Why willpower? Why not an actual emotion like courage? Well, emotions are volatile, and the more obvious choices have been shown to brainwash their Lantern users. Thus, the neutral power is a state of mind rather than an emotion.
Rage and Love are the most difficult emotions to control because they exert the most amount of influence on their wielders, and are also the most powerful. This is because two of the most difficult people to reason with, regardless of Real Life or fiction, are those who are madly in love (as they will dismiss any concerns one might have towards their target of affections, no matter how valid), and those who are consumed by anger (for the opposite reason of Love; where someone consumed by anger/hatred will brush off anything that makes their target of hatred/anger even remotely sympathetic and not deserving of their absolute fury). Mad Love, Revenge Before Reason, Fury-Fueled Foolishness, The Power of Love, and The Power of Hate are all tropes for a reason.
In the comics, the normally dainty, delicate, and generally softening emotion of love is represented on the emotional spectrum by the Predator: a huge, intimidating, reptilian biped. Basically, it's a purple dinosaur that's all about love.
Parallax is, in science, essentially the difference of the perceived position of an object when viewed from different lines of sight. Now, why name the representative of fear after that? Because everyone sees fear differently.
Originally, the name was chosen because others perceived Hal as changing when he became a villain, when he believed the only thing that changed was his perspective. Fridge Logic set in almost immediately, with Hal himself frequently insisting both that he hadn't changed and that he had.
Let's not forget the compassion entity of the Indigo Tribe. Proselyte comes from proselytism, meaning conversion. What does the Indigo Tribe do? Brainwashing sociopaths into becoming empathic heroes. Aka convert them. Well done Geoff, well done.
Out of all the corps, the Star Sapphires stick out like sore thumbs, with their Stripperiffic outfits (while the other Corps have the standard Hard Light suits) and their tendency to only choose women. Why would this be the case? Well, considering their entity, the Predator, is a guy...
Even funnier in that context, though probably more directly relevant to the sexist recruiting bias: we eventually learn that that Zamarons, the founders of the Star Sapphires, are an all-female race of immortals... who were in fact originally the females of Maltus - the same race that gave us the Oans aka Guardians of the Universe, who were originally (before Kyle Rayner rebooted their species/Corps for them) conspicuously all male and depicted as hyper-logical. The ones who became the Zamarons left because they thought the men of their race were a bunch of emotion-rejecting idiots committing foolish "sacrilege" by trying to live without things like Love, while the males were happy to see them go for embracing such an unstable emotion in lieu of cool logic. Yes, that's right: the cultures of the Zamarons and the Oans are literally the Western stereotypes of men (logical to the point of insensitive) and women (the emotive ones/loving ones), and the Star Sapphires are prone to recruiting females because they no longer trust most men. Interestingly, it's indicated that while the Violet Light of Love can make you nuts at its extremes (the Zamarons even eventually switch from crystals to Power Rings for recruitment because the gems were exerting too much influence over the hosts) going without love or compassion entirely can also make a strong-willed person dangerous as hell (see: Sinestro's fear-based fascism). So on a meta level the Star Sapphires vs Green Lantern Corps/Zamarons vs Oans thing? One giant Deconstruction of the Mars and Venus Gender Contrast. The answer to which is apparently that both sides are wrong when taken to the extreme; the answer is a happy middle somewhere in between.
While the emotional spectrum has nothing to do with the chakra system, you can see some influences in the symbol designs. Both the Red Lantern Symbol and the Muladhara have four sections, both the Indigo Tribe symbol and the Ajna have two petal-like structures around a circle, et cetera.
Kyle Rayner is the butt of a lot of jokes because his mask makes him look like a crab. But it serves it's purpose quite well of hiding Kyle's identity, as opposed to Hal's much less ridiculous looking mask, which makes him look like... Hal Jordan in a Domino mask, which was hilariously pointed out in the 2011 film.
With Lights Out over, it's readily apparent why the Guardians assigned only a single lantern to each sector; they knew of the possibility of the Dimming already, and refused to accelerate it.
I always got a little bugged by Hal Jordan being declared 'the best' of the Green Lanterns, but I realized something. Of all the human Lanterns, he has the most balance. The Green Lantern need to be brave, imaginative, and have strong will power, and Guy, Kyle, and John all excel at one of these attributes (Guy is really brave, Kyle is really imaginative and creative, and John's will power is said to be so great its stronger than the ring can handle), but Hal has the right balance of all three of those. None of them are slouches in either trait, but Hal is the best because he excels at all three of these attributes.
It's surprising that such a non-racist guy like Sodam Yat - who even has budding UST with a member of another species - could have come from a planet of Absolute Xenophobes like Daxam, isn't it? Except as we see in the horrifying treatment of the corpses of aliens they've found (a taxidermy museum where they're made to look much more frightening than they were when alive), the adults on Daxam actively use fear to instill hatred of aliens in the next generation. So, what, growing up in such a culture, could have possibly changed Sodam Yat's mind? Why, meeting an actual alien, who befriended him after crashing his ship on his world, of course! Sure, classic "get to know them and realize you're not so different" Aesop, right? Except that the same Aesop does not stick with the adults on Daxam, even after Arisia, an alien who was Sodam Yat's partner in the Green Lantern Corps no less, helps them expel the Sinestro Corps invaders from their world. So it still begs the question of what made Sodam Yat so different from the other Daxamites? Well, he had to be willing to be around said alien to make friends in the first place, despite having been raised in such a hateful, fear-mongering culture, right? Except that's just it: it's a fear-mongering culture. And Green Lanterns universally have the Ability to Overcome Great Fear. He was able to work up the nerve to interact with the friendly alien and have his whole view of other worlds and peoples completely shifted, because he didn't give in to his culture's attempts to instill fear in him. Folks, Sodam Yat ended up not being a racist like his parents, for the exact same reason that he was chosen as a Green Lantern.
Regarding the Star Sapphires:
People have been joking for years that Star Sapphires' uniforms are "not actually colored like a sapphire" and in recent years there's been a lot of snark about how the "Violet" Light wielders are "actually wearing pink, not 'violet'!" However, turns out that sapphires actually do come in both pink and purple shades; in fact, corundum, the mineral that "sapphire" is the common term for, comes in every color and save for red corundum (which is called "ruby"), all of these colors of corundum are still called "sapphires". Whether you're looking at the pink or purple ones there are literally sapphires in Real Life that actually match the Star Sapphires' uniform colors in any continuity. Additionally, careful examination shows even the old-school "pink" Star Sapphire uniforms are colored some shade of Fuchsia or Magenta...which though they appear "pink" to our eyes are classified also as a shade of "red-violet". When you consider that "indigo" as a color is actually classified as a shade of "blue-violet" the fact that Star Sapphires usually wear shades of red-violet actually makes a ton of sense because it means they really are using different colors of light than the Indigo Tribe.
To quote a gem stone website's description of the folklore surrounding the stone: '"Sapphires are seen as the guardians of love. When given as a gift they enhance love and tune your spirits to one another. Also, sapphires have been used to banish envy and jealousy as well as promote fidelity in marriage. Pink is one of the most coveted colors in fine sapphire." Not only does this seem to show the creators of the Star Sapphire concept Did The Research a bit, the folklore becomes even more appropriate when you consider the "tune your spirits to one another" thing matches perfectly with one of the modern Star Sapphire abilities, namely the "tether" ability that helps a Star Sapphire either find an "Eternal Love" in danger or find their own loved one(s), no matter where they are in the universe, and bring them to them.
And while we're at it, can we stop and appreciate how the name of the ancient Greek poet Sappho - whose name is now synonymous with "women in love with women", as is the term "lesbian", itself referring to the little all-female artistic commune she used to lead on the island of Lesbos - actually means "Sapphire"...and the Star Sapphires are a group, almost entirely composed of women, that are devoted to the notion of Love? One wonders if this was deliberate, or just accidentally so on-point.
In the Rebirth Issues where Hal fights against Sinestro, he uses fighter constructs that look like F-16 fighter jets. This seems weird, as Hal was a experimental jet tester, and would've had access to the latest and most advanced equipment (the F-16 was first made in 1973 and is in production to the present day), it would make more sense for him to have a 5th generation fighter (i.e. an F-22 or an F-35) as a construct, as those are the most advanced fighters currently being made. But Hal Jordan hasn't been a pilot in years, in comic book or regular time. The fridge brilliance is that he was a weapons tester when they were testing the F-16, or was trained in it. Since constructs aren't about the actual firepower (usually) but the will behind it, he probably went with the fighter he knew best instead of the most dangerous one.
Also, (American) 5th generation fighters aren't actually focused on raw firepower, but instead rely on stealth technology and advanced sensors (the idea being that the first to see the enemy usually wins), so they actually carry fewer weapons than 4th generation fighters. Stealth and advanced sensors are kind of useless when it's a construct, so Hal is probably sticking with the F-16 for the practical reason that it is just better suited to being a construct.
While online I found someone wondering why Well-Intentioned Extremist Sinestro would recruit the likes of Romat Ru, Kryb, Scivor or any of the other 7196 criminals and psychopaths that make up his corps of fear as opposed to Knight Templars such as himself and then it hit me that that was the point, he gathered the most dangerous criminals in 3600 space sectors to make up the Sinestro Corps because those are the type of people who the guardians would be most likely to authorize lethal force against just like Sinestro wanted
If Carol Ferris herself can recognize that the Predator entity is not actually "preying" on anybody but in fact means well but is often corrupted by its hosts in negative ways, and it's recognizably the "entity of Love"...why the hell has the name "the Predator" not yet been retconned to something with less Unfortunate Implications? Even the Star Sapphires, including Carol, failed to rename it, and they of all people should know it's not evil or "predatory"!
Because predators aren't evil either, there's no malice in a predator's actions, it is driven by hunger and instinct, similarly The Predator is not evil, but it is very dangerous, and a name like Predator makes that very clear that someone shouldn't try anything with it.
Dex-Starr was an ordinary Earth cat when the red ring chose him. He's been able to speak and reason ever since. So either all Earth cats are sapient, or the rings can uplift non-sapient beings.
Atrocitus has been trapped in the Book of the Black. Without his power ring. If a Red Lantern loses a power ring, they go into cardiac arrest. So, because of this, Atrocitus will die the moment he gets out. And since his heart was ripped out, it can never get fixed.
Obviously, Sinestro's going to turn evil in any movie sequels. But what's his motivation for putting the yellow ring on at the end of the movie?
Sinestro spent all movie believing that Fear was stronger than Will, and that it was essentially an untapped resource; he believes that Dark Is Not Evil and plans to use Fear to fight evil as a Well-Intentioned Extremist. He has witnessed his group of Green Lanterns (Will) being completely out-powered by Parallax (Fear) in a straight fight. Hal killed Parallax though trickery, not sheer strength.
Sinestro is also the mastermind behind the yellow ring, or at least the one who encouraged the Guardians into its creation. It was his project, and from his point of view it's perfect and the Guardians are holding him back, and will probably have no reason to deploy it at all with Parallax gone. So, in frustration against the restraint and perceived weakness of the Guardians, Sinestro resolves to go it alone and use what he has (directly or indirectly) created.
Perhaps Sinestro is also (more than) a little power-hungry, and as noted he sees Fear as more powerful than Will. He seems too eager to use the yellow ring, and ignore other options. He doesn't just want to see Parallax beaten, he wants to use the situation as an opportunity to "trade up" his ring.
A lot of Green Lantern villains have had this happen to them: Black Hand was recently outed as a necrophiliac, Hector Hammond is constantly trying to mindrape Hal Jordan in order to steal his memories of all of the sex he has had over the years whenever he's not having his powers jammed, the Manhunters committed an act of genocide against an entire space sector (Sector 666) that was then COVERED UP by the Guardians because they didn't want anyone to find out what their creations did (cause who would trust them to run a police force after their first police force did that) and the survivors (who were naturally pissed off at how everyone and everything they ever knew or loved was dead) were isolated to a lifeless world and left eternally crucified in terms of being made to suffer horribly so as to not give the Guardians bad publicity.
The Hector Hammond thing took on ultra-scary terms when you see him LITERALLY eating Hal's memories in Green Lantern (vol. 4) #62.
A sort of Meta-example, both of Briliance and Horror. The Blue Lantern Corps, and the Blue Rings of hope have so far been seen as the most benevolent Corps. When you look over at Warhammer Fantasy, the God of Change and Sorcery is Tzeentch, a Lord of Chaos. Most of the Blue Lantern Corps individuals are religious and saintly, and hand-chosen by a member of the Corps. Considering that some folks are unfettered in attaining their hopes, this was a good idea, but what if a Blue ring chose someone unfettered...?
Never happen. As we got to see when Jordan visited the Blue Corps' home planet, Blues pick fellow Blue recruits, whereupon they're taken to the Blue Battery and interviewed by the two Guardians who started the Blue Lantern Corps. Ganthet and Sayd weren't taking any chances on a repeat of Sinestro or Laira's father.
It gets worse. The Third Army infects/assimilates by physical contact. The Green Lantern comics have established that sentient microbes exist. If one of those species gets converted, you might not know the Third Army is coming for you until they're already in your lungs.
There's a whole story arc where the Absolute Xenophobeplanet of Daxam is invaded by the Sinestro Corps, who take up residence and make it a base, and it's up to Green Lanterns Arisia Rrab and her partner Sodam Yat - apparently the only Daxamite adult not to be a horrible anti-alien xenophobe - to deal with it. Sodam Yat is actually initially unsympathetic to his own home planet's plight, because of their horrible racism, but Arisia manages to convince him that it's their duty to save them anyway. Because they have no backup able to arrive soon enough from the GLC but Daxamites are partly descended from Kryptonians, this results in them resorting to the tactic of Sodam Yat using Ion, for whom he is the current Torchbearer, to turn Daxam's red star yellow, activating the population's hidden Superman-like powers; Arisia then trains them how to deal with their powers and use them in battle, and subsequently leads them in a successful coup against the Sinestro Corps invasion. Of course, the adult Daxamites must have missed the obvious Aesop that this means not all aliens (Arisia after all is non-native to their world) are awful, because they immediately turn on her and tell her to get the hell off their planet because now that they have superpowers, they don't need her. She calls Sodam Yat's own father a racist and punches him for his lack of gratitude in the face of his son's sacrifice - because turning the star yellow required Sodam Yat to stay inside of it - but he just smirks at her. It's a frustrating Downer Ending and we're meant to feel bad for Arisia and Sodam Yat and to be just itching to see the Daxamites' comeuppance. So it's a good thing that Ion later gets mysteriously torn out of Sodam Yat so that the star is no longer yellow, and revokes the superpowers of those xenophobic monsters, right? Wrong: Fridge Horror kicks in, because it's canonically stated that a LOT of Daxamites who were using their powers of invulnerability, flight, etc., when the star cut back to red, died from said powers suddenly going away. Which sounds like an awesome Hoist by His Own Petard, Karmic Death moment...right up until you remember that there were children on Daxam, some of whom reacted positively to Arisia in the original arc and clearly weren't yet irreversibly corrupted by their elders' racist fear-mongering (meaning, the racism is purely cultural, not genetic). Given the sheer number of Daxamites killed in the mass-depowering event, what do you think the chances of all those deaths being out of the super-racist adults are, compared to the possibility that a number of perfectly innocent, still-redeemable children just died horribly by say, being crushed by heavy objects they'd picked up, or falling to their death during an innocent aerial sports game?
If the rings always know best whom to select for power (in fact, it is explicitly said to "never [make] mistakes"), how come they didn't see Sinestro's betrayal coming?
Because it didn't. The ring chose the right person in terms of power, Sinestro is one of the most powerful Green Lanterns in history. But the ring didn't choose someone with the right moral code.
Wait wait wait what? Hasn't anybody noticed that of all of the "emotions" on the Emotional Spectrum, only four of them are actual emotions? (Rage, love, hope, and fear). Will and avarice are just character traits, as is compassion, though the later-most can be induced or bolstered by empathy or sympathy.
I had always understood them as more motivations, than emotions. You would act out of rage, greed, fear, will, hope, compassion or love because they are what give you the strength to perform an action, just as the rings do.
Geoff Johns has stated that this is how he sees the colours of the emotional spectrum. They're not necessarily feelings per se, but they're all basic drives.
Heck, let's look at it from a different angle. Joy is an emotion, but in terms of motivation and "power", it'd be a terrible emotion to power a corps. After all, happiness is dependent on nothing going wrong, since the instant something bad happens to any degree the happiness of anyone is destroyed. It'd be like making a spear out of glass: technically it could do something, but it'd shatter so easily as to not be worth bothering with. At least Hope intrinsically has the quality of being able to exist in the face of adversity, even if it could be broken given the right leverage. Sadness would also count as an emotion with little motivating power, since it comes when spirits are lowest, and people only come out of sadness when it's substituted by a stronger feeling, like anger or will or love.
The emotions in the spectrum aren't actual emotions as much as they are feelings. Greed isn't exactly an emotion but it is a strong desire to own something for yourself. Being greedy isn't a deliberate choice someone makes, it is a feeling you can't control based on emotions like envy. Compassion works similarly, being based on empathy which isn't an emotion itself but instead is the sharing of emotions. And willpower isn't an emotion at all but that is the point. The Guardians rejected emotions and settled on the most stable band in the spectrum. The seven emotions in the spectrum are all tied to emotions in different ways and this is reflected in their powers. Straightforward emotions like love and fear have powers similar to the straightforward willpower. Hope, the passive emotion, is itself mostly passive. Compassion uses empathy to replicate other powers. It all makes sense if you view the "emotional spectrum" label as a matter of convenience.
Relic also shows us that the lightsmiths used different names for the emotions, its possible they are all emotions but are just improperly named , Greens emotion could be determination while oranges could be desire, or envy with the greed merely being a product of that desire to have what someone else does
. Additionally, careful examination shows even the old-school "pink" Star Sapphire uniforms are colored some shade of Fuchsia or Magenta...which though they appear "pink" to our eyes are classified also as a shade of "red-violet". When you consider that "indigo" as a color is actually classified as a shade of "blue-violet" the fact that Star Sapphires usually wear shades of red-violet actually makes a ton of sense because it means they really are using different colors of light than the Indigo Tribe.
Unfortunate Implications? Even the Star Sapphires, including Carol, failed to rename it, and they of all people should know it's not evil or "predatory"!