#parallax!hal

[zoestarlings]

so ive been reading the kyle rayner run

[spidey-webs]

The real tragedy of the whole “Batman contingency plans” thing escaping containment into the wider cultural zeitgeist is that it’s become completely divorced from the original context of, you know, the Tower of Babel story-line happening after a beloved member of the Justice League did in fact go mad, become all-powerful, and destroy all of reality.

Which is devastating because it loses so much when you take Hal Jordan out of it! In both adaptations and fan discussions!

Despite only being mentioned by name once in the story, Hal haunts the whole narrative in how unspoken he is. The whole theme of the story is the failure to communicate and how it destroys trust, and an essential part of that is how the whole League won't (and can't) talk about Hal.

When Kyle finally tries to bring him up, Wally shoots him down. He is the forbidden topic at the heart of the League's breakdown of trust!

When the contingency plans plot is removed from the context of Hal's fall from grace, isn't proceeded by a JLA founding member doing what was supposed to be unthinkable, Bruce's actions lose their emotional core. It becomes just "Batman is the coolest and smartest and also a huge untrusting asshole" instead of "Bruce was already on the knife-edge of crippling paranoia regarding his powerful allies, and then one of those same allies started slaughtering people and he couldn't do a thing to stop it, confirming all his worst fears and sending him right over the edge"

You take Bruce's feelings of very personal betrayal out of the equation. He's not operating on just hypotheticals, but fears that were heartrendingly justified!

Bruce claims the reason for his plans on some past mind-control incident, but Clark calls Bruce out on it being an excuse.

Maybe that's how it started, but there's a reason the fail-safes aren't against mind-control and possession. The fail-safes are ways to permanently stop your friends should they willingly or unwillingly become a threat.

And they both know it. They've argued about Hal several times before.

Bruce has a lot of unresolved feelings about Hal. He's still hurting.

The contingency plans are not some cold, clinical necessity. They are the product of pain.

I think all readings and tellings of the Tower of Babel should be followed by the JLA/Spectre story.

It provides the necessary emotional conclusion to the unspoken conflict! Because they finally have to talk about it! They heal the broken trust! Bruce admits how much Hal's betrayal hurt him and his faith in heroes, and gets past it! Instead of letting a former and potential future threat be eliminated as his fail-safes say he should, he invites the threat back, even if he can't guarantee it won't happen again, because he chooses to believe in his friend!

The contingency plans are a cool and interesting concept, but again, you can't just...take Hal out of it. You can't make it about some evil alternate versions, or about Clark. By doing that, you lose the most heartbreaking part of the story. Batman isn't in the right or the wrong, but he's not heartless. He's brokenhearted.

[deadmaidclub]

more kyle and hal ft lady lanterns

[yellowcorps]

He doesn't look a thing like Jesus.

[cultstatus]

he’s a real bummer

[harveydont]

unforchies for me that i like him so much.

[honkygay]

OH NO I NEVER POSTED THIISSSSSA

[stardayzzing]

[Parallax and the Sun Eater]

So funnily enough I sat down to draw KYLE today and I ended with this piece????

I'm not like insane over it because I can SEE my errors but for something I never intended to make I do really like it!!

[day-dream-fever]

[thecrowmonster]

dc characters as tumblr/twitter posts

[venatici-flare]

dc may not be respecting baby but I do

[zoestarlings]

page redraw from final night #4 i did on a whim. there is NO reasoning behind this except i love them

[galaxy---ghost]

Halbarry Week Day 4: Time Travel

Barry takes a wrong turn somewhere in the time stream. Hal can’t believe he gets to see him again.

[spidey-webs]

Not to get into it again, but adding on the Tower of Babel thing: the "Bruce looks down on Hal" thing is so lame compared to their canon dynamic between the 90s and 2010s, aka Bruce spending over a decade of comics being fucking terrified of Hal.

It's so much less interesting than the reality of Bruce being terrified of Hal and what he's capable of. Bruce spiraling into crippling paranoia every time Hal does literally anything, whether it's rewriting reality or doing Spectre-stuff or talking to his ex-girlfriend. Bruce squirming and gnashing his teeth and losing all rationality over the slightest suspicious Hal-related activity. Brcue being vulnerable to Parasite!Parallax's influence because of his paranoia about Hal. Bruce constantly jumping to the worst possible conclusion about Hal, and sometimes being right, and sometimes being wrong, and how that fucked with Bruce on the deepest psychological level and took a lot of time and conversations with other heroes to get through.

Just...Bruce's inability to cope with Hal's plunge into supervillainy bringing out the worst him. How he doesn't dare hope or trust again so instead he doubles down on what he knows are his own worst tendencies.

Bruce saying shit like:

The feared Batman fearing the man without fear!

This dynamic is infinitely more fun and interesting than anything I've seen made that’s based on 5 minutes of animated movie (that doesn't even know how Green Lantern powers work), or fandom osmosis (have no idea how powerful Hal Jordan is), or some infamously out of character comic they saw out of context on tiktok one time (really, really doesn't even know how Green Lantern powers work or how powerful Hal Jordan is)

But obviously dealing with the baggage of Parallax isn't for everyone, but even after everything got rebooted, it's not like Bruce doesn't respect Hal:

Or, you know, there's other aspects of their dynamic that are really really funny:

High Drama Bickering!

Sulky Batfrowns!

Bruce's many, many "YOU'RE NOT A GOD!" moments!

And Clark being so so so sick of Bruce's Hal Issues!

[frownyalfred]

Hal Jordan was such a DILF as Parallax….yes he was possessed and going insane at the galactic level. but. the HAIR. the SMIRK.

[featherpitch]

Flyboy.