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"which is just ridiculous because he and self-consciousness parted ways years ago."
Tony Stark was born in 1973 to Howard and Maria Stark, and their lives were completed and perfect and for a few minutes the world actually stopped turning on its proper axis to just sit and look in awe at what it had spent the last four point six billion years evolving toward. It let out a happy little sigh and then had to get back to work, but for a moment, everyone noticed. Things would continue in that general fashion throughout the rest of his life. But we can probably just hit the highlights. Tony proved himself an engineering prodigy – goddamn Anakin Skywalker off-the-charts potential-wise – when he was four, and built his first circuit-board while his pre-school classmates were presumably taking their macaroni art home to eat after dinner when no one was looking. At six, he built an engine as a solid 'fuck you' to the older boys on bicycles who were being annoying. He could have a motorcycle now, and then it wouldn't matter how short his legs were. Also building things was fun. The most fun out of everything else. It surprised his mother, and would get Howard's attention and praise, and at four and six, that's really all a kid wants. By the time he graduated summa cum laude from MIT, Tony Stark had turned the artificial intelligence world slightly on its own head, having created the base code for what would be his own personal AI – JARVIS – when he was fifteen, and perfected it over his final two years at the institute. However, at seventeen years of age, with a father still perfectly capable and willing to run his own hard-built company, Tony was suddenly at a slight loss for what to do. He busied himself mainly with whatever he could get his hands on from the company, coming up with new ideas and working out how to propose them – he was quite ready to at the very least be allowed to sit in, and he'd promise to try really, really hard not to make comments when people said blindingly stupid or obvious things. Honestly. It was about this point that his father's best friend, Obadiah Stane, stepped in a little more than he had done before. While having nearly always been a presence in Tony's life, Stane stepped in to fill some of the gaps in child-rearing that Howard failed to notice, and here, when Tony was working out how to make people take a seventeen year old, smart-ass genius seriously, that the man more actively guided him to make sure he didn't flounder too hard. Howard and Maria Stark die on Friday, December 17th, 1991, in a car crash. Stane steps up once again, this time to steward the company until Tony is of age, and Tony himself attempts to continue on doing what he'd been doing, but with moderately less success. There's a slide into all manner of distractions and a very dangerous lesson learned at this point – Tony Stark can be highly functional in nearly any situation in which he needs to be so, regardless of what he's done to himself. Little repercussion, or scant, or finagling, or whatever. It's right around here that a sudden realisation he finds he already knew, really, hits, and it's this vaguely dangerous one of power. At twenty-one, Tony comes of age and takes control of his father's company. With him come all the ideas and prototypes, the creativity and flair, the ingenuity and imagination, that he'd been building up over the years previous. Initially running into problems with people believing he's too young, or wanting him to be more like his father, he eventually learns how to counter-act both relatively tactfully and the company itself grows in success by leaps and bounds. Their contracts with such institutions as the United States Air Force become all but standing, and Stark Industries is appointed an official liaison from the military acquisitions department: James Rhodes. Personally, Tony Stark becomes famous for his brilliance in science and engineering weaponry, and infamous for his parties, drinking, escapades, and charm. He settles pretty quickly into this lifestyle and doesn't leave it for a fair while. It's important to note, though, that near to the beginning of his career as CEO of Stark Industries, he is approached by a lower-level accountant who brings an important discrepancy in projected quarterly figures to his attention. Out of the entire section, she was the only one who noticed the problem, and she even went over her own boss' head to bring it to him personally. By the time the conversation's ended, she has been promoted to personal assistant, her former boss has her former job, and she's gained a new nickname: Pepper Potts. This lifestyle continues on for a little over a decade until a very normal weapons demonstration in the Middle East goes vastly awry very quickly. Everything goes well – beautifully, even – until the convoy from the demonstration site is attacked on their way back to base. Attempting to break for cover, Tony is met with the stark reality of one of his own weapons and receives a number of shrapnel barbs in his chest and heart in realisation. Depending on one's definition of 'fortunately', the group responsible for his kidnapping – as that was indeed the point of the attack – had previously taken someone with the ingenuity and experience necessary to properly treat his specific injuries. Yinsen, in addition to removing as much of the metal as he could and implanting an electromagnet to take care of what he could not reach, becomes a very important person over Stark's three month captivity, being calm and reasonable in cases where Tony himself couldn't be, and aiding practically in their ultimate manner of escape. The three months themselves, however, don't go by as smoothly. When initially 'asked' by the terrorist group to build one of his own missiles for them, he flatly refuses, prompting a round of persuasive methods intended to change his mind. While Mr. Stark is many things, reckless and impulsive being some of the least of these, he is far from stupid and perfectly capable of realising when the time to play certain cards is at hand. (This is markedly different, though, when applied to purely interpersonal relationships as opposed to anything strategically based.) Under guise of capitulating, he and Yinsen produce both a modified arc reactor powered with palladium better capable of powering the electromagnet in his chest and the armored suit that will eventually get them out of the cave complex or die in the process. It is highly unfortunate that both of these scenarios manage to play themselves out, with one escaping and the other sacrificing himself so that the first might do so, but Yinsen's death – particularly with escape so close at hand – that effects Tony almost more than the rest of the experience combined. The man had been one of only a handful of people who didn't feel like they had any ulterior motives or wanted anything from him, and was an unreasonably positive force in an otherwise unbearable situation. And there's just living with someone all day, every day, for three months straight. Makes you a bit fond of them, if you're any sort of social creature. The act of the escape itself does, considering the multitudinous variables involved, go fairly smoothly after that incident. The suit works – of course it works – very well for something cobbled together out of spare scraps in a cave, and a couple of days in the desert see him picked up and brought stateside by the Air Force. It's at this point that he reveals the extent of the leaf he's turned over: rather than purely superficial motivations and pursuit of the next distraction, he feels he's finally found true purpose and – like everything else he's ever wanted – follows it up with dogged determination. Not very long after his return, amidst the public doubtings of his sanity and casual-bordering-on-libellous usage of 'PTSD' by the newspapers, he discovers that his own friend and mentor, Stane, has attempted to lock him out of his own company. Tony takes this about as well as mercury takes room temperatures, as expected. On the positive side though, it does prove to be one of the final tipping points into properly becoming the Iron Man as known today. Almost immediately following his retaliatory attack against his kidnappers in Gulmira, he winds up facing off against Obadiah in a battle between their respective suits and ideologies that ultimately winds up being far too close but ends in Tony's favor regardless. By the time the conflict and resulting aftermath is resolved – also as expected, he manages to in fact almost do the exact opposite as requested by SHIELD and makes his identity as Iron Man known to the public basically as soon as the public learns Iron Man exists at all – he is far more settled than he had been before. At this point, he has lost a mentor and drastically changed his personal outlook on life, sure, but to a degree the experience is cathartic and ultimately resolves most of the unattended to issues he had from his captivity. The personal outlook doesn't necessarily change his day to day living habits either, but it does tend to give him an intermittent responsibility he had more previously been lacking. Again with the drive and the purpose. Stark's life for a number of months following this is uneventful, right up until he learns that the thing keeping him alive is also kind of killing him. Painfully. That's some kind of irony. Downright ironic. Or just annoying; it depends on how one looks at it. Palladium poisoning from his own arc reactor – fairly exponential in terms of progression and kind of horrific in terms of things to look forward to. The resulting quest and more-resulting lack-of-progress on the matter sends him into a fairly public tailspin, making Pepper the CEO of Stark Industries (on the whole actually one of the better decisions made during this period), taking several more risks than are necessary or than he normally might have, and then having what seriously should have been the most terrifying birthday party since Papa Frankenstein decided to start gathering all his creations together for the piñata games. He is somewhat aided/goaded/nudged into these behaviours by people around him at the time, but really there's not a whole lot anyone can say about his lack of choice in the events – it's very likely that anything they did simply speeded up a process that was fairly inevitable anyway. It's – annoyingly enough – Nick Fury and by proxy, SHIELD, who wind up providing the answer to his problem. Technically by proxy also his father, but in retrospect there's more to that than the strictly apparent; Tony's feelings regarding his father have yet to truly change very much. One moment from beyond the grave hardly makes up for a lifetime when you're actually there, no matter how ostensibly wibbly it's supposed to be. (That's another matter as well.) He does, however, completely acknowledge his father's own genius in terms of engineering, even as much as it was a shadow he worked very hard to get out from under. Howard had already worked out all the principle formulation on the vibranium atom, but it was Tony who had the means and knowledge to actually form the element itself. No small amount of self-discovery and a miniature particle accelerator later, Iron Man has a brand new arc reactor: now with non-lethal side effects and ten times the power output! It's practically as good as you can get when you have a hole in your sternum that opens directly into your chest cavity – the Rolls Royce of pacemakers. As though he'd have it any other way. Following the debacle with Whiplash – really, Whiplash? More annoying than troublesome, when he really sat down to think about it. This was basically just an annoying period in his life in general – Tony effectively returns to his pre-look-I'm-dying-over-here behaviour, back into the only-partially-reckless, semi-Bad-Life-Decisions, somewhat-impulsive groove of things as opposed to his full-blown everything from before. He has a decent amount of emotional stability all of a sudden, between not-dying, learning a bit more about his father (standing feelings not... withstanding), solidifying a bit of relationshippyness with Pepper, having Rhodey come in as a partner with War Machine, and finally being asked to come in at least as a consultant for the Avengers Initiative. Lots of change all in a very short period of time, but then he tends to work in quick sprints of personal growth and then long distances of maintaining status quo like that. So that gets us through Iron Man 2. The Avengers sees he and Pepper finally together and actually all in all, Tony doesn't... Contribute a whole lot to the film. He fights, like everyone else, and banters, like everyone else, and yeah he learns that SHIELD is keeping secrets – which... literally no one doubted except Steve and even he did doubt enough in the end that he also learned SHIELD was keeping secrets so the fact that Tony did to is sort of redundant. He makes the sacrifice play through the portal that everyone knew was coming after Steve called it as something he would never be able to do, and all in all manages to ramp up his applicable PTSD memory bank up to a healthy retirement plan. Because just a few months later Tony is basically falling apart. He can't sleep, or he does sleep and then wishes he hadn't as he relives falling from everything – out of the sky, out of the atmosphere, out of his home, out of his other home – the lights fading around him as the suit malfunctions in a vacuum he never designed it for, other lights fading as oxygen deprivation causes his vision to black out around the edges before he's pulled back out of the water – You get the picture. It doesn't help that someone is blowing people up with magical bombs or whatever and old memories are being dredged up in far more real manners than just his dreams anyway. His chauffeur gets blown up, and Tony threatens the terrorist on national television, as any sane person is wont to do. Then Tony gets blown up, rather spectacularly, on national television. (Really, to be honest you could probably compile a list of news footage from within Iron Man 3 and still be able to watch the movie just by watching that, because Tony's life is always on display.) He has several panic attacks, comes questionably close to being verbally abusive to a middle schooler while simultaneously being pretty nice, and comes back from the dead again, victorious and arguably mentally healthier. Look on his works, o! ye mighty, and suck it. AOU goes here later. Additional highlights and recommended reading include: » The Iron Giants: A Tale of Corporate Backstabbing and Then Later Some Actual Backstabbing |
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"He's a useless hero without context. He's a mistake in a suit of armor, really." MBTI ( ENTP; THE DEBATER ) ENTPs are quick to see complex interrelationships between people, things, and ideas. These interrelationships are analyzed in profound detail through the ENTPs auxiliary function, introverted thinking (Ti). The result is an in-depth understanding of the way things and relationships work, and how they can be improved. To the ENTP, competence and intelligence are particularly prized, both in themselves and in other people. The ENTP regards a comment like "it can't be done" as a personal challenge, and, if properly motivated, will spare no effort to discover a solution. KEIRSEY ( THE INVENTOR ) Inventors begin building gadgets and mechanisms as young children, and never really stop, though as adults they will turn their inventiveness to many kinds of organizations, social as well as mechanical. There aren't many Inventors, say about two percent of the population, but they have great impact on our everyday lives. With their innovative, entrepreneurial spirit, Inventors are always on the lookout for a better way, always eyeing new projects, new enterprises, new processes. ENNEAGRAM ( THE ENTHUSIAST; 7w8 ) Sevens are extroverted, optimistic, versatile, and spontaneous. Playful, high-spirited, and practical, they can also misapply their many talents, becoming over-extended, scattered, and undisciplined. They constantly seek new and exciting experiences, but can become distracted and exhausted by staying on the go. They typically have problems with impatience and impulsiveness. Rooms tend to feel smaller and quieter when Tony Stark isn't in them, and to a large degree that's probably because they actually are the latter and you never know if they technically could be the former or not – who knows what things like rooms can get up to when he's involved. Look what the guy does with caves. This is because Tony Stark is, like most brilliant people, a little bit crazy. He makes connections between things that normal people would hardly put on the same plane of existence, and then manages to smash them together to suit his own purposes. There's no logical reason he should be able to get away with building a mechanized battle suit out of missiles under the noses of thirty-some-odd terrorists watching his every move, and yet that's precisely what he decides to do. The miniaturized prototype of a much larger prototype that had, until that point, yielded little but publicity shouldn't be something anyone decides is a good idea to craft and then stick through their sternum, but it's working out pretty well so far for him. The idea to inject yourself with about fifty microrepeaters so that you can remotely call your “hi-tech prosthesis” to yourself from three hundred miles away shouldn't be something that evolves beyond the drunken physics stage, and yet. The reality of the world that Tony Stark lives in isn't quite the same as the reality that exists for everyone else, if for no other reason than because Tony Stark has few qualms about bending the laws of physics and any other universal constants over the table until they do what he wants. In addition to being rich-people-crazy, or “eccentric”, Tony happens to be remarkably irritating and also have scads of charisma. He's the sort of person who is difficult to actually dislike, even though he's frequently insulting, acerbic, facetious, and intentionally a bit of an ass. He has fewer problems pushing buttons than he does bending the rules – meeting Bruce Banner, literally within the first sentence of their introduction he manages to both compliment the man's scientific excellence, and then immediately prod the most sore spot the man could have had. It's one shade away from actually poking a bear with a stick – which he arguably does a little while later, later, purely in the name of scientific discovery (aka: sating his own curiosity). However, despite that, he does have magnetic qualities that extend beyond what's embedded in his chest. To continue the Bruce example, he's potentially the first person who ever trusted the man on pure instinct, and chose to see him as more than the alter-ego he could become. Tony has – and always has had – a big heart. Initially, his science and his legacy had him in one area, but he simultaneously created those that would benefit those who needed it most. The Intellicrops, the water purification, the philanthropy. That was how the rest of it bled out, because when forced into a team style situation, Tony winds up exhibiting very odd methods of showing affection for those he cares about. In Iron Man 2, when things are becoming clear that he – and potentially those near to him – are being targeted, he lowers the security on Rhodey's most logical course of action, allowing his best friend the opportunity to take an Iron Man suit for himself, which got his superiors off his back quite nicely. Tony does care about his friends, he just shows it... very poorly. To those whom he deems meriting that kind of attention, he can be highly attentive, just not in the methods most people would assume. His own value is determined by what he is worth and the worth of what he can make, and it's this deficit between what he can and does do for others and the casual manner in which he views it that creates an odd dynamic: someone who has incredible self-confidence and very low self-esteem. Obviously, not everything Tony does is motivated so purely though. He is a rich, intelligent, only-child who rose quickly through the echelons of everything he's ever attempted to do, happens to be very good-looking, and is rarely presented with a situation he can't figure or finagle a way out of if the options initially handed to him are displeasing. He enjoys gambling, not only with money but also far more basic things like... his life, and while he is more than capable of running the odds, the faith he has in his own abilities tends to blind him to the possibility of things he just hasn't considered. That and a healthy dose of simply being numbed to a large portion of the sort of thing that would stun most normal people. On losing the three million dollars he had won one evening in Caesar Palace in one roulette spin: “Don't know what was more exciting […] The fact that I won it, or the fact that I don't care I just lost it.” It's pretty easy to forget occasionally that Tony actually is as intelligent as he believes he is – whether that's because it's simply irritating to realize that or because he's so good at obfuscating the issue when he feels like it remains to be determined. Similarly is it easy to assume he is the rich, arrogant playboy that he so enjoys projecting to the world at large. For the most part, it's actually true, which makes that fairly easy, but there are layers and layers beneath that image that all but his closest friends don't manage to uncover. Long before he strapped himself to the inside of an idea straight out of the middle ages, Stark covered himself in fancy armor, it just happened to be in slightly more discreet coloring. The man delights in uncovering some of these facets purely for the reactions it elicits from other people who weren't expecting them, just as much as he likes pretending they aren't there the rest of the time. Upon meeting the majority of the Avengers, Tony immediately drops the tacit conversation he was just having with Agent Coulson regarding potentially flying the other man to Portland just to see his cellist girlfriend, and proceeds to start showing off and insulting people. Later on in the movie, he plays off having even a little bit of knowledge about Coulson's girlfriend, because Tony Stark doesn't care about things that matter. The best way to get to know Tony is to look at the three people who could be considered more or less to be his only friends. All three began their relationships with him on a purely professional level, being paid to remain around him – and this is a fact that he is quite aware of. However, he's also aware that as things have progressed, each one has had numerous chances to move on, and none of them have. In fact, all three have remained with him despite several attempts by both circumstance and Tony himself to push them away. Happy began purely as Tony's chauffeur and bodyguard, and has since fought random individuals and taken great personal risk by staying close to the man. And yet, while he is potentially dying after being exploded, he still manages to provide Tony with a very important clue, trusting him to be able to figure it out and then utilize it effectively. Rhodey begins his friendship with Tony back when both men were fairly young, and remains Tony's best friend after years of Tony absolutely taking advantage and pushing the boundaries of the friendship. He, too, chooses to remain by Tony's side even at personal risk to his own well-being, even after events wherein the two fight and happen to explode a fair portion of the latter's Malibu home. But it's Pepper who provides the most insight, as it's Pepper who has the most direct interaction with the man. Pepper goes from menial paper-pusher to Tony's personal assistant based purely on her ability to see mathematical errors, and then progressively onwards to intuitive best friend and love interest. Pepper brings out the best aspects of Tony that his relationship with Rhodey doesn't touch upon, and it's desire to “do right by [her]” clashing with his own instinctive self-destructive tendencies that allow him pause enough – every now and then – to stop and consider what he's doing. Tony bears no illusions as to the flaws in his own personality. (“Textbook... Narcissism? [Pause.] Agreed.”) He doesn't make much effort to actually do anything about them, nor does he worry and fret over them, but he does acknowledge them, even if only to himself. His method of compensation is to either surround himself with those who make up for them, or simply to excel so highly at what he is good at that anyone he encounters can't use those flaws to dismiss him. He has, very obviously and publicly, turned over to a remarkably new chapter in his life, both by symbolism and action, through Iron Man and his shift into clean energy over weapons manufacturing, and he's working hard to commit to that change. Tony didn't really recognise his PTSD for some time. Whether or not this is because he didn't recognise it for what it was or because he didn't want to is somewhat debatable either way, but regardless, it wasn't something that he acknowledged or addressed until it had grown to the point where it was unavoidable. Initially, it simply presented with his crisis of conscience, and his ensuing crusade to find and destroy that of his weaponry that had fallen into the hands of various terrorists and terrorist groups. Arguably a reasonably decent method of dealing with it, given his penchant for self-destructive behaviour anyway. At this point, it might not have been PTSD specifically, but what ultimately wound up becoming that was an amalgam of both this first experience – the kidnapping, the betrayal of his father figure, and the fallout of both – and those that followed afterward. The whole thing where what was keeping him alive was also killing him was fairly traumatic as well, but it wasn't that experience that he had nightmares about for months afterward. It wasn't until after the battle of New York that Tony's nightmares got to a point that meant he could no longer ignore them. He dreamed of falling, of going through the portal and the vastness of that empty space on the other side, the isolation involved in dying for a cause he believed in, but by himself lightyears away. It was the portal that wound up screwing him over mentally the most, with it being the focus of his nightmares and the cause of his first severe anxiety attack, which happened in public and due to a child's comments – usually the perfect circumstances for him to simply ignore or brush off something that bothered him. Even then though, he didn't truly recognise it for what it was, assuming instead that it was something to do with his heart or his reactor, anything physical. When JARVIS informed him that it appeared he had suffered an anxiety attack, his response was an incredulous, "Me?'" Considering how debilitating some of his panic attacks seemed to be, Tony managed to remain quite functional regardless. Throughout Iron Man 3, even small comments could set one off, but they could similarly be made better by other seemingly innocuous statements. Even too, towards the end of the film when one started to take place, he reacted to it an almost 'oh not now' attitude before it had fully hit, and all throughout he tended to approach them with a moderately practical mindset, considering that anxiety attacks by nature are fairly irrational. He took an odd approach to them as a whole, wherein he didn't necessarily dismiss them outright, but he refused to actually deal with them when they weren't directly happening. Given that this attitude is in itself symptomatic of those suffering from PTSD (based on my research, at least, not personal knowledge), it makes sense, but it is far from helpful in terms of handling the issue properly. Rather, Tony kept himself grounded via Rhodey and Pepper – and acknowledged to Pepper herself that her presence was likely what had kept his issues from progressing further, faster – and allowed others to help as necessary. Harley ultimately wound up both causing at least one of his panic attacks, but later through a brilliant piece of common sense, stopped another one midway through. Ultimately, Tony doesn't necessarily deal with... any of his issues, not outright. He tends towards behaviours that only have an immediate rather than long-term effect, which makes his reactions towards his anxiety attacks slightly perplexing. He actually seems to handle them better than most of his other issues, and I suspect it is merely his irritation with them that promotes this attitude. For a man who values his own intellectual prowess, his own capability, and who naturally tends towards an admittedly creative but still highly logical thought process, what would feel like an entirely irrational sense of fear and helplessness along with the inability to think properly would be highly annoying. Annoying enough, potentially, to learn how to properly address the problem rather than maintaining his usual stance of 'I'm going to ignore this issue until it goes away or Pepper takes care of it for me.' |
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"He's a regular mystery wrapped in a four-point-four billion dollar alloy."
GENIUS LEVEL INTELLECT ( If my math is right, and it always is. ) Tony graduated at seventeen summa cum laude from MIT, and finished high school before he was really two full steps into puberty. He built a circuit board when he was three, an engine when he was six, and became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics last night. Within the context of his own canon, he's one of the greatest minds in the world. Obviously he would argue the greatest, but that depends somewhat on the field being discussed. EXPERT BUSINESSMAN ( I'm pretty much the only name in green energy right now. ) Having taken over the stewardship of Stark Industries at twenty-one with the passing of his parents, Tony grew it into one of the largest tech conglomerates in the world. Yes, he tends to eschew the more dry aspects of running the business, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how to do them. Howard Stark built the company and maintained its initial military contracts, but Tony developed the more commercial, non-weapons-based productions, and diversified the majority of the company's patents. Later, he shifted the direction of the company entirely away from weapons manufacturing and into clean energy. MASTER ENGINEER ( Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! ) It was evident from a very young age that Tony would be mechanically inclined, following in his father's footsteps. As an adult, he has always been years ahead of his competition and pushed forward with advancements in his field that make Clarke's third law laughably applicable. He built the first prototype Iron Man suit in a cave in Afghanistan out of missile components, and miniaturized a previously unviable power source using other components from the same, and started creating artificial intelligence capable of both autonomy and autodidactism when he was still a teenager. Boy is about half a step away from speaking cyborg. EXPERT PROGRAMMER ( I hacked the Pentagon when I was in high school on a dare. ) Hand in hand with the engineering in this day and age, nonetheless still a point deserving of its own merit, as it is the basis for the artificial intelligence that started with DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers, and later became JARVIS, FRIDAY, JOCASTA, TADASHI, &c. Technically JARVIS does most of Tony's on screen hacking at this point, but commutative property basically means that Tony's still doing that since he created JARVIS, yadda yadda. He could do it himself, but why would he when he can create something else that can do it for him? MASTER SCIENTIST ( So much to do, so little RAM. ) Also related to other points but worth mentioning on its own, Tony is adept at multiple branches of science to multiple levels. He exhibits high levels of proficiency in not only mechanical engineering, but also aerospace and electrical engineering, chemistry, physics, he designed his own home in Malibu and given his familiarity with the infrastructure likely assisted in overseeing the actual building of it, as well as planned the rebuilding (and likely initial building) of Stark Tower in New York City. Basically if it's not a "soft science", he either has a good grasp of it or can given the space of a few hours and enough information in front of him. He also wouldn't admit it, but his understanding of business and publicity, &c., likely means he understands core concepts within psychology and sociology even if he wouldn't want to admit it. Or... Potentially be cogently able to apply on purpose if they were framed in that context. Yay? EXPERT TACTICIAN ( That's it? A cheap trick and a one-liner? ) (How many times can I use 'expert' and 'master'? Let's find out.) One of Tony's best abilities is one that is the most innate and unable to be learned - his ability to think strategically on his feet. He once blew up a super-regenerating lady made more or less out of self-healing lava by tossing dog tags in a microwave and kicking some fuel across the floor, then using a fridge door to protect himself from the ensuing explosion. That's years after building the prototype suit out of missile pieces in a cave. He also utilized furniture and broken pieces of his own home in combat when his weapons systems were offline. And in a deleted scene used his own arc reactor as a makeshift defibrillator. Basically he more or less either has to be constantly scanning his environment for a million different contingency plans, or he's fantastic at thinking on his feet. Lbr, it's definitely the latter. Not that it couldn't also be the former, but if it is, then it's subconscious and basically still the latter anyway. MULTILINGUALISM ( Are you trying to make up an Elvish dialect or just mashing the keyboard? ) There's not much to this one - Tony speaks English, Spanish, Italian, and Dari officially, and French canonically, and tbh I find it personally ludicrous he doesn't speak at least Japanese as well considering his company's technological inclinations and how he'd very likely want to have a hands-on approach to major business deals. Plus, he apparently picked up Fari between his three-month Afghan vacation and the start of "The Avengers", which is granted four years, but four years wherein he had multiple other issues taking place and no apparent reason beyond PTSD to learn a language retroactive to when it was necessary to know it. He likely knows how to at least have casual conversation or get around in more, given how learning languages works, but I have no canonical evidence to support that so it's more of a logical derivative based on his ability to pick up complex sciences and concepts quickly once given a base to work off of. SKILLED MARTIAL ARTIST ( I take back 50% of the bad things I've said about you ) This is a much more recent skill - basically only in any sense that remains useful since he began being Iron Man - but even so. While Tony likely took self-defense classes before that point, they only managed to become useful for whatever reason once self-defence became something that actually influenced his own survival. He was training in boxing for a while, and since his most recent kidnapping has become proficient in at least one form of Kung Fu, if not multiple martial arts as a whole. Honestly he's both 1. paranoid enough that I'd assume he'd learn more than one; and 2. busy enough that I'd assume he has to learn them linearly and hasn't had time to learn more than one or two. So. Basically by this canon pull point Tony is paranoid enough to have learned to defend himself outside of his armour, but he's not going to be able to beat up anyone who grew up on martial arts like Clint, Natasha, or Steve. SKILLED PILOT ( The Mark IV suit entered the A in STARK moving approx. 400 mph. ) There's no way Tony would be able to adequately pilot the Iron Man suit if he didn't have good reflexes or what are borderline the natural instincts of a born pilot. The flight methodologies inherent in flight patterns that are built on the individual movements of all four limbs forced towards congruously creating a whole is difficult enough; if he didn't already possess a higher-than-average understanding of aerodynamics then he would have basically just been boned from the moment he tried to fly out of that terrorist camp in Afghanistan. As it stands I can take pictures of the novelisation/thought process involved in the IM2 sequence where he flies through the globe and like four or five drones blow up bc they can't handle the mathematical calculations, but that feels maybe like showing off. MARKSMAN ( His life is just a long list of repairs. ) Less remarkable feeling, as a whole, but despite the use of auto-targeting, or occasionally in the face of the abject lack of such, Tony is still able to eye-ball a target on the fly and hit with consistent accuracy. He'll never beat Clint in a target shooting competition, but he is familiar with multiple kinds of firearms and weaponry and definitely lands shots more often than not. |
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"His expression was the ash after an eruption, the cool competency of one of the top busisnessmen in the world."
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"Tony has such a, well, let's say a charming childishness about his creations."
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