My head is still falling off (fic notes I might lose when it hits the ground)

[jmtorres]

I am sort of torn about whether this entry is primarily notes for myself so I don't lose track of things I want to write, or at least partially for other people and/or my feedback addiction. It sort of affects whether I filter it or not, you know.

Current plotbunny batch:

Captain America somehow woke up all the Iron Man plot bunnies. And then added some more. So I have Mistress Pepper and Tony who is a nightmare running around my head, as well as Tony who built Pepper as a robot and Steve who is like "The future is so awesome! Who else is a robot?" But I also have new ones.

the goddamn lunar base
So this happened because I was trying to figure out how in the fuck you could have a Tony Stark who is not emotionally damaged, a thought experiment based on the fact that apparently Tony's emoness was intentionally written in as a like, a base facet of his character, by Stan Lee. This is who I'm talking about if I refer to Spoiledest Brattest Tony, because this is a Tony with pretty much all of his traumas peeled off and that leaves rich kid Tony with no real problems who has everything he could want out of life.

He doesn't have abandonment and daddy issues. His parents are not dead, and they love him very much. He doesn't have PTSD with a side of survivor's guilt. He was never a POW. And therefore also doesn't have medical issues best resolved by needing to be plugged in put a reactor in his body. (A version of the Iron Man suit exists primarily as a fulfillment of his childhood wish to be a robot. And explore space. The lunar base of the title is because he um, buzzed some astronauts and Howard smoothed things over by officially leasing some moon and starting building what Tony refers to as "Sure, it'd be cool to have a place to keep some snacks up there.") He is not responsible for the company (or the company's fuck-ups, which overall did not happen) and has no real interest in being in charge, because, you know, Howard has asked! Howard was like, "So I'm pushing ninety, kiddo, I'm thinking about retirement, do you want the company or do you want to just keep building robots in the basement, it is okay if you say robots" and Tony totally said robots. And then he found out Howard had started grooming his PA Pepper Potts to take over Stark Industries, mostly via the fact that Howard handed her the lunar base construction project as a sink or swim exercise, and Tony had a fit about how his dad didn't love him anymore. (This is totally a meet-cute, though I haven't decided if they end up lovers or BFFs after they finish fighting with each other about this ridiculousness.)

Tony's BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD in this universe is that his dad offered him the company and he said no and then was an asshat about it. It is entirely self-inflicted, and it's a self-inflicted papercut. (Oh, and he's still unmedicated bipolar. But he's actually been diagnosed and tried a few medications over the course of his life and made a conscious decision that he'd really rather be a fucking genius with mood swings than deal with the flattening effects, and there are some safeguards in place like he's supposed to tell people in his lab if he's hitting a downswing and not play with anything explosive. Also, I don't think he's self-medicating with booze like regular Tony, he drinks but he drinks for the fun and the fashion.)

This is actually a really deeply comforting story for me to ground with when I read too much fanfic or have too many other regular, fucked up versions of Tony running around in my own fanfic. I can just sort of back off the angst roller coaster and go "And now, the Tony who eats regularly and explores space as a hobby." Also I am having lots of fun figuring out the science fictiony/economic aspects of building a lunar base. Tony has semi-seriously pitched to Pepper (when they start getting along at ALL) that they should put a still on the moon, no really, because sales of novelty alcohol could be the first actual profit-producing venture for the lunar base, which is otherwise mostly a hole to throw money down and hope that someday incredible discoveries come out of it.

Steve is also in this universe. Howard gets called in by SHIELD when they find Steve, obviously, and he takes Pepper with him on that trip for um ImayhavemadeherimprobablyrelatedtoPeggyand/orBuckywhydoyouask only Tony doesn't know that, he's just in the throes of his tantrum about the company and is like MORE PROOF DAD DOESN'T LOVE ME ANYMORE HE DID NOT TAKE ME TO MEET CAPTAIN AMERICA. But in the long run he does end up being close with Steve who is legitimately excited and "wow, cool!" about the goddamn lunar base and the fact that Tony invented a spaceship just to take Steve up to see the moon.

Also Maria is in this story but I feel like I need to like, I don't know, poke every variant of canon ever to see if I can work out more than "wife of Howard, mother of Tony" before I start inventing her characterization wholesale.

Further plotbunnies: Subsequently we rapidly arrive in the region of all niqaeli's fault.

The Lady and the Captain
So niqaeli found a kinkmeme prompt about Cap, secret Lady Gaga fan and the thing like, promptly bloomed into an epic on us. It starts off with Steve learning the wonders of youtube and getting interested in Lady Gaga from videos and then when told she's derivative ("Everyone uses religious imagery, Tony, that's not derivative so much as... common inspiration" "Try Madonna, Steve. And I don't mean the Virgin Mary") he ends up trying to do an internet crash course in all the pop culture Lady Gaga references. PS my notion of Avengers line-up is here GREATLY influenced by Unholy Ridiculous (aka Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes), so it's Jan who scores Steve tickets to the show when he expresses interest in seeing a pop star/New York performance artist, Lady Gaga. And also backstage passes. And then Lady Gaga's reaction to "Captain America is a fan" is "........that Captain America? Propaganda central? WILL HE DO A VIDEO OR SOMETHING WITH ME?" to which Steve's reaction is part "yes! cool!" and part "...this is really weird, I was definitely not this famous before I died!" to which Lady Gaga replies, "Well, yeah, honey, it was the resurrection that got you all the attention."

So after this initial meeting they're going back and forth in email about what song of hers to do a video for, what the project's going to be. Lady Gaga in my head does not capitalize in email, by the way, and I do not know what is a significant characterization point but it IS. Tony is the one who set up Steve's email account and it's on Stark servers and so he can access it and he tells himself it's to protect Steve's reputation and what if Lady Gaga tries like, staging Captain America's death or putting him on his knees or something else sexual that clearly Steve will not even RECOGNIZE because he is a PURE INNOCENT *eyeroll* and uh, yeah, the point at which they find out Tony is reading all the email is when he is like "NO ABSOLUTELY NOT I FORBID IT" when Steve suggests that if Lady Gaga really wants to deconstruct the propaganda part of his career they could do "Government Hooker." Lady Gaga's response to Tony's outburst is to be like "jealous boyfriend much" and shoot back pitch for "Heavy Metal Lover" and a design sketch for a version of the Iron Man costume for her to wear with various parts of it exploded into metal shards pointing off her body and also the main arc reactor situated at the crotch. Steve does not know about attachments and Tony, squawking, is very conflicted about teaching him at this point in time.

Also I have a general desire to in all my Marvel fic make the Hulk always be FEMINISTHULK in the background, constantly breaking phones tweeting every time Tony opens his mouth, and it SUPER AWESOME in this plotbunny. Hulk and Steve have a conversation about how Hulk is unconvinced that Gaga can effectively smash the patriarchy using the tools of the patriarchy, ie, her pop stardom and dancing around in not much clothing as an object to be ogled. And Steve is like, "I think she's actually being effective at it, and here's why: Tony is not attracted to her, Tony thinks she's weird and scary." Because Tony is the barometer of the patriarchy. Tony is not best pleased with this. In this story we are writing Tony as um, more or less bisexual but not in any way identifying as queer because he's you know, totally comfortable with all forms of privilege, of which he has many. So after various shenanigans with Lady Gaga cause everyone to assume Steve is gay, Tony then tries to court Steve without actually coming out to him, and when he eventually does, his terminology is "Just because I don't march in pride parades does not mean I am COMPLETELY HETEROSEXUAL." Yes, he comes out as not completely heterosexual. For this Tony that's sort of progress.

But oh we are plotting the video they do decide to shoot, and there's totally streams of plaster of paris and blood falling all over them and artistic nudity (Steve gives many protestations of "It's ART, Tony!" and "Art is SUPPOSED to make you uncomfortable!") and she puts him in heels and does a version of his costume for herself, featuring a giant strap-on in her pants, and there's random commentary on how Carrie is a film about how society and sexual repression turns mutants into monsters and quite possibly a cow in the video (the cow is blue and brown Holstein, mmmmmm the prime rib of America) and also a reference to Planet of the Apes, another film Steve will have to use Tony's netflix to watch. We are essentially writing RPF about film production. We are utter dorkfaces.

Lady Gaga's mutant power is that she is a were-centaur. (It, no, I know it's random, but it makes us LAUGH LIKE LOONS. For one thing it explains the fact that she feels a foot taller than she is and constantly wears ridiculously enormous heels to enforce this perception on reality. Steve is like "so the transformation parts of the 'Born this way' concept seem more connected now" and "so why a unicorn-motorcycle and not a centaur for your cover art?" and she's like "because I deal in metaphors, full stop; I don't do literalism, even when literalism is surreal in its own right.") When she initially tells Steve about this she refuses to demonstrate because shaved horse legs look stupid. But I think we should eventually throw in plot with her supervillain ex-boyfriend showing up so she transforms to kick him in the face.

This story gives me SO MUCH GLEE I DO NOT EVEN. And I want to vid it and I can't figure out how but I will probably be drawing an awful lot of it at the very least.



Captain America's Clone
"The Losers" is an over-the-top comics action film in which Chris Evans plays the dorkwad comms officer on a burned spec-ops team. This movie is awesome in many ways, it is snarky and ridiculous and has about three endings in successive levels of "I tacked on my 500 words of team fluff fic because they are SO ADORBS." niqaeli and I watched about eight times recently due to the Captain America film introducing us to the wonder that is Chris Evans's epic career of comics dorkery, and then because of the hilarious scene in which Jensen claims to be a government experiment who can kill you with his MIND niqaeli hatched a plotbunny about Jensen being Steve's clone. Jensen knew he was an experiment and surmised he was a clone based on there being other copies around, but did not know he was a clone of Captain Fucking America until the news broke that they'd pulled him out of the ice and his face is all over the news and Jensen is like "FUCK, so life is about to get interesting" because someone's going to want to restart the supersoldier program and Jensen's been off the grid since the team got burned and also his sister and niece: people taking them == NO.

niqaeli has written a snippet about how Jensen has healing factor and does dumb fucking bullshit like using his enhanced reflexes to leap in front of bullets for his teammates and then refuses to go to the hospital out of paranoia and "I grew up in a lab" trauma and they have to knock him out to get him into surgery and then he wakes up while they're operating and yeah. I keep poking at how Clay, the team leader, totally became his dad and/or mom figure to get him to stop being a freakface and undo some his damage about how he grew up. Like, Jensen never really talks about it? He just occasionally drops these comments that totally SOUND sarcastic about how the government did spooky stuff, anal stuff, etc, but it's enough for Clay to recognize that he has trauma and try to fix him and then? Then? when the Captain America stuff comes out? to be like "Yeah, so that explains some stuff." Also: we keep poking at how he cannot get drunk, and has lamented that his judgment has never been impaired enough to think having an orgy with Cougar is a good idea--if you have never seen Losers, Cougar is the sniper in the clip I linked above, and is laconic as hell, and when it gets back to him how much Jensen wants to bang him and hasn't his reaction is basically "Moron *pounce.*" Yes, we follow the fandom trend and ship them like whoa, just with added hilarity of crossover plot.

Plot of course eventually causes Jensen to meet Captain America ("So this is awkward! Hi, Dad!") and exciting comparisons are made ("So are you gay? I was wondering because I'm kind of gay and you know, not sure if that's genetic or environmental" and "Your nose is more broken than mine" "Yeah, I, um, got into a lot of fights when I was younger" "....so did I, lets go with that") and Steve's face continues to make hideous OH NO horror as he learns more about Jensen's life as a clone Tony has hilarious fascination about the whole thing and it's possible that Nick Fury ends up complaining about migraines and offering the Losers team positions in SHIELD as a way to get them off fugitive status and protect Jensen from the REALLY NOT ETHICAL continuing US military supersoldier program that produced him.



Also I might be making a Losers vid. To Lady Gaga. Maybe.

Fuck all, I guess I'll go ahead and post this for people to read. It amused me to get written out. I did say I'd write things out more when I had more cope.

Comments

[the_future_modernes]

Oh I totally enjoyed reading these and look forward to the resulting stories with enthusiasm and glee.

[jmtorres]

*flailhands* niqaeli has a few thousand words progress, I have a few hundred words. And this.

[echan]

When she initially tells Steve about this she refuses to demonstrate because shaved horse legs look stupid.
AHAHAHA omg.

Nick Fury ends up complaining about migraines and offering the Losers team positions in SHIELD as a way to get them off fugitive status and protect Jensen from the REALLY NOT ETHICAL continuing US military supersoldier program that produced him.
AWWWW Fury has a heart!

You should totally do the Losers vid.

[jmtorres]

"Which has made me think pretty hard about what the deal is with shaved human legs. Aesthetically, I mean. Unfortunately I won't be at the point in my career where I can pull off hippie feminist shag for another decade."

[thedivinegoat]

I love your brain.

(And you are totally to blame for all the Gaga music and videos I own.)

(I originally typed I live your brain, which is not true because I feel my life would be a lot more surreal if that were the case)

[jmtorres]

Hey, it all made sense at the time!

[scaramouche]

This whole post brings me so much happiness you don't even know. Your brain is a lovely, if slightly terrifying, place.

[jmtorres]

If I am ever moved to collect quotes to put in my profile, this is totally going up there.