#Mia is THRIVING because Ollie quit being Mayor to be a full-time girldad

[rmbunnie]

Okay so post-Seeing Red reread that comes with reading through Green Arrow 2001, I have 2 new things I've noticed and thought were interesting! This is the first, and the second will be here later on:

Ollie is kinda on his empathy A-game in this one? Like he's being a good dad, a good friend/colleague, it's impressive how much he isn't flying off the handle. I feel like all-in-all post-Mia-HIV-diagnosis, or maybe even post-City Walls, I can't pin down the shift exactly, he becomes much more self-aware in regards to his own temper and emotional shortcomings, and he doesn't like try to change that, but he does start avoiding situations that he knows he won't be able to handle with grace, (which feels like a much more natural progression for him and most characters in general than suddenly getting better and healing and no longer being flawed, but that's just my preference,) and he's doing his best with that in this one. All this to say, he:

keeps the conflict with Bruce to a minimum, except for when he's calling out his parenting style and rightfully upset by the possibility that Bruce only showed up in the first place to lure out Jason, and he and Mia were planned collateral. (It's worth noting that once he critiques Bruce's parenting, Bruce's knee-jerk response is to say pretty much "I know you're being mean and irrational because you're upset, but remember when Roy got addicted to heroin?" which, even disregarding the Roy part, he's kinda chalking any questioning of his parenting style up to Ollie just being upset, when like, that's a very valid critique of the situation. And I think context is added to his critique of Bruce's parenting style by acknowledging that a. that this comes after Bruce calling Jason "dirt in the gutter" and GA responding like "whatever you say," and b. Ollie is canonically aware that somehow, Jason ended up buried in rubble in his last fight with Bruce, meaning he has at least a rudimentary understanding of the Joker showdown (although I can't imagine he knows about the whole ultimatum part.) Several times throughout this run, Ollie alludes to Bruce being a difficult parent (mainly to Dick, via gossip from Roy,) but he doesn't know Jaybin well enough to even recognize him in Heaven, so I think it's entirely possible that when he says Bruce was a bad father to Jason, he's referring not only to Bruce's general closed-off and authoritarian approach to parenting, but specifically to recent, post-resurrection treatment of Jason, (maybe including the blowing up?) which would be VERY interesting.

sends Mia away when he wants to talk one-on-one with Bruce about Jason's turn towards evil! I don't know how I didn't notice this one in my first readthrough, but after she accidentally says something rude about Jason's death and the topic of drug dealing comes up, Ollie asks Mia to talk to one of her contacts about the weapons deal that's going on (and makes a point of praising her in front of Bruce for her network of sources and good information-gathering skills,) and then immediately goes in and tries to press Bruce on how hard it must be to see Jason doing the things he's doing (where Bruce doubles-down on having no residual care towards Jason.) This doesn't mean anything in the larger plot of things, but I think it's really sweet that once she gets embarrassed saying something insensitive, Ollie kinda gives her something to do off to the side so the adults can talk about something personal she'd be out of the loop on. I wonder if part of the reasoning behind sending her away is so she wouldn't be psyched out by the failed sidekick talk and the general idea of a sidekick dying, turning evil (relative to this way he was before,) and consequentially being abandoned (at a surface level,) by his hero parent, as opposed to Bruce's cautionary tale approach to the whole Jason debacle. It happens right when Bruce starts claiming that Jason is like, morally lost. The idea that she would see herself in Jason before the gym fight and Ollie could predict that upsetting her feels like a stretch typing it out, but a very interesting one imo. Either way, it's for the best that Mia wasn't around to hear the "another piece of dirt in the gutter" remark, and Ollie seemed to plan for this.

Gives Bruce run of the case, even before Jason comes into play, just in an effort to be cooperative, and because “he’s visiting." I'm also moderately obsessed with "Try and wear something nice tomorrow!" Like yeah Brucie public appearance, I understand what it actually means, but yelling "wear that dress I like ;)" out into the night is crazyyyy.

Is just so cute with Mia, if there’s one thing Green Arrow 2001 makes Oliver it’s a girldad. That really shines in this storyline. His first reaction to Mia when she escapes/is let out of the gym is “are you hurt? Did he hurt you?” he’s hyping her up, he keeps talking about Bruce’s “wild child” taking “his girl,” he’s actually explaining things about Bruce's m.o. and disposition to her, just being a great father all in all. And not to cornplate, but he makes a little joke about hating pineapple on pizza to some goons and Mia agrees with him pretty close after the Winick issue where she says it’s her favorite to the Teen Titans (another point of contrast with Bruce in the Mia-Jason parallel this storyline centers on: Oliver takes Mia to join the titans specifically so she can have a support system, while Jason was established to interact with them only behind Bruce’s back, under the pretense that he’d be punished for working with them, and dies isolated from his peers) which reads like she’s lying just so she can keep agreeing with her dad?? Mia Dearden cutest of all time! They both eat the pizza anyways...

I'm biased, but I just think it's kinda sweet that he continuously refers to Jason as "kiddo," "this kid," "wild child," etc. Like even mid-fight. idk Ollie acknowledging his actual age just hits, king of actually understanding the parental relationship between a sidekick and the hero who adopts him while Bruce makes a point of referring to both Jason and Mia exclusively as partners, charges, etc. all comic. Like it's ROUGH his direct response to GA calling him a hell of a father is admitting he has failings as a "mentor," both emphasized in quotes and bolded. Jason's wrong in the Mia conversation specifically about their fathers being the same, not because they aren't genuinely disconnected from his and Mia's backgrounds, they are, but because Oliver is a genuinely active parent, unbeknownst to Jason. And it's a leap in logic to think Mia's in the same spot, but with his reference to go off of? It's just a really fucking tough example to work off of, that he's internalized as the standard. But in reality, Ollie's... kinda killing it?