Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Going up, sir?

What floors are Lois' and Clark's apartments? And what floor is the Daily Planet bullpen on?

And, yes, this means I'm writing a fic. But it's still at the scribbles and timelines stage. Oh, who am I kidding? It's always going to be at the scribbles and timelines stage. It's that prose part of writing that always gets me. I can list the series of events that I see in a story. I know how 80% of the story should go but... It's the whole writing sentences that tell the story thing that gets me stumped. Huh. This little blurb/rant is longer than my question. And to quote Jubal Early, "Does that seem right to you?"

They weren't very consistent. With Clark's apartment, he was on the ground floor for virtually the entire time except for "All Shook Up" when he was on the top floor since he had to learn how to fly.

Lois's apartment was either on the first floor (#105) or the fifth floor (#501), or very high up on a tall skyscraper (in Operation Blackout where she falls a million miles and dangles on a flagpole). I think they even once claimed it was on the 3'rd floor even though the apartment number was 501.

I don't remember if they ever said where the bullpen is. Fanfic says either 3'rd or 4'th floors, I think. I'm not too certain about this one.

Which, of course, would make the apartments on the ground floor have negative numbers on their doors... "Hi, I'm your downstairs neighbor, Star. I live in apartment minus 203..."

And Greenie - keep working on it. Don't give up, and don't forget that many fanfics are co-authored. You can look around for a beta reader and a co-author if either will help.


~Toc

Actually, I always assumed Clark lived on the first floor and that they went up to the roof to try to teach him to fly ...

As for Lois, since in the 3rd season they talked about Clark knocking on her 5th floor window, and it was unlikely that she had changed floors, I simply chose to think that she had always been on the 5th floor and ignored any evidence to the contrary.

Nan

Clark has a balcony in his apartment so he probably has a set of stairs that leads up to it.

That would be in Ordinary People. Here's the quote from the script:

Lois comes out of the bathroom in hang-out wear, drying her hair, preoccupied. A RAPPING at the window.

LOIS (absently)
Who is it?

Superman enters through the window.

SUPERMAN
'Who _is_ it?' Lois who knocks on your third story window?


Although, to be honest, I seem to recall in the actual scene, Clark said "How else knocks on your third story window?" Either way, it was definitely 3rd story window.

I found a website tonight that says:

Sara

Face it Lois had a magically apartment that changed its location in her building whenever a new writer showed up.

As for Clark's apartment. Whenever we see it from the outside backend of the apartment he is on the second (top) floor of the building. It is not ground floor. From the way you get to his front door it would appear probably ground floor. From my personal experience both are possible at the same time. Since we never see the street and how the building is situated on it we having nothing to go on so I will explain why both are possible from my own experience.

I lived in an apartment building that had several of the buildings that were building that ran lengthwise along a hill. I lived on the top floor on one such building. On the side I lived on there were 3 stories but if you lived right across the hall from me you were really in theory only on the second floor because the ground floor only had apartments on my side of the building the other side being built into the hill. So even though the second and third floor had apartments number 1-12 the first floor only had 6 apartments. Also instead of having to walk up 2 floors to get to my apartment you only went up 1. The entrance to the second floor appeared to be at ground level - from the street it was and you went down a set of steps and entered the first floor apartments each directly from a side walk that ran the length of the building. It may sound confusing but that is because the of course did some contouring of the hill to accommodate the building.

So you see why I say that Clark from his front door could appear to be living on the ground floor (that being the top of the hillside) and the back end the drop off or slope of the hill so as in my building there were more floors than what would really appear to be there.

Don't know if this is relevant, but a lot of older houses in London have steps up to an entrance on the first floor (US second floor). The floor of the ground floor (US first floor) is often a few feet below normal ground level. Houses like this originally had the kitchen and other servant-related things on the ground floor.

Some of the houses shown in Lois and Clark look like that - for example, I think that Lois is shown leaving such a house just before someone tries to shoot her in an early episode.

IIRC, the story at the time was that during an early season hiatus, the door nos. on the door of Lois's apartment were taken off for painting and put back up in the wrong order - and no one noticed.

Whatever the reason for the switch, it sure has provided interesting work for authors over the years.

As for Clark's apartment, I've always thought it had an atmosphere of being at the top of the building. I once had reasons for that theory, but whatever they were they're lost in the mists of time and I haven't watched an episode recently enough to remember what they were.

I like Kmar's notion of it being higher on one side than the other though. I'll buy that.

LabRat

Man, all this great information... Thanks so much, everybody. But I can't for the life of me remember why I was asking what floor things were on. Dang.