See, it surprises me that you'd feel the need to check for that reason in
this fandom, Sheila. After all, it's not as if deathfics are common here.
I think I could probably count on the fingers of two hands the number of deathfics on the Archive. Maybe three.
One reason is probably that, like you, we authors are all pretty attached to the characters and like to see them get together/end up together/be happy together.
A few of the deathfics I've read have been obviously written by teenagers - cloyingly sentimental stories in which Lois is killed in a traffic accident/in childbirth/of a mysterious illness and Clark mourns her bitterly, cradling their child to his bosom/vowing never to love another/dying/killing himself from grief. Some of those smack suspiciously of Mary Sue-ism. A couple are poignantly sad, and one is even almost WAFFy, in a way: Jennifer Eagan-Dixon's When Magnolias Bloom.
Actually, as long as I've been a GE it's been Archive policy that deathfics should be marked as such, so that readers don't stumble on a principal-character death unexpectedly. So you shouldn't have to worry about encountering that accidentally anyway, Sheila.
And now all this has put me in mind of another poll...
Wendy
