Crazy!Tony time.

[perrypadfoot.livejournal.com]

Since I've been back-tracking in Marvel Iron Man/Avengers comics, I've come to a conclusion: Tony is completely fucking crazy!

Also, since I have a thing for the crazies, I'm writing a fic, and I would like your opinion.

To me it appears Tony has some kind of dissociative order.  For the purpose of the fic, I'm using a combination of MDD/Schizo/PTSD/Depression. Yes, I've very mean to Tony.

My questiion to you is, if Tony had other personalities, who do you think they would be?  What would they be like?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Camel.

Comments

[autumn-lily.livejournal.com]

Dissociative in regards to Iron Man? Not any more than any other super hero, and definitely not as much as say the Sentinel or Batman when it comes to their persona. For instance, Batman and Bruce almost seem like two separate entities, Bruce compartmentalizes as to completely preserve his secret identity and there was no way he could live all day every day as either one without doing some serious damage to himself.

Tony tries to find redemption as Iron Man. Iron Man seems to be more like what Tony strives to achieve, he wants to be a hero, a good man. But as Tony stark he carries all the baggage of his past mistakes and just who he is.

I think the separate persona line of thought could be confusion from when Tony was actually trying to make the world and his fellow Avengers think that they were two different people. But if you notice, once they other Avengers find out, you lose that whole 'two different people' concept. But I see where you would think that.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'll give you that Tony is nowhere near as cracked as Batman or Sentry. :) And I agree that as things stand, it's obviously a conscious categorization on his part and not a pathology. But I think he does imbue the division with more significance than most superheroes, and I could see how it could become problematic, for the purposes of a fic that's speculating on consequences of the psychological trauma he's endured over the years.

Oh! And there was the fairly recent story about the robots his dad had built, that were basically being controlled by his own subconscious thought-streams. The one where he ended up electrocuting himself to save Cap. I don't think it's the same thing, really, but taken together, I think there's definitely some logic to the idea.

Oh! And the fact that he actually, literally is a combination of multiple versions of himself, if you want to dip back into the canon. He has the memories of his original self (who sacrificed himself fighting Kang), the teenaged Tony from an alternate timeline, and a version of himself who existed for a while in a pocket universe and came about being Iron Man in a whole different way.

[autumn-lily.livejournal.com]

True, but Tony never displays any sort of symptomatology if there were a split in his personality. Even so, it's not the same as DID, it would come from external sources (something similar to head trauma), and not from psychological factors seeing as how he doesn't fit any of the other criteria. So it wouldn't be a diagnosis of the disorder, but of injury presenting with pathological symptoms.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't disagree. I can see how I could get from here to there if I wanted to write a story where I was inflicting him with it, but I can't say that he suffers from DID now.

Self-harm, on the other hand? Oh yes! And some emotional detachment ("You stopped his heart!" "Why are you so upset? I started it again.").

[autumn-lily.livejournal.com]

Self harm is probably one of Tony's calling cards. And yes on the detachment. He can;t escape from his life / job / mistakes physically, so he must distance himself emotionally, or else risk being overwhelmed and lost in his own sea of misery and self pity / loathing.

But what he truly never understood was that if he HAD showed all of that internal hurt, Steve totally would have cuddled him better (hopefully in the nude); much to the delight of the fangirls.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

I think that's the lesson we have to take away from this, yes. :)

[autumn-lily.livejournal.com]

But that is why we are here at this comm. To ensure that, at least in our own personal continuity, this sort of thing definitely happens. ;)

[perrypadfoot.livejournal.com]

Could an external source be similar to trauma induced by Ultron/Extremis, or would a more extreme measure have to be taken?

[autumn-lily.livejournal.com]

No, I think the whole process of Extremis (how he received it under duress and without a whole lot of choice. As well as the line of thought that made him decide that was the ONLY way to get rid of the enemy) as well as the sudden onslaught of neural input would be alot for anyone, it's a constant day to day stress that would go a long way in wearing a person down with depression, anxiety, just generally being overwhelmed and disconnected from what's going on around his actual body in favor of all the action in his head.

Also, having an evil robot take over your brain and rewire your body into a chick when you have an obvious love of your penis the way most men do, bound to cause some residual gender confusion (or maybe not, Tony seems to be pretty stable with his sexuality and gender, if I remember a certain hot pink mid drift baring shirt thing correctly...)

Also, the number of times Tony has been mind controlled / had other versions of himself merged into himself / been brain hacked / ditched his body and was left as a sentient armor, just might cause him to develop that type of personality split.

But once you fix the 'injury' the split should also heal as well, though it may take a little time.