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#Hi im going though through the marvel wiki
darthspideys · 5 years
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UHHH SO THERES AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE WHERE GWEN STACY AND MILES MORALES ARE MARRIED AND HAVE TWO KIDS
(There names are Maximilian and Charlotte)
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sineala · 2 years
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Tony Stark and Arthuriana
Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!
I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.
(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)
Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.
We've got:
Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1
A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187
Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest
What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?
Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare
Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4
Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest
Civil War: The Confession
Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side
In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.
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The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."
The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!
(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)
This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)
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But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.
The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.
As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.
Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)
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Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.
So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)
So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.
IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.
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They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.
We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.
Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.
The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.
So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!
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Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.
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Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)
Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.
So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"
The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.
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This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.
Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.
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He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.
So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.
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So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.
Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.
Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you  would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.
Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.
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Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.
So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?
Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.
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It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.
The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.
Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.
Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.
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Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.
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Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.
They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.
And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.
Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.
Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.
(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)
Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)
At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.
I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.
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Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.
Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.
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(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)
(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)
Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!
Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.
It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!
Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.
That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.
"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.
"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."
Then Tony gets it.
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So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.
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So that's a thing that happens.
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And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.
We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.
Whew.
Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.
But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.
(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)
Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."
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The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.
The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.
Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.
The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!
So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.
Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)
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So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.
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"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"
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Clint speaks the truth, clearly.
Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.
The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good. 
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Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.
But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference. 
(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)
In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.
And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.
I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?
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As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.
You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.
So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.
This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.
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So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.
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Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.
Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.
And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.
There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.
If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.
So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.
The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!
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scarletwitching · 3 years
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Hello! Do you have any "real world" timeline of Wanda's backstories (particularly her origins). I know she was created in the 60s, and her first origin seems to have her as the biological daughter of two golden age American heroes. However most wiki pages only describe her latest "in-universe" history. Im curious to know how many actual real-world years she spent as a White American, German Jew, Serbian Romani, Mutant, Witch, Avenger, etc. Thanks!
I’m choosing to do this as a chronicling of backstory retcons (plus a couple of important firsts) because it would be too much to do the whole thing, and I’m going to include the various changes to Magneto’s backstory because they’re kind of necessary. The dates listed are release date, not cover date.
March 1964 (X-Men vol. 1 #4) -- It’s Wanda, no last name. She’s a mutant, part of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She’s from Central Europe. She has an older brother named Pietro, and he promised their parents that he would take care of her.
March 1965 (Avengers vol. 1 #16) -- Wanda’s an Avenger now.
November 1966 (Thor vol. 1 #134) -- We learn that Wanda and Pietro, who are now twins, are connected to Wundagore Mountain and that there was a massive “blinding light” on the night they were born. This was maybe an aborted attempt to retcon them into not being mutants (their powers are referred to as “mutant-type” for some reason), but it goes nowhere.
May 1974 (Giant Size Avengers #1) -- Wanda and Pietro finally have a backstory. They are the children of US-American superheroes Madeline and Robert Frank (aka Miss America and The Whizzer). They were born on Wundagore Mountain, but their mother died and their father abandoned them. They were subsequently raised in the High Evolutionary’s citadel, but they ran away because it was weird being around all those talking animals.
June 1974 - February 1975 (Avengers vol. 1 #127-134; Giant Size Avengers #2 & 4) -- Agatha’s here, and she’s teaching Wanda magic. Wanda is now a mutant AND a witch.
December 1977 - September 1979 (Avengers vol. 1 #166 & 181-187; X-Men vol. 1 #125) -- Origin Story: The Good One. Wanda and Pietro are not the Franks’ kids and were not raised in the High Evolutionary’s citadel. They were raised by Django and Marya Maximoff, a Roma couple from Bulgaria (Transia, the town they’re from, will later become a country of its own), and it is implied that they don’t remember this because they suppressed their own memories. However, Django and Marya are not their birth parents. Their birth mother came to Wundagore Mountain, heavily pregnant, fleeing their father. She gave birth in the citadel, then left because she did not want to be alive anymore.
Meanwhile, Chris Claremont comes up with the idea for Magda, Magneto’s mysterious dead wife, but before the issue introducing her can even come out, John Byrne and some other guys go behind Claremont’s back and make Magda Wanda and Pietro’s mother. Which makes Magneto the husband their mother was running from and thus... None of the living characters know they are related, and it is editorial’s intention that they will never find out, though the connection is acknowledged openly in the letters column.
August 1981 (Uncanny X-Men vol. 1 #150) -- Claremont begins the long process of turning Magneto into a hero, and with that, we learn Magneto’s backstory as a Holocaust survivor. Claremont continues to add to this for the rest of his initial X-Men tenure (through 1991), but crucially, he never has him say that he’s Jewish. You’re supposed to understand that he is, and most of the audience does understand. It is very, very obvious (we even get a trip to Israel), BUT he does not say the exact words, “I am Jewish.”
November 1982 (Vision & the Scarlet Witch vol. 1 #4) -- The characters aren’t supposed to find out they’re related? Forget that. They all know now. I would argue that this issue also makes it obvious that Magneto is Jewish, but whatever, he doesn’t say, “I am Jewish.”
October 1985 (Vision & the Scarlet Witch vol. 2 #5) -- This is the earliest reference I can find to Magda being Romani. It feels like that can’t be the first time that was confirmed, but this post needs to get done some time.
October 1987 (New Mutants vol. 1 #61) -- Another “earliest reference I can find” scenario. I think this is the first time Magneto mentions being from Poland. At any rate, it is a time he mentions being from Poland, and it gets retconned anyway.
July 1993 (X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #2) -- Due to editorial meddling, Magneto became a villain again in 1991, and according to comic book legend, editor-in-chief Bob Harras thought that Magneto being Jewish and a supervillain was proooooooblemaaaaaaatic. And if he can’t be both at the same time, one’s gotta go. Enter Gabrielle Haller, who is here to give a Ted Talk explaining Magneto’s new backstory. He’s Sinti Romani. That’s the change.
December 1997 (X-Men vol. 2 #72) -- It is revealed that the Erik Lensherr identity was an alias created by document forger Georg Odekirk in order to help Magneto hide from the authorities and find Magda... by pretending to be Sinti. Which, to me, implies that Magda herself was Sinti specifically, not Roma. Either way, Magneto says he’s not Romani, but once again does not say he’s Jewish.
September 2008 - January 2009 (X-Men: Magneto Testament #1-5) -- Magneto is officially, definitely Jewish. For real this time. No more ambiguity. He’s also German now, instead of Polish, and his name is Max Eisenhardt.
December 2014 (Avengers & X-Men: AXIS #7) -- Rick Remender, who is clearly invested in Wanda and Magneto’s relationship, is forced, possibly at gunpoint, to make them not related. This is revealed via a spell going wrong and not affecting Magneto when it’s supposed to affect Wanda’s family, which is the dictionary definition of “plausible deniability.”
January 2015 - June 2015 (Uncanny Avengers vol. 2 #1-5) -- Wanda and Pietro go to the High Evolutionary to figure out what their brand new backstory is. Turns out that, according to the High Evolutionary, they are not mutants and got their powers from being experimented on by him as babies. Their birth parents were their adoptive parents Django and Marya all along, which would make them Roma (not Sinti)... but something is weird about this reveal because Vision finds out there is more to the story and refuses to tell Wanda what it is or that he discovered any information at all.
March 2016 - January 2017 (Scarlet Witch vol. 2 #4-14) -- Nevermind, Django and Marya weren’t Wanda’s biological parents. Django is her uncle. His sister Natalya is her birth mother and a witch, and “the Scarlet Witch” is now a legacy title. Wanda was born in Serbia, but how that intersects with the Chthon thing is not explained. And Wanda’s dad is... the guy who murdered her mother. Who? Doesn’t say.
December 2017 - July 2019 -- A bonus! Marvel gives up on pretending Wanda and Magneto are not related... but mostly outside of comics. The official Marvel website runs articles just... saying they’re related. Official merchandise says they’re related. The mainline comics don’t touch it, but things are very suspicious.
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id-boo · 3 years
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my thoughts on c!dream and what they're going to do with his character; a long very long post
all this all is /roleplay and /dsmp and tbh im just info dumping to organize my thoughts
ok so, c!dream is a villain. this is obvious for many reasons (he has a list with all of his crimes on his wiki page LMAO) but the main fact why he's a villain is because the story isnt told by his perspective.
villains are villains because we don't know their view, the story is never about them, someone else says they're the bad guys and everyone (the other characters + the audience) goes with it.
for example, when we took villains that had a "redemption arcs" we can identify 2 patterns: the villain/ bad guy learned from their mistakes and became a better person or we see their past/what they've been through/ their intentions and why they act the way we act so we can understand and justify what they do.
zuko from avatar? become a better person
loki from marvel? we understand his pov
snape from harry potter? we see his pov and he (tries to?) became a better person at the end
even if a villain doesn't necessarily have a redemption arc, we can like them and even support what they do when we see why they do that (personal example: in bnha, shigaraki tomura hate the heroes and that mf is RIGHT the heroes society is rotten and he has personal motivation to hate them - his family)
what i'm trying to say is, that's why c! dream has so many apologists. we don't see the true motivations or why he canonically do what he does, but people can speculate. "he just wanted them to follow the server rules" "he just wanted a happy big family" "he wanted to make everyone happy but power corrupted him"
the only dsmp dream streams we have are those from the begging, mostly before the lore, where dream (who became c!dream) was a funky happy guy chilling with his friends. he never wanted wars.
however, i don't think c!dream is like this anymore. i think he, for some unknown reason, became a bad guy. but again, we can't know WHY he is the bad guy. is he just a bad person, who made bad choices? does something happened? we don't know because he doesn't stream his pov, and just like a movie, the villain story became a narrative from the "heroes".
ok now with all of this, what they're going to do with c!dream? I very much doubt he will stream lore, so the "i get why the villain is like this because now i know his pov" strategy won't be used.
what they can do is what they already did: c!dream telling his story to others, saying to c!sam his motivations or what he wanted, saying to c!tommy why he did what he did etc, but the character + the audience cant tell is it's his genuinely sad true or if he's just lying and manipulating the situation.
aaaaaand of course
character redemption <3
what c!dream has been through is like, to not say worse, what c!tommy had to go through during exile. (i HATE comparing them because they're different situations with different contexts bUT ANYWAYS)
months without seeing the light, without talking with anyone, being mentally & physically tortured and the list goes on. both c!tommy and c!dream were suffering and that's horrible and it doesn't matter what they did before, because at the moment, or when/ if c!dream goes out, both or them will be fragile and traumatized.
with baby steps, c!dream could realize how evil he was to others. he can say he feel in his own skin what happened to c!tommy, and say he wants to change. he has a lot to think about after sam's last lore stream (c!sam directly said to him that everything he's going though, himself had planned to c!tommy).
the way they're writing the lore is to slowly make c!sam and c! quackity look like the bad guys, but we can still understand their pov and their past and WHY they're doing all of this.
same with c!techno. he scaped, he's gonna save (or try to save?) c!dream, his position in morality chart will go up /hj
conclusion c!dream had really really bad takes and he did really bad stuff but he's not necessarily the bad guy until we fully understand his pov and i can't wait to see what they're going to do when he canonically, finally scapes the prison for real
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in-a-cave-with · 4 years
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Can you recommend me a list of comic of the principal's chronology? I'm tony's centric but also I want to read the rest. I just finished Iron Man (1998), the invencible Iron Man and Superior (I really don't know why I read it) Thanks, I love ur account. ❤️
hi! thank! 
also, uh, 616′s timeline is…..very convoluted and not as easy to discern as ults, plus there are a bunch of people who have, you know, read more comics than i have who know more about What’s Going On. however you can parse together a vague understanding of events through just reading avengers comics and the crossover events some issues tie into. (you could also read Basically Everything, in which case i recommend following this guide written by a person with far more comic book knowledge than i will ever possess probably). 
so anyway here’s the marvel 616 storyline after iron man (1998), told through only avengers comics, iron man comics, and big Events. however if you don’t want to read some of them then reading the wiki page is ok too especially for stuff like. civil war 
also: a lot of other solo comics that i’ve read that don’t involve tony don’t really…tie into the “main” storyline that much?? hence why this is just a list of avengers comics + when iron man comics take place around them. there are also tony comics that don’t tie into the main story a lot but i still put them there bc some of them make more sense w/ context
avengers team breaks up: avengers disassembled (2004) 
wanda apparently erases mutants???? idk i didnt read this im confused: house of m (2006)
avengers team gets back together again, tony gets the power to control computers: new avengers (2005) #1-20 // iron man (2005) #1-12 
*sigh* civil war. new avengers break up: civil war (2006) // iron man (2005) #13-14 // new avengers (2005) #21-25
cap’s side of the avengers tries to avoid being arrested, tony is miserable: fallen son: the death of captain america (2007) // new avengers (2005) #26-31 // iron man (2005) #15-32
oh shit there are skrulls (tony has no idea though): invincible iron man (2008) #1-7 // new avengers (2005) #32-39
SKRULLS INVADE: secret invasion (2010) // iron man (2005) #33-35 // new avengers (2005) #40-47
norman osborn becomes director of SHIELD because of fucking course. also tony deletes his brain: new avengers #48-60 // invincible iron man (2008) #8-19
tony gets rebooted after he deletes his brain?? i have no idea how stark disassembled fits in the timeline honestly: invincible iron man (2008) #20-24
norman osborn invades asgard: new avengers (2005) #61-64 // siege (2010)
steve and tony realize that they still do like each other actually: avengers prime (2010)
THE HEROIC AGE! EVERYTHING IS BETTER NOW but tony’s life still sucks: invincible iron man #25-33, #500-502 // avengers (2010) #1-12
evil norse mythology forces attack earth: fear itself (2012) // avengers (2010) #13-17 // invincible iron man (2008) #502-509
avengers do their thing. however have i mentioned that tony’s life sucks?: invincible iron man (2008) #510-527 // avengers (2010) #18-24
the avengers….fight the x men?? what the fuck??? why?????: avengers (2010) #25-30 // avengers vs x men (2012)
avengers find an old friend….and lbr this is THE best arc in this comic: avengers (2010) #31-34
tony fucks off to the moon and other weird shit that he does in his free time, a collection: iron man fatal frontier (2013) // iron man vol 5 (2013)
somewhere along the line the illuminati realize the multiverse is collapsing and different earths are colliding with each other. they put together their infinity stones and have steve wield the gauntlet to try to stop the incursions, but he fails. the illuminati decides to wipe his memory of ever knowing about the incursions because they know that he will object to their only other option which is aiming a killer weapon at any other earth on a collision path with 616: avengers (2013) // new avengers (2013) // original sin (2014)
tony turns into an asshole: superior iron man (2015)
the incursions keep happening. earth 1610 (ultimates) is on a collision path with 616: avengers: time runs out (2015) // secret wars (2015)
something happens with dr doom and miles morales but i don’t exactly know what, but 616 gets rebooted and now miles lives on earth 616 now
all new! all different!: all-new all-different avengers (2015) #1-12 // invincible iron man (2015) #1-11
also tony finds out about his adopted mom: international iron man (2016)
*deeper sigh* civil war part 2 electric boogaloo. anad avengers break up: invincible iron man (2015) #12-14 // all-new all-different avengers (2015) #13-15 // civil war ii (2016)
on the bright side, riri williams. and victor von doom!: invincible iron man (2017) #1-11 // infamous iron man (2016)
ok so let me get this straight. steve was HYDRA the entire time?? and was the main reason behind c*vil w*r 2? and now he’s CAPTAIN HYDRA and TAKES OVER THE COUNTRY???? also fuck you nick spencer leave ai tony alone: secret empire (2017)
riri and friends go on a journey because TONY IS ALIVE: invincible iron man (2017) #593-600
original avengers are FINALLY back on a team together: avengers (2018) #1-17
tony is rebooted once again and has this cool new VR tech that backfires obviously: tony stark - iron man (2018) #1-12
evil norse mythology forces attack earth part 2 electric boogaloo: tony stark - iron man (2018) #12-13 // war of the realms (2019) // avengers (2018) 18-20
and honestly that’s..pretty much where we’re at in this point in time. tony stark - iron man’s gonna lead into iron man 2020 which is another big comic event but i DO NOT want it at all
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shellheadtm-a · 4 years
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anon | ‘✖‘ cuz it seems like you're only willing to rp w/ people who are big on aesthetics, or 'friends only' ...
anon | ‘✖‘ the times i have reached out to you, i've been ignored... i do love your blog so, but naturally i'm hesitant because of that.
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i’m gonna answer these together and be breathtakingly, brutally honest about myself here.  first things first:  i remade in part because this was a bit of a problem, in that so much was happening on my dash at all times i literally could not keep up with the influx of ims, how fast my dash moved, and it was incredibly, awfully, not fun overwhelming.  rp started to feel like a job, and i’m not here for that.  i couldn’t keep up.  i was stretched thin.  so naturally i gravitated back to the people i have sure, plotted things with.  things i don’t have to think hard about because i don’t have to really consider how tony feels, i already know.  does any of this make sense?  probably not.  but this is a lot of it.  there was just too much, at all times, going on, and now that i’m here, on this new blog, the list of people i’m following is genuinely under a quarter of how many i was.  i do regular clean outs when things aren’t clicking.
so let me clear up the main elephant in the room here that...if you’re here, if i’m following you.  i want to rp with you.  i don’t care if you’re 616.  i don’t care if you’re mcu.  i don’t care if you’re another fandom.  i don’t care if you’re an oc.  i don’t.  if i’m here and you’re here, i want the thing.  sometimes it’s gonna take some hashing out before we do the thing, however.  and that all comes down to the point that scenarios that would work for an mcu based tony will not work for a 616 based one.  things have to be kinda guided, i know not everyone is familiar with the comics and how astronomically different tony is.  but i’m here to do that, to talk about, to explain how he’s different and answer any questions anyone may have because i am a literal tony stark wiki article.  except more indepth and a better wealth of cited sources.  you get me?  please i am begging you - if you ever legit have questions about how comic tony is different, i am always happy and more than willing to answer them.  you’re giving me a chance to do my favorite thing, which is talk about my boy.
and if i’ve ever ghosted you in an im or something, it’s by accident usually.  again, i used to get...so many ims.  so many.  i could not keep up.  i’d open something with the intention of replying and get swamped with something else and...by the time i realized i’d never replied it’d been ages and i’d look like an asshole.  like i said, my dash is much, much, much smaller now.  and i definitely intend to keep it that way.  i’m still bad about being flaky on tumblr ims, i don’t know why my brain hates them so much.  and i will say disco is literally the best place for this kind of thing, if you have it.  but i’m doing what i can - now that i’m not...drowning under the weight of things - to keep up with what i have.  i’m...well, probably still failing miserably, but i’m trying.  there’s also the fact that i’m socially anxious, shy, and awkward.  i don’t do the whole hi how are you thing very well.  i do better, handle it better, if we just jump right into it.  it gives me something to latch on to that’s not the social graces i lack. (as a note, you’ll probably notice i’m in literally almost no marvel/rp servers at all that aren’t exceptionally tiny and closed, and this is part of that, too.)
last two things, here we go.  one, there are certain people (that shall remain nameless) that i have a lot of things with.  and by a lot i mean unintentionally they make up the bulk of my drafts and inbox.  we just have plotted and built so much we have a lot to say.  but that doesn’t mean i’m closed to having more friends like that.  let me be really clear about that.  i’m absolutely here for it.  and now, hopefully, with such a small dash, i can do that.  like everyone else, sure, i have my friends.  we happen to have plotted things more.  i have threads i’m really excited about, and they get a faster turn around - strike while the iron is hot, etc.  but it’s because we talk and plot that that happens.  i know i’m kinda awkward, and it takes a tic to get me comfortable.  i don’t do small talk at all.  but honestly - i prefer being friends with people i write with because it makes it all just...so much easier than writing with a stranger.  i’ve never been very good at that, and i come - originally - from an rp background stretching back to livejournal and dreamwidth where friend groups move through the community together, and all the friend groups are interconnected by some people so they merge and move and...it’s like that.  it’s how i know how to operate.  and i would love - and i can’t believe i’m finally gonna say it - to have a good, solid group.  for continuity and plotting.  a bunch of avengers rpers where we can just.  set up a continuity line and run with it.  would fucking love that.
lastly, here’s the the thing:  i don’t give a good doodly fuck all about aesthetics.  i really don’t.  i like making things in photoshop, it’s fun for me.  it’s a hobby.  it’s relaxing some days to do nothing but make comic edits.  i like comic artwork, so i make things out of it.  a lot of the rpc is into it.  i know some people do it for...idk.  popularity points.  but it’s completely incidental.  i make things because i want to,  not because i give a good goddamn what anyone else thinks about it.  don’t use icons?  cool, that’s fine.  don’t have a fancy theme?  great, those don’t matter.  don’t make fancy promos?  okay, would you like one?  i like making promos.  like it’s a thing that literally just doesn’t matter to me, but is also a hobby that overlaps the rpc and it is what it is.
a lot of my reticence has to do with the fact that...i worry people come here looking for a tony stark that acts like mcu tony, and uses comic artwork, and that’s not what this is.  i’m a comic tony through and through, and he’s as different as you can get without a lot of core things being true.  i feel like that’s probably disappointing to some people, and if it is, i’m sorry, but it’s why, ultimately, overall i was disappointed with how the mcu panned out.  but it makes me really kinda...gunshy, even though i very much want to interact with you if you’re here!  i do.  and that’s the truth of it.
why aren’t we rping | accepting
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lacertae-dreamscape · 5 years
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I don't know if you know anything about Green Lantern, but I just realised - Zenyatta is absolutely a Blue Lantern, and there is nothing that can dissuade me from this.
all i know of green lantern is that i watched the movie and i have a vague understanding of the idea from that (also i read one comic on tumblr with red lantern angry cat whom i endorse 100% and i saw mentions of blue lantern doggo that is everybody’s doggo and is nice and soft)
but the above doggo comic made me realise that though i have no idea what blue lanterns are supposed to be (ill google after im done answering this part) if zen is like that cute doggo than he definitely would be one.
[insert elevator music as i go google blue lanterns for more info]
[ding]
oooh they’re moved by HOPE
honestly i love that idea a lot, esp since wiki says that hope also needs willpower to be able to work to its fullest potential and hhh
im not dc much (or marvel) past a very casual setting but boi do i want an au where zen is chosen as a blue lantern? and/or red lantern genji freed from control of that rage and allowed to heal under zen’s hope
HHHHH
or, or, zen being a prospective for a blue lantern but mondatta’s death makes his hope waver so much he’s considered for red lantern but ultimately his sheer control and hope breath through
or OR OR OR all of this where his helping genji comes from his own understanding of emotions of anger and hope due to what he went through
*NOW I HAVE FEELS ANON*
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vertrue · 6 years
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hey yo what’s up im pk and i wrote harry once before in my devianart days so buckle up KIDS its going to be a wild fuckin’ ride. * i’ll be basing him mainly off 616 because no offense to the be-u-tie dane dehaan,,,, i think james franco was more canon and tbh those movies came out 200 years ago & the most i know about it now is all the james franco blogs i stalked to jog my memory and get to this point. cool? cool. lets crack this wide open ----
* im going to keep this vague so i don’t step over other people’s canon because harry & the osborns/oscorp haven’t been mentioned or utilized by the mcu.
[ HERMAN TØMMERAAS, HE/HIM, 24 ] HAROLD OSBORN has been spotted in gotham city! the VILLAIN is publicly known as THE GREEN GOBLIN, and have often been described as DEBONAIR, but also DESTRUCTIVE. they have also been affiliated with NO ONE, and said to mainly operate in NEW YORK CITY. will they help find answers, or add to the chaos? [ pk, she/her, 19, est ]
*  quick warning this intro deals with some heavy stuff ( marvel & dark? wow ) so yeah,, things like depression, mental illness, verbal abuse, neglect, drug use, death, and violence.
firstly. bruce wayne who? that mug couldn’t lie. ( * that panel covers it all i could end the intro here if i wanted ).
* will smith meme * this is my SON harold theopolis osborn - runner up for worst hair in the marvel universe. beat only by his own father.
he was born to norman and emily osborn. listen without getting too deep,, his mother died sometime after childbirth due to complications ( it’s marvel no one is really dead butt ) which left him with n*rman. that tool.
surprise. norman didn’t win dad of the year. first he’s too busy with business,,, then finding elaborate ways to kill a spider,, just hold your son plz.
his dad ran oscorp ( stark employees don’t interact plz & ty ) so they had that $$$$$$$. sort of cybernetic engineering/military research & sketch stuff like experimental science because norman eventually creates the goblin formula ( a rip off version of the super soldier serum ) via oscorp but thats later !!!
harry’s kind of a HUGE suck up to his douche dad. he’s constantly chasing after approval which wake up call, har, you’re never going to get it. * ( “  that creep is my father, all right! if i'm lucky, i'll become half of what he is. so just keep your mouth shut about stuff you don't understand! “ ) thanks james franco. long story short norm left him hanging a lot. * EXHIBIT A harry’s delusions of his father often leave him at odds with people ( especially after the gwen incident )
tired of being second to work -- harry switches around the chemicals his father is working with and it explodes in his father’s face ( the goblin formula is made ) & his father becomes the villain known as the green goblin.
listen if it wasn’t complicated enough - there’s a lot of amnesia nonsense in here. somewhere down the line GG discovers spider man's identity,,,, but it doesn’t matter because cue another fight and now norman’s got amnesia. identity crisis solved. he forgets everything. green goblin’s gone for a hot minute.
somewhere in this period harry starts using drugs due to stress/// it is said beforehand that he had pills for everything * sleeping, staying up, to relax, yadda yadda. but he turns to actual hardcore drugs to cope with everything in his life which eventually leads to an overdose/bad reaction. he’s hospitalized until he’s in the clear.
norman’s getting wacky because there’s chemicals left in his brain and the green gobllin persona eventually makes a brief return. though he becomes sidelined when dealing with his son’s health issues.
eventually oscorp starts doing poorly & harry turns to pills again ( hits him hard due to also dealing with depression /// norman tries to cover this up by not allowing him to be moved to a hospital and instead has a doctor come to the house ),
norman essentially starts to lose his mind,,, remembers everything,,, can’t take it anymore. dons the green goblin costume once more and kidnaps gwen stacy :(((( y’all know how this ends. snap crackle pop y’all. that dumbass throws her off a bridge and ya...
to end that chapter and introduce gg 2,, norman essentially ends up impaling himself on his own glider & harry finds him. removes the green goblin costume from his father’s body to preserve his identity & bribes the coroner to not find any traces of the goblin formula in his blood. ( you know that bitvh ain’t dead tho )
harold then, like EVERYONE in NYC, blames spider-man. (for his father’s death),,, and so my small stupid son becomes the second green goblin.
                                    * SIGH *
where i’m starting ;
with a migraine
i wouldn't say he’s full blown goblin yet. but definitely prepping and modifying his father’s work. & starting an obsession w/ spider man //// sorry. just following the super villain handbook.
it’s definitely in the works. and happening. ripperino. he’s just really bitter :/ he’s an “orphan” * i use that term loosely here
* marvel wiki says he refused to go to gwen stacy’s funeral - sounds petty. but in his defense he was probably dealing with burying his dad and the shift in power @ oscorp. also petty. ( don’t get me wrong though he LOVED gwen !!!!!! & he’s just as heartbroken as any of them ,, he just makes a lot of excuses for his dad
in charge of oscorp until his dad drags his ass out of the grave. !! lazarus pit not far !! so i’d say he’s in gotham on business. stomping on other people’s territory.
norman’s not even dead you fools he’s sipping fine wine in europe.
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arachnrd · 6 years
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ABOUT :
- My interpretation is primarily based on the first Insomniac Spider-Man game and its DLCs, along with the prequel book Hostile Takeover and heavily featuring my own headcanons. Personally,  I don't agree with the takes in the Insomniac verse based comics, nor what they've done to Peter's character in the Miles Morales game ( including the change they made to his appearance they can completely miss me on that ), so we're just not gonna touch that here. No judgment or hate at all if you like any of that, or any of the other interpretations to Peter's character,  this is just my personal preference and my portrayal. If you don't agree, feel free to move along.
- I wont accept hate over my takes on Peter's / Spider-Mans character, or theft of my headcanons, graphics, or anything I definitively create myself. And while I dont condone cancel culture or anything of the sort, I will not hesitate to bring that behavior to light if it's consistent. Im here to have fun, not deal with nonsense over a fictional character.
- Im not a huge fan of the MCU. Im fine with interactions with other MCU based muses, but may be selective about it and will want to talk things out before hand.
- I dont associate with the Marvel fandom, particularly here on tumblr. The original reason I left this blog back in 2019 was due to the community being heavily toxic and drama mongering, and as a result will not only not tolerate any drama or toxicity, but will be a bit selective and cautious on who I interact with from that side of the rpc.
- Unless it's established in the source material, or plotted out with me, your muse will not know Peter is Spider-Man. Im not touching giving muses ex - machina knowledge of others without it being discussed or signed off on by both parties, period.
- I will NOT interact with blogs that use youtubers, social media influencers, or anime / drawn characters for their Fcs [ Comic centered blogs I'll be selective about ] . Nothing against you, it’s just not my thing.
- I will NOT follow OC's with no bios or abouts up; Hard to know if our character's can interact if there's no info.
- I will block personal blogs that reblog or follow, as I like to keep interactions here between fellow rp mutuals.
- I may want to explore more adult aspects to Peter's character, so that, along with being an adult myself, means Im simply more comfortable interacting with those of age and will not follow or interact with minors, please respect this.
- Unless it's something applicable to our muses collectively, Please reblog memes or posts in general from the source. I'm not a resource blog and if treated as one, especially by blogs who never interact, I will soft block.
- As stated this blog is MUTUALS ONLY, meaning i will only write with mutuals. if i dont follow back there’s genuinely no hard feelings, I just get very overwhelmed with an overly busy dash and need to be a bit selective to prevent my anxiety from going nuts. you’re more than welcome to unfollow. though its very much a mutual thing; if you want to interact but dont follow me, chances are I’ll say no as I take following as a sign of interest. I may take a while to follow back as my notifications on here are the worst. If I don’t follow back within a weeks time, feel free to unfollow.
- This blog is multi-verse. Despite being set within the narrative of the game, I can incorporate elements from the movies and comics ( Mostly from the Ultimate comics since thats what I'm most familiar with and have actually read), such as dynamics between characters, etc if your muse isnt in the game. Not to mention love creating verses with writing partners. BUT, my Peter will still be played as the ps4 version of his character.
- I dont pretend to know every Marvel character. Or even ALL the characters from the Spider-man comics to their finest detail. For that my knowledge is going to be straight from whatever info you give and wikis.
SHIPPING / RELATIONSHIPS
- I ship based on chemistry between muses, but Im also very okay with pre established dynamics (whether that be romantic, enemies, platonic, familial ( though this Ill be a bit selective about ), whatever!) Considering that can be a bit easier thread wise for some people instead of starting from the very beginning. As with most things, I like to talk through it beforehand. If you have anything in mind, you're more than welcome to approach me! But I also reserve the right to respectfully turn things down or offer alternate options if things dont mesh.
SMUT
- I will not write smut on tumblr. So for the most part any if it all suggestive scenes will lead to a fade to black or time skip.
M U N
- i am a-okay with questions, especially about my muse! if you have any about anything at all i will be more than happy to answer them the best i can! Also totally fine with random IMs even if we havent talked before so hmu.
- I write under the alias Nox! ( She/Her ) and I am of age.
R U L E S / O T H E R
THREADS / PLOTTING:
- I love plotting. If given my way I'd be plot exclusive but I know that's not everyone's cup of tea. If you're ever interested in plotting, know I am already onboard.
- If you want to turn a meme or ask into a thread, I’d prefer to be asked before hand. Simply because sometimes its nice to have memes just be stand alone things or for fun.
- Additionally I take the memes I send in to others as just memes for memes sake as well, so if you want a thread to continue off one you'll have to let me know , otherwise I'm clueless.
RESPONSE TIME/ ACTIVITY:
- My activity may be a bit sparse. As it is I have a hard time keeping muse, just the way I am sadly. i know this is something a lot of people, myself included, can find frustrating (especially when you’re really into a thread) but a fair amount of the time i may take a while to respond. As much as I love this, aside from being a hobby, and having a very unreliable laptop, I have a chronic illness that makes me exhausted most days or just not in the mood to write and not in any kind of state to type out a response you lovely people would deserve. though i will always try to quickly reply when i can. Please be patient. If you ttry to harass or guilt me into a response, I wont hesitate to soft block for my own sanity. Im here to have fun and write when the mood strikes.
MEMES:
- Yes. please. send as many as you want, as often as you want. Even if we haven’t interacted, you’re free to send one my way; They can be a great place to start things off.
POST LENGTH:
- You don’t have to match my length in posts! sometimes i can write far too much when i get really into writing (and alternatively not write enough), so don’t feel obligated or pressured to follow suit by any means! whatever you are comfortable with is totally okay! it’s not a contest, this is all for fun.
GRAPHICS:
- ALL icons will be from the game/ with the exception of live icons of Peter's first ingame face model that I managed to scrape together. Comic icons will not be used.
- all icons and graphics are created by me unless stated otherwise
- PSD by plutocomissions
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carolxdanvers · 7 years
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Ok, putting this in a separate post because im hyperfocusing lke crazy and i got off topic, but I need to explain why I think that Missy’s actions at the end of The Doctor Falls are more Good than anything the Doctor has ever done*
I have only ever in my life seen TWO fictional act of pure altruism. Missy’s decision to stand with the Doctor was one of them. The other was Tony Stark in Marvel’s 2006 Civil War.
True altruism is selflessness for the good of others. Doctor Who gives us a good definition of that with this season’s definition of virtue. It doesn’t seek advantage; the truest form of goodness is when there is no hope, witness, or reward.
Backstory: My dad is an economist. I grew up knowing some shit that’s probably weird for a child to know — specifically, a passing knowledge of game theory. Game theory, in a nutshell, is the idea that in any situation where multiple people are making a decision, every decision has several potential payoffs. (One of the most famous examples is the prisoner’s dilemma, which is shown a lot in police procedurals.) 
In the prisoner’s dilemma, there are multiple possibilities: Either Prisoner A betrays Prisoner B and receives the full payoff, a drastically reduced sentence (or vice versa), or Prisoner A and Prisoner B both keep their mouths shut and receive a partial payoff, a moderately reduced sentence. In the even that Prisoner A and Prisoner B both betray each other, their payoff is not in the form of a reduced sentence, since they will both serve full sentences, but instead the payoff is the instant gratification that comes with the attempt at self preservation, even though the attempt fails (I’ll touch more on that.) It’s the smallest possible payoff, and therefore the least desirable outcome for both prisoners.
The only possibility for lack of payoff in game theory is if one party never takes an action specifically, the decision itself must be attempted or started, because otherwise it is not yet put into action and cannot affect the outcome. In the prisoner dilemma, this would be like one prisoner deciding to betray the other prisoner but suffering a sudden heart attack before he could alert the police of his choice to do so: the immediate payoff of attempted self preservation never comes because it was only ever an intention and never made its way into deed, regardless of whether that deed failed or succeeded. 
Following the basic ideas of game theory to their logical conclusion: there CANNOT BE a truly altruistic action, because there is always some form of payoff. That’s why there’s phrases like “tis better to give than to receive”, because after all, when you give someone a gift, they’re grateful.
This is called psychological egoism. There’s a quote in that wiki that explains it better than I can: “[Man] is either willing to get a reward from God, therefore he wanted to serve himself, or he wanted to get a reward from people, therefore, he has done that to get profit for himself, or to be mentioned and praised by people, therefore, to it is also for himself, or due to his mercy and tenderheartedness, so he has simply done that goodness to pacify these feelings and treat himself.”  **
Say you give a homeless man your last dollar and you are a good person in his eyes. This cannot be true altruism, because the man has witnessed your action and you have made him think positively of you.
You give a blind man your last dollar and he has no idea who did it, no one is around to see you being a good person. Perhaps he doesn’t even realize he has an extra dollar, and so he doesn’t think that there is some mysterious good person out there. There’s no witness. But there is reward, because you have the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you did something to benefit another person, even if it was at great cost to yourself.
To have no hope, no witness, and no reward, you have to perform an action (or have the intention to perform an action, since according to Mark Twain there are no good deeds, only good intentions and so an attempted action brings its own immediate payoff) with no expectation that it will reflect well on you, AND with none of the personal gratification that comes from doing good things.
Example: Tony Stark acted as a villain in Civil War because it was the only way to save lives — if no one stepped up to help enforce the Superhuman Registration Act the way Tony did, sentinels would be sent out. Kill squads. Genetic experimentation. Imprisonment. He had no witness to look on him as heroic, because the public loathed him for his actions. He had no reward, because HE hated his own actions. He hated what he was doing and he hated himself for it, but he did it because it saved lives. No hope. No witness. No reward. Pure altruism can be achieved when your actions are done to help others but no one, INCLUDING YOURSELF, views your deeds as noble. Since Tony was not actually saving anyone, but instead was offering an alternative, less horrible fate, there was no payoff.
Missy had one witness: Her former regeneration. He found the action that she was trying to perform reprehensible. She never completed the action, and so was denied any form of emotional gratification by her failure. In this specific case, she was also denied payoff because she was never able to ATTEMPT the action. She made the decision to stand with the Doctor, and then was immediately struck down. This is equivalent to the situation in which the prisoner suffers the heart attack before he can follow through with his decision: No payoff. Everyone else believed that she had chosen to do something selfish, so there was no witness and so no social reward. As such, her aborted attempt to join the Doctor in itself is pure altruism. There is no payoff in this situation, and so game theory’s restrictions on altruism don’t come into effect. 
Conclusion: The Doctor has no idea that Missy has achieved true altruism in a way that he himself has not, and his ignorance of this fact is what makes her deeds truly pure and altruistic.
* - keeping in mind that, though I’m working my way through the extended universe and classic who, I am primarily going off of New Who, which means this statement may very well be wrong, there might be some instance where the Doctor fulfills the requirements I’ve laid out in this post. Please don’t attack me if this is the case.
** -  side note: this played havoc with younger, more religious me. I didn’t know it was an actual theory, so I assumed it was a problem with me, specifically. I just assumed that I wasn’t Good like other people are, because I was Good with the hope of getting into Heaven, or because doing bad things made me feel guilty. I was a very troubled 12 year old.
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divincr-arch-blog · 7 years
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steph’s guide to roleplaying
Heyo! Bare with me, for this is a long post.
So, within various fandoms, I have seen a common trend that rubs me the wrong way. People asking, either their followers or blogs they follow, why they aren’t popular/roleplayed with. Or, they ask for advice and do not apply it, for one reason or another.
I have been in the indie Tumblr roleplaying community for over three years now, across three big fandoms (Marvel, Harry Potter, and Fire Emblem) as well as smaller fandoms. I have seen many trends come and go, many popular roleplayers come and go, and more.
It’s hard to get your foot in the RP door on Tumblr. I was there. Your favorite blog that you cry about being so good was there. Everyone was there. It’s a BIG pond, with many fish. Things are ever changing on Tumblr, so this will be reference guide to what you need to get started on your RP blog!
When it comes to edits, whether they are icons, themes, or promos, they are very important to RP blogs. Icons are a staple within the RP community, across fandoms, indie, and group. It may seem hard to get and make graphics without Photoshop, a very expensive program, but there are ways around it. Your graphics do not have to be fancy or hand drawn, but cleanly sized and cropped. There are many image editors out there, but these are my personal favorites. 
GIMP- a free and downloadable image editor. it works very similarly to Photoshop, and will work for basic things like cropping, coloring, and resizing images. It does not have all the features of Photoshop, but will work fine for simple things.
Pixlr- a free image editing site that requires no download. Again, it works similarly to Photoshop and Gimp, but more on the basic side. I recommend this if your version of GIMP or Photoshop is acting wonky or broken. If you are iffy about downloading programs, this will be perfect for you.
Photoshop Torrents- While stealing, pirating, and torrenting is wrong and illegal, Photoshop is expensive. You can get older versions of Photoshop through various torrents on the internet (I found mine through tumblr). I like using CS5 because it is a well known version with plenty of tutorials online. I recommend downloading Photoshop Portable, as it can easily be stored on your flash drive.
As for what is actually on the blog and what people like to see on a roleplay blog, there is a few things that people prefer not to see. The number one thing most followers want from a roleplay blog is writing. They may want that through interaction with you as a partner, or they just like reading it as a personal or follower. As for the things that people do not like to see, there are the top few things. 
6 Pages of Memes- It is okay to reblog memes. It is how interactions between partners start, and can serve as good ice breakers between new mutuals. However, as someone who has gone through many blogs, six pages of memes with a few RP post in between is not appealing. Just because you may not be getting responses right away, does not mean you should spam your blog and the dash with memes every half hour. People may not be online or interested in that meme. If you like all these memes, queue or schedule them for when people are online more. Also, send some to the people on your dash and focus on making new threads from them.
Short Replies- Before I start, yes, one liners are fun. They are quick, easy, and light, but they should not be the only thing on your blog. Many people like to expand to paragraphs because they are writers. Paragraph responses also show potential followers how you write and if it will click with their style. They may seem intimidating, but take your time on them. Save part of your responses to the drafts and come back to it later. Roleplaying is not about how fast you can respond, but the quality of your writing. This is especially true when you do not use icons. If a blog doesn’t use icons, I look for description in shorter replies rather than dialogue.
Negativity- This monster comes in many shapes or forms. Negativity/guilt tripping, drama with other blogs, and personal posts do not belong on a roleplay blog, though. Instead of guilt tripping and vague posting, talk it out with a friend for a confidence booster or take a tiny 1-hour break from blogging. Keep whatever beef you have with someone private, as well as your personal/political beliefs about an issue. That’s why personal blogs are things.
Lack of Pages- Pages about your blog are very important! It serves as your personal anchor on your blog, as well as people’s knowledge to your and your character prior to following and interacting. If someone does not see pages about your blog on it, they are more than likely to brush your blog aside. A rules page is the first thing people look for. They want to know how you are as a person, and how to interact with you. Besides the general “do not be a jerk” rule that everyone has, many people elaborate on how interaction with them work. An about page also helps people know your character. Do not just link a wiki page, especially if play as a canon divergent canon character. A well thought out about page helps both OCs and canon characters. It gives a personality and base for your muse and sets it apart from others.
Make it this far? Hella! You are almost through that metaphorical door! Now that the basic and bare bones of your blog is out of the way, let’s talk about trends, or what it is more commonly called aesthetics. They constantly change in the rp community. GIFs used to be the common thing, now it is still icons. While the trends may change, the basics of tumblr rp stays the same.
Themes- Right now, as I write this long essay of a post, container themes are all the rage. They were not always, nor are they required of an RP blog. As long as a blog does not have the basic preloaded themes that tumblr offers, most people don’t care too much about what it looks like. A few good theme blogs for RPers are soldierholiic, theme-hunter, and octomoosey. Don’t like any of those? Look at someone’s blog. There is usually a small icon in the bottom corner that links to the theme maker’s blog. My personal favorite is soldierholiic’s sora theme.
Formatting- You do not have to format your post to be considered quality! You do not have to hate formatting to be considered quality! As long as you can use basic grammar and spelling, you are good. Many people use small text because it looks a bit cleaner. The shortcut for small text is ctrl+shift+ -, if that helps. Also, many people expect your posts to be cut, meaning the latest two replies on a post. If you do not want or cannot download x-kit or other extensions, just politely ask your partners either through talking OOC or in your rules, to cut your post for you.
Function>Aesthetics- While having a nice looking blog is...well, nice, if someone can’t read or navigate through it, then they most likely will avoid you. Many experienced blogs are guilty of this too, not just over zealous newer blogs. Make your posts readable, both on the dash and the blog. Make your pages easy and accessible to find, especially for mobile users. Use colors that won’t kill my eyes because I’m reading your reply on your blog.
Graphics pt 2- While many blogs have personalized or hand drawn icons and promos, it’s not a requirement. You can use the icons you find in the tags. You can have icons that don’t match your theme. As long as they are sized correctly (100x100px is the norm), they do not have to be super edited. For promos, many fandoms accept the casual promo, containing an icon and a bit of info about your blog. It’s easy to spread around and learn a bit about the mun/muse. A fancy photoshopped graphic designed promo is not 100% necessary in most fandoms right now.
I know this post is getting very long and boring, but I swear I am almost done. Your blog is set up. You know the basics of roleplaying on tumblr. But everyone seems so scary with their rules, friends, and mains, etc. Many people on here are shy when it comes to new people. You probably are too. This is how you talk to people who seem intimidating. 
Be Casual- There is no need to call everyone senpai or quality or perf. That just makes things awkward. Just be casual with people you want to interact with. Talk about your fandom, scream headcanons with them, ask for their name. You do not have to go in with ‘HI DO YOU WANT TO RP WITH ME, [muse name here]-MUN-SENPAI?!!’ That comes off a bit strong and off-putting.
Be Respectful- First off, don’t be a jerk to people. Secondly, just read someone’s rules before messaging them with questions about something. While many are open to answering any questions a follower may have about them, if it something already stated in the rules of that blog, just save you all some trouble by reading them. Also, do not hate on their interpretation of a character. Each blog is different, even if there are 100 duplicates for that character. 
Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help- Is there something in the reply you don’t understand? Something about their character you don’t understand? Questions about the universe? Feel free to ask a partner for help! They won’t bite if you are respectful about it. Also, if you are close to your partners, they will often be open to help you with graphics if they have experience/time. Just don’t strut into their IMs expecting a theme done before you get there. Ask first! Be okay with their answer, even if you do not like it. 
Lastly, roleplaying is a hobby. Do not let it consume your life or stress you out. If that does happen, it is okay to take a break and come back. It is okay to restart your blog from scratch. It is okay to follow new and different people. Just have fun and be yourself.
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sineala · 2 years
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I don’t need anon to pick at your brain! I’ve been into comics on and off for ten years but I still know and understand frighteningly little about the medium, and I want to change that. Between military and other life stuff, I’ve done less reading and research into comics than I’d like. For example, I’ve seen you say in another post that the Marvel wiki volume numbering for Iron Man is EXTREMELY WRONG (to quote you 🤣). And it just so happens that I recently made a spreadsheet of all the comics I own, which I referenced the wiki to help me make. But now I’m worried I got some stuff on my sheet wrong. 😭
As long as the scheme you use makes sense to you, that's the important thing. But I just checked, and the wiki is still disastrously wrong about mid-2000s Iron Man. They used to be right! And then a couple of years ago, they got it wrong, and it is still wrong.
Big nerdy list under the Read More.
I haven't double-checked all the volume years, but this is the way I refer to them:
Tales of Suspense vol 1 (1959), #39-99. ToS itself started in 1959, which is why it has that year, but Tony doesn't appear until #39. He starts splitting the book with Steve at #58, and after #99 we get separate Cap and IM books. Cap keeps the numbering; IM renumbers and we have...
Iron Man vol 1 (1968), #1-332. Like volume 1 of most of the rest of Marvel's classic titles, this goes all the way until the mid-90s. Whether or not the cover says "Iron Man" or "The Invincible Iron Man," it's all just called Iron Man.
Iron Man vol 2 (1996), #1-13. Shh. We do not speak of this.
Iron Man vol 3 (1998), #1-89. Definitely the best Iron Man run. Starting with #41, the book is dual-numbered with legacy numbers, like many Marvel comics of this time. That means #41 is also listed as #386, and so on for the rest of the run. Basically that means that if they hadn't renumbered anything at all this would be the 386th issue. Marvel often likes to return to legacy numbers when they have a big milestone issue (like #500 or #600) coming up.
Iron Man vol 4 (2005), #1-35. This is the run that was going on through the entire Civil War and post-CW era. At Iron Man #15, the book changes names to Iron Man: Director of SHIELD and keeps the numbering going; some people would class Director of SHIELD as a separate run based on this, but, let's be real, you're gonna sort this with the rest of v4 here. At #33 the book actually changes names to War Machine: Weapon of SHIELD but weirdly no one seems to be arguing that that one should be a separate book.
Invincible Iron Man vol 1 (2008), #1-33, #500-527. This is Fraction's run, and Marvel has now decided to start treating "Invincible" as part of the actual title for some reason, so this is a brand new volume 1 of Invincible Iron Man. Halfway through it renumbers for the milestone #500 issue even though they would like me to believe it has a different name from the comic it's getting renumbered to match.
Iron Man vol 5 (2013), #1-28. Now we're back to "Iron Man" and this is Gillen's run.
Superior Iron Man vol 1 (2015,) #1-9. Tony is a bad, bad man.
Invincible Iron Man vol 2 (2015), #1-14. This is the beginning of Bendis' IM run, once again getting "Invincible" in the title, so by my count we're at volume 2 of Invincible.
International Iron Man vol 1 (2016), #1-7. This is a series that ran at the same time as Bendis' IIM v2, and is about Tony's quest for his biological parents.
Infamous Iron Man vol 1 (2016), #1-12. Okay, so at the end of Civil War II, Tony ends up in a coma and this run is actually about Doctor Doom who is now Iron Man, more or less.
Invincible Iron Man vol 3 (2017), #1-11, #593-600. This was running at approximately the same time as Infamous and is now about Riri Williams who is ALSO now Iron Man, more or less. Halfway through it renumbers with legacy numbering which is a thing a lot of Marvel books were doing at that time, conveniently just in time to reach that milestone #600. Which is when Tony comes back to life.
Tony Stark: Iron Man vol 1 (2019), #1-19. This is Slott's run. Yeah, sure, give it a completely different name. That's cool. I don't need things to be simple or anything.
Iron Man 2020 (2020), #1-6. This is the miniseries/event that closes out Slott's IM run. It's got some tie-ins.
Iron Man vol 6 (2020-present), ongoing. Cantwell's current run. #15 is out this week, as I write this. We are finally back to a run that is just called Iron Man, which we last got, uh, eight volumes ago? Geez. I would like to point out that this run is Iron Man (2020) and the previous run was Iron Man 2020 (2020). Comics are so accessible and easy to understand.
Okay, so that seems like it basically makes sense, right? As much as comics ever make sense?
Great! But that's not what the Marvel Wiki currently does.
This is what we get, starting with volume 4, where the weirdness starts:
Iron Man vol 4 (2005), #1-16. You might think that the wiki has decided to split out vol 4 and Director of SHIELD into separate runs. That would make sense. That's not what this is. #16 is actually two issues into DoS. It's in the middle of a story arc. It doesn't change creative teams or anything. There is no conceivable reason to end it here. Now you might think, okay, that's a small error, but surely the next run is DoS? *laughs bitterly* No.
Invincible Iron Man vol 1 (2007), #17-28. This is actually most of the Director of SHIELD run. It says "Iron Man: Director of SHIELD" right on the cover. The Marvel Wiki has decided that doesn't count, I guess. You can buy a big trade paperback of the entire Director of SHIELD run. It's called Iron Man: Director of SHIELD. I guess that doesn't mean anything to anyone.
Iron Man: Director of SHIELD vol 1 (2008), #29-35. Congratulations, Marvel Wiki! You have correctly identified 7 out of 35 issues of this run! That's a failing grade!
Invincible Iron Man vol 2 (2008), #1-33. This is the first half of Fraction's run, before the renumbering at #500. We are now up to IIM vol 2 because the Wiki decided that the middle of DoS was a great thing to call IIM vol 1. You might wonder where the rest of this run is getting numbered. You're going to be sorry you asked.
Invincible Iron Man vol 1 (2011), #500-527. Look, we've... found volume 1 again? We're numbering volumes in reverse? Oh God. I mean, I know this is what legacy numbering means, but it's kind of a mess.
IM v5 (Gillen) and Superior are both unaffected by this.
Invincible Iron Man vol 3 (2015), #1-14. Bendis starts here. I had this down as IIM vol 2 but that's not how the wiki sees it.
International and Infamous are not affected.
Invincible Iron Man vol 4 (2017), #1-11. This is the first half of Bendis' Riri run, also one number higher than I had it. Then it renumbers to legacy, and I bet you know what's coming.
Invincible Iron Man vol 1 (2017), #593-600. Yep. I love legacy numbers.
Everything after this is fine in terms of numbering.
So, yeah, legacy numbering makes it a little weird, but legacy numbers are like that. When I talk about them I usually wedge them in with the Invincible runs they're part of. The thing that really throws it off is the part where Director of SHIELD is listed under three different runs because that's just... wrong. And throws off a lot of the numbers after it.
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sineala · 5 years
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hi!! first off, thank you so much for all the comics advice you provide, they're utterly amazing and are really appreciated!! I have a question regarding the last comic ask you answered: are the comics you mentioned in chronological order? you see, I've been trying to figure out the order for some time, and i would be really grateful if you could help me out 💕
It’s sort of mostly chronological? It’s complicated, because most of the volumes start and stop at the same place but this is not always the case; I was also trying to figure out a way to list the events. As it is, the way things are listed there, I don’t differentiate between runs that start at the same time as other runs and events that happen within runs. 
It would be really useful if there were a timeline (I feel like someone must have drawn one) but this is the best I can do with just text:
AVENGERS:
Avengers v1 (1963)
Avengers v2 (1996)
Avengers v3 (1998)
New Avengers v1 (2005) & Mighty Avengers v1 (2007)
Avengers v4 (2010) & New Avengers v2 (2010)
Avengers v5 (2013) & New Avengers v3 (2013)
Avengers v6 (2015) #0
All-New All-Different Avengers (2016)
Avengers v7 (2017)
Avengers v8 (2018)
TALES OF SUSPENSE:
Tales of Suspense v1 (1959)
Tales of Suspense v2 (1995) #1
CAPTAIN AMERICA:
Captain America v1 (1968)
Captain America v2 (1996)
Captain America v3 (1998)
Captain America v4 (2002)
Captain America v5 (2005)
Captain America v6 (2011)
Captain America v7 (2013)
Captain America: Sam Wilson (2015) & Captain America: Steve Rogers (2016)
Captain America v8 (2017) #25 
Captain America #695-704  (2017)
Captain America v9 (2018)
IRON MAN:
Iron Man v1 (1968)
Iron Man v2 (1996)
Iron Man v3 (1998)
Iron Man v4 (2005)
Invincible Iron Man v1 (2008)
Iron Man v5 (2013)
Superior Iron Man (2015)
Invincible Iron Man v2 (2015) & International Iron Man (2016)
Invincible Iron Man v3 (2017) & Infamous Iron Man (2016)
Tony Stark: Iron Man (2018)
The Marvel wiki will sometimes use different year numbers from AO3 – for example, AO3 has Avengers vol 5 as 2012, not 2013. It has to do with street date vs actual recorded publication date, I think, and those differ. Also the volume numbering of Iron Man on the wiki is currently EXTREMELY WRONG and has decided that Invincible Iron Man starts literally in the middle of the Director of SHIELD run so all their volume numbers are off by one. I have fixed it in my list.
So you can kind of see from the years how they link up. There were Cap comics in the 40s and 50s (the 50s Cap has been retconned as not Steve); Tales of Suspense started in the 50s, but Tony only showed up in 1963, a couple months before Avengers started. Steve shows up in the modern era in Avengers  #4. Start reading Tales of Suspense at #39 (1963), the first appearance of Iron Man; at #58 Cap joins the book, and it ends at #99 and splits into Cap and IM, Cap keeps the numbering and starts at #100, in 1968. After that volume 1 of Avengers, Cap, and IM keep running until the mid-90s.
Marvel didn’t really invent events until the original Secret Wars, in the mid-80s. Operation Galactic Storm, from the early 90s, is probably the biggest event from a Steve/Tony perspective; this is the Kree Supreme Intelligence stuff. Then volume 1 ends with The Crossing and Onslaught, which… um. Yeah.
Volume 2 of Avengers/Cap/IM runs simultaneously for about a year. Mostly we don’t talk about this. Definitely read the Tales of Suspense one-shot which came out about now, though.
Volume 3 of Avengers/Cap/IM start at the same time, in 1998, after the whole Onslaught mess is over. Cap v3 and v4 fit into the same space of time as the entire v3 runs of Avengers and IM, so Cap v4 – which is post-9/11 – ends at the same time as Avengers/IM v3, which is where the numbering starts to stop syncing. There aren’t really any major events within v3 other than small crossovers like Live Kree or Die, until you get to Disassembled at the end, which basically wrecks everything.
The next start we get is New Avengers v1/Cap v5/IM v4, in 2005. This is basically the “Civil War up to Steve’s resurrection” era, although I guess House of M happens before CW, if you want to read House of M. This is when Bendis starts writing every Avengers book known to man. CW starts about one or two dozen issues in, depending on title (they don’t start quite at the same time). Mighty Avengers v1 starts after Civil War, and if you’re following along with events, you then want to read The Initiative, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, and Siege as you go along. IM has a variety of writers and has Extremis (at the beginning) as well as the Director of SHIELD run. Cap v5 is the Brubaker run, and it’s mostly about Bucky. Captain America does some weird renumbering back to vol 1 #600 at the end of vol 5 and then goes on a bit and then (when Steve is Cap again) moves to a team-up book (Captain America & x) for a few issues, running simultaneously (as far as I know) with the beginning of Cap v6. Steve is alive again at the end of Siege.
Next, it’s Avengers v4/Secret Avengers v1/Invincible IM v1 in about 2010. Look for banners that say Heroic Age. And start with Avengers Prime. The Avengers is still Bendis. These three don’t exactly sync. Invincible (this is Fraction’s IM run) is already going before Siege (and therefore before Avengers v4); the arcs World’s Most Wanted and Stark Disassembled align with Siege, sort of, very badly. Steve is actually in Secret Avengers v1 rather than on the main Avengers team at the beginning of Avengers v4; he doesn’t head his own Cap book (Cap v6) until about halfway through Avengers, when Fear Itself happens and Bucky kicks the bucket (don’t worry, he’s fine) and Steve gets the shield again and rejoins the main team. Fraction’s run also renumbers at #500 because why the hell not. New Avengers v2 is also running now, starting I think at the same time as the others, but is not Steve & Tony-centric. Also AvX happens.
And then it’s Marvel Now and we have Avengers v5/New Avengers v3/Cap v7/IM v5 kicking off together in 2012-2013. This is Hickman’s Avengers, Remender’s Cap, and Gillen’s IM. Important events are Infinity and Axis. After Axis, Steve loses the serum and Tony goes evil and we get Superior Iron Man running in parallel with the ends of Avengers and Cap. And then the multiverse dies and we get Secret Wars and its associated bunch of miniseries.
After Secret Wars, in 2015, it’s All-New All-Different Marvel. (Avengers v6 is a preview issue for all the Avengers titles.) We get All-New All Different Avengers, Bendis’ IM (Invincible v2 & International), and Spencer’s SamCap. At this time, Steve is deserumed and running Uncanny Avengers; I forget the volume number. He was running Uncanny before the end of the world too. SamCap started before SteveCap did, and that one v8 issue is actually Spencer’s final issue that kept the numbering from SamCap. Important events include Standoff, which is when Steve gets reserumed (SteveCap starts after this) and becomes secretly Hydra. At the end of all this we get Civil War II.
Then it’s… I think it’s called Marvel Now 2.0? Avengers v7 starts at about the same time Bendis’ Invincible renumbers again (and is about Riri) so we’re at v3 by my count, and Infamous Iron Man (about Doom) starts. The two Cap books are still running on the same numbers. Then Secret Empire happens.
Then it’s Marvel Legacy, which means that literally everything renumbers to its vol 1 numbers because Marvel wants to make me cry, but Avengers and Invincible IM keep going with the same creative teams. Spencer’s Cap run ends basically when Secret Empire ends, and Bendis stops writing for Marvel with IM #600. Waid picks up Cap for two arcs, one of which is amazing and one of which is extremely confusing.
And now I think we’re at A Fresh Start and Avengers v8/Cap v9/Tony Stark: Iron Man have started. The current major event is Infinity Wars. There are Infinity Gems involved, yes.
You know, I thought this was going to be quicker to type.
Also I forgot to tell everyone to read Iron Age, in which Tony time-travels, cries in the rain, and hits on himself.
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