looks like my exhausted rambling isn’t over yet but this time I’m gonna talk about Tony Stark and why I hate the direction the MCU went (aside from Black Panther, Gaurdians of the Galaxy, and Ragnarok - but why they’re exceptions might also be touched on)
so, a long while ago I talked about how Young Justice and Teen Titans has been exactly what I needed when I first moved to Bellevue - I would imagine the heroes watching over me, making sure I was safe, or coming to whisk me away so I could join them and become a hero myself
I started watching the MCU movies around the end of middle school/beginning of high school and Iron Man, for me, couldn’t have come into my life at a better time
firstly, my first introduction to superhero movies was the Batman Beyond trilogy which was exactly the opposite of what I needed and almost enough to turn me off superhero movies entirely
and then I saw Iron Man, which was so completely different - it was funny and hopeful and bright - but also... well
around that time I’d constructed a mask to hide all my negative emotions - all my pain and anger and fear, everything caused by the abuse I’d suffered in Texas and my mom and brother starting to lash out more and more - and this mask, well to me it looked an awful lot like Tony Stark’s
and that was what I needed, I needed to see myself in him, to have the reassurance that I could move on from my past and become a better person, that I could have happiness, that no matter what others might think or see neither my mask and what was under it made me an irredeemable person
for the whole first half of the MCU I latched on to Tony, him and Loki were my favorite characters because they represented the two possibilities of what I could become - the positive and the negative, and even the negative didn’t look all that bad once you scaled it down to a small, disabled human from the powerful, magically talented god
(I also liked Loki because it was like they’d taken all my own family issues and lain them out in a way that anywhere I looked in the fandom I’d see people indirectly supporting me through their support of him)
I also liked Bruce, Clint, and Natasha, and all the side characters, they were all relatable in small human ways that I was very fond of
Thor and Steve I struggled with though
for about three years - the three years I lived in Texas - my mother was married to a bodybuilder name James, he was abusive and because of this I was traumatized and spent up until recently automatically scared of any large muscular man
sort of a ‘they have to prove they’re not to be scared of instead of the other way around’ kinda thing, and unfortunately Steve and Thor did not do that in those first few movies
so I projected heavily on Tony and tried not to let my trauma color my opinion of Steve and Thor too much and trusted that Marvel would handle their main characters as well as I was used to from things like, for example, Teen Titans or Young Justice
Age of Ultron was difficult but it had some good Clint moments and the ‘language!’ running joke was fun - I was torn up at the loss of Jarvis, of course
and then Civil War came out
they took the character I projected on and one of the characters my trauma made me somewhat distrustful of and pitted them against each other and somehow, miraculously, I sided with Steve
of course I sided more with healthy communication and talking things out amongst themselves before they take sides and start splitting up but unfortunately there wouldn’t have been much of a movie if they’d done that, would there?
and then, Steve admitted to knowing who killed Tony’s parents and not telling him sooner and got upset at him for being upset
I’d managed to get past my trauma enough to recognize that he was mostly dedicated to being a good person, I’d even managed to get past it enough to side with him over Tony for the better part of that movie
but watching that fight, especially the end where Tony was laying there defenseless, was almost like being retraumatized - having the association of large muscular men as violent and dangerous rebranded into my brain - and the letter he sent at the end pulled up all the less physical aspects of James’s abuse
and so Steve was firmly associated in my head with all of that stuff from my past, and it made it so hard to participate in fandom where suddenly everyone was picking a side and declaring one or the other completely in the wrong
and those who like Steve or believed his side was right decided anyone who liked Tony, or disapproved of how Steve handled the whole situation with Tony’s parents having been murdered, was a terrible person and should be torn down for liking him, they reduced Tony to his mask and declared that he’d never be able to make up for his past - called him heartless and more
and those who supported Tony were just as bad
and there was no room for someone who supported Steve’s argument against the accords but was against his actions in the Hydra base(I don’t remember where it was, I watched the movie once and refused to ever watch it again cause it was too triggering for me)
and while the rift in the fandom has softened, its still there - everyone seems to either hate Tony or hate Steve
and those who dislike Tony have had more and more good reason to as the series has gone on and it hurts
because at some point he stopped being a beacon of hope for me while still being too connected to me
in fact, it’s almost like him and Loki switched places with Ragnarok and everything
(here’s where we touch on why Ragnarok is so much better than most of the rest of the MCU, and is in fact my #1 favorite MCU movie)
by the time Ragnarok came out I had lost my main fictional source of hope for myself - I’d only ever found two characters I related to in that way and on that level: Tony and Loki (there have been many other fictional characters I’ve related to but all either on much smaller scale or just in wildly different directions)
and Tony was quickly becoming worse than what Loki had represented for me, my hope turned sour, my mask indistinguishable from the truth, I was a little lost
I distanced myself somewhat from the MCU fandom, I just couldn’t handle it, it hurt too much
and then I watched Ragnarok
Thor was goofy and ridiculous and silly and a definite hero but in an almost washed up way - like his time had come and gone and come again and he was gonna grab it with both hands while it was there but not take it too seriously this time cause he knew better, y’know?
and that was exactly what I needed to get past the ‘big muscular man’ trigger to see him as a whole Good Person and absolutely love him
and him and Loki’s interactions were exactly what I needed right at the cusp of a change for the better in my relationship with my own brother
and by the end of the movie Loki was happy and accepted and understood (and gay, can’t forget the gay subtext) - while still being himself - and that was definitely what I needed
and then Infinity War and Endgame came out and I still haven’t watched either of them yet but I don’t need to and I don’t want to because I’ve had enough spoiled for me to know that nothing good would come of it
and it makes me so sad and angry
Marvel took this series, these characters, that was so important to me at such a difficult part of my life, that I was so dedicated to for so long, and essentially threw it all away, trashed it, ran it into the ground so thoroughly that I decided not to watch any more unless it’s, like, a Black Panther sequel - and that mostly because black superhero movies need to be supported so more will get made cause they’re important (and because Black Panther was good but, I mean, I feel like the rest of this post does a good job explaining that one movie being good doesn’t mean it’s sequel will be or that you should watch the sequel so the representation aspect makes more of a difference for me rn)
and all because... what?... cause they decided drama and conflict was more important than their main team being a team? cause they didn’t want any spoilers leaked so they lied to their actors? because they were more motivated by making money than telling a satisfying story? cause they forgot not all their watchers are cookie cutter carbon copies of each other and all relate to different aspects of different characters for different reasons?
because they forgot that because this series might be a child’s first introduction to the concept of superheroes they have a responsibility to protect and nurture that child’s faith in the world? that’s the responsibility you take upon yourself when working with those characters, any superhero characters unless your story is undeniably adult oriented, and you need to remember that
superheroes are supposed to be our hope that maybe things can be better, maybe we can make a difference, that’s what got Marvel and DC big and they need to do better to remember it
(I liked Black Panther because it was very emotionally impactful and visually stunning and had great characters and representation - so many different important woman characters as well as most the characters being black! - and just overall was, like, the ideal movie)
(I liked Guardians of the Galaxy 1&2 because it was easily separated from the rest of the MCU in my head and it was fun and funny and leaned very heavily into found family which is my jam and it had an A+ soundtrack and Groot was adorable and amazing and Drax was very autistic coded in a Good way, also Gamora and Nebula gave me similar sibling feels to Thor and Loki which is important to me)
