Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Bridge to the Past 7/12

I loved this chapter. The interactions between Bernie and Lara, between Lara and Lois and the Kents acceptance and sharing of their pictures of Clark with Lara. Very heart-warming.

LOL! Never one to beat around the bush, Lois goes straight to the heart of the issue.

And Lara's response: Very nice imagery here. I could practically see Clark getting embarrassed in a similar situation. Must be genetic. Cute.

Lois is awesome. I loved it that Lois set up this little dinner party so that Lara and Clark can finally talk. Can't wait to see what happens next.

One suggestion for the archive - the <> around the dialogue in this chapter made reading a little ...not harder, but less smooth for me. Maybe swap it around to only show Kryptonian speech in brackets instead would flow better.

I loved Lois' entry line as well =)

This is a very neat story so far, can't wait to see how dinner goes.

I discovered this story this morining around four when I couldn't sleep and I love it. It's such a unique take on canon and the line about the exiled lunatics cracked me up. I can't wait to see what happens next.

PS. I love your tormented Clark

You know, a story needs more to scare me off. Honestly, are you reading Carol's OTOH? If I tell you that I'm still sticking around, what does that tell you about my ability to stomach lunkheaded/stupid/wallowing Clark? :rolleyes:

Anyway, I especially loved your trademark killer punch line for this chapter. Dinner with your parents, indeed.

LOL!

She is most decidedly NOT reading OTOH /mutter/. However, she knows more about it than I do at times - except THERE ARE NO ITALIANS! I would like to state that emphatically for the record. [I'll explain when we get to that point...]

/restarts chant/

Larnie
Larnie
Larnie
Larnie

/disappears quietly into to the night as others chant and distract Queenie/

Carol

Nothing like busybody women to ruin a man's evening.


Elisabeth

Wow! I love that last line of Lois'. I am having a bit of trouble with the Clark I am reading but I am looking forward to seeing more and more of this.

I have to leave for work in two minutes, so I'll just say that I'm reading it and loving it!

Ann

Very good so far. I'm enjoying the angst of Lara and Clark but really hoping that they'll start talking and work their way through it. It's good to have Lois, Martha, and Jonathan be the mediators.

Imagining the part where Lara looks at the photo albums is priceless.

Yay!!!! Feedback!!! I sorta kinda forgot. I'll fix it soon, but it'll have to be at a time when I'm not almost-unconscious.

Alas, this is true, though I will get around to it! Also, what Carol doesn't realize is that most of her protagonists in OtoH are Italian. This is obvious from the aura of sheer awesomeness that many of them exude. Also, "Krypton" is the Greek word for "Italy". I'll bet some of you didn't know that. Of course, some of her characters are more Italian than others, as you will see when she comes to her senses and introduces Vinnie and his girl Lucia from Milan.

/whispers/

Vinnie is the travel agent, not the non-Italian you're waiting for me to introduce.

/end whisper/

My mother was a first-generation Italian-American. Her parents were both born in Italy and emigrated to the US through Ellis Island before the last turn of the century. So I approve of Vinnie, because I know that he is a legitimate businessman engaged in a perfectly legal business enterprise. Just don't take any special deliveries from him.

Great story, Queenie! Clark's ongoing pain is legitimate, and the spillover into his home life is also very true to life. And Lois' decision to take the dilemma by the horns to resolve it is quite in character for her. I hope that Clark will listen to his mother, even if he doesn't immediately embrace her and tell her everything's fine (which I do not expect to see).

But somewhere along the line, he has to open up and accept that things happen to people. What happened was by no means his fault. He might feel that way - like a child wondering if his parents' divorce was his fault - but he'll have to believe that there was nothing he could have done or can do which can change those circumstances.

I wonder if Lara has any information which might help Lois and Clark make babies?

/initiates counter-chant/

No Larnie!
No Larnie!
No Larnie!

As fractured as Lara's relationship with Clark is now, it might be damaged beyond repair if she gets involved with another man so soon after her husband's (Clark's biological father who also sent him away!) death. Then Clark's dream accusations would become even more true in her mind. And Clark might jump to the conclusion that she really didn't love Jor-El after all. And none of us want that!

Excellent story, Queenie. Keep it flowing!

/mutter/

Yeah, but couldn't Larnie be a perfectly acceptable couple at *some* point? Not *right* away, but *eventually*...

Carol [who's husband is 4th generation Italian - or maybe 3rd - not sure if his grandparents were born here or immigrated young]

Carol muttered:

Eventually? Sure! But Clark and Lara have to be on a firm foundation first. Lara allowed Kryptonian social mores to deprive her of her firstborn. She can't allow her own loneliness and homesickness to lead her into a relationship with Dr. Bernie-Klein before she and Kal-El get righteous with each other. Her priority right now has to be rebuilding the bridges with her son.

Then, maybe if Bernie isn't too freaked out by the prospect of dating Superman's mother, they can see what might happen.

I loved Lara and Lois in this chapter. Kind of didn't like Clark, though. He seemed a bit whiny to me. Come on - I agree it would be a huge blow to find out you were lied to and told your entire planet had exploded, but I feel like he's getting a bit too upset about the fact that his parents had him before they were married and then gave him up.

That is not that uncommon and... well, he's an adult. He should be able to deal with these types of things better. (Just to be clear - I'm not saying he doesn't have a right to be upset, but I think he's a bit more upset than the situation warrants. Whatever he finds out about his past, he has a great present and shouldn't put it in so much jeapordy by ignoring his wife.)

But, forgive me, feelings for Clark from OTOH seem to sometimes spill into other Clarks as well. (This is particularly troubling when it's my Clark and I can't recall writing anything that would annoy me...) So, maybe he's being perfectly reasonable, and I just want to be annoyed at him.

I loved that fact that Martha and Jonathan are acting like rational adults here and are great to Lara, and Lois' taking matters into her own hands is so in character it made me laugh.

I like the fic but Clark's reaction seems so over the top.

I guess my problem is that my vision for Clark is such that I would see him reacting very differently than this. I wouldn't expect him to withdraw into himself the way he has done. My expectation would be that he would reach out and hold on more tightly to those that he knows do love and care for him.

Anyway, given the way he's reacting here, I love the fact that Lois is taking charge. I would expect no less from her.

Bob

That's a reasonable expectation, but we all have to remember that in this story Clark's entire history, his sense of self, his tie to noble Krypton, has been utterly and ruthlessly crushed. Should he focus on the present. Yes. Is it understandable that he be knocked off center by such a revelation? Of course.

How would you react if your mother - who you believed had died saving your life just after you were born - suddenly reappeared and said, "Oh, no, we were too embarrassed to tell people I was pregnant, so your dad and I gave you up for adoption in another country, and your dad just died a few weeks ago and asked me to look you up. Here I am!"

I don't know what I'd do. I doubt that any of us would know what we'd do. And while the above description is an oversimplification of the actual circumstances, Clark isn't thinking logically.

Consider this. The noble Jor-El, laboring frantically to construct an escape vehicle for his family, is barely able to build one rocket for his infant son. As he and his beloved wife Lara watch the telemetry from the rocket assure them that it's on course, the planet beneath them disintegrates and they die gasping for breath.

Heroic, isn't it? And it's a fitting beginning for Superman, too. The Last Son of Krypton, sole survivor of a brilliant, advanced, powerful but doomed people becomes the hero to an entire world. But now that beginning, that image, that heroic mold is shattered beyond repair. He's an illegitimate child. His parents sent him away because they couldn't (or, to Clark's mind, wouldn't) admit that they had lost control of their passions, not to save him from certain destruction. He's unwanted. He's an inconvenience, an intruder in their happy home, a source of shame.

Clark has never had to deal with anything like this before. This isn't just bad news. This means that everything he's based his origin on - and based Superman on - is a lie. Yes, Jonathan and Martha took him in and loved him without reservation and raised him to be a man, but now in his eyes he's damaged goods. Yes, Superman has saved countless lives and prevented destruction and devastation all over the world, but the society which inspired his costume - and, by extension, his super-identity - is no longer noble to him. It's all a lie.

His feelings and opinions aren't factual, but he can't acknowledge that yet. He'll get there, I think, but it will take some time, and it won't be pretty in spots.

I should have known that Clark would be clueless about the 'dinner with your parents'

Just wanted to say that Terry Leatherwood in the post above wrote clearly and poetically. I had many of those same feelings as to why Clark was over-reacting, but Terry put it all into words, and very well, too!

That isn't what happened.

That is absolutely not what happened!

Clark's parents did send their son away to save him from destruction. Not from certain destruction, all right, but from probable destruction. I don't have the strength to go looking for previous parts now, but I distinctly remember that the mores of Krypton were such that if an illegitimate child was born, the head of the family or the klan passed judgement on whether or not the child would be allowed to live. Jor-El and Lara believed that their son would be sentenced to death, if others found out about his existence.

I'm all but certain that it has been common in certain cultures to sentence unwanted newborn girls to death. That practice has morphed into large-scale female foeticide in countries like India and China. Admittedly I don't know of any culture where families have killed their own unwanted sons, but Mary's explanation for how it could happen on Krypton rang true to me. Out-of-wedlock sex was seen as so reprehensible that the fruits of it were put down.

I think there is a big misunderstanding between Clark and Lara. Clark believes that Lara and Jor-el sent him away because they didn't want him. Lara believes that Clark is dismayed because she and Jor-el made him by having illegitimate sex. I do hope that Clark can accept the illegitimate aspect of himself - after all, even Jesus was an illegitimate child, or he looked that way to the people of his home town, to be sure. And I very much hope Clark can accept that his parents did send him away to save him, only not from an exploding planet. To continue the biblical comparisons, consider Moses. His mother put him in a 'spaceship' of his own - okay, not a spaceship, but a small 'ark' ( as King James' Bible describes it), and sent him away down the river Nile to an unknown fate, but hopefully to salvation. Moses was saved, and so was Clark. And Clark, if you are like Jesus and Moses, why should you complain?



Moses is saved by Pharao's daughter.

I can understand Lara's heartbreak. She had to send away her son, because she had born him out of wedlock. Afterwards, when she had married her beloved Jor-El, she was unable to have more children. She watched her husband die. She went looking for her son on the Earth, and found him, only to have him reject her and accuse her of being a liar and a terrible mother. Poor Lara!!!

Ann