Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Ultimate Lois Deathfic

Oh, I don't think it suggests anything of the sort, Ann. What it suggests is simply that authors will always write the stories which occur to them at the moment, which interest them.

As always with this topic, you seem to be pinning a lot of assumptions onto what other member's motivations are. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar. No deep motivations to insult your favourite character. No misogynistic desire to devalue women. Just storytelling for the fun of it.

As others have noted - if you've spotted an imbalance in deathfics, then why not take a positive stance on it, rather than a constantly negative one? Write your own Clark deathfic. Issue a challenge in the Challenge Folder for Clark deathfic....

Like others, I have trouble understanding your own motivations for starting up this thread and beginning this topic yet again. You can have no hope that opinions will have changed. Views will be expressed that have been expressed a thousand times already in all the other threads you've begun and the same people will make them.

By this point, you might as well just have begun the thread with a link to the last one you started and let everyone read that instead. Save us all the trouble of repeating ourselves. Because it's beginning to feel like we're all caught in one of those endless time loops from SF shows, doomed to pointlessly repeat the same instant in time.

But...we're not really into closing down threads in this forum, so if you want to revisit this one endlessly and repeatedly...hey, knock yourself out.

LabRat

LabRat, I'm sorry. I have specifically not made assumptions about what other member's motivations are. I agreed with Saskia that she wrote her story because it made her feel better. Apart from that I have not made assumptions about other members' motivations. If you think I have, will you please tell me where in my posts those assumptions are?

And Alcyone, I have no wish to see Clark dead, so why should I ask for Clark deathfics? I wouldn't find them as depressive as yet another Lois deathfic, but should that mean I have to ask for stories about Clark's death?

One more thing. LabRat, you said this:

And Alcyone, I don't really know what to quote from your post, except that you say that I'm not actually discussing anything and that I'm just plain wrong. Okay, let me summarize our arguments as I understand them:

Me: There is an excess of Lois deathfics compared with Clark deathfics, and there should be a reason for that excess. Look, this is what I think may be the reason...

LabRat and Alcyone: There is no reason. End of discussion.

Ann

I'm reading so much intolerance of Ann's views in some of these posts. Surely she has as much right to raise these issues as does a writer to post another deathfic? After all we've seen Lois deathfics before, too.

I haven't read this latest deathfic so I don't know if there was anything new in it - some new insight into the characters that we've never seen before in a deathfic. But if we're going to criticise Ann for posting ideas that we are familiar with (although we haven't seen the Hamlet take on it before which I thought was interesting ) then shouldn't we apply that same criterion to a deathfic? - shouldn't there be some new insight in it to justify it?

But we don't, of course. Nor should we, any more than we should demand that a poster's non-fic comments be always original. (there would go most of the comments in the fdk threads if we did <g>)

Ann posts lengthy fdk which I suspect most writers love to get. :)She likes to write, expand, explain. I'm one of those who enjoy reading her comments, especially when they make me think of some aspect of a story in a way I hadn't perceived it.

As well, all of us have our views and attitudes shaped by the culture in which we've been raised. See, for example, Sue's strong reference to how her religion has helped her cope with death.

There are more Lois-deahfics and dead- Lois fics than Clark dfs.
To say , "well, that's what people want to write" merely restates the observation. Surely it's can't be wrong to probe why a pattern exists? To try to undrstand it?

Sue's having a hard time killing Clark But it's easy - as the writer you can do whatever you want to. This discussion has been had before too, and suggestions have been made on the methods. Also, the show nearly did so a couple of times, and if it hadn't been for Lois's intervention....

Death is painful, mean and brutal. To overlook that aspect, to romanticise it into some sort of 'passing away' with no mention of the horror and the suffering is....

Now that I think of it, I'm not sure we've ever had a Lois death-fic - what we've had is sad-Clark-mourning fics. Although, I'd better qualify that by saying that once I see a warning that a fic is Lois deathfic I don't read it - I do check those warning threads at the top of the fanfic list. Sometimes I peek though - the trainwreck thing.

btw, I don't want to read such a fic, so please don't take this as a challenge to write one

Sue and Kathy, thank-you for yo so much for your sympathy and understanding.

c (who these days is only capable of playing in the shallow end of the pool )

I think that both parties have a point. Your past record of intolerance to deathfics stand against you, Ann, so of course you must expect that people will feel frustrated when you bring what seems to be a similar issue again. Also, I don't agree that a deathfic that focuses more on Clark's loss as opposed to Lois' loss is inferior or hurtful at all. It's simply a part of the author's views on death, as is explained in this thread.

However, you do have a point. Some of the posters may think you're carrying feminism too far when you see misogyny in children's moral fables in this way. However, I don't believe that. The content of folk tales carry the subconcious nuances and thinking patterns of generations of social traditions and cultural sub-texts. If you do see a trend where the matyrdom of girls are seen as more exhalted and positively spun than that of boys, such statistics cannot be brushed off as mere co-incidence.

In Hinduism, there is a certain wedding tradition where the young bride and bridegroom are linked together with a sash and made to walk seven times around the fire. The first six times the bridegroom walks in front of the bride, demostrating his dominance and precedence over his wife. On the seventh round, which represents death, the bride is required to walk in front of her husband, signifying her duty to stand between her husband and death. In other words, to die before her husband. This is a part of the mythos that gave rise to the infamous Sathi Pooja, where it is a matter of honour for a woman to cast herself onto the funeral pyre of her husband and a matter of disgrace to outlive him. Such instances where the woman's life is considered of secondary importance to the man's is fraught in the traditions of ancient civilizations all over the world. Society has promoted women as primarily being vessels and symbols of honour, chastity and outright decoration for men since time out of mind. Today, we pride ourselves in our modernity in thinking and the abolition of anachronistic fallacies from our cultures. However is it quite so impossible that the lingering instincts and subconcious ideas that gave rise to these tradions in the first place are still inherent in us, uninvestigated and undiscovered? And does it really do us credit to dismiss the issue out of hand in such a way?

I for one, am going to do some thinking about this. Although in the others defence, Ann, it honestly wasn't readily apparent what you were trying to tell us until you clarified it to alycone in two sentences. At first, I thought you were just upset about Lois deathfics again. Then I thought it was about how you perceive death. It's only now I understand that you are drawing inferences to apparent misogyny through statistical data.

I'm quite willing and game to give this due consideration and ruminate upon it, but I don't think we should discuss it in terms of writing talent anymore. That simply makes an interesting anthropological disscussion into a personal vendetta that is also a dead horse into the bargain. And I think that if this is to be a profitable discussion, this topic belongs in the OT folder.

On a side note, I don't wish to demean your beliefs at all Ann, but believing that NOTHING happens after death feels like a rather uncomfortable thing to believe. No wonder you don't like deathfics! But in literature Ann, Lois does definitely go on to a better place after death, if the author has anything to say about it. So you can divorce death in fiction and reality with that in mind.

Also, I feel a deathfic plotbunny coming on. Oh, dear.

Why should it stand 'against' her, though? it is her opinion and why not accept it as such?

Wow - the author as God, changing the mind set that a reader brings to a story. Sort of like waving a magic wand

c.

It simply occurred to me to clarify this. I don't believe that the prevalence of Lois deathfics as opposed to Clark deathfics are indicative so much of misapprehensions on our part as the demographics on the boards. We are clearly a majority of women here, and I haven't yet read a Lois deathfic written by a man. (unless it's Tank, but then he's just a naturally evil sort of man and cannot be counted. ) My theory is that as women, we asociate ourselves with Lois' role in the relationship. Not because we relate most to her, but because she is the feminine vessel of this relationship. Why do we want to believe in their love? Because we like to fantasise ourselves being a woman like Lois, who is able to find true and unconditional love for the rest of our lives. She is the wife, the mother, the girl-friend in whose role we cast ourselves. It is through her that we act out our fantasies.

Sometimes our fantasies include thoughts of death. Not death itself, of course, but how we would like our death to affect our partners. We like to fantasise about a man who would go to pieces if we left them, who would never again find true love, perhaps, and remain always faithful to our memory. It's a pure ego-trip for women, that we call 'high romance'. Or we would like to feel good about ourselves by helping him find love again and letting him get on with his life. In all cases, it's not something we would want in real life at all, but something fun to imagine, which is what fiction is, really. We sure as hell don't want to die, no matter how much we love our partners and there is really nothing romantic about being dead for real.

So why don't we kill Clark? Well, why would we want to? To a woman, that's associative of losing our own lovers and husbands. It's fun to wonder how much others would mourn us, but a highly uncomfortable thing to deal with how much we would mourn another. So unless it's a cathartic experience, I honestly don't see that Clark deathfics would hold a great deal of appeal for a woman who's just after a little romance and an ego-trip on the side.

So if I think Lois deathfics aren't that big of a deal, why am I still so interested in your topic? It's because you said that people told you moral stories as a child and expected children, regardless of gender to feel good about girls dying and bad about boys dying. In that case, it moves from a simple case of gender-based preference to an all-encompassing social commentary. It is this aspect of the topic I am intersted in, although I don't think Lois deathfics bear any relation to the said topic at all. Which is why I'm asking we dispense with the Lois deathfic theory to pursue what I feel is a more valid topic.

We do accept as her opinion, Carol. However when she pulls up an argument like this time and again, we feel that she is not taking an objective stance on it. So we are naturally prejudiced as to what we expect her to be saying as opposed to what she is actually saying. It's a predictable pitfall.

Carol, if an author isn't God over her own fictional universe, what is she supposed to be? We are writing about a man who flies . It can happen so because we make the rules of universe which our characters inhabit. Whether you choose to accept it as such or not is your own choice, but it's easier for everybody if you do. Otherwise, just don't read it.

Please don't misunderstand me, Hasini. I know you meant well when your posted your previous reply.

I wasn't objecting at all to an author being "God" in her own universe, but rather to the idea that the reader ought to buy into the author's universe. I'm glad you've clarified that now by saying it is the reader's choice (and often not a conscious one) whether to buy into the author's parameters. And of course, once the author has posted the deathfic warning at the start of a story, no one has a right to complain they weren't warned about the content.

As for the flying man - that falls under the 'willing suspension of disbelief' umbrella - for some of us that's a small umberalla, for others it's a tent.

I've just read your last post (think there was a time cross in posting) and I do think you're onto something with idea that some readers, female anyway, might fantasize about how their lover would react to their death.

btw, loved your term "deathfic plotbunny" - had immediate visions of the 4 Plotbunnies of the Apocalypse.

c

LOL, Carol. Let me introduce you to them.

Here is the Pestinential Suebunny. First name Mary. Brings out readers' hidden homicidal inclinations.

And her brother The Deathfic Wangst Rabbit. Makes readers suicidal.

Close on their heels is the Flaming Bunny of Ship Wars (thankfully not a presence in this fandom, but is reportedly quite busy in the Smallville waters.)

And the Bunny of Punctuation Famines. Devours commas and fullstops, creating lack of coherence in fics.

And together they are the...

*sigh*

Obviously we're not getting anywhere here, but as always I can't resist. Blame my day off. Grr.

You misunderstand me. I am not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that the framework underlying your argument has some big holes in it, which is what I look at when I look at how persuasive an argument is. The biggest hole being that you just don't read what you're talking about and that you have no intention of reading what you suggest in its stead. So what is your point exactly, other than to imply that those who write Lois deathfics do so because they've swallowed an anti-woman agenda that has them valuing the lives of males more? I agree with Hasini, this has little to do with fic.

Besides that, I generally do think your argument reduces women to mere victims of ideological baggage. Obviously an uneven power structure exists in the world at large, but I am a firm believer that every structure creates a position of opposition.

If I were to look at folktales (which ocurrs to me after reading Hasini's post) for instance, I would look not only at the content, but at the fact that a lot of them at base were by women and for women before men actually made them "legit" enough to publish (which is the only way we know them now). They represented a way for women to be creative and to create communities in an otherwise stifling social environment where their expression wasn't valued so much.

We don't have a lot of "original" folktales (and here I'm thinking in the Western frame) because folk tales are oral in origin (which makes even using the word 'original' kind of sketchy). A lot were never recorded and a large amount were also changed to be fit to be printed and disseminated. I don't know much about them, but I find it more interesting to imagine a group of women of all ages scandalizing each other with their lurid interpretations of social mores (folk tales are really freakin' bloody and scary)than brainwashed drones, which is what the content would have them seem if we look at it through the victim frame. There more than that I think.

alcyone

Thank you so much for your very thoughtful posts, Hasini! I think you are definitely right that one reason for the prevalence of Lois deathfics is that many women like to fantasize about how their lovers or husbands would react to their deaths.

And you are right, this topic should probably have been posted in the Off Topic folder.

I absolutely loved you sinister plotbunnies!!! Okay, so here is my own deathbunny. Please note the skull!



And thank you so much too, Carol, for coming out of semi-retirement to defend me. Thanks!!! <tearful smile>

Ann

You're welcome, Ann.

btw, I'm not so sure that one has to read a deathfic to critique that genre's premise - Lois deathfic is Lois deathfic Nothing within the story will change the fact that she is dead. To say you must read the fic to comment on the genre is like saying you must watch kiddie porn before critiquing the genre. (or fill in your own personal "avoided" genre here )

Loved this! - Knew there was some evil force at work there.

Monty Python's Killer Rabbit is now hopping into view, looking around....

c.

Comparing Lois deathfics to kiddie porn is hardly fair, Carol. In fact that's a rather hurtful thing to say! Kiddie porn is a criminal and amoral activity! Rather, liken it to a legitimate genre like slash or sci-fi or action/adventure. People don't like the genre don't read it and therefore, apart from a generalized idea of the appeal of such stories or the kind of content that's in them they don't KNOW much about it. The first rule of true critiquing is that one must familiar and thorough with the subject before you do. Otherwise it just comes across as biased griping.

I seriously don't think that it's possible to 'critique' an entire genre. That is merely criticising. Every story within a certain genre or even a universe is only as valid as the author makes it. Every story is different and unique. Lumping them all together as, well, "Bah! Deathfics" is hardly an opinion we can be expected to take seriously.

We respect your aversion to deathfics, and I do think we should put up some kind of warning for them. But you cannot and will not be able to criticise it constructively unless you know what you're talking about and can take an objective stance on the whole subject. And when I say, "know what you're talking about" I mean that you should have read deathfics extensively in order to be able to compare them with others and realize the attraction of deathfic, even if you don't feel it yourself.

Well, then I should probably give up reading LnC fanfic altogether, because I know what'll happen at the end - Lois and Clark get together. It doesn't matter what vital relationship issues and life truisms the writer manages to explore within the story itself, nor how enjoyable her writing is. The point of such fanfiction is that LnC get together. Save me the mush! Am a Clana shipper anyway. Bah!

Personally, I think you should at least pick a much-recommended deathfic and try it. Sometimes you have to take a chance on something you are positive you will hate. If I hadn't done that I would never have discovered the fascinating sub-genre that is slash fiction nor have enjoyed the obsessive addiction that is Smallville or even Harry Potter.

Oh and btw, Ann, you're welcome! ((((AN))))

On reflection, I think you're right about the example that I used, Hasini.

But I'm not certain that the examples you've provided work as well either because neither gets at the obscene horror of death. Slash is hardly about that I gather, but is a genre that deals with adult sexual orientation. (am I right about that? never having actually read any, I don't know for sure) And adventure or sci-fi is very benign. I'd thought about using 'kiddie fic' which is a much maligned genre by a few posters on these boards however that too is a benigh genre. But that thought lead me into your no-go zone, Hasini - and i went.

But you're right, it's not quite fitting as a parallel of equal weight either. Unlike the other examples, it has the same seriousness, but the moral dimension makes it inappropriate.

Not sure one's reading needs to be all that enclusive. A representative sample is enough.

But as you know from other comments I've posted, I've read some death fic so I assure you my thoughts on the genre are not based on being a death-fic virgin. Even beta'd two for the archive when I was GEing. So your scolding is a bit unfounded.

btw what specific parts of what I wrote earlier in this thread came across as 'biased griping'? I'm not going to say I have no biases though - no one can make such a claim.

oh.

c.

Ah, but how could you identify a representative sample unless you were familiar with the stories? A statistican will first have studied the make-up of the population in order to choose a perfect sample.

Oh, okay. Actually, I was speaking to the whole of none-deathfic-reading people through you. However, I think you may have been biased in your reading if you still insist that the only point in a deathfic is death. How about the artistic expression of bereavement and the effectiveness of its conveyance? How about how the means of Lois' death is differently set so that we can examine Clark's emotional response to each setting? Death itself is a many-nuanced thing, and I simply think it's an oversimplification to lump the whole thing under "Deathfic- Ew!"

That's actually what made think of comparing it to slash. People (in the HP fandom, which is my only other fandom) simply say that they are not intersted in reading fic that contains a male/male pairing. In fact, they thought it was by definition adult and a well, squicky issue which people ought to be warned about before reading. Now most slash fiction I read are either PG or PG-13 and are even more intricately written and well-characterized that het fic because the author is concsious that the evolving of a relationship between two characters who have very little canon foundation for supposed sexual ambiguity. And actually selling it to the reader takes careful work. To be sure, there's a lot of very bad fic, but as we say in slash, "when it's good, it's amazing!"

The same can be said of deathfic. A squicky and hard-to-write subject which meets with a certain amount of prejudice from readers because of it's propensity to turn into an angsty-angst-angst fest. However, I'd rather wade through the bad ones to aappreciate the good ones, which when well done, are rather brilliant.

Umm, that was when you likened deathfic to kiddie porn and earlier, when Ann said that we wrote more Lois deathfic than Clark deathfic because our feminist ideals were overruled by misogynist cultural conditioning. And I didn't say you 'were'griping, I said it just came across that way.

That was a joke. To underine the absuridity of it all. *headdesk*

ME? Clana? I KEEL YOU, MALO!!

I am something of a rather large sort of idiot.

Here I am, assuming that people who don't like deathfic are simply prejudiced against an angst overdose and should be introduced to the concept of "trying it before dissing it". Completely ignoring the fact that death is an extremely sensitive issue especially to people like Carol, who have recently faced loss in real life and adding insult to injury by implying that a reluctance to discuss death is akin to homophobia. Yep, I think I should go do an inventory of how many brain cells I have remaining.

I am truly sorry for becoming so obnoxious in my later posts. I really shouldn't assume about other people's preferences so much. It is perfectly understandable that people who have become sensitized to the whole issue of death in RL will simply not want to deal with it in fiction and call it entertainment.

I think this is where I slouch off into the corner, extract my foot from the recesses of my mouth and eat humble pie instead.

That's a very good point, Hasini. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to stick my nose in once again and defend Carol, for two reasons. One, because she defended me, and two, because I think I understand what she means.

Imagine a TV show that doesn't exist in the real world. We are going to assume that it stars two characters, one white and one black. The show generates quite a lot of fanfics, and a small amount of the stories are deathfics.

Now imagine a black woman who is a fan of this show. She has watched all the episodes and she has read a ton of fanfics. But she has discovered that almost 70% of the deathfics are "black character deathfics" and only a little more than 30% of the deathfics are "white character deathfics". Moreover, there is no obvious reasons for why this should be so. Usually the person who dies in the deathfics does so for completely random reasons. The two characters suddenly find themselves in a rain of bullets, and the black person is killed, while the white one survives. It could just as easily have been the other way round, but it wasn't. Or the two heroes' car flips, and the black man is killed while the white one survives. Or a lunatic sends mailbombs to the heroes, and the black man's bomb explodes while the white man's bomb is a dud. It could just as easily have been the other way round, but it wasn't.

When our black fan has realized that almost 70% of the deathfics in question are "black character deathfics", even though there is no really good reason for why such an imbalace should exist, she feels deeply offended and decides never to read a deathfic inspired by this show again. Is her decision justified? Perhaps not. If she never gives a deathfic a chance again, she is going to miss out on any deathfic that gives us a thoughtful and well-considered reason for why the black character might indeed run a greater risk of being killed than the white character. And even among the deathfics that ask themselves no such questions, there may be some that are very well written and very moving. It is not at all impossible that our fan might have liked some of these stories if she had given them a try.

On the other hand, it is also possible that even the well-written stories would have angered, saddened and depressed her. Does she have a right to those feelings? Does she have a right to stop reading these stories and still brand the popularity of death-of-blacks fics versus the relative non-popularity of death-of-whites fics as deeply troubling? (Does she, at the same time, have a right to dislike all deathfics?)I think she does. Does she have the right to raise this question, maybe again and again, when she talks to other fans of this show? Heh. You know what my answers must be, Hasini. But will the other members of that fandom appreciate her tenacity? It ain't necessarily so.

Ann

P.S. Like the hypothetical fan I have described in my post, I won't read the "death-of-blacks" fics - eh, I mean that, like Carol, I won't read the death-of-Lois fics. However, I'm not implying that 70% of the LnC deathfics are death-of-Lois fics, because I haven't counted.

There's the one flaw to your logic (to my way of thinking, at least). Lois can die for completely random reasons. She's vulnerable in ways that Clark isn't. You have to work at it to kill off Clark. You have to drag in a villain, supply them with Kryptonite, trick Clark into showing up... If the fic is about emotions (which I think most deathfics are - the character dies for a *reason*, which is usually to explore the emotions that arise from that death), then it's sometimes not worth all the other hoops you'd have to jump through.

Plus, like someone else suggested, maybe it's because the majority of the audience here is female and we appreciate seeing the tributes to Lois as woman and her place in Clark's life and heart. She has definite value in the eyes of this group and this is just one of the ways to explore that.

ETA: I can certainly respect your opinion and views. But I marvel at your tenacity.

Chiming in again with another point.

Years and years ago I wrote in the X-Files fandom. And here's the thing I remember most about character death stories - we killed off both main characters about equally. Actually, if I had to bet money on it, I'd say that Mulder was killed off far more often than Scully. And it was definitely Mulder who was tortured more often. It's an entire genre - Mulder!Torture. Yes, Scully saw her share of angst and torture (especially on the show), but in the fanfic they were equals.

So, while I see your point about Western culture as whole valuing women as less than men, I just can't buy into it in specific cases. And especially not in this fandom, where Lois is revered and loved and *essential* to everything we do.

Hell, it's not even "Clark and Lois". Lois is first. Which is exactly the way she'd want it.

Okay... okay... I normally keep my stinking nose to myself...

But I do have to poke one hole in your theoretical TV show, Ann <not picking on you <g> just poking holes in your theory>

See, here, you are dealing with a TV show where both characters can easily die (white & black) by either bullets (as you pointed out), a car accident, falling off a cliff, a bomb, a heart attack... need I go on? But with LnC, it's a little different. Superman CANNOT be killed by any such easy means of death. As Sue pointed out... it's a little more difficult to kill him off... you have to set it up and it's a major undertaking. Whereas, if you were a cruel author (not saying that I would do this) you could very easily just have Lois and Clark enjoying some light, easy banter, sharing an ice cream cone together and Clark bends over to pick up a penny off the sidewalk and Lois steps off the sidewalk, looks back to see what Clark is doing, and gets hit by a truck.

BAM! <to quote John Madden>

Would that be a good fic? I'm not the judge one way or another. I'm simply posting another theoretical set of circumstances... trying to show that it is indeed easier to kill Lois. To have killed Clark in the same manner... he would have had to have just fought with a bad guy and have been severely weakened by Kryptonite first. And then we wouldn't have seen them just enjoying a casual stroll sharing an icecream together, now would we? It changes the circumstances quite drastically when you bring Superman into the picture. Because, let's face it, if you tried to kill Clark off in this manner, and he got "hit by the car", he would just allow himself to bounce off of it or slide under the vehicle, so that he didn't get hurt and he could continue "living" in the eyes of the public.

Now... if you really wanted to put a "fair" challenge out there and see Clark abused in the way that you seem to think Lois gets abused... then have someone write a story where "Lois" is Ultrawoman and Clark doesn't have his powers and gets killed. Because, then, it would be real easy to kill him off, and you'd be leaving behind a grieving super-powered Lois instead... who has to carry on in Superman's place. That would be more the same set of circumstances.

Actually, that could be a very interesting story... hmmm... but I digress...

I actually do not "prefer" deathfics. I will read one occasionally, and even enjoy it. I can "appreciate" the talent it takes to write one and the amount of "heart" and feelings and emotions that goes into one.

So I normally don't say anything because I feel like every author has the right to write what they want... just like we have the right to read it or refuse.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. <g>

-- DJ <signing off>