#rhodeslab

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One thing I came up with for them that turned out to be kinda canon or at least has canon evidence to support it

that rhodey is at least 200 times more chaotic than tony, but because he is a colonel and hasn't had his bare ass plastered all over the tabloids, people find it incredibly hard to accept he'd do some of the outrageous shit tony gets accused of. my only canon evidence is the way rhodey smirked in iron man 2 during the senate hearing as he watched tony make an ass of justin hammer and that hydra senator. rhodey being 200 times more interesting as a person than tony is a hill i will always choose to die on

One thing I came up with for them that I refuse to change no matter how OOC it may seem

rhodey programmed U to put motor oil into tony's shakes as a joke in college and since tony never bothered to check why his beloved bot insisted on putting motor oil in his smoothies, rhodey let him go on thinking it was just a quirky glitch — also because when tony does realise it, at the ripe old age of 60, he looks so outraged that rhodey's on the floor howling with laughter.

Their government assigned theme song

this i am not sure 🤔

Something about them barely explored in canon that I expanded on

rhodey's relationship with lila. the comics gave us crumbs while the mcu still ignores the fact that rhodey has a life outside being tony's best friend and war machine. rhodey and lila have always been close and she goes to him first with all of her problems instead of her parents — she came out to him first, she called him when a girl broke her heart in college, she ran away from home in philly once only to end up outside his apartment in new york. one reason why rhodey put on the suit and became war machine was because he wanted to keep the world safe and protect his niece at all costs.

3 characters from another media that helped inspire my shaping of them

it's mostly a combination of don's long body of works and a whole lot of tropes from well-written books and tv shows/movies i have read/watched.

Did I permanently remove any unfavourable canon elements from their character/setting

yep that gross moment the clown brigade added to avengers endgame. rhodey would never make fat jokes nor would he ever mock someone's trauma — man's been in the air force before becoming war machine, he has seen and experienced first hand trauma and ptsd. he'd never joke about that, he would've sat thor down and remind him that the only person to blame for the state of the universe was thanos.

🥺🥺🥺 (a different version of that soft scene from Endgame)

"Don't...go."

The voice was barely a whisper. If it wasn't for the room's palpable, suffocating silence — interrupted only by the low buzz of the air conditing unit on the ceiling — Rhodey would've missed it altogether. He sighed in the doorway; he had hoped to slip away unnoticed, knowing it would've made the task at hand easier.

"Please, Rhodey. It's a suicide mission."

The laboured breathing made Rhodey turn. Tony lay on the bed, his back propped up by the pillows Rhodey had adjusted moments earlier, knowing it'd give relief to his friend's troubled back. He still looked deathly pale; being stranded in space with dwindling supplies had reduced him to skin and bones while the enormity of their defeat pooled into the pleading, downcast brown eyes.

Rhodey shuffled forward. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to Tony's, cold and chapped; a featherlight kiss that held an entire world — their world — in its grip, frozen in time and space. Tony whined when Rhodey pulled away. Desperation bubbled in his eyes, threatening to fall as tears.

"Tony, I'll come back. I always do," Rhodey said, even as the words rang hollow in his ears. He knew Tony was right. Facing Thanos again, after the dust from the previous catastrophe had barely settled, was a fool's gambit. But helplessness in the face of overwhelming chaos and despair left them with little choice.

Rhodey kissed him again and combed his fingers through Tony's matted, overgrown hair — that man needed a shower once he could stand straight for five minutes without passing out.

"Listen to me, Tones, I want you to rest. I want you to get better, okay? Because when I come back, and I am coming back, we're going to have a long talk about you running off into space without back up." When Tony looked away, defiant even in his weakest moment, Rhodey cupped his chin with a gentle tilt until their eyes met. "I am coming back, you hold on to that, you hear me?"

rhodey and carol spent a period of time trying to outdo one another in arranging over-the-top dates. rhodey designed an underwater ship to bring carol down to the bottom of the challenger deep for dinner. carol, in turn, took him for a rendezvous to the dark side of the moon. tony thought it was ridiculous but being the chaotic best friend that he was, he egged them on. so rhodey brought her for a picnic at idunn's orchard on asgard (thor was happy to oblige) while carol dragged rhodey to a 24-hour rave at knowhere (rocket got her tix because he owed her).