Oh Terry, I so don't want to do this, but at the same time I'm almost unable not to answer you. So I'll do my very, very best to be clear about my own views, but at the same time, to be fair to others.
I am an agnostic who lost my faith in God for many reasons, but one reason was that I spent so much time thinking about God when I was a child. When I was seven years old, I was given a "kiddie version" of the Bible, and I read, and read, and re-read this book over and over, thinking about the stories and turning them over in my mind. I think it's not a good idea for me to voice any general verdict about the Bible, since that will provoke so many people and start a new, painful debate. But I will mention the story of Cain and Abel.
Cain and Abel were, as you all know, Adam and Eve's two oldest sons. Cain was a farmer and Abel a herdsman, and both made offerings to God. But while God accepted Abel's offering, he rejected Cain's, and Cain became jealous of his brother and killed him. God punished Cain by making him an outcast, a lonely wanderer of the Earth.
This story has given rise to many comments and interpretations. For example, how heinous is the crime of murdering one's brother? How is it different from other murders? What would it be like for Adam and Eve to basically lose both their oldest sons because of this fratricide? Are they to blame, at least partially, for this tragedy, by not raising their sons properly? Is perhaps God himself to blame, for creating Adam and Eve in such a way that their very first son became a murderer? And how would you deal with your own horrible guilt if you were Cain? How ominous and fraught with lies and sins is the answer that Cain gives to God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" What would it be like to be an eternal outcast, wandering the Earth with the death of your brother on your conscience? And why does God preserve Cain's life by putting a mark on him to stop others from attacking him?
There is, however, one person who basically never becomes the object of discussion in connection with this story, and that is Abel. Abel, mind you, is the one who died. The one who was robbed of his life, the one who was murdered. Yet no one ever seems to feel sorry for him. Who spares a thought for Abel?
Abel, the way I see him, isn't treated by the Bible as a human being. Rather than being shown a person, he is turned into a catalyst whose purpose of existence is to die, so that the Bible can tell the story that it really wants to tell, or the story that people want to talk about. When I was a child, this was one of the Biblical stories that haunted and disturbed me, the story about a young man whose life seemed to have no value of its own, but whose death was necessary so that we and the Bible can talk about his brother and his parents and God and sins.
I'm sure that there are so many Christians out there who will interpret the story about Cain and Abel completely differently. Please, people, I'm not saying that I'm *right* about my interpretation of it. I know that this is how I read it when I was a kid. And it was this story that made me think that some people are treated as if they have no value of their own, and only their deaths might be of interest because we can use their demise to talk about other things and set up another story.
Later, I concluded that people whose lives were considered inconsequential in themselves but whose deaths might be used as catalysts to say something interesting about others were often women. I have talked about this many times before, and I will not go into it again.
I really feel spent, talking about deathfic. No one will benefit from my continued insistence that I don't want to read them.
As for Superman, I will repeat, once again, that Lois may very well be killed in the "real world" - the world of comics or movies, or even TV shows - but Superman will not be permanently killed as long as his trademark owners can make any money on him whatsoever. And if Lois is killed, as she might well be, but Superman lives on, as he will and must, the trademark owners will most certainly give him a new love interest eventually. It may not even take a very long time for Superman to move on romantically. So how badly will Superman be hurt by Lois's death? My answer is, not very badly at all.
But now it's time for me to be fair. *This* incarnation of Superman, Lois and Clark's Superman, the Superman that this site is dedicated to - yes, he *would* be hurt, very very badly hurt, by Lois's death. I can't blame people for wanting to write stories exploring *this* Superman's grief at Lois's death.
Personally, I can see one extremely good reason to explore what Lois's death would do to Superman. The reason is that Superman is so fundamentally, existentially lonely. He really is the last of his kind. He is the orphan of an entire world, and apart from his adoptive parents, Lois is his only real connection to this world. There is a pureness and an absoluteness of the loneliness that he would suffer if Lois died. I can't blame people for wanting to explore it, even though I myself shudder at the thought of reading this story.
And now, honestly, I don't want to talk about this any more.
Ann
