Do you see Tony stark as a male version of Peggy Carter? A rich high class brat that won't hesitate to do anything and side with anyone to shine and then act like everyones protective god mother? Or do you think he is at least a bit redeemable because he might have learned bit from his mistakes.
There are certain similarities. Peggy definitely has more in common with the Starks than anyone.
In her show, all her 'friends' are not from the same SEC as her, as with the Starks. In fact, her friends are... employees. Butlers, waitresses, housekeepers... they're almost literally being paid to be friends with her. You see that with Tony, too. His 'friends' are: an air force colonel (when Tony has extremely lucrative military contacts with the air force), his PA (who gets made his CEO and... immediately dumps him), his bodyguard, his robot butler, his other robot servants... and women who benefit financially from sex with him (Christine Everhart and Maya Hansen). In Peggy's case, she's that woman to Howard Stark. š¬ (And Steve).
In AC, the only time you see a person from the same socioeconomic class as Peggy, they're a villain. Similar thing with Tony's villains in IM (Obadiah Stane, Anton Vanko, Justin Hammer, Aldrich Killian...) they're just Other Tonys.
(So you can tell that TPTB have some kind of... English fetish going on and think upper classness is definitely part of her Specialness?)
While Tony has the same 'avoidance of all consequences for his actions' wealthy white privilege that Peggy has, there are certain important differences.
Generally speaking, they share one over-arching trait, which is: if you consider whether or not the world / people around them would be better off if they didn't exist, the answer is yes.
Without Tony, there'd be no Anton Vanko, no Aldrich Killian, no Quentin Beck (which means no Spider-Mans dimensional incursion), no Ultron (which, in another universe, endangered the entire multiverse), no dead Pietro, no dead Sokovians generally (meaning probably no Scarlet Witch, no Vision, no Westview Hex, all the knock-on effects of that?), no Snap. And Hulk or Thor could have put the nuke through the wormhole in A1 (except he wouldn't because it wouldn't have been written into the story at all since Hemsworth doesn't have short man syndrome.)
With no Peggy, Steve's story in CATFA isn't altered (because she didn't matter to the plot or his life at all). But there would be no Winter Soldier programme (since she wouldn't be around to give the man who started it a job at SHIELDra), ergo no Black Widows being mind-controlled either (since that was based on Winter Soldier tech), no continued Hydra (WhatIf confirms all this by showing that a SHIELD founded by everyone else who was there originally, except her, has no Nazis in it.) Ergo no Project Insight. No Winter Soldier means no assassination of Howard Stark, so no Civil War bust up of the Avengers, if Tony still exists (unless Zemo found some other way to effect it). C.1940s her male colleagues in SSR would have handled everything she interfered with in AC, Edwin Jarvis's wife wouldn't have been sterilised by gsw in the uterus, and Daniel Sousa would have settled down with a nice girl (nurse Violet, possibly Skye) and wouldn't have been assassinated by Hydra for whistleblowing in 1955, because there wouldn't be any Hydra.
.
Now the differences:
First, Tony is actually above-average at some of the things he thinks he's good at, so his arrogance based on that is at least partially warranted (which Peggy's conviction of her own competence, moral integrity, etc. isn't).
His estimate of his own ability is debatable, though, since his genius (in the MCU) stems from the Grand American Capitalist Tradition of stealing other peoples' work, doing a minimal amount to hone it, and then claiming all the credit / reaping all the financial reward.
(See: Iron Man suits, AI, E.D.I.T.H., B.A.R.F., Extremis serum, time-travel, etc. Tony's only original creations I can think of in the MCU are his robot-servants and the improvised booby-traps from Iron Man 3.)
Second, Tony may have got into MIT as a legacy admission (nepotism), but he does actually have at least some of the expertise in a STEM field to warrant a place, which Peggy lacks.
(She gets an honorary degree from IIRC Oxford: ie. rewarded for doing no work. And while she claims competence in mathematics (as part of the AC retcon of her war record), outside of one code-breaking scene her alleged mathematical ability is never shown. And in fact there is a scene where a character has to explain to Peggy how many sides a cube has. No, I am not exaggerating. This literally happened.
And Bletchley Park's happy concession to her leaving mid-war suggests she wasn't a crucial employee. It's like the opposite of all those 'screenshots of my boss begging me to come back after I quit' stories.)
Third, while Tony may have inherited his company without earning it, he does have the necessary brains and thieving habits to create and maintain such a company if he wanted to. He was CEO for decades (since the age of 21) without the company imploding.
Although Obadiah Stane was dirty dealing under his nose without his knowledge so- er wow okay looks like he and Peggy are neck and neck? Except that Peggy did know she had bastards working for her and kept them on anyway (see: Zola, Mitchell Carson).
Tony has some appropriate skills; which cannot be said of Peggy in any of her unearned spying jobs.
Peggy is a nepotism baby who couldn't stomach any of the jobs she was handed on a silver platter, one after another, that she kept idiotically choosing to ask for despite her unsuitability for them (which she also cannot recognise).
And then she flaked out on these jobs from 'boredom,' even in the middle of a crisis like a world war (failure is never her fault, always the job's, always the mens').
Essentially she keeps asking for desk jobs she doesn't deserve, being given them because of glass ceiling nepotism, and then whining when she⦠is expected to do them? And is not respected when she doesn't?
She believes she is a brilliant, underappreciated spy, surrounded by inferiors, but cannot spot a single spy when they infiltrate her organisation or home (any one of many, many occasions: during the war and after).
She's a spy who craves attention.
Whose disguises fail in seconds, and are so inept that she cannot avoid detection by someone who barely knows her, even when photographed from the back!
(Contrast that with actual-spy Natasha, whose disguises are so good not even we realise it's her until she reveals herself! Or Coulson, who is not disguised but is so unassuming that he has no need!)
Peggy is a woman who thinks she is a sort of hero to other women... but is fine shunting the work which she considers beneath her off onto them... (but she reacts with outrage when men do that exact same thing to her) ...or fine with letting her rich male friends get away with chauvinism.
Who interferes to prevent male feminist colleagues from taking steps that would make life better for the Other Girls (whom she is Not Like and who Cannot Therefore be allowed to Become Like her.)
(Because as long as White Feminist knows Her value, she's the only person that matters!)
It takes a certain level of competence to correctly gage the extent of your own competence, or relative incompetence. It's the basis of true self-awareness.
She lacks that.
(Whether Tony also lacks it is... not clear. Maybe he does, too).
Peggy's continued bloody-minded belief that she is, eg. a competent spy and a feminist, directly contrary to the evidence... (because the writers aren't capable of recognising when they've written the exact opposite of what they vaguely intended) ...is the proof that she lacks the qualities necessary to actually be either of those things.
And to realise that she is just not physically or temperamentally suited to spying or heroism, at all.
She does share Tony's habit of blaming anything but herself for her problems, though. š¤
When Peggy shows up hours late for work, eats like a slob at her desk while all the men are doing their paperwork, refuses to do said paperwork (even though that's the job she's been hired for and accepted) as if it's an insult to even ask her, shunts it off onto female underlings (can't expect Her Majesty to do it, but those working class sluts upstairs?), and then does nothing except sabotage her colleagues' work for months, then unilaterally hires someone (Johann Fennhoff) who cannot be trusted and so kills 40+ people...
She acts as if her male colleagues' lack of respect for her ability is due to ONLY sexism, and not to her being -- for example -- lazy, treacherous, bad-tempered, entitled, disastrously incompetent, and a self-outing nepotism hire, who is ALSO a woman.
(The fact that she is also sloppy/unprofessional at work is moot, since at least one of the male agents is too, and in this field her capacity for violence is a feature, not a bug.)
When Tony calls himself a "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" he is at least getting 1/4 of those right... ish?
(Is it genius to commit industrial espionage and rip off the designs of other men including employees, do 12% of the work and then patent them as your own?
When it's JARVIS and FRIDAY who do everything for him, actually?
Is inheriting generational wealth a flex?
Does exchanging sex for favours make you a womaniser or a creepy Weinstein-esque loser?
Does making money off cleaning up the very mess you caused, for Rich-White-Guy tax write-offs, count as actual philanthropy?
Would an actual philanthropist list philanthropy last, of all those things on the list?)
He does appear to learn from his mistakes for a brief period...
(His Act 1 Fuck Up is usually revealed as a Plot!Coupon necessary for his Act 3 Success; the icing over of the Iron Man suit, the double-reverb attack gained from firing at Rhodey in IM2, etc.)
...But that is over-ruled at the beginning of each new Iron Man movie, when the lessons of the last one are ignored to set his personality back at 0. š
In the case of the Avengers movies, though, he doesn't learn at all. Ultron tries to murder everyone (WhatIf reveals he would have eventually destroyed the entire multiverse.)
Hydra tries to enact Project Insight A.I. to kill millions...
And yet years later Tony is still claiming those two as morally correct successes, flawed only because they were made to fail (not because they were horrible fascist ideas to begin with), and redoing Insight as EDITH only giving it to a disaster teenage boy. š¤¦āāļø
Peggy, however, is pathologically incapable of learning from mistakes, because that first requires you to acknowledge that you are capable of making mistakes, which is inconceivable to her.
She has herself up on a high pedestal, as the pinnacle of womanhood around which the world and all other women surely revolve, and cannot be knocked off her axis.
The closest she has ever come to an accurate self-assessment was when Edwin Jarvis called her arrogant and ignorant and she flippantly pretended to agree. (Inadvertently proving him right).
Tony is possibly redeemable because he at least has sensible people around him, telling him he's a fucking idiot.
He does occasionally make the obeisance of saying 'my bad,' even if he doesn't fully comprehend it.
Peggy on the other hand isn't redeemable because she doesn't think she's ever done anything wrong in her life, ever.
She thinks she is practically perfect in any way. Atwell thinks she's a good enough sort of woman to fix any man! Like a lot of TERFs and white feminists, she would see the mere suggestion of any wrongdoing on her part as preposterous.
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Steve Rogers and Stephen Strange have literally never interacted in the movies so why the fuck do all the Tonky stans who hate Steve use Strange as a prop to voice their opinions????
I love tom Hollands spider-man but hate the fact that his role as spiderman is getting overshadowed by the fact that they kept having tony. Like I get tony supposes to be his mentor and all but it's like the fan can only sew peter as someone who can't do anything without Tony
Ohhhhhh buddy this is such a can of worms for me lmao I am so sorry if I go off the rails, Iāll try to keep it to a minimum..
Marvel is so far up toenail stinkys ass they couldnāt tell right from left or up from down. If marvel wanted to give Tom an actual mentor they couldāve done Banner whos an actual scientist with a shitload of phDs but noooo lets bring in toenail. And heās not even a good mentor??? Like what the hell, man???
And most of the fandom has such a hard on for that narc toenail, that instead of leaving Peter to grow as his own character, they have to insert rdjs 5ā9ā ugly lookin ass into everything. Headcanons here and there and everywhere about their perfect father/son relationship!!! Completely erasing Peters relationship with Aunt May and Uncle Ben.
And itās Marvels fault that the fandom sees Peter as this UWU soft boi who needs a father/son relationship with stank because every time time they showed Peter being able to do something on his own as his own person, they had t*ny there to belittle him-
āNot in that onesie youāre not.ā
Or offer *advice*-
āIf youāre nothing without the suit, then you shouldnāt have itā
Like boye stfu u aināt shit without your fancy ass suit either.
OH AND HELL rmr when Peter kept telling him āhey thereās some fishy stuff going on, the baddies are having a meetingā and t*ny doesnāt respond and instead just tells the fbi or some shite and then gets mad at Peter when Peter actually tries to do something about it??? That aināt a mentor. Thatās just another adult who thinks that a teenager has nothing special to say and THEN when said teenager was RIGHT the adult blames everything on the teenager.
A TRUE MENTOR wouldāve been there for him and told him, āalright thanks for the information, Iāll have my guys look into it, good job kid.ā
But what does Peter get instead???
......also real mentors donāt talk about how hot a 15yos Aunt is right in front of them. Jus sayinā.
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Things Marvel should do in 2017: - let Steve Rogers take a damn nap - give Bucky Barnes a cat and lots of hugs - let Wanda Maximoff learn to love and accept herself fully, weird powers and all - kick T/ny in the balls - let Sam Wilson be happy / take up the shield - EXPLAIN BUDAPEST - stop making so many damn spiderman reboots - explain how "When you can do the things I can do, but you don't, and people get hurt because of it.... that's on you," sounds in ANY WAY like "We can't be trusted to make the right decisions so we have to hand responsibility to the government." Explain that. - give us more Sam/Bucky interaction - give us more Sam/Bucky/Steve interaction - give us Sam ratting out Steve's reckless behaviour to Bucky - Sharon Carter VS Natasha Romanoff in literally any kind of competition ever
CACW starting off the tonystarkification of phase 3 was bad enough but I swear the GP has amnesia when it comes to that movie and the teamironman takes you see go viral. like no one except for rhdy agreed w him by the end and switched teams. t'challa is the only (other than steve) to recognize bucky as a victim and help him, yet the GP seems to only pay attention to fight scenes & ignore actual characterization?? IW did a bad job of cementing the T'C/SR/BB teamup from CACW for the GP's memory
Whatās hilarious about IW (or infuriating, depending on whether youāre a glass-half-empty kinda person??) is, because the Avengers movies went out of their way to pretend Bucky didnāt exist (I assume thanks to HA letting Whedon take her out for a drink), until Steve is walking right up to Bucky and hugging him in Wakanda, if you had only ever watched Avengers movies, you would have no idea who that guy is.
And then they go right back to pretending Bucky doesnāt exist in EG by having Steve react (slightly) to Samās resurrection, and having a Moving Stare Off when TāChalla comes back...Ā
But his reaction to Buckyās resurrection is not shown, and he is never mentioned even once, despite being the first person to turn to dust.Ā
In fact, they mention movies Sebastian Stan has been in more than they mention the actual person Sebastian Stan is supposed to be playing in this universe.Ā
And they thought ramming in a gratuitous director-cameo as Unnamed Gay would mask the scent of their gay panic?Ā
Nope! It still stinks!
(And as for CW, which is just a trainwreck of bad characterisation for everyone tbh...Ā
Well, Natasha has known Tony a lot longer than Steve, and a lot more intimately. And Natasha has also had access to the same info as Steve, which suggested TWS might have murdered Tonyās parents.Ā
*totally justified in Starkās case anyway since he co-founded SHIELDra and was buddies withĀ āArnieā and knew TWS was āSergeant Barnesā way back in the 1990s- but moving on*Ā
And yet, Iāve never heard any suggestion that Tony was going to hunt Natasha down and go on a homicidal rampage to punish her for lying to him about his parentsā deaths (including trying to kill Clint just to hurt her).Ā
Because that would be stupid, right??
The Avengers movies reduced individual characters to bad campy one-note stereotypes of their solo movie selves, with the result that Avengers-Tony is just a bullying bro-wannabe mancave-having prick, and Steve is... some kind of Homelander-esque 'old-fashionedā thing?Ā
(Wrong! Steve was ahead of his time in the 1940s. āThe creators got in-person death threats from American Nazisā kind of ahead-of-his-time. So for him to be old-fashionedĀ now,Ā he would have had to be āof his timeā in the 1940s.)Ā
There is this amateur writerās belief (*cough*Whedonagain*cough*) that, just because conflict is interesting,Ā therefore the only interesting way to introduce characters to each other is if theyāre having an argument in every scene.Ā
So they never showed Steve and Tony actually getting along.Ā
(Honestly, the most unbelievable thing in AOU wasnāt the magic, it was Steve spending the whole movie glaring in disapproval every time Tony opens his mouth, but then sayingĀ āIāll miss youā at the end. They want to make Steve out to be a self-sacrificing verging on self-destructive type, but this only makes sense if heās also a huge masochist!)
But then they expect us to believe not only that they did get along (well you didnāt show us that, you showed us the opposite of that), but that the end of their āfriendshipā would be a devastating development for both of them...Ā
When, in fact, all that happened is that everyone ended up living in paradise,Ā looking their best selves, and Tony ended up engaged to his dream woman and conceiving a kid.Ā
If thatās the result, they shouldāve split the Avengers years ago!)Ā
Since tumblrs tagging is so shit I propose that we tag all posts that are specifically anti Tony as one word so they wonāt come up just when someone searches for anything similar that way people donāt get mad about accidental cross tagging.