Application: alteredstates

[withmoreme]

Player Information

Name/Alias: Em
Personal Journal: cotume27
Email: cotume27@gmail.com
I am 18+ years old

May we post and/or link your application for others to see as an example in the future? Yes


Character Information

Character Name: Tony Stark
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Canon Point: Near the end of Avengers, after falling back through the portal.
Character Journal: withmoreme

Appearance: Tony Stark stands a relatively short 5'8", but given his habit of getting in people's faces, sometimes, it's hard to remember he isn't taller. Tony stands up straight, hands usually held casually at his sides, but he also talks with them, gesturing with whatever he happens to be holding at the time. He moves with an easy, confident swagger, and frequently seems to be in no hurry at all, especially if people are waiting on him. As a result of how he makes his living, his long time interest in fitness, and what it takes to operate the Iron Man suits, he is in excellent physical shape. He has dark brown eyes and keeps his dark brown hair neatly styled, his distinctive mustache and goatee equally so.

Steve Rogers told Tony once that he was all about style. The other man meant it as a dig, but it was still the truth. Tony does appreciate the finer things in life, and that includes his wardrobe. He has a very large closet full of very expensive, perfectly tailored suits, and he is perfectly comfortable in them. That doesn't mean he does anything silly like wear them to work in, and around the Tower, he is more likely to be seen in trousers or jeans, tennis shoes, and t-shirts. He also has a habit of wearing shoes with thick soles to increase his height, especially around people he wants to impress - or, more frequently, intimidate.

There is one other very notable thing about Tony, namely, the glowing circle of light in the center of his chest. The light is produced by a miniaturized arc reactor set into a socket in his chest that powers an electromagnet that keeps shrapnel from penetrating his heart and killing him. Most of the world is aware of the reactor by now, but it is still one of the few things Tony doesn't flaunt. In most cases, he keeps the reactor's light hidden under his jackets and ties. However, around people he is comfortable with, or around people he feels need the reminder of his position as Iron Man, he might lose a layer, allowing the light to show through his shirt. If he is involved enough with his work to have stripped down to a tank top or relaxed enough to only be wearing the flight shirt, the reactor might be plainly visible. It's the easiest way to tell when Tony is completely at ease - or possibly just too busy to think about it.

There is also the fact that Tony is Iron Man. He has built and regularly uses a series of armored suits made of a gold-titanium alloy and powered by the arc reactor in his chest. Though every version of the suit has had some minor differences, so far, they have all been metallic, hot rod red with gold or silver detailing. The helmet's eyes glow the same blue light that shines from the suit's chest, where the reactor rests.

Age: 41

History: On May 10, 1971, Tony Stark was born to billionaire and genius weapons inventor Howard Stark and his philanthropist wife, Maria. A child genius, Tony built his first circuit board at the age of four and his first engine at the age of six. Tony was never very close to his parents; Howard, especially, seemed not to know what to do with a child, and nothing Tony did ever seemed enough to impress the man. Tony grew up seeing more of Howard's business partner, Obadiah Stane, than he did his own father, and only recently has Tony really begun to understand what his father was going through at the time and let those wounds heal.

By age fourteen, Tony was enrolled at MIT. While there, Tony met James Rhodes (or, "Rhodey"). By all accounts, Rhodey initially thought Tony to be an impossibly unlikeable brat, but eventually, Tony worked his way into the other man's affections, and the two became close friends. While at the school, when Tony couldn't find anyone willing to log the same hours as him in the lab, he built his own assistant - a fully functioning and fully automated robot that he then named "Dum-E".

Tony graduated MIT at the age of 17. After college, Tony tried to talk Rhodey into letting him get the other man a job at Stark Industries, but Rhodey declined, choosing instead to pursue his own military career with the Air Force instead. It was a move that Tony took as something of a personal blow, considering Rhodey had been his first real friend, and for a while, he held it against the other man. That changed when, a year later, Howard and Maria Stark were killed in a car accident, leaving Tony an orphan and Stark Industries in the control of Obadiah.

At twenty-one, Tony regained control of his father's company and settled into his new position as CEO. Later, when he learned that Rhodey was working in weapons development for the Air Force and that Stark Industries was in need of a new liaison with the branch, he insisted on having Rhodey in the position, where he remains to this day.

Given his position and the fame and fortune it involved, it was likely inevitable that the company's successes would start to go to Tony's head. He became an insufferable playboy, obsessed with surrounding himself with beautiful women (and the occasional man) and flaunting his money. He also followed in Howard's footsteps and became alcoholic, though he would never let anyone tell him he had a problem with any of it. He felt he was accountable to no one, and the harder anyone pushed him to be responsible, the harder Tony pushed back.

Sometime in his thirties, in response to Stane's complaints that Tony couldn't keep track of his schedule and his threats to find him a personal assistant, Tony created an artificial intelligence, ostensibly to serve as an electronic butler, and named him JARVIS. The name is an acronym standing for "Just A Really Very Intelligent System", and while JARVIS did seem to serve his purpose as far as what Stane expected, Tony had bigger dreams for the AI and carried on teaching it past what anyone thought possible. Today, JARVIS is self-aware and Tony's partner in the Iron Man suit, as well as running much of what happens inside Stark Tower and Tony's other houses.

A little over ten years ago, a young woman named Virginia Potts who worked for the company's accounting department brought to light a mistake that Tony himself had made - and dared to argue with him about it. Stane had been interviewing a stream of applicants to get Tony an actual person to make sure he was where he was supposed to be with all of them quitting shortly after starting the job. Their interaction was enough for him to transfer Virginia out of accounting and into being Tony's personal assistant. Their relationship was initially volatile, Tony forever insisting he didn't need a personal assistant and Pepper - a name that had been a childhood nickname - growing increasingly frustrated at how difficult Tony was, until she finally went off on him. Afterwards, Tony seemed to gain an actual respect for her, and they eventually became good friends, even if Tony did still make her job more difficult than she felt it really needed to be. Their relationship also continued to bloom, and today, they are something of an item.

Three years ago, Tony and Rhodey flew to Afghanistan to demonstrate the new Stark Industries creation, the Jericho missile. While there, the convoy Tony was riding with was attacked by enemy forces bearing Stark Industries weapons. Tony was kidnapped, but not before he took shrapnel to the chest. When he came to sometime later, it was to find that he was a prisoner of the Ten Rings - and that his fellow prisoner, Yinsen, had inserted an electromagnet powered by a car battery into Tony's chest to stop the shrapnel from penetrating his heart. The leader of the Ten Rings, a man known as Raza, told Tony he would be given freedom if he built them a Jericho missile of their own. Yinsen and Tony both agreed it was a lie and so made their own plans.

Over the next three months, Tony built a miniaturized version of the arc reactor that powered Stark Industries' main factory in California and had Yinsen implant it in his chest to power the magnet. The two then went on to develop a metal suit that Tony intended to pilot in order to break them out of the terrorist compound. The suit was a success, but during the escape, Yinsen was killed. Tony went on to destroy the compound and fly away, though he crashed into the desert, where he was later picked up by Rhodey, who never stopped looking for him.

Immediately after returning to the States, Tony called a press conference and announced that Stark Industries would no longer manufacture weapons. Stane advised Tony that it was a bad decision and that he should lay low and let him deal with the fall-out. In the meantime, Tony built an improved version of the miniaturized reactor, as well as improving and rebuilding the armored suit.

During his first public appearance since the press conference, Tony was alerted to the fact that Stark Industries' tech had been used to destroy Yinsen's home village. When Tony confronted Stane, Stane revealed that he had plans to replace Tony as the head of Stark Industries. Enraged, Tony flew his improved suit to Gulmira and destroyed the Ten Rings' weapons stashes, as well as killing the men occupying the village. On the way home, Tony was attacked by a pair of United States Air Force F-22s. In an attempt to stop the attack, he revealed his secret identity to Rhodey. Back in Malibu, Pepper discovered him trying to get out of the suit, thus outing him to her, as well.

After the attack on Gulmira, Tony sent Pepper to hack into the company's computer system through Stane's computer. While there, she discovered that not only had Stane authorized the shipment, he was the one who had paid the Ten Rings to kill Tony, though they decided to use him to build them weapons instead. Before Pepper could warn Tony about Stane, the other man ambushed Tony in his home, paralyzing him with a Stark Industries device and cutting the arc reactor out of Tony's chest to power a suit Stane had reverse-engineered from the ruins of Tony's first suit.

Tony managed to crawl his way down to his garage and make use of the original reactor. He then went to Stark Industries to help Pepper and agents from S.H.I.E.L.D. stop Stane, who had donned his suit to avoid being placed under arrest. With Tony's suit not at full power, he was outmatched, but Pepper was able to overload the original, full-size arc reactor, electrocuting and shorting out Stane's suit and causing him to fall into the exploding reactor, killing him.

At the following press conference, Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. presented Tony with a cover story; instead, Tony outed himself publicly as Iron Man. Tony later returned home to find Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., waiting. Fury was less than impressed with Tony's performance in front of the press and informed him that he wasn't the only superhero out there, also explaining to him a proposed and so-called "Avengers Initiative".

Tony spent the next six months using the Iron Man suit to help maintain world peace and working on reinstituting the Stark Expo in order to carry on his father's legacy. After the opening of the Expo in New York, Tony was summoned to a senate hearing where Senator Stern demanded that Tony turn over the Iron Man technology to the United States government. Tony refused, claiming that he was the only one capable of creating the technology and that it was his property.

In the meantime, the palladium cores Tony had used to power the arc reactor were slowly poisoning him. Despite his best efforts, he had been unable to find a substitute, and, as a result of his impending death, grew increasingly withdrawn and reckless. He didn't tell anyone about the problem, but appointed Pepper as CEO of Stark Industries and, when a Natalie Rushman from the legal department came to make it official, hired her as his personal assistant.

While in Monaco, Tony decided to drive his own race car in the Circuit de Monaco, where he was attacked by Ivan Vanko, son of Anton Vanko, a former business partner of Howard's who Tony's father had had deported for espionage. Tony discovered that Ivan was out for revenge on the company after his father died in poverty. A few days later, though, Ivan was apparently killed in an explosion.

During what Tony suspected would be his final birthday party due to the palladium poisoning, he donned the Iron Man armor and got drunk, forcing Rhodey to don an older suit and intervene. The two fought until a simultaneous blast from their repulsors caused an explosion. Rhodey took the suit back to the military, and Tony went for doughnuts, where he was confronted by Nick Fury. Director Fury revealed Natalie Rushman to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff, assigned to keep an eye on Tony, and that Howard had been a founding member of the organization. Fury gave Tony some of his father's old materials which led to Tony's discovery of a hidden message in the diorama of the original Stark Expo. With JARVIS's help, Tony was able to synthesize the element, vibranium, and use it to power his arc reactor, thus reversing the palladium poisoning.

Afterwards, Ivan Vanko called Tony to reveal that he was still alive and wanting revenge. Tony donned a new suit to fly to the Expo, interrupting a presentation by rival weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer, with Rhodey in his new, heavily armored suit as the centerpiece. While there, Ivan remotely took control of Rhodey's suit and the armored drones he had created for Hammer, using them to attack Tony and the people attending the Expo. Natasha was able to get Rhodey back control of his suit, and the friends were able to defeat the drones. Ivan himself then appeared in an improved version of his own suit, and neither is a match for him until they fire simultaneous repulsor blasts, recreating the explosion. Unable to escape, Ivan set off the self-destruct in his own suit, as well as in the downed drones. Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper all narrowly escaped; then, Pepper attempted to quit as CEO, and she and Tony finally kissed.

After the fight at the Expo, Fury told Tony that, while Iron Man was approved for the Avengers Initiative, Tony himself was not. Tony agreed to serve as a consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. as long as Senator Sterns would personally present medals to Tony and Rhodey at a ceremony planned for the two.

Sometime later, the Avengers Initiative was reinstated after the Asgardian Loki attacked a S.H.I.E.L.D. base and stole an item known as the Tesseract, an energy source and weapon, as well as brainwashing several agents and a doctor who was studying the Tesseract. Agent Coulson alerted Tony to the new threat, and when Captain Steve Rogers, otherwise known as Captain America, and Agent Romanoff encountered Loki in Germany, Tony arrived to help take him down and back into custody. On the way back to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s flying base, Loki's brother Thor took him, leading to a confrontation between Thor and Tony which ended only when Steve intervened.

Back on the helicarrier, Tony and Dr. Bruce Banner worked together to track the Tesseract using the gamma radiation it emitted. By using JARVIS to hack S.H.I.E.L.D.'s computers, Tony also discovered that they were planning to use the Tesseract to create weapons. An argument ensued, and one of the agents Loki had brainwashed, Clint Barton, set off an explosion, disabling one of the helicarrier's engines and causing Bruce to transform into his alter ego, the Hulk. Steve and Tony were able to get the engine restarted and save the helicarrier from falling out of the sky, but in the chaos, Thor and Bruce were both ejected from the helicarrier, and Loki managed to escape after stabbing and apparently killing Agent Coulson.

Fury used Coulson's death to motivate the team into working together. Tony was able to figure out that Loki would use the arc reactor powering Stark Tower to use the Tesseract to open a portal to another dimension, allowing an army of beings known as the Chitauri to invade New York. During the attack, Fury's superiors unleashed a nuclear missile on Manhattan, but Tony was able to grab hold of it and fly it through the portal.

The next thing he remembers is waking up on the banks of the Hudson.

Personality: Tony's personality is larger than life, but it also comes with layers. To the press and general public, he is Tony Stark, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. He is quick with a quip and a grin, quick to trade jabs with any reporters who might think they can get something over on him. He likes the finer things in life, from cars, to clothes, to food, to women. He is secure in his own genius and isn't afraid to flaunt it. He is extremely charismatic, with more charm than should be possible for one man. He knows how to sell, and how to make you love him. He can also be a ruthless businessman, especially when he thinks someone might be trying to get in his way. As much as he's had his doubts about what Stark Industries was doing, he's happy with its direction now, and he's not about to let anyone compromise that.

He loves the spotlight. He loves having people's attention on him, having their recognition, and, in many ways, he needs it. There is a reason he only hesitated for a moment before putting aside Coulson's cover story and announcing himself to the world as Iron Man. Of course, Afghanistan changed this, in some ways. Before, he would have reveled in the attention of beautiful people, inviting any that caught his eye home without a second thought. Since Afghanistan, though he still flirts and keeps up the appearance of being the consummate playboy, Pepper has been the only one to share his bed, and that wasn't for almost a year, after the events at the Stark Expo. He can be extremely protective of the arc reactor and who gets near it. He is quick to touch and prod; letting other people touch him is a different matter. He doesn't even like being handed things by people he doesn't trust implicitly, and, while that's partly to be difficult, and while he has no problem getting up in someone's face, if someone comes at him, his immediate reaction will frequently be to lash out with words and glares, to try and make them back down.

Despite the fact that Tony loves the social scene and loves surrounding himself with people, Tony doesn't get close to people easily. He is the epitome of an extrovert, but only on the shallowest of levels. Tony is far more comfortable dealing with machines than actual living, breathing human beings, and sometimes, he just doesn't know what to do with the latter. There are very, very few people Tony actually considers to be his friend, and it took him a long time to really get close to any of them. When he does let himself get close to people, though, he can be a loyal, protective friend. It doesn't mean he'll always have the attention span to remember that someone is allergic to strawberries, but he does at least make an effort to connect that person to strawberries in some meaningful way. He wants to take care of his friends; he doesn't always know how to do it without accidentally making an ass out of himself in the process.

Tony can seem extremely impulsive, but usually, it has more to do with his mind running faster than he can sometimes keep up with. One of his latest habits is simply stepping off things while in the Iron Man suit, because he trusts his own work and trusts that it will catch him. He does think things through, but sometimes, the thought forms and solidifies faster than most people can keep up with.

The one time Tony seems really able to focus his attentions on one thing is when he's in the Iron Man suit. He has no trouble thinking on his feet, immediately making calls as to which weapons are most useful and effective in the current situation. His mind still runs a mile a minute, but combat allows him to narrow that focus down into the task at hand.

Tony can be extremely stubborn to the point of childishness. If there is something he doesn't want to do, if he doesn't deem it interesting enough or worthy of his time, he tends to just not do it at all, frequently leading to someone yelling at him for it later. To call him self-absorbed would also not be incorrect - sometimes, he just gets so involved with something that he will forget any other plans he might have, up to and including eating and sleeping like a normal person. It's frequently nothing he intends to do, but every now and then, he just loses track of anything but his current project.

Tony is always thinking. He has more ideas than he knows what to do with, and it shows. There are more blueprints on his servers that he'll never have time - or the resources - to build than there are ones that have actually seen production. It's another part of why he's so grateful that JARVIS turned out to be the wonder that he is. The AI can actually keep up with Tony's thought processes - and keep track of all of them for him. In a way, even though Howard has been gone for over twenty years, he is still trying to impress the man, still trying to improve on everything he's ever built, and it's likely something he will never be able to really let go.

Despite most appearances, some of the things in Tony's past trouble him to the point that he has nightmares about them. He has nightmares about his time in Afghanistan, and about Stane breaking into the house and stealing the reactor. He also has nightmares about failing, whether in business and his normal life, or in his position as Iron Man. He fears losing Pepper or Rhodey more than he fears for his own life, and he would do nearly anything to keep them safe. This is also starting to spread to the rest of the Avengers, though they haven't been together long enough to be sure.

Tony is extremely outspoken. He isn't afraid to speak his mind on things, or interrupt someone, or keep talking even while other people are trying to interrupt him. He can be extremely sarcastic, especially with his jokes, and knows how to aim barbs for teasing or to cut someone deeply. Frequently, though, for all his talking, he might be babbling on about nothing, or trying to get around to saying something and not being able to find the right words. This is especially true when he's trying to be honest with someone, and it is those rare moments where he frequently gives up and changes the topic. It's a very few number of people who can get Tony to really open up about his feelings.

Tony's opinion of himself is a strange thing. On the one hand, he believes in everything he's built, including JARVIS, the robots, the Iron Man suits, etc. He is proud of his genius, and of the things he has created, even when they are being used for purposes that are less than pure, though this is something he takes very personally. The knowledge that his weapons were being used to kill the people he had built said weapons to protect was enough to make him try and completely pull the plug on Stark Industries’ weapons production, for example. On the other hand, Tony seems to have a very low opinion of himself otherwise. He attributes the fact that the Iron Man suits run more efficiently to how he built them, and will never stop to think about the fact that, in the last three years, he himself has become a better pilot. He frequently considers himself unworthy of the same loyalty he shows his friends, unworthy of receiving their help even when he would never hesitate to help them. He was more willing, for example, to let Pepper and Rhodey assume he had fallen back on old, bad habits of drinking and partying too hard than to admit he was dying and that he needed help.

In the end, no matter how well Tony seems to be put together, how confident in himself he may seem, it really comes down to the fact that he is no good on his own, despite what he might say to the contrary. To this end, meeting the Avengers may be the best thing that ever happened to him.

Powers/Special Abilities: Tony is a jack of all trades and master of more than even he can list. He is a certified genius, which lends him the ability to pick up even extremely difficult concepts literally overnight. He is a master mechanic, engineer, and builder and has no trouble figuring out how something works if left alone with it for more than a few minutes. He is also a genius when it comes to computers, and even without JARVIS's help, he would have no trouble doing difficult (and sometimes less than legal) tasks.

Tony speaks several languages. Among the ones he speaks fluently are Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, German, and Arabic; he also knows the basics in many, many more.

Howard Stark made the family fortune designing weapons for the military, and Tony grew up to carry on his father's legacy. He knows his way around most weapons systems and is an excellent shot with most ranged weapons. Even if it isn't one he designed himself, he will likely be able to take it apart, put it back together more efficiently, and blow out the center of a target on the first try.

Tony is much better with machines than people, but he has some basic medical skills, mostly picked up in trying to take care of himself and avoid letting doctors get near the reactor. This knowledge includes drawing blood, giving injections, taking a person's blood pressure and pulse, and stitching minor wounds.

Tony practices mixed martial arts, though it's nearly impossible to tell which specific ones he's thrown into the blender. Most of his fighting in the suit is done from a distance, but he can fight up close and personally in it, too, and would likely be able to take care of himself in a hand-to-hand fight without the armor.

Tony builds and operates armored suits dubbed by the press as "Iron Man". Tony is an excellent pilot of said suits, having been using them for just over three years. His physical strength means he has little trouble maneuvering in the suits despite their weight, and his extreme intelligence gives him the ability to think quickly on his feet and react immediately to situations as they arise in combat.

River Power: Technopathy: http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Technology_Manipulation

Reason for Character Choice: I had been slowly building interest in writing Tony through Iron Man and Iron Man 2. By the time Avengers came around in all its Whedon Directed Glory, any resistance I might have put up was futile. Tony is an absolute blast to play, with the many angles to his personality, his ego, and his lack of brain-to-mouth filter on top of the fact that he is very, very good at what he does - and how much he loves doing it.

Additional Information:

Writing Samples

First-Person Transmission Sample: ((taken from an app for another game in which they were provided a phone upon entrance. clearly, Tony didn't agree with the choice))

[Tony's hand is visible as he starts the video, and he looks entirely irritated.] Why an iPhone? You know, there are better options out there than these things. They sent me one to try. It lasted me two days before Dum-E ran over it. Though I might have told him to. I don't remember. But anyway.

[He looks away from the video for a moment, and when he looks back, he's holding something up for the camera to see. It looks like just a clear piece of plastic with a thin metallic frame, but he's less irritated and more salesman, now.]

StarkPhone. Been run over by Dum-E, had me blast it across the room, survives being in my pocket while I'm in the suit. These babies are the way to go. Sadly, though, I've only got the one, but fortunately, Verizon has recently decided I'm serious about this whole cellphone thing - or, well, Pepper is, at least, since I'm leaving that one to her. So, I'll just be over here getting my data transfer on, if no one minds.

[His free hand comes into view again, and the video stops.]

Third-Person Log Sample: Part One: http://withmoreme.dreamwidth.org/2403.html#cutid1 and Part Two: http://withmoreme.dreamwidth.org/4083.html#cutid1 of an AIM log written with brokeharlem (on DW). She wrote Bruce and Thor; I, obviously, wrote Tony (and JARVIS).