Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Types of love and "L & C: tNaoS"

I need to answer two questions from KathyM:

Kathy, I don't know that there is such a group. Maybe there isn't one at all, at least not on these boards. There could be one over at Zoomway's boards, where the "Dean Cain" folder is the one that has received the largest number of posts. And of course, after I've read what feels like thousands of comic books and seen all the movies, I know how precarious and fleeting Lois's presence can be in the non-LnC Superman world, and how secondary she is in that world to Superman. (The "Lois and Superman" romance is resolved, said Christopher Reeve in an interview after his third or fourth Superman movie. Further Superman movies, he added, should not deal with that aspect of Superman's life.)

So after the Christopher Reeve movies, I have never really dared to believe that Superman's love for Lois is a given. After I returned to the world of Superman again after a ten-year hiatus, I always scrutinized any Superman-related (or Clark-related) stuff I came across for this one vital aspect: Superman's (or Clark's) love for Lois. I became hyper-sensitive to whether or not his love for her was a driving force in the stories I read. And when I read LnC stories where we see a lot of Clark, but where I can't perceive much of his love for Lois, I tend to conclude (perhaps very unfairly) that this is a "Clark-centric" story, written by someone who is more interested in Clark than in Clark and Lois. I guess you could say that I "translate" the strong focus on Superman (and the often dismissive take on Lois) in the non-LnC world of Superman as a strong focus on Clark (and a dismissive take on Lois) in some LnC stories I have read. But once again, I may certainly be very unfair to the writers of those stories. I may certainly misconstrue their intentions with the stories they have written. It's not as if I approach those stories without a ton of "Lois and Superman-related" baggage of hope, joy and horrible frustration. (But for all of that, I may never like their versions of Clark.)

Kathy also asked the following question:
Kathy, have you ever heard me rant and rave at the fact that Lois accepted Lex's proposal in LnC? If you have - or even if you haven't - there is your answer. Nooooo!!! No, no, no, I don't want Lois to fall in love with someone else. But when I grew up and "watched" Lois and Superman, it never seemed remotely possible to me that Lois would find another man to love. I didn't worry about Lois moving on, because it seemed absolutely impossible that something like that could happen. Superman could move on, yes. Lana was always there as a threat in the background. Lori Lemaris was another potential love interest, and then, of course, there was Wonder Woman. And in one comic book story from the sixties, Superman met, fell in love with and proposed to a more-or-less ordinary Earth woman! And she accepted his proposal, and they started to prepare for their wedding... until it was revealed that this woman was suffering from a deadly disease, and she died before they could marry. But there you are. When I grew up it always seemed possible that Superman might move on, but it never seemed possible that Lois would. That is why I myself have always focused so heavily on Clark's faithfulness and constancy, not on Lois's.

But let me tell you that I worry about what the latest Superman movie might do to Lois Lane. Will she be seen as the woman who chose Richard White over Superman? I would totally and completely hate it. In fact, if the image of Lois Lane changes so that she is generally perceived as someone who will not give her love to Superman/Clark Kent, then she, too, will be dead to me as a character.

Terry wrote:

Yes, Terry, that does make Clark subservient to Lois. But because I also can't imagine Lois without Clark, that makes Lois subservient to him.

Terry, my fantasy about Lois and Clark is a fantasy about two people who are destined to be together, and who are doomed to be hollow and incomplete without each other. But as I was trying to explain to Kathy, when I grew up it seemed eminently possible that Superman might stray and abandon Lois, but never that Lois would abandon him. That is why I focus so heavily on Clark's faithfulness and constancy, as I just said... but that doesn't mean that I feel less strongly about Lois's.

Terry, you said something else in a previous post:

Terry, believe me, when it comes to real-life people I don't begrudge anyone the right to remarry (with the possible exceptions of those who maliciously murdered their spouses - you know what I mean). Real life people are real life people with real life problems, desires and pains, but fantasy people are fantasy people, whose problems, desires and pains we are free to bestow on them ourselves. So we can choose to make them larger than life and incredibly romantic, or we can treat them "seriously" and put them in all kinds of realistic situations. Actually, the two approaches don't have to be mutually exclusive, but to me the realistic "Lois dies and Clark moves on" scenario is a no-no, absolutely incompatible with my fantasy about Lois and Clark.

But Terry, I found it interesting that you mentioned Lou Gehrig and his wife, because they were real people. It could well be that I'm over-interpretating what you said about Gehrig's widow, but it seemed to me that you did not wholly approve of her decision to stay single for the rest of her life after her husband died.

This reminds me about a Swedish writer, Per Olov Enquist, whose father died when he himself was just a few months old. His mother never remarried. I recently saw a (to me) hugely interesting interview with Enquist, where it seemed to me that he perhaps disapproved of his mother's decision to never remarry and thus say no to physical love for the rest of her life, just because her husband died young.

The latest, and probably last, book that Enquist has written is called Blanche and Marie. The "Marie" in question is Marie Curie, a very famous woman who most certainly existed in real life. I haven't read that book, but I have heard Enquist talk about it. Basically, although Enquist didn't say it in so many words, Enquist portrays Marie Curie as a sort of counterpoint to his own mother, a woman who made another choice about love than his own mother did. Marie Curie was an extremely famous scientist and physicist, who won the Nobel Prize for physics twice. But after her husband died (or she left him - I don't quite remember) she started an affair, which shocked the people at that time, the early nineteen twenties. Enquist explained in that interview that his book chartered the painful, awful downfall of Marie Curie, who toward the end of her life was sick, shunned, hated and deserted by everyone because of her illicit affair.

What I found most interesting about the whole thing was the answer that Enquist gave, when the reporter asked him if Marie Curie had done the right thing when she had risked everything for love. After all, her affair cost her such awful pain in the end, so was the initial joy and pleasure worth it for Marie? Yes, said Enquist confidently. It was worth it for her. And I thought to myself, how can he know that? How can he know what it was like to be a super-famous female physicist in the early twentieth century, who risked everything to "move on", and who came up against the merciless condemnation of all of Europe? How can he know that it was worth it for Marie? Just because he wishes that his own mother had taken a few more romantic risks?

I think we should be very, very careful when we talk about and judge the romantic choices made by real people. But when it comes to the romantic choices made by fantasy people like Lois and Clark, I know what I think and what I like.

Ann