It's really time for me to write some FDK on *this* vignette, Crystal, since you honored me so by asking me to post my original FDK on this as a vignette!
I just love this:
Just this once, she wants to be stupid and juvenile and completely irrational — because she’s always been smart, mature and nothing if not rational, especially when it comes to keeping men at a safe distance.
This is so, so, so achingly Lois: the woman who has become hardened and cynical about men, ordinary men, Earth men. A woman who has become so suspicious of Earth men that she instinctively reacts with mistrust when she meets the most wonderful Earth guy ever, Clark Kent. In your story, she has already gotten over her suspicions regarding Clark. She knows that he is a wonderful man, and she wants him, but she is afraid of the messiness that must always be a part of an ordinary relationship with an ordinary guy.
This is her path not taken, personified in a hero who flies around in bright blue spandex and a red cape; an Adonis of a man who embodies all that is true and just and good.
A man who’s not from this world.
A man who’s strong enough to lift a space shuttle into orbit.
A man who has swept her off her feet, literally and figuratively.
So she prefers the dream, the fantasy, about a relationship with the god. Because when you are with the god everything is always perfect, and you are in heaven all the time.
So yes, Lois wants the fantasy. Even if simply uttering his name is another metaphorical nail on the coffin of her best friend’s unrequited love.
Her heart breaks a little more for Clark every time she sees how much she’s hurting him. And she hates herself a little more each day.
Heartbreakingly, Lois
knows that her Superman fantasy can't come true. If Superman is as perfect as she thinks, then he isn't going to spend all his time just being with her, concentrating on making her happy. What about all the other people all over the world who need the superhero?
So Lois's Superman fantasy can't come true, but she could be with Clark instead. And it wouldn't be perfect, but it would be lovely and wonderful, because Clark is a lovely and wonderful man. But she is turning down loveliness because she can't stop dreaming about perfection. And she knows, she really knows, how utterly unfair and unreasonable her rejection of him is. And she hates herself for hurting him so - and yet she can't give up her fantasy.
I love the poignant, bitter beauty of this sentence, which I have to quote all over again:
Even if simply uttering his name is another metaphorical nail on the coffin of her best friend’s unrequited love.
And finally I just have to say.... You know that imitation is the highest form of flattery, don't you, Crystal?
Ann
