#Hal Jordan professional babygirl

[oof-ouch-yikes-stripes]

PARALLAX ‼️

[oof-ouch-yikes-stripes]

I've been turning Mav and Hal around in my head and comparing them as protagonists in their respective works in my avian verse and I need to get some of my thoughts into words before I lose them forever. Anyways, minor spoilers for fics that I haven't published yet, lol.

When looking at them in their respective canons, they're similar in many many ways. Pilots, kinda cocky, kinda think they're hot shit, their dads died piloting and their moms kinda didn't care about them afterwards, reckless in a way that proves that they either don't fear the actions or the consequences, have a thing for characters that are so girlboss on paper but are mistreated by either the narrative, the characters themselves, or sometimes the fandom.

However, then you put them in Project Angel, and even difference experiences within Project Angel, and some of those traits either don't arise, arise in different ways, or fundamentally can't exist within the system as I've set it up.

Now, before I continue, I also have to establish that the existence of my avian verse is fundamentally to help me cope with Major Life Shifts. Project Angel represents a comfortable sort of stagnancy, something familiar but unhealthy because you've outgrown it. Bluer Skies, the Top Gun one, was written to help me understand leaving my hometown and going to college. As such, Mav doesn't necessarily want to leave Project Angel because it's all he's ever known, but he also wants to see what else is out there because PA is all he's ever known. On the other hand, Nesting Instinct is to help me cope with the fact that my parents now live two states away, and my hometown is no longer my hometown. Hal has seen the world as a human, and has an idea of what it's like to live as a part of a flock, and has decided that he likes Project Angel, as restrictive and Morningstar-infested though it may be. While neither of them chose to leave, Mav was taken unexpectedly and Hal was ousted. Suddenly operating in this new world that he has no knowledge of and no idea he wanted to be a part of is overwhelming for Mav, and being ordered to go and live amongst strangers for Hal is unpleasant and unwanted, but because it's an obligation and also because he has experience in a real world setting and knowledge of actual avian culture from Morningstar, it's less overwhelming and he takes to it better.

Now, onto the actual character analysis bit.

Mav survived Project Angel by essentially flipping it the bird. Despite all attempts to suppress it, he's just a guy who got a taste of freedom (flying, as regimented as it may be) and support (Goose), took to it like water, knew that that was his life's purpose, and immediately became annoying about it. He's allowed to retain a lot of his canon characteristics because he knows he's the best, he knows that he's an asset, and he knows that they can't truly punish him in any way that matters, because discharge doesn't exist for a guy who's analogous to an alien in Area 51 and he can't be corporeally punished for fear of damaging their weapon. He's naive to a lot of things, but also immune to a lot of social stigma at the time since the only people he had notable interactions with were Goose, who drinks respect women juice, and Charlie, who is a girlboss, and I will not let the characters or the narrative abuse her, so while Mav doesn't know about the capabilities of women in a combat scenario since that bias does extend to the avians they keep for training at PA, he does respect them for their talents in at least some disciplines. Goose is his main link to the outside world, and while he's plenty book smart, things like neighbors and kitchens and fiction are things he can only learn about through Goose, who in turn does try to tell Mav about a wide variety of things, but also is prone to the fact that his own experiences are only a fraction of the things to experience in the world.

Hal, on the other hand, didn't just grow up in PA, but also under Morningstar, who treated him like shit. Hal and Ice literally shared techniques for repression growing up. Ice was better at it than him, but Hal had to do it for longer, so he's on the same level now. As such, he never got to genuinely develop many of his canon characteristics, and instead uses them only when he has to Pretend To Be A Real Person, since in his head, a well-adjusted person is confident, outspoken, and takes up space. While Hal is self-assured in his abilities (he has survived up until now for a reason, and he's the one in charge of the other avians for a reason), he's not allowed to be the other two as Morningstar's favorite. His experience in the real world gives him a self-awareness that Mav can't possess, interacting with Ice and the other avians gave him a compassion that Mav can't possess, and living under Morningstar gave him an ability to lie and act that Mav can't possess.

By virtue of being plunged into a world he knows nothing about, Mav doesn't actually have that much agency, since he knows nothing about the history of the centuries-long war between Morningstar and aviankind that he's allegedly about to help end. He is told things, then forced to react to them. His main skin in the game is the knowledge that Ice was abused by Morningstar, and he likes Ice, so he's anti-Morningstar. Mav's story isn't his own, but the story of a very long war coming to and end, seen by a guy who's living life for the very first time and discovering that maybe the life he was living wasn't that great after all, and falling in love while he's at it.

Hal has all of the agency in his story, even if he's acting based on the pressure exerted by Morningstar's shadow over his life. He thinks he's the only one around who knows the full truth, and he's making choices to manipulate his targets, and only once he's freed from the burden of Morningstar does he start to then make choices for himself and what makes him happy. He has a defined goal with consequences if he doesn't succeed, unlike Maverick, and isn't necessarily converted by love, since he was only on Morningstar's side out of fear anyways, but knowing a live with love makes him able to resist returning to fear and makes him feel happy and safe for once in his life.

I think those are the major points, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.