As for how much our behaviour is influenced by our memories, I agree with those who say that our basic personality is what realy affects our behaviour. So if we lose our memories, but our basic personality is intact, then we will act according to our basic personality. I like the frontal lobe explanation. Or to put it differently, how our behaviour is affected depends on what parts of our brains are affected.
Lois most certainly isn't above cheating in order to get what she wants, so I don't think that her "Operation Fool Kent" is in any way against her basic personality. But I think it is glaringly obvious that, well, her body remembers her love for Clark, but her conscious mind doesn't. This was brilliantly put:
All she knew at the moment was the blood pounding in her veins - the thrill of a plan coming together, no doubt. After all, what else could be causing her heart to beat this quickly?
Yes, what else could make her heart beat this quickly? Maybe her body's realization that it will be allowed to do a most wonderfully delightful thing, namely seduce Clark. Lois's conscious mind is telling her that she should be doing this because it will be a great way to fool Clark to get her off the island. But her body is getting excited and hot because it really, really wants to make love to Clark (and it can't remember that the two of them have never made love before, and it can't remember why they decided to wait until they were married).
The heat she felt from the following kiss caught her by surprise. Electricity shot through her entire body, leaving him catching her when her legs gave out beneath her.
“Lois, are you okay?” Clark instantly asked.
Her finger went up to trace his lips as she responded. “Take me back to the cabin, Clark,” she said, surprised at how husky her voice sounded.
Oh, her body so desperately wants what her conscious mind is uninterested in.
I was very glad to see Clark see through the ruse concocted by Lois's conscious mind. But I was almost equally glad to see him see through the true motives of her body:
He was right. He knew he was. Deter had somehow put the idea that she loved him in her mind. But last night had been about more than convincing him that she remembered. It had been far too intense, far too passionate, and frankly, far too long a session of love-making for it to have been about nothing more than convincing him to get her off this island. And it hadn't been all him. She'd been as insatiable as he had. Her mind might not be willing to recognize her feelings for him, but her body most certainly had.
Exactly.
I was very glad to see Clark realize that Lois always repeated exactly the same phrase to say that she loved Deter and had no interest in Clark. Clearly these words are tied to a strong hypnotic command. Personally I find it hard to believe that it would be possible to brainwash Lois so thoroughly that she would give up her conscious love for Clark so completely and transfer it all to Deter so perfectly, when her body still remembers all the love it has for Clark. I once saw a documentary about a woman who was really and truly "in two minds" about the world around her, but then doctors had found it necessary to sever the connection between her two brain hemispheres. She really did have two minds and two ways of looking at the world, but Deter can't have performed major brain surgery on Lois to affect her in a similar way.
Anyway, this was a riveting, fantastic chapter! I love G-fic where Lois and Clark make love "off screen".
And there is no way that I can believe that Lois's mind can convince her body that it wants to go back to Metropolis to do with Deter what it just did with Clark. If Lois's brain hemispheres aren't well and truly separated, then I don't see how her mind can make her body run away from Clark into the waiting arms of Deter.
But you are going to bring Star into the story! Yes! That's a great idea!
Please post more soon!
Ann
