fabula-unica:

I would argue two things. Actually, that’s a lie, I will argue seventeen things all at once, I will fight myself if I have to, but my point is: a) I don’t write an overly intellectual Hal, I write a whipsmart Hal who covers a lot of his more overtly intellectual tendencies. And b) is, look, this guy graduated from the Air Force Academy. Service appointments are not handed out like lollies; they go to the best of the best of the best. You absolutely hands down DO NOT graduate from Annapolis or West Point or the AFA if you are not borderline genius in terms of mathematical prowess and acumen. The guy is fucking smart, all right? That’s just canon. But pilots – they are this strange cultural crossing point, you know? Because on the one hand before you qualify to sit in the cockpit of a fighter jet you have got to be a borderline fucking mathematical genius. But on the other hand, there is no more ruthlessly machismo culture than pilot culture, so what does that give you? A hell of a lot of overly testosteroned dudebros who read Bronte on the sly, is what it gives you. I have some personal experience with pilots, and I can tell you this is true. They are smart as fucking hell, but socialized not to display it. I see nothing in canon to contradict this interpretation, and everything to support it. Does he have Bruce’s level of erudition? Hell no. Nobody does. But I think of him as a voracious and indiscriminate reader – information, you know? The more information the better. So I maintain (and point it out whenever I can) that Hal’s bookshelf/kindle library is fucking terrifying in the sheer array of bizarre things it contains. The part that is my interpretation is the motivation for being that kind of reader, and I go back and forth on that one. Either a) he read what he could whenever he could, whenever he got enough access as a kid, in order to escape from his hellish surroundings, or b) he read like a house afire once he got to the Academy and realized how wide was the gulf between what his peers knew and what he knew, and he stayed up till all hours tearing through as many basic reading lists as he could – stupid lists he got off the internet about “twenty books everyone needs to have read” and “the ultimate great books quiz” off buzzfeed, that kind of shit. I do not think his first year at the Academy was an easy one. I think he was made to feel the gulf in more ways than one, and that part is just my own interpretation of the character. But the smart-as-hell Hal is canon, as far as I’m concerned.