CC, I've loved your story so far, so much so that I've been pasting each new part into a word file as you post it, which I
never do. However, I've been hesitating over posting this because my response isn't all appreciation and "this-is-wonderfuls." But you did say you wanted the bad as well as the good, so here goes.
had Andrus not been the son-in-law of Odias Sinders, the esteemed Director who had previously held Madge’s office, he would never have been hired.
This was amusing--the whole Andrus-Madge interaction was. But it made me wonder if, in Utopian time, this was before or after the fumbled re-capture of Tempus in MJD. It'd be nice to have a hint so FoLC can place it.
Only dimly registering the warm body which eventually came to lie beside her, or the hand that never left hers. Or that she slept far longer than the time she had allotted herself.
Awwww... I really liked this.
"these people are a little... Superman happy.” She paused at the odd strangling noise that came from his throat.
LOL!! Oops, I mean, "poor Clark," of course.
That said, we *will* get inside Lois's head... erm... soonish. And I hope, once there, it will be satisfying enough to account for what looks like an about-face on her side. If not, though, do let me know! I've mulled over adding a few lines here and there, but I'm still undecided.
I liked the peek into her mind in this section; it was, in fact, very necessary for the reader to identify with Lois's behavior and choices. However, for the same reason, I still feel that we needed a brief section from her POV back when she made the huge about-face from believing she & Clark were in their future to believing that it was a mind trick. It was too big a change to handle off-stage, so to speak.
“When we were mad at each other or... drunk?”
Cute line, but it jarred me. Would Clark even think "drunk"? Speaking from personal experience, it isn't the sort of expression someone who has never been drunk would think to use. Crazy? Temporarily blind? Yes. Drunk? It just doesn't come to mind.
“You’ll need something comfortable...”
He stopped abruptly. She wished he would quit doing that, quit measuring his words, or at the very least get better at disguising that was what he was doing.
“Not just about me,” he said with a teasing grin. “Let’s not forget who makes up the other half of this equation.”
She stilled. And then grimaced when she saw he had noticed.
“Sorry,” he began, “I wasn’t... that wasn’t...”
You did an excellent job with this, CC. It just happens to be one of those things I hate about S1 Lois--she can't be satisfied. She gets upset because Clark is measuring his words, trying to avoid things that might upset her. And then when he doesn't measure his words, she goes still and makes it clear to him that she's upset again. Clark is damned no matter what he does--unless he turns into someone smooth and slick like Luthor who can hide all signs that he's guarding his thoughts and adapting his words to his audience. Pet peeve there. You're doing fine with it.
She’d liked it better when it was an empty space, a bare floor, nothing but the two of them meeting to talk, comparing experiences while they put the puzzle pieces together.
I miss the fact that we aren't seeing them do any of that. Part of the fun of watching L&C is watching how they tackle problems: tossing ideas back and forth, squabbling like children, finishing each other's sentences, and energetically attacking the problem. Unfortunately for me, you're keeping most of that off-stage and only revealing it in introspection after the fact. I don't prefer that method of telling instead of showing because it distances me to hear about it later rather than experience it as it occurs. But I realize that is a personal preference.
You made a similar narrative choice in the first part of this section:
When they had taken off from the HEA room, they’d had a plan in mind. Get out of Metropolis, see if the spell or the illusion would break. If this whole thing was just a product of proximity, then they would simply outrun it.
This explanation occurs almost 600 words after the scene began, for no reason that I can see. It's not like concealing this info increased the suspense. Putting it at the beginning of the scene would have given the reader a context in which to view what L&C discovered instead of struggling to figure out why the heck they were going on a world tour instead of trying to interview people in the city and find out what was going on. I think this gets tied back to not knowing why Lois changed her mind about their being in the future. Because we don't know why that happened, we don't see why L&C aren't trying to read newspapers, watch TV, get online, find a city hall and have Clark hover over it and listen to what people are saying inside to get a quick overview of what is going on.
His resemblance to Clark Kent had been good, if not a bit more subtle. He was smaller than the original, maybe. Shorter, less... something. Anyway, though he wasn’t the dead ringer that she was, the two of them together were pretty amazing.
I see what you're getting at, but no. I can see a comment like, "if you were taller, or more muscular, or more imposing, you'd be a dead ringer for Clark Kent," but I can't see the Utopians either not noticing or saying that his resemblance to Clark Kent was subtle. They have photos. They have film footage, videotape--by God, if they've got a copy of Clark's childhood bed, then they have all the footage from the time, from every era of his life, including when he first started at the Planet--and that's footage of Clark, not just Superman. Sorry, but there's no way anyone could look at that face and say it isn't CK.
Just a bit of personal experience here: the first time I visited a set at Warner Brothers', I was getting a tour of the makeup trailer, and a guy walked in. It happened to be the same actor who played the bad guy's henchman in SLV during S4, except this was during his days on
The Flash. When he walked in the door, I opened my mouth to greet him--
because I recognized him so instantly that I thought he was someone I personally knew. It was only when I didn't have a name to call him that I realized I had been completely misled by the fact that I saw his face in my house on TV each week. And he was only a supporting character, a face on the screen.
So maybe the "people-not-recognizing-Clark" problem is mine, not anything to do with your story.
CC, I don't want to end this with your thinking that I didn't like this section. I liked much of it a great deal. I'm just a writing teacher and a would-be professional writer who can't help making suggestions to improve even very good work.
