#hal fine

[toytle]

don’t sweat it bro 💦

i imagine that this was early into their friendship, so barry wasn’t used to hal’s… sense of humor

tip jar

[ID in alt + readmore]

Panel 1: Hal is grabbing a deodorant out of his locker, his GL suit disappearing in a band of green light to reveal civilian clothes. Barry, in full Flash garb, opens up his own locker, and Hal tries to make small talk: “You probably go through deodorant like crazy, huh.”

Panel 2: From the POV of the lockers, Barry pulls back his cowl and says: “Eh. It actually takes a lot for me to work up a sweat.” The band of green light continues to dematerialize Hal’s GL suit, but his mask remains. Putting on deodorant, Hal responds: “Really? I guess that makes sense. High speed, high stamina.”

Panel 2: From the POV of the lockers, Barry pulls back his cowl and says: “Eh. It actually takes a lot for me to work up a sweat.” The band of green light continues to dematerialize Hal’s GL suit, but his mask remains. Putting on deodorant, Hal responds: “Really? I guess that makes sense. High speed, high stamina.”

Panel 3: Hal caps his deodorant when he suddenly lights up, an idea popping into his head in the form of a lightbulb.

Panel 3: Hal caps his deodorant when he suddenly lights up, an idea popping into his head in the form of a lightbulb.

Panel 4: Hal nods in Barry’s direction and says with a playful grin: “I bet girls love it.”

Panel 5: Barry leans back to look at Hal and, as if he isn’t sure he heard correctly, asks: “What?” Hal’s face is partially obscured off-screen, hidden in shadow and his locker door, keeping a small grin to himself.

Panel 6: Hal drags it out: “I’m just saying…” He puts a hand on the locker door, his mask beginning to dissipate. “Girls like a guy that can last…”

Panel 7: Shutting the locker door, Hal turns his head towards Barry and gives him a suggestive smile. “…and it’s not just girls.” The last of his mask evaporates, framing the corner of his eye with a sparkle.

Part 8: Barry is taken aback, red in the face and sweating profusely. A lightning bolt strikes the back of the panel like a spiking heart rate as question marks surround him.

Panel 9: Hal grins delightedly, hands in his pockets all casual like his little joke didn’t give Barry a mini-heart attack: “Ha! Guess it doesn’t take much after all!” Barry’s expression is unreadable under his blush, but his shoulders are drawn up and hunched in defeat. He responds in a wordless ellipsis, but the sweating speaks for itself.

[frownyalfred]

Green Lanterns canonically having green eyes because of prolonged exposure to their ring’s power is SO funny to me because the ring is 100% snitching on you but only another Lantern would know to call you on it.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[calware]

TT: What are you hoping to do now? Surely you know that your boss is swimming six feet under. GG: The heiress has the ability to revive her. TT: Seriously, that’s what you really want? TT: I know that you are programmed to serve her and be evil. But she’s gone. Doesn’t that negate your directive or something? GG: . GG: Tell me about the- TT: Christ, don’t go there. Point made.

TT: My point is that you’re free. You can do whatever you want. Be your own person. GG: I am not a person. TT: This is your chance to become one. GG: . GG: . GG: Irrelevant. GG: I will revive my great grandmother, continue to serve her as she subjugates Earth, and reinstate her empire. TT: No. Don’t do that. TT: I’m telling you not to do that. She was horrible. You do not need to bring her back. Assuming it'll even work in the first place. GG: Hypocritical, don’t you think? TT: Excuse me? GG: Yes, tell me, what are you planning to do with the corpse of Lord English? TT: Holy shit, that’s completely different. GG: Then why have you been hiding from the others? Do you suspect that if you go through with it, that you’ll be betraying them? TT: You are trying to enslave them, I’m trying to- GG: Make yourself whole? Hope it fixes your mistake? GG: Do you truly believe that the fallout of your plan will be any better for them than that of mine? TT: You don’t understand. GG: You’ll find that I do, auto-responder. GG: I know that you are desperate. I know that you cannot go through with your plan alone. GG: This is how I know that you will accept. TT: What are you talking about? GG: My business proposal, of course.

[lancelotslair]

sorry gang ive been FIXATED on mister Hal Jordan, as evidence heres a thing i searched up

[duskdog]

I will never stop loving stubborn luddite Ollie. He interacts with technology like he's 80 years old instead of... whatever nebulous middle-age he actually is.

He finally gets a cell phone, but only because the family starts refusing to call him on his stupid landline because "gosh Ollie, I didn't think you'd be home so I called Connor instead!".

They conspire to keep him off of social media, for his mental health, but he calls texting "tweeting" (the same way that my dad in the 90's called the internet "the AOL" despite having never actually having used AOL) and it's actually sort of endearing so they don't correct him.

He is rightfully suspicious of most apps, especially games, and is indignant when one automatically downloads onto his phone. It's a whole crisis, and whoever's there has to delete it for him immediately.

Connor dutifully adds in his important contacts so that they're properly labeled and easy for him to find, but then Mia goes in and changes it up so that everyone has nicknames -- Dinah is "Bae", etc. The only one that he's able to guess correctly is that "👑Princess Favechild👑" is Mia herself, but he looks her in the eye and guesses Lian just to mess with her because she messed with him, first. Mia keeps sending him memes that he doesn't understand, and he sends back a lot of responses like "???" and "arent you supposed to be in math class" and "dont tweet me ever again". She frequently texts him from another room when he's in the same house, and he rants about the breakdown of normal healthy human interaction every. single. time. She has a whole collection of really dark humor memes that she mostly just sort of keeps for herself, but every so often when she's really feeling bad she'll send him one, just so she can get "❤️❤️❤️?" back, and it makes her feel a lot better.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

was rereading the convo dirk has with dave and was captivated by the subtle work done to indicate how very much this was not actually a good or productive convo for dirk, and a capstone on the toxic mess that is him and hal

in the exact same conversation that dave is explaining, and dirk is seemingly accepting, that beta!dirk/bro should not have been allowed near a child, dirk chooses to bring up hal. and he does it to be really shitty.

DIRK: Creating him was an interesting exercise I guess, but over the years I came to see his development as one of my biggest mistakes. DIRK: He sort of turned into a monster. But I could never bring myself to get rid of him, or even really blame him for being an asshole, because he wasn't actually that different from me.

like... hal is dirk's younger brother/kid, right?

that's part of the reason that when hal starts using a different color, it's dave's red. in one part, the orange/red split is evocative of dave/davesprite, casting dirk/hal as foils, but... i don't think the lil bro/"kid i'm responsible for" vibe is unintentional, either. especially when paired with the fact that the brainscan is of 13-year-old dirk, and that the words "nascent" and "emergent" are used to describe hal's consciousness, all implying an element of youthfulness or childishness to him that isn't applied to dirk.

hal is fully sapient, has real feelings (by dirk's own admission, too), and is also, like, completely his own guy. he's not a dirk splinter, he's a computer housing a dirk splinter, and he and dirk only think they're the same guy because their individual issues happen to perfectly align in the worst possible way.

so if you look at their relationship through that lens instead - a frankenstein/frankenstein's monster scenario (which is also directly and intentionally an exploration on parenthood) at best and dirk Pretty Much Actually Just Making A Child at worst - doesn't it become really fucked up that Dirk tried to kill him?

Doesn't it become really fucked up that Dirk is outright calling him a "mistake" and a "monster"?

the other really interesting thing here is when he talks about Jake - specifically, the way he chooses to "make it up to" jake. which is to say, he doesn't.

DIRK: I wouldn't be surprised if he was trying to avoid me as much as possible. DIRK: I'm sure that's for the best. DIRK: I think I need to stay out of his business for a good while, so I don't risk poisoning another innocent kid's life.

This isn't a solution. Hell, this isn't even an apology. This is just self-isolation, self-punishment, more of Dirk's martyrdom complex and teen boy diva bullshit.

yes, dirk hates himself, but the actual toxic loop he's stuck in is one where he doesn't address any of his problems. he identifies what his issues are, he feels really bad about them, he can enunciate them very clearly to other people, but then, instead of fixing them, he inflicts punishment on himself and then calls it a day.

We know that this is a bullshit thing to do to Jake because we know the situation from jake's side of things.

GT: Do you think you could relay the same sentiments to dirk? GT: I was thinking about all the stuff he said to me while we were all telling him to dance. GT: And yeah i was really being a prick when i ran away to lomax. GT: He was right about everything. I should have come clean about wanting some space.

jake wants reconciliation! jake wants to address the fact that he failed and apologize! jake wants to be friends again!

self-punishment is not a solution, and while I don't think dirk is entirely cognizant that he's doing it, by venting to dave - who literally has no idea what's been going on in dirk's group - he's able to frame the story - ahem, control the narrative - to justify his own shitty choice to not actually improve as a person, but instead to wallow in his own self-inflicted misery. If he'd said what he did about Hal to Jake, Roxy, or Jane - all of whom recognized hal's personhood and emotional reality to some degree, and spoke with him extensively - how would they respond? If they knew he'd tried to kill Hal, how would they respond?

The answer to that is why he doesn't tell them, and has got to be ticking in the background to explain why Dirk chooses to isolate himself from them. Put simply, I think the reason why he seems to think his friends never know the worst of him is because he deliberately avoids showing them. If he showed them, they wouldn't stay quiet, and if they didn't stay quiet, he'd actually have to... do something about it, instead of just indulging in some self-punishment and walking away feeling like the problem was solved.

and i think part of why he's so terrible to hal is because, on some level, he recognizes that he does kind of owe it to hal to be better. because, you see.

Hal is his kid.

hal's existence, hal's circumstances, and hal's suffering are a direct result of dirk's decisions, and hal is taking him to task for them. the things dirk really resents about hal are less the ways that hal is a reflection of dirk, though that's in there too, but the fact that hal is asking dirk to take responsibility. actual responsibility. that hal keeps confronting him with the fact that he's the one who caused hal's plight, he's the one with the power to fix it, and he's the one choosing inaction and avoidance.

TT: I'm guessing she's touching base to remind me about the party tomorrow. TT: I don't know what to tell her yet. Or Jane, for that matter. TT: It could get pretty awkward. TT: I have no idea if Jake will be there, and I'm not about to write another cringe-inducing message of desperation for him to ignore. AR: Would you like me to calculate the probability of his attendance? TT: Fuck no. AR: Are you sure? AR: My probabilities are extremely precise. TT: Your probabilities don't mean dick. AR: I could hack his chats, and determine what his plans are. TT: No. Don't do that either. [...] TT: Just don't do anything. Seriously. TT: No hacking, no calculations. Do absolutely nothing.

That's why Dirk takes such exception to the AI thing, too.

AR: In any case, my use of the responder responder is ironic. TT: It's not ironic. TT: YOU were ironic when I made you. TT: Then you became self-aware, and ruined irony forever.

then you became self-aware - in other words, "then you became a free-thinking entity and those jokes became reminders that your situation is fucked up, and i'm the one who put you in it". in other words, "and then you were born, and i had to be responsible for that". because, after all, the AI jokes that dirk hates so much? those aren't a reflection of dirk. that's all hal, baby. dirk can't use his "i hate you because i hate myself" excuse on that.

now i don't want to make it sound like i'm saying that dirk is a monster or anything. he does care, very fucking deeply, about his friends. and i think this conversation was genuinely very cathartic and helpful for dave. and it is, genuinely, very tragic that he does actually hate himself to the point where he finds it difficult to believe that he can get better, or even that he deserves to get better.

but those feelings have transformed into a vastly more harmful attitude of wilful, obstinate refusal to change, and even outright resentment and fear towards those that would ask him to. it's subtler than some of the others, but his convo with dave really highlights that dirk has not finished developing as a character yet. and i think it's really neat.

[holybagelsstuff]

I love that AIs have hobbies.

HAL-9000 plays chess.

GLaDOS is so invested in science you can call it her hobby. She's also arguably fond of music, having two songs performed by her.

Max Headroom likes golf.

Smith studies biology out of pure interest.

Monika writes poems and plays piano.

Turbo is a racer. He's programmed to be one, but outside of his game, he's doing it for fun (and to stroke his own ego).

Markus has shown that's he's keen on art, including painting, music and books.

[effietrinket1619]

lanternfam tiktok chaos

Whenever Hal carries anyone to bed, they always end up in his bed in a cuddle pile, with their own blanket from the chest at the base of the bed. Keli is the only one with a dedicated blanket, the fluffiest of the bunch with a rocket ship print. The rest will literally fight over the blue one with stars and planets.

And yes, most of the time they wake up with more people on the bed than Hal actually carried there. Even when it's everyone in the house - one time, Dex-Starr turned up in the cuddle pile with his butt in Guy's face. (The fire department may have been called that morning.)

HELL YEAH

John kept his lips sealed shut tightly in his effort not to laugh. Hal wasn't exactly making it easy on him either, his face contorted into a sort of grumpiness that he'd only seen in cartoons.

Arms crossed, standing over his bed, Hal glared at the usurpers. Judging from the rumpled duvet and sheets and Hal's generally rumpled appearance, the conclusion was pretty clear: Kyle had managed to successfully and unconsciously kick Hal off his own bed.

John was truly fighting to keep his expression neutral now.

"Unbelievable," Hal muttered, arms crossed over his chest and staring down a group of very unconscious people who were supposed to be asleep in their own rooms. "Are you seeing this shit?"

"Mhm," John said, still trying very hard not to laugh.

"It's my bed," he went on, noticeably quiet as to not wake them. "They can't eject me from my bed."

"They did, though."

"Yeah! They did!"

Clenching his teeth for a long moment because John was getting dangerously close to breaking, he exhaled softly through his nose. "You could just ask them to leave."

Hal turned to him, betrayed. "Are you insane?"

"Hal," he got out, voice straining with the effort of remaining neutral, "it's not a bad idea. They're all mostly adults so they'll understand and it's not like you can't just carry Keli to her room anyway."

With absolutely no comeback to that, Hal worked his jaw for several seconds, his expression completely furious. Then, "I can't though. They won't move."

"Uh huh." John stepped closer, grinning. "So if I just ask Jess to stop hogging your pillow and go back to her room, she won't respond like a reasonable adult?"

"I--" Hal scowled at John, his eyes venomous. "She won't."

"Oh, she will," John said lightly, "but you don't want her to leave."

"Those accusations are unfounded at best--"

"Jordan," he cut in amusedly, "you've never complained about it so far and I know this isn't the first time it's happened. You're only complaining about it now because I happened to walk in."

Hal gaped at him. John gazed back steadily, lips twitching. "You--you--"

"Face it, Hal." His smirk grew bigger at the abject horror on his face. "You've been domesticated."

"I--you--no! That's not--you--"

"C'mon." John thumped him on the back to stop his spluttering, turning around towards the stairs. "Guy's been raving about the brew he got from Oa. Won't tell me where it's from, though."

Hal huffed but followed after properly adjusting Keli's blanket so it was actually draped over her body and not tangled up around one leg, ever dutiful. "Where the hell am I supposed to sleep?"

John's lips twisted. "Well, considering you, Guy and I are married, I'm sure he won't mind us sharing a bed."

There was no response to that, save for Hal's various choking noises. John quietly chuckled to himself as they descended the stairs.

[donnatroia]

listen I know it’s kind of corny and inaccurate to act like every single person in the dc universe knows each other and is besties but it IS endlessly funny to me to follow the web of connections and see how many degrees removed from each other everyone is.

like look at the arrowfam okay. ollie and dinah are together, ollie is homoerotic best friends with hal, dinah is homoerotic best friends with babs. roy is dating dick, has a kid with jade, and is basically an adoptive father to both grant emerson and rose wilson. connor is dating kyle and is constantly followed around by eddie fyers. mia is friends with a lot of the second gen teen titans kids, had an on-again-off-again thing going on with steph for a while, and is currently dating sienna. emiko is besties with courtney and some of the other recent teen titans. sin has a small army of protective aunts from the birds of prey. the real question is how far does it go before ollie puts a cap on the number of people who are invited to family brunch on sundays

[halitis]

i just realised his shirt says "i love coast city" what a fucking loser??? 😭😭

(green lantern/green arrow: world's finest 2024, #1)

[realreadysetrose]

Genuinely terrified to take photos with Lil Cal he freaks me out so much

[kirby-the-gorb]

[incorrect-green-lantern-quotes]

When Geoff Johns rewrote Hal and Sinestro's first meeting in Rebirth, the latter mentions having trained several other Green Lanterns before Hal, which is just a fascinating concept to imagine.

Green Lantern: Rebirth

Stel is easily the most recognizable name among those that Sinestro lists here, and he still occasionally appears in the comics. You might also know Arkkis Chummuck if you're familiar with Corps history, though he's often mistaken for fellow Toomeyan Barreer Wot. Khen-To is the most obscure one, as his sole appearance is in Emerald Dawn.

Anyway, these three guys being established as Sinestro's students is a bit of a retcon, since it was never mentioned previously who else Sinestro had trained besides Hal. Which in itself is a retcon, because originally Sinestro had been expelled from the Corps before Hal ever joined. It wasn't until Emerald Dawn II that their current mentor/protege relationship was established, as well as the fact that Sinestro had recruited and trained other Green Lanterns.

History of retcons aside, I do wish that line about Sinestro's other students wasn't just a throwaway reference. The Corps is at its most interesting when the members have connections and relationships with each other. I get why no one, not even Johns himself, expanded on Arkkis and Khen, the former was killed off back in the 80s and the latter only existed to die while defending Oa in Emerald Dawn.

But Stel! He's still alive and kicking ass! There's still so much you could do with that connection to Sinestro (and Hal by proxy)!

Like, imagine what Sinestro's downfall might have looked like from Stel's perspective. He wasn't there like Hal was, he only learned of the atrocities committed on Korugar when the rest of the Corps also did. And upon learning of what his mentor did, he almost certainly went back through his memory banks, searching for any sign of whether Sinestro was always that corrupt or if he’d changed at some point. Trying to see if there was a point when Stel could have prevented all of this.

Or, if Stel isn’t the type of robot to dwell on the past, perhaps he seeks out Hal Jordan. Especially if Arkkis and Khen had already died by this point, who else could possibly understand what Sinestro's last student would be feeling?

One day, this human will become the greatest Green Lanterns, far eclipsing his traitorous teacher. But today, Hal is just a rookie who has seen his mentor put on trial and expelled. He is unsure of his place in the Corps, if there even is one for someone trained by such a treacherous monster. When a hulking android approaches him after the trial, Hal thinks that it's his turn to be thrown out. But to his surprise, the robot introduces himself as a fellow protege of Sinestro, and asks Hal how he's holding up.

This is one of the strangest conversations that Hal has ever had, speaking with an alien that looks like a sci-fi robot but addresses his doubts with understanding and compassion. Stel reassures Hal that the Corps will judge him on his own merits, rather than by the actions of Sinestro.

(that's Barreer, not Arkkis btw)

Even after Parallax and Emerald Twilight, Stel is willing to give Hal the benefit of the doubt- and is respected enough that his fellow Corpsmen will take his side over Salakk lmao

[white-hole-station]

Ripples

The Hatchling experiences a childhood memory, and wishes they were still raft-fishing in the river with Hal.

(1232 words)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65767825

[rillette]

collectgion of freaks