Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: Did Lois spend her teens with Ellen or Sam?

In Seasons Greedings, Lois says that her parents divorced when she was twelve.

In Lucky Leon, Lois says that when she was a Senior she had a big fight with her dad and moved out. So that would lead you to assume that she had been living with Sam.

But in Home Is Where The Hurt Is, when Sam says he is still her father, both Lois and Ellen chorus, 'Not for seventeen years,' which would lead you to assume that Lois lived with Ellen from the age of twelve.

But if she was living with Ellen when she had the fight with her dad, why would that make her move out of her mother's house?

*am confused*

Maybe she lived with him during high school but his actions then is the comment about not being her father for seventeen years. Or it's a reference to the divorce.

Oh, maybe it's just me, but I can absolutely see her having a fight with her dad that caused her to move out of her mom's house. Maybe her dad rattled her cage about her living with an alcoholic mother when she had a choice not to. But he would be assuming that her choice not to live with her mother would be to live with him - not to move out of her mother's home nor come to stay with him. If you go with that idea or something similar then the other two time lines of Lois being age 12 when the divorce happened and Sam not being a father for 17 years would be about right. The bit about 17 years would have made Lois 9 or 10 but it seems I also remember something in the series about Sam being mostly gone before there was an actual divorce.

You know, it always seemed to me that they've just been terribly inconsistent with Lois's upbringing.

There's also this line from Twas the Night Before Mxymas:

This was S4. 15 years would make Lois 15 around the divorce, not 12, which the 17 years and Lois being 29 in S3 meant. Also, two teenage daughters - at 12, Lois is barely a teen, and Lucy would be even younger.

As for Lois living with her father or mother - I'm pretty sure there is more evidence to suggest she lived with her mom. It's possible that Sam was influencing Ellen to inflict his opinions on her, so she had the fight with him and moved out? That's the only explanation I can think of.

So, basically, this is a flexible topic. <g>

Julie

As someone put in a caption for a motivational poster, "Continuity is for lesser shows."

We were just talking about this over at Zoom's boards and someone suggested that perhaps Sam and Ellen split up when Lois was twelve (which is what she says in SG), got back together again, then divorced later. It doesn't make perfect sense but it works, sort of.

Might Ellen and Sam have had joint custody? Just a thought; joint custody might fit with some of the continuity problems you guys have pointed out.

You know, I feel incredibly unobservant. I'd never noticed any of this before. I guess I don't watch carefully enough!

Chris

I always assumed that Lois lived with Ellen until she was an older teen, and that she probably argued with her mother and went to live with Sam.

It's certainly possible that Ellen divorced when Lois was twelve, but didn't quit drinking until she was fifteen.

Maybe that's why Lois left to live with her father.

Don't forget too that she was an exchange student in Ireland for a while too, so she wouldn't have lived with either parent then.

An exchange student in Ireland? Wow, I totally missed that one.

I always figured she was an exchange student in college. After all, Patrick was older than her, so I figured he was an older student or maybe a grad student at that time.

A quote from "When Irish eyes are killing":

LOIS
Uh... Clark, this is Patrick
Sullivan. I met him when I was an
exchange student in Ireland.

People remember things differently, especially when the topic is so emotionally charged. For example, my older sister and her husband were married, then divorced, then married again, then divorced again, then married yet again, all to each other, over a period of about twelve years. (I think I have that sequence correct.) But the narrative and the time line was different depending on the teller of the tale. I was four when she got married the first time, so I don't have a real clear memory of those early years, but I do remember my father shaking his head in amazement at their behavior on any number of occasions. And my folks didn't tell the rest of us everything that was going on. We had to find it out for ourselves, which also meant that the story got a little twisted depending on who was telling it.

So all of the observations about Sam and Ellen's marriage could be completely honest and subjectively true, depending on who was telling the tale. Maybe Sam's actions broke the family when Ellen and Lois chorused the "fifteen years ago" line, but his permanent departure and the divorce didn't take place until many months later. People are funny that way.

Besides, Woody's comment about continuity was not only quite funny but quite apropos. Just look at the original Star Trek. In one episode ("The Squire of Gothos"), they gave the current date of the series as nine hundred years after the European Baroque period, which would put them in the 28th century. But later on, the producers settled on a 200-year time gap between the 1960's and the original Enterprise time period, and they kept that timeline all through the shows that followed it.

Once you get past Superman flying and focusing enough energy through his eyes (heat vision) to burn out his cornea and lenses in an instant, then a little timeline juggling isn't so hard to accept.

Jax, I always assumed she went to Ireland in high school for several reasons. First, aren't student exchange programs usually done at the high school level? I guess some are done at a college level, but...

Secondly, if you weren't exchanged for anyone, but just went to college in Dublin, wouldn't you say "I met him while I was at school in Dublin?"

Third...I don't know. I always assumed she was in High School and I don't know why. It certainly fits an image of a rebellious LOis getting away from her family.

So, basically, since there is no continuity to speak of, I can make her live with whomever I want her to.

Thanks, guys!