another thing i love about laios:
HE IS GENUINELY A REALLY GOOD LEADER!!
despite struggling with the finer points of socializing, he has all the qualities necessary to be a good leader.
(i refer to the manga a lot in this post as someone who's read most of the manga at this point, but i avoided any specific spoilers)
He cares about all his teammates' well-being
He is extremely level-headed in a crisis
He is excellent at strategizing (within his areas of expertise; in the manga someone eventually points out he's pretty much useless at fighting other humans, lol)
If a plan fails, he is immediately thinking up a fallback plan - he doesn't give up
He is acutely aware of his teammates' strength and weaknesses, and accurately assigns them tasks suited to them in times of need.
He is perhaps not innately a 'leader-type'; he's fine deferring to the rest of the party most of the time, even when he doesn't understand why. (Just going along with the blindfold in the sauna for example, lol.) He was ready to head back into the dungeon by himself before Chilchuck and Marcille volunteered to come along. He doesn't think of himself as particularly smart or special. And when the party meets others (such as the old gnome couple) they don't tend to assume Laios is the leader.
But he has an unwavering vision (during the story it's rescuing Falin), and, you see it again and again: when they enter difficult combat, or any time things fall apart and everyone is panicking, Laios steps up and takes charge. His calmness helps everyone else calm down, and they generally follow his lead. They intuitively look to him in a crisis, to the point they're shocked the few times he doesn't have any ideas.
It kind of ties into another thought I have; he is repeatedly seen as "having no interest in other people" by other characters, but this isn't really true! He struggles to understand people and he is aware that they struggle to understand him. This leads to him mostly focusing on the things he IS good at understanding, such as monsters. But he genuinely makes a big effort to understand the people he cares about. In the manga, there are times you see him think deeply about his friends' struggles and motivations. For much of the early arcs, he understands Chilchuck better than Marcille or Senshi do. He and Marcille don't get each other that well at the start of the story, but by the end they have a very strong reciprocal friendship.
I could go on about it honestly but this post is already very long. Tl;dr laios one of the characters of all time to me and i think people should appreciate his leadership skills more!!
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what makes you ship halbarry, mine is the amount of symbolism and moments they manifest about them being compatible with each other and even the main lore knows theybare one😭😭
sometimes I wonder why these two aren't together yet since they are basically soulmates 😭😭
This is probably the question I have been waiting for the most and for which I have to have the longest possible answer.
I will try not to go too far, but I will also try not to miss any points that I consider important.
I think I can start by saying that I love their dynamic, I've always liked it.
To start Barry is a more serious guy, shy and introverted, always thinking about some situation and planning. And Hal is more outgoing, noisy and confident, he NEVER plans and is too impulsive.
They are opposing poles, not radically opposed as with other characters in the league, but they remain opposing enough to provide contrast to the relationship.
There's also the fact that the two of them are fully aware of those differences, and even though they don't like some at all, they've never tried to change anything between them. Even when people constantly point out how different they are and how no one understands how they are friends. (Even they can't understand how they're so close if they don't resemble each other at all)
(Personally this panel is one of my favorites, as I love how Hal immediately jumps up to Barry's tastes, making it clear that while he doesn't like to do the same things Barry does, he doesn't find it as bad or boring as some might think.)
In general, the series of “The brave and the bold” I like because it allows you to take a close look at their relationship and give us lots of interactions of them, allows us to see a little more of their real character and their friendship.
There is also the fact that in that series they constantly show how well they know each other Hal and Barry manage to combine their skills to help each other. They always take advantage of each other's ability to resolve conflicts, and even when they fight or argue, they resolve them quickly. Another of my favorite numbers is the last volume of the series, when Barry falls into a terrible and painful depression and Hal is the only one who supports him.
Literally Hal tries to have some stability in his life to let Barry stay with him, helps him like Barry has always helped him and says one of the phrases I love the most.
“The poor man needs something to hold on to, so he will stay with me, maybe our friendship will be a comfort to him, he will always be able to count on that until the day we die.”
In this same comic is where Barry tries to sacrifice himself and Hal stops him, to that I add that in a previous issue we also show that one of Hal's biggest fears is losing Barry. The thought of seeing him die or get hurt is something that scares him.
Hal's not afraid to die, he's afraid that Barry will die and it's his fault, that I can't save him. And that point added to everything that's going on with Parallax and Crisis on Infinite Earths feels like a stab for both of them.
It's fucking tragic.
Generally in many moments of Hal as Parallax or The Wraith, Hal talks about Barry, continues to talk about how amazing he was as a person and a hero, talks about how he remains his best friend even though Barry is still dead. (That reminds me a lot of when I'm with my friends and some of them start talking about their boyfriends even though they're not there and we didn't talk about them originally)
And when they both revive, Barry constantly lets him know that everything that happened with Parallax wasn't him and tries to support him, try to be there for him for as long as he couldn't help him when his friend needed him the most.
We also have the fact that Barry has canonically been a blue lantern, and well, hope and willpower isn't exactly two opposing poles, on the contrary, it's likely that both entities are reciprocal forces. That they stick together and support each other, just like Hal and Barry do.
I also like to think that they had a somewhat similar childhood.
Both lost a father or mother, and that led to the loss of the rest of their family and childhood, they had to grow up faster than the other children, became more independent, and soon discovered that the world was cruel and unjust.
Although we also have other universes like:
The universe of Injustice where the two of them continue to support each other and remain together despite the mess that is around them, and there is even a panel where Hal as a yellow lantern is going to rescue Barry after Constantine abducted him.
Or we also have the fact that red and green in the chromatic circle are two opposite or complementary colors that are usually used when you want to create a harmony on a visual level.
That is, from the choice of colors we can know perfectly well that they are opposite poles, but they complement each other so well that it creates a visual harmony when you see them together. (For some reason Christmas usually uses these two colors as its main ones).
There's also the fact that Hal and Barry met before the league was formed, and even when they met Batman and Superman, Hal wanted him and Barry to work it out on their own. (Barry refused because someone has to put prudence on their duo)
And we have the fact that in the story of how they met, Hal calls it his
“first date”. (Let's pretend he didn't say that when he and Barry weren't literally on what looked like a date, where they went to dinner at a restaurant where there was live jazz music and Hal actually had a good time sitting on Barry's cell phone).
(Hal hates jazz, but he's still there with Barry at a dinner party while putting up with music he doesn't really like. That's pretty.)
I think it was also in this comic where Hal lets Barry use his ring to get you both out of there.
There's also universe 36 where we have two variants of Green Lantern and Flash that canonically speaking are couple. It is worth remembering that the two of them did not stay together, since in an event they participated in, the Flash of their universe dies. (It seems there can't be a crisis without a sprinter dying) Luckily at DC Pride they made the green lantern of their land look for their Flash, and they revived and were happy.
(They're supposed to be neither Hal nor Barry, but the truth, their designs and even their names feel like very inspired by them, so I scored it as a little extra point although I don't know if you can consider it).
We have DC vampires that although in that universe, Hal kills Barry because they won't let him turn him into a vampire because he would end up killing everybody. Hal finally gives us that line where he admits that he REALLY wanted to conquer the world with Barry, which kind of fuels his tragic gay romance.
Anyway, I would like to go longer, but I can't find some panels that I was looking for to explain me more, plus I feel that this is already long enough and meaningless to make it clear that I love them both.
I just want to add that I think probably the thing I like most about them is that they both admire each other. Both their heroic parts and their civilian parts, and I think that's very sweet and nice, added to the fact that they're always there trying to support each other or show off parts of their personality that you can't appreciate with all their friends to the same extent.
I like that they always have symbolism and like many times in the comics it refers to some moments that they have lived together. This makes me have the theory in my head that maybe some cartoonists and writers also like them in a sense beyond friendship, but since NOBODY dares to take the leap of faith and make them canon, they let us drop some crumbs so as not to lose faith.
(If anyone got here, thank you so much for reading all this even though it doesn't make much sense in some parts, I apologize for that and make up for it with some panels of them two)
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