I Like It Here Inside My Head

[iam93percentstardust]

are you normal or do you still associate back in black with the first five minutes of iron man (2008) almost twenty years later?

[gracieparkerr]

when a nuke is sent for nyc, fury doesn’t comm the avengers. he singled out tony stark; told him, not the team. fury knew tony would immediately have a solution, one that he would execute without asking. that’s how tony worked. and fury knew that.

and fury was right, because what did tony do when he got the call? he asked fury how long they had. and then he Got To Fucking Work.

[abyssal-ilk]

i love hitting characters with the disability beam. we should all be hitting characters with the disability beam. my favorite activity

[abyssal-ilk]

annoyed that your favorite character canonically receives a grievous injury that they seem to walk off without issue? oh do i have a solution for you.

[no-gorms]

This a real question, not a complaint: how do you still ship Steve and Tony after Civil War? I used to love it, but now I cant forget that CW made it clear Steve doesn’t care about Tony or even the Avengers very much. I always wonder if The Letter TM was supposed to be a real apology and the screenwriter was just a sociopath, or if they were making him a dick on purpose. Anyway, I’d love to know how you reconcile all of that because your characterizations of them are so beautiful. I want to enjoy the ship again, so I’d love to hear your take on it.

----

The funny thing is, Civil War is what made me ship Steve and Tony again, and I feel like how people engage with CW's take on them depends on where their feelings already were when that movie came out. I'm speaking broad strokes but not to universal experiences, plus shipping is subjective. Thoughts behind the cut.

I got into Steve/Tony as a ship around the time the first Iron Man movie came out (thanks, zen-ish!) and most of the fic back then was comics-based and focused on a deep, years-spanning friendship with bumps between them. Understandably, a lot of these feelings got projected forward into the fresh potential of the MCU's new versions of the characters, and in my memory, a lot of fic post-The Avengers predicated a future friendship dynamic not too far from from what the comics had established.

Now, a lot of people thrived then and still thrive now in that post-2012 The Avengers time of rich possibility. I know I had joined that high with tremendous excitement. But my investment in them as a ship took a sharp blow when Age of Ultron came out, because (not knocking those who get stuff out of it) the team dynamic was not working for me. Workmates instead of teammates, Steve wasn't even living in the tower (WHY?) and though there were some nice moments, Steve and Tony's main interactions were plot-driven instead of character-driven, and coolly semi-antagonistic. And by 'cool' I mean impersonal, which comes back to the workmates vibe.

The Avengers didn't need to show them as a tight team, but it teased the possibility. AOU, in my opinion, didn't follow up on possibility, and as a result I lost interest. I know a lot of people filled in the blanks and used the 2012-team-as-family momentum to keep going, but I couldn't get into that.

Now Civil War. Oh boy. I understand why people like yourself have strong negative feelings about it, but when Steve and Tony fight in this movie, it's personal. It's also plot-driven, but in my opinion the character beats are stronger in how the conflict is depicted. It fills in the negative space in AOU of two people who should know each other well by now -- Tony knows how Steve's going to react to the Accords, and Steve knows that Tony's already made a decision. Tony gentles himself, and uses a personal touch to try to convince Steve to change his stance. Steve outright yells at one point, which he rarely does. When Tony learns about Zemo, he goes to help Steve without hesitating -- that's a ride-or-die that's too late, and gets turned on its head at the last moment. When Tony learns about his parents, Steve stops trying to justify his actions, because he knows Tony's pain is too great and in this, without question, Steve was wrong and he can't defend himself in any way, it's done, it's over, all he can do is stand his ground and not let Tony hurt anyone.

It hurts because they care. As opposed to AOU, where when they fought the dialogue could've come from anyone and the movie refused to address the fallout afterward, or in The Avengers they barely knew each other and (you guessed it!) the movie refused to address the fallout afterward.

Would it have been nice for them to show Steve and Tony as good friends? Definitely, I'm upset about AOU to this very day. Is Steve's letter at the end of CW weird? Yes, and I won't bother justifying it.

But to me, CW built up a storm of emotion between them where previously there was (again, in my personal opinion) barely anything at all, and as long as there's something, that's something I can work with. (And I thought it was delicious.) A lot of how I write Steve and Tony is influenced by CW and its fallout, especially in how I'd build their friendship backwards in their timeline (through the post-2012 Avengers and AOU era) knowing what we know about them and how they strongly affected each other in CW and after.

[ilarual]

okay but riffing more on this moment from 04.16, I think we do really really need to talk about how this little scene with Dean from the end of OTHOAP kind of broke Cas's brain a little.

I am very glad we as a society have been having more conversations about Cas's lone wolf flavored romantic hero knightly chivalry bullshit, but if you ask me, I think a big part of that starts here.

Like, Cas makes the decision post-S5 to leave Dean to his suburban domesticity with Lisa For His Own Good or whatever, but like... a huge part of that is because Cas has seen Dean break down over being asked to carry the weight of the world. Dean lay bloody and beaten in a hospital bed, weeping through a recently-crushed trachea and pleading with Cas to find someone else to take over the burden of responsibility because he couldn't handle it.

Of course this rewires Cas's brain and makes him eventually decide that it is his personal job to prevent Dean from having to carry that burden of universal responsibility ever again.

Naturally he makes a dogs' breakfast of this on a regular basis because Cas, despite being both intelligent and unexpectedly wise, repeatedly crit-fails his WIS checks. (Also because a literal deity or two hate him personally and want him to suffer but that's neither here nor there.) But I think it's important to understand not just that Cas has this tendency to go off to try and solo the final boss by himself every single time there's an opportunity to do so, but also why he's so fixated on specifically sparing Dean from having anything to do with the big cosmic problems if he can possibly help it. And the origin of that, in my opinion, is all the way back in OTHOAP.

[ilarual]

basically the tl;dr for me is that while Cas running off to slay metaphorical dragons on Dean's behalf is misguided and tends to come with a boatload of unintended consequences... like, damn. It really comes from such a loving, compassionate place.

He is not, in fact, successfully meeting Dean's needs, because by the time Cas going off by himself to troubleshoot cosmic problems becomes an Issue™ for them, Dean's actual emotional needs are much more strongly rooted in Cas being there than anything else... but the tendency itself (while also drawing on a lot of other sources including but not limited to Cas's daddy issues) comes, in its deepest essence, from a desire to relieve Dean of the burden he carries.

Like fundamentally Cas is the only close connection Dean has who looks at him and says no, you should not have to carry this enormous burden that is too big for you and too much for any person to reasonably be expected to carry and that you've been forced to bear all on your own for much too long.

The only real problem with that is that he follows up that deeply compassionate emotional response with "I, of course, am not a person* and will carry all the weight of the world myself so you don't have to :)"

*citation fucking needed

He went too far to the other extreme, trying to solve Every Problem so that Dean isn't bothered with it instead of like. Collaborating. But at the end of the day the reason he's trying to do that comes from a deeply loving place, and that's why I'm absolutely convinced that if Dean had just cried some pretty tears at him about how it breaks his heart every time Cas leaves or shuts him out and lies about what he's doing, it would go an extraordinarily long way towards solving this particular issue.

[kinky-cas]

(tags via op)

[beetusthatyeetus]

John’s voicemail: If this is an emergency, call my son.

Sam’s voicemail: If this is an emergency, call my brother.

Dean’s voicemail: If this is an emergency, leave a message or try my other phone.

Bro is his own emergency contact on top of being everyone else’s I’m going to throw myself under a jet ski

[scoobydoodean]

If you had to pick five moments that you think best summarize Dean as a character… What would they be? Like, either each individually makes you go “yup THAT’S the character” or as a whole they male up the most of his facets?

Oooh that’s difficult. Hmm. HMMM.

1.02 "I figure our family's so screwed to hell... maybe we can help some others"

"Saving people, hunting things, the family business" etc etc yeah. But ALSO we often ignore that this whole conversation is centered around not letting desperation for revenge consume you, and Dean's care for others including strangers—wanting to keep them from experiencing the traumas that he has.

DEAN Listen to me. You've gotta prepare yourself. I mean, this search could take a while, and all that anger, you can't keep it burning over the long haul. It's gonna kill you. You gotta have patience, man. SAM How do you do it? How does Dad do it? DEAN looks over at HALEY and BEN. DEAN Well for one, them. I mean, I figure our family's so screwed to hell, maybe we can help some others. Makes things a little bit more bearable.

4.22 "Stepford Bitch in Paradise"

This one is a good representation of Dean's refusal to back down, caring about the whole world, and arguing fiercely to protect it, as well as his ability to stir up the care and love in others.

DEAN Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? CASTIEL What is so worth saving? I see nothing but pain here. I see inside you. I see your guilt, your anger, confusion. In paradise, all is forgiven. You'll be at peace. Even with Sam. DEAN You can take your peace... and shove it up your lily-white ass. 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. It's a lot better than being some Stepford bitch in paradise. This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it.

12.22 "I hate you and I love you"

Just a very good summary of Dean's childhood experiences and how they have effected him, and how he (yet again) stirs up the care and love in others (and pulls people from mind control over and over via the power of love <3)

I hate you. You lied to me. I was a kid. You promised you'd keep me safe. And then you make a deal with Azazel. Yeah, it saved Dad's life, but I'll tell you something else that happened. Because on November 2, 1983, old Yellow Eyes came waltzing in to Sammy's room, because of your deal. You left us. Alone. 'Cause Dad was just a shell. His perfect wife? Gone. Our perfect Mom, the perfect family... was gone. And I... I had to be... more than just a brother. I had to be a father and I had to be a mother, to keep him safe. And that wasn't fair. And I couldn't do it. And you wanna know what that was like? They killed the girl that he loved. He got possessed by Lucifer. They tortured him in Hell. And he lost his soul. His soul. All because of you. All of it was because of you. I hate you. I hate you. And I love you. 'Cause I can't – I can't help it. You're my Mom. And I understand...'cause I have made deals to save the ones I love more than once. I forgive you. I forgive you. For all of it. Everything. On the other side of this, we can start over, okay? You, me, Sam. We can get it right this time. But I need you to fight. Right now, I need you to fight. I need you – I need you to look at me, Mom. I need you to really look at me and see me. Mom, I need you to see me. Please.

5.22 "Well, then I ain't gonna let him die alone"

Bobby and Cas try to convince Dean that they've lost and there's no point in trying to reach Sam.

BOBBY: You just don't give up. DEAN: It's Sam! CASTIEL: If you couldn't reach him here, you're certainly not gonna be able to on the battlefield. DEAN: Well, if we've already lost, I guess I got nothing to lose, right? CASTIEL: I just want you to understand – the only thing that you're gonna see out there is Michael killing your brother. DEAN: Well, then I ain't gonna let him die alone.

Dean pulls up at Stull right in front of two archangels who could blow him to smithereens, blasting music from his car and making an obnoxious scene. THEN Cas and Bobby show up right behind him (just as Michael says "you are not a part of the story!") Dean's refusal to give up defies causality, and his attitude is infectious.

While Dean is being beaten to death, he's saying,

DEAN: Sam, it's okay. It's okay. I'm here. I'm here. I'm not gonna leave you. I'm not gonna leave you.

Dean's refusal to abandon his brother fills Lucifer with jealous rage making his control slip, while simultaneously bringing dozens of memories of traveling with Dean to Sam's mind helping him surface and take control.

3.10 "I didn't deserve what he put on me"

I have trouble picking a 5th because there's so many different directions I could go (Dean and Cas in the Crypt, Dean reusing to abandon Cas in Purgatory, Dean in the cemetery in 2.20 crying over John's grave, Dean's "I'm not mad I'm worried" from "Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets" or the similar scene in "The Future", Dean convincing Chuck and Amara to make up, Dean refusing to give into Chuck's writing and kill Jack, Dean telling Chuck "We will never give you the ending you want", etc).

I think I have to go with 3.10 "Dream A Little Dream of Me" because it summarizes a lot of Dean's intrusive thoughts and his overactive sense of responsibility and guilt, identifies the origin of those feelings, connects all of it to his depression and suicidality, and then circles back to the fact that he knows deep down that he doesn't deserve to feel this way, that he's not a tool for others to use, that he is his own person, and that he deserves to live.

DREAM DEAN I mean, you're going to hell and you won't lift a finger to stop it. Talk about low self-esteem. Then again, I guess it's not much of a life worth saving, now is it? DEAN Wake up, Dean. Come on, wake up. DREAM DEAN I mean, after all, you've got nothing outside of Sam. You are nothing. You're as mindless and obedient as an attack dog. DEAN That -That's not true. DREAM DEAN No? What are the things that you want? What are the things that you dream? I mean, your car? That's Dad's. Your favorite leather jacket? Dad's. Your music? Dad's. Do you even have an original thought? No. No, all there is is, "Watch out for Sammy. Look out for your little brother, boy!" You can still hear your Dad's voice in your head, can't you? Clear as a bell. DEAN Just shut up. DREAM DEAN I mean, think about it ... all he ever did is train you, boss you around. But Sam .... Sam he doted on. Sam, he loved. DEAN I mean it. I'm getting angry. DREAM DEAN Dad knew who you really were. A good soldier and nothing else. Daddy's blunt little instrument. Your own father didn't care whether you lived or died. Why should you? DEAN Son of a bitch! My father was an obsessed bastard! All that crap he dumped on me, about protecting Sam! That was his crap. He's the one who couldn't protect his family. He- He's the one who let Mom die. – who wasn't there for Sam. I always was! He wasn't fair! I didn't deserve what he put on me. And I don't deserve to go to Hell!

[trains-gengar]

hey remember when jack killed mary and everyone treated dean like he was crazy for struggling to forgive him?

[trains-gengar]

allow me to correct myself. ONE person didn't treat dean like he was crazy for it. and that was jack.

[soft-pine]

as the strange combination of a bitter deangirl (gn) and a deancas shipper, i cannot overstate how much i appreciate everyone's thoughtful 15.09 The Trap takes. my only contribution to the conversation is that 15.03 kills me.

at the end of s14, everything happens so fast. cas finally admits to himself something's really wrong with jack. meanwhile jack's killed nick and mary. dean is devastated. rightfully angry. then jack's manipulated into fucking with the whole world. they don't know what to do. the plan dean and sam come up with seems like the only thing with anything close to jack's power. and even cas suggests locking jack away until they have more time to work things out. like i cannot overstate how dramatically quickly everything is unfolding. chuck shows up and says jack will end the world. dean was never gonna be okay with the world ending. was never gonna be okay with anyone but himself sacrificing to make that happen. instead they find out chuck is messing with them. he kills jack, opens hell, and they spend an awful horrible week trying to fight ghosts they thought they'd dealt with long ago, while trying to keep a whole town safe and calm, while grieving jack's death, while having to talk to a demon in his corpse, while reckoning with the fact that everything they've ever known is a lie and an elaborate set-up for a cosmic being's entertainment. like it is punch after punch for weeks and weeks with no breathing room. finally culminating in cas doing something which makes sense but is also very much a pattern where he just decides what to do. which results in rowena dying and sam being entirely torn up.

the conversation dean is having right before cas leaves in 15.03 is trying to take care of a broken up sam. based on what dean says it seems like they haven't even been home for a day. like they haven't even had a moment to try to decompress from the series of escalating, terrifying events which they've been dealing with for days and days pretty much nonstop.

it always strikes me then that what cas says is "You used to trust me, give me the benefit of the doubt. Now you can barely look at me..... I've tried to talk to you, over and over, and you just don't want to hear it. You don't care. I'm... dead to you." i recognize he's parroting back something dean said in 14.18 but i don't understand, i really don't, what the timeline he's working off is. like when is dean supposed to have enough space to work through the emotional ramifications of everything above. when is he supposed to have calmed down enough settle in to feeling any one kind of way.

"You still blame me for Mary." like it just happened, my guy. like where was he supposed to work in grieving for his mom (again) and working to move on from the grief and blame, into fighting off a ghost apocalypse and finding out god is basically jacking off to his pain.

i think patience and understanding has always been one of dean's strong suits. and i think cas tends toward impatience more. and it does make sense that when dean truly does get to the edge of his patience, that feels like a breaking point to cas because he has always had access to it before.

in response, i do think cas is allowed to be reactive and hurt and angry! after all he just went through all of the above as well!!!! but i think it's a grave mistake to think that cas doesn't also need to apologize for lashing out in anger.

[soft-pine]

thinking about this again... and getting .... frustrated because if the trap apology and reconciliation scene is supposed to be resolving their issues.... why is it so one-sided?

like i am not the first to point out that the issues that lead to 15.03 are a long-time pattern of behavior from cas! dean feels angry and betrayed and hurt not only because of what happened at the end of s14 but also for all the ways it calls back to a pattern of hurt!

BUT ALSO dean not offering immediate forgiveness is literally not at all a pattern.... like he is so forgiving often to the point of being so while still in the midst of suffering the effects of the hurt. so it's just sad to me to see the time where he can't offer it so immediately as though that's like some longtime character flaw when it's just. JUST NOT.

the one thing i will say is that of course it doesn't feel out of character for dean to be the one to swallow his pride - or not even realize he's also owed an apology - and apologize first. or just decide to shoulder all the blame for the rupture or feel like it's all his fault (when its not its not its not). but god it hurts!

[userfinalgirls]

there is no home without you, buddy

Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl

SUPERGIRL (2026) dir. Craig Gillespie

[sentrysvoid]

Supergirl dir. Craig Gillespie | 2026

[dcfilmblr]

Supergirl dir. Craig Gillespie | 2026

[gracieparkerr]

god forbid you meet tony stark and god forbid he gives you a nickname. that shit is NOT going away.

you threaten security with pepper spray? your name is pepper forever now.

you look perpetually grumpy? your name is now happy. congratulations.

james rhodes? nope. that’s rhodey actually.

nobody will ever call you anything else for the rest of time. tony-given nicknames are forever.

[meidui]

from a 2011 au where tony is like "would you like to come live in my nice warm house" and steve is like "i'm actually doing just fine in my wet cardboard box"

-

That night, his room at SHIELD is hard to fall asleep in.

As he does most nights, Steve pulls the sheets and the pillow off the bed because the mattress is too soft and makes himself a new bed on the floor, but the downside is that the floor is colder. The rooms don't have individual heating units and no one has told him where the central controls are, so for the last few weeks, Steve has pulled on sweats and a hoodie over top of an undershirt and put on socks for good measure too. He isn't just cold when he's trying to sleep—he seems to run chilly almost all the time, everywhere he goes. It must be a side effect from spending so long in the Arctic ice.

Steve tosses and turns for a while before sitting up, restless. He can't get Tony and what he'd offered out of his head. Tony, who apparently looked for him for a long time before SHIELD did and might be the only familiar piece of anything left in this future.

Steve climbs out of his makeshift bed and gets out the laptop SHIELD assigned to him. He has no illusions about having any kind of privacy on it, but if anyone at SHIELD has a problem with him typing Tony Stark into the search bar, it isn't him who has something to hide.

It doesn't take him long to find what he's looking for—most of modern technology is quite intuitive.

Stark Industries launches deep sea exploration program; Captain America recovery efforts continue. Exclusive interview with Tony Stark.

Steve is almost amused because the headline makes him sound like a sunken ship. He can't fault them for thinking the Starks were looking for a corpse; Steve thought he was dead, too.

His laptop screen lit up with the article is the only light in his room and he reads about Stark Industries and its brilliantly engineered probes, the future of deep sea exploration, the possibility of marine life conservation efforts, and—

Is it true you're resuming the search for Captain America's body?

Never stopped.

Staring at those two words in the dark—never stopped—is when Steve finally believes it. The man who he only met tonight has been looking for him for years; to him, they aren't strangers. Steve closes his laptop slowly and climbs back under the covers. This is Howard's son. This is the man Howard raised, and Steve should be able to trust him more than the strangers here who only brought up Peggy to him once, when they were convincing him to join SHIELD because she founded it.

Maybe Tony's house would be warmer than it is here.

[omg-just-peachy]

Tony Stark Bingo: Disheveled

I got absolutely CONSUMED with missing stevetony this weekend, then remembered i had a tony stark bingo card sitting untouched in my email and decided to dust off my fic writing fingers for the first time in actual YEARS

help me i missed it so much.

they are soft and cozy here because no matter how long it's been that is my favorite way for them to be!!

****

It’s not exactly unusual for Tony to get home late. But these days it’s more and more likely that Steve and Tony get home late together. Tonight, however, Steve looks at his watch and sighs, wondering what could possibly be keeping Tony. 

Steve himself had been home for nearly two hours. He’s showered and changed, had a snack, and he’d be thinking about dinner and a long, lazy evening on the couch or in the lab right about now, except Tony still isn’t home. 

He pulls his phone from his pocket, checking for an update. There’s no shame in checking in, right? This…whatever it is they’ve been doing for the past few months certainly looks and feels like dating, though neither of them have braved that conversation just yet. No need to rock the boat. At least, that’s what Steve keeps telling himself. There has been a definite lack of strange men and women coming and going from the Tower, though, which tells Steve just about all he needs to know. 

Before he can stop daydreaming about Tony long enough to text Tony, he hears footsteps, followed by the warm, familiar voice he’s come to know and… 

Well, the end of that sentence is another conversation altogether. 

“Honey, I’m home,” Tony says, falling into the chair beside Steve for all of thirty seconds before thinking the better of it and joining Steve on his own chair, climbing awkwardly into his lap. 

Tony’s hair is half dry and wind swept, and he looks a little worse for the wear after their mission: a small cut beneath his eye, the first signs of a bruise on his left arm… nothing out of the norm, and, in fact, one of the better outcomes. But something protective still flares up in Steve’s chest, and he presses his lips to the tender spot by Tony’s eye. 

“About time you joined me,” he murmurs. 

“Missed me, did you? Fury wouldn’t stop talking. I think he gets off on watching you leave and keeping me behind. He’s out to get me, Rogers, I swear. 

Steve chuckles, then reaches up to smooth Tony’s hair. Freed of the shackles of his expensive products, his curls are taking on a life of their own, and Steve can barely resist the urge to press his face into them and inhale. He’s always loved seeing this side of Tony – undone and comfortable at home, the way very few people get to know. 

“ You’re being targeted,” Steve agrees, and Tony relaxes into him. “This can’t be comfortable,” Steve says. The Tower’s furniture might be nice, but it’s surely not built for two grown superhero-sized men at once. 

“Mmmm…but you’re here.” 

Steve laughs again. “Yes, but I can be…” he trails off, lifting Tony up and waking the both of them to the couch in the living room. 

“...Here,” he finishes, once they’re settled in together. “Better?”

“Yeah, yeah, this is better.” Tony’s eyes are shut and he looks completely at ease here with Steve on the couch, and the sight of it settles something in Steve, too. 

“I did, you know. Miss you. Even though it was only a few hours.” Steve hears himself say. His face heats at the admission, adding, “Silly, I know.” 

Tony shifts, opening his eyes and smiling a little, the one Steve likes to think is all for him. “Missed you too,” he says, and kisses him so sweetly that any second thoughts Steve might have had vanish as quickly as they came. 

They should think about dinner, and plans for tomorrow, and all those pesky conversations Steve knows they should have, and probably a million other things; but for now, Steve is happy enough to let a disheveled, sleepy Tony Stark doze off against him.

[soliloquent-stark]

the ever-perceptive natasha romanoff, sniffing crushes left and right like it's her job*

*it kinda is, and the crushes are obvious, but that's not her fault!

marvel parallels 43/?

scarlett johansson, robert downey jr and chris evans in iron man 2 (2010) and avengers: age of ultron (2015)

[kayvsworld]

not to be talking about avengers (2012) in the current year (2025) but tony stark walking into a room full of spies and government agents, planting a hacking device on one of their computers, starting up a little hacking program on a giant screen in full view of everyone present, and then exiting WITH NO ONE NOTICING simply because he is THAT good at misdirection and running his mouth. what the fuck. icon legend media trained at the Maria Stark Public Appearances Bootcamp at age 4 guy who crowd worked his way out of a senate hearing they do not make them like this anymore