#friendship and happiness vs the mortifying ordeal of being known

[frotting-corporations]

i like to be alone too much. i'm ruining the possibility of making new friends

[rel-ish]

my want for friendship vs the mortifying ordeal of being known: fight

MAN UR NOT WRONG but also if u want to be friends i am so open and happy to talk anytime!! 

[in-a-cave-with]

Hello =) Why do you always mention Tony Stark self loathe? Is he notorious for it? And why is he self-hating? I thought he loved him self do much and was confident. I’ve seen people calling his character narcissist, egomaniac etc. So Is his arrogant behaviour a mask? He is a cis white hetero billionaire man, can’t he get a good care for his mental health? Privileged yet ignorant. Smh

………..bruh….theres so much to unpack here…..

ok so im going to assume this is about ??? that one screenshot of my fic that im writing which is set in the 616 universe? which makes this ask even more wack af bc aside from 616 tony’s “treating ‘tony stark’ and ‘iron man’ as separate identities that he had to play/thinking iron man is the only good part of him” thing that he had going on for the entirety of the time he had a secret identity (i think it’s around 10 years in the marvel sliding timescale??), he also has the biggest track record out of all tony starks in marvel universes of “times he has sacrificed his happiness/his friendships/his life for the greater good”. like just off the top of my head theres execute program, civil war, iron man director of shield, iron man fatal frontier, fear itself, avengers vs x-men. to put it extremely bluntly tony would not try to ruin his own life this many times if he really liked himself as much as he says he does

if you’re talking about mcu tony then it’s different but eventually leads back to the same thing? tony doesnt immediately try to sacrifice himself when things go wrong bc of him + instead tries to look for ways to fix the problem but when it comes down to it he lays down his life w/out hesitation. he overly attaches himself to his iron man identity and can’t leave it bc he took yinsen’s words farther than they were meant to be taken [inserts meta about how mcu tony is the most notable example of how the hero can take their mentor’s ‘great power great responsibility’ statement too far and eventually ruin themself] also there’s an entire movie (iron man 2) dedicated to how tony distances himself from the people close to him by acting (key word: acting) self-absorbed/arrogant so they won’t miss him when he dies

in general it’s true that tony’s sometimes over-confident in his intelligence/abilities but this often (OFTEN) leads to him fucking something up and then thinking “why didn’t i do better”. guilt is a big part of tony’s character: guilt over lost friends, broken relationships, tragic situations that he accidentally helped cause, lives he could’ve saved, etc. and a lot of his self hatred stems from how he holds himself responsible for the variety of bad things that happen

basically people who say that tony stark is an “egomaniac” or a “narcissist” are wrong straight up. no debate. because if you took maybe 5 seconds and read the synopsis to any iron man movie or looked at maybe 2 pages from tales of suspense it’s super clear that he doesn’t particularly like himself and. yeah i dont really like putting it this way but he wears arrogance as a mask for a variety of reasons including but not limited to trying to live up to the public’s general impression of him, emotional abuse he went through as as kid, and the mortifying ordeal of being known

also uhhhhhhh

“He is a cis white hetero billionaire man, can’t he get a good care for his mental health? Privileged yet ignorant. Smh”

i mean. long post of evidence explaining why 616 tony is bi coded aside you first need to recognize you have problems with your mental health to seek help for it and this particular factor is not influenced by privilege. ppl who havent recognized that they have problems shouldnt be faulted for it i think.

also 616 tony has a therapist he mentions in squirrel girl v2 and mcu tony tried talking w bruce about his issues in iron man 3 so it’s not like he’s not trying or anything

[derpcakes]

Hey! So I got thinking about coffeefic lately and wanted to hear your thought process on developing Saber's arc in Act 2 and how it reflects canon. The theme talked about with Saber in canon is the impact of how she lives up to her ideals and how she shouldn't right? For me I never really understood what it meant no matter how much I tried to wrap my head around it. It's also low key because I have a friend who will die on being an all loving hard worker and I don't know how to feel about it lol

Yeah just wanted your thoughts on this because your writing in coffeefic clearly shows you get what FSN canon was trying to get at

Firstly, thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying the fic, and I am always ready to dive into Character Arc and Themes. I’m going to throw this under a cut since it got a little Long...

So, Saber’s arc in coffeefic is both a “domesticated” version of her emotional arc from canon and meant to fit into the overarching themes of the story, which are, basically at this point, “hey, it’s good to feel feelings and let yourself love and be loved”. Saber’s friendship group and romantic relationship at Camelot fell apart because she kind of became obsessed with everything being perfect, and so didn’t really Deal With anything - she fell out of love with Gwen but was afraid of hurting her feelings and/or creating tension in the group so she kept up a brave face. Which, obviously, and ironically, ended up hurting Gwen’s feelings more and contributed to the mess that was her relationship with Lancelot and the big tiff that happened among the “knights” when everyone found out. If Saber had just, idk, talked to them about it and respectfully broken up with Gwen or opened their relationship to let her also date Lancelot without it being A Whole Thing, it may not have been A Whole Thing. But Saber was basically afraid of her own feelings and her own inability to love (did she “get it wrong” by falling out of love with such a good person?), so that whole business fell apart. And as she moved on with her life and moved (let’s be real, ran away) to New Fuyuki, she took that failure on and kind of owned it: okay, says she, I am Bad At Feelings so I’ll just be a walking talking Weapon of Justice and not think about any of that. Better for everyone. Saber looking at her own backstory is basically the “this is fine” dog

BUT in Act 2, she’s faced with both The Ghost of Her Mistakes in the form of Lancelot and the baffling possibility of an actual functional romantic relationship in the form of Diarmuid, which she feels she’s fundamentally unworthy of. She manages to sort out her issues with Lancelot in Act 2 since the key conceit of this AU was always “no one is forced to murder each other so everyone lives to DEAL WITH THEIR PROBLEMS and TALK TO EACH OTHER”. That “duel” scene in the parking garage is meant to mirror the Saber vs Berserker fight at the end of Zero, albeit with the twist that, instead of it ending in murder (yike), Saber owns up to her mistakes and admits that she engineered the most gallant and ridiculous situation ever because she just wanted to fence with her BFF again, finally owning her EMOTIONS and expressing a desire for love and human connection. From this, they can start to talk to each other again, and begin to patch things up. This is Saber’s first big step to dealing with her issues and putting things back together rather than fleeing from the broken pieces (by the end it’s even implied that she’s talking to Gwen again, and has maybe started to patch things up there. Delicious, delicious closure)

But that lingering doubt follows her all the way through to the end of Act 3, culminating in her impulsively breaking up with Dia. As well as just being afraid of The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Saber is wrapped up in this sense of Duty she’s constructed for herself - she’s built her current sense of identity around being noble and aloof and dedicated and not swayed by silly little things like love and feelings (at least, she SAYS she isn’t). But love and feelings AREN’T silly little things, which is basically the Big Theme running all the way through coffeefic. By the end of the Act she’s plucked up the courage to let herself love and be loved, and the ending sees her moving forward trying to embrace her emotional needs and her own personhood... hence the shift from “Saber” to “Arturia”, dropping her old nickname which marks her out as a sharp object and instead embracing the human being underneath. 

So “don’t sacrifice yourself and cut off your own emotions and needs for the sake of ideals and a kingdom” comes through instead as “don’t cut yourself off from love and connection for the sake of a sense of duty and self-loathing”. It translated surprisingly easily, which I think is one of the fun things about Fate: a lot of its Big Themes are actually really human and personal, so you can change the window dressing (swap out a fallen kingdom for a close-knit friend group that fell apart) and have the emotional core be much the same. Basically her arc is about letting herself be a person rather than trying to be an empty figurehead, letting love into her life (in a romantic sense obviously since all this growth sees her setting off into a happy future with Dia, but also in a platonic sense in that she reconciles with Lancelot and gets her bestie back by admitting to her flaws and working past them), and forgiving herself for her mistakes and trying to fix them, rather than ending up in an endless loop if self-loathing (or, in canon terms, an endless loop of Grail Wars). Sometimes you mess up and that’s okay, and you should try to admit your faults and move towards a better future rather than trying to paste over a happier past and/or punish yourself for eternity. Again, this is also basically the emotional core of her canon arc, but in a less epic setting.

I hope that answers your question and sheds some more light on the subject! Oddly enough I was intrigued by Saber but not mega invested in her when I started writing this fic, but working out and digging into her past and her issues really got me hooked. Those drunk emotional chapters in the middle of Act 2 always make me cry on the reread, haha.