one-piece-of-harry:

Well I mean, character wise? every single thing he’s ever done after the fact. He wiped out the terrorist organisation so the US had no one to ‘fight’ anymore, and restored world peace, with his bare hands. Then, ya know, all the other stuff with the nuke and shizz. But tbh the character can’t shed the weight of that guilt, even after all of that and having that guilt is kinda where the fandom idea of “he’s always guilty” came from.

Like, the thing with redemption stories is that the stating point, the “bad thing” can’t actually be too bad or else the audience wont accept it. Tony never did anything unethical to the audience, never intentionally. He provided a service the US government paid for, but the connotations of “war profiteer” have stipulations tony never met. He was neglectful, because he was this dumbass existential emo-bro who couldn’t think beyond his own circumstances. He never set out to hurt anyone, and in fact thought he didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. He thought his actions were irrelevant, kinda like how him selling weapons to the government is the same as regular people buying clothing they know was made through labour abuses. We need clothes that are friendly to our wallets in order to survive, meanwhile the US needs weapons and they will get them, whether they get them from tony or not. We’re contributing to a horrible situation somewhere else to help our situation here. He hated himself, compared himself to the devil, but there was nothing to be done about it.

The difference is tony could have made a difference, while we just have to wait it out for companies to give us ethical options.

And then when he’s stripped on his hubris, when he sees consequences of war and, most importantly, sees weapons with his name etched on the sides in the hands of people bent on conquering everyone around them? He finally sees the direct consequences of his actions. There is no “pondering the existential philosophy” of creating weapons of mass destruction up on his ivory tower, there is only the people, right in front of him, getting hurt. 

(and for the rest of the iron man trilogy thats his priority. Tony isnt spurned on by a definitive ideology, instead just by human lives.)

ANYWAYS now that we’ve established that the original sin wasnt malicious we can work on the next part of redemption: admitting mistakes.

I mean, i don’t really need to explain how he does this one. First the press conference then later in a much more personal and vulnerable way to pepper.

then we get onto the most important part: fixing the damages done. We’ve already kinda talked about it in the first paragraph but tony stark has dedicated his life specifically to the safety of the world. He ends the thing that brought the destruction (weapons) and replaced it with something beneficial (clean energy). He, of course, puts himself on the frontline with any conflict that could get violent so that no one else has to. He also founded a charity in his mothers name (actually called the september foundation in memory of her singing). He also contributes to the education of children and has a direct interest in fostering a future where he is unnecessary. THEN he also pushes for social programs centered around community clean-up.

Like, overwhelmingly tony stark has saved the world dozens of times and, more importantly, helped the world in every way he could think of. 

Like, i don’t see how him contributing to a system that over half of the population of america has/would have done the same makes him irredeemable. And i dont see how we can list all the shit he’s done and think he hasn’t redeemed himself.

Your answer is perfect and you have more patience than me. Because whenever ppl ask questions like that anon, I find myself frustrated af wanting to know what they think his redemption should look like. What else do they want him to do?? Build a time machine and make it so Howard never goes into the weapons industry????