Fanfic Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...
As a Team Cap supporter (and a hardcore one at that), I want to say that this series is a reflection of everything wrong with the MCU's fandom, the inherent hypocrisy that permeates it.
Four years ago, CACW came out and split the fandom in two. That was the point of the movie, of course, can't have a Civil War if everyone's all buddy-buddy, right? But it did it's job too well. Soon after the movie released, a veritable avalanche of Pro-Tony supporters descended upon AO 3, churning out bucketloads of stories revolving around one simple premise:
Tony Stark can do no wrong.
Sure, the stories themselves varied, no two authors are alike, but there were elements common to each one. Steve and Team Cap were the bad guys, they were in the wrong, they deserved to be outcast, tortured, arrested, executed and so on and so forth while Tony and Team Iron Man got to live as saviors and angels, beloved by the populace.
So, along comes To Trope Or Not To Trope, taking the premise of the Pro-Tony crowd and flipping it around. So it becomes:
Steve Rogers can do no wrong.
And well, the Pro-Tony fandom went completely nuts. Take a look at any comment section in the series, you'll see torrents of "fans" (and I hesitate to say that word because I don't really consider them to be such) claiming they're severely offended by the series' existence, and they'll cheerfully rail on the very things that they write about, all because the names are on opposite sides of the words. And frankly, their inability to realize their hypocrisy is kind of sad, but not unsurprising.
Because well, just because you look in a mirror doesn't mean you'll see anything.
Fanfic I personally love this series
It’s an answer to the many Team Cap bashing stories with arguments I don’t get. I know it’s very one sided but so do most team iron man fics. While I prefer Steve, I do like Tony but he does have his problems and trauma but I think he was very flawed and his mistakes don’t get brought up much as often as Team Cap’s supposed mistakes. It’s a matter of preference and opinions. Steve didn’t know for sure Bucky killed the Starks and only suspected without proof to give to Tony and he had other pressing matters. Tony was also a horribly relaxed mentor to Peter and only directly get involved when Peter made mistakes that were caused by Tony making it seem like he was outright dismissing him.
I will fully admit this series is not for everyone but it’s some fun if you don’t think it goes too far in the other direction.
Fanfic It's only evil if Tony does it.
Literally not matter what anyone else does, it's fine, especially if they do it to Tony. Tony calls Natasha a double agent after she switches sides in Civil War or refers to Wanda as a WMD? Horrible and dehumanizing. Clint makes a crack about Rhodey's broken spine? No one will ever comment on it.
The prompts in this story twist absolutely every character to portray Tony as negatively as possible, whether it's Peter wanting nothing to do with Tony or Tony folding like a house of cards the moment Ross orders him to "patrol America's oil fields". No one likes Tony unless he "admits" to being responsible for every bad thing that happens in any movie he's in (barring the Chitauri) and he's generally considered a villain on par with Loki or HYDRA. BUT, the other Avengers will immediately forgive him if he just apologizes, because (unlike Tony) they're good people.
Finally, the author outright dismisses any and all trauma Tony goes through as being "minor inconveniences". Whether it's PTSD from nearly dying and witnessing the true scope of the Chitauri fleet or learning his parents were murdered by watching a video of said murder with their killer mere feet away, it's all brushed off as an "inconvenience". My personal favorite being gibbs_yeah insisting that, despite being the one who was repeatedly struck in the head with a hunk of metal that then struck his chest hard enough to destroy his arc reactor and left in a broken suit in a frozen bunker in Siberia, Tony should be having nightmares about killing Steve and Bucky in Siberia.
Long story short, despite claims that the series is only a fair response to the various Pro-Tony stories, it's just an excuse to mangle everyone so as to bash Tony Stark.
Fanfic Complete and Utter Shit
As a Captain America fan I get the annoyance of Steve being portrayed as evil. THIS however goes in the exact opposite direction, with gibbs_yeah liberally misinterpreting canon in order to suit his ideas. For instance he goes so far as to assume that Zemo made the video footage showing Howard being beaten to death when the film made NO such insinuation and ignores both that Steve himself admitted to suspecting it and that he kept it quiet for selfish reasons, which essentially made Steve guilty of a breach of trust. He portrays Peter being yelled at in Homecoming as proof that Tony's abusive and ignores that Peter refusing to listen to Tony had nearly gotten an entire boat full of people drowned before ignoring that Tony DOES give him a change of clothes to go home gives him the suit back when he proves that he can handle himself and allows him to go his own way. Finally he ignores numerous cases when Tony DOES express care for other people and develops as a character
In his attempt to vindicate Captain America all he succeeds in doing is making BOTH characters look bad.
Fanfic Biased? Yes. Complaints? No.
Is it clearly biased in favor of Team Cap? Yes. Are almost all other fics out there incredibly biased in favor of Team Tony? Also yes. This is honestly karma for that. It's not meant to be taken seriously, and just deconstruct absolutely everything Team Tony is wrong about. Their good points are ignored, but they tend to ignore Team Cap's good points, so again, karma.