MCU recs

[selenak]

Let me tell you, having my Avengers reading hunger rekindled by Iron Man 3 was tricky, because while on the one hand there are gazilion stories, on the other I have to eliminate so much which I'm really, really not interested in. My avarage look through archives and lj communities goes roughly like this:

- is Loki mentioned in a prominent position in the summary and paired with an Avenger in the pairings list? Do not want.
- Clint/Coulson? Do not want.
- Steve and Tony as adopted fathers of Peter Parker? SO DO NOT WANT, Peter is one of those characters you can't detach from Uncle Ben and Aunt May without altering him (any version of him) so much that it kills any interest I might have)
- Tony as Darcy's newly discovered bio dad? Okay, new trend, is at least more plausible than the Peter Parker stuff, but still not exactly what I'm looking for
- Clint/Natasha - I'm okay with this, but right now I'm more in a Natasha and Clint as team mates mood
- Tony/Steve - absolutely for the comics, but so far I don't see it in the films; author would have to start from scratch to convince me
- any summary indicating it postulates Howard Stark as an abusive parent: DO NOT WANT. I'm aware that some of the comic versions (and they get endlessly retconned anyway) go with that, but the movieverse didn't indicate anything more than Howard having been focused on his work and not having spent much quality time with his son. I get so TIRED of the fannish trend to blame parents, I can't tell you. (Not just in the Marvelverse. Everywhere.) Anyway, if you want a MCU character who has had an abusive father on screen, go with Bruce Banner. (He did in the Ang Lee Hulk.)

Having filtered all this out, still looking in vain for Happy Hogan centric stories and also having been converted to Tony/Pepper as a pairing by the combination of their screentime in Avengers and by Iron Man 3, this leaves me with the following stories I can recommend.



Gary the Cameraman: A Profile. By the talented lettered, a story that's at the same time meta on comics and their fans, but also manages to flesh out Gary the fanboy from Iron Man 3.


Projection: there have been a few stories on what Bruce was doing during IM3 before we catch up with him in the tag scene where we find out Tony has been talking to him the entire time. . This one is lovely, hilarious and very in character.

Several short and quite different takes on how Pepper responds to the Extremis.

There's only one phoenix (and it's not me): Pepper pov of the climactic scene. I don't often go for vignettes which simply flesh out what we've already seen on screen, but sometimes I really want them because on screen, we got a different pov than the one I'm most interested in, and this one delivers.

babel, babel, look at me now : Fixing Extremis doesn't mean removing it. Tony Stark may in fact be dating a superhero. (There's a line in the budget for it.) Aka the one where Pepper learns to master her new powers. Great ensemble use, especially Natasha. (In canon, I actually don't want Pepper to give up being a CEO for being a superhero, because I think she worked for that CEO position her whole life and is great at it, but fanfic is different, and this take is fun.)

Through the Fire : The Extremis was a dream come true for the veterans lured into the scheme. For Pepper, it's a waking nightmare. In this completely different interpretation, Pepper really doesn't want the Extremis and it remains a violation for her. Again, we get a great scene with Natasha, and in this story, Pepper makes the opposite decision. Which is a totally valid interpretation, too, and doesn't make her weak.

Non-Extremis related stories about Pepper and her relationship with Tony:

A List of Times Tony and Pepper Saved Each Other : Hilarious, consisting only of lits the two of them make and annotate. The voices sound very true to me and reflect the both loving and occasionally cranky relationship they have.

The Right Thing in the Wrong Way: People don't ask why Pepper sticks by Tony as often as they should, and if they did, she probably wouldn't tell them the truth: that he's never left her alone on the one day she actually needs him. This story is set before Iron Man 1 and offers one possible and plausible foundation for Pepper's loyalty to Tony before she ever fell in love with him.

And lastly, something a bit on the fluffy side, but sometimes one is in the mood:

Hot Chocolate is for Heroes : in which Harley visits Tony in New York and gets to meet Captain America as an added bonus.

Comments

[likeadeuce]

Oh, thanks for these. I haven't really been seeking out IM3 fic (among other things, I'm still not really sold on Tony/Pepper, aside from that few minutes in 'Avengers'), but these all look like interesting takes on the film.

[scrollgirl]

I'm fine with Tony as Darcy's bio dad (bizarre, but ultimately harmless) and Steve/Tony (I'm happy to ship them in any canon), but I absolutely agree with most everything else. I especially echo your distaste for this "blame all parents everywhere" attitude that crops up in comics. Howard Stark might have spent more time trying to save the world than spend time with his son, but there's nothing to indicate that he was abusive. It bugs me that fans who can manage to keep 616!Steve and MCU!Steve separate in their heads, and 616!Tony and MCU!Tony, etc., suddenly conflate 616!Howard and MCU!Howard despite many character details being quite different.

[selenak]

It is most frustrating. Though unfortunately not new. Fandom never misses a chance to go for the abusive parents interpretation, never mind the lack of evidence for same in canon. I remember reading the summaries of many a Harry Potter tale which had the Malfoys as cruelabusive parents before canon made it abundantly clear they were anything but, and sometimes even after, never mind that even the early HP books, in which Lucius shows up only briefly and Narcissa not at all, still give no hint Draco was anything but spoiled his parents.

Anyway, MCU!Howard: Captain America gives us a good idea of the young and the film fragments from Iron Man 2 of the older Howard, and so fandom really has no excuse for the lazy abusive father characterisation.

[princessofgeeks]

thank you for this; am looking forward to reading them.

[ratcreature]

any summary indicating it postulates Howard Stark as an abusive parent: DO NOT WANT. I'm aware that some of the comic versions (and they get endlessly retconned anyway) go with that, but the movieverse didn't indicate anything more than Howard having been focused on his work and not having spent much quality time with his son.

Yes. Also, considering that Tony has the same fields of interest as his father, I imagine they would have had many opportunities for quality time together even while Howard was focused on his work, once Tony had grown up past toddler-age and Howard could share science stuff with him. I mean for example my father was self-employed as a civil engineer, and quite absorbed with work and working very long hours, but when I was little I was allowed to visit him in his office, watch him work, occupy myself, and he showed and explained thing to me, like allowed me to play with the first computer he got, and all sorts of stuff. He had done the same for my older siblings. Obviously it's didn't quite reach the level of true co-parenting, and my mother was stuck with all the tedious child-related stuff and he mainly knew how to engage with his children once they were old enough to begin reading and understanding math, but it was still parenting and not traumatizing or anything, but rather fun stuff. I can't really imagine that Howard wouldn't have taught Tony about science and showed him all sorts of cool stuff at his company as soon as Tony was able to understand.

[selenak]

Indeed. Given that Howard expected Tony to solve that complex riddle of the new element he invented and hid via the model of the Stark Expo, he must have had a high opinion of his son's intellect, and I don't think that was some biased "well, he's my son!" thing but rather a guess based on his interaction with Tony.

[ratcreature]

I'm not that immersed in the Iron Man canon, but considering the setup I've always figured that Tony probably adored his father as kid, as kids do, and Howard could relate and teach then, and then Tony became a teenager, with all that that entails, like being sullen and resentful, and generally pissed off at the own parents and feeling misunderstood and so on and so forth, so there was the usual relationship strain (and Tony probably was not an easy teenager). Only then his parents died before he could finish redefining their relationship as adult-child to parents, and see and understand his parents as people in addition to their parental role, because he wasn't fully grown up when they died. So any issues he had as teenager he could not resolve with his actual parents while they were alive into a mature relationship, and that alone probably left a lot of conflicted feelings about them, even without any abuse.