quigonejinn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quigonejinn) wrote2008-05-31 04:29 am
quigonejinn) wrote2008-05-31 04:29 am
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Stronger (Harder, Better, Faster)The song is on my default playlist, and last week, in the throes of full-blown fandom crazy, I started obsessing about what a fantastic track this would make for an Iron Man vid. And then one of the DOOMTHREADS -- it is 4:30AM, and I am too brainfried to figure out where, even with Gmail's halfway decent search engine -- somebody mentioned wanting to see it. And uh. I was too tired to write tonight, so here! HAVE MY OBSESSION.
Tony Stark set to Kanye West and Daft Punk
XVid, 35MB
Started at 10PM or so of Friday night, finished around 4AM of Saturday morning. Not much in the way of movie-independent storytelling, which is probably why it came together so easily. It usually takes me about eight hours per minute, but I banged this together in way, way under that. Think more like a 5:20 recap of the movie than anything else.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
Oh, that hit the spot. I think you articulated perfectly the difference between Public!Tony and Private!Tony, and Pepper probably sees, or feels unconsciously a little of that too -- his close friends realize the difference, and it probably is what allows them to forgive him over, and over, and over again, even at the detriment to themselves. They see him trying so hard, and yeah, it's all a little "poor little rich boy" but they can't really help themselves. He's got everything, even the ability to hire and build his own friends, and he's epically, obviously lonely.
...but I'm off, somewhere in there, I'm definitely missing something. He's not simply lonely, there control issues complicate it somewhat, because I think the loneliness is in part the result of the unwillingness to lose said control, it's self-inflicted far more than just the result of being a child prodigy and being born into money.
And he tries really hard to make people like him. And they do. Which makes me dream about Tony at the Stark plant in, like, I don't know. Tennessee.
Oh, please, please write that. I can see that happening sometime after Pepper just started, like, after her first week where she's ready to quit every other minute, constantly questioning herself for agreeing to take a job that is impossible for the sheer fact that Tony doesn't actually follow anything that she says, doesn't seem to respect anyone other than JARVIS, and never, ever seems to shut up despite having nothing of import to say.
But by the end of the week, she manages to get him to the factory like she promised the board, and despite all the frustration and supreme human effort it took to get him there, watching him work over the torch, finally silent, probably the first time she actually gets him, if not completely, then enough to get her into the next week, or until she can find a better job.
(and this cycle will wash and repeat for weeks, then months, then years, until Afghanistan, and then it's too late to quit then, because now it's more than a job, it's family, and that's something far more dangerous.)
(oh. Pep. You should have gotten out while you can.)
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
I'm not sure he even realizes he's lonely. Maybe not until Yinsen calls him on it. I think his loneliness is totally unconscious, and he fills it with all that flash and wanting people to like him and strippers.
and it is about control. Because if he lets up on the control, people will see him as he is underneath all the flash, and we can't have that, now, can we?
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
I might be old-fashioned, but man, that's just fucked up.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
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Especially with Rhodey. Christ. CAN OF WORMS, GUYS. CAN OF WORMS. WHAT WAS THAT 10 YEAR, BILLION-DOLLAR DEVELOPMENT CONTRACT YOU SIGNED LAST SEPTEMBER, TONES?
Yeah, I keep wanting fic where Yinsen (heresy!) survives Tony's origination story. I don't know how that fic would play out, but man, it really seems as though Tony would be in a Better Place if he had a third emotional pillar or whatever.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
Because the look on Rhodey's face at that first press conference, and when Tony comes to him at the base - here he thought he'd got his friend back, and he finds out that like Obie said, Tony never really came back from the cave. And for Rhodey that has to really hurt, beyond the professional conflict.
And Rhodey loves the military, and is loyal to it, and I was saying somewhere else that it's going to head towards one of them asking the other to make a choice, and that's not going to go well at all.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
Oh man. Yeah. You can see it so clearly, and now that we've been talking about how physical Bridges makes Obediah, it's interesting to compare Obediah's physical interactions with Tony and Rhodey's.
Is the current fic the Sentinel pieces? I've seen them, but after reading the first couple paragraphs of the first one, realized that I needed to save 'em for when I had more brainpower.
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that would be interesting, because like I said somewhere above, Yinsen has experienced Tony at his lowest and weakest and has seen Tony in a long stretch without game face at all. I don't think he'd let Tony lapse back into it once he got home. And I think he'd try to talk him out of building another flying robot to solve his problems. Yinsen is really like the father Tony never had - one that actually tried to teach him how to be an adult.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
Yes! There's a scene where Tony just looks over at him, and you can see it. So when Tony had to walk away after Yinsen died, it was like he left another big piece of his soul in that cave. Gut-wrenching, I say.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
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...it's pure Tony Stark performance until he starts talking to Everhart about his Dad and, more clearly, when he's down in the shop with the music blasting and NOT TALKING AT ALL.
is totally RDJ's speciality. He manages to make the silences his characters go through as much a characterization moment than what comes out of their mouths, if not more so. That's frikking talent.
(edited because the english language, it has left me)
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
Oh man. He's so good at it. And Jon Favreau is so good at working with him. I mean, I keep trying to figure out just how RDJ manages to be so effective in the bit when Obediah leaves him on the red carpet is so horribly sad or how RDJ manages to convey OMFG FURY AND REPRESSED EMOTION when he's fixing his arm, but about 0.15 seconds into it, I just get totally sucked in.
RDJ. HOW ARE YOU SO GOOD? AM I JUST THAT MUCH OF A FANGIRL? DON'T ANSWER THE LATTER.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
He is amazing at getting across very complex emotions with just his face and body language.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
And I don't think it's as simple as Poor Little Rich Boy, not by a long shot. You're exactly right. A lot of his barriers are self-imposed -- I refuse to believe that every woman he's ever had a one night stand with was crazy. Even given the way he tends to pick up women, a decent number had to have been probably perfectly nice women who would have been decent girlfriends. But no, Tony doesn't even want to find out what they're like because who wants to wear their game face first thing in the morning?
Pre-Af Tony only interacts with people when he's wearing his game face, and his game face is an asshole. In fact, you can almost see him transitioning to a slightly more public version of himself when Pepper comes down into the shop.
(I have a pet theory that Tony blew off the Apogee Awards when he realized that they were going to do a mini-biog heavy on the CHILD FUCKING PRODIGY and INHERITOR OF DADDY'S MANTLE and MAGAZINE COVER BOY thing on top of Rhodey presenting the award. Sure, he's totally convinced of his utter brilliance and worthiness of being adored -- but at the same time, his Daddy issues totally predate Afg, and if he really is as emotionally shut down as we've been postulating and if he's aware of his performance, I can kind of imagine Tony not wanting to have it rubbed in his face, particularly if it's Rhodey, who called him the day that awful fucking news broke, who flew all the way from Denver to be there at the funeral, etc, etc. Too much potential emotional vulnerability in one place, guys.
It's the same kind of HEDONISM NOW PLZ avoidance that happens when Rhodey starts talking to him about why he loves the military.)
despite all the frustration and supreme human effort it took to get him there, watching him work over the torch, finally silent
Exactly. And in my head, there's a very real difference in which Tony charms the welders and how he's schmoozing, say, the president of Lockheed Martin, for whose new communications satellite Stark Industries could supply microassembly expertise. I like to think that Tony really does <3 the people in the funvee, but that he doesn't fundamentally care at all about the military-industrial complex wankers who are attending the Apogee Awards and could take his failure to show up as an insult.
I think Pepper would pick up on the difference.
Randomly: Is it wrong to want Everhart/Stark? Because I was watching the ending of the movie there, and she's the ONLY PERSON SITTING in the whole room, and you know that a huge part of why Tony came out of the Superhero Closet was to fuck with her in much the same way that he buys the Jackson Pollock just to fuck with Pepper. And, plus, I bet there was assigned seating. And there has to be a reason why a reporter for Vanity frickin' Fair, a magazine known for its hard-hitting coverage of daily events, is front an dcenter on this. I like to think that he has a tiny bit of proto-respect for her.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
That's a great observation. I actually know a few people like Tony, and it's very, very hard to get beyond their game faces. They're always *on*, even when they don't want to be. It becomes habit, kind of instinctual, and sometimes they can't turn it off.
I have a pet theory that Tony blew off the Apogee Awards when he realized that they were going to do a mini-biog heavy on the CHILD FUCKING PRODIGY and INHERITOR OF DADDY'S MANTLE and MAGAZINE COVER BOY thing on top of Rhodey presenting the award.
I think this is a sound theory. In fact, it makes a hell of a lot of sense, because clearly he'd been there at some point, as there was an empty chair and half drunk glass of something or other next to Obie.
Okay, I totally agree that Pepper picks up on the difference, and that's why she's still there all these years later. She's the one who sees him like this the most, as she sees him actually working in the lab, and when he's working it's harder for him to wear the game face (notice he doesn't wear game face AT ALL when he's with Yinsen. Not once.
Also, yeah. I think Christine/Tony would be kind of hot, because he knows he can't really pull one over on her, but he'll just keep trying. And because she's awesome.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
SHIT. I hadn't noticed that, but you're right. You're exactly right. How can you wear a game face when it isn't a game anymore? Shit.
... I was going to talk about how brilliant you are and how this is incredibly helpful to my cracky Yinsen story idea, but I see that you've already thought it through and put it to far better practical application than I would have thought of. :D NO FLYING ROBOTS. What does that mean? No battle to conclude the movie, probably, or SHIELD having to bring out the heavy artillery earlier.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
re: the cave - I hadn't realized it until now. But he doesn't try to crack one joke. it's really unusual in the scope of the film, and I think that's the real Tony Stark. We get glimpses of him after that (and when he mentions his dad to Christine) but really he keeps the damn game face on nearly all the time, doesn't he? He even does it with his robots, to a certain extent, when no one is looking.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&amp;#39;ALL.
Yeah. That makes perfect sense. SO maybe try to re-route Tony harder to develop the arc reactor stuff? We never really hear about it after Tony manages to build a better one for himself, and from the HE BUILT IT IN A CAVE FROM SCRAPS convo, it doesn't sound like he's feeding even legit enterprises of his company the info. I'll choose like to think it's characterization rather than, uh. You know.
I wonder what he would have made of the NO MORE WEAPONS move.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&amp;#39;ALL.
He seems to have got pretty paranoid right off the bat about sharing his tech - from day one of his return he's not keeping anything on the company servers - and it's HIS company, and he has no reason to suspect Obie yet.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&amp;#39;ALL.
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Which, I think, is why he drinks. He's not excessive yet, not in the film. Because the tech is still new, it still feeds into his "HOLY NEAT LOOK WHAT I MADE GUYS" portion of his brain, he still thinks it's the answer, and it still feels like it, for the moment. But the downtime after the announcement, after Obie, is going to wear the high a bit, and nothing after will really match, you know, that night because the variables will never be perfect for that sort of crisis again. Obie became a representation of what Tony no longer wants to be (complicit, manipulated, gullible), and directly responsible for those three months gone.
And he killed him using his big shiny suit he built himself. That's got to be a great feeling, it's got to be practically tangible. And the high from that will never going to last or be that good again.
So he'll keep chasing that high, and he'll never feel like he's achieved something as tangible as that first time, and he'll get more and more frustrated as he discovers one man really can't do everything, because now he's discovered "everything" no longer just includes him, and that's going to sting.
So he'll drink, because it's a way to turn off, it's a way to forcibly override his code, it's a hack to relax.
notice he doesn't wear game face AT ALL when he's with Yinsen. Not once.
I never even considered that. Wow.
I love you.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
YEah. lots of Tony's behaviors are very much in the realm of an addict. Dysfunctional at the very least.
And pretty soon game face just doesn't work any more - at least not with himself.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y'ALL.
NO. I AM SO WITH YOU THERe, FOR THE EXACT REASONS YOU SAID.
I love her. So, so much. But we know this.
I like to think that he has a tiny bit of proto-respect for her.
Hee "proto-respect" to go along with his "proto-soul." Was that you that coined that? Because I love it and it never, ever gets old.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
Re: TONY STARKS WON THE OSCAR, Y&#39;ALL.
Seriously. I love that we don't see a fully formed adult human here - he's got so far to go, and it's seriously doubtful that he'll ever get there the way he's headed. But he's trying.