I find it interesting as well as very depressing that you said this, Lynn:

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It's for a deathfic. I don't even want to *read* that type of story, much less write one; nevertheless, I think this could be developed into a powerful story by someone with the talent and interest...
Quite a few people on these boards seem to reason like that. A deathfic is bad, but a Lois deathfic is okay.

Bobbart has just finished a fic where Jon and Martha were missing for a long time, and it seemed very probable that they were dead. They were brought back, and most people were very happy. Now, if we consider your story premise, it could easily have been turned into a story where Clark caused the death of his parents. Clark has spent more time with his parents than with Lois, and in the beginning, when he didn't know how to control his powers, he may indeed have zapped his parents with X-rays that may have harmed them. So it is more likely that Jonathan or Martha would get cancer as a result of Clark's powers. Yet such a story premise does not exist. And why not? Because it is unthinkable that Clark would cause his parents' death. Such a thing would be gruesome, and it can't be tolerated. But the idea of Clark unwittingly causing Lois's death is tragically beautiful. Why is it awful for a man to accidentally cause the death of parents, but tragically beautiful for him to cause the death of his wife?

My answer is harsh. The way I see it, it is because our society says that young women are not so interesting in themselves, and their lives aren't worth that much. But their deaths are beautiful. They leave such beautiful corpses. And they were only women anyway. Therefore people may cry over their deaths, but they don't need to feel truly devastated by the loss of these women's lives, because their lives weren't that valuable anyway.

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Ophelia. What is most beautiful, her life or her death? Don't tell me you don't know the answer. Not only is her death exquisitely beautiful, but we may cry over it and feel cleansed and relieved afterwards.

Men, however, are valuable. The "defining narrative" of the western civilisation is the story of a man who dies and rises from the death to live again - I'm talking about Jesus, of course. Our civilisation doesn't have a similar narrative about a woman. When a woman dies, she should remain dead.

TOGOM, one of the most influential episodes of the LnC TV series, shows how Clark "died" and became alive again. Lois cried for him as if she had been Mary Magdalene crying over Jesus. But like Jesus, Clark "became alive again".

There have been so many re-writes of TOGOM on these boards. It would seem natural that some of them should tell us that Clark didn't return, that he stayed dead. (Perhaps he was shot with a kryptonite bullet?) I think Tank may have written such a story, otherwise such a premise is a no-no. Clark mustn't die, because he is a man. And therefore his life is more valuable than his death.

It makes me really sorry to see Lois deathfics written for their story potential, when Clark deathfics are so rarely written for their story potential. My explanation for this is that I think people respond to this deeper narrative in our western civilization which I have referred to, the one that says that a (young) woman's death is tragically beautiful, but a man's death is just devastating and unbearable.

It isn't over until the fat lady sings.

Ann