Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic The Roads They Walked Alone Part 52 - Comments

Any and all comments welcome.

thanks,


Rac

Hi,

Great part!


Great news for Jimmy.

Maria's right. You're putting your most sympathetic original character - Lok Sim - in the crosshairs of the craziest villain since Professor Moriarity. I know there are no guarantees in war, but if you could find it in your heart to have him survive (despite his being a huge target), I'd really appreciate it. Besides, little Thia needs an uncle.

And Talan? Wow! She's broken through and admitted something to herself that she didn't think she was capable of. It's almost scary to read how intense her emotions are and how far she thinks she'd go to protect Kal-El. I wonder if there's an encounter between them looming on the horizon, and if Clark will remember Lois strongly enough to resist the temptation she could present to him.

I can't be certain, but it looks to me as if the war on New Krypton is heading towards the endgame. Nor's forces are demoralized, cut off from resupply, lacking spare parts and new weapons and ammunition and fresh toilet paper (you'd be surprised how much of that item an army uses) and replacement soldiers, and all Nor can do is to rant about killing Talan. It's a wonder his general staff doesn't just shoot him down like a dog.

Sorry, are there dogs on New Krypton?

Lois really is making great progress, despite her frustration with the diplomatic process. It's hard to watch people die when you know you can do something about it, but when you also know that you can do so much more in other places, just not as quickly. Don't let her drop off the deep end, please! Clark will be tested by Talan, I believe, but Lois will be tempted to take justice into her own hands, and that would be a momentary gain but a long-term disaster for both her and for Superman when he returns.

And the snapshot of Jimmy was wonderful. I think he had to grow up fast and furious, and it's left him feeling at loose ends. Who knows? Maybe Jimmy will face some kind of temptation in the near future, too.

Thanks for keeping this one going, Rac. I think it's a wonderful read, and I'm eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

Rac, I came home from work thinking I would have at least an hour to write feedback on the latest part of your story. And then it turned out that my fridge had broken down, and I've spent the last three hours ordering a new fridge, trying to salvage as much as possible of the stuff inside and taking care of slightly yucky things...

I should really be in bed, but if I don't write anything about your story now, I imagine it won't happen. I will have no time to quote, but I will try to put down a few general musings. First, Talan. What sort of person is she anyway? I'd say she is like a saint, and the very, very best kind of saint, too. The saint who is not aware of how amazing and giving and idealistic she is. The saint who is directing all her energy outward, to try to make the world around her a better place. She is as far as possible from a real-life English woman from the 14th and 15th century, Margery Kempe, a woman who actually set out to become a saint. Can you believe it? Much of her life she spent doing the kind of things she thought saints should do - she became celibate, had cramps of ecstasy and shouted revelations in churches, went on extremely ambitious pilgrimages and dressed in white (and she pretty much abandoned her fourteen children while she was out doing her saintly stuff). Margery Kempe's attempts at saintliness were selfish, because she was trying to excel at holiness in a way not dissimilar to how an athlete tries to become number one in his or her sport. Talan is as far from that sort of saint as anyone can be. For much of the story, Talan has completely ignored herself and thought only about giving herself totally to the cause of making New Krypton a better place for her people. This may perhaps sound dangerously extremist, but Talan is as far from a jihadist or a "holy" terrorist as anyone can be. A jihadist may actually believe that his mission is so holy that God will reward him for killing as many of "God's enemies" as possible, and then it doesn't matter if these "enemies" are innocent civilians. Talan, on the other hand, believes in justice and, I think, in mercy. Revenge and unnecessary killings have been anathema to her.

Until now. Seeing a person like Talan - a person burning so true for a beautiful, noble cause - seeing someone like her become shaken to the core of her being and succumb to the pain and joy and selfish altruism of love is an awesome sight. Talan herself is larger than life, and her love must be similarly overwhelming. How will she be able to reconcile this raging fire of love with the ideals she has spent her life fighting for? How will she reconcile this emotional turmoil with her idea of who and what she is? I'm thinking of stories about how great and noble people have been corrupted. Will Talan be corrupted? It depends, I think, on whether she is an all-or-nothing sort of person. I think Talan will have to accept that she has human flaws that she has previously not been aware of. If she can't accept this, if she can't accept her own weaknesses and imperfections, I think the risk of her being corrupted is not negligible.

Then there is Lok Sim. Reading about him, I'm reminded about what God said to Abraham before he destroyed Sodom: If there were ten righteous people in that city, he would spare it.

Lok Sim, to me, is the sort of gentle, kind person whose very existence could almost redeem an entire people. Why should anyone fight so hard to save a people like the New Kryptonians? Because a people who have produced a person like Lok Sim can't be beyond redemption. I, too, hope so much that you won't kill this gentle giant, and yet his demise is exactly what I can see happening. Well, then, at best Lok Sim can live on in his people's memory as an inspiration and an example to them all.

Clark and Lois - I have barely any time at all commenting on them in this chapter, except I will say that it's very interesting to see Lois deal with the extremely frustrating reality of diplomacy. Nevetheless, as frustrating as diplomacy can be, I do think it's the right thing to do in nine cases out of ten, or in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Jihadists aim for perfection and some noble people lose faith in their ideals altogether when they discover imperfection and moral ambiguity in themselves. We humans are not perfect, and we must forgive ourselves and others. We must learn to compromise even as we keep on fighting for what we truly believe in.

Your story is just getting ever more fascinating, Rac.

Ann

Unfortuantly I can't comment much again but I just wanted to know I am still with you hanging in there...

More soon

~Lois Lane Wanna Be

This is the most amazing story, Rac.

First Lois - she's grown so much as she struggles to find diplomatic solutions to complex problems, problems that her physical powers alone could never solve. ( In a way, she's the mirror image of Clark who is having to rely on his brain since the brawn is gone. (that phrase sounds so superficial )

It's hard to say who has been having the most horrendous time of it all - Clark, Lois, or Talan. Maybe Talan because she really had no choice in her fate, whereas Clark chose to be there, and Lois chose to define the role of "superhero" in a much broader way than Superman had.

Had to smile at that - yet so true and so perceptive of Lois to acknowledge that.

Loved the scene between Clark and Thia - he really is a gentle man.

Nice layer of depth you've added to Jimmy.

And Talan - what an amazing character! Larger than life, operatic, in a way that neither Lois nor Clark are. (although this is not to say there isn't music for each of them: there is, but it's different. ) I'm seeing some kind of burn and crash coming. I do hope she comes out of this alive, but I'm having "Beau Geste" visions.

Terry wrote:
We haven't seen anything from Clark's point of view that suggests this. Although Talan has acknowledged her feelings to herself, I don't see her pulling a "Fatal Attraction" style move on Clark - she's an honourable person. A "Tis a far, far better thing I do" sort of hero. Ann drew some interesting parallels between Talan and saints, but I'm thinking Talan is a Jedi warrior.

I'll end by seconding Terry's plea for Lok Sim - let Lok Sim live!
If Terry is selling the t-shirts, I'll take one.

c.

Thank you for your comments, everyone.

Hi Maria. It's good to know you think I'm so evil that I'm going to kill every sympathetic character I've created. War has a tendency to put good people in dangerous situations, this isn't an exception. While progress is being made on every front, nobody's out of the woods yet. But I can make one promise - there will be more soon!

Terry, thanks for commenting. I'm really glad you're enjoying the story. Nor's fixation does seem like a growing problem. I wager the reason his generals don't kill him is because they're all afraid of Rae Et. I would be. And Talan is certainly facing a different sort of conflict from what she's used to. She has a total blind spot where her own emotions are concerned. I mean, it took her forever to recognize something you noted many sections ago.

As for Lois, patience may be a virtue, but it isn't always one of hers. Diplomacy must be a maddening endeavor (even when it's a worthy one), but I'm sure it's doubly so when you have the capacity to deal with the problem head on and without any of the intricacies of negotiations. But I think Lois is realizing that as easy as it would be to rip Sangara out of his comfortable environment and bring him and his goons to justice, it wouldn't be a tenable long-term solution to the problem.

Hi, Ann. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment, especially given how hectic it seems things were for you. I hope all is well with the appliances now. Talan definitely strikes me as someone who is selfless, but not in the intentional, cry for attention sort of way. She's just so consumed by what she has to do, that there's nothing left that's just hers.

While I tend to have a softer spot for the New Kryptonians and they're overly formal, rational way of life than most of my readers, I agree that Lok Sim is the kind of person who could pretty much redeem an entire society. A world that produced a person like him can't be all bad. He started off as a character introduced solely to move a plot line forward, but I ended up liking him so much that I kept coming back to him and reintroducing him to different situations. He's sort of woven his way into the fabric of the story at this point.

Hi LLWB. Thanks for your patience and for taking the time to read and comment. I know it's been a really long ride so far.

Carol, thank you very much for your kind words. I agree that Lois and Clark could probably do with a "power swap" right about now. If Lois wielded the sort of political power Clark has over an entire planet, I'm sure she could make a rebel war in a small, poor corner of the world disappear pretty quickly. And if Clark were still Superman, he could have avoided all sorts of really terrible situations. But, since it's my story and I'm really, really mean, I gave them both phenomenal powers (his political, hers physical) that aren't as helpful as they should be. As you can tell, my meanness extends so far that I made what must have been a dream of Jimmy's come true, but in a really horrible way. Man, sometimes I'm a real jerk.

Talan the Jedi Knight, huh? I can see that. I bet she'd be really good with a light saber. As I recall, the Jedi were a pretty emotionally repressed bunch, too. Hopefully she won't pull an Anakin and let her emotions drag her to the dark side But I digress...I agree that her life has an operatic quality to it because its all strum and drang with nothing of ordinary, everyday existence. There really aren't any 'slice of life' moments for her. Even with her family, she's distant and kind of awkward. With Lois and Clark, you can see how they're trying so hard to stay connected to their normal lives, despite all the really weird, out of this world stuff that happens to them.

Thanks for all of your really wonderful comments, everyone. I very much appreciate them. Oh and Terry, if you are making T shirts, I'll order one, too.

More soon!

Rac