so ive been reading the kyle rayner run
another member of the server, everyone is nice and cool, you should totally join
I just wanted to promote a Discord Group I'm a part of that's really fun and welcoming! Gamers, fan fic writers, and more- every type of Destiny fan is welcome but we mostly like to share ideas for more O14 fan content and encourage each other. If you love Saint-14 and Osiris and are looking for a place to commiserate about the curse that has befallen both their houses, please stop by and check us out! We'd be happy to have you!
(The blushy ghost used in the banner is not mine and was found on google and traced back to this link for credit)
This art can do ✨ bling-bling ✨
I love the range this golden foil has: from silvery white to warm gold and almost black in the shadows. Very fitting for them, I think! Always a pity to lose such things to scanning 😩
I’m a bit curious on Hal’s personality in his depictions. From what I know is that early hal was headstrong, cocky, kind of a goofball, and detached (dissociating away his fear and averse to commitment). This seems to be the version of Hal that most people write.
But then there’s the whole Parallax thing, and the Spectre run. I don’t know much about it but it seems hal gets a lot more subdued and melancholy as the spectre. And then after that he comes back as flesh and bone.
So what is he like at the end of that?
Pre-Johns and pre-Parallax Hal tended to be more happy go lucky, stupid, and generally doe eyed hopeful "the system that fucked me over once definitely won't do it again!" type of man. He was also entitled at times. But this is mostly true up until around the time of Hard Traveling Heroes, which is when he starts to be heartbroken and melancholic, traits that persist until the climax of Emerald Twilight.
A lot of people say Emerald Twilight came from nowhere and I disagree. I think those people weren't paying attention, because all the signs were there. Hal had been steadily becoming more disillusioned and melancholic through the 70s and 80s until we get to the 90s, where that heartbreak gets amplified to the nth degree. Hal didn't go from stupid to mad with grief without a transition period in the middle. But a lot of people think once a run from x writer ends, it no longer counts for the next one, and so they say the tragedy came from nowhere.
At the very start of the 90s, Hal has a lot of suicidal ideation going on. The run itself begins with him more or less saying "There’s nowhere else to go" (paraphrasing) and throwing himself off a cliff. He waits until he's almost crashing head first into the ground to pull himself out of there using his ring. He's flirting with the thought of death.
He is also self sabotaging. He pulls back from everyone and turns himself into a homeless man who lives on the road because he's looking for a sense of self, a meaning to life he has lost. He becomes a seasonal worker because he needs something to do, but those jobs never last because the life he's trying to leave behind (in the shape of Guy Gardner) keeps metaphorically knocking on the door and dragging him back to Green Lantern.
Even when he comes back, he chooses to do solitary things. For example: exploring space to recruit more GLs, that keeps interactions to a minimum. It's all things that are brewing in a pressure cooker that blows up when Coast City is destroyed in front of Hal's eyes and the hero community drops the ball. Hard.
They all say well, it’s not MY city. They all say get over it. Clark goes and creates a monument using scraps of the very bomb that killed everyone and everything Hal knew all his life, and immediately after that Clark is in Metropolis enjoying the sun and saying aaaaah. what a nice day.
And Hal doesn't snap immediately. The tension is there, but at first he does try to keep it together until it becomes impossible. He tries to reconstruct Coast City, but there are limits to what the ring can do. The one thing he could depend on, his will power, is not enough. He is not enough. His grief and anger become so big that his mind just... fractures. He snaps. No one's listening and no one's helping, so he will take matters into his own hands and make. it. right.
This Hal is angry. This Hal has a heart with a hole that threatens to kill him at any moment but he endures because he cannot die until he does what needs to be done. This Hal refuses the help that comes too late, he has killed his friends, he has destroyed the corps, he has killed Sinestro. Kyle arrives like a lighthouse in the middle of the storm but for Hal it's too late because he has driven his ship into the cliff and is letting it sink with himself still in it.
He is mad at himself and mad at the world for failing Coast City and all the innocent lives lost. He almost becomes a god, and is perceived as a god by some due to the power he now possesses. There are moments when clarity hits him and the old wounded heartbroken Hal shows his face, and he is dying. His pain is so palpable. His anguish. The old Hal wants help. But Parallax Hal does not want to be saved.
Of course, the status quo changes with the events of Final Night. Hal sacrifices himself to save the Earth. He sees that only in death will his anger stop, and he sees that he's the only one who can do what no one else could do for Coast City. It's a no brainer. He sacrifices himself and burns himself to a crisp reigniting the sun. Hal doesn’t expect to come back. He doesn’t want to come back. This is HIS final night.
Unfortunately, The Spectre had other plans. His anger morphs into straight up depression because now he is alive enough to deal with the outcome of what he did as Parallax. He has to live with the tragedy of what he lost and the tragedy of what he did. Few people stand by his side and want to give him a chance. Very few people recognize there's good in him. Most want to see him dead and gone. He himself wants to be dead and gone. Helen, his niece, being there definitely helps him not lose it, not lose himself. She is his hope. She is the innocence he lost and he will never get back.
After all of this, he is more grounded, mature. Still melancholic. Still haunted by everything that happened. He is cocky, of course, and self assured, because at the end of the day those are the things he can cling to with some sort of safety net. But they're also things he uses to keep the raw wounds hidden.
Post Johns? Yeah like more than half of this is lost because Hal’s the greatest hero ever and he can do no wrong. He is headstrong, overconfident, cocky, and ultimately good, but he is missing like half of his soul.
[🚧 WIP] Don't mind me, I'm just trying to remember how to hold a pen
commission for @ zeteram (twitter)
Good to see grandpa back to normal
I don't know if this post will break containment, but will you like/reblog if you are or know a man who is asexual? All of the people in my life seem convinced that being Ace is a 'girl thing' and that Ace men don't exist!
i sometimes make my own posts but this is really just my reblog hell
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