Tony in AoU: “isn’t that why we fight? So we can end the fight and go home?”
Tony in IW and Endgame: couldn’t end the fight and can’t go home 😦
That line from AoU sticks out to me a lot, because it’s partially why I am so convinced Tony will end up making it out of all this alive.
Tony, since the beginning of the story, has been the one character really working towards “the endgame.” By that I mean he’s making plans. His arc has been establishing a life–a home–after the war is over.
Endgame isn’t just a chess term to refer to the stage when the major pieces are blowing out–it’s also a term to refer to the final stage. The conclusion. That’s why it’s a term used in fandom to refer to the “final” ship (ex: their relationship is endgame). It’s where a character is at, and will presumably remain, when the adventure is over.
Tony’s endgame has been his family. Since Iron Man, his internal arc has been the slow build towards this goal. Starting a relationship with Pepper, mentoring kids like Harley and Peter, getting his heart fixed (literally and figuratively), proposing, dreaming about wanting a child, maybe even building Pepper that farm. All of it.
He’s been doing this since Yinsen told him all those years ago he’s the man who has everything and nothing when he admitted he had no one back home. Yinsen told him not to waste his life–
And Tony decided to make his home.
The narrative fails if he doesn’t get home. In this way, he’s very much like Odysseus. (Funny enough, it also took Odysseus 10 years to get home to Ithaca.)
The Odyssey begins in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Tony’s story also begins in an active war zone and the journey is fraught with danger.
Odysseus used his clever thinking to rescue his crew from Polyphemus, similar to how Tony uses his wit to save his friends (e.g. Flying the nuke through the wormhole and stopping the invasion).
I like to think that Tony’s Scylla and Charybdis moment (a metaphor for the lesser of the two evils) was when he created Ultron to stave off the threat from Thanos. Ultron (Scylla the six-headed monster) almost destroyed the world, and many people died, but Earth survived. Unlike in the Odyssey, the threat from Thanos (Charybdis, the giant ass whirlpool) manifested anyway. 🤷🏽♀️
i have been thinking about this a lot for a long time so here goes. all the odysseus and tony parallels i’ve noticed:
-odysseus didn’t want to fight. at the start of the trojan war when agamemnon and menelaus went around recruiting all the greek heroes, he literally faked madness to try and get out of it. it was only when the choice was kill his infant son or drop the charade that he finally agreed to go
-tony never wanted to go to space. he wanted to stay at home and get married and have babies. but when the time came and he had no choice off he went (and in doing so he was also saving peter, his son-figure, from falling off the q-ship and dying)
-odysseus ends the trojan war. the horse is his idea. it’s his brain that ends ten years of warfare
-we don’t know exactly how thanos is gonna be defeated but tony will be crucial
-tony wanted to build pepper a farm and there’s hints that’s where he’ll retire to
-when odysseus gets back home and has dealt with all the suitors, one of the first things he does is goes and gets all his sheep back. he’s a farmer-king
-warcrimes. odysseus has been known to dabble in some light… warcrimes
-tony’s past as a weapons manufacturer is NOT a warcrime and should not be considered as such, but there’s no question that tony views it that way
-tony loves pepper. he wants to get home to pepper. his last message to pepper is one of the most heartbreakingly romantic things i have ever seen (my previous favourite moment of romantic heartbreak is from the iliad, go read book six so we can both cry about hector and andromache)
-the very first time we see odysseus in the poem he is sitting on a beach and crying because he misses his wife so damn much. it’s been *twenty* years since he last saw her and he still misses her that much
-tony is currently stranded in space, and for odysseus being shipwrecked and stranded is practically a hobby
-odysseus meets his mother in the underworld and is able to say goodbye to her there. it’s highly tragic because he didn’t know she was dead and was looking forward to seeing her at home, and she died of grief after loosing faith he would ever return. they both get closure from that meeting
-h*ward will reportedly appear in endgame, and hopefull tony will get the closure he needs from him then
-odysseus is constantly saved and helped by women. it happens with calypso (not that i’m particularly enthusiastic about including her here because if someone isn’t allowed to leave your relationship isn’t consensual), nausicaa and most importantly athena. circe also counts but their relationship is a little more complicated
-pepper kills the villain in iron man and iron man 3 (and she helps take down hammer in im2). nebula and natasha help tony. carol, pepper and valkyrie seem to be the most popular options people are theorising to rescue tony
-fighting side by side with their sons! the climax of infinity war and the climax of the odyssey have tony and peter fighting together and odysseus and telemachus fighting together
-tony has a strained relationship with many of the other avengers, and the narrative often villainises him
-odysseus is also frequently villainised. in euripides’ trojan women odysseus is seen as the most stinkman garbage ever to exist, even though he never actually appears in the play and agamemnon is also around. ajax hates odysseus in life and even when they meet in the underworld despite it being him who persuaded the greek generals to give ajax a proper burial (even though ajax literally tried to murder them). the romans also weren’t fans of odysseus and honestly if the romans didn’t like you you were doing something right
they’re not exactly the same, odysseus is definitely a lot more morally grey than tony, and i’m not suggesting that the similaries are on purpose or anything. but the fact remains that there are A LOT of parallels between tony and odysseus (i’m not even sure i’ve covered all of them here), significantly moreso than the obvious tony cassandra parallel
hopefully this indicates their stories are heading in the same direction. i’d really like that to be the case
you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
iampinbitch 