[App] beyondtherift

[runbeforeyouwalk]

About You - The Player
Name: Aubrey
Age: 23
Contact: taibhsearachd@gmail.com
Past Role Playing Experience: A... lot?

The Character
Name: Antonia "Tony" Stark
Age/Birthdate: 39 / March 3, 1973
Species: Wanderer
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe (AU)
*Pre-existing powers: Genius, a truly astonishing alcohol tolerance, and an incredibly powerful energy source in her chest
*Rift Change, if applicable: Tony is forced to tell the truth whenever someone asks or confronts her about her feelings, whether it's something trivial (like her opinion of their outfit) or something significant (like, you know, actual emotions).
Livejournal: runbeforeyouwalk
Played By: Claudia Black
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/3792217/1643084

Appearance:

Though she gives the impression of being a much bigger person than she is, Tony's actually fairly short at 5'3" and lean, though more in the "occasionally spends days subsisting on alcohol and caffiene pills" way than the actually athletic way. She has long, somewhat angular features, dark eyes, and long dark hair that she keeps loose most of the time, tied back when she's working. She is very conscious of her appearance, and when in public is very fond of playing up her sexuality, but jeans and T-shirts and sneakers are just as common for her as thighbaring dresses and killer heels. Her hands are callused and lightly scarred from working with them, and while her nails are often painted, they're never very long.

Of course, the most noticeable thing about her appearance is the arc reactor, a powerful energy source placed in her chest to keep shrapnel from entering her heart. It's a round disc-like object that fits into a socket in her sternum (or where her sternum... used to be, anyway), and emits a bright blue-white glow. It's not uncommon for her to wear dresses or tops that bare enough cleavage that the arc reactor is right out there in the open; even when she doesn't, unless the material of the shirt is dark and thick, the arc reactor generally glows right through it.

Personality:

Everyone in Tony's world knows who she is, and knows what she's like - she has a public image to maintain, and she's happy to do so. That public image is... not exactly the most positive in the world. On the surface, Tony is a cheerfully reckless egomaniac, a hard partier who'll sleep with anyone with a pulse if they're pretty enough, a genius to follow in her father's footsteps and a superhero of her own making. She's a cutthroat bitch, a slut, a trustfund baby who had everything in life handed to her, a spoiled princess who insists on playing with the boys. All of these things are true to some degree, not an act of any kind - it's just that the Tony Stark the world knows is an exaggerated and shallow portrait of the actual person.

Tony's a social creature who likes being around people, and likes it best when she's the center of attention. Luckily for her, she's extremely charismatic, and even at her most abrasive tends to at least be charming about it... which is probably the reason no one's strangled her to death yet. Her sense of humor is extremely heavy on the sarcasm, and it's possible she's actually incapable of turning it off - though almost certain that in most circumstances, she really doesn't care to turn it off. Even in the most dire of situations, she always has some kind of snarky quip, and it's hard for even her closest friends to tell if she's taking something seriously or not. She's impulsive in all her decisions, diving into situations without a pause to consider it or think ahead - which isn't to say she doesn't think at all. She's quick on her feet and does her best thinking under pressure, and she knows it, which only encourages her recklessness. This works out for both good and ill; sure, sometimes she does something bold for good reason and saves the day, buuut sometimes she does something insane for the hell of it and nearly gets herself killed.

Tony is rather self-centered - on an ordinary day, her biggest priorities are whatever keeps her from being bored, usually a combination of work, alcohol and sex, taking stupid risks (usually involving fast cars or the Iron Man suit) and needling the people around her (sometimes friendly teasing, sometimes not so much). The details of ordinary life bore her, and she has the fortune to make sure that other people handle all that for her. It's been that way her whole life, and as a result, it's hardly surprised that she's spoiled and sometimes a little childish - she wants to get what she wants right away and exactly how she wants it, and tends to sulk when that doesn't happen. Without her personal assistant, her AI, and the myriad other people who make sure she doesn't have to think about things like remembering dates and appointments, doing laundry, feeding herself, remembering her social security number... she probably wouldn't (won't) manage that well. Or at all. Similarly, the details of other people's lives bore her, and chances are she'll only remember your name after first meeting if she particularly liked you or you particularly annoyed her. It is just not in Tony's nature to concern herself with the personal lives of anyone but herself, and while she's made an effort to get better in recent years... she's still kind of selfish, and if she even attempts to remember things about you or takes an interest in your personal problems, it's a sign she really cares.

Tony doesn't tend to get close to people quickly or easily. She holds people at arm's length, uses sarcasm and deflection to avoid any real emotional involvement - she doesn't even like being handed things by people she doesn't trust completely, because on some level she sees the exchange of things as an emotional exchange as well, and she can't do that with most people. She's constantly testing people in small, subtle ways, pushing their buttons just to see what happens, like they're some puzzle she can figure out. By contrast, she develops strong emotional attachment to inanimate objects - her AI, JARVIS, the arc reactor, the Iron Man suit - all things she's created, things that are therefore predictable and safe and within her control. Mechanics she can manipulate with ease, they can't hurt her or let her down, and if she screws something up, she always knows exactly how to fix it, whereas people... People are another matter.

When she does get close to people, it happens fast and hard; you'll turn around one day and suddenly realize Tony Stark is a part of nearly every facet of your life, and acting like she belongs there, like she's always been there, and is making herself completely at home. Being close to her is... not easy, and she knows it. She leans on her friends hard, she drags them into whatever insanity is going on in her personal and/or professional life, and she puts them through hell worrying about her just by being herself. To the outside observer, there's not much incentive to be Tony's friend, unless you're just there for the glow of wealth and reflected fame - it's a hell of a lot of work for not much reward. Tony is not emotionally demonstrative for the most part, in anything but the most shallow way, glib compliments and casual flattery. In her childhood, she never really had an example of how normal people express affection for each other, and today, she generally shows it by giving people things. When she actually does try to engage on an emotional level, to talk about her feelings for people or go past friendly teasing and shallow flirting, it generally comes out painfully awkward and often so jumbled that even those closest to her can't figure out that she's trying to tell them something serious.

The way Tony sees herself is a complicated and contradictory thing. She's known since she was little that she's a genius, and she is not shy about it; as stated before, there's a level of self-absorption that stops just short of narcissism (some may say it doesn't stop...). The truth is, a lot of the reason she's so arrogant, so loudly determined to make sure everyone knows how brilliant she is is that as a child, the only way she'd ever get any acknowledgment of her accomplishments was by shoving them in her father's face. Tony needs acknowledgment for the things she does - she'd wear down fast as a masked superhero, fighting battles in secret for no recognition, which is why she didn't hesitate for more than a second before announcing herself publicly as Iron Man. She knows she's brilliant, and she knows she's good at what she does, but she still needs that outside reinforcement to make it worthwhile. Perhaps to balance her ego, though, is the fact that she is never, never satisfied with herself, or with anything she does, no matter how good it is, no matter how pleased she is with it - she's forever tinkering with her creations, finding ways to make them better and then doing it again. She's forever trying to live up to her father's legacy (and maybe do him one better); she's always, deep down, trying to impress him, even though she knows that's never going to happen.

On the other hand, Tony doesn't seem to really like herself, though only the people closest to her seem to notice it, and sometimes not even then. It seems she almost buys into the image she projects of herself of being selfish, of not caring about the damage she does to others, when in reality, she cares a great deal, she just doesn't know how to express it. She displaces her negative feelings about herself onto her robots, who can't be hurt by it - it's not a coincidence that the way she talks to Dummy is exactly the way her father used to talk to her when she was younger. She's almost obsessive about being in control, about not being seen as weak, hardly surprising when the majority of her life has been spent in men's spaces fighting to be just as good as they are, and the slightest falter would be used to tear her down. She's always been self-destructive, and while that's been tempered a little in recent years, it hasn't gone away entirely. These days she's less likely to nearly get herself killed for the hell of it, because being a superhero gives her that outlet in a form people respect, in a way no one's going to question... and in a way that gives her the opportunity to prove, to herself and others, that she's not selfish, that she's not worthless, that she's not wasting her life.

History: Tony's actual history isn't that different from her canon counterpart, except for being born a girl. Most of the changes are in the way she's treated and perceived by the people around her, and in how she reacts to that, not in the actual events. If you want me to write up a history anyway, I can, but it won't be very interesting.

Events:

• SO HOWARD STARK WAS A TERRIBLE PERSON. ...okay, no, that's a lie. What he was was a terrible father, particularly to this version of Tony. Howard didn't want a child, he wanted a way to continue his legacy. In a way, Tony was everything he wanted - a genius, a prodigy, the one person in the world who could contiue her father's work when he died - but she was also a small person who just wanted attention, affection, acknowledgement from her father, while he saw her as little more than an annoyance... and something of a disappointment, because when Howard envisioned someone continuing his legacy, that someone wasn't a girl.
  
  Tony's father never told her he loved her. He never even told her he liked her, and it was much more common for her to be given things than affection, and to this day, Tony has a hard time dealing with emotions when it comes to other people. She doesn't tell people how she feels about them, she doesn't show it through any of the affectionate gestures normal human beings might rely on. She gives people things - and by things, I don't mean birthday presents (let's face it, she never remembers birthdays, including her own) or taking them out to dinner or whatever, I mean she will give her friends a car or a house or her company as casually and off-handedly as if she's giving them a book or a dress she doesn't want anymore - because that's the only way she knows to express affection.
  
  In addition, Tony was and is pretty well convinced her father resented her for being a part of his life, maybe even hated her... so Tony hated him in return. No matter what she did - building a circuitboard at four, building an engine at six, getting into MIT at a ridiculously young age - it was just never good enough, and most of Tony's life even after Howard died has been about alternately trying to piss her father off and trying to make him proud of her. The pissing him off... yeah, she managed that perfectly well, but she is never, never going to make him proud of her, and that knowledge is probably the root of a lot of her self-hatred issues.
  
  In conclusion: who the hell let Howard Stark have a child?
  
  
• A few years ago, Tony was in the Middle East for a demonstration of one of her new weapons, the Jericho Missile. The convoy she was in was attacked, the soldiers she was with killed - with weapons Tony had designed, no less-, and Tony was kidnapped. She'd been hit by one of her own weapons in the attack, and to keep her alive, to keep the shrapnel out of her heart, an electromagnet powered by a car battery was placed in her chest.
  
  Though Tony didn't know it at the time, the attack had been ordered by her mentor and the closest thing she had to a real father, Obidiah Stane. He meant for her to be killed, but the men who had her weren't about to waste the mind of Tony Stark while they had her - they tortured her, trying to force her to build them a Jericho missile of their own. Tony eventually pretended to comply, but instead of a missile, she built an arc reactor and a prototype of the Iron Man suit, and fought her way to freedom... but in the process, Yinsen - the engineer who saved her life, the one who encouraged her to fight back, to make her legacy something more than weapons and destruction, one of the few people who ever believed in Tony herself, as a person - was killed.
  
  ...there is really not a way to overstate the effect this had on Tony. Before, she didn't really think too much about her legacy, about the consequences of her actions in the world: she made weapons for the good guys, her weapons kept the free world safe and made her rich in the process, everybody wins, end of story. Except here, she saw her weapons in the wrong hands, being used to kill the people they were meant to protect. She saw that the only thing she'd really done with her genius was spill blood, and she hated it. When she got back home, the first thing she did was announce that Stark Enterprises would no longer be making weapons; the second was to rebuild the Iron Man suit, in the hope that in her hands, that kind of power might do some good. Tony's never going to be what most people would call "responsible", but since this, she's been a lot more conscious of the effect her actions have on people and the world, and she goes out of her way to do the right thing even when it's hard and painful. She feels like she owes it to the world, for all the blood shed with her technology before she even thought to pay attention to it, and because the last thing Yinsen told her was not to waste her life, and she's determined not to.

Writing Sample:

Tony’s been sitting in the lab for half an hour. She’s been staring at the hole in her chest off and on. Weighing the new arc reactor in her hand. Taking the old one out, reaching in and... putting it back, hands shaking, head spinning.

She doesn’t feel anything when she looks at it, at warm metal and empty space where skin and bone should be – not fear or anxiety, no emotion at all. It’s fine, just machinery, and since when has that ever been anything to fear? She’s fine, just working, and so what if it happens to be on herself this time?

It’s just that every time she reaches in there, the bottom of her stomach drops out, the whole world seems to twist and spin around her, and her hands–

She strangles down a shout of pain as the wire brushes the wall of the socket, entire body spasming for a moment as her hand jerks away of its own accord. With a soft groan, she lets her head drop back and closes her eyes, taking deep gulps of air to steady herself before she sits up again and fits the old reactor back into her chest.

Tony lets her hand rest on it for a moment, feeling the soft hum of it in place of a heartbeat, before she sighs and reaches for a rag to wipe the slime off her fingers. "JARVIS, get me Pepper."

She’s stopped shaking again a half second before the connection goes through, and she flashes her best smile as Pepper’s face comes up on the screen in front of her, distracted and a little harried-looking. "Hey. How steady are your hands?"