Paul, if Superman ever proposed to Lois in Superman II, I most certainly can't remember it! How about the rest of you FoLCs? Does anyone remember a proposal in Superman II? If so, can you describe it to me? What did Superman say to Lois?
And Paul, I very much hope you are wrong about this, too:
1. Superman leaves.
2. Lois throws herself into a rebound relationship.
3. Lois discovers that she's pregnant.
4. Lois realizes that Superman must be the father.
5. She realizes that there are all sorts of problems with having Superman's love child, especially if he's gone.
6. Finding herself in a tight situation, she allows the relationship to accellerate. Partly as a cover, and partly because she wants to convince herself(as the article says) that she can have a good life without Superman.
7. When the pregnancy starts to show, she convinces everyone that Richard is the father, perhaps fudging the due date by a month or so to make it more plausible.
I hate the idea that Lois would be so devious that she would use Richard as cruelly as that. I really, really hope that she does
not know that Superman is the father of her child, at least not straight away. I'd much, much prefer that she has had her memory wiped away by Superman, so that she honestly doesn't know that they have ever been lovers. (Remember that in Superman II, they were lovers only for a single night.) She might still remember their extremely romantic "flying date" in the first Superman movie, and if so, she might still feel extremely let down that Superman left her without a word. However, she would feel really betrayed only if Superman made some sort of public announcement to the effect that he was truly leaving, so that she knew that he planned to be gone for a long time, possibly forever. In a situation like that, I can certainly imagine her throwing herself into the welcoming embrace of Richard's almost right after Superman's departure.
If Lois actually knew from the beginning that she was pregnant with Superman's child, then I can accept her behavior towards Richard only if she was honest with him right away. She would have had to tell him not only that she was pregnant, but that Superman was the father of her child. She would have had to ask Richard if he was willing to pretend that the baby was his and if he could love the child and raise it as his own. If he agreed to all of that, then Lois's behaviour becomes at least acceptable.
Another possibility is that Lois doesn't know that she is pregnant when she meets Richard, and that she becomes intimate with him so soon that she believes that her baby is his. I would be okay with her behaviour if she gradually begins to wonder about Jason. I can imagine that she might start to remember enough to know, or guess, that she once made love to Superman. For all of that, she might not be sure of Jason's paternity until right before Superman returns. This would put her in a very difficult situation. She would have unwittingly led Richard to believe that Jason was his son, and Richard and Jason have a very strong relationship. How can she break up this family of hers?
All I can say is that I hope that Lois didn't deliberately deceive and use Richard. I don't like to think of Lois that way at all!
Ann
Oh, P.S. Paul, you said Larry Niven had written something about Superman and Lois? Larry Niven? Could he be that Larry Niven who wrote two scifi books about a Ringworld? Never mind the details about the world, but this is what I think I remember about those books:
The hero is 200 years old. In the beginning of the book he has a 20-year-old girlfriend.
The hero and his girlfriend get separated when they land on the Ringworld.
The hero learns that there's a custom on the Ringworld which requires that you greet everyone you meet of the opposite sex by having sex with them. The hero eagerly participates in this custom.
The hero meets a 3000-year-old geisha, who has spent most of her very long life perfecting her technique at pleasing men. She becomes the hero's new girlfriend.
The geisha girlfriend dies, leaving the hero devastated. To comfort himself, he has some electrodes inserted into his brain, which constantly stimulate the part of his brain regulating his feeling of lust. As a result, he lives in a state of constant sexual ecstasy.
The hero gets tired of his electrodes and goes looking for some live action. He meets his first girlfriend, the 20-year-old, who unfortunately has been transformed into a horrible monster. The hero and the monster fight. Gradually, the hero gains the upper hand, slowly maiming and dismembering the girlfriend/monster until she/it dies.
The hero discovers that the entire Ringworld has become unstable. To stop it from wobbling, the hero has to direct a powerful laser beam onto a part of the Ringworld, killing everyone who lives in those parts. It turns out that all those women that he "greeted" by having sex with them lived where the beam hit, so they were all killed. (You may note that
all the (thousands?) of women that the hero had sex with on or on his way to the Ringworld have been killed, all but one of them by him, at this point!)
Okay.... And all I've got to say is if the Larry Niven who wrote about the Ringworld is the same Larry Niven who said something about Superman and Lois, then I, at least, couldn't care less about what he had to say!
Ann
