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

Since the Lois deathfic is back again, I just thought I'd give you the ultimate Lois deathfic:



Hamlet-Clark: Oh, poor Lois. Here were the lips that I used to kiss so many times. Where are they now?

Ann

Ann, you're comparing Lois to Ophelia?! That's not on! Ophelia was a prize wuss-face! IMHO, at least.

No, I'm not comparing Lois to Ophelia. I'm comparing her to Yorick, the court jester whose skull Hamlet finds in the churchyard. This is what Hamlet says when he holds Yorick's skull in his hands:

As you can see, Hamlet says that he used to kiss Yorick's lips when he, Hamlet, was a small child.

This is a painting of the small child Hamlet with Yorick:



Hamlet clearly loved Yorick when he was a child. And Clark loves Lois when they are both adults. But if Lois were to die, Clark might contemplate her skull in the same way that Hamlet contemplates Yorick's. The point I was trying to make is that I think that the Lois deathfics rarely consider the full tragedy of Lois's (premature) death. Often I find those deathfics too neat and clean, too sweetly sad in a romantic way, where the focus is on Clark's broken heart:



The true physical horror of death, of decay, of the horrible transformation of the vibrant young Lois into a rotting corpse, is rarely in them. Actually considering Lois's dead body, her fleshless skull, brings home the message of her death in a special way. At least I think so.

Ann

Right. Sorry, got to brush up on my Shakespeare. So what we're trying to say is, if we're writing a deathfic, we should write about the clay that housed our souls being eaten by maggots and earthworms?

Actually, I don't agree. Men die and worms have eaten them, but when I think of death I think of the soul. The essence of the person we love has flown to where we cannot follow, and though they may flourish wherever they are, the tragedy is left to the living. I don't feel sorry for the dead, Ann. I feel sory for what they must have gone through and the fear they must have overcome and the promise their lives must have held yes. But once the well is dry, why would we care if its walls caved in upon itself?

I don't pity the dead, Ann. They are at peace. I pity the living who mourn them.

Difference of opinion, I guess.

Let me try to explain once again what I mean, Hasini. Of course I'm not feeling sorry for dead people because they are being eaten by maggots, I feel sorry for them because they are dead. Or rather, I feel sorry for those who died young, before their time ought to have been up.

About fifteen years ago my sister-in-law's brother-in-law died of cancer at the age of thirty-nine. His wife was devastated at first, and his daughters, six and ten years old, were shell-shocked. But now, fifteen years later, they have all moved on. His wife has found a new man, an extremely nice person, and his daughters, in their twenties, are busy building their own lives and are doing well. I'm sure the daughters still really miss their father, but I honestly believe they are very confident in their ability to build successful and happy lives of their own. As for the wife, if her husband was miraculously brought back and she was given a choice as to which man she would like to spend the rest of her life with, her present partner or her former husband, I'm not absolutely sure she would choose her husband.

So this man's family has moved on. But what about himself? If he hadn't been so cruelly struck down by this insidious disease, he would have been in his mid-fifties now, probably still vigourous and very able to still enjoy life. Every day that goes by is a day that this man should have been able to live through and enjoy! Every new day is a day that has been stolen from him! His family is happy again, his family has moved on, but nothing can compensate him for what he has lost. If his wife visits his grave every day, if she brings fresh flowers and kisses his gravestone and talks to him and does everything she can to prove her love to him, that still isn't going to give him back a single day of all the days he has lost.

A little less than a year ago, my brother's father-in-law died. He was seventy-eight. He was a lovely man, and we all miss him terribly. But I don't feel that his life was stolen from him. He died of a heart attack at seventy-eight, and his mother and father both died of heart disease in their early sixties. I don't feel that my brother's father-in-law was cheated out of anything that he ought to have had. We all miss him terribly, and I feel so sorry for his wife and his daughters and his sons-in-law and his grandchildren. But I don't feel sorry for him.

As for my sister-in-law's brother-in-law, I don't miss him, and I've never really missed him, because I never knew him well. And I don't feel at all sorry for his wife, because she is happy with her new man. I do feel sorry for his daughters, but I honestly believe that they are relatively happy now. But above all, I feel sorry for him.

So if Lois is killed prematurely, I'm going to feel very sorry for her. Nothing is going to compensate her for her death. And a lack of compassion for her in a Lois deathfic is going to hurt me a lot.

Ann

I get what you mean, Ann, and I still prefer to look at it differently. I think it's purely a cultural and religious bias or something. I was always taught that a person dies when his or her time on earth is definitely up, like a lamp runs out of wick, or oil, or air, or all of them. I was taught that although there is a chance to cheat death and your own destiny, karma usually wins out. If you die early due to your bad karma, then you it's likely you've paid for your past misdeeds and will live a longer life in your next birth.

Believing in reincarnation has its perks. You always have another life to live. So dead people are pretty much in clover. But the person you lost will never walk among you again, so its the living who will grieve and feel robbed.

I don't know really. Perceptions of death, as my world cultures professor pointed out last semester, depends purely upon cultural idealogy. In my case I've been raised to view death as merely a stop-gap between lifetimes. When I was younger, I lived in a period of extreme violence in my country, so I found myself contemplating dying a lot. I discovered I wasn't afraid, but I thought it'd be a shame I might not have the same family in my next lifetime, but I'd probably meet up with them all at some point of the cycle of rebirths, so it was all a temporary thing really. In fact, the most disturbing possibility I came up with was that I might die without reading the seventh Harry Potter book, and wondered how I could get a message to my re-incarnated self to read the series at first convenience! What can I say, I was a wierd kid!

Anyway, that's more or less the mindset I still have. I'm not afraid of dying itself, but I AM afraid of the grief it would cause and I AM afraid of losing somebody close to me. Such grief has always been more self-centred, in my experience.

But if I didn't believe in reincarnation, I suppose I might think the same way you do. When it comes to unverifiable theories about life, death and taxes, my philosophy has been that one theory is probably as good the other, and to just pick a theory and run with that. So, this is an entirely new angle for me to wrap my head around and I must ponder this a bit before deciding what I'd feel about it.

You always leave me with food for thought, Ann.

I suppose, if you believe that there is nothing beyond this life, than his death is a tragedy. If there is nothing to gain on the other side, then he truly has lost everything.

But, for those of us who believe that this life is merely a station on the way to something better, death is not the end. Like Hasini, I mourn for those left behind but not for those who have gone on.

Next week will mark eight years since I lost my husband. In those eight years I suppose I have "moved on". You have to - or you'll go insane. Do I miss him? Absolutely and every day. But I honestly believe, no, make that, I know that he is in a better place and that I will see him again someday. When this life is over and we can be together without the worries of mortality, who can say that either of us lost anything?

Before you get upset and tell me that I've misunderstood you, Ann, let me say this. When an author kills off Lois (or any character) it's for literary license. It's an entirely different thing than when God calls us home. I only speak to the latter since you used it as an example in your post. To me, there is a vast difference between fiction and reality.

I read one to escape from the other. And, sometimes, a good cathartic cry is just what I need. So I don't mind if an author "kills" one of the characters. Because in the next story they'll be fine and whole again. It seems a bit overwrought to get really worked up when the memory chip in my head resets with each story. Unlike life, in which there is no way to back up and change a darn thing.

It's all subjective, isn't it? We each bring our own luggage along on every story.

I wish I could reset those memory chips each time, but for some reason I've never been able to do that. It would be so much easier to be able to reset, rewind, erase.

And not to think about what the implications are.

This has been a difficult several months - two deaths in my family and the nervous breakdown of another family member. As hard as this has been, most of all I grieve for their loss, not mine.

So true that we all bring our luggage along. Some of us escape into religion, some of don't, can't. But oh how much I would love to believe what you've written, Sue. It would make it so much easier.

c.

It doesn't make it easier, Carol. It makes it bearable.

My heartfelt condolences for all that you're going through. Sometimes it's all you can do to get through the day. Eventually, though, it feels worth the effort again. <<<hugs>>>

I tend to be like Sue and am usually able to "reset" after reading a story, which is probably why I have no strong aversion to deathfics either (although I respect that a number of members of this board do). This doesn't mean that I haven't felt haunted or deeply saddened after reading one, but for me often a cry over a story helps me release some of my deeply-buried feelings over real-life things that I haven't been able to or wanted to let myself cry over.

Carol, my thoughts are with you too over this trying time in your life. {{{{more hugs}}}}

Now maybe I'm just missing something, but...
Ann began this thread by saying that the Lois deathfic is back again. But where? Has a story just been posted without a warning, so that she read it? I assume that there was a reason to bring this all up again.

Kathy

Kathy, it's called Healing. Very

Ah, thanks. I'm way behind on my reading right now - that one's on my list...

Kathy

Why does a *single* posting of a *warned* deathfic result in yet another thread?

Why can't someone just post a deathfic and it be ignored by those who don't like it?

What?

If you mean in a disagreeable way, yes. Very special. Let's reduce her to a body. That's all she is--flesh and nothing more. So when her heartbeat stops, she's nothing more than dead tissue. It's like she never existed.

Nevermind that she's cherished enough to be mourned, there is nothing positive about that. It's too romantic and clean, it's much better for her to be nothing more than decomposing skin and ashy bones, so she can _truly_ be the object of our pity.

That's way better than the beautiful dead maiden.

alcyone

You are at least partly misunderstanding me, Alcyone. Because I wouldn't have started a thread if the new deathfic had been, for once, a Clark deathfic. It's the insistence of the idea that Lois has to die so that readers can enjoy the catharsis of fictional death through Clark's eyes that gets to me more than anything. What's wrong with having Clark die and watching Lois find peace afterwards? Is it, perhaps, that Clark's death, unlike Lois's death, would be too big a loss to be cathartic?

Ann

It's one thing for topics to come up again and again (to share information and insights with newbies, for example), but for me, quite another to retread the same tired ground over and over when nothing new will be accomplished by it.

When was this discussion last held? A year ago? Ann, why do you think anything has changed, so that we need to do it all over again?

Kathy

Personally, I would find it easier to kill off Lois for the simple reason that she *doesn't* have superpowers. It has nothing to do with the fact that she's female. It has everything to do with the fact that she has no superpowers. It takes a lot more "work" to kill off Clark. I've been toying with a fic that does just that for over a year now and it's darn hard to kill the guy.

I started this thread by referring to Hamlet. Have any of you seen, or better yet, read Hamlet? I read it very carefully when I decided to write a very short, simplified version of this play for my students, a version that would lay bare the essential conflicts and drama of this play. I found that this play is so very, very much about death. Oh, it is about revenge too, of course, and about deceit, and about Hamlet's hatred of his uncle, and about his cowering before his task of having to kill his uncle, the King of Denmark, representative through his lofty office of God on Earth. And it is about Hamlet's hatred of his mother for her betrayal of his father, and about his ensuing revulsion of Ophelia. But most of all, it is about death. It is about the fear and horror and sadness and loss and grief of death. And it is about the complete uncertainty of what comes after death. In his famous "To be or not to be" monologue, Hamlet says:

What happens after death? We don't know. Hamlet tells himself that he would really like to commit suicide, but he dares not for fear of what will happen afterwards. And when Hamlet finally dies - not because he has committed suicide, which was considered a mortal sin during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but because he has been murdered, it is still not certain that he will go to paradise. This is what Hamlet's good friend Horatio says at the moment of Hamlet's death:

This sounds peaceful, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Hamlet is going to enjoy the happiness of Heaven. It could mean only that the sorrows of life is over for him.

Unlike Hamlet, I don't believe that we will be plagued by horrible dreams after death, dreams that we can't wake up from. I believe that there is nothing after death. Of course I may be completely wrong about that, but still, that's what I believe. And because I believe that there is nothing after death, that makes death, particularly premature death, a very big deal for me.

I grew up in a very religious home. I was given all sorts of religious children's books when I was a kid. A sub-genre among the religious books were the stories about good little religious girls who died and went to heaven. Another sub-genre were the stories about good little religious boys who were saved by God so that they could live out their lives here on Earth. Both these stories were supposed to be equally educational and uplifting: the girls who died and went to heaven and the boys who survived and lived out their lives on the Earth. Both these kind of stories were supposed to be equally demonstrative of God's love for humanity and for children. But all I could see was that the little girls died, that their lives were taken from them, that God wouldn't protect their lives here on Earth, and that I wasn't even allowed to feel truly bad that the girls were dead. Oh, I was allowed to cry at their deaths, of course, but afterwards I was supposed to smile through my tears and feel happy and good that the little girls were in heaven. Bottom line, I was told that I shouldn't really grieve when a girl died. I should grieve a little at first, and then I should feel happy.

And on Sundays, I put coins in the collection-box that was shaped like a little African boy, to remind me and everyone else to save the little boys of Africa. Because boys were meant to live.

And if there are significantly more Lois deathfics than Clark deathfics, then that suggests to me that I should smile through my tears at Lois's death, just like I was asked to smile through my tears at the little Christian girls' deaths. But I shouldn't have to imagine Clark's death, just like I wasn't asked to imagine the deaths of little boys in the educational children's stories I was reading.

Ann

This topic has been discussed over and over, and nothing new will come up now. There are people who dislike deathfic, especially Lois deathfic in Ann's case. That's all very understandable and reasonable. But there are also people who do like it and will read and write about it. Each has their own right.

Yet you are suggesting, in my eyes, that I shouldn't have written a Lois deathfic, Ann. I believe I have a right to do so. I wrote and posted my story, but I never asked you to read it. That has been your choice. So I don't get why you are so upset about it, after all the previous discussions. It wasn't like there was no warning at all.

As to why we write more Lois deathfic than Clark deathfic... It's like Sue said, damn hard to kill the guy! Besides, I wrote this story for a reason. It was to let go of some of my emotions and I could only identify with Clark for that. It has helped me, for I am one step closer to being 'normal' again instead of the state I've been in the last few months.

Saskia

Yes, I understand that. And that is precisely why I would never criticize you for writing it.

But I still want to discuss the "death-of-a-woman" story as a genre and as an "established idea" in human culture. With my background, I know that I myself was taught to regard "death-of-girls" stories as cathartic and ultimately uplifting, whereas "death-of-boys" stories were never offered to me as a source of strength or renewed hope. Why else was I served up many stories where girls died and went to heaven, but never any stories where the same thing happened to boys?

At the same time, I'm absolutely sure that my relatives who gave me the stories about dead girls didn't realize what kind of message they were giving me. I'm sure that my relatives hadn't even truly noticed that the dead children in their stories were all girls. In short, my relatives taught me something they weren't even aware that they were teaching me.

In my case, the attempts at educating me backfired. Instead of regarding stories about the deaths of innocent girls as ultimately uplifting, I was horrified and outraged at them. Why was it good that girls died, but not that boys died?

Of course I realized, even then, that there was an enormous difference between stories and real life. Sure I was expected to feel good about the deaths of girls in stories, but I was certainly never expected to be happy about the deaths of girls in real life.

However, since I feel that I was taught something that my "teachers", my relatives, weren't even aware that they were teaching me, I have to wonder what kind of education other people have received. I'm sure that no one here has read all the books and stories that I read as a child. But maybe, maybe you have come across your own stories about girls or women who died, where you were allowed to cry at their deaths and feel relieved afterwards? At the same time, maybe you have never been offered the opportunity to cry "feel-good" tears at the death of a fictional good man?

Back in the seventies, there was a hugely popular move called Love Story. It was about a young man and a young woman who met, fell in love, started having sex together and got married. After a while the young woman got sick, and she was diagnosed with leukemia. Finally she died in the arms of her husband. The End.

Like I said, this movie was enormously popular, especially among young women and girls. I saw it, and was mystified at the popularity of the film. Did the females who loved it identify with the young woman in the movie? If so, were they happy to identify with a character who died? Did they think it was all right to die as long as somebody grieved for them? Did they think that the young husband's utter grief was so incredibly beautiful that they themselves would happily have died if it had made a hunk of a man so heartbroken? Or did they fantasize about comforting the drop-dead gorgeous widower and making him happy again?

And would a remake of "Love Story", where the man dies instead of the woman, be much of a success?

I bring up the question of the Lois deathfics because I think it is deeply troubling if there is an underlying readiness in our "common consciousness" to regard "death-of-women" fics as ultimately uplifting, whereas a corresponding readiness to regard "death-of-(good)-men" as uplifting isn't there. Or, to put it more bluntly: I don't want to be comforted by stories about the death of a woman. And it troubles me - yes, it does - if others are ready to be comforted by stories of the deaths of (good) women, but not by stories of the deaths of (good) men.

Ann

First a lot of people read for catharsis and that's great. But that is one way of reading. Let's not assume everyone who reads has the same reaction and the same intentions for reading. Those kinds of generalizations are seldom productive.

In that vein, enjoying a deathfic that happens to have Lois as the one who passed doesn't necessarily mean that Clark's death would be a bigger loss. That's faulty logic, people have rehashed this a million times.

Ann, you are providing your own biased and culturally-bound reading of what you percieve to be a genre. Your supporting evidence comes from your own experiences, which is fine, except that you put them forth as suggesting some larger political agenda of which _you_ stand as judge and juror. In essence you are saying "Because this happened to me and I understood it that way, I can judge and censure." Further, you seek to be a critic of something you don't even read, often parroting generalizations instead of giving a fic its due for better or worse.

I don't think your comments generate "discussion" at all. I would find them much less repellent if they did. Discussion entails some exchange, but you are clearly more interested in slamming your view into us than in actually attempting to see the different perspectives on it.

We all fall into that at times though. Nevertheless, what does always offend me is that inevitably your comments end up scolding those who dare post something you disagree with.

Why not go brainstorm ways to kill Clark instead?

alcyone