Tony Stark will never die. Tony Stark will never kill himself.
That isn't to say he hasn't tried. But it also isn't saying he has. When it comes to trying not to die, he doesn't try at all. Tony Stark is the type of guy to stare right down the barrel of a gun, and make eye contact with the bullet. He faces death bravely, right up to the bitter end. Between the time the trigger is pulled and the bullet flies out the chamber, he has a choice to make. He can either die, or he can live. What happens next depends on who wins the argument that happens in his head.
I like to think that there are two distinct parts of Tony Stark. They're nameless, they take no shape or form, but their voices drown out his own. They have power. He has none. One wants to live so desperately his chest is collapsing from heaving so hard. The other wants to die, and will destroy everything that surrounds them with unshakeable determination. Neither interact, nor collaborate. However they are codependent, neither can exist without the other. They fight for control.
It all happens in an instant. Tony never truly hears their arguments, either he can't understand them or he can never remember what they said. He has better things to worry about. But he feels the change. Sometimes it's like a fever. A thick, hazy fog that clouds his vision. It's like static. It's like sex and drugs, a little dirty and intoxicating. Sometimes it's like the sudden wail of a dying mother cradling the mangled remains of her baby who got hit by a stray bullet meant for her in the middle of a war zone. He doesn't know who is who. His body moves out of the way automatically. He pulls his own trigger automatically. The man who wants to live always wins in the end. When the ringing stops, and his vision returns, he's right back where he's always fucking been, stuck as the observer to a life that was never his, the memories already fading into the background because the experience isn't his to remember. When things die down Tony is what's left.
He doesn't remember the bad times. He doesn't remember the good times. Time stretches into a meaningless existence, fifty more years of watching the sun rise and set. You'd think that'd be a good thing, and it usually is, but it actually kind of isn't when it's all that you do. Wake up. Go to bed. Wake up, wait for your cue to start acting. Go to work, come home, you don't remember opening the door. Wait for the sun to set, wait for your eyes to shut. The room is too warm. Tomorrow will be the exact same thing. Tony lives a mundane existence where all he can do is watch the time pass by. With his endless amount of time, he thinks. Records everything he remembers, translates his experiences into data. So he knows what having a will to live feels like. Theoretically, he knows how it feels to be happy. He just can't. Nothing works.
There has to have been a moment in time where Tony lived for anyone else. Where he dragged himself through the motions just because someone else needed him to. He had to have been living for someone else. Eventually, someone else had to step in. It had to have happened. He couldn't have wanted to live through all of that, no one would. Anyone else wouldn't have survived it.
Hey I’ve got some new (to tumblr anyway, they’re about a month old lol) doodles. It was like a lighting study of a vivid horrible nightmare I had a while back :)!
And uh well, I don’t care about sounding insane on tumblr, this is the deranged and cringe about a character website, so I’ll be explaining some dream and fan continuity things under mwah ⤵️
Ok so
The whole reason I have a fan continuity in the first place is because not long after I got into transformers, I had the most vivid nightmare of my whole life 💀. It’s not the one I’ve drawn about here. Yeah. I’ve had like I think 7 uh “Ratchet in Peril” dreams for god knows what reason??? Idk why that was the topic my brain decided to latch onto, but whatever, here we are. I’m not mad tbh, I’m getting free writing out of this lol.
Anyway that first one that started all this was deadass of Ratchet having a heart(spark? Yeah) attack and almost dying 💀💀💀. It was nuts! Vivid as hell! Got a POV shot from his perspective about it as well as the usual disembodied camera perspective! Got to hear a character who only has a figure’s voice! Literal like semi sound speculative biology on how sparks work came from that! I woke up in a cold sweat and my chest hurt! It was cool!!! I’ll have to explain more about that first dream once I draw or write something about it. :3 But yeah, vivid stuff, most of these dreams have had consistency between locations and character designs and voices, just crazy levels of detail. Which kinda weirds me out because I typically only have consistent locations for dreams that don’t have like much of a plot other than “you’re at that mall that doesn’t exist again”??? Transformers did something, idk.
So, ya know, of course I wasn’t about to let all that angst and lore potential go to waste, especially since I’ve had 7 of these, and now I’ve got a fan continuity and something to do with the OC designs I’d made. :3
The dream that these drawings are based on was the second nightmare I had. I’m pretty sure this one happened cause I was looking up random stuff on the tfwiki for reference the day before and ended up on the topic of zombies (aka terrorcons, sparkeaters, the sparkless, etc etc.). Well in the marvel comics there’s a whole zombie arc apparently and Ratchet was important to it—
And what do you know! He’s got horrible reoccurring nightmares of people he cares about coming back from the dead and trying to kill him because he failed to save them! It’s wild, I suggest looking up this arc yourself everything happens to this poor old guy (TwT ). Marvel, let him have a break, jeez.
So I went to bed and immediately had a nightmare about him being awake way too late at night, alone, still working, and hallucinating people he cares about as zombies telling him he should die for failing them— in particular the main one I remember being the most antagonistic being this headless Grimlock (the shadowy figure in the doorway there ^).
It started out with him just finishing up some things, probably taking inventory for med bay or commenting similar, a little end of the day task, but he was already noticeably stressed about something. Grumbling a bit to himself, being really hard on, critical of, and negative about himself. Then something else agreed. And I remembered how neat the lighting was especially here. The only light was coming from the screen he was working on and his own screen on his chest, and then there was that dark doorway. He brushed it off at first, but the second time he heard something it got to him. He turned around and saw the figure in the doorway and just froze for a while staring at it with increasing horror while it spoke and walked into the room. And this is the scene I’ve depicted here.
It just got increasingly worse and more terrifying after that, but that’s for another time. (Aka for whenever I properly write anything lol) (>.O )
bc i was thinking about how rose's fandom realistically would be, given what we know of her career (lots of action flicks, most of them not really that good, huge star nonetheless, best known for a franchise that seems to be a mcu-level success circa 2016 but with characters more akin to the x-men reboot. closest real world counterpart is seemingly jennifer lawrence, but without the hunger games), and everything about it just seemed to scream generic fanbase, huge mass appeal but not that many actually dedicated and active fans, tumblr tag filled with mostly photos and, tbh, some shipping with whoever her version of nicholas hoult was (unless it was miles...?) BUT THEN I THOUGHT...
what if her not-mystique, instead of having a completely made-up romance with not-beast, actually got to at least interact with the other half of her longest and most iconic relationship from the comics...
DoMayStic Day 17: Bedridden (by @astrobookwormsinger)
The door to Loki's bedroom swung open and hit the wall behind it with a huge clang.
Loki grimaced. There was only one person who would do that. Pushing himself up by his elbows, he sat up and looked at his brother's face.
Thor stood there, his eyes wide and his mouth half-open.
"It is true, then!"
Loki rolled his eyes. "Of course it's true, Thor, you imbecile. Did you assume I fibbed about something this severe?"
"You are prone to lies you consider 'harmless' all the time!" Thor protested. "What else am I to expect from you?!"
"Are you going to simply stand there and accuse me while I lay here in pain? If so, you may leave me to my misery, at the very least. Chide me when I feel better."
Thor slowly made his way to the bed and sat on it. Loki glared at him.
"Mother… told me this occurs regularly in most goddesses and ladies beyond a certain age."
"I'm not not a lady," was all the explanation Loki offered in response.
Thor looked at his brother—his sibling, he supposed—with a sad expression. Loki scoffed. "I do not require your pity."
"It's not pity," Thor explained. "I wish to help."
Loki considered it. "Fetch me my books, I would like to read while I am… incapacitated." Thor promptly obeyed, and when he sat back down on the bed after getting the books, Loki raised an eyebrow.
"Could you… explain what's in those books to me?" Thor asked hesitantly. "If it would help create a distraction."
"You were always too thick-headed to actually read, were you not?" Loki asked back, fighting back a smile. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.
