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Scrolling through AO3 and saw something I wasn't expecting: Hal and Jason fics. And usually, the Jason Todd-ification of DC fandom is not my cup of tea. But. There's an interesting concept there. Just not one I've ever personally seen addressed.
And that's:
Hal actually fucking did it.
Every single thing Jason fantasized about at the height of his wrath? Hal actually did it. Hal killed his mentor and his tormentor, Sinestro, with his own hands. And he decimated the friends that didn't stop his tragedy, killed the comrades that didn't care for his grief, and reduced his all-mighty masters to nothing. He actually ripped Henshaw to shreds.
Hal is the dog that bit back. The dog that not only bit the hand that fed, but went for the throat next.
Hal is the League member that went bad. There's many parallels there to Jason's narrative, should one want to look for them.
Moreover, Hal's pain became a palpable, all-consuming thing that devoured everything. Hal's tragedy, his grief and his rage and his pain, was so great it caused a literal Crisis (the second crisis ever! Out of only seven!), tore reality apart, erased entire timelines. It had long-lasting effects on the entire universe for years to come. (On a more personal note for Jason: It hurt Batman. On a deep, psychological level.)
It mattered.
But it also did not help. It didn't make Hal feel better. It didn't fix anything, despite how desperately Hal believed it would. It, in fact, made everything worse. Hal regretted all of it.
And I think Jason Todd reckoning with that tale would actually be a genuinely interesting way to explore his character.
I'm not caught up enough to know whether these two characters have ever interacted in canon, but I think I'm well-read enough to say: probably not. And if they did, probably only superficially.
But I think there is room for a very interesting conversation between these two characters.
Hal being basically the embodiment of Vengeance for a time is also an interesting element, if the timelines were shifted around so that Jason crawled out the grave before Hal's rebirth. Like. There's a foundation for one hell of an interesting dynamic here.
one of the little details i've noticed about the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe specifically—book AND movie both!—is the implicit implication that the white witch's spell did more than just make it always winter and never christmas. i think it froze everything there, including time. for instance, tumnus talks about narnia before things were frozen as though he lived it himself, and by his own admission, that was over a hundred years ago. (he does this in book and movie both iirc but it definitely stands out in the movie.) and you say, okay, well do fauns just live a long time? maybe, but then tumnus is referred to as now being "middle-aged" in hahb, implying he ages more normally once narnia is no longer frozen. the beavers, too, speak similarly, but more than that, in the book, think about the dam. if he built it after the river froze, it wouldn't be properly dammed, but the river there is described as being frozen very specifically after being dammed, as well as looking like it froze all at once (due to magic). and beavers, even Talking Beavers, wouldn't live a hundred years, especially considering our knowledge of how bree and hwin aged fairly normally for horses in hahb. so like. imagine everyone in narnia is just as frozen as the land. never aging. never dying. only being turned to stone. imagine your dam has been unfinished for decades. imagine there hasn't been a child born there for a hundred years. not until the sons and daughters of our world brought hope and magic and spring again.