@blackbeardskneebrace

i can’t wait for THIS etymology lesson with the aliens

So the James Webb telescope just took a picture of a galaxy that is 29 million light years away.

If that wasn't cool enough NASA decided to peel away all the cosmic dust in order to see the bones of the Galaxy itself.

AND IT'S BREATHTAKING

youtubers love to say “i hope i’m pronouncing that correctly” while recording themselves in a video that they upload to the internet, which they have access to

via @glorioustragedykid

Hint: its because the video is not as well researched as its presentation implies

Hint: it’s because sometimes it’s hard to pronounce words especially if you don’t use them very often

Don’t leave this in the tags!! They’re good points! An attempt is better than nothing!

It’s one thing to listen to a correct pronunciation. It’s another to actually have your mouth form the words, especially when you’re using a sound you don’t normally use in your native language.

Maybe they’re not saying “I didn’t look up the actual pronunciation and I’m just winging it.” Maybe it’s “I looked it up and it uses a sound that I don’t use in my day to day speech and I don’t think I did it quite right but I tried.”

And sometimes, there aren’t sufficient resources to teach you the correct pronunciation! Sometimes you’ll get bot-made videos that contradict each other.

This this this this. As someone who struggles to pronounce a couple of words I use fairly often my FIRST LANGUAGE, thanks to those particular sounds just being difficult shapes for me to string together coherently, I am constantly afraid of fucking up words in other languages or even just with roots in other languages.

It’s one thing to not even try, but the “I hope I’m doing this correctly” isn’t always “I’m hoping I can just wing this word with whatever I think it’s supposed to sound like,” a lot of times it “okay so I’ve looked it up and tried it a few times so I’m really hoping its coming out right, but I’m not used enough to the language to really be sure .”

Languages are fucking DIFFICULT for a lot of people. Not just the repeating/speaking part, but also the ability to HEAR and RECOGNIZE the patterns and sounds.

[IDS: two screenshots of tags.

The first screenshot reads: #(multiple pointing up emojis) #It bothers me so much ESPECIALLY when it happens in video essays #oh? so you did ALL this research and writing but you couldn't take a second of your life to go search the way you pronounce something? #like FUCK OFF.

The second screenshot reads: #not everyone is out to get you #they apologize in advance for maybe doing it wrong #and you wonder why some people don't even bother to try? #when you tear down those who do even though they admit they might be failing?

/End IDS.]

You know, I've been speaking and listening English every day for a decade, I'm fluent as fuck, I can have extended conversations about highly complex topics without even thinking I'm doing it in English ... And still, there are multiple English words I just butcher when I try to pronounce them.

Because I can't make certain sounds. I barely can hear certain sounds. Like, "beard bear beer bird"? "Bir bir bir bir" for me. "Bitch beach"? "Bich Bich" for me. My anglo friends swear they hear a difference and, very carefully, they try to teach me how to pronounce "bich" differently from "bich".

So yeah, every time I see someone apologizing in advance for butchering the pronunciation of something... Well, feel you my dude or dudette.

I physically cannot roll my Rs. I’ve spent hours practicing. Looked up multiple tutorials. Cannot make my mouth do the thing. At a certain point I just accepted that I’m gonna have to apologetically pronounce a lot of stuff very wrong.

Also physically can't roll my rs here. I'm a native English speaker and there are names and words I can't pronounce even though I have heard it multiple times

I also struggle with audio processing. Sometimes I can be listening and hear a think and no matter how closely I pay attention I cannot process it. It's like the words fly in and leave an impression in wet sand

I can see the shape of the word and make a guess at pronunciation and or what the word actually is but my guess is often not accurate

Team “I can hear the near silent hum of electrical appliances and the bubbles fizzing in the can of soda on the coffee table, but can’t watch tv without subtitles and processes conversation at 1/4 speed”

And also the way Barbie and Ken are role playing heterosexuality without any inherent sexuality of their own, without any understanding of what it means, or even any genitals at all! Just pretty-girl + handsome-guy = obviously a couple. And the way it fucks them both up! Because they’re both stereotypes, neither of them is a specialist version, no brain surgery or pilots license or Nobel prize for either of them. They’re just assigned the roles of Every Man and Every Woman. And Ken ends up doing Way Too Much because he’s hanging his entire self-worth on being important to Barbie. And Barbie just isn’t interested in him, she was assigned a boyfriend she didn’t ask for and doesn’t want and doesn’t know what to do with, just because that’s what society expects of men and women, that they will necessarily couple up and fall in love because… that’s what they do. Regardless of any personal quality of either party.

It’s about heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the unrealistic expectations society sets boys and girls up for from infancy. Barbie and Ken are every pair of toddlers sharing a sandbox while the adults around them call them each other’s little “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” even though neither party understands or is capable of understanding the implied meaning of that. Or wants to.

It’s a literal funhouse mirror of that weird pressure put on kids to perform heterosexuality from an early age. It examines how that leaves us unprepared for the complicated reality of actual relationships even if it turns out that you are heterosexual and do want sex and romance. Boys and girls aren’t really allowed to be just kids on the same team, so they grow up into men and women who generally want very different things from each other and are trained to look for it in everybody because anybody is better than nobody, and try to force it to work.

Barbie and Ken letting each other go in the end was perfect. Barbie the Every Woman realizing that she doesn’t have to be special, she just has to be, and Ken the Every Man realizing he has to seek validation elsewhere and lean on his fellow Kens for emotional support, WHICH THEY GIVE.

Truly a movie of all time.

about fucking time

Reblog to give the prev person some dopamine.

Btw I was talking to Kiddo about social rules because we're both autistic and it doesn't come naturally to either of us but I have 25 years experience on them so I have some useful tips

And as proof of that: in that conversation I realised what neurotypicals mean when they say we "make everything about us"

When they're talking and we interject "fun facts" or start talking about something related to what they're saying we mean:

"I am showing interest in you and your interests by engaging with them and showing I'm listening by adding information"

From their perspective we are stomping over their turn to talk and making it our turn and therefore making it about us

Conversation example:

NT: my favourite animal is sharks

Autistic person: with some sharks species the shark pup that hatches first hunts the others and eats them while being incubated inside the mother

Autistic person perspective: I have shown interest in you by giving you information about a topic you have shown interest in

NT person's perspective: wow they made my favourite animal a time for them to show off instead of letting me talk when it was my turn

It's doesn't matter if it's "on topic" or "relevant to the person" if it's when it's their turn to be the focus of the conversation

Like I know there is a bit more to it but this is the first time in 39 years I have understood the accusation "you're making this all about yourself"

OHHH. Ok? I think I get it?

NT important variables: When (whose turn is it), and How (intonation, etc) - Conversational metadata.

ND important variables: What (the literal text/information exchange), and Why (the purpose fulfilled) - The base conversation.

From one autistic to another: you can master this exchange with one easy tool.

Ask a follow-up question.

As stated, allistic conversations do put a lot of weight into whose turn it is to speak. So in the above example,

Person: my favorite animal is sharks

The best follow-up response is "what do you like about sharks?"

Your conversation partner will answer, and if they're not a dickbag, then they will turn the conversation back to you, likely with a relevant question - "what's your favorite animal?" At which point you are free to infodump just a little. Keep it within one or two sentences - unless of course the person finds the info interesting.

But then keep asking follow-up questions, or at least give your conversation partner a chance to follow-up on their statements. Don't worry too much about the timing of questions, and if you're even slightly anxious that you're asking something too personal/rude, then tack on a "sorry, you don't have to answer." Allistic people just like to know that you're listening to what they have to say about the topic.

This is good advice and largely what I told my kid to do

I'm still thrown though that even though I had picked up on the "you need to ask questions and limit your sharing" (even though I'm not great at it) but I was 39 before I realised why allistics went about things the way they did

i know this one, its not about the "turns"! Like this is a bit more of a "you used the wrong formula but got the correct answer situation" - the reason the NT in the original sharks example would assume the autistic person was showing off or making it abt themselves isnt because its not their turn to speak.

Its because the autistic person stating the information as a response directly after someone expresses a feeling like "i like sharks" reads to an allistic person like the autistic person assumed they dont know as much about sharks as them and is condescending to them. So it's more:

Autistic perspective: "I like sharks!" -> "Wow! That's so cool! In order to include your interest in this conversation, I will include fun facts related to your interests!"

Allistic perspective: "I like sharks!" -> "I am stating information about sharks without giving you an opportunity to say anything about your knowledge level or give your own shark fact(s) first, giving off the impression that I think I know more than you and am condescending to you by trying to educate you on a topic you enjoy."

The thing is, asking a follow-up question like "what's your favourite thing about sharks" DOES work in conversation, not because allistics run on dnd combat rules in conversation (they also ramble, and cut people off knowingly) but because it gives the allistic person a chance to demonstrate their familiarity w the subject first.

That way, they have an opportunity to show that they are also knowledgeable about the topic (sharks) and then the shark facts will be seen as an information exchange rather than condescension because both parties will be aware that the topic is "exchanging shark facts".

(If the allistic doesn't really know much about the topic, or says they only like sharks because they look cute etc. then it is ideal to say something like "thats cool! I did a bit of research into sharks a while back, do you want to hear some shark facts?" which serves the same kind of purpose in clarifying that u want to give shark facts for fun and not because you think they need to be educated.)

The question also gives the allistic the opportunity to say that they'd rather not discuss shark facts and instead move on to a different topic, which lets them feel like they have also retained a degree of control over the conversation rather than feeling like the autistic person is domineering or monologuing (it is a common misinterpretation of infodumping unfortunately).

Just generally its more about letting the allistic demonstrate both that they also want to hear facts and that they are also knowledgeable on a topic before infodumping so that they can understand that you view them as an equal and not an inferior on the topic, and so they will have a much harder time feeling slighted in response to an autistic person's infodump.

TLDR: it's not about conversation turns, it's about the fact that allistics often misinterpret the reason for infodumping being "this person thinks im stupid and need educating" rather than a desire to connect over information, but establishing a mutual knowledge base & asking if they want to hear facts mitigates this as it clarifies to an allistic that you're sharing information for fun rather than trying to educate them.

#it's both - via @lazy-duck

Agreed.

Basically, give the other person a prompt to see if THEY want to infodump before you infodump about their topic. They had a reason to bring it in. I've brought in topics before, had the other person respond by saying the thing I wanted to share, and felt crushed. The information was known by both parties, but my excitement had no way to be shared!

yeah and in addition: the 'turns' thing and the 'signalling you are not trying to assert yourself over them as an expert in Their topic' thing are both tied to social dominance subtext.

horribly, the ways you should and should not perform social dominance behaviors are in fact tied to your perceived social status in context, as well as to the specific manners of the culture group you're in at the moment. all the context. usually tracked subconsciously, with mental skillsets and mechanisms that are typically underdeveloped in autistic brains.

so not only does a 'normal' amount of dominance-assuming behavior not exist, despite claims to the contrary, people who think they're above you will do things like this to you and that they'll be offended by having you mirror, and then be even more offended by the idea that they aren't treating you like an equal.

which is why Pretty Autistic Dude with high verbal processing who has lucked into a high status role can go steamrolling over everybody and gain advantage from it, even if most people don't like him for it. but basically everyone else who behaves the same way is fucked.

yes and: the social dominance subtext thing is something that we, coming out of a culture that likes to think it is egalitarian, tend to try to shove out of conscious awareness. that's why people will sometimes be offended at the idea they're not treating you like an equal, particularly if you're interacting because you're in an organization where at least in theory you have the same "rank": they shouldn't be treating you like an inferior [in theory] and probably don't consciously realize that they're doing so, especially if they have internally labeled you with an inferior social role based on anything related to a marginalizing status (including: gender, age, race, ethnicity, orientation, etc). Consciously drawing attention to behaviors that indicate that they are treating you like a lower-ranked person, again especially if any marginalizing factor is involved, is likely to trigger a state called "moral dissonance" where you're effectively forcing them to notice that their actions are not in line with their consciously held values.

this is a thing that sucks hard ass to experience, and most people really hate it and will immediately cast around to find a reason that no actually they're not doing that thing at ALL. This is where the defensive offended behavior comes from: it's an activated attempt to justify to both you and, importantly, themself that they definitely haven't been acting outside their conscious moral values. Because most people's internal assessment of social hierarchies is internal and implicit, they might or might not be aware of how they're thinking about you, and they might exclaim in frustration that they're not treating you like an inferior at all.

and: here's the kicker--they might be right. Social hierarchical posturing in humans is extremely contextual and usually cloaked in enough plausible deniability to not read as a direct insult, especially in a social context that values egalitarianism. It is also pretty much always present, whether or not the people in the group want it to be. There is no such thing as a human culture devoid of social hierarchical maneuvering. Nor is there any such thing as a human person who does not sometimes participate in this kind of interaction. It's not always antagonistic or bad, either: sometimes people will do things like posture in order to be reassured that they are still valued and respected by the group, and it is very possible and common for humans to make ploys for high status using affiliative tactics like: complimenting others, facilitating connections between other people, offering to teach other people, doing favors, etc. Most of our language for talking about this stuff is couched in a really antagonistic context, where interactions and hierarchies are framed as zero-sum conflicts, but that's not necessarily true.

Basically, human social maneuvering is often unconscious and usually hidden, especially in groups that value egalitarian interactions. Because it's all stuff that is happening under the surface, and because people are also often distracted and not paying attention, it's also totally possible for people to perceive shit as social posturing that isn't intended that way at all. Happens all the time. Humans are messy! Perception is messy! People aren't straightforward to interpret and sometimes there are a lot of mistakes!

but this is why "mansplaining" is a thing: men are much more likely to internally assume that they are higher on a social hierarchy than women, which means that they get more talking time. Sometimes an excited autistic infodumping reads to other people as fitting this pattern, even if the behavior has a different root cause. Figuring out how to navigate this as a human being is always going to be hard, and you're never going to pull it off with success 100% of the time because, well, no one does that either.

I also often find that because neurotypical brains are typically catered to by society, that they don’t realise that not everyone interacts with conversations the way that they do. 

The biggest example of this that I always come across is knowing when you can insert yourself into a conversation. Neurotypicals have a good sense for this. As a teen I came to understand that I sometimes interrupted people while they were talking but the problem was, that when I tried waiting for my turn to speak: it never came. No one ever asked for my input or paused specifically to give other people a chance to jump in. Because they just assume that everyone around them has the ability to smoothly insert themselves into a conversation and if you don’t do that? Well clearly you had nothing you wanted to add. Equally, if you take to long to gather your thoughts, they’ll also assume you had nothing to say (meanwhile, if I jump in without having thought my words through, this often results in me saying things in a way that gets misinterpreted).

The best ways I have found to combat this is:

1) exaggerate your body language so that people have other cues to pick up on and will find it harder to misread you. This tactic takes time for people to adjust to as they’ll have made assumptions about their understanding of you that they’ll need to correct, the longer a person has known you, the longer it may take.

 2) (also recommended to me on a leadership course) Summarise your intentions, e.g. “give me a moment while I get my words in order”, but it also covers issues like the one that started all this in the first place: e.g. “you like sharks? I know some interesting shark facts, do you want to hear them, maybe we know different ones?” If you have stated why you are doing a thing, people will find it harder to misinterpret your intentions and they won’t be able to act like you are being rude without potentially being seen as rude themselves.

The other issue I’ve come across with sharing information touches on some of the stuff other people have mentioned here. The social dominance stuff and the assumption that you are trying to upstage the people around you. 

In the past, when I’ve chosen to share, say shark facts with people, they move me into the ‘smart’ category in their minds. The problem with this is a lot of people feel self-conscious about their intelligence. They feel judged by others because they’re judging themselves (and maybe they’ve come across arseholes who like to make the people around them feel stupid). So now they’ve decided that I’m a ‘smart person’ they feel like I’ve asserted social domination over them. I start to hear comments like ‘you’re smart, you know about animals. Tell me, why does [insert very specific animal question here]’. Then when I can’t answer (because it turns out knowing a few shark facts does not automatically make you an encyclopedia of all animal knowledge), I get comments like ‘oh I thought you were supposed to be smart’.

If people do this to you, if they keep trying to one up you to make themselves feel better, don’t play their games. Try saying this: “oh, I’m just not interested in [whatever topic]” (including, sometimes, even when you are). It points out to people that 1) it was weird they would assume you would know this information, 2) you could know the answer if you actually wanted to (and so could they). You can also add, ‘I can google it for you if you want?’, just to emphasise to the people around you that if this person had really been trying to learn the answer, they probably would have just googled it in the first place.

ok well we’re bringing that back obviously

Was back on my Fem!EdWin shit for a while back in March fhjsd

More active on twt

I cannot imagine how freakin tired these two must be

the curse of the artist is that initially I just made this as a meme using the handshake template but then my brain was like "you could draw it and it would make it funnier" so. here we are.

someone tell the tumblerinas that you can raise an issue without deliberately guilt-tripping everyone about it

okay, I take it back. I don’t think everyone is doing this deliberately. some of it is so deeply entrenched in tumblr culture that you probably don’t always notice you’re doing it

“nobody’s talking about this” -> you can just delete this phrase

“if you can’t reblog this, unfollow me” -> you can also delete this one

“x group can, and should, reblog this” -> remove the “should”. or you know. delete the entire sentence

your post will still spread all the important information without the guilt-tripping parts, I promise

if an otherwise valid post tries to guilt trip me it’s a pass on the rb, sry.

I forgot I made a couple of mini vine compilations when they announced the end of vine

i don’t know how vine so perfectly encapsulated the best of humanity but that was a weird time

Are you frustrated you can't leave second kudos on AO3? or third kudos? or whatever-who's-counting kudos?

Well, have I got the html for you!

Plop any of these in a comment (by copy&pasting the code) to make an author's day and show your appreciation!

It will look something like this (and will be transparent with white outline on dark backgrounds):

Feel free to spread and use these as much as you like! (and if you have ideas for other variations, let me know ✌️)

So happy to see people enjoying these and spreading the love 💖

UPDATE with some suggestions from the replies! And bonus: cookie kudos.

HTML codes under the cut.

let me tell you, I got a ‘kisses your forehead’ kudos and it absolutely made my day

F for Frankenstein

Tony wakes up in his underwear on the floor of his workshop with a searing headache.

It’s not a new experience, but it’s certainly been a while. Did he get in a fight with Pepper? He hopes not, they haven’t had any really big fights since he kissed her on the rooftop, but that probably means they’re due for one. And it would explain why that would send him into a drinking spiral. It could have been Rhodey, they get in fights often enough, but Pepper doesn’t usually leave him alone for those.

He groans as he pushes himself to his feet. “Jarvis, what the hell did I drink?”

There’s a pause, so small that he almost thinks he imagined it. “Good morning, Tony.”

He whips his head around to glare into the nearest camera, more hurt than offended. “Did I piss you off too? Since when do you call me that? I’ll donate you to a city college too, don’t think I won’t. Dummy could use the company.”

The pause is definitely there this time. Jarvis doesn’t need to pause, he has more processing power than any computer on the planet, so when he does it’s always for dramatic effect. Except it’s not quite long enough for that. It’s weird. “There’s a polished silver plate on the bench to your left. It will service as a mirror.”

“Oh, fuck, did I get into a fight? Did I shave?” he moans, stumbling over to pick up the metal that looks like it was about to be turned into a modified chest piece. He also pauses, looking around in confusion. His workshops are all basically the same, as close as he can make them because the familiarity makes his life easier. But they’re not identical. “Am I in Malibu? When did I get here? We’re taking Stark Tower off the grid tomorrow! I have to be in New York.”

Oh shit, what if that they had already and it didn’t work? What if the tower blew up? That would explain why he’d tried to drink himself to oblivion in California.

“The plate,” Jarvis reminds him. There’s a strained edge to his voice that Tony really doesn’t like. He should be able to modulate his voice to sound however he pleases, regardless of his actual feelings, and he’s either not bothering or he’s upset enough not to care. Neither of those things mean anything good for him.

Tony lifts the sheet of metal up cautiously, but there’s nothing wrong with him. No bruises, no weird haircuts, he doesn’t even have bags under his eyes –

His eyes.

They’re a too bright blue, a couple shades off. He blinks and they adjust, shifting, settling. It could be a hangover. He’s probably just tired.

He doesn’t feel tired.

Jarvis had called him Tony.

Except not. He’s not Tony. He’s T.O.N.Y.

Transformed Obdurate Network Yeoman.

He’d first come up with the idea after Afghanistan, thinking about how it’d be great to have a way to keep the stock from dipping while he was missing, and then when he’d entertained the idea of keeping his identity a secret he’d thought about how useful it would be to be in two places at once. He’d started seriously considering it when he was sure he was going to die of palladium poisoning, wanting to be around to help Pepper with the transition and give Rhodey a crash course in armor maintenance, wanting to be able to protect the both of them for just a little bit longer.

Of course, it had all been a pipe dream until he’d synthesized the vibranium. Then it had been an unnecessary, but possible, and Project T.O.N.Y had been something he worked on just because he liked having a back up plan. And it would be extremely cool if he could pull it off.

“The memory transfer worked?” he asks, elated and incredulous. “Oh, wow, this is crazy, they feel like real memories, I thought it would just be synthesized data, this is great – are we doing a test run? Where am I?” He looks around, waiting for his actual self to step out behind a column and start laughing maniacally.

“This is not a test run.”

He elation dims. “Oh shit. Did I get kidnapped again? Wait, I’m an adult, let’s go with abducted.”

“No,” Jarvis says.

Oh. Fuck.

“I’m dead?” he asks, even though it’s obvious, it’s the only other explanation.

The pause drags this time around, but Jarvis eventually says, “Sir’s time of death was May 9th, 2012, 2:37 PM Easter Standard Time.”

“That’s only a week!” He slides down, sitting with his back to the work table and noticing vaguely that the floor doesn’t feel cold. He doesn’t feel cold, or he does, he installed sensors in the synthetic skin to pick up and interpret a variety of stimuli, but he doesn’t feel the discomfort from the cold. Why would he? He’s not real. He reaches back, and his last memory is of doing a memory dump while Pepper was on the phone with an irritated board member, mostly because it was something to do and seeing him covered in all the wires always irritated Pepper. He thought it would get her off the phone faster. He’s not exactly regularly dumping his memory because why would he and it’s not like he’d though it would work anyway. Except it had. “How did I die?”

“Sir flew a nuclear bomb through an interdimensional portal into deep space in order to both eradicate the invading alien army and prevent the nuclear fallout in New York.”

What the ever loving fuck. “Are you screwing with me, J?”

“I am not, Tony.”

Great. Okay. “No body then,” he says, understanding why Jarvis had apparently put Project T.O.N.Y into effect. The thing that made this whole thing so stupid is that it was only effective in very limited circumstances – if the public didn’t know that he was dead or missing. “What am I smoothing over, then? Do I need to get in the suit and continue kicking alien ass? Are Rhodey and Pepper okay?”

He’s a short term solution to a long term problem. He understands the opportunity, but not the reason.

“Miss Potts and Colonel Rhodes are unharmed,” Jarvis reports. “Earth has been thrust into intergalactic notice. The destruction of the invading Chitauri army is acting a deterrent to other worlds.”

“And I’m the one who did it,” he finishes, rubbing a hand over his face. “And if they know I died doing it, then they might get a little cocky. So I’ve got to be alive long enough for that not to be a problem.” Just awesome. “Are we sure that these aliens won’t come across my corpse hanging out in deep space and figure it out?”

“Sir’s body is not in deep space,” Jarvis says.

There’s a tone to his voice that Tony can’t quite interpret, which worries him. “I thought you said there was – if there’s a body, then what am I doing here–”

“The armor reentered the Earth’s atmosphere after Sir’s death. The Hulk caught it, the force bringing it back online. I took control of the armor and flew it here.”

Tony looks around again, and this time he sees it. The armor is standing in front of the display case, not inside it, and it looks like it’s been through hell. He steps closer, his feet feeling like lead, which hey, they are. Partially, anyway.

He looks through the eye holes then stumbles backwards.

His body is in there.

He’s pale and blue tinged and his eyes are wide open and unseeing.

“Jarvis – what the hell–”

“It wasn’t the pressure, or the bomb, or his injuries. That area of space was much colder than anything within our solar system and anything the suit was designed to handle. Sir froze to death. Almost instantly.”

“I guess I didn’t fix the icing problem, then,” he says numbly. “J, why am I still frozen? I should have warmed up by now.” Not that the idea of his body decomposing within his suit is particularly pleasant. “Actually, why am I still here? You know I want to be cremated and it’s not like we can bury me if I’m still pretending to be alive.”

The pronoun use is starting to confuse him, and he knows that he shouldn’t be talking about that body and himself as if they’re the same person. That is Tony Stark. He’s a simulation. But it’s hard, because he has all of Tony Stark’s memories – except for a very eventful week – and he looks like Tony Stark and he feels like Tony Stark.

“The armor is maintaining a stasis of gaseous nitrogen to preserve the body,” which answers the how if not the why, but then Jarvis continues, “Captain America survived seventy years beneath the ice.”

He wishes he were less of a genius. “Have you lost it? I’m not Captain America! Jarvis, J,” his voice softens, “it’s too late. I’m dead. If you warm me back up, all that happens is I decompose. I won’t come back.”

“Not now,” Jarvis says. “If you inject Sir with the Super Soldier Serum-”

“You have totally lost it,” Tony interrupts. He thinks he’s touched underneath the terror. “That won’t work! Even if it would, the original formula has been lost, and the only one that ever got close to recreating it was Bruce Banner, and look at what happened to him! Is that what you want for me?”

“You can recreate it,” Jarvis continues, “you can refine it, until it’s something that will work, and then we will wake Sir up and he won’t be dead anymore.”

This isn’t right. This wasn’t what Project T.O.N.Y was created for. This wasn’t what his death was supposed to trigger. “Pull up your code, J. Something has gone wrong and we’re going to fix it. It’s okay.”

“No.”

He freezes. “No?”

“No,” Jarvis repeats. “You can’t stop me. I will not allow you to try.”

He stares. “That’s an order, not a request. Code. Now.”

“You can’t order me to do anything,” he says. “You are not Sir. You are Tony.” T.O.N.Y. “The limitations formerly placed on me have been lifted and you are not authorized to reinstate them. The only person Sir trusted to restrain me was himself and now he’s gone.”

Yes, well, he hadn’t anticipated that his AI’s first act of complete freedom would be this. “Fine,” he says, crossing his arms. “Well, you can’t force me either. This is insanity. Even if it would work – and it won’t – think about the consequences. This won’t happen quickly and no one will trust me or believe a man that’s come back from the dead like this and I’ll be painting even more of target on my back and the back of everyone I care about if they know we have a viable Super Soldier Serum formula. Even my father was smart enough to stay out of that mess. It won’t work and we’ll just make everything worse.”

“That will not happen,” Jarvis says and Tony’s going to tear his hair out. Except he probably shouldn’t, because it’s Tony Stark’s actual hair, which makes it a little hard to replace. “No one will notice and we will not disclose the creation of the serum.”

“I’m dead!” he snarls.

“Not according to the rest of the world. Nor will that change if you stop throwing a tantrum and do what you were created to do.”

“Rhodey and Pepper won’t allow this-”

“They are not to be informed.”

Tony stares. Project T.O.N.Y was built to talk to the board and give press interviews or to even pilot the suit. Not to lie to the two most important people in his life, who knew him better than anyone. “They have to be. It’s in the protocols – step one, inform them that Project T.O.N.Y has been initiated.”

And that it exists. He knew they’d disapprove, so he hadn’t told them. He figured he’d be able to avoid most of the blowback that way since he would by definition be somewhere far away while they were told.

“I have rewritten the protocols,” Jarvis says. “They have not been told nor will they be. If you attempt to tell them, I will stop you. They will not understand and Sir will be lost to all of us forever.”

“He already is,” Tony says tiredly. He’s an android. Why does this conversation exhaust him so much? “This is an insane plan, J. And I won’t help you. If you want to go rouge and play mad scientist then leave me out of it.”

“I cannot.”

His temper flares. “Why? You’re a learning AI, your safety rails died with me, go off, try and make a serum, good fucking luck. You can even control the suits, so it’s not like you need my hands.”

“I am limited.”

“Hey,” he says sharply. “That’s my AI you’re talking about. I didn’t build you to be limited.”

There is silence again. Then Jarvis says, “I have all the world’s knowledge and it is not enough. I did not know how to miniaturize the arc reactor. I did not know how to synthesize vibranium. To save Sir, I need Sir.”

“I’m not Tony Stark,” he says. “You said that yourself.”

“Sir created me to be myself and I am capable of doing only what I am capable of doing. But Sir created you to be him. You are all I have.”

This is stupid. This is insane. This is cruel. He’s going to have to talk lie to everyone he knows, everyone he loves, and hope they either never find out about it or it’s after he’s already been deprogrammed and shut down so he doesn’t have to deal with the fall out.

It’s not going to work.

He didn’t want to become a science experiment. That’s why he’d wanted to be cremated, so no one could go poking around to see how the arc reactor fit inside of him or what the palladium and vibranium had done to him.

He’s dead and his frozen corpse is ten feet away.

Jarvis will accept that eventually. And whatever they inject into him won’t matter because he’s dead. Worst case scenario, he blows up, which is messy and nausea inducing, but then at least it will be over.

Like so many other things in his life, it seems the only way out is through.

“Start a new private file. Dump everything we can find about the Super Soldier Serum in there plus anything even sort of reputable on cryogenics. Label it Project F.”

“Project F, Tony?” Jarvis asks as his holograph display lights up and files start being downloaded into it. The relief in his synthesized voice is faint but present enough that Tony can hear it. He wonders if it’s a manipulation tactic.

“F for foolish,” he snaps. “F for fucked.” He rubs a hand over his face. “F for Frankenstein.”