I'd hoped to update "Foundations" today, but I think I'm going to hold off until I've written a little further along. In the meantime, thanks so much to those of you who have commented
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Tank:
It's inevitable that since he isn't becoming a normal mortal man that he'll give himself away sometime while they are together. Also, since he wants to spend his life with her we have to know how he plans to keep her from ever knowing, and why he feels he needs to do that. I know that Clark might think that because there will be no more Superman, that Lois doesn't need to know that the absent Superman was him.
I agree that it would be impossible for Clark to have a life with Lois without her ever finding out, and I haven't meant to suggest that that's his intention. When Constance Hunter asks Clark if Lois knows, he says that she doesn't, "but she will one day." And in Part 4, he thinks:
Later. When things between them were more certain. When the roots went deeper, were stronger, then he could tell her. When they’d become so secure in their love for one another that living without it was unthinkable. That was when he would tell her. And it would be awful – he didn’t deceive himself about that – but they would get through it, and then there would be no more lies, no more secrets.
So he does intend to tell her, but he doesn't have an exact timetable for it, any more than he did in the series. He seems to think that one day the timing will just be "right" and that he'll know it when it is. But right now what he knows is that she would never let him give up Superman for her, so he thinks it will be better to tell her after Superman is gone and there's no taking it back.
I hope that makes sense, or that it will by the end of the story. And if it doesn't - if his motivations still seem unclear or unreasonable - I hope you'll let me know so that I can take another look at them. Those kinds of comments are very helpful when I'm doing final revisions for the archive
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Ann:
I think Clark is being anything but reasonable here. But at the same time, he is being so, so human precisely because he isn't human. Can't we sympathize with his fears of being exposed and rejected? And Clark has more to hide than most of us. And he is also being more altruistic than most of us.
Yes, this is how I see this Clark. I don't defend his reasoning as sound, but he's not in a very reasonable place right now. I think (hope!) a case can be made that by this point in the series, Clark had been through enough as both Clark and Superman to just
really want his life to be simpler, however unrealistic that desire. And when Lois tells him in WWW that she can't love Superman because "you live above us," it's a little like the moment in the Pilot when Jonathan tells Clark that they don't know if it's possible for him to have a family and a normal life. I think those well-intentioned words could be crushing to a guy like Clark, who seems to want those things very much.
Thanks for hanging with me on this one! The next part is written, but I'd like to get a little farther ahead before I post it, so it will probably be around this time next week before I update. (Of course, my former fandom will be claiming me for much of the weekend, but as soon as I crawl out of Book 7, I'll be back to work on "Foundations"
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Best,
Caroline
