I, too, am very sorry to hear about your neighbour, Rachel.
Anyway, I read something today in a no-cost daily paper of the kind that you can pick up at train stations and the like. There was a review of a new movie - or new here in Scandinavia at least, "300" by Frank Miller. The reviewer described the movie as extremely "black and white" in terms of the morality of its characters - except then the reviewer contradicted himself by saying that the bad guys in this movie are extremely, unbelievably bad, while the "good guys" are only moderately bad.
This got me thinking about the characters in your fic. And I really think that you show us so convincingly that Clark and Lois - Clark especially, of course, but Lois too - are really so unaffectedly, unassumingly good in a way that is rarely seen and which is difficult to write in such a way that the characters don't become boring. Interestingly, Clark and Lois are far from perfect in your fic - Lois especially, but Clark too has his shortcomings - and yet they are so, well, good. Which brings us to the next question, by the way - what the heck is goodness anyway?
One of my own favorite books is a a book about a 14th and 15th century English woman, Margery Kempe, whose life's ambition was to become a saint. She worked hard for many years to achieve sainthood. Isn't that interesting? But what does it take to become a saint?
Technically, you become a saint if a Pope canonizes you. However, you must first deserve your sainthood. Now, Margery Kempe was an illiterate woman. Her ideas of what it took to deserve sainthood may not have been the same as those of the learned theologians of her time, but even so - isn't it a little funny to think that she spent years and years nagging her husband to stop having sex with her, because she thought that a saint must be celibate? And isn't it shocking to think that when she finally had managed to evict her husband from her conjugal bed, she pretty much abandoned her fourteen children so she could go out into the world and do saintly things? She spent many years going on truly arduous and often dangerous pilgrimages to holy places such as Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela, because she thought that such journeys were looked upon with great favour by priests and bishops and supposedly by God. Margery Kempe also had revelations accompanied by seizures inside churches, so that people could see and hear for themselves that God spoke to her. And finally she began dressing in white, so that the purity of her soul would be matched by the color of her clothing.
I find Margery Kempe's dedication to her quest for sainthood so fascinating - she reminds me, in a way, of a sort of spiritual athlete, tirelessly doing everything in her power to live up to her own ideas of sainthood. But does that make her a good person?
A new Swedish documentary describes the life of a contemporary young woman who became a nun at eighteen. For this young woman, being a nun means never leaving the convent, not talking to the other nuns in the convent for more than two hours a day, not forming any special friendships with any of the other nuns, not meeting with members of her family more than seven times a year, and never hugging her parents or siblings, because she and her family must always stay on different sides of a barrier of bars. Personally, I'm not going to criticize this young woman for choosing this kind of life. She isn't hurting any other people except perhaps her family, but then again, her Catholic mother expressed great pleasure that her daughter had become a nun. But I have to say that this nun doesn't strike me as an obviously good person, but rather as a - well, as an athlete of the spirit. A spiritual super-achiever, a champion of abstinence. But can anyone else benefit from this woman's self-imposed isolation?
Lois and Clark, on the other hand, are not saints. They have flaws and faults. They are hurt, lonely and scared. But they instinctively fight to protect other people from harm and to make the world a better place, and they do it in spite of their fears and shortcomings. They do it not to win prizes at the Olympic Games of Saintlihood. They just do it, because if they don't, there will be more pain and suffering in this world.
Your portrait of Lois and Clark and their instinctive fight for good and for other people is so moving and unforgettable, Rachel. You have created truly good people who are real, vulnerable, flawed, flesh-and-blood humans - or in Clark's case, a Kryptonian - which in every way that matters amounts to the same thing. In this day and age, when so many movies and stories portray people who are evil and brutal, your story about Lois and Clark becomes all the more gripping.
Ann
