I would LOVE to hear your aro Hal thoughts if you don’t mind sharing?
[re:] (Sorry in advance there are absolutely no issue citations; I have saved so many pages in random places without labeling them.)
I don't know if I'd even call it having thoughts so much as having...an incomplete collection of Hal...saying things?
And having things said about him?
And he does this very familiar weasel jink when asked certain types of questions.
Like the general direction of authorial intent here is presumably that he's a ~playboy~ who ~can't be tied down~,
but we rarely see him...like...with anybody. He's an informed attribute playboy who's had a handful of onscreen flings that tend to be complete disasters with significantly less chemistry than a poorly measured baking soda volcano, and other than that there's Carol, who he's been failing to marry with high agitation for sixty-five years at this point. Like in cape comics it's standard for your obvious endgame A couple to take twenty or thirty years to get around to that, but sixty is excessive. Like even Alicia Masters and the Thing managed it faster and they kept getting put off because it stressed out too many Marvel writers to contemplate monsterfucking. (And other less comedic factors but this post isn't about that.)
And every time Hal tries to go steady with Carol he acts like he's dying, even though he clearly loves her and holds having her in his life in extremely high priority.
Like he is not enjoying a playboy lifestyle he doesn't want to give up. He has tried very hard to settle down several times, but he always panics and bolts at the last second like someone who's run out of the willpower¹ to keep holding onto an electrified rod--except when he's rescued by deus ex machina.
And it's also pretty evident that he hates himself for this and doesn't understand why he can't pass this standard life milestone, or why he keeps hurting Carol, his favorite person, trying and failing to do what they think you're supposed to. He very blatantly views his romantic failures as something that let down other people and "improving" as a sacrifice he's supposed to make for them.
When his desires come into it it's primarily in the context of him gaslighting himself about how he totally wants the things he's supposed to that won't disappoint people, definitely definitely for real this time.
As seen above, romantic success for Hal is often conflated with retiring from being Green Lantern to inject cheap drama and insert a built-in inevitable failure, framing him as staying single because he's "married to the job". This barely ever made sense but was already downright comedic by the, I want to say late 70's?, where Carol was in on the secret identity and John and Katma were pulling off extremely successful GL/GL dating in the same book. At this point it's complete nonsense, so writers have been pulling harder on framing Hal as a disorganized man-child with commitment issues who's just sort of arbitrarily rendered undateable by being a committed superhero, something which, although it's a classic source of drama, has not hindered any of DC's other characters to this degree this consistently.
In conclusion: This aro man does not know what aromanticism is despite being one degree of separation from Connor Hawke, which is ruining his life and his ability to have any self esteem. Him and Carol desperately need someone to tell them what queerplatonic relationships are so they can stop doing these wretched I'm-not-touching-you kisses.
Also he's been dressing up as the aromantic flag since 1959. Okay now I'm done.
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