I sincerely doubt it, Ann. I mean, sure. Lois is more replacable than Clark. Superman is arguably the most recognizable superhero in existance.
Sure, Clark has died a few times (as Clark or as Superman), but he always comes back. Superman is Clark Kent, and the public isn't going to accept anything else.
And Lois hasn't always been his primary love interest. There have been plenty of LLs over the decades. There was even a Superboy series with Lana Lang and no Lois. It was pretty popular for a while and was turned into a TV show in the 80s.
At this point, though, Lois is very much Clark's destiny. His One True Love. Sure, there's Smallville, but Smallville is hardly true to the Superman mythos. It's also only a small part of all things Superman, just as the Superboy comic and TV show were only a small part in their time.
I hardly think a few deathfics in our little community are about to make an impact on that. Especially not when they focus on Clark's reaction and the fact that Lois is crucial to him.
Come to that, there's a very famous graphic novel out there, Kingdom Come. Early on (actually, several decades before the story takes place), Lois is killed by the Joker. By the end of the book, Superman and Wonder Woman... well, they're an item. And the book takes place in the DC Universe future. For a while, it was considered a possible future towards which everything was heading. (Since then, a critical moment in the book's story happened differently in real present continuity, so we know things won't turn out as they were in the book.)
Did Kingdom Come change things? Is Superman going out with Wonder Woman? Heck no. He's still married to Lois. Wonder Woman is off doing her own thing. If she's flirting with anyone, it's Batman (but not really very much at all).
Superman goes with Lois Lane, and that's not going to change.
It's pretty much universally accepted that Superman's top 3 vulnerabilities are:
1. Lois Lane
2. Kryptonite
3. Magic
Meanwhile, there's the opposite situation with Wonder Woman, the most recognizable female superhero in existance. She'll never be replaced, but Steve Trevor has come and gone from her life several times. He'll no doubt be back again, but he isn't nearly as well-known as Lois.
I don't see why TOGOM stories don't count, either. They're a natural magnet for Clark deathfic because TOGOM is part of series canon. If you see more Lois deathfics than "real" Clark deathfics, it's because TOGOM is out there skewing the numbers.
(Of course, I had a beef with the spate of fic that came after BGDF. Every single one was about Lois's pain from the separation. Clark, OTOH, had to be separated from Lois, lose his powers, go into a war zone, deal with this alien culture which was his by birth, etc etc, but somehow that was considered secondary. A passing thing.
That irked me.
So, I can sort of sympathize with you seeing this as one-sided. But there you go. A counterpoint to your complaint. A way in which FoLCs are one-sided in favor of Lois.)
As for deathfic in general... I was never big on it. I like my fics to be happy. I have enough pain in RL (I won't get into my more recent issues with mortality specifically), and catharsis never did much for me.
But then, one day, I was working on this story. It'd started with me getting this cool idea for a title. Then the title sat there for a couple of years with no story to go with it. Then I was talked into trying to write it again. And, in the course of a single weekend, I ended up writing
The Cape of Good Hope , an angsty (and perhaps cathartic?) deathfic. Go figure.
Stories are stories. Whether I'll like them or read them depends on how they're written, what they're about, my mood at the time, and a bunch of other factors (some variable, some not). I'm not a big fan of deathfic, but it has its place.
In the end, you write the stories that come to you and you read the stories that suit you (and your mood). Trends come and go, and, as has been pointed out, telling a writer to consider trends and bigger pictures is more counter-productive than anything.
Are there more Lois deathfics than Clark deathfics? Depends on how you count them.
Does it matter if there are? It depends on you and how you look at things.
Are a handful of Lois deathfics in a small community of fans that's out of the way even amongst Superman fans going to change the future of Lois Lane? I sincerely doubt it.
Is this drifting mishmash of a post going to help, make things worse, or end up just being one tiny part of an already huge thread? Only one way to find out...
Paul
