Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Choices And Consequences (all)

Thanks again, Maria, for bugging me about this unfinished project. Hope the conflicts are resolved to everyone's satisfaction. And I hope you all enjoy the different points of view of the two main characters.

I anticipate most readers will think, "This is different." Hope so, anyway. That's my intention.

Oh, this is brilliant! I wasn't really sure about it at first, until I finally realized about halfway through take two that these were two different alternate dimensions. (/me slow on the uptake!) Then I was hooked. And the conclusion! I loved the bickering between KJ and Dan, and their attempt talk their way out of this weird situation with Lois.

ROFL!!

and

Great stuff, I really *am* laughing out loud! My husband is a movie buff and that last line fits him perfectly.

I am glad you gave Dan & KJ a happy ending. They deserved it after making such a sacrifice.

Hi,

Yes!


Great story.

Oh, Maria, please don't feel sorry for Dan and KJ! Even though neither of them is married to Lois any more, they preserved the timeline and Utopia developed like it was supposed to and now they're working with H.G. Wells on maintaining the timeline. They're both still serving the greater good, even if no one knows they're doing it but them.

And shouldn't we all do right, whether anyone is watching or not? I didn't think of this until just now, but (/me shakes index finger at all misbehaving FOLCs) you'd better straighten up and fly right! Utopia may depend on it!

That was a truly fascinating piece, Terry. I usually shy away from pieces featuring "Call me Daniel" but this was a nice version of him. I still liked KJ a lot more, though.

What a spot-on title, and interesting exploration. I fear I'm not doing your story justice with this comment, but my head's still kind of whirling after reading it. Because it was good and thoughtful and thought-provoking. What a nifty ending, too. It was unexpected and made me smile.

I have the story saved to read again, slowly this time (because I did speed through the three parts just now, overwhelmed as I was by curiosity), so that I can savor it.

Thanks for sharing.

Okay, first let me say, I read Take 1 and Take 2 simutaneously. Or more precisely side by side. (Consider that one of my quirks.) That said...

I thought the raspberry / blueberry syrup switch was pretty cute...

Is it short hair... or long hair....

Then I as I read those stories further I was in tears... (I'm glad Mrs. Mosley could laugh.) SERIOUS WHAM warning please!! I really wasn't in the mood for tears tonight. Not at all. I don't mind reading stories like this. I just like to be prepared to 'steel' myself against the coming onslaught.


As I usually try to do, I type my thoughts before I actually post feedback. Before I reached the end of Take 1 and Take 2, I had written this:

Very well written, but you just topped my list for saddest stories ever. The one that used to be first drove me away from reading fanfic for a long time. I won't let that happen again, but I wish I hadn't read your stories.

But then you left the reader thinking that things were going to get better, and that improved the situation, so the other story once again tops my list of saddest stories. I've got to tell you, though, that I almost stopped reading the stories all together. And I would have hated not to have read the entire story(ies). You need to put a wham warning that part of this is a sad story - please - to prepare us poor folks that don't handle the tears very well. I'm a premenopausal female, for God's sake. I can only take so much... It would also be nice if tell us that things have the possibility to get better or at least tell us it's an altered timestream.


Who does Lois think she is digging around in someone's brain? He should have had permanent damage! And she opened his skull up? Go get Bernie to help you, woman! Digging around in someone's brain is what killed Abraham Lincoln. He probably would have lived if those so called docs had left the bullet alone. Of course the sliver of kryptonite had to be removed from Clark's brain - Lois just wasn't qualified.

I would say Take 2 is the better story. I won't say 'liked'.

All the sudden in Take 1 there's a clone? Oh, please... And she married it / him? And if he's a clone, why would the hot water of the shower scald him? Never mind - you explained that in Resolution.

KJ Clarkson? Please tell me you wrote this before Kelly Clarkson won American Idol?

Dan Scardino? Arrggghhhh.....


This is hard to read like this:

I'd suggest ... ready for," he pauses, grins, and nudges my elbow, "but I .....


Bernie and Lana? The Lana? What a hoot!


Maybe Doc Klein is Marty McFly's doc...


Determinist Universe - I like that phrase


And we're off to see the wizard.... Sorry, I just couldn't resist...

I apologize for not posting a WHAM warning. Since the terrible situations were resolved in fairly short order, I didn't think one would be needed. Apparently I was wrong, and I have now posted one.

Classicalla wrote:
Sorry about making it hard to read. The technical reason I used the dashes instead of commas was to imply a pause of a couple of seconds duration, as if Bernie is trying to tease Dan a little. The commas tend to make the action flow more smoothly, and I wanted to put something in to stop the sentence. I didn't intend for it to be so abrupt, but the commas didn't hit the brakes hard enough.

Actually, I don't follow American Idol, and the similarity of names never crossed my mind. I was trying for a name with Clark's initials (CJK) but without actually using Clark and Jerome and Kent. KJ Clarkson was the best I could do!

I'm glad I could make some folks laugh. And maybe I should offer a no-prize to the first person to tell us who is the subject of the discussion at the end of the third story.

Well, he sounds rather Star Trekian to me.

Captain Picard? (French Guy - messed with time and could have gotten stuck in Minnesota - or was that Montana?)

The guy (sorry, don't know his name) pretening to be a crew member and trying to get Captain Archer to help him with the future?

Oh thats an easy one. It's Tank, right?

I have to admit, I was a little confused by the two separate parts. At first I thought it was two alternate stories, like you couldn't decide which you liked better so you did two versions. Now I feel pretty dumb because it was all one story! But I liked it anyway!

I don't think a wham warning was entirely necessary. It was a fairly short story that was completely resolved. But thats just my opinion. I guess it doesn't hurt anyone to say you messed with the toys but you'll put them back later.

All in all, I really liked this story. It was very different, and that's always welcome. As with all time travel stories, the technical talk did confuse me a little. Kudos to you for being able to write it coherently!

~Kristen

minimunch3. I guess I read slower than most. And I very nearly stopped midway through Take 1 and Take 2. I figured if I was already crying, I might as well finish them. As I said, some people cry easier than others, and I wish there had been a wham warning *before* I read the stories.

Anyway, Terry is a great writer.

Classicalla, I didn't mean to make it seem like you were wrong. I'm all for wham warnings because they can be done is so many ways that you don't need to see them if you don't want to. I think I skimmed through this one so fast the first time through and just figured everything would turn out ok that I didn't give a second thought to whams. And I completely agree with you, Terry is a wonderful writer!

Anyway, back to your regurlarly scheduled feedback...

~Kristen

Yeah, Terry is a great writer, but I was firmly convinced there wasn't going to be any happy ending. Maybe it was my experience with that other story I read that's on the top of my list for saddest stories ever.

Terry, this is an incredibly moving story (trilogy?) and I'm sorry I haven't posted feedback until now.

I'm going to start by making a few comparisons between this three-parter and the fic you posted just before this one, She's. I won't blame you if you dismiss what I say about She's, since I haven't read it and likely won't. But I learned enough about that story from the feedback thread to be able to discuss its premise. In She's, Clark freezes Lois to be able to save his parents. He does it because she asks him to do it, and also, obviously, because he hopes he will be able to save his parents that way. He freezes her even though he must understand that this is incredibly dangeorus. He hopes that he will be able to save her, just like he did in that episode on which your story is based.

I have a couple of objections to this premise, but only one is relevant on this FDK thread. This objection is that the whole situation - Clark deliberately exposing Lois to life-threatening danger in order to save his parents - is improbable. How often does this sort of thing happen in real life? Not even terrorists usually demand that somebody else should be killed in exchange for the lives of their hostages.

By contrast, the premise in Choices And Consequences, that sometimes you can't save everybody and that you are going to have to choose who you should save and who you should abandon, is horribly, devastatingly probable and real. I'm sure it happens all the time at disaster sites. And one of the most harrowing movies I've ever seen, Sophie's Choice, deals with exactly this situation. Sophie, a Jew, is sent to a Nazi concentration camp with her son and her daughter. When she gets there, she is told that she will have the chance to save one of her children - the other one will meet with certain death. Sophie chooses to give her son a chance to live. In so doing, she sentences her daughter to death.

What Sophie goes through, and the grief and guilt that wracks her for the rest of her life, is so much worse than what happens to Lois in your story, Terry. For all of that, your story is one of the most moving I've read. One thing that makes it so incredibly poignant is that it is so full of goodness and love. Lois, as Ultra Woman, is a most admirably good person, an altruistic superhero and a loving wife. And both KJ and Dan are incredibly good and caring husbands. In spite of the horrible grief of your story, the scenes with Lois and Dan and Lois and KJ overwhelmed me with the sheer love that the men, in particular, feel for and give to Lois, but also the love that Lois is giving back to them.

Your story had me thinking about what Lois ought to have chosen, if she had known that she would have to make a choice about whom to save. Should she save her husband or her children? To me, it's obvious that Lois would, and should, have chosen her children. Wouldn't most mothers have done that? Wouldn't many fathers have done it, too? Sacrificing everything for your children is the ultimate act of altruism as well as the ultimate selfishness in the world. What could be more important than your children? They are your escape hatch to the future, to a time when your own physical existence has ceased. They represent the hope that something of you will live on for centuries or millennia. I'll never forget an old woman I was briefly hired to help with household chores and the like; she had no family left at all, and her daughter had died many years ago. I'll never forget the bottomless sorrow in this woman's eyes, when she looked at the old framed photograph of her daughter and said to me: "Children are not supposed to die before their parents."

So how about Jon and Laura's reaction to Lois when she had saved them but had failed to save their father? How could they blame her for Clark's death? They were only nine years old, and I can understand their horror. I find it harder to accept Jon's hatred of his mother now that he has grown up; he should know from his own experience that sometimes you just can't save everybody. Failing to save somebody while you are desperately working to save somebody else is not the same thing as killing the one you were forced to (temporarily) abandon. For all of that, I still feel some sympathy for Jon's reaction. You make me feel his grief, Terry. As for his hatred of Lois, well - ultimately we can't demand that children must love their parents. Children don't choose their parents. They don't even ask to be born. Sometimes parents and children simply aren't compatible. I don't hate Jon for hating Lois, but my heart aches for Lois.

The next version, however, is almost unbearable to me. I do think that Lois must grieve the loss of her children more than she grieved the loss of Clark in the other version. Also, Clark's hatred of Lois is harder to accept for me than Jon's hatred of his mother. Clark must know that Lois didn't deliberately endanger their children. She did what she could, even though I think she made the wrong choice when she made Clark her priority rather than her children. Clark can't possibly doubt the heartache Lois must feel over her dead children.

But even though I strongly disapprove of Clark's behaviour towards Lois, I also feel so much compassion for him. You make me feel that his heartache is as bad as Lois's, Terry. Clark is a bereaved father as much as Lois is a bereaved mother. In his utter desolation and loss, Clark is able to feel only dark and troubled emotions. What a lonely, lonely figure he is in the end. Lois, who I will insist comes through as the more generous of the two of them, has at least found another man who truly, truly loves her. Clark appears to be as starkly lonely as a weathered piece of rock in the desert.

These two first chapters are extremely moving, tender, harrowing and devastatingly sad. They are marvellously well written.

The concluding chapter pays an absolutely wonderful tribute to the altruistic love that Lois's two alternative husbands, KJ and Dan, feel for her. Dan and KJ are, literally, prepared to give up absolutely everything for her. Dan is removing himself from the woman he loves with all his heart, so that she can be happy with another man, and so that she can keep her children. KJ is prepared to sacrifice all that and more, his own physical existence. This chapter is a wonderful mix of humour and comedy and incredibly beautiful altruistic love.

I loved the ending, too - well, actually not the very ending about the man in Minnesota and Paladin and Abrams, because I didn't understand that. But I absolutely, totally loved KJ's words to Dan near the end:
Haha! It's been a long time since I saw Casablanca, and I don't remember it that well, but I do remember that Humphrey Bogart's character has just given up Ingrid Bergman's character - she's going back to her husband - and Humphrey Bogart says exactly those words about a beautiful friendship to a newfound friend of his. How wonderfully appropriate!

I absolutely loved this story, Terry. It's not only so well-written, but it also gives the reader so much food for thought. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing it with us.

Ann

Knowing what I now know about these stories, I'm going to read them again when I have a chance.

Reading over Ann's post made me realize that I'd like to see another story from Take 2 - What has Clark thought and felt through the years?

Ooh, interactive feedback! I love it!

Ann, thank you for your very kind words and your detailed feedback. Your objection to the "freeze Lois and fool the bad guys" scenario in "She's" is duly noted and extremely valid. You aren't the first one to object to such a drastic plan, and I'm sure you won't be the last. I didn't like it either. But since we're dealing with a TV show, we have to give the characters some leeway somewhere. Also, let's all remember it wasn't Superman who came up with such an idiotic plan, it was good old Lois Lane. She wasn't ambushed, she essentially threw herself on a grenade for people she loved. And people do put themselves in danger for people they love in real life.

And while there may be some FOLCs who object to the ending to "Ordinary People," where Spencer Spencer, the decapitating doctor, and the German nurse are frozen in liquid nitrogen and then shattered into a zillion pieces by automatic weapons fire directed against Clark but which ricochets into the ice, I've never read any. (Quite beside the point, why isn't that episode considered deathfic? Three people die, right in front of Superman!)

"Abrams" is a reference to the main battle tank of the US Army, named after an American general of the late 20th century. "Paladin" refers to a medieval warrior who wanders about the countryside doing random good deeds. The man in Minnesota is none other than our own beloved Tank Wilson, he of the famous (infamous?) Tank endings.

As for your comments regarding the different characters' reaction to tragedy, remember that pain affects people different ways. Two men might each lose a ten-year-old son to sudden accidental death, and it's highly likely that they will react in quite different ways. And children who experience grief always carry the scars for life. A large percentage of them learn to deal with it, but many never escape the aftereffects of the trauma.

Classicalla, perhaps you could write Take Two from Clark's perspective. I tried, I really did. Nothing usable came out. Besides, I think it gives the readers more room to react if the viewpoints are limited. The only three characters we actually hear from are Lois (once in each part), Dan, and KJ. Wells is there to provide transportation and wrap up the loose ends, but he really doesn't do very much (in a dramatic sense, anyway). You also griped about Lois digging down into Clark's brain to get the Kryptonite sliver. Bad judgement? Maybe, but she was dealing with an emergency situation, and she knew exactly where the sliver was. And maybe the brain trauma Clark suffered contributed to his behavior later.

Kristen, you get the no-prize! And I'm glad I didn't bore you with the tech talk. Since I have an amateur's interest in science, especially physics, I feel this intense need to explain things. My teen-age daughter has this habit now of asking why something is in my hearing and then telling me (almost in the same breath) that she really doesn't need to know. I usually go ahead and explain anyway.

Chris, I hope your head has stopped spinning. And thank you for your kind words also.

Yes, I will consider writing Clark's perspective. I will think about it. I guess I said something about Lois poking around in Clark's head because the nurse in me can't help myself.... I've also got psychiatric experience. Maybe we could work on the story together....