Sorry for my short and incoherent reply. Maybe I will come back and add more after this semester is over and we have lived through the blizzard that may be coming.
The aftermath to the tsunami in Indonesia turned out better than I feared for Lois and Clark. The speculation about Ultrawoman's and Superman's love life waws limited to the trash tabloids. It wasn't like the speculation about Tiger Woods, for example, which has made it into the Op-Ed columns of New York Times, for example. (Not that I'm comparing Tiger Woods with Superman in any way, of course, except to say that if Superman had been real and people had known that he was married to the world's only female superhero, the interest in his faithfully monogamous marriage might have been even greater than the interest in Tiger Woods' many affairs.)
I agree with Lois that Clark is still a hero in every way. He went back to Indonesia so that he could help out more there, and he carried himself like a hero and managed to preserve his dignity, too.
Lois isn't bad at being a hero herself, come to think of it!
Dr. Friskin was great. I loved this:
“But you don't agree,” he replied. It was a statement, not a question.
“I can't make that decision for you. I know that in my professional opinion, it would have been good for you to wait a little longer before creating so much stress in your life. But I also know you; and I know how much stress you're under when you're not helping. You weighed those competing stressors and you made a decision. Now we need to figure out how to move forward given that decision.”
Wonderful. Clark seemed to expect a scolding, as if he had been an errant child. But Dr. Friskin treated him in every way like an adult, a person who had weighed his options, made a decision and now needed some advice about how to deal with the outcome of his decision.
I loved this, too:
Clark, you blame yourself because doing so means that you had some semblance of control over the events. Because if you had some control, then there's something you can do differently next time to prevent the same outcome. We need that sense of control, because without it, we feel lost. But not everything in life is within our power to control. You can't be responsible for Nor's actions. Or the actions of his followers. Or even your own generals.”
I think I've said something along those lines in some of my earlier FDK. It's so interesting that people may blame their own actions in order to keep up the illusion that they could have controlled events that were really out of their control.
I don't have time to say more, I'm afraid, but this was a wonderful chapter as usual!
Ann
