Okay, but seriously, why does everyone give Tony crap for having his name on a building or the Starktab/phone/etc? It’s the name of the company, people! A name he did not choose. If I read one more fic where he’s insulted for the “ego” of engaging in standard corporate branding (most of which is probably done by the PR team) I’m gonna scream.
also what’s so bad about naming them stark? You all realize how marketing works?? Tony stark IS a brand. People want to buy things that have his name on it. It would be stupid not to bank on this.
If you think about it, with all the press coverage of his child genius shenanigans, and SI making him CEO as soon as possible, you could just as well say that Tony has been corporate branded all his life. Like you just know that to Obie and the SI board, he was insurance for the stockholders - “Look, we have an emergency backup Stark Genius ™! The future of our company is assured!”
This reminds me of a bit of dialogue I’ve been toying with to play on the common “Tony is so arrogent for saying he is a genius, why can’t he be modest” bit, with Tony casually saying that women tend to like good looking, rich geniuses, and have someone make the “oh and modest too” response only for him to come back with, “modesty is the luxury of people who haven’t had PR teams since they were six.”
And like, going into the idea that he has been exposed to both intelligence test results and literal market research on his attractiveness since he was a child, and knowing he is a genius or that he is broadly considered attractive is no more a matter of ego than knowing his shoe size at this point. He simply has not lived a life where he can convincingly pretend not to know how people see him, or how he ranks in various measures.
