...Death is not romantic...
...You're young and naive, so...
...Using and belittling Lois...

These are the three main things that struck me as I read. The first two are the ones that dug under my skin the most.

Yes, I understand that death is not romantic. Death is brutal and horrible, like a leg being cut off, and if you're unlucky enough you get to watch helplessly as it rots off and there's nothing you can do to stop it. So no, death in itself is not romantic. Perhaps then I see the way people survive romantic. No, not in the gushy mushy way, but the way that hearts DO seem to heal afterwards, how ever though they are nearly destroyed by the death of a loved one they someohow manage to get up in the morning. And even though the pain never fully leaves a person, eventually there's a day where you wake up and can go a few hours before you think about it.

And I may be young, but I'm not all that Naive. While I was never in any immediate danger with the exception of a couple mortar rounds, I WAS in a warzone for nine months. I'm one of the lucky ones who never fired her weapon at a living target, but I know people who have. I know the toll it takes on them, I've seen the piece of themselves they lost when they had to take another human's life, even though it had been the enemy. I've heard explosions on nearly a daily basis, each time wondering if it hit one of my own, or civillians. So, while I haven't experienced death, I've seen what it does.

And, truthfully, though I haven't experienced death I AM (to use my above analogy) watching helplessly as my leg rots off. I have been for several months now. My father, who was diagnosed with level FOUR metastatic Melenoma not six months ago, is on what are perhaps his last weeks. I went home this past weekend and saw with my own eyes what death does. He's not dead yet, but he's not the man he was before. And while the fact that he's dying is in no way romantic whatsoever, I think that the fact that his beloved wife (my beloved stepmother) gave up everything - she was working AND going to school - to make his last moments on earth as peaceful and as comfortable as she can, yes I find that to be one of the most romantic things on this earth. When I talk about romance here, I'm not meaning wining and dining, I mean the beauty of the love they share. And when I see them together still, I see a love that anyone of us would kill to have. And they're losing that, and talking to my stepmom she said she wouldn't give back a single day of the five years they spent together, even knowing the heartache she's going through and will go through. I've seen a man watch his older brother, a mother and father watching their son, heck I'm watching my own FATHER die.

And I apologize for the rant, but to suggest that I'm too naive to know what death does to people is patronizing and if I may be blunt a little insulting.

*deep breath, big grin*

Sorry. Anyway. I am in no way saying that those of you who prefer not to read deathfic shouldn't feel that way. There are subjects I myself hate to read, and to have someone tell me I'm WRONG for not liking it would grate my nerves to no end. And I also realize that most of this wouldn't have happened had I written 'Deathfic' somewhere in the beginning. I've learned, and from now on the deathfic warning would probably take up half the frickin page.

And now, onto my having been able to bring Lois back. Yes, its true. There are ways in the LnC universe that Lois may have been brought back. Who knows, they could be living somewhere isolated where people never even heard of Lois and Clark, happily feeding eachother pineapple bits. I didn't write anything about their whereabouts afterward. Just about Jimmy's reaction.

But really though, wouldn't bringing her back lessen things? Kind of cheapen the whole thing as well? While it would work in several cases, as it did in the story Wendy mentioned above, it doesn't work on all. Would Romeo and Juliet (a play I don't like) have been as impactful had they found a miracle cure at the end? Not that I compare myself to shakespeare or anything.

Anyway, that's my past due long winded response to this thread.

And I think that even after my dad passes I'd still read deathfic, still write it even. But that's just me, really.

And another thing: I personally don't feel that what I wrote was disrespectful or lowered Lois in anyway. No, it wasn't JUST to show Clark's pain although we did see that.

Quote
Originally posted by TOC:

But I'm going to keep insisting that the idea of killing Lois just to make us feel sorry for Clark *is* disrespectful. People, yesterday I read once again in a Swedish newspaper that 100-200 million women have been killed in what The Economist calls "gendercide". Okay. Does that mean that because 200 million women have been killed, our proper response should be to feel really, really sorry for 200 million men? Perhaps we should write a few fics describing the actual blow-by-blow killings of some of those women, so we can really cry for all those bereaved and lonely men out there?
And no Ann, I wouldn't mourn for the 200 men. I would feel for the families of the women who died, because there ARE people out there that had loved them. But really... Gendercide? I would be more enraged that something like that even happened. And why bring up just the women who died? Why not mention the countless thousands who die every day? Why NOT mourn for the families who lost their loved ones as WELL as those who lost their lives? Is that disrespectful to the people who DID die? Am I supposed to mourn JUST the loss of my father, and not the heartache left behind? So while you insist that my handling of BoJ was disrespectful to Lois, please allow me to maintain that it was NOT. I was as true to her character as I could be, and to me that IS respect.

And now I really must end this because its getting to be longer than most fic I write... That and I'm hungry and lunch will be over soon.

-CB

Mmm cheese.

I vid, therefor I am.

The hardest lesson is that love can be so fair to some, and so cruel to others. Even those who would be gods.

Anne Shirley: I'm glad you spell your name with a "K." Katherine with a "K" is so much more alluring than Catherine with a "C." A "C" always looks so smug.
Me: *cries*