I am so blown away by all this great feedback. I had hoped that this was a strong chapter. I’m so happy that so many of you liked it.
As many others have pointed out before, the idea of Clark’s amnesia being caused by the physical trauma of the impact with Nightfall never felt right. The idea that this was a side-effect of the attempt on his life was too tempting to pass up.
Framework4:
First off: Thank you!
It would be nice if Lois could win the Pulitzer for writing an upbeat editorial entitled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman".
This is such a wild idea. I’m not a huge fan of that movie (I do love Dandello’s “Plane Storm”) but I should have thought of that myself.
Ann:
There were many issues that I found difficult to come to terms with in this piece. I wanted to approach a piece with enough “serious” ideas to build an interesting story around. The challenge, as I saw it, is the existence of all those wonderful stories over in the archive. Nightfall in particular has been done well many times. This meant that I had to think outside the box and take some chances with ideas I hadn’t seen before. The worldwide tragedy of a failed Nightfall mission is one of those issues. The possibility of Clark’s memory loss being permanent is another.
Michael:
When you started talking about the memory loss expert without naming him, I kept expecting to meet Deter
I can’t stand Deter. If I ever write him into a fic of mine it will only be to abuse him. I wanted a serious and knowledgeable professional of the highest standards. That’s why he’s a friend of Bernie’s.
c-mom:
I too am starting to think that Martha and Jonathan may be dead, but if Clark never gets his memories back, his grieving will be much less. At the moment they are only names to him, not the wonderful people who shaped his personality and are his original support system.
As I said in Ann’s note above, I knew going in that to provide a new perspective on this story, I’d have to introduce some more volatile elements. Removing Martha and Jonathan at the same time that Clark has permanently lost his memory wasn’t something I did lightly. I just hope that I don’t take things so far that I lose my better-than-I-deserve audience.
Betty:
I have to respond to this:
I'm having a hard time accepting a) that Martha and Jonathan are dead and b) that Clark now will never remember them, and seems fine with that.
First, Clark himself is disturbed that he isn’t feeling more. Beyond that, I think if you read that section of chapter 16 carefully, you’ll see that he’s refusing to acknowledge that they might be dead.
He's not getting much sunlight these days -- maybe the clouds will clear enough for some sun to shine through
I’m *so* glad you mentioned this. Your right, the “impact winter” is definitely something that can’t be ignored. Imagine what might happen when the sun returns in force.
Now, that said, memories that were actually dissolved by that gas cannot be recovered.
Thank you so much for your note. I hope this doesn’t get too dark and I promise that it is my intent to bring this to as uplifting a conclusion as I can given the circumstances.
Elizabeth:
The discovery of parts of the survival pack etc will hopefully now lead to exoneration of Superman and maybe something will trigger a realization in Lois that he also survived!
The pack is definitely a key thing to have. As to what they can do with it, well, we’ll see.
Iolanthe:
That was a fun part. This section of the story needs all the light moments it can get.
Elisabeth:
The doctor’s office was fun. I’m glad you liked the chemical basis for the memory loss. It seemed much more reasonable that getting bonked on the head. And now that they have the combination of the mission pack, they should be able to move the investigation forward nicely.
Again, I want to thank all of you for sharing your thoughts and opinions. It is what keeps me going on this monster...I mean story. I never had any idea how challenging it would be to develop a story of this size. My first “big” story was 25K words. When I went to a 50K word story, it was a challenge but it didn’t surprise me. When this one is done it will be over 100K words. Somewhere in there is a line that says, “As of now it gets WAY harder.” I don’t know exactly where that line was, but I crossed it. I hope I can hold it together long enough to get the last 9 chapters out the door.
For those of you that regularly generate long stories, I am more in awe of your abilities than ever!!!
Again, thank you also much for hanging in this long.
Bob
