hello my friend do u have any recs for fics with insecure tony? i love that sad old man
Hello nonnie! I'm not sure what specific flavor of "insecure" you're looking for but you could give these a try:
Refraction by chelicerata: AU Tony where he never became Iron Man after his experience in Afghanistan meets dimension-hopping post-Endgame Peter; a definite fave of mine!
Want for Nothing by pastself: Peter POV so you have to read between the lines for Tony's side of things, but an EXCELLENT exploration of Tony's various Relationship Insecurities through the lens of the two of them coping with the world's reaction to their relationship. Another absolute fave!
only when I hit the ground by Aisalynn: a lovely look at a post-Endgame Tony who made it out alive but not unscathed, and how that impacts how he approaches his relationships (and his will-they-won't-they dynamic with Peter in particular.) πππ
Expiration Date by LearnedFoot: perfect execution of "pining while dating"-- Tony thinks their relationship is just a fling on Peter's side, and has a lot of feelings about it.
Another Life by InColor: love a good fic that explores the fallout of common tropes-- resurrected Tony has a hard time integrating back into the living world.
the friendly neighborhood by postelectric: it's less that there's a specific focus on his insecurity here and more that it's just a pitch-perfect Tony Stark so there's a general background atmosphere of gentle self-loathing? AU where Tony ghosts Peter after Homecoming, and they meet again as adults post-EG (that Tony survives, worse for wear.)
Rebuild by tuesday: similar vibes to the above! Post-EG Tony (who lived) and how his relationship with Peter develops over time; another Big Fave.
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...can you elaborate more on doctrine of labyrinths bc what you mentioned abt it in your last post sounds π₯΅
oh BOY you don't know what you've done
I would love to talk about DOL; it is one of my BIG BIG favorites and now you've unleashed me. I'm unleashed. SO: Doctrine of Labyrinths is a 4-book series by Sarah Monette/Katherine Addison, who folks might know from some of her other work like The Goblin Emperor. (Which is also very good!)
It's queer historical fantasy set in roughly ~~~Industrial Revolutionish Fantasy France, where there are harsh class divisions between the Upper City and Lower City, and some people are naturally born with the gift of magic and others are not. The A-plot of each individual book typically revolves around some kind of magical- or court intrigue-based mystery, but the through-line of the whole series is the very devoted but extremely fraught (platonicβ¦ish) relationship between our two leads, Felix and Mildmay.
Felix is my beautiful princess with a disorder. He's a wizard within the ranks of the Upper City's fancy magic court, and other characters either love him or hate him because he's charming and witty and brilliant but also a huge bitch who is sososo fucked up from The World's Most Ghoulish Backstory and he's never met a situation that he didn't want to make worse. He will cause problems on purpose and then hate himself for it. He's terrible and I love him.
Mildmay is one of my favorite characters of all time! His full name is Mild-may-your-sufferings-be-at-the-hands-of-the-wicked because his mom made some Decisions before she left him orphaned, and let me tell you: the sufferings? Not mild. He was raised from childhood in a gang of thieves, and as a result he's very rough around the edges and he ain't saying shit about nothin', ever, including all of the sufferings, oh god Mildmay please say something about the sufferings to someone, please. Other characters tend to write him off as a brainless-but-scary thug despite the fact that he is incredibly street-smart and, beneath the stony exterior, very kind.
So when we zoom out to what gets examined within that relationship, DOL is ultimately an exploration of different patterns people might find themselves in following abuse from multiple angles (Felix is primarily an externalizer who struggles with curbing his own abusive tendencies; Mildmay is primarily an internalizer who struggles with repeatedly falling into emotionally-unfulfilling or outright exploitative relationships) and what it means to heal and who deserves to do that, in the context of some really excellent mysteries and intriguing worldbuilding and a very fun magic system that runs mostly on symbolism. It is MESSY and NUANCED and very dark but ultimately hopeful, which is like, everything I want in a narrative.
But speaking of: yeah, it's Very dark. There is on-screen sexual assault, damn near every POV character has CSA in their backstory (including some at single-digit ages) and this is discussed unflinchingly and with some brief on-screen flashbacks, there is medical abuse/forced medical institutionalization and graphic deaths and depictions of the aftermath of torture and so much in-universe victim-blaming/queerphobia/ableism/general horrible ethics and physical/emotional child abuse including child death and it's a LOT. It is a lot.
But as I said, it is ultimately a hopeful story and I found it very affirming and cathartic and just, such a breath of fresh air in terms of presenting such an array of non-perfect-victim reactions to trauma and letting characters be messy and fucked up and nigh-unforgivable and then gently taking their hands and asking "do you want to be better? because you still can." Definitely, definitely, definitely recommend, but just, um, mind the trigger warnings for Everything.
(And as for the π₯΅: yeah lmao there are Vibes all over the place. Most of the actual sex in these books is not horny at all but hoo boy are there some Vibes.)
For the tropes: didn't know they were dating, coffee shop aus, unpowered/all-human aus (π)!
Didn't Know They Were Dating: B! I'm not going to plug it in to specifically search for but it's a solid trope and one that will pique my interest if I see it in the tags/summary. Great for both fluff/comedy and angst-- the "one person thinks they're 'just' FWB and is angsty about it but the other person fully thinks they're dating" variant is a fave!
Coffee Shop AUs / Unpowered AUs: I'm lumping these together because they're pretty much the same answer-- C~D. Mundane AUs are basically a "ehhh probably not⦠unless," for me! With the "unless" being that I'll give it a try if something else about the premise or writing sparks my attention. Some other tropes inherently supersede the "probably not" like omegaverse, arranged marriage or historical AUs, and strong/punchy writing in the summary (or an author that I trust) will also get me to give them a shot. (Everyone read @spider-mancan Touchpoint, it is SO good.)
Speaking generally, if a canon has fantastical elements then that's a big part of the appeal to me and stripping those elements away for a fic is going to also strip away its appeal, thus the need for a Something Else to catch my attention.
With Starker in specific, the way that being superheroes influences both Tony and Peter's characters and their dynamic together is a big part of what I find compelling about them as a ship! I like that Tony has all the social power but Peter is the one that's more physically powerful, I like the way that the superhero context inherently puts them in a very small peer group and heightens the potential for codependency and mutual understanding, I love their mutual guilt complexes and that tends to be lessened as a character feature in mundane AUs, etc.
Groundhog Day time loop: A+ A+ A+, I love time travel in general (this is another A I will just put it here) and time loops in particular! In addition to just being FUN I am always super impressed when someone manages to pull one off, because the structuring and planning involved in keeping an inherently repetitive premise interesting has to be a huge (but fulfilling!!) headache.
Soulmate AU: this one is the inverse of ETL where it's a ~D in general but a B for Starker (and other, like, ethically dicey ships.)
I don't enjoy soulmate AUs for fluff purposes or relatively mundane ships because I actually kind of find the idea of soulmates inherently unromantic-- romance to me is about opening yourself up to be vulnerable with another person, and "no no it's okay the universe already decided that you're perfect together and they'll definitely love you back :)" gets rid of a lot of that-- but give me an age gap ship or incest or ETL or something like that along with the soulmates, and suddenly we've added the stakes and therefore the vulnerability back in and I'm SO on-board.
Animal shapeshifting/transformation: if we're talking "help I've been turned into a cat" that's a B for me! Cute plot, not going to specifically search it up but it's a classic. If we're talking, like, werewolves, that's an A for the same reasons as the brands of omegaverse that I like haha.
Reincarnation: this is the type of thing that I really enjoy in original works but is a little more hit-or-miss in fanfic? In my experience it's often either so AU'd that it loses the connective tissue to the aspects that I enjoy about the ship, or is essentially a mundane AU with another narrative awkwardly layered over it-- I don't usually find that it's integrated into the plot in a way that excites me vs kinda muddying the waters. But if the premise of how it's handled in an individual fic sounds interesting, I'll give it a try! Solid C for me.
Bodyswap: C! Doesn't inherently excite me, but I'll give it a shot if the summary is good. I feel like the things I do find interesting about the bodyswap trope (understanding other perspectives etc.) work better for original works and gen than for shippy fic I guess, so since I don't read much gen it's not up there for me as a fanfic trope??
Thanks for playing and giving me so many opportunities to babble haha! πππ
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Are there any books, movies, or tv shows you think could be an intriguing crossover or inspiration for starker?
HMM. I feel kind of boring for not really having an immediate answer for this! I've talked about a potential Starker PacRim AU or Loveless AU, and obvs I did mine and Shivanessa's Tokyo Babylon fusion, but those are really the only things that I've had strong "you could make a religion Starker out of this" impulses about.
I think for me, a lot of what I find appealing about Starker is very specific to their canonical circumstances? The superhero piece, the mentor/mentee piece, their respective backstories and how they mirror and diverge from each other, the modern setting making the age gap a Much Bigger Deal than it would be in many other fictional settings-- it's not that I can't be interested in AUs that deviate from those features (Pyrite is literally a mundane AU and I've talked at length about how those are not my usual cup of tea!), but it's not where my brain goes as a default setting.
Even doing a quick mental inventory of my favorite shows/books/etc., it's like⦠yeah, sure, one could write a Starker ATLA AU where Peter is the Avatar and Tony is the techy nonbender genius who kits him out while he's figuring out how to overcome a bending block! One could write a horny TLOU AU where Tony is escorting immune Peter across the country to find a cure for the mushroom zombie infection! One could write a Doctrine of Labyrinths AU where up-and-coming mage Peter takes fallen-from-grace normie Tony on as an esclavin (Taboo Magic-Enforced Slave ft. Sexy Bonding Ritual) to give him diplomatic immunity!
And those could all be great fics and I'd certainly read them if someone else wrote them, but again yeah, they're just not where my mind goes as a default. The first example is just an ATLA coat of paint over their canon dynamic so anything I could explore there I could write in a canon setting, if I was going to write zombie apocalypse Starker I'd want to do it in the context of the canon verse going to shit instead of by inventing a new first meeting, if I wanted to give them a sexy magic bond with uncomfortable social expectations I could send them to a planet with rigidly enforced customs, etc. My baseline setting is "build on/twist what's already there" instead of building from the ground up!
But I appreciate the ask! πππ It was fun to bat around what things I'm into that could even theoretically make good Starker AUs haha. (And to think about the things that absolutely would not translate, at least for the parts of the characters/settings that I'm interested in lmao. The world does not need a Starker Animorphs AU!)
For the ask game: Marriage Of Convenience/Arranged Marriage! :D?
BIG ol' A-tier trope, I love an arranged marriage/marriage of convenience.
Something about exploring the disconnect between the social "roles" of spouses vs the actual reality of intimacy and connection is so fun and sticky to me, I love the weird dynamic of falling in love within an established relationship, and then the question of physical intimacy and how that plays a role in things is so juicy!
(I'm a sucker for the mildly to extremely dubcon vibes that can happen in a "we legally have to consummate this marriage that neither of us is strictly jazzed about" scenario. This is my brand of trash and I love it.)
A favorite for sure! Thanks for playing πππ
nooooo too many good choices. But my heart belongs to YNYD so.... epilogue?
"I don't need an apartment closer to campus," Peter said, rolling his eyes. "I've been doing fine, and it's only, like, twenty minutes away."
Tony scoffed, because that just wasn't the point.
"Almost thirty," he countered. "And the question is, would you use it?"
Peter pursed his lips, narrowing his eyes like he wasn't hiding a smile, and he said, "You just want another apartment to decorate."
someday this will actually get finished and posted!! someday!!!
