Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Types of love and "L & C: tNaoS"

Wendy Richards posted this elsewhere but I didn't want to reply there because it really is hi- jacking that particular thread, something which I'd indicated in that other thread a few of us, Wendy included, were close to doing

So I've quoted some of Wendy's post below, at least the part that related to my comments in that other thread and reposted it here.

[QUOTE] But I feel that this takes your argument too far, Carol, and risks being insulting not just to [the author] but also to other readers:

quote:

Anyway, once Lois Lane gets demoted in Clark's emotions to just "one of Clark's women" then the story no longer feels like an L & C story, but, instead, only a Clark Kent story or a Smallville story in which that great iconic figure of Lois Lane is kicked back into a pre-feminist corner and told to be good, be quiet, to wait her turn, prove herself worthy, and then she too will get a turn to service the super man. (or even worse, semi-bimboized)

Sure, we can "love" several men at the same time or serially - because we enjoy one more than another in bed, because another is on the same wave length, or we laugh at the same jokes or because he's a great cook. But like that wry observation about the contemporary school system - when all kids are told they are special, then no one really *is* special.

I know, though, that many on these mbs are now looking for Clark-centric stories with Lois playing only a secondary role, and have less interest in the actual TV series, beyond Clark Kent.
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I'll [wendy] take the last point here, because it's an argument you've made several times. Why do you insist that readers/writers who believe that people (men or women) can love more than one person in their lifetime, and specifically that Clark could have loved someone before Lois (or love someone else after losing her) have no real interest in Lois?

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Define, "love". Wendy, I honestly think you're missing some of what I've said - I haven't denied at all that either Lois or Clark could have had a relationship with someone else and perceived that as love. I'd hoped that my comments about the different types of love, as well as my comments about Alt-Clark, made that clear.

My focus was on the premises of L & C about both the uniqueness of the relationship and also about the importance of Lois Lane. So where i don't see that reflected in a story, it's difficult to assume the writer as a "real" interest in Lois Lane.

As well, I'd hoped I'd explained why I see Lois Lane as a symbolic, iconic character. An important character in broader, pop culture terms. I don't see her as interchangeable with other women in the L& C universe (unlike the Smallville universe, say, where she may even be Chloe )

So this is something I personally look to see reflected in stories. Clearly some others on these boards do not as their comments have made clear. I haven't challenged their right to express those opinions, just noted that they are there and looked for the internal logic of what has been written.

But why is it so difficult to accept that many people who read/post on these mbs have not bought into the L & C premises about the relationship and about Lois lane's importance? You can't have it both ways - either Lois Lane is merely one of Clark Kent's several women, without any special significance, or she is not. I believe most people here get the contradiction involved in trying to rationalise both views.

Anyway, I even admitted to wanting to feel that special romantic, iconic sense of their relationship in stories but said that I knew that was pretty 'hopeless' given a post-modern "i love the guy I'm up with" construct. I thought my posts had made it clear I realised i was in a minority.

But I'll restate - *I* want to believe in that great love affair that is Lois Lane and Clark Kent, not just that Lois Lane is next in line. Many don't, and that's the way it goes.

How fans of Smallville or other Superman incarnations view Clark Kent as well as his relationship with Lois Lane is beside the point here on these mbs. I don't suspect they're surprised at having their views challenged. Were I to read fics posted on sites dedicated to those incarnations, I would know that I could expect what we see in that particular incarnation - for example, on a Smallville site: Clark and Lana or Clark and Chloe or Clark and Lois or Clark and Lex or Clark and (I can't remember the name of the girl he married!) But here I don't think it's unreasonable to look for "Lois and Clark".

btw, i too would like to see your mother-in-law meet a nice man.

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Wendy continues:

"Believe it or not, it is possible to love more than one person in a lifetime without devaluing either relationship. I've heard people say that the love they have for their second partner is 'completely different, but just as strong' and doesn't take away at all from the love they had for their first partner. As others have said in the past - even as much as we want Lois and Clark to be together for ever - if for some reason Lois lost Clark, or Clark lost Lois, would you really argue that the survivor should be alone for the rest of his/her life? But then it's pretty obvious that you do."

You're putting words in my mouth again, W. As I said repeatedly, in RL people often settle into different types of relationships or love. Their personal stories are nice, comforting but..... <g> Bring on the great L & C love story!

Wendy again:
" Yes, the Lana we saw in the alt-universe wasn't a nice person, but Clark did seem to hint that the Lana he knew was a good friend. Why couldn't a happy marriage result from that? And it wasn't as if he'd even met Lois at that stage."
No reason at all - see my original post in the other thread. Oh, and define "happy" That's as loaded as the word "love".

Wendy again:
"Besides, what seems to be clear from the story and [the author's] comments in this thread is that she is also a Lois and Clark shipper, so your suggestion that she isn't, purely based on the fact that you don't like Clark's back-story here, is just a tad unfair, don't you think?"
With respect, the story doesn't make that clear at all. As well, the author's comments indicated she's a bit ambivalent on the issue. Nevertheless I did not say that she was not an L & C shipper. As well, I ended both posts with a recognition of the author's "right to write" her own story.

Wendy again:
"You're both entitled to your opinions. ..... thread this morning."
How is my stating my opinion undermining the opinions of others? Your comment is unfair, Wendy, suggesting that only those who agree with your viewpoint may express their opinions. Is that what these mbs have become?

c.

I think, Carol, that the strong emotions this kind of discussion brings up are specific to the individual. I understand that you want to see Lois and Clark and only Lois and Clark get together. Frankly, so do I. I also believe that this was the strength of the show, that a man and woman can overcome anything - even death - if they simply persevere and make use of all the help they can get.

But I also don't understand why you feel that Clark's being a widower disqualifies him from having that "once in a lifetime" love with Lois. If a man loses his wife to death (or divorce, which can be more devastating than death) after two years of marriage, is he doomed to suffer incompleteness for the rest of his life? And what about the woman who marries a man like that? Will she be doomed to know that she will never live up to the first wife's legacy? That's a scary concept, and one with which I do not agree.

You've made the case that because Clark married Lana before he met Lois, they can never love each other with that "once in a lifetime" love. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with that premise, especially since you've let Lois off this same hook by describing her previous relationships as "Federal disasters." Yes, that was Lois's term, but a bad relationship generates as much emotional baggage for the next person as a good relationship does. This, to me, is just as much a sexist viewpoint as treating Lois as simply "the next one in line" is.

I don't recall reading a fanfic with the following premise, so let's make one up. For reasons unimportant to this example, Lois falls in love with and marries someone before she meets Clark. This someone dies in a tragic manner, leaving Lois alone until she meets Clark. Now, since Lois had a wonderful relationship with this anonymous man, is she incapable of experiencing that "one great love" with Clark? And if so, is Clark left with "sloppy seconds" because he marries a woman he can never be "once in a lifetime" in love with? (Lousy grammar, but I hope you understand what I mean.)

I understand this complaint very well, Carol, since you leveled it against one of my stories ("The Road Taken") because Clark loved Lana and married her before he met Lois and Lana died. Honestly, it stung a little then, and I'm sure that our current author feels the sting too. You're a well-respected and well-spoken member of this forum, and you always present your opinions in a thoughtful and clear manner, so a critique from you cannot be brushed away without strong consideration that the critique is not just valid as your opinion but is the correct viewpoint. The only problem I see is that you don't seem to accept the fact that others don't feel as you do about this situation.

I respect your opinion, Carol. It's just as valid and important as mine is. But it's just an opinion. You're coming across as if your viewpoint is the only correct one. It isn't. It's completely valid, and I am NOT telling you to keep it to yourself, but you should also respect the opinions and viewpoints of others on this issue. The perception, judging from your feedback postings on a number of stories, is that you do not grant that respect on this question.

And I humbly suggest that if a number of people tell you that you're coming across in a way that you don't think you're coming across, maybe the "multitude of counselors" has the correct take on the situation after all.

Please don't take this as a challenge or a put-down. I only want you to allow others to hold their views without fear of being picketed in the feedback folder. I encourage you to keep posting what you believe, but I also encourage you to open your mind to other ideas and other concepts. You don't have to accept everything someone else believes (and you shouldn't), but you should respect it.

Thank you. I hope this post spreads oil on troubled waters and calms them.

I can only speak for myself and my own opinions, but here's my two cents.

Before I met my husband I absolutely adored and loved another man. We're still good friends to this day, even though, for several reasons, things just didn't work out between us.

Then I met and married Mark. We had eight wonderful years together before he died in an accident. For at least three years afterwards I was a walking mess. As I came out of the haze and horror of that time I became friends with and then fell in love with someone else. Does that cheapen the love I had for Mark? I hate to think that it does. What I feel for this new man is completely different from the love I had and still have for Mark. They're different people (although there are some striking similarities between them).

That's reality, though. One of the things that drew me to this show and this site, was that it was about Lois and Clark and their relationship. I love the idea that they're soul mates who are destined to find each other (though I loathe that episode on so many levels - ugh).

The difference between what could happen in reality and what happens in a fic in the LNC:TNAOS universe, I think, is the point that Carol is making. I have avoided and mostly likely will continue to avoid stories where they have other loves in their lives. In reality I would cut both characters miles and miles of slack - but this is fiction. It's wish fulfillment. It's a fantasy where everything turns out perfect - like I wish real life would.

Real life doesn't come with guarantees. But the fic I read darn well better. Does that mean that people should only write stories that are solely Lois and Clark? No! It just means that I, personally, won't be very interested in reading them. I'm only one person and there are all sorts of people who love that kind of story. That's the beauty of having so many voices in the community.

I think that the idea of Lois being the only woman who is meant for Clark is something that belongs to the fairy tale the show actually was.

I mean, in real life this simply cannot be true. Or would I have to spend my life with only the second best man, because maybe the man who was meant for me didn't happen to grow up in Germany and thus we will never meet?

I agree with Sue here that in my opinion we can love more than one person with all our heart, hopefully not at the same time, but...

And I think it's a difference if Lana and Clark were married and got divorced or if Clark even committed adultary because he met Lois after Lana. That would kill the idea we have of him. I don't really see why a widower shouldn't have the chance to find real love more than once.

Of course this - Lois is the only woman- concept is part of the magic. If either of them ever dies I guess many FoLC's would like to see eternal love that is stronger than death. Lois or Clark should stay alone until they die, because there is no one else who they could ever fall in love with. But in the end that's a romantic idea we don't really go through with. Author's either don't write that scenario or they kill the characters off like in "Romeo and Juliett". I don't think that there are many people who'd like to read about a Lois or a Clark who are emotionally suffering for the rest of their lives.

I don't recall a fanfic like that either, Terry. I don't think there is one. To me, that is important. People who have written and posted LnC fanfics don't seem to have fantasies about Lois Lane living very happily with a man who isn't Clark. We all seem to agree that Lois can be truly happy only with Clark (although I do remember a Tank story where Lois has had enough of sharing her life with a superhero and walks out on him).

No. Clark isn't left with "sloppy seconds". There have been several stories where Clark has met another woman and has married her or at least had a very close relationship with her, and he has been very happy with her even though she wasn't Lois.

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I'm talking about stories like It Might have Been by Ray Reynolds, where the author even posted an nfic honeymoon vignette to underscore how sexually happy and in tune Clark was with his wife-who-was-not-Lois. There is also The Butterfly Legacy by Lynn M, where Clark's true love seems to be the woman he met in the jungle, and the memories of this woman are always with him afterwards in his marriage to Lois. There is Classicalla's A New Hero, where Lois is dead but Clark has remarried and is very happy with his new wife. And in her new story, Laura S made Clark very, very happy with Lana, and then he became a very, very grieving widower.

Yes, there have been stories where Lois has remarried, too. She did so in your Choices and Consequences, Terry, but even though the men she married (two versions, two different men) were extremely kind and loving to her, the pall of what she had lost always hung over her, and she was incapable of being happy. (In your story, Terry, Lois therefore had to be reunited with Clark.) And in Becky Bain's Ad Astra Per Aspera Lois eventually married another man, after waiting for many, many years for Clark to return from Krypton. She had a good marriage to her husband, and he was a good man, but, to use a term from LnC, he wasn't her soulmate, and she wasn't truly "meant" to be with him.

I would say that as far as LnC fanfic goes, Clark can be completely happy with a woman who isn't Lois, but Lois can't be completely happy with a man who isn't Clark. So until someone actually writes a story where Lois is very happily married to a man who isn't Clark, I don't think your question is completely valid, Terry.

However, Terry, one of the things that makes you so interesting as a writer is that you want to explore the Lois and Clark relationship "as a reality", not as a fantasy. That is to say, you find it interesting to put Lois and Clark in the kind of "relationship situations" that people have to deal with in real life. Almost all of us fall in love more than once during our lifetimes, and in most relationships jealousy and doubt are definite possibilities. And relationships may fall apart for all kinds of reasons, including the death of one of the spouses. You write very well about these "real-life threats" to Lois and Clark's relationship.

Personally, however, I agree with Sue:

I totally agree with Sue here. To me, the LnC universe should be perfect when it comes to Lois and Clark's romantic relationship, precisely because this is a fantasy. And like Carol, I think that means that their love should be unique, one of a kind and incomparable, and Lois must be every bit as important as Clark. That doesn't mean I think that other people should not be allowed to write stories where this is not so - of course not! Good heavens! No matter how how infuriatingly opinionated I may be, not even I am presumptuous enough to demand that everybody should write just the kind of Lois and Clark stories that I like. But when I write FDK on a story, my own preferences about what an ideal Lois and Clark relationship should be are going to shine through.

Ann

P.S. Just to make things absolutely, absolutely clear - of course I have no objections to "real-life" widows or widowers remarrying. On the contrary, I'm happy for them. I, too, hope that your mother-in-law can find another man to share her life with, Wendy. And however snippy I may have sounded, I'm happy for Elisabeth's grandfather, too.

Talk about baggage.

I really think that folks are letting real life intrude into the fantasy that is Lois & Clark.

Who gets first credit in the series?
It is Lois & Clark, on the paper it is Lane & Kent.

All I think Carol is saying is that stories where Lois Lane is an "Also staring" are not Lois & Clark.

I have the same reaction to L&C stories where Clark becomes without Lois.

I can't agree here, Ann. Even if nobody has written such a story that doesn't necessarily mean that people in general don't want Lois to be happy with a man who is not Clark. I'd just say that the interest in stories where Lois and Clark are not the happy couple isn't that great. After all we're all LnC fans for some reason. And I guess it's just harder to imagine that Clark would turn Lois down in an elseworld story than that it would happen the other way round. After all Lois did reject Clark.

Of course you can argue that Clark wasn't any better in the episode "Contact". But I'd say that Lois behavior throughout the first two seasons gives authors more possible starting points to develop a healthy relationship between Clark and a woman other than Lois. Besides, we know little about Clark's past relationships, while we do know that Lois used to have trouble with men before she met Clark.

You make an important observation here, Barbara. Like people such as Wendy have repeatedly told me, I can't know what other people are thinking.

Let me just say, then, that those people who want Lois Lane to be happy with other men than Clark Kent have apparently not, so far, bothered to write down and post their fantasies.

Ann

Well, as I said, I don't believe there are many people who want either Lois or Clark in a relationship with another person. Of course you can list a few, but compared to the amount of stories listed in the archive, it's nothing, really. And almost all people her said that they wouldn't read a story where not Lois and Clark are involved or going to be involved. I wouldn't read those stories either, because I believe in Lois and Clark.

Okay, I admit, I like Laura's new story, particularly because I hope that it will show a Lois, who instantly falls for Clark, and a Clark who is for once reluctant to admit that he has fallen in love as well. I think that could be an interesting aspect and something that not so many people have already written about. I don't think I've read such a story on the archive.

Sorry, Barbara, but I have to question another thing you wrote in your previous post:

In my opinion, what I know about LnC: TNAoS (and what I know about it I have chiefly learnt from reading about it here) suggests that the TV show gave us more evidence of Clark turning down Lois than the other way around.

In my opinion, Clark rejected Lois when he turned her down as Superman in that first season episode, and his rejection of her wasn't much better than her rejection of him as Clark. Yes, I can see that he found it hard to trust her with his secret when she was involved with Luthor. But why couldn't he at least warn her against Luthor as Superman, when he knew that she would almost certainly listen to him as Superman? She dismissed what he told her as Clark, so warning her against Luthor as Clark did no good. But refusing to warn her of Luthor as Superman, he pretty much made sure that she wouldn't receive and really hear the warnings she needed to hear about this criminal. So in my opinion, Clark's "love" for Lois in that episode really was mostly jealousy and a hopeless need to be loved by Lois for being Clark. In other words, it wasn't really would we could call unselfish love.

And what about Clark's decision to leave Lois, his fiancée, and go off to New krypton and fight a war? Okay, I can understand that he would feel obliged to help the people on New Krypton. But how - oh, please, how - could he consider it his duty to marry this New Kryptonian woman whom he had never seen or heard of in his life?

I read FDK on Becky Bain's story on the boards a year or two ago, and the poster (who loved the story very much) talked about how the story was about doing one's duty. Let me respectfully suggest that it wasn't Clark's duty to marry Zara no matter how you look at it. Clark's biological parents had sent him to the Earth, not to New Krypton. His foster parents had raised him as their own son according to their own beliefs and traditions. He had proposed to Lois, telling her he wanted to love her and be hers for all time, and she had given the same promise to him and pledged her heart to him.

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And then, in Becky Bain's story, Clark just up and leaves for New Krypton after giving the matter some thought for just a short while, certainly no more than a week. He not only goes to New Krypton, but he marries Zara right away, too. And he didn't just marry her, but he certainly consummated his relationship with her, too. And he had children with her. And he never sent any kind of word to Lois to inform her of what had happened. Like a sailor's fiancée, Lois walked the "shores" of the Earth for years and years and years, wondering about her loved one who had left her so many years ago, and who had promised her to love her forever. Finally, after a long, long time, she married another man. And then, after still more years, a teenaged boy arrived in Kansas, close to where Lois was now living with her husband. It turned out that Clark had sent his surviving son to Earth to keep him safe from the war that kept ravaging New Krypton! The boy stayed with Lois and her husband and their son, whom Lois had poignantly named Clark. Lois and her family grew to love the boy. But then, after several years, Clark finally returned to the Earth - but only to bring his son back to New Krypton, so the boy could marry his birth wife. Ah yes, because Clark had adopted the sexist culture of New Krypton so thoroughly that he even had his own son birth-married.

All of this didn't happen in the TV show, certainly. But still, wasn't it a most horrible rejection of Lois, his fiancée, to go to New Krypton to fight a war and marry a woman that the New Kryptonian had decided all on their own was Clark's birth wife???? Did Lois ever reject or let down Clark in a way that even comes close to what Clark did to Lois when he agreed to marry Zara?

And, Barbara, like you point out, there is the Contact thing, too. So did Clark turn down Lois as badly as Lois turned down Clark? Most definitely, in my opinion. And if people find it easier to imagine that Lois would turn down Clark than that Clark would turn down Lois, couldn't that just possibly have something to do with double standards in the assessment of men's and women's behaviour?

Ann

Did it ever occur to you that one can overinterprete such things, Ann? As an english teacher you are used to interprete texts and I'm sure you're great at what you do. Given your excellent FDK-skills I cannot say that I don't like your insights into problems like these. But I don't think that anyone paid much interest into general considerations on male and female rights when the show was created. And I don't think it's different with the people writing fanfics. The main purpose of the different story arcs was to make their coming together as difficult as humanly possible.

After all, where would have been the point in letting things go the easy way? Let's face it, Clark didn't tell Lois about Luthor as Superman. But that wasn't because it would have been out of character or because he cannot stand to approach Lois in his superhuman character. In the end it was, because the writers of this show didn't want it to be too easy. What if Lois had believed Superman? The show wouldn't have been the same. After all many good episodes wouldn't have worked if Clark and Lois had actually talked somewhere in the process.

Of course you are right that the producers of the show didn't want things to resolve themselves too easily for Lois and Clark. And of course that is the real reason why Lois and Clark rejected one another the way they did.

I'm just saying that I don't much like the idea that Clark has been seriously, truly in love before he met Lois. (And for goodness sake, don't give me stories where he is seriously, truly in love with someone else after he has met Lois!) Of course I can accept that he really liked someone before he met Lois, but that is not the same thing...

Give me Lois and Clark forever!

Ann

It looks like opening this topic was like throwing a live grenade into a crowded room.

Ann wrote:
It's interesting that you'd point out "It Might Have Been" to support your position, Ann, because Ray is a self-proclaimed first-season Lois hater. Part of the reason he wrote the story was to rub Lois's nose in Clark's happiness with someone else (and it was NOT just about sex, as you imply).

In "The Butterfly Legacy," Lynn didn't make Gillian his "one and only soulmate" at all. Clark and Gillian were together because Clark thought Lois was married to someone else and was therefore lost to him. Another valid viewpoint is that Clark believed that Lois had rejected him and was open to receiving comfort from another woman, which would have made Gillian the "sloppy seconds." In any case, he'd already chosen to leave Gillian and return to Lois before he found out she'd been killed.

In "A New Hero," Lois had been gone for quite some time before Clark allowed himself to get close to another woman. To classify Clark in this story as being a "serial womanizer" is totally unwarranted. Classicalla didn't portray Clark in that way at all.

If we want to view these stories as fairy tales, we can. It certainly isn't realistic to write about a flying man who can't be hurt by anything man can conceive or construct. And if we want to write about a perfect relationship between two people, we can do that too. There's no law or rule which prohibits it. I only ask that we all allow others to express our opinions without being clobbered for it.

Interestingly, I just found Irene Dutch's excellent "Redemption," where an AIDS-ravaged Claude comes back into Lois's life to try to correct his past wrongs. This was a bit that I found pertinent to this discussion. ("...that man..." refers to Claude in this excerpt and "...she..." refers to Lois.)

Like I said, interesting. Lois had loved Claude - or, at least, she had loved the man she thought Claude was. If we don't accept this, we have to say that Lois went to bed with Claude just for the sex, and that's not what I got either from the pilot episode or from the fanfic I've read since then. She really loved Claude, but she loves Clark far more, and it's so much better for both of them because Clark loves her, too, unlike Claude, who only used her to further his own career.

All this is to say that if Clark loved and married someone before he met Lois, it does not destroy their chances of having "that one great love" together. Nor does it make Clark a serial womanizer. Nor does it devalue Lois and make her just "the next one in line." Yes, our fanfic is fantasy, but if someone's story doesn't line up with our fantasy, it isn't a direct attack on our cherished beliefs. It just means that Laura's fantasy world is a little different. It's neither better nor worse because of that, and it certainly isn't wrong for the same reason.

Can't we all just get along?

I swore I wasn't getting into this one. But I have to point out here, Ann, that such a story would be within the rules for this forum, so authors are quite entitled to write a story along this premise if they so choose to explore it. (Whether they'd get many readers is another thing entirely. ).

I know you didn't mean otherwise - unlike other posters who let their opinions become bludgeons, you do tend to recognise that your tastes don't hold sway here exclusively (and say so, too! ) But thought I'd nail it down anyway.

I must confess to having a wry smile every time this old horse comes around again for discussion. Back in the day, many authors like myself, Wendy and others were repeatedly told we were "killing the fandom", "destroying everything Superman stands for", that we "obviously hate Superman", that we 'don't care about the characters"...because we were writing and posting angst/tearjerkers. We'd come into a fandom, you see, which at the time had really mostly only had romances and comedies prior to that and we were told (sometimes quite viciously) that we had no right writing anything else.

Not that it stopped us.

So it's been a delight for me, personally, to see the fandom open up so much, lighten up so much, in recent years, with a new influx of authors not afraid to stretch the envelope some and explore themes and plots of all shades and hues.

We can debate this old chestnut till the cows come home, (and are welcome to do so, of course) but really it will always come down to this:

There will be stories we enjoy and which suit our tastes. There will be stories we don't. But all are welcome to be written and posted here, so long as they follow the small amount of forum rules we've laid down.

Everyone is welcome, too, to post their opinion that a story doesn't suit them (although we do like such negative fdk to be balanced with something positive). The rule here is to remember that your opinion is only one of many and in the end the story belongs to its author, who is the final authority on how its written. What won't be tolerated is telling an author that they can't write something, that they should be posting in another fandom, or demanding that admins remove stories from the mbs...simply because they don't suit an individual's specific tastes or pov.

And if a story really offends your sense of who and what the characters are so that you really can't in all conscience say anything positive about it...stop reading. Leave it to those who enjoy that sort of thing and go read something else you do like.

Life is too short for anything else.

LabRat

Actually, Terry, I'm not implying that Clark's relationship with this other woman in Ray's fic was all about sex. But I find it very easy to believe that Ray is a self-proclaimed Lois hater, and I can certainly believe that the point of his story, including his nfic epilogue, was to rub Lois's nose in Clark's happiness with someone else. And, Terry, if someone writes an LnC fic with the explicit purpose of making Lois suffer, then I'll reserve the right to hate that fic, and to think very little of the author. I don't claim to have an objective "right" to these feelings of disgust, but I don't apologize for having them.

However, Lynn, Nancy and Laura clearly didn't write their fics with the explicit purpose of making Lois unhappy, and while I might question aspects of their stories, I certainly have no right to hate them - and I don't, I very much want to point out. For example, I followed Nancy's story quite closely, because I was fascinated and delighted with her portrayal of Clark and Lois's children. I did not, admittedly, like Clark's relationship with a new woman, but in no way can I describe Nancy's Clark as a serial womanizer. On the contrary, Clark's behaviour in Nancy's story was very responsible, caring and honourable, and we would be so fortunate if more people in real life were so honourable and good. My only complaint, really, is that in Nancy's story Lois was clearly not "Clark's one true love" - and that is something that I, bottom line, always want to see in a Lois and Clark fanfic.

Ann

<DJ peeks in>

Just here to put my meager 2 cents worth in. *ahem*

There are a lot of interesting and valid points being made here. But here are 3 important things to remember:

1. The writers on this fandom are not paid or compensated in any way shape or form (except perhaps by the gracious and wonderful fdk they receive) for their stories. And while I personally enjoy 'constructive' fdk - perhaps not as much as the "wow, I really liked that chapter" fdk <g> - not all 'negative' fdk is 'constructive'. So let's keep that in mind. I would hate to feel that I personally had ever posted something that would discourage someone from writing.

2. Opinions are like noses - everyone has one and some are bigger and more pronounced than others - LOL - but we all have them and are entitled to them. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that we always need to poke that nose out and show it to everyone. <g> And it certainly doesn't mean that we should expect everyone else to have the exact same nose - LOL.

3. These are some of the most friendly and encouraging message boards that I've ever been involved with. Let's make sure we all do our part to keep them that way. I've been on the receiving end of unpleasant fdk in the past and it's not an enducement to continue writing, believe me.

When it comes right down to it - we all love LnC: TNAOS - in our own ways - otherwise we wouldn't be here... would we?

So to paraphrase 2 of my favorite things in this thread so far:

We all have different tastes and some of us are going to prefer some stories more than others. So if you don't like a story - then don't read it. Move on to something you do like.

And yes, let's all get along - because this is such a wonderful community to be a part of.

Anyway, I'm done now. <g>

-- DJ, signing off.

***EDITED***

I realized I had one more point to make. <bg> From an author's point of view... if you want to make a point that you don't enjoy a particular kind of story, then don't offer fdk on that story. Since fdk is the lifeblood that keeps an author writing - at least for me it is - the absence of fdk on a particular story is going to speak volumes... without saying a word. Only my opinion, of course <pokes her own big nose out of the thread>

There's one more point I'd like to offer up here - which is an important one, I think.

The type of story which Ann, Carol and others enjoy and which suit their tastes make up more or less the vast majority of fanfic posted on these mbs. Probably 90% or so.

By contrast, the type of fanfic which you don't enjoy - but which many others do - occupies a very small space in the entirety of the fanfic posted here.

Surely, you can afford to be tolerant of such a small number of stories you dislike and allow them and their fans the small amount of space they share with you out of the bounty you enjoy? Where they can play and have fun, too.

It's not too much to ask, I don't think, that this little 'niche' in the fandom can have its own space to thrive. After all, it's not as though you guys aren't well catered for elsewhere.


LabRat

I'm not familiar with all of the fics mentioned, but are any of them labelled as Esleworld or Alt-Universe? That might solve some of the problem because if it is labelled as an Esleworld or an AU story then people can't readily complain that our Clark wouldn't have more than one love because the story is not about our Clark but some other Clark.

After all, a story that has Clark sleeping with Lana or marrying before Lois definitely is not about L&C:TNAOS. It is either an AU or an Elseworld because that didn't happen on the TV show. Now if you were writing about Smallville, that's a different story and would most definitely fit with that show

In my opinion I don't feel that Clark should be doomed to a life alone simply because he hasn't met Lois. However, the show was titled Lois and Clark for a reason and that is because the lead characters got together. Believe me I've debated circles around my friend who only know of the the whole Superman thing from watching Smallville and will say the Lana and Clark belong together. Of course I don't agree, but I don't feel that Clark would 'settle' for Lana because he hasn't met Lois. Clark is the kind of person who has a lot of love to give and while Lana may not be our first choice for him. It is clear that he once loved her and that they did share something. So does that make Clark an insensitive coot if he moved on? I personally don't think so. I feel that both Lana and Lois wouldn't want Clark to spend the rest of his life alone if they died young particularly with the secret that he bears.

Interesting debate.

I personally love to see a story where Lois and Clark end up together… they are my favorite and I eat them up like crack.

BUT

I also love seeing authors here play out every single situation and aspect that they can think of for our two heroes. I like to think of it this way:

1. Every story written here is like an alt-universe. The original was obviously the series we saw on TV. No author is ever going to get it exactly like the show (unless of course they were the writers for the show) although some do come pretty darned close.
2. Because I look at every story like an alt-universe I can read it and know that my little tightly woven dreams and aspirations for the characters were already fulfilled in the show. The characters we know and love DID end up together and things turned out pretty okay.

Now that is the basis I go into every story with. Then I get to see our authors play with it. What’s if? That’s the question we all ask. What if this detail was changed? What if this person hadn’t had this as an influence in their life? How would it have changed their personality? What if they took this path in life instead of another?

Oh my! The possibilities are endless! And I for one and so glad they are. If there weren’t we would have run out of good fanfiction a long time ago. So what if sometimes they don’t instantly fall in love with each other? Maybe this author’s Lois and Clark had vastly different backgrounds. That’s fabulous! That means I get to meet a new set of people. It would get really boring if I had to read about the same Lois and Clark over and over.

So, my advise to everyone is to sit back and enjoy. Let your mind think outside the boundaries and enjoy the exploration of all these different possibilities. So what if it didn’t happen exactly like it did in the tv show or in the comics? That’s why we write fanfiction and not official licensed novels and comics for DC. Get rid of the walls in the box you are holding your imagination in. It is so much more fun when you do.

JoJo wrote:
In the sixties, DC comics (and Marvel did it too) would run "What If" stories which explored alternate timelines for their main characters. What if Clark had revealed his dual identity to Lana as a young man? What if he married Lois and she died? What if he had chosen to marry Lori Lemaris (the mermaid from Atlantis) and moved under the ocean? What if Jimmy were exposed to radiation and became a huge, mutant human-turtle amalgam? (Don't laugh. They actually wrote this story. Jimmy was "Turtle Boy." So now you know the truth, grasshopper.) What if Betty Brandt were bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker? And in the late eighties, DC published a mini-series about how Clark might have turned out if his capsule had landed in the Soviet Union.

A lot of these were presented as highly detailed dreams of one sort or another. The vast majority of these stories did not end well, reinforcing the accepted mythos of the Superman universe. I suspect that at least some of them were rejected plotlines that were used because the writers couldn't come up with anything "real" for that month's issue. But, as JoJo points out, the "what if" is perfectly legitimate territory for curious writers. As I've already stated, my preference is for Clark and Lois to be together (and the show was, indeed, named "Lois and Clark," not "Clark and whoever was available to guest star this week, plus Lois if we can figure out how to squeeze her in"). But that doesn't mean that we can't bring in others who might come to mean a great deal to our heroic couple.

In fact, Ann, you have given me a marvelous idea for a story. Thank you.

If you're a Lois and Clark shipper, more power to you! Just remember that your ship isn't the only one on the high seas.

So LR does this mean you might be open to a small section of Other Than LnC Superman based fiction?

I know it has been raised before but if we had such a place it would be a logical place to put stories set against the LnC but where Lois or Clark is a minor player.

And yes I did say Clark because one of the other things that sets LnC apart is that Clark is a staring character, not a background mask.

I should probably leave this thread alone by now, but I can't resist making one more comment (and along the same tired path as before, too).

Terry, you talked about the "Imaginary tales" in the comics from the sixties. I remember them well. I remember the one where Clark married Lois, and she died, leaving him alone with a super-son. (Eh... a death-of-Lois story.... surely we have never heard of something like that before?) I most certainly remember Jimmy the Turtle Boy. I don't remember a specific story where Superman married Lori Lemaris the mermaid, but I certainly remember that Lori was portrayed as a potential love interest for Superman in many comic book stories. (This is why I can't read Nan's Home series, where Clark is married to a woman named Lori who is apparently a reincarnation of Lois. To me, however, the name Lori is inseparably connected with Lori Lemaris the mermaid and Clark's potential unfaithfulness to Lois with Lori, and seeing him married to a woman named Lori after the "real" Lois is dead is more than I can take.) And I vividly remember the Superman Blue/Superman Red story, where Superman was split in two. You could say he was suddenly "twinned". One super "twin" wore red and the other "twin" wore blue, hence the names Superman Blue/Superman Red. What really happened was that Superman could suddenly live two lives and therefore also marry two women. And he did, too: One of him married Lana and the other one married Lois.

But, Terry, there was never an Imaginary story where Lois and Clark got married and Clark died, leaving Lois alone with a super-son. And there was never an Imaginary story where Lois married an exotic lover like Aquaman, King of the sunken city of Atlantis, or a story where Lois was twinned so that she could get to marry two guys herself - never a story where one of her married Superman/Clark Kent and the other one married Batman/Bruce Wayne. Because getting two spouses was something that Superman could do, but it was not the proper thing for Lois Lane.

I recently recounted a true story of how an Afghani man told my friend that he had two wives because he had so much love in his heart that it was enough for two women. Apparently Clark, too, is similarly full of love, because this is what he tells Lois in one of the nfics that are eligible for this year's nKerth awards (Clark has just told Lois that he has had a sexual relationship with another woman):

Hmmmm. I can just imagine Lois telling Clark that she fell in love with Dan Scardino and loved him passionately and had sex with him even though she had already fallen in love with Clark at that time. But why shouldn't she have sex with Dan Scardino in spite of her love for Clark, since love is not a limited commodity?

The thing is - I want love to be a limited commodity for both Lois and Clark, and that is what I'm all about as a Lois and Clark shipper. But just like there were in the comic books from the sixties, there are stories here where Clark, like that Afghani man, has so much love in his heart that he needs to give it to more than one woman. And therefore, like LabRat suggested, I will just have to avoid those stories and read the other ones, where Clark loves only Lois, just like I always wanted him to.

Ann

Okay. I have finally figured it out.

Ann, we're talking about two completely different things.

You wrote:

If Clark were to marry Lois, and then while Lois was still alive, have an affair with Lori Lemaris, I would view that as a betrayal of Lois and her love for him. And I believe that we agree on that point.

But Clark cannot - categorically cannot - be unfaithful to Lois if she has died. And this is where we sharply disagree. Faithfulness to a spouse (or unfaithfulness) is for this life only, Ann, and cannot be applied to either of them if the other is dead. It doesn't matter if there weren't any "dead Clark/Lois with a super-child" stories. It doesn't matter if Nan's Lori reminds either of us of Lori Lemaris. Clark can't be unfaithful to a deceased Lois any more than Lois can be unfaithful to a deceased Clark.

But this isn't the subject under discussion! You want to read only Lois and Clark love story tales. You refuse to admit as possible any tale where Clark marries someone else after Lois dies. You demand that we all write Clark as loving only Lois and never loving or being truly intimate with anyone else without insisting the same requirement be laid on Lois. You insist that even imagining Lois's death is possibly the most horrible thing a FOLC writer can do.

Okay. I get it now. I understand. Honestly, you have a perfect right to read only stories you like. You do not, however, have a right to trash someone's story because it doesn't meet your strict requirements. There are certain stories I don't like, but unless I'm asked to be a beta for that author, I won't give only negative feedback, I won't behave as if my personal Superman fantasies have been deliberately attacked, and I won't flame the writer or the story in the feedback folder. And I don't understand why you keep beating your head against this same stone wall. Just don't read the story.

'Nuff said?

Thank you so much for this Labrat.

I have to argree with the points made thoughtfully and respectfully by Barbara, DJ, Terry and Labrat to name a few.

To add my usual .02. I can't help but feel scared when this discussion comes around because I am in the minority who like stories that are not fairy tales and present less explored areas of our favorite characters. I feel that, in theory, with every harsh review authors get for simply the *premise* of their fics (which cannot be *fixed* without scrapping the whole story), the danger of decreasing that 10% of different fanfics increases (and actually what appears to happen is that just moving the fic in one direction makes people sound the alarm, regardless where the fic might really be going).

Sure this is a Lois and Clark forum, but I don't see why any writer that goes off the beaten path at best gets told flat out that he/she will lose X person's readership, or worse yet that she/he should be labeled as hostile to Lois for X plot. Surely it is possible for people to write to simply pursue an idea without having an anti-Lois agenda. I mean obviously some do, but to read so much about motive in writing if the author hasn't expressed as much is to make alienating assumptions.

Like Labrat mentioned the amount of "mainstream" eternal love LnC fics is quite large. Those who try something different already go against the grain and will probably recieve less reviews. However, must they also deal with flat out criticism of their premise as well? It's like kicking people who are already at a disadvantage.

For the sake of a tolerant, diverse community, if you don't have anything constructive to say it really is better to say nothing at all.

alcyone

have just returned and have read all these posts at once.

Interesting comments but I've somehow been left with the impression that some posters have missed my argument about the uniqueness of the Lois and Clark relationship - that their love for each other was that once in a lifetime love. (as presentred in L & C: T NAoS that is) And also that Lois Lane is as important a character as Clark Kent/Superman.

I don't object, and have never objected to any suggestion that either L or C had "loves" before they met each other. As I've said, all too often , there are so many types of love.

But what has thrown me out of stories has been the suggestion that other loves that each had (oddly, nearly always Clark as it turns out) was "the love of a lifetime". As soon as that premise is set up, it means that I as a reader (all too sadly logical) can't buy that either Lois or Clark will be "that one great love" for the other.

That doesn't mean that other readers won't be interested in reading, of course.

It's the distinction between the different types of love that matters to me as a reader, but I do understand that distinction is either irrelevant to others or that they may not get the distinction in the first place. Please accept that I do understand that.

And yeah, i know RL is totally different - but right now I'd just as soon escape real life.

c.

I may be wrong , but I can't think of any posters who have made this type of criticism without presenting evidence from the story to support their point. Sure it's a matter of interpretation, but there has to be something in the story to have led a reader to make the interpretation Alcyone suggests (or any interpretation, for that matter) in the first place.

Shouldn't a writer strive for some internal logical in a story? Is it wrong for a reader to say, wait a minute not following your logic here? Sort of like pointing out a plot hole.

c.

Carol wrote:

Yes. Absolutely. A story must be self-consistent or the vast majority of readers will stop reading, whether it's fanfic or a published novel by a writer who got a six-figure advance for the collection of dreck I'm holding in my hand.

One of my favorite yell-at-the-author moments comes whenever the hero/heroine is in a sticky situation, takes out an armed opponent, and then leaves the weapon beside the unconscious enemy! Even if the main character is a pacifist who absolutely refuses to kill people, doesn't it make sense to remove the weapon from your enemy's reach so he doesn't wake up, follow you, and shoot you in the back?

So an internal logic is pretty much required for any story, no matter what length, to be believable. But what's the premise here? If Lois is "the great love of Clark's life," as so many want her to be (me included), why can't he find love again after she dies? Why couldn't Lois find love again after Clark dies?

Carol also wrote:

That doesn't make sense to me, Carol. You seem to be saying that if Clark married Jane Doe and Jane died, all before he met Lois, that Lois can never be "the love of a lifetime" for him. If that's logical, then your premise must be that only Lois can make him truly happy and that no other woman can really even tease anything other than a fleeting distraction from him.

The first part of your premise - that only Lois can be Clark's "one great love" - is exactly what L&C is based on. And I agree completely, totally, fully, and innumerably (sorry, had a Jack Sparrow moment). I don't think I could write a story where Clark loved anyone else more than he loved Lois.

But the second part of your premise isn't reasonable. You're taking the position that once he has Lois, no other woman can do anything for him after that, even when she's dead. The New York Yankees had a first baseman named Lou Gehrig who died of what is now called (supposedly in his memory) "Lou Gehrig's disease." He left behind a childless widow who never remarried, saying that once she'd had the best no one else would do.

That's a very romantic notion, and it's one which fits our ideals of "love" very well. I'd like to think that I've ruined my wife for any other man (and so far I'm doing pretty good), but it would be foolish for me to believe that she would "forever remain faithful to my memory" if I were to pass on any time soon (or any time not so soon). Insisting that Clark cannot love any woman after Lois isn't logical, it's an unreasonable requirement.

We aren't the ones who don't get you, Carol. You don't get "us." The story that has Clark choosing someone else over Lois is so rare that I can't think of any at the moment. The ones which come to my mind immediately ("What Might Have Been," "The Butterfly Legacy," Nan's "Home" series) all have a Lois who has either married someone else (usually Luthor) or time has passed and Lois has died. We're not deliberately stomping on your romantic ideals. We're simply exploring other possibilities.

Way back when I was posting "The Road Taken," Carol left the following feedback on the final chapter.

In this story, Clark did love Lana - before he met Lois - but nowhere did I state that Lana was "the love of Clark Kent's life." That's Carol's interpretation, not the author's intent. I get where you're coming from, Carol. I really do. You want stories where Clark cannot possibly love anyone else after he meets Lois, whether he ends up with her or not. And that's your right. You shouldn't change your opinions or preferences based only on anyone else's opinions or preferences.

But it's your opinion, not divinely revealed truth. You have every right to prefer those stories. You do not have the right to trash those stories which do not meet your standards. If a story doesn't meet those standards, that does not disqualify it as an interesting or reasonable or logical story. I will tell you the same thing I told Ann.

If you don't like the story, don't read it. Don't flame us for not adhering to your own personal preferences. Don't accuse us of illogical plotting or destroying the magic. We're different people, and we like different things. I don't care for every story on the archive or on the boards, but I'm not going to whack an author in public for that reason. Plot holes? Yes. Main characters acting out of character? Probably yes, unless that "acting out of character" is part of the central premise of the story.

But I'm not going to attack anyone because "that's not the way it's supposed to be." That's wrong and it's hurtful.

I'm not the only one to say this, nor am I the first, but here it is again: If you don't like it, Carol, just don't read the story.

No, that's not what I said at all. In fact, I did say that I could see other relationships for both (see my above comments, and in fact, the title of the thread.)

But what I have said was that if those relationships were presented as "the love of a lifetime" or "that one great love" then that premise would consequently make it inconsistent for either Clark or Lois to be presented as "the love of a lifetime" at some other point.

I wonder, Terry, if this isn't a matter of how we interpret the term "love of a lifetime". I wonder if perhaps you take the term to mean any type of love and that any individual may well have more than one love in her lifetime? Whereas I see the term "love of a lifetime" as suggesting something unique about that particular love, something extraordinary.

That different perception would account for my reading of your TRT - You wrote powerfully of Clark's love for Lana as the love of his life, and while Lois was present in the story, she was never more than a female "Jimmy Olsen" - the sidekick who helped with the A plot. Clark was not the least interested in Lois as a woman in the story at all, although he respected her as a colleague. That's why I called your story a Clark and Lana fic. A well written one with an excellent A plot, mind you, which is why I kept reading. And, to be honest, I was also expecting to see some indication that while Clark 'loved' Lana she was not *the* great love of his life. (naive, I know )

btw - Nan has always made it clear that Lori is Lois reincarnated so I'm not sure that that example quite works. As well, in BL Lois did not marry Luthor, did not even have sex with him, but came to the same realisation that she did in the TV series - it was Clark she loved.

And to repeat what I said above - sure, if Clark (or Lois) dies I can see Lois moving on, loving someone else - but no, I don't see that New Guy would be "the love of her life". He would be "a" love of her life, however.

But the series was called "Lois And Clark", and that's what I look for in fics. Both the relationship, as well as the affection and equal regard for both characters. (and to repeat, again, I do know that others don't look for those elements)

Terry, I think you're allegation of flaming is both an exaggeration of what I have written and unfair - I get the feeling you're saying that I should not state my opinions nor explain why I hold them.

I don't know what to think about criticism of stories frankly. It's hard to be dishonest but that's what I would be if I were just to say positives when I also had quibbles. Better not to post at all then, regardless of the positives?

I know criticism can be difficult - I've certainly had lots of it for my stories. On the one hand I wanted to know what people thought, and I revised stories to take into account some of those criticisims, trying to achieve an inner logic in plot, characterization, etc. But sometimes the answer was that they thought that what I had written was not worth reading and that was hard to take.

c.

I haven't had a chance to read Laura's story yet, which sparked off this latest round of discussion on this topic. I do know that Clark is grieving Lana deeply. But even so, and even if he does at some point refer to her as "the love of his life", couldn't he just realize later that he was...wrong?

Lana would be his childhood sweetheart, and probably the only woman he had ever loved to that point. He would have shared a true and genuine love with her, but he could easily realize at some future point that in fact this love wasn't the same deep and all-consuming passion that he will develop for Lois. So it could come down to ranking Lois as truly "the love of his life", but it doesn't negate his genuine feelings for Lana. The only other difference then from the show would be that he didn't fall instantly in love with Lois.

Relationships with childhood sweethearts can be tricky things. I married my high school boyfriend, and we are still together over 25 years later. But the complete and utter adoration that I had for the man for the first x number of years isn't there anymore. My love for him is different now, as we've changed as people over the years.

So even if Clark and Lana had been together for as many as 5, 10 years, once he falls in love with Lois, he could come to realize that his love for her was entirely different.

As an example from RL, you can take the apparent situation with Tom Cruise. Everyone recalls the ridiculous spectacle he made of himself when he began dating Katie Holmes. (I'm not a Cruise fan.) And as I recall, he made it quite clear that the feelings he had for Katie were head and shoulders over his feelings for any other woman before her. So at least as far as he's concerned, she is "the love of his life", yet one presumes that at the time he did love at least some of the women he'd been involved with.

I hardly want to compare Clark of this story - or any other story - with Tom Cruise. But it does help illustrate why I am one of those who thinks it is possible that a Clark who has loved once could easily find that all-encompassing magical love that he and Lois will share. I've only seen about 5 episodes of Smallville, but even there one could assume that despite the obsessive love that Clark there has shown for Lana, one day in the future he will realize that that didn't compare to his love for Lois Lane.

Evidence from the story to argue about how an author feels about Lois or Clark in a story based on how they are written dismisses the creative process. It's like a literary argument where everything is ascribed to the author's biography. Such a thing assumes the writing in question is blatantly derivative instead of something purposely arranged and worked on.

But it isn't about internal logic. It's about "canon."

To tackle your comments from a slightly different angle and less skillfully than the other posters...I have no problem with someone saying wait a minute you say X and Y but earlier in the story you had said B. That's what I interpret to be "internal logic." In this case though, I was referring to continuity between the series and fic, which is I think the "evidence" used to argue that certain fics from the get-go are not in the spirit or whatnot of LnC. This view of the "spirit of LnC" boils down to what the author/reader interprets as "canon." But there have been plenty of people disagreeing on that to suggest that the notion of canon is hardly stable, the most recent example I remember being some think Clark is capable of killing and some think he is not *shrug*. There's enough evidence to support both so we can all happily co-exist and it makes fandom richer by opening up story possibilities. That being said, of course I think any story needs internal logic to work--if your story is about a happy Clark you can't just make him depressed and go killing people in chapter two for no good reason. So the "evidence" that counts for me in any critique relating to "internal logic" lies in the fic itself rather than in the series.

Near the end you said:

If you say positives you earn the right, in my view, to mention the quibles. But the point blank criticism of "this premise isn't LnC," as I've said, is just not a useful critique to make and is rather disheartening to a writer and overshadows any other positives because it's akin to telling them they should have scrapped the central idea (which is what the _premise_ is). That there is no way it might work (as LnC) based on internal logic alone. Those are pretty crushing comments after someone has taken the time and effort to write it out, because it indicates that nothing they could have done, short of not writing *that* story, could have worked. The words "doomed from the start" come to mind.

To go back to the issue, while you may have an aspect that defines LnC for you, other people have their own parts of LnC that give it its "essence," or whatever, and these might not be aligned with yours. That doesn't mean that they aren't "Lois and Clark" (clearly there are a minimum set of traits that make it so, otherwise it wouldn't be here). Maybe they aren't to you, which is what this all boils down to. Still, just because you don't see them that way does not mean that they are not within the scope of the grey umbrella of the series. This is the statement I have a problem with:

Like I said before what you look for is your interpretation of Lois and Clark in fics. Should we pretend that there is a clearly marked yardstick of "Lois and Clark" by which we all can judge a fic? Like I said, there are general parameters the board establishes (the use of characters from the series, etc.), but within those I think there's more to gain for encouraging fic you like than discouraging fic you don't.

alcyone

I think that it's more than just the continuity with the series that can be used as evidence. For me, what also matters is evidence from the fic itself. There has to be a consistency within the story itself. I'm not sure we disagree on this point, though.

If some major aspect (notice my avoidance of the word 'canon' ) of the series is to be changed, then I do think the author has to make that change plausible within the context of what we saw in the series. Otherwise it's difficult to call on my "willing suspension of disblelief" - having done that for the super-powers business, it's difficult for me to go further in that regard:) But it may not be for others.

But surely there has to be more to a fic to warrant the label "L & C" fic than just the use of the characters from the show? Were it as wide open as that, then I'm guessing that most Smallville fanfics would also qualify as L & C fic. The only exception would be those stories which focus on Chloe, and even then, it could be argued that such a story would be a crossover.

Clearly, there is much of L & C that is open to interpretation, but surely there is something intrinsic that makes L & C, well, L& C, and not say Smallville or SR or...?

I'm not sure I'm following this argument. How is deconstructing a story dismissing the creative process? Sometimes what and how an author writes is indicative of how the writer subconscioulsy thinks about some issues. For example, is anyone going to argue that Ian Fleming was a feminist? Or that there are not examples of anti-semitism in Dorothy Sayers' novels? I'm not sure that this is ascribing an attitude to the author's biography - the evidence is in the actual text.

At any rate I'm not sure that the "creative process" is always completely independent of a writer's values and attitudes. I don't think it's possible. Probably literature would be pretty boring if it were possible.

I do believe that a writer's values subconsciously shape what they write. I've been accused in private e-mails of writing a Lois who is too independent, not submissive enough to Clark Kent, etc. Now I'd never thought of my interpretation of the character in that way but clearly some people have thought so.

For example, years ago I wrote a story for S6 called "The Last Time I Saw Elvis", a story that hardly anyone ever read except for a few who wrote to tell me that Lois was way too independent, was a lousy mother, and also that I'd written Martha as way too independent. But I really thought I was writing those characters in a way that was consistent with what had been in the series.

Nevertheless, I have claimed to be a feminist and so it wouldn't be surprising to see that reflected in what I've written, whether it be Lois or Clark or Martha. etc as well as how I watched the show itself.

Anyway, I'm not too confident I'm following your argument here, Alycone, and I may have misinterpreted what you were getting at. Are you suggesting that we should never compare or reference what we saw in the series to what we read in fanfics?

Yes, I've never claimed otherwise. I suspect we all do that. As soon as anyone starts a comment with "This is so like Lois and Clark..." that's what is happening.

c.

There are, I think, three ways of looking at Superman. Most non-LnC fans think of him primarily as a movie and cartoon superhero who is known mostly for his super-strength and his ability to fly, and for his constant fights with Lex Luthor. To these people, Lois Lane as well as Clark Kent are rather secondary characters, and love and romance similarly play a very minor role in their take on of Superman.

The fans of LnC are clearly very different, because to them the superhero in spandex is the secondary character, while the civilian lovebirds are what really counts. But I think there are two main groups of LnC fans. One group, possibly the biggest, love the one-of-a-kind soulmate status and love chemistry between Dean Cain's and Teri Hatcher's characters in LnC:TNAoS. These people are going to want fics that reflect this love between Cain's and Hatcher's fictional characters, between Lois and Clark.

But another group of LnC fans, probably almost exclusively female, are interested in LnC only because they love Dean Cain's handsome and romantic Clark Kent. To them it's probably enough that Clark Dean Kent finds romantic love in the fics they read, whether or not his love interest is Lois. In fact, at least some of the Dean fans may actually prefer that their hero falls in love with someone other than Teri Hatcher's Lois Lane.

Now me... I became a die-hard Superman fan only after I had become convinced, back in 1969, that Superman truly loved Lois Lane. And I quickly realized that the one thing that I found absolutely necessary and indispensable about Superman was precisely his love for Lois Lane. If he lost that love, if he fell in love with another woman, if he preferred another woman over Lois, if he wanted to have another woman on the side, or if Lois died... well, if any of those things happened, Superman would be dead to me. He would be dead, useless, hurtful and horrible as a fictional hero to me. I truly couldn't stand him if he rejected Lois. And I couldn't stand him if Lois died.

In 1980, Superman rejected Lois in the movie "Superman II". And I rejected him. He was dead to me for ten years. A friend of mine gave me a book about Superman, and I hid it away in the attic. My best friend gave me a Superman tea mug, and I put it away on the highest shelf in my cupboard. Many years later I broke my favorite tea mug and found myself without the proper means to drink tea, so I looked around in my cupboard and found and retrieved my Superman mug, which I have used for my breakfast tea ever since. But by the time I found this mug (and was willing to use it), Clark had already proposed to Lois in the comics.

To me, no fantasy comes close in importance to my fantasy about Lois and Clark. Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain pale enormously in importance compared with what the fictional characters of Lois and Clark mean to me. I don't mind giving Lois and Clark Teri's and Dean's faces, but as for the show... well... I haven't seen it.

And I realize - believe me, I do - that I have no more "right" to Lois and Clark than anyone else on these boards. If anything, I have even less of a claim to these characters than the rest of you guys on these boards, because my fantasy about Lois and Clark doesn't even have anything to do with the TV show that these boards are dedicated to.

But I feel so enormously strongly about Lois and Clark. I feel so enormously strongly that Clark is dead to me as a fictional hero if he doesn't love Lois, and if he doesn't love her a lot more than any other woman, and if Lois isn't alive and around for him to love.

Please accept that I feel that way.

Ann

Well, I don't deny that I do love the handsome and romantic Clark. It's also fair to say that IF I had to choose one of these two characters and say which one was more important to me, I would choose Clark. Many would. There are also many - including you, Ann, and Tank, for example - who I believe would choose Lois.

This is where I completely disagree. So yes, obviously I'm not part of this group that you speak of. What information have you seen posted that has made you draw this conclusion?? Is the reverse true for you - that you don't care whether or not Lois's love interest is Clark. Would you actually prefer that Lois falls in love with someone other than Clark?

I doubt it. Yes, L&C did turn me into a Dean fan, so I have watched other TV shows and movies that he's been in, even the awful ones. And I have therefore seen the "actor" fall in love with other females. But when I watch L&C I don't see "Dean" playing the role - I see Clark. And because I see Clark, I want to see Lois too.

From the responses I've seen in this recent discussion and in other threads, I've never got the impression that there is this second group of FoLCs such as you describe. On the contrary, I would say that 99.9% - if not 100% - prefer reading stories about Lois and Clark together.

But just because people may prefer L&C together, doesn't mean that people are unwilling to try other premises. Because it is also true that many people believe that, depending on the circumstances, either Lois or Clark could potentially find love with someone else. I know that is one of the issues that disturbs you, and you have every right to feel the way you do, just as everyone has that same right to their own feelings and opinions. But that issue is not the same thing as your latest statement that at least a small smattering of "Clark" fans don't care - or might actually prefer - if Clark ever loves Lois or not.

Kathy

Ooof this is long. And repetitive.

All I’m getting at is to be aware that even what we “saw” in the series is hardly something objective we can use to police what fic premises are “LnC” or not. Of course we should compare and reference because that’s the fun, but I don’t think that it’s productive to use it as a critique, since its likely nothing the writer can change other than not writing the fic. It's just negative. I give an example below.

Yes, but my point is that even that #1 “major aspect” is not something that every fan of the series agrees on. For example, to some people having *Clark* as the protagonist and not Superman is that one important thing—it is that which facilitates there being a “Lois and” in the first place. Some people think it’s both Lois AND Clark as *individual characters* equally. Some people think it’s the characters as *romantically* involved. And even these examples are over-generalizing, but all are valid. I think the fact that we're having this discussion is a good indicator of this.

Usually I would agree, but in certain occasions what “we saw in the series” (which is btw another way of saying “canon”) is hardly the same. To use my previous example, some people “saw” in the series that Clark could kill if pushed beyond certain bounds. Some people “saw” he couldn’t no matter what. And there’s people who are in between. But if you just didn’t “see” that such a thing could happen, the fic is doomed from the start, not because of the premise itself—but because it doesn’t work for you . No “context” will ever justify it or fix it because you didn’t “see” it in the series to begin with. Same thing with if you "saw" Lois as more important or Clark, or if you think them both as fighters as the central attraction, or their romance--the shadings are endless.

I guess at this point I should say that I’m not arguing about sloppy writing or overtly shady characterizations here. If you’re setting the fic immediately post Pilot and have Lois declaring her love for Clark in the first sentence and successively have them getting married without explaining most of us will agree that there’s a problem. But most people here are too skilled in characterization to make huge oversights like that so the issue, I believe, is much more subtle. We wouldn’t be discussing this if it were otherwise.

Obviously not just the characters, I added an etc. and just meant to leave it vague because “LnC” at some point becomes something slippery. What are the basics? I’d offer two. Sure it’s about romance and chemistry between Lois and Clark. Sure it’s about Clark more than Superman. But there might be more that I’m not mentioning. How far to diverge from the series for it to still be acceptable is one of those questions without a clear answer. Ultimately it's up to the mods, and they've been doing a great job in keeping this fandom so open.

I mean just look at genre. Some fics go way off in a different genre than the series. But to some people even the genre is “LnC” and something not keeping with the tv series' family-hour feel automatically does not make it “LnC” and they won’t read it. Didn’t Labrat just mention how some of the fics we consider classics now, were objects of controversy in their time—for being outside the bounds of “Lois and Clark” be it in drama (as opposed to lighthearted comedy) or whatever?

Yes, but even that intrinsic thing that makes it LnC for me is not what makes it LnC for you. Chances are they are related, which is why a community exists in the first place, but they might not be the same. My problem is that slapping that “not LnC” critique on a fic gives no room for the writer to fix anything. What can Terry (I hope he doesn’t mind my using him as an example, it’s just what’s most vivid, because it’s so well done) do against the charge that Rebuilding Superman isn’t “LnC” since person X didn’t “see” Clark be able to kill in the series? What kind of "constructive" feedback would something like this be? What does a reader seek to accomplish with this--because honestly I thought feedback was a gift to authors not a bat to the head.

Clearly what we believe influences what we write BUT it’s a question of degree. And since no one can clear that up, it's safer to begin and end with the _text_ not the writer--which is what I'm arguing for. Accuse the _text_ all day, but leave the writer out of it (unless he/she says something and even then...)

I’m no psychologist or psychic, so if I don’t actually know the person how can I pretend to know the entirety of his/her views on a subject based on one piece of _fanfiction_? It must be quite offensive actually to have someone else claim that what you’ve written shows you think/agree with X, when perhaps your point was something else and it was just a mistake in conveying it/different interpretation.

Your argument also doesn’t take into account that HOW we read influences our interpretation just as much as any authorial intention (maybe even more) because none of us can claim to be unbiased to begin with either.

I've always said it, it's about the execution, not the premise. Never the premise. A good author should be able to carry anything through. If it doesn't work--then it doesn't work because of the writer or the reader, not because it's "not LnC."

alcyone

Acyclone said it quite well, as did many others, but I have to have my go at it. I did want to give a quick thanks to Carol, though, as it’s been quite some time since I’ve been fired up and passionate about something, and certainly longer since I’ve been passionate about L&C. (Even though this horse has been flogged to death and past it. Poor thing.)

First, addressing Framework:

First off, I didn’t see Labrat sign off as a boards admin, so anything she said was surely her own opinion and not that of the collective group who run the boards and are in charge of such decision-making. But that’s beside the point.

The point is that this is a L&C fanfic forum, not a forum for all types of Superman fanfic. I didn’t follow all of what was said in the subject thread regarding the request for an “Other” section on the boards, so I’m not sure what points were hashed out there. But let me requote what the boards FAQ states:

“Any of the characters” means that I could write a completely Perry-centric story, with Lois and Clark as minor players, or even have L&C not in it at all. But my story has to be about L&C Perry with the characteristics that we saw on the show, the history, that sort of thing – a gruff man with a southern drawl who loves Elvis and whose marriage with Alice is on the rocks.

Just because Lois and/or Clark aren’t “major players” in a fanfic, doesn’t mean that it’s not an L&C story. And it certainly doesn't mean that I love them less or don't believe in that "mythic love".

Which brings me to Carol’s question:

Yes, there is. There are a lot of things. It’s the CHARACTERISTICS of said characters that make them solely L&C characters, rather than Superman movie characters or Smallville characters or what have you.

It is as wide open as using any character from the show, and that doesn’t make Smallville fanfic L&C fic. It’s not the names Lois Lane, Clark Kent, or even Lana Lang that make the characters fit into fandom; it’s the characteristics which writers have given them in their various incarnations.

If I write a story about Clark and he happens to be a bit bumbling and a lot nerdy and considers himself to be Superman above Clark, then I’m writing about Clark in the movieverse. If I write a story about a Clark who thinks of himself as Clark Kent, first and foremost, and has a wry sense of humor and got his Superman suit from his mother when he was just shy of thirty (as opposed to from a crystal cavern in the middle of nowhere, a gift from his dead birth father), then I’m writing about L&C.

It’s not just one aspect of L&C that makes it L&C, at least not for most fans.

Sara (who, to be clear, isn't posting as a boards mod, either)

Again, from Carol:

Carol, how do we know that one of those other relationships was "the love of a lifetime?" What's the criteria? Where's the checklist for making that decision? What tips us off? How can we tell? Or do we have to await your judgment?

This sounds like Clark's reaction to his wife's sudden and violent death at the end of "The Road Taken" should have been to sweep Lois into his arms, kiss her senseless, proclaim his eternal love for her, and remark that his love for Lana pales in comparison to his love for Lois. Then she says "Okay, when's the wedding?"

No way. Not gonna happen. Not only does a hokey ending like that cheapen their relationship, it devalues the character of Lana and makes her just a notch on Clark's bedpost. Like we've said, you want to see Clark with Lois and ultimately only with Lois. Hey, I got no problem with that. In fact, I prefer that outcome myself. And if you want to leave feedback saying that this is what you prefer, by all means do so.

The problem, Carol, is that you insist that because this is a Lois and Clark forum, Lois can end up only with Clark and Clark can end up only with Lois - unless, of course, those other relationships really didn't mean anything. You see a story where an author decides to explore something really juicy, something really different, something with some angst and a few WHAMs and an "edge" to it, and because Clark and Lois don't get together right away, you think it's not L&C fanfic. There are tons of romantic stories with the L&C relationship resolution as the central focus. If you like those kinds of stories, fine! Read them! Enjoy them! There are a lot of them on the archive and more being written all the time by highly skilled authors who feel the same about our heroic couple that you do.

The difference is that they don't feel it necessary to dismiss a story that doesn't settle under this umbrella as "too Smallville" or "too movie Superman" or "not really canon," whether you use the word or not. You're trying to force us into your preferences, and that's what is generating all these sparks.

Ann wrote:

Ann has told us that Clark cannot exist for her unless Lois is the dominant love in his life. Gosh, Ann, doesn't that make Clark subservient to Lois? Doesn't that make his existence an adjunct to hers, without substance on its own? Doesn't that make him completely dependent on her for not only his identity but for his life?

This is the kind of thing that, if we reverse the gender of the pronouns, would be denounced (and rightfully so) as anti-female. How can someone who is an ardent feminist, dedicated to the equality of the sexes, express so biased a viewpoint?

To Ann's credit, she clearly states that this is her viewpoint and she's not trying to make anyone else adopt it. Thank you, Ann. You have a right to feel this way, and you have a right to express your feelings. You aren't trying to make the rest of us take on your viewpoint, and I applaud you for your eloquence while I shake my head wonderingly at this highly limited and very sexist view of Clark.

There are a number of similarities and a few differences between Ann's POV and Carol's POV, but the main difference is that Ann recognizes that she's not the ultimate authority on what qualifies as L&C fanfic while Carol feels compelled to point out what is and what is not L&C fanfic by her measure. This is the problem, Carol! If you want to express your opinion, please feel free to do so. If you don't like the same kinds of stories that I do, fine! You don't have to, and in fact there should be some disagreement, otherwise all the stories would sound the same. But don't try to shoehorn us into your narrow view of what's acceptable L&C fanfic. Because your opinions and feelings are perfectly valid, they are perfectly acceptable, but they are not the perfect guides for the rest of us.

I'm done ranting. I will check into this thread again, but I doubt that I'll post anything else. I'm beginning to feel like a broken record here.

Maybe we all need to just go write something.

Don't know if this will mean anything to anyone's argument, but Lois was always considered a central character to the show, not just by her name being first in the title, but by the show's original working title of Lois Lane's Daily Planet. I read the original title in an article in the April 96 issue of SPX.

Here it's talking about Deborah Joy Levine: I mentioned something earlier in this thread asking if fics that stray away from canon shouldn't be labeled as elseworlds or alt-universes since the events in these fics never actually happened to the Lois and Clark of LNC:TNAOS (e.g. marrying Lana before meeting Lois.) If the fics are labelled as such, then probably most anything could be done with the characters.

I need to answer two questions from KathyM:

Kathy, I don't know that there is such a group. Maybe there isn't one at all, at least not on these boards. There could be one over at Zoomway's boards, where the "Dean Cain" folder is the one that has received the largest number of posts. And of course, after I've read what feels like thousands of comic books and seen all the movies, I know how precarious and fleeting Lois's presence can be in the non-LnC Superman world, and how secondary she is in that world to Superman. (The "Lois and Superman" romance is resolved, said Christopher Reeve in an interview after his third or fourth Superman movie. Further Superman movies, he added, should not deal with that aspect of Superman's life.)

So after the Christopher Reeve movies, I have never really dared to believe that Superman's love for Lois is a given. After I returned to the world of Superman again after a ten-year hiatus, I always scrutinized any Superman-related (or Clark-related) stuff I came across for this one vital aspect: Superman's (or Clark's) love for Lois. I became hyper-sensitive to whether or not his love for her was a driving force in the stories I read. And when I read LnC stories where we see a lot of Clark, but where I can't perceive much of his love for Lois, I tend to conclude (perhaps very unfairly) that this is a "Clark-centric" story, written by someone who is more interested in Clark than in Clark and Lois. I guess you could say that I "translate" the strong focus on Superman (and the often dismissive take on Lois) in the non-LnC world of Superman as a strong focus on Clark (and a dismissive take on Lois) in some LnC stories I have read. But once again, I may certainly be very unfair to the writers of those stories. I may certainly misconstrue their intentions with the stories they have written. It's not as if I approach those stories without a ton of "Lois and Superman-related" baggage of hope, joy and horrible frustration. (But for all of that, I may never like their versions of Clark.)

Kathy also asked the following question:
Kathy, have you ever heard me rant and rave at the fact that Lois accepted Lex's proposal in LnC? If you have - or even if you haven't - there is your answer. Nooooo!!! No, no, no, I don't want Lois to fall in love with someone else. But when I grew up and "watched" Lois and Superman, it never seemed remotely possible to me that Lois would find another man to love. I didn't worry about Lois moving on, because it seemed absolutely impossible that something like that could happen. Superman could move on, yes. Lana was always there as a threat in the background. Lori Lemaris was another potential love interest, and then, of course, there was Wonder Woman. And in one comic book story from the sixties, Superman met, fell in love with and proposed to a more-or-less ordinary Earth woman! And she accepted his proposal, and they started to prepare for their wedding... until it was revealed that this woman was suffering from a deadly disease, and she died before they could marry. But there you are. When I grew up it always seemed possible that Superman might move on, but it never seemed possible that Lois would. That is why I myself have always focused so heavily on Clark's faithfulness and constancy, not on Lois's.

But let me tell you that I worry about what the latest Superman movie might do to Lois Lane. Will she be seen as the woman who chose Richard White over Superman? I would totally and completely hate it. In fact, if the image of Lois Lane changes so that she is generally perceived as someone who will not give her love to Superman/Clark Kent, then she, too, will be dead to me as a character.

Terry wrote:

Yes, Terry, that does make Clark subservient to Lois. But because I also can't imagine Lois without Clark, that makes Lois subservient to him.

Terry, my fantasy about Lois and Clark is a fantasy about two people who are destined to be together, and who are doomed to be hollow and incomplete without each other. But as I was trying to explain to Kathy, when I grew up it seemed eminently possible that Superman might stray and abandon Lois, but never that Lois would abandon him. That is why I focus so heavily on Clark's faithfulness and constancy, as I just said... but that doesn't mean that I feel less strongly about Lois's.

Terry, you said something else in a previous post:

Terry, believe me, when it comes to real-life people I don't begrudge anyone the right to remarry (with the possible exceptions of those who maliciously murdered their spouses - you know what I mean). Real life people are real life people with real life problems, desires and pains, but fantasy people are fantasy people, whose problems, desires and pains we are free to bestow on them ourselves. So we can choose to make them larger than life and incredibly romantic, or we can treat them "seriously" and put them in all kinds of realistic situations. Actually, the two approaches don't have to be mutually exclusive, but to me the realistic "Lois dies and Clark moves on" scenario is a no-no, absolutely incompatible with my fantasy about Lois and Clark.

But Terry, I found it interesting that you mentioned Lou Gehrig and his wife, because they were real people. It could well be that I'm over-interpretating what you said about Gehrig's widow, but it seemed to me that you did not wholly approve of her decision to stay single for the rest of her life after her husband died.

This reminds me about a Swedish writer, Per Olov Enquist, whose father died when he himself was just a few months old. His mother never remarried. I recently saw a (to me) hugely interesting interview with Enquist, where it seemed to me that he perhaps disapproved of his mother's decision to never remarry and thus say no to physical love for the rest of her life, just because her husband died young.

The latest, and probably last, book that Enquist has written is called Blanche and Marie. The "Marie" in question is Marie Curie, a very famous woman who most certainly existed in real life. I haven't read that book, but I have heard Enquist talk about it. Basically, although Enquist didn't say it in so many words, Enquist portrays Marie Curie as a sort of counterpoint to his own mother, a woman who made another choice about love than his own mother did. Marie Curie was an extremely famous scientist and physicist, who won the Nobel Prize for physics twice. But after her husband died (or she left him - I don't quite remember) she started an affair, which shocked the people at that time, the early nineteen twenties. Enquist explained in that interview that his book chartered the painful, awful downfall of Marie Curie, who toward the end of her life was sick, shunned, hated and deserted by everyone because of her illicit affair.

What I found most interesting about the whole thing was the answer that Enquist gave, when the reporter asked him if Marie Curie had done the right thing when she had risked everything for love. After all, her affair cost her such awful pain in the end, so was the initial joy and pleasure worth it for Marie? Yes, said Enquist confidently. It was worth it for her. And I thought to myself, how can he know that? How can he know what it was like to be a super-famous female physicist in the early twentieth century, who risked everything to "move on", and who came up against the merciless condemnation of all of Europe? How can he know that it was worth it for Marie? Just because he wishes that his own mother had taken a few more romantic risks?

I think we should be very, very careful when we talk about and judge the romantic choices made by real people. But when it comes to the romantic choices made by fantasy people like Lois and Clark, I know what I think and what I like.

Ann

Terry, I don't think you've really read any of my posts completely. All along, both in this thread and elsewhere, I've said I can see both Lois and Clark in relationships with others before they meet or even after one of them dies that each believed and labelled as "love". Mind you, I don't want to read the latter because they usually are dead-Lois fics and I (although I do understand that this doesn't mean everyone) want to read about Lois Lane as much as I want to read about Clark Kent. (what Ann says about Lois Lane - me too.)
What I've been trying to do, is to distinguish between the different types of love.

OT ramble: (I will add, though, that I'm not so sure that everyone must remarry or hook up or whatever after the loss of a spouse - or even that everyone must be in a relationship at any point. People are different, and remaining alone after the loss of a spouse is just as valid/healthy as moving on. After all, there's a difference between living alone and being lonely. We are, I often think too much a "couples" oriented society when, in fact, coupledom (and 'happy' coupledom) is far from universal. )

With respect, no I don't think it does, at all. In fact, as you imply, that would be "distasteful'. But, and now I'm going to comment on the story, and so I'll add, a disclaimer - this is my opinion, not to be taken as what the whole world should think. In the body of the story itself, were I (and only me, no one else of course) to believe that Lois would one day become the "love of Clark's life", I (and I stress that "I" means one person only and not absolutely everyone else in the universe or even the guy next door) would have to see some indication that the marriage to Lana was not perfect - not that he didn't love her, but there were things that were not quite right for him. As well, it would have been not unsurprising for Clark to have been at least aware of Lois as a woman. Laying the groundwork for what is to come, so to speak. In fact, you did do that for Lois - we saw those few subtle. indicators in Lois that suggests she regards Clark as more than her colleague. Nothing more, just enough to suggest. That those elements were not there for Clark I saw as significant, especially since you, as the writer, had taken the care to include them for Lois.

Where on earth have you got the idea that I believe that?? I do admit to having difficulty with prolonged angst that isn't justified by anything in the story - angst for angst's sake, but that's it.

Also define "something really different" and "edge". Oh, and "juicy" (which I always take to mean a bit of nfic, which can be, uh, interesting But, of course, "juicy" could be Clark's life running an orange grove in Florida or his life as a tabloid reporter/papparazzi or... ).

[QUOTE] You're trying to force us into your preferences, [QUOTE]
No, I'm not - have never indicated that what "I" think should be
what everyone thinks. In fact, throughout this thread I've tried to make it clear that this is my opinion only. I do try to explain why I hold an opinion because I think that should be done, otherwise a reader is left wondering why someone has come to that opinion.

Terry, I do feel with the exaggerations in your last post, you've flamed me. Never thought I'd say that.

Alycone, I'm concerned about your use of the word "police" because I sense you've used it as a pejorative which implies that I have no right to state my opinion. But given what you've written elsewhere, I can't believe that you think that. Nevertheless, I agree with most of what you've said, in fact I think we've both been saying much the same thing, some degrees of difference, but only degrees. And, as you said, we've both been very repetitive.

c.

Just a couple comments to Ann's response to my post.

Yes, there are separate folders for both Dean and Teri over at Zoom's boards. And not everyone who posts there are primarily L&C fans, although some are. Certainly a number have stated that they're not interested in fanfic, although that doesn't preclude them from being a fan of the show and its characters.

But people who aren't primarily interested in L&C probably aren't posting over here.

You are rather unique here in that your background is steeped in the comics and the movies. Conversely I have never read any comics, and although I've seen the movies, I do not interchange movieverse with L&C-verse. The fact that Superman gave Lois that awful amnesia-kiss has no relevance at all - for me - to what happens here. I cannot combine those visions of Clark/Superman in my head. You cannot separate your cumulative knowledge of the characters in your head.

I understand your fears for Clark's constancy to Lois, but I cannot begin to share them. And so I never start any story with that fear in my head. The Clark in Lois & Clark had some romantic relationships before coming to Metropolis, but apparently nothing very serious for him either emotionally or physically. But one look at Lois and he fell for her instantly. The thought of another woman never seriously entered his head once that happened. If there is a Elseworld story being posted where Clark is seriously involved with someone before he even meets Lois, I still don't worry. I recognize it as an Elseworld (or an Alt-universe), but I don't question whether or not he's going to fall for Lois; since this is L&C I automatically assume that at some point he will.

There are rare exceptions to this - Ray's story for one, as you pointed out. But an occasional story that differs from the norm is not suddenly going to release a floodgate of other stories all written along similar lines. I truly believe, based on everything I've seen on these boards over the years, that most L&C readers would not be interested in a steady diet of Clark w/o Lois or Lois w/o Clark stories.

So our interpretations of how we view the characters may be different, as has been reiterated in this thread and in many others before that. But I personally don't see conclusive evidence contradicting my belief that underneath we all have the same desire - to want Lois and Clark together, no matter what.

Kathy

EDIT: There was something I forgot. Ann, you pointed out that perhaps I had never seen you venting about Lois's decision to marry Lex. Well, I had, and although I asked you the question, I knew that you didn't support that. But yet you didn't seem to feel it an extraordinary thing to assume that there must be L&C fans who are there primarily for "Dean" and who don't care whether or not he is with Lois? I still don't understand why you would assume this. Is it just because some people are saying that he could potentially find love with someone else? Do you think that anyone who believes in this possibility (and the same for Lois, of course) is *not* part of the majority who believe in the epic, soulmates-type of love as you mention for the first group? And, maybe, isn't even a "true" fan?

This was my impression from your post - let me apologize now in advance if I did misinterpret you.

Gee, and I though I was the only one with that issue around here.

My take - unless it's a straight novelization of the show (what went on the screen with background, if any from the original writers) it's an alt-universe. In the show, Lois and Clark are defined as soul-mates. But soul mates don't always end up together in a particular lifetime. The the canon alt-verse, Clark didn't even realize the possibility that he had a soul-mate until Tempus and Wells got involved. Was that Clark in love with that Lana - he would have said so until he met Lois. If he and Lana had been married when Lois arrived, would he have regretted his decision? Maybe, but he wouldn't have acted on it - that's not how the character is written. Clark his honest and honorable.

If Lana had died before Clark met Lois could they get together - possibly, once he realized he didn't want to spend his life alone. Would that diminish his feelings for his first wife? No more than for any other widowed person who finds a new partner.

Conversely - if Clark had never arrived in Metropolis, would Lois have found someone else? Maybe, maybe not - she has always been written as a woman who needed a man who was her equal - and she has no equal, until Superman shows up.

Maybe a key point is hiding here - Lois knows she has no equal and her experience tells her not to settle for less, until she meets Superman.

Clark knows he has no equal (he is, after all, able to fly) but may be willing to consider what's available - until he meets Lois.

My 2-cents worth.

I'm not so sure, if I may disagree and I hasten to add that this is just my opinion. I'm not so sure that Lois was so egotistical that she would feel that she had no equal. I do believe she was confident about both her skill and talent as a reporter but that same confidence didn't come across in her personal life at all. Not sure, either, that she would think she had no equal as a reporter.

lol - That makes Clark sound so predatory.

like your website, btw.

c.

I have no good answer to that, Kathy. I do think you are wrong when you say

where you imply (or so I think) that many LnC fans truly believe that Lois might find (real) love with someone else. Just like I never saw that as a possibility when I read the comics as a kid, so I've never seen it as a possibility in the LnC fics I've read on these boards. Where has Lois ever moved on, except in Becky Bain's Ad Astra, Per Aspera where she was rather cruelly abandoned by Clark and married another man many, many years later and found a sort of quiet peace with him? Okay, there are also two Terry-fics where Clark either died or divorced Lois, and Lois remarried afterwards. But she was so unhappy that her new husbands had to go back in time and change history so that Lois could be reunited with Clark. That's not what I call Lois being happy with another man. So, Kathy, I think you are wrong when you suggest that many LnC fans believe that Lois might find happiness with another man (if that is what you really suggested - I might well have misunderstood you). In short, I have seen no signs that there is either a supply of or a demand for Lois-moves-on-and-finds-happiness fics on these boards. But there is a supply - a meagre one, but not a non-existent one - of fics where Clark falls in love with another woman and finds happiness, either for the rest of his life as in Ray's It Might Have Been and Classicalla's A New Hero, or temporarily as in Laura's new fic, where Clark was extremely happy with Lana until she suddenly died. I will also insist that there are more Lois deathfics than Clark deathfics posted here. There is a surplus of stories where Clark is widowed and alone or remarried to another woman and happy, and there is a shortage of stories where Lois is widowed and alone or remarried to another man and happy (not that I want to read such Lois stories).

But as so many other people have pointed out, there are really so few stories posted where Lois dies and/or where Clark moves on. And there are so, so many stories where they are in love and together. Why do I focus on the very few stories where (to me) awful things happen? How can I explain my reaction? I don't have a good or rational explanation, except that the stories that hurt me make me hurt so badly. I can't really explain, but let me try to tell a story:

Imagine a girl who was born to parents who were incredibly patriotic Americans. They named their daughter Georgina Freedom, in honor of George Washington and the freedom you can find in America. When Gerogina grew up, she too became incredibly patriotic, and her number one idol was George Washington. Georgina eventually started a fanclub for George Washington, and the members of this fanclub were encouraged to write stories about George Washington's heroic life. The George stories soon became popular, more and more people started to write them, and eventually they started diverging a little from "canon". After all, not everything was known about George Washington's life, and the fans started to "fill in the holes" with their own stories. Gradually the stories became slightly more fanciful. When someone came up with "a new idea about George", many of the members of the fanclub were grateful and supportive.

But then something happened. One member wrote a "George story" which crossed a line. Never mind how it crossed it. Most members of the fanclub found the story acceptable and were not upset, though the overwhelming majority preferred the "normal" George stories. A few members liked the new story idea so much, however, that they decided to write their own George fics in the same vein. And so a handful of the new George stories circulated on the internet.

Georgina Freedom was absolutely horrified. To her, the new stories were downright sacrilegeous. You'd think that with so many other George stories around, Georgina would be more generous and tolerant of of a few "alt-ideas" about her hero. Not Georgina! After she had read these stories, they burned themselves into her soul like acid, festering and aching as they kept her wondering how anyone could think of George that way. And what, she asked herself, would happen if more and more people got to know those stories and actually started thinking of George that way themselves? It was not as if George was alive and could defend himself.

And that is the end of my story, and the moral is... I don't exactly have one. Except perhaps that when you care too deeply about a hero who is either fictional or dead, seeing him presented in way that is awful to you is going to hurt a lot. And the fact that there are so many other stories that don't hurt you won't make the story that does hurt you hurt you any less. If someone hands you an enormous bunch of flowers and there is just one nettle among them, that nettle is still going to sting you if you are careless enough to touch it.

Is my hyper-sensitivity and downright allergy to some LnC stories reasonable? Is it normal that they can sting me like nettles? Of course not. What can I say? I'm not reasonable when it comes to my preferences about Lois and Clark. Kathy, as you pointed out, I can't fully separate what I know about the comics and movies versions of Lois and Clark from what I see of them on these boards. And because I know that Lois gets short-changed in most of the generic world of Superman, and because that hurts me a lot, seeing her getting short-changed on these boards, too, is going to hurt me even worse. And that is true even if we are only talking about a small number of stories.

But, Kathy, this is a very relevant question:

I had no right to assume that. You are right about what you said about Zoomway's boards. The true Dean fans, who care about Dean rather than about Lois and Clark, will read about the latest Dean gossip on Zoom's boards instead of reading fanfic about about Lois and Clark over here.

And now I don't think I can make myself a lot clearer, no matter how muddy my thought processes have been here.

Ann

I... uhh... hesitate to get involved here. But I did want to respond to just one point.

Actually, that's not exactly true. I just wanted to comment on this, for anyone who might be interested in how one might deal with this problem... (if they want to deal with it at all, of course ).

Well, Demi, in her author's comments to Heaven\'s Prisoners , deals with exactly that sort of problem (by 'primary catalist', I assume she means Clark leaving Lois - although, I should point out that has always just been my assumption of what she didn't think would work in the Lois and Clark universe ).

You might want to check it out. It lets people know right up front that there might be some problems with your basic premise, but that you want to explore how Lois and Clark might have handled it anyway.

I really appreciated that comment the first time I read the story because it allowed me to suspend my disbelief long enough to get to the good parts .

Just a thought for anyone who wants the option. (who only reads Lois and Clark for... well, Lois and Clark - oh, and the nfic. Must not forget the nfic )

Ann, thank you. I appreciate your response. I'm not going to say much because I think I've been entirely too vocal in this thread, but I can't make myself shut up entirely.

No, you didn't misunderstand me.

I am making an assumption here as well, one which others may agree with but some may not. Yes, there are more Lois deathfics than Clark deathfics. Yes, there may be more stories of Clark moving on with some degree of happiness after Lois' death than the reverse. Whether there is a surplus of one and a dearth of another is a relative term, considering the very small sample numbers we are talking about for all the categories. Some FoLCs would avoid stories in any of these categories. Some who would pick and choose, some would probably read all of them.

But you can't read stories if they aren't there. And you can't simply say that the stories aren't there because no one will read them. If a writer's muse is not inspired (for lack of a better word) to write a Lois-happily-moving-on story, how can we read it?

So I have no more hard facts than you do. This is strictly my opinion. But until we get evidence one way or the other, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Kathy (who is thinking of creating a poll, but thinks that maybe this horse is completely flogged at this point...)

So if Nan had not used Lori but Sharon or Teri or Lisa or Helen you could read and enjoy the series?

Terry,

Is this why you are so bothered by Carol's POV? Because by her standard your story isn't L&C?

For the record I loved that story. I felt it was the best Lana I'd ever read. I wish the Smallville folks would have read it and learned from it. But I do read Smallville stuff and some comic based stuff and MovieVerse stuff.

But Terry, if we apply the following POV

"The Road Taken" is not a L&C story. The Clark in the story was only somewhat like "our", your Lana had only a hint of the L&C Lana and Lois, your Lois was the most like our "Lois", but still wasn't our Lois.

It was a delightful story, as I said at the time it first appeared, and I look forward to the sequel. I think after the trauma you put Clark and Lois through that it will only be after decades of angst, if ever, that he could allow himself to feel love for Lois. I am looking forward to a nice long adventure story where Lois & Clark learn to work together and become in time friends. I figure you've got at least four or five stories to write before you can let them them love each other.

I would not have shied away from the story right away if Lori had had another name. But as soon as I found out that Lois was dead and Clark was involved with another woman, albeit one who was said to be an incarnation of Lois, I would have lost interest in the story. Sorry.

And Kathy, I know I should have shut up by now, but...

Well, as far as the demand for Lois-moves-on fics is concerned, there is a folder here where members can post their demands and preferences for new stories, namely the Fanfic Challenge folder. I distinctly remember that someone posted a challenge for a Clark-moves-on fic some time ago. I also remember that Carol replied that such stories already exist on these boards. But as for challenges for Lois-moves-on fics, unless Carol was provoked into posting such a challenge after Ray had written It Might Have Been - did you do that, Carol? - I don't think that anyone has ever posted a challenge for a story where Lois finds happiness with another man. (Just a few days ago Patrick posted a Lois Luthor challenge, but I don't think you were asking for a story where Lois finds wedded bliss with Luthor, were you, Patrick?)

Well, so much for the demand for Lois-moves-on fics. As for the supply side, if not a single writer of LnC fanfic has ever found that his or her muse has been inspired to write a Lois-happily-moving-on story, then that fact means something to me. And if, at the same time, a very small but not non-existent number of writers of LnC fanfic have indeed found that their muses have been inspired to write Clark-happily-moving-on stories, then that fact, too, means something to me. To me, the stories posted reflect the ideas about Lois and Clark that circulate in this community, and the kind of stories that never get posted represent ideas that aren't popular here. And that is pretty much my point. But I can't prove that I'm right about what I take to be the reason for the absence of Lois-happily-moving-on fics, so yes, let's agree to disagree.

Ann

No, never.

No, I've never posted such a challenge, Ann. I did once start a thread asking why there was a dearth of Lois-moves-on fics, however.

I agree with that - my old argument about how our values and attitudes, our culture, the times we live in are subconsciously reflected in what we write no matter how much we may try to avoid that. These things also act as filters for how we perceived the characters. Like Luthor's complaint to Superman about Lois - "She's just a little too independent." Yet we never got the sense that Superman perceived Lois in that way.

Anyway, part of me would like to issue a challenge like that, but then I wouldn't read the story that resulted so it would be hugely hypocritical to issue such a challenge.

I'm also curious why Lois's previous relationships are never portrayed as "love" and as satisfying, and that she's never portrayed as a widow whose had a happy marriage prior to her meeting Clark or as happily married to a good guy when she meets Clark. But I'm not familiar with all the stories here or on the archive, so this type of premise may be out there, and just as often as it is for Clark.

c.

Argh...can't...stay...away....

I want to refute this, but first I want to go back to one of Sara's key points,

Even in LnC (this is me, not Sara btw)it's not _one_ thing that makes "our" Clark but a combination that varies and overlaps from person to person. Thus this "our" Clark is never objective, never one thing alone for everyone. It's always "somewhat" Clark, and in fact even in the series it's "somewhat" Clark as his character's consistency can be debated. The same can be said for "our" Lois and as for Lana-- I believe Terry warned his readers beforehand of that particular change. This is somewhat similar to MLT's strategy, (which is a good strategy for some protection from premise-related negative feedback, but as Terry's example suggests, not fail-safe).

But back to Framework--to make your argument without the qualifiers ("it's not Clark" as fact)-- even based on what Sara states-- you need to prove that we can agree 100% on what are the "characteristics" of Clark and the "characteristics" of Lois that we saw on the show. Then, based on that democratic metric we can judge what is an "objectively" good characterization.

But as I've said, these "characteristics" are themselves subject to interpretation from the moment they were shown to us. There is a way around this however, you can adhere strictly to what was overtly mentioned and requires no interpretation. I'm not sure anyone would actually want to do this though...you wouldn't be left with very much to work with.

alcyone (who is embarrassed for being unable to keep away, poor horsie...)

I can't stay away either...

Ann, I understand the point you're making about demand for Lois-moving-on stories, but I'm afraid I don't look at it quite the way you do (which comes as no surprise). I'm not saying that people are clamoring for such stories, any more than they're clamoring for Clark-moving-on stories. Since I think we're all agreed that the majority of us want L&C together - always - then usually no one would clamor for anything else but that.

However, just because you don't ask for it, doesn't mean that you're not open-minded enough to read it if it's offered to you. I've even read a couple of slash fics set in the L&C universe. They weren't to my tastes, and I would never have put out a challenge, for example, asking someone to write slash, but I was willing enough to read the stories when I found them.

And with the muses...well, I disagree that just because no one has written it yet doesn't mean that no one ever will. Yes, it would not be a popular idea here - but quite frankly, Clark moving on is not popular here either, even though it does exist. And in at least some of those stories, it exists due to tweaks of canon that were introduced in the show: Clark mistakenly believing that Lois has in fact married Lex, Clark's molecular structure leading him to live far beyond when Lois has already lived a long and very fulfilling life with him. Not every Clark-moving-on story falls within those parameters, but one can see where at least some of the ideas came from.

If I understood the process as to how writers come up with some of their premises for stories and then successfully execute them, believe me, you would have seen lots of stories from me over the past six years. Yet there hasn't been one.

Kathy

Okay, against my better judgement, I’m going to add my two cents (which is probably more than my thoughts are worth ).

I have to say that I’m confused. By reading the posts, I get the feeling that we’re not allowed to talk about ‘canon’ anymore. Why? Has it become a dirty word and no one sent me the memo?

I would think that ‘canon’ is sort of an important element to consider when writing any story that claims to be fanfic of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman - even if the author chooses not to follow it. After all, canon is where our characters come from. So for the remainder of this post, pretend I didn’t get the memo.

In my opinion, canon clearly portrays a number of things while there are certainly other things that aren’t so clear. As has been mentioned above, Clark is clearly the real character in Lois and Clark and Superman is the disguise. I suspect we all agree on that (although I may be wrong).

But still... if we can do anything we want with the characters then why can’t we write stories where Superman is the real character and Clark is simply the disquise - or in other words, Superman Returns fics? Why can’t we write Smallville stories and simply say ‘Hey this is an alternate take on the characters?’ Doesn’t there have to be some sort of standard - however loose - for what we consider Lois and Clark stories? Why, for example, is a George and Lynn story not simply considered an alternate universe version of Lois and Clark?

So... although we might not always agree as to what is or isn’t in character, isn’t it always an important discussion to have? And doesn’t that require that we look back at canon - and work on trying to explain why things are different if we deviate from canon? Or simply admit that our Lois or Clark is acting out of character in a particular story that we write - but that we wanted to explore the premise anyway.

So... on to the topic of this thread. Canon says that Lois and Clark are soulmates: destined to meet and fall in love lifetime after lifetime. Now, in real life, I don’t believe in soulmates. (But then again, in real life, I happen to think that “falling in love” is nothing more than an instinctive animal reaction designed to ensure the propagation of the species.) However, the show clearly portrayed Lois and Clark’s love as ‘the one true love that changes you.’

Now, I don’t have a problem with either Lois or Clark falling in love with someone else before they meet or even after one of them dies. But, in my opinion, there has to be something qualitatively different about those relationships. Not that the relationships can't be good - just different. In the Lois and Clark universe, Lois and Clark are soulmates - and one can’t, to my understanding of the concept, have serial soulmates. To me, that is one of the things that makes a story uniquely Lois and Clark.

Having said that, I think anyone should feel free to write whatever they want - just like I, as a reader, have the right to say that I’m not interested in reading such stories or that I disagree with your take on the characters - just like you’re free to say that you disagree with my take on the characters. Sometimes, I might even look at your comments and realize that you’re right - that I have stepped over the lines of what is or is not a true portrayal of the characters. Maybe at that point, I’ll rethink the story or the characters - and correct the problem. Or maybe I’ll say: “You’re right. But I still want to explore this idea anyway.” Or maybe we’ll agree to disagree about the characters and all go on our merry way.

Now, that doesn’t mean that some of that criticism won’t hurt. I’ve been known to storm around my house for a couple of hours after someone has criticized one of my stories - scaring my dog half to death . I’ve been known to rant and rave - and even cry - because someone told me there was something wrong with my story. Still, once I’ve gotten past that, and had a chance to think about what the person has to say, I often find that I agree with them (not always, of course. And there are people whose criticism I simply ignore - sometimes not even bothering to read it - because I know we are always going to disagree.) Still, some of the most inspired moments in my stories are the result of heeding to constructive criticism. And, yes, some of the criticism has been about ‘characterization.’

Finally, I’d like to address some of the comments Terry leveled at Carol. I thought the comments were unfair. I think Carol is as entitled to her opinion as you are to yours, Terry. I suspect you’d like everyone to see things the way you do - and yet you criticize Carol by saying that she wants everyone to see things the way she does. Truth is, all of us would like to have everyone see everything the way we do. It’s human nature. (I know, after all, I want all of you to agree with me ). And reading through Carol's comments, I certainly didn't see anything I thought was disrespectful. So I think we would all be better served if we just stated our opinions and left the personal attacks out of it.

Anyway, those are my two cents worth (although if you offered me a cent and a half, I’d probably sell them for that)

ML (who will now go back and climb under her rock)

This is just a friendly reminder from one of the board’s moderators.

I have only skimmed some of the comments in this thread and am definitely not stating an opinion on the topic.

I want to remind everyone that we are all entitled to express our opinions on posted topics. You certainly don’t have to agree with everything posted. However, please remember to be courteous and avoid personal attacks when posting. Posters should not feel as if they have been flamed.

Thank you,

Tricia

Hmm. I sense there might be some confusion. To clarify _my own_ canon-related arguments here as they might be easily misinterpreted elsewhere:

1.No two views of LnC canon are 100% alike, but they are both valid and often overlap. How much each are valid and overlap are subject to debate.

2.Since no two views of LnC canon are 100% alike, when I point out a subtle difference (regarding something subject to interpretation, be it in importance or some other way) in an author’s view of LnC canon as reflected in a fic—this is an opinion. Not fact. I do not hold the end-all “definitive” view of LnC canon. (of course many *opinions* say something about the overlap mentioned above and validity with regards to fandom)

Canon is not a dirty word to me, but "your canon" in terms of importance and interpretation of motivations, events, etc is not "my canon."

Topic at hand:
Labrat said--

I think this quote is really useful. For me, this “soul mates” thing--until I see it in narrowly defined in the faq to mark it as *indispensable* element to the LnC fanfic world and thus, necessary to all fic to be here--is an "individual's specific taste." So is Lois and Clark working at the Daily Planet (here I’m thinking of of those yummy NK Elseworld fics), getting together in the first season, or second season, the comedy genre, the drama genre, etc, etc. As far as LnC _fanfiction_ is concerned as a whole. I might read some of those fics and find them to be awesome. But some fics don’t fit into that and, hey, that’s awesome too.

More specifically, this thread, IMO (to be safe), suggests that using canon (let's take the oft mentioned episode) to "prove" to skeptics how "intrinsic"/"essential" soul mate-ness is to LnC fanfic is a shaky project. In this case, it appears to be so because its importance (in light of the whole series) and even the way the notion of 'soul mate' is interpreted varies so much from person to person.

That's a beautiful thing.

alcyone (who will make her exit on this positive note, but adds that should anyone want to debate she's always game--just pm her)

If there is nothing readily identifiable as "L & C" fic then, why the ban on posting Smallville and SR fic? Surely it could be argued that those are just elseworld or alt-fics?

I know ADMIN had said no to that issue, but in the light of both what Alycone has said about the elusiveness of canon and what Labrat has ruled in the quote cited above, I'm puzzled. If canon is in the eyes of the beholder, and in fact may not even exist, then isn't Smallville fic really just "Early Years" L & C, while SR is a variation of NK-fic, while both could be labelled Elsewhere fics?

I'm not requesting Smallville and SR fic be posted here - just bewildered. But I read the thread in this folder that dealt with that request and came away a bit confused by it. Alcyone's post reminded me.

c.

I think there's been some confusion of terminology here. Now, I haven't read the entire thread - in fact, I've read very little of it - so there may be a good reason for why that is and you may be aware of it. Bear with me.

Canon is not open to debate. Canon is a fact established on the show that cannot be open to interpretation by its very nature. It is indisputable.

Canon:

Lois Lane keeps fish.
Perry White has an Elvis obsession.
Clark Kent can fly.

What is open to interpretation is how we view the characters beyond the narrow limits of canon that the show gives us. It's a human truth that no two people will view things in the same way. If they did, there'd be no debates on TV show forums. Everyone would see exactly the same thing. Clearly, this doesn't happen. How many times have you read a forum debate on an episode of your favourite show and found yourself thinking, "Huh? How on earth did you come to that conclusion? Where you watching the same thing I was?" or even "You know...I never thought of that. You're right, he did look guilty..."

So even for a story which adheres to canon, there's an awful lot of wiggle room for character interpretation.

And then, of course, there are stories and authors who toss canon in the bin and leap off into the wild unknown. That's called 'exploring all of the possibilities'. Or 'what if...?'. And that's been a basic of fanfic for the entire three decades I've been involved in fandoms. It's probably the most cited reason why someone begins to write fanfic in the first place. "I was watching TOGOM and I suddenly thought, what if...?", "I always thought it was a shame that the clone died and thought I'd change that..."

Of course there are stories which diverge so wildly from canon and the general consensus of characterisation that they are OOC...but even these can work within the basics of the show if they are handled correctly. I'd personally find a story where Clark murdered someone wildly OOC. But if the author presented a very good, logical reason why he committed murder - and more than one author has successfully done so - then I'll go with it, believe in it, and it won't be OOC at all. It will make perfect sense and still be my Clark.

What constitutes exploration, what if, OOC or Elseworld is of course open to interpretation, too, and will depend on how you see the characters. One reader's OOC is another's Elseworld.

I think the debate here in most recent posts has been about character interpretation - which, as the name suggests is open to interpretation - and not about canon - which isn't.


LabRat

Thanks, for replying, L.

But what about fics where the powers are reversed - it's Lois who has the powers and Clark can't fly? They've been accepted as Elsewhere.

As well, in alt-universe fics, Perry isn't always an Elvis fan.

Not sure about the fish though. Lois either has them or they're not mentioned in fics. And a couple of times, those fish have been the stars of the story

Anyway, I can't think of anything that would prevent a Smallville fic from being considered as An Early Years L & C fic - no canon reasons, given our wide open definition of canon, and our exclusion of character traits from it. Can anyone?

(disclaimer, I'm not at all a Smallville fan!

c.

I think it's the character traits themselves. There are a lot of traits that stick with LCTAOS which aren't necessarily found in the other incarnations, and some that can't be found in the other incarnations. Present to me three fics based on non-canon versions of each show, and I can probably tell you which incarnation they belong to. Such as every time I've seen Smallville (which, I admit, is relatively rare), there is absolutely no way I can see that Clark Kent as the Superman we know and love. And there are so many differences between L&C's Clark Kent and the movieverse's Clark Kent. Don't get me started on that, though, because I never did like the movieverse's version and the Silver Age. The character just didn't make sense to me.

Even with elseworlds and alt-universes, there are so many bits and pieces of the characters that are intrinsic to L&C. And I don't think there is a way I could find them in any other version.

Well, those are examples of the stories contained in the following group mentioned in my last post:

And, yes, they could easily be considered Elseworld or Alt-Universe if they diverge enough from canon. I'm pretty sure that these and similar examples have been.

I'm a little confused as to your reply here, Carol, referencing my post, or what your point above is. I'm getting the impression that in some way you thought that my last post was in some way an answer to your last question about Smallville etc. Just in case and to clarify - it wasn't. I was simply confused when I skimmed over previous posts and found a discussion labelled canon which seemed to me to be more about character interpretation and wanted to point out that they aren't the same thing. I felt the confusion over the terminology might be confusing the debate.

I'm a bit confused as to your point here, too. But if you mean there's some issue over whether Lois keeps fish is canon or not, then the answer is, yes, it's canon. It's an established fact direct from the show. No one is ever going to win an argument which starts out, "Lois Lane hates fish..." because someone is simply going to come along and shoot that one down in flames with "Okay, in episode X, scene Y...could that be an aquarium I spy in Lois's apartment..."

Anyway, it may just be the time of day and the fact that I'm exhausted after spending the weekend babysitting our friend's dog (she's fun to have for a visit, but it is rather like keeping company with two juvenile delinquents when she and Homer get together :rolleyes: )....but I didn't really understand the points you were making in reference to my last post. Apologies if I've misunderstood what your meaning was. (Which, the more I consider it, seems ever more likely... )

LabRat

No, more likely my fault for explaining my argument so poorly. (never like to blame things on the dog ), L. Also since I'd asked the Smallville question, I thought you were answering it, which I know now was not the case.

What I was trying to suggest, though, was that given the wide-open definition of canon that we've arrived at, that a Smallville fic wouldn't really violate any L & C canon as long as we label it as an Elseworld or Alt-fic or Early Years. Just as we have fics in which Clark can't fly or Perry is not an Elvis fan, etc which may appear to contradict canon, they don't really as long as they are slotted in the appropriate category.

As well, If a well developed argument in a story can justify any premise (as you argued in your second last post, L. ) why wouldn't that also apply to a Smallville or an SR premise whether that premise be about characterisation or about factual details from the series?

As for Lois's fish, I had to mention that point because it reminded me of the delightful fish stories on the archives. (Jana's, and Anna's) But I'm not sure I was trying to prove any argument with that particular point.

Anyway, I used to think I knew the difference between a Smallville fic or a SR fic and an L & C fic, but now, not so sure I can pinpoint the difference and so I was looking for explanations. Am pretty sure it has something to do with canon but....

Also am now very confused about why characterisation isn't also canon. If we can consider behaviour to be OoC (as L mentioned in her second to last post) then we must have some sense of 'canon charcaterisation' to reach that conclusion, otherwise we can't say something is OoC because we have no reference point. I think this perhaps underlies Karen's post (although I may be misreading Karen).

Can anyone explain?

c.

Thanks, Carol. Now, I got you. I should probably have made it clearer that I was making a general point, rather than responding to the last post in the thread.

As for the 'Smallville point' - sorry, but I ain't touching that one. <g> It's one of those things where I instinctively know what the answer is at a personal level, can recognise the differences between the shows and know why Smallville and SR fic aren't LNC fic, but explaining it logically is quite another matter.

Karen makes a good start on it though and some nice points and I'm sure that there will be others equally eloquent and intelligent - this board is frequented by FoLCs after all - who'll take a good stab at it. Hope you get your answer.

LabRat

Now that this thread has calmed down a bit, please let me inject myself once again.

After thinking for a few days about what I wrote, after reviewing some of the comments made after mine, and after reading the private messages I received, I’ve come to a definite conclusion.

Carol, I do owe you a sincere apology. I went over the top with the way I presented myself and my case and I should not have done so. I will endeavor to state my case in more measured tones in the future, and I hope that you will forgive me for my excesses. I had no intention of making you feel as if you’d been flamed, and I am truly sorry for that.

Now that I have stated the most important point, let me respond to a couple of other things. ML wrote:

Earlier, I wrote:

Before that, I wrote:

I also wrote:

And that was just in this thread.

ML, you’re an excellent writer with many wonderful stories on the archive, and I’d be surprised if these were the only ones you’ve written. I respect your opinion on these matters, and I’m a bit taken aback that you’d accuse me of not allowing someone else to hold a different opinion. Of course Carol is entitled to her opinion. Of course Carol (and anyone else) is entitled to state his or her opinion on the boards. What got the burr under my saddle was the bald statement that “X story isn’t L&C” without couching the statement as someone’s opinion and without giving any clear statement as to why it isn't L&C. And Carol is not the only one who’s made that statement, either in this thread or in other places.

If someone writes to me in a feedback folder and says, “Terry, your story ‘Intrigue On the Lusitania’ does not feel like a true L&C story to me. For one thing, it’s set in pre-World War I England. For several other things, Lois only appears in one scene and then gets killed, Lucy is a countess who is the main suspect, and Clark is only a deckhand who tosses the mooring lines from the deck to the ship. He’s not even a crew member!” Such a critique is fine with me, because it’s presented as an opinion with supporting documentation and a reasonable presentation of the reasons for that person’s opinion. I might pout at receiving such a response, but even I can see that this is not only valid but almost certainly correct. It would NOT be an L&C story, even if Jimmy and Cat solve the murder and Perry get promoted to captain. The qualities which would make it an L&C story are simply not present.

To return to the original thought of this thread, how do we know that author A has presented Lois as in love with someone who has supplanted Clark as “the love of her life?” Or vice versa? I think that’s a valid question, despite my insufferable pettiness in asking it earlier. I’d really like to know what people think about this. I’d like to know what to expect when I write my next long story, which pairs – oops. (waves hand in slow circle and types in a soothing voice) These aren’t the spoilers you’re looking for. Move along, move along...

Seriously, can we talk about this calmly? Because it would be nice to know what the readers are looking for and where the boundaries are. Sure, the majority of stories pair Clark and Lois at the end, and yay for that! I prefer to see them together too, at least most of the time. And if there are warning labels to alert the reading public – like a WHAM warning, or an ANGST warning, or a SPLUTTER warning – I’ll start using it if I know about it. I just hate to have coming at me if I don't expect him.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll all forgive and understand my tantrum.

Well, Terry, I'm not your average reader who can tell you where the "normal" boundaries are. But I have referred to Becky Bain's Ad Astra Per Aspera at least twice in this thread. I don't like Becky's take on Lois and Clark, but she certainly gave us fair warning. She posted a foreword which began like this:

If you plan to post something similar to Becky Bain's story, a word of warning similar to what she posted might be a good idea.

Ann

Thank-you, Terry, for your apology.

A word about my non-use of 'qualifiers' of the 'this is my opinion' type.
I went to school at a time and in a place where if you didn't pass a rigorous regional exam in grammar, you failed your senior year in high school. (and I might add this was how it should have been!

We were taught that to write "in my opinion", "I think", "I believe", etc. when writing an opinion or argument was redundant because readers should be able to distinguish between fact and opinion when they read.

Consequently, it goes against the grain to use qualifiers (my former English teachers Will! Know!) and so where I've used them in this thread, I've been a bit flippant because of my discomfort.

On the matter of why I didn't perceive TRT as an L&C fic: I had given some reasons in the original TRT fdk thread in explanation and also briefly alluded to a couple of reasons in this thread. I'll e-mail you privately, Terry, with a fuller explanation since this still matters to you. Don't worry, it won't be long:)

As Labrat said above, she knows what an L & C fic is and she knows what a Smallville fic is but she's not going public with the latter perception - I suspect, because, "there be dragons"

By the way, to call something a "Smallville fic" or an SR fic , etc is not an insult, just a descriptor. But then, not having read fanfic other than L & C I don't know what it's like. I would find it difficult to believe that its quality differs from "L & C" fic, though.

I'm sorry, though, that my comments have upset you so much, Terry.

c. (who has decided not to post mbs fdk on stories anymore)

edit: oops, just remembered that I've read a couple of X-files fanfics (not bad ) and I used to read Lou's stories at Pemberley (very good!) and one sitcom fanfic that had been written by a former folc. "L & C" is the only Superman incarnation fanfic I've read though.

This makes me very sad to hear, Carol.

Ann

Your mind powers will not work on me, Terry. I read that and I'm curious.

I wanted to consider this question:

And add my own to it in the discussion as it resembles Terry's: Can Clark/Lois be moderately happy with someone else without it looking as if the person has has supplanted either as “the love of his/her life?” I think this is also an important question, because it's easy to see that not-Lois is not "the love of Clark's life" if a writer has Lois or Clark meet the other person after being in love, or overemphasises not-Lois' faults (or not-Clark's) or includes an obvious huge problem of any sort (domestic abuse, being controlling, cheating, ect).

So, as an example, when Mayson dislikes Superman, then it's easy to see where she and Clark can go wrong (and conversely where he and Lois can go right). It's another matter entirely if Clark and Mayson are "moderately happy" with each other to begin with. But this leads to another question: What makes "moderate happiness" anyway and how can a writer show this?

Going to the series for a guideline-- is there an example to follow of a not-Lois/Clark who doesn't have a huge flag indicating how wrong he/she is as far as our heroes as concerned? Scardino comes to mind (and here I might be way off my rocker, so someone correct me if he's signaled as blatantly not being for Lois the way, say, Mayson was--it's been a while) but the situation is different since by then Lois was already in love with Clark (and vice versa so neither actually had a chance to begin with).

Turning to fic for a sec. A similar situation happens in SQD's excellent When Galaxies Divide. I attach a spoiler warning, mild as it may be. If you (generic "you") haven't read it you should.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S

Both Clark (as Kal-El) and Lois are involved with other people at different points in the fic. If I recall correctly (and someone please correct me, since I don't want to misrepresent the fic), Kal-El's Zara doesn't have feelings for him (providing the aformentioned "huge problem")and Lois meets Scardino only after she and Kal-El separate and she's already in love with Kal-El. While the fic is fair to Scardino, her already having loved Kal-El and the Zara situation makes it so that there is no question they are each other's "love of a lifetime." How could a writer make this clear, if, say Kal-El had some feeling for Zara or if Lois met Scardino first? That would be a different fic I think.

So the question ends up being: What about when a fic shows not-Lois/Clark already in a "moderately happy" relationship with one of our heroes? In what way can these not-Lois/Clarks be marked as not "the love of a lifetime" without it being obvious (like the overemphasis of faults or a huge problem is)? I want to be clear that I'm not making an argument here, I honestly don't know. I get the sense though that this would be a gut wrenching, tear your heart out type of fic. I suspect that's why good soon-to-be exes get offed so often. Things are cleaner that way.


On the side, I want acknowledge my terminology error. Sorry about that *hand to forehead*. What a dumb mistake! I did take "canon" as the general "what I see in LnC," where characterization was really what I meant (aka interpretable stuff). I think I lost the difference between the two when the 'soul mate' thing came up. Lameness on my part. The sad thing is it probably won't be my last trip up thanks to the ever-increasing cobwebs in my head. Thanks, Labrat, for pointing it out.

alcyone

This bothers me, too. I'd hate to think that I chased someone off, or even contributed to such an outcome. Carol, please don't leave because you and I got so sideways.

And I'm looking forward to reading your e-mail. Seriously.

It's not hard to get sidetracked and turned around on a thread where complex issues are being debated, Alcyone, and when you're trying to organise your thoughts. I've been there myself more than a few times. It's just one of those things.

You seem to have misunderstood my point, Carol.

For clarification: I know in my own mind what the difference is and I'm comfortable with my own opinion on it. But sitting down and explaining it...well, to be brutally honest, I just don't have the curiosity in the question or the interest in any discussion of it to sit down and work it out in my head in a logical enough manner to post on it so that it would make sense to anyone else.

I understand that for you it's a burning question right now. But for me, it's just something I'm not terribly interested in. So it's not worth spending time working out a detailed response on the subject when I have so many other things taking up my time.

Frankly, I'd never have mentioned the subject at all, except that your misunderstanding of my other post forced me to at least allude to it, since it focused your attention towards looking to me for an answer.

LabRat

Labrat posted:
I took your use of 'ain't' and the <g> as a humorous avoidance and so I replied with what I'd hoped was a humorous "there be dragons" acknowledgement. It didn't occur to me to take it as meaning you were just plain bored with the question. Oh well.

To clarify, I was seeking Admin response rather than your personal response which I would not presume to do. As well, I was curious what others thought.

c.

Well, to be comically obvious... if a story has a teenage Clark who's friends (sort-of) with Lex, who has a best pal named Chloe, and a history of dealing with "meteor freaks" then it's probably not L&C.

But it'd be darn near impossible to set down specific guidelines (you can use Lex, you can't have Chloe, etc). So we rely on people's good sense in general, and look at specific cases as they come up. <shrug> Can't really get more specific than that; it's not always black-and-white.

PJ
who, btw, would enjoy a good Smallville Clark&Chloe shipper fic if anyone has any recommendations...