#howard is
okay so i finished watching all the episodes of armored adventures that howard is in and my review: actually pretty good? honestly pretty enjoyable? i liked it enough that i’m actually going start it over and watch all the episodes correctly, you know, like a normal person.
tony in this is way more unhinged than usual while howard is surprisingly hinged? howard has the energy of a man who is post-emotional-breakdown. this is a man who has found some sort of inner resolve because He Has Seen Shit and come out the other side. maybe this is from losing maria, maybe not?
huge fan of the way tony and howard are kind of obsessed with each other. mutual highest priority. you love to see it. it’s almost bordering on healthy, even? i mean howard keeping tony home from school for so long because he couldn’t stand being apart from him is not like the Best behavior but it could be so much worse. also like the fact that he knew from across the globe when tony was hurt, like, um. okay… love that for them…
love that howard’s got a solid obsession in this one, and love that it’s not captain america, ngl. interesting that he’s not even fully revived in this universe? compelling? i don’t care about the whole makluan thing very much, but i like the way howard’s fixation & expertise was presented and the way tony moved into the temple to make it his workshop was super normal & not at all about his dad or anything.
loved absolutely every scene of tony and howard working together in any capacity. the fact that howard knew he was iron man for soo long before he just straight up calls him anthony while he’s in the suit to say he knows?
i’m going to have to watch and actually pay attention to the whole thing so i can form some coherent headcanons about tony’s childhood and maria and so on because i have fic ideas and this universe is fascinating.
Hi please talk with me forever about Howard and Tony’s relationship in IMAA because I am fully obsessed and I absolutely cannot shut up about them ever???
100000% co-sign on Howard being Surprisingly Hinged only by virtue of powering his way through Some Shit with sheer force of will, and Howard and Tony being kind of co-dependently obsessed with each other but in a really sweet and somehow weirdly healthy way.
I cannot get over their relationship in this show because it feels like there is just SO MUCH complex and compelling character development and backstory there that is both shown and implied, even though it’s not ever really discussed directly because it’s not the focus of the story. and I just. wanna dig into it and roll around in it forever like catnip omg
I also headcanon Howard having an emotional breakdown about Maria’s death, and that defining his relationship with Tony in a lot of ways. The fact that he took Tony out of school after Maria died and it appears that he kept him pretty sequestered does strongly imply that he got obsessively overprotective of Tony for a while, though by the time the show timeline starts he and Tony both seem to be pretty well-adjusted (except for Tony being a socially clueless dork), so at some point I think he realized how toxic that could turn out and reined himself in. Basically gave himself a stern talking to and an intervention about how You Have To Be Normal For Your Son, So Get Your Shit Together. At the same time it’s still so clear that Tony is his whole world and you cannot convince me that he is not still FULLY capable of going 100% feral for Tony’s sake if he ever had to. My impression is that Tony doesn’t really realize this because he’s socially isolated enough that he doesn’t have ton of points of reference for “normal” parent/child closeness - and also he is simply a moron - which is why there’s never any suggestion that he finds/has ever found Howard’s parenting overbearing. He seems to to have pretty uncomplicated affection for Howard and just generally think he’s great and cool, which?? is just??? make my heart full of the feels?????anyway I think about this constantly so, you know, hmu any time for IMAA Howard thoughts lmao
okay well, i think i’ll be taking you up on this offer because i basically just got here but i’m already ready to pour too much time and thought into this whole thing and trust me i have a LOT to say about tony and howard’s relationship in general and this specific iteration of them is soneat.
i completely agree that there seems like there’s a lot that’s happened off screen and not really explained in the show because, yeah, it’s not the point, but it is THERE. and we are so on the same page here about howard’s breakdown and pulling himself through it for his son.
i really love the idea of howard pulling tony out of school and getting obsessively overprotective and maybe a little unhealthily fixated on tony and his safety and then realizing he actually had to get his shit together for him. notably, though, he only slightly corrects this? he pulls back but not quite all the way to a normal degree. it does come off as the two of them staying almost completely isolated until howard goes missing, which is so much, for me? howard knows he has to be a better dad but he still can’t quite let him go out into the world, not when technically he COULD teach tony just fine. so he does. but he definitely could and would go feral in a heartbeat if he needed to. the lid is on, but it IS a lid, imo.
“uncomplicated affection” is such a cute way to put it also but god yes that’s exactly what it is. the social isolation means that he really wouldn’t have any frame of reference for how close he should be with his dad, so he is just honest about his feelings instead and it’s so much. and they do seem really, surprisingly close, when howard gets found? there’s a surprising amount of honesty. especially from howard, who did not feel so weird for example sharing his feelings about losing the company with tony. and this honestly feels significant? i’m still thinking about this and collecting up my feelings about their codependency/mutual obsession but honestly it’s really cute! it’s kinda wholesome! it’s maybe not completely healthy but it might be the healthiest option between these two, in any universe. i’m emotional and i care so much.
Gosh yes, I love thinking about Howard’s rationale for keeping Tony isolated and how it might have developed/changed through the years - because you’re right, the environment he raised Tony in could have been way worse, and Tony generally seems surprisingly emotionally well-adjusted, but… his childhood was also very much still Not Normal and he is, like, totally out to lunch about how the real world works sometimes, bless his heart.
My reading of Howard is that he is very aware of this and does carry some guilt/conflict/regret about how he didn’t do as well as he could have at raising Tony. The best example of this being that his will stipulates that Tony has to go to regular-ass boring school for regular-ass kids if he’s still underage when Howard dies, and the way he very gently says “you are about to get dumped into a shark tank and holy shit you are so naive and gullible you are going to get eaten alive, please get some peers and learn some social skills, I fucked this up so bad you are so unprepared oh my god” in his hologram recording.
And I think it’s reasonable to guess that some of that is that he just… didn’t really know what to do with Tony? Even after he had his presumed ‘come to jesus’ moment about not being completely smothering, I think “figuring out how to raise a supergenius” came a lot easier to Howard than “figuring out how to raise a competent and emotionally intelligent adult.” It’s easy to see how he’d find it hard to justify putting Tony in a traditional school environment (knowing exactly how blindingly brilliant Tony is and seeing how he flourished getting constant one-on-one attention from someone who can keep up with him and having basically unfettered access to any technology he wants) but he obviously never quite figured out how to supplement his personalized homeschooling with developmentally-appropriate interpersonal socialization and common-sense life skills training, lmao.
One other thing that stands out to me about Howard’s parenting - which he is much more successful at than he is at instilling Tony with some common sense - is that he is… surprisingly okay with Tony being Iron Man and regularly engaging in extremely risky superheroing? In my opinion, that speaks to Howard having put a lot of emotional legwork into overcoming his instinctive overprotectiveness, and being very conscious of being supportive of Tony without being restricting. Tony is curious, impulsive, stubborn, has a strong sense of righteousness/justice, and is inclined to get his hands dirty rather than depend on other people to get things done — I think Howard would have recognized, long before the show starts, how much trouble that combination of personality traits could get him into (even though we have to assume that he never predicted that Tony would decide to become a superhero, sldjfsdk). And I think he did a lot of self-reflection basically going “this is who Tony is and I have to find a way to be okay with that, or he will resent me and I risk driving him into even more risky behavior.” So we see Howard being actually quite chill about Tony’s whole Iron Man thing, despite the fact that he probably gets a new grey hair every time Tony is out of his sight, lol. I just find it very funny to imagine that behind all the scenes where Howard goes along with whatever’s happening like “yes this is all very cool and I’m okay with this, I love you and support your choices Tony” is Howard’s internal monologue of barely-restrained panicked screaming.
Anyway I can ramble forever but I gotta go to bed for tonight, but /finger guns/ good talk
