That meme is perfect to pick a conversation because I'm loving the mutual follow but I want to know you better. So CHANCE! Anyway, I'll pick the obvious for starters then I'll try others????? Okay: Steve x Tony.
Okay, I’m back for a while, anyway, so it’s ask answering time! All right, so. Steve/Tony. This is actually one of my strongest OTPs—I’m not really all that prone to having OTPs, and this is one of the fairly few ships I actually consider to be one. There are a lot of different things that attract me to them as a pairing, so it’s kind of difficult for me to break it down and lay it all out, but I’ll give it my best shot. It’s also hard for me to differentiate the characters in terms of universe—I mostly ship Steve and Tony in the main Marvel 616 universe, but since I perceive the characters as fundamentally the same people in any universe, I ship them pretty much wherever they appear together, including the movie universe, though that’s more based on what they could be to one another in the future based on the beginnings of a relationship that we see in the Avengers. Since they’ve been shown to relate to each other in similar ways—to be close and to have a strong bond in almost every universe they appear in, whatever the nature of it—I tend to think of them as just very compatible in ways that are inherent to their characters, that they could have the relationship they have in 616 canon. So that’s mostly what I base my shipping on.
Steve and Tony are extremely different people who are also extremely similar, and this is one of my favorite things about them, both as friends and as a pairing. They’re both compelled toward heroic action, unable simply to sit back and watch people be hurt or injustice continue around them, willing to sacrifice their own health, safety, well-being, happiness, and lives for the good of those they can protect. They’re both extremely stubborn, action-oriented, dynamic people willing to take steps and put themselves in harm’s way to do what’s right and for the sake of others—even though they don’t always agree on what’s right, and prioritize moral issues differently. They can both be aggressive and have extremely strong personalities, and in ways such that you might expect them to clash. Which they do. However, despite that, they’ve been friends for years, despite disagreements and arguments and everything else that might have gotten in the way of their friendship, they are extremely close and care about one another a great deal, whatever else. I love friendships and relationships like that both, where one person doesn’t have to give up their sense of their own personality or goals or ideals or ideas to be extremely close to another, and I get that from Steve and Tony—they argue and fight and don’t agree because they’re not willing to compromise what they hold to be more important than themselves or their own lives, and I love that they can do that, that they will do that, not just with the big issues, but with the smaller ones, too. Tony believes that the ends sometimes justify the means, and to save and protect others he is willing to sacrifice everything about himself, even his own morality, literally everything he is. Steve believes that a person must never sacrifice what’s right, must never sacrifice their own morality, must never settle. Their ideologies are bound to come in conflict, and yet they have so much respect for each other, they admire each other so much. I love seeing that.
And I get a really strong sense from them that they like each other. They willingly spend time together, they joke around and tease each other, they enjoy one another’s company, they work AMAZINGLY well together on the field and as a team (Steve is a great leader, Tony great at supporting a leader and bringing a team together, doing the things that make a good leader able to lead, and they fight together almost effortlessly, instinctively). Tony sees Steve as a person, not just as Captain America, and is willing to argue with him, to give him a hard time, to make him justify his positions and ideas. Steve isn’t willing to write Tony off or give up on him, ever—he might be disappointed, but he isn’t ever going to stop having faith in Tony. Tony almost hero-worships Steve, but he’ll still call him on his bullshit and listen to his jokes, and I think Steve is always in danger of self-righteous stubbornness—he simply WILL NOT back down—and of people just listening to him because he’s Captain America. Tony isn’t used to people having faith in him even when he’s let them down before, but Steve refuses to give up on a friend—or on anyone. Steve was one of the last people who tried to reach Tony when he was drinking himself to death, Steve will always come back, refuse to put up with or listen to Tony’s bullshit but still try to reach out to him, still think he’s a good person, still give him another chance.
And, I mean, they’re canonically extremely emotionally invested in each other already. ”I’m not half as good at anything as I am when I’m doing it next to you.” The absolute devastation they both experience when on different sides in Civil War (despite their commitment to each side, the choices they’ve made, and that only makes me ship them more, honestly, the way they don’t have to agree to respect each other, the awful fights they can have even though they care so much, because that’s the kind of people they are—they’re willing to give up pretty much anything for each other, die for each other, but they won’t give up what they think and feel is right for each other, and I can’t even tell you how beautiful I think that is), the way they are willing to die for each other, the deep, intense admiration they have for each other, all of it.
Completely apart from the gazing into each other’s eyes, the tendency to want to be around each other, the closeness and touching and monologues about azure eyes and so on (though none of that hurts, mind you), it’s more that their dynamic interpersonally really works for me. Tony is this pragmatist, this brilliant futurist and engineer who thinks that the ends justify the means who hates himself and isn’t willing to let one single person get hurt on his watch, who would sacrifice himself in a heartbeat but is too arrogant to bend on his decisions about what is right, who is deeply vulnerable but refuses to show it to anyone, who has highly held ideals that he’ll never, ever live up to himself, who mouths off and cares too much. Steve is this idealist who understands that reality doesn’t always measure up to his high ideals, who doesn’t necessarily hate himself for not being perfect but doesn’t think he’s all that special and so doesn’t realize why people aren’t always as noble as he is, a man from the past who can live in the future, who is pure courage and grit and stubbornness and determination, but who is really just kind of a dorky guy with an artistic side who won’t give up. Tony is emotional but hates to show it, Steve is stoic and represses so much. Tony is a man of tomorrow and Steve is a man of yesterday, but they’re both so competent in the world of today, both intelligent but in such incredibly different ways, both creative, but in different ways, both stubborn and snarky but in incredibly different ways there too, Tony self-destructive and difficult, Steve steady and strong and sometimes lost. They have all these fascinating contrasts to play with, and they play off each other so well; both their vulnerabilities and their strengths clash and mesh.
And they mesh well, they argue and have fun together, they trust each other and even when they’re busy tearing each other’s hearts out they care about each other so much. They balance each other well, they respect each other without having to be the same or even hold all the same ideals. Basically, they play off each other and make each other better—they are better at doing everything together, and I love that dynamic. They have a deep relationship, one that’s passionate and intense and sincere and dynamic and trusting and respectful and sometimes explosive, fun and teasing and comfortable and loving and sometimes difficult. I don’t think it’s actually canon in the comic per se, but I can see it, I can see how it would work, and I like what I see.
It’s hard to explain, really, but that’s my best shot at it.
