, but an awe inspiring epic of a social one. Intentional communities that need to be self sustaining in the very long term. We'd need to run full scale tests of those for more than a century before we'd hit the bugs that come from all the original founders being gone and their kids after them. After the true believers who volunteer, after those raised by true believers, after the ones who met them as grandparents... what kind of culture drift happens when the originals are no longer directly influencing things? You wouldn't know for a really unintuitively long time.
And obviously it's going to be hard to simulate how closed off a space colony could be, and you'd get the problem of small towns and villages everywhere where everyone just leaks away to the big cities, but you also wouldn't get everyone dying from forgetting to pack, so, swings an roundabouts.
And I could go on about my vague ideas at some length, but, the point is, if Tony asked what I want from him, there's ideas I have that only countries or billionaires could feasibly help with, so I'd kind of have to ask him. It would be a terrible waste of opportunity to not ask. Space colonies wouldn't be ready or well prepared if nobody tried this stuff.
And I don't know if Tony Stark specifically is the guy for this. He might be more interested in other interests like supers and prison design and criminal justice. But I think he'd be interested that I find it interesting, and he's looking for people with drive and passion that could convert this kind of pie in the sky stuff to real work.
And if I'm wrong about that then he'd stop talking to me, but, if we've known each other a while and he's asking, it seems rude not to answer.
Friend, but friend we can do stuff together, and here is my idea for stuff...
And Steve very much has ideas for stuff, in canon, far as I know.
So leaving it all out for some simplified version that would never use Tony?
Means leaving out everything he's interested in and passionate about.
Kind of doesn't work.
Also? I get frustrated at the idea that romance is entirely separate from the complex business of daily living together. A partnership works together, even if it's just to arrange food or furnish a flat. With much bigger resources around the idea it's actually superior to just stand back and let him deal with it all seems... unequitable. Impractical. Kind of exhausting. A good partner might not be good at your job, but they're good at some part of the life you're going to share, or what's the point?
Being an amusing conversationalist is not the half of it.
But what do I know, people stuff is ever baffling to me.
The hook for the relationship was that Steve didn't recognise him, started out communicating in a format where they didn't see each other, so initially he treated him like any other human. Which was the foundation even after they figured out who they were.
And then Tony asked what he wanted from him.
And you know, with that as a start, the answer has to be stuff he could get from anyone else on the planet, to treat him like an ordinary guy, and definitely not want to use his money.
Except... that's not the foundation of Steve and Tony.
I mean, Steve gets to skip a lot of the background gossip and form his own opinion from experience, in 616, or SHIELD briefings and experience, in MCU. He doesn't have that response to celebrity anyone else with a tv in the Marvel multiverse would. He's a fanboy in a lot of noir AUs because Marvels, but usually it's Tony that's a fan of Steve.
So for one, they don't start out anon, that feels like stripping them too far, but it could make an okay start.
But the other is, what Steve wants with Stark money is extensive. He doesn't feel entitled to it or, where I've seen, talk him into it, but the entire base of their early relationship is Stark funding the Avengers, and Steve's assorted reactions to it.
Back off from that plus giving him an unrelated background? It's not Steve and Tony any more. Because this is where a lot of their chewier issues come from, that Steve, like every other close friend Tony has, is varying degrees of on the payroll, uses Stark equipment, and wants a whole lot from his genius and his money. Even before adding Iron Man into the mix. Tony seems eager to spend it, but Steve is getting spent on, and wow is that a lot of layers of Stuff to work through, if they want a romantic as well as business and team relationship.
... team seems an inadequate word for the getting shot at together parts. Mutual defense is pretty key there too.
Tony absolutely has issues where he expects everyone is only into him for his money, and could feel quite relieved to be anonymous interesting guy to someone.
But once it gets to the point of asking, what do they want from Tony?
I'm not sure having no ideas would be passing, let alone optimal.
Tony works with driven brilliant people who are dedicated to their causes. Through SI, through Rhodey's air force connection back before, through his charity work, and absolutely through the Avengers. Tony works hard and plays hard, but it has been a while in canon since he played with anyone he didn't work with, and even before that picking up big brain researchers and pretty for the night were apparently closely connected.
Tony *wants* to do things with his money. Grand and interesting things. Things he would not have thought of doing, and could not achieve, alone.
And if he's looking for pretty to spend tome with, that's cool, but if he's looking for a partner? In what way is being completely oblivious to his work a plus?
If Tony asked me... well I'd want a friend. I am not awesome at getting friends, if I had somehow a friend that interesting I would want to check parameters before risking the connection.
But after that?
I want to build space colonies.
And superhero teams, and find a legal role for them, integrate them at more levels of society, make sure they stay connected to the communities they protect, work on their legal rights and responsibilities, get into mutant rights and inhuman rights along with critiquing the whole gifted and enhanced program... I'm interested in his work, and would want to help improve it. Don't have the qualifications, do have ideas, would want to organise a team... and find someone to lead it since I'm not good at that either.
But also I want to build space colonies, and to do that is a complex engineering task, but an awe inspiring epic of a social one. Intentional communities that need to be self sustaining in the very long term. We'd need to run full scale tests of those for more than a century before we'd hit the bugs that come from all the original founders being gone and their kids after them. After the true believers who volunteer, after those raised by true believers, after the ones who met them as grandparents... what kind of culture drift happens when the originals are no longer directly influencing things? You wouldn't know for a really unintuitively long time.
And obviously it's going to be hard to simulate how closed off a space colony could be, and you'd get the problem of small towns and villages everywhere where everyone just leaks away to the big cities, but you also wouldn't get everyone dying from forgetting to pack, so, swings an roundabouts.
And I could go on about my vague ideas at some length, but, the point is, if Tony asked what I want from him, there's ideas I have that only countries or billionaires could feasibly help with, so I'd kind of have to ask him. It would be a terrible waste of opportunity to not ask. Space colonies wouldn't be ready or well prepared if nobody tried this stuff.
And I don't know if Tony Stark specifically is the guy for this. He might be more interested in other interests like supers and prison design and criminal justice. But I think he'd be interested that I find it interesting, and he's looking for people with drive and passion that could convert this kind of pie in the sky stuff to real work.
And if I'm wrong about that then he'd stop talking to me, but, if we've known each other a while and he's asking, it seems rude not to answer.
Friend, but friend we can do stuff together, and here is my idea for stuff...
And Steve very much has ideas for stuff, in canon, far as I know.
So leaving it all out for some simplified version that would never use Tony?
Means leaving out everything he's interested in and passionate about.
Kind of doesn't work.
Also? I get frustrated at the idea that romance is entirely separate from the complex business of daily living together. A partnership works together, even if it's just to arrange food or furnish a flat. With much bigger resources around the idea it's actually superior to just stand back and let him deal with it all seems... unequitable. Impractical. Kind of exhausting. A good partner might not be good at your job, but they're good at some part of the life you're going to share, or what's the point?
Being an amusing conversationalist is not the half of it.
But what do I know, people stuff is ever baffling to me.