Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Ten Years in the Making (5/?)

You should know about me that I have been a "Lois and Superman" fan since 1969. That is how long I have been wanting Superman and Lois to get married. Over the years, I became convinced that Superman was really just playing a cruel game with Lois, and that he didn't really intend to marry her even though he pretended that he did. The movie Superman II finally broke my heart. That's where Clark first made love to Lois and then rejected her to the point that he even "raped her mind" and destroyed her knowledge of what had happened between them.

I have never really forgiven the character of Clark Superman Kent for the unnecessary heartbreak and suffering that he inflicted on Lois in the seventies and eighties. What the comic book character and movie character did affects my way of looking at Clark Kent from the ABC TV show. This means that I tend to look at stories about Lois and Clark Kent from Lois's point of view. I identify with her and sympathize with her. When I read stories where I think that Clark treats Lois badly, all my old resentment against Superman for his cruelty to Lois fills me with smoldering anger again.

So when I look at this story from Lois's point of view, I feel that Lois has had ten years of her life practically stolen from her. For ten years she was paralyzed with guilt and depression over Clark Kent's "death". And those ten years were those that were supposed to be the best years of her life, the years between thirty and forty.

I myself am fifty-two years old. I can feel myself getting older than I used to be. My eyesight, for example, is really declining. I'm physically more tired and have less staying power than I used to. I remember what it was like to be thirty, or, for that matter, what it was like to be forty: I felt strong, and a part of me felt as if I would stay this strong "forever". I didn't feel myself declining, and somehow I thought that such a decline would never happen. But now I know that I am past my physical prime, and I can look back at my life and say, yes, those were the best years of my life, physically at least.

My point is that life is short. A person's physical prime is short. And ten years is a horribly long time and a horribly big part of a person's physical prime.

By refusing to tell Lois about himself for ten years, Clark more or less stole ten of what ought to have been the best years of Lois's life. That's a horrible thing to have stolen from you. What, for example, if Lois wanted to have children? By now Lois ought to be thirty-nine years old. I recently read an article about the fertility of women, which claimed that women's fertility declines steeply after the age of thirty-five. Most women under thirty-five who have failed to conceive can be helped at fertility clinics; most women over thirty-five can not.

So why did Clark stay away from Lois for ten years? Well, do you remember what Adam said when God asked him if he had eaten the forbidden fruit from the tree of good and evil in the garden of Eden?

Right. Yes. It was the woman's fault. Or it was a woman's fault. More precisely, in Clark's case it was Lana's fault, because she was the one who told him that it would be a bad idea to for him to go to Lois and tell her that Clark was alive. Because if he did, then Lois, too, would undoubtedly react badly and think that Clark was a freak. Never mind that Clark survived because he was Superman, and Lois seemed to love and adore Superman. Surely she would resent Clark for being Superman anyway? And surely the fact that her whole life seemed to go down the drain as she grieved for Clark Kent was not something that Clark could be expected to try to remedy by going to her and telling her that Clark was alive? After all, Lana had told him he shouldn't, so how can we blame him for listening to Lana's bad advice?

Except I blame him anyway. As a diehard "Lois and Superman" fan, I dislike any relationships Clark may have with other women. I don't feel sorry for him because of his failed relationships with Becky and Lana, although I do feel sorry for Becky, who apparently had to die to save Clark from worry that she would spill his secret. Having to die for our hero's peace of mind is a steep price to pay. Anyway, if Clark likes another woman and chooses to listen to her and believe her, instead of listening to Lois and believing her, then I'm not going to sympathize with him because of that.

I'm reminded of what another writer said when her version of Clark was criticized. She admitted that his behaviour could be thought of as really questionable, but, she reminded us, this is Clark!!! Surely we all know that if Clark does something that seems bad then it can't be bad because Clark is a good guy who doesn't do bad things. Something that would be described as bad if it was done by someone else becomes all right if it is done by Clark Kent.

Except I don't buy that. In my opinion, a bad deed is a bad deed even if it is done by Clark Kent. And if someone does sufficiently bad things, then he or she is at least partly a bad person. (But you must remember how much I resent those things that Superman did to Lois in the seventies and eighties, and how ready I am to vent my anger at those past misdeeds on LnC's Clark Kent. I'm not exactly fair, because I generally have a lot less sympathy for Clark than I have for Lois in LnC fics.)

So I'm afraid that you are fighting a losing battle when it comes to convincing me that Clark shouldn't be blamed for what he did to Lois. That's what life is like, losing some of the battles, because no one can ever win every battle against every "opponent". All you can do in the long run is to do your things the way you like them best. That includes writing your own story so that you like it. The main reason I'm spending so much time arguing about it is because I feel a strong need to object to what I would call "Clark-centric" stories, the ones that ask us to forgive Clark for almost anything because he is Clark, but which ask us to feel a lot less sympathy for Lois. Or at least that is how I read some stories, but I'm not a disinterested party here, as I've told you several times.

Ann

P.S. Oh, by the way, this thing about Martha... You made me feel that Martha is motivated by her love for her son. It bothers her very much that Clark is in pain because of Lois's anger with him, so Martha spends a very long time explaining Clark's actions, or his non-action, to Lois, so that Lois will forgive him, so that Clark can be happy again.

But you didn't make me feel that Martha feels sorry for Lois for the ten-year grief that she suffered so unnecessarily. Martha isn't saying, "What was it like for you, Lois? Do you want to talk about it?"

This makes me feel that the readers are asked to feel sorry for Clark. We are asked to wish him well because he is feeling bad about having ruined a large part of Lois's life. And then, bottom line, it is Clark's grief that counts, not Lois's suffering.