Carol, I didn't want you to feel bad over this, which is why I've been agonizing over that first post and rewriting it for over a week. That's also the reason why I wrote the second post, so you would know that I didn't think the characters were irredeemable--if we knew more of the good things about them. I'm going to answer this quickly and then head home so I can read the next two parts.
And I think some of what you want is coming - and has been there 'in between' in the past, in my head, but maybe it needed to not be 'in between' or something.
Actually, that's exactly what I think. That's why I asked for specific scenes, probably ones you've had in your head that took place off-stage, but without reading them myself, I don't have the feelings for the characters that you want me to have. It would only take a few, with one scattered every 40 pages or so to keep that basically good person in my mind and convince me that they
could change.
Lois with Christopher, for instance, is based largely on my first night home with my oldest. I was in tears for hours because I was exhausted and I had no idea what to do to make it better. It was pure exhaustion combined with 'I don't know how to make it better for her' combined with 'oh crap what have I gotten myself into'.
Carol, I wouldn't have had a problem with that at all if we had had Lois think earlier about the baby instead of just about herself (i.e. this isn't the way I pictured my first child's birth, poor me). All you would have to do is slip in her fear for the
baby--not just for herself--when she realizes he's going to be born early. Or have her question herself when she holds the baby for the first time: he's so tiny and helpless, and he needs her so much, and how is she going to do this without screwing it up? That focus is on her concern for the baby, not her concern for herself. That's what I was missing. She doesn't have to have the immediate bonding, but she
has to have a feeling of concern about the baby instead of coming off as basically disinterested.
To me, Clark's offer to help there was genuine. He didn't know what he could do to make it better, but he was willing to try, even if Lois didn't take it that way.
The problem is that Clark is invulnerable and doesn't need much sleep compared to a human, so he should have pointed that out. When he accepted Lois's argument about his needing sleep for work without even disagreeing with her, his offer looked like it was motivated by reluctant courtesy instead of genuine concern. In effect, that made Clark an unreliable narrator. He thought he was making a genuine offer, but based on the other information at our disposal, we assume that he was fooling himself.
