Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: Red Boots Down

Well, ML managed to meet the challenge and have Clark deal with a Lois who has left him. He manages to make a life for himself...and Lois manages with her life. And she keeps them, more or less, in character.

But then she adds the epilogue. What a yucky way to end a great story.
But she tells it with great ML aplomb

Okay, Gerry. Let go of the epilogue obsession already . It's my story and I get to keep the epilogue if I want to .

(You can probably all tell by now what part of Gerry's advice on the story I didn't follow )

ML

I liked the story a great deal. I thought it was excellent and brave...up until the ending part which I thought kind of cheapened everything before it. It was such a shame given how committed the fic was to itself. A really great read nonetheless.

Kind of like Lois. I always knew they were similar creatures at heart.

Excellent contrast. I've known people of both types myself.

(singsong voice) some-body's not o-ver Lo-is...

BWAHahahaha! Does a girl this innocent really exist?

Yeah, um, don't get your hopes up, honey. And I wonder if Lois showing will finally make Kelly say something rude.

(Lisa is banging her head on her desk.) This woman deserves what she gets!

Yep. That. She deserved that.

I am still not entirely convinced all the old feelings are gone. Clark is still pretty pissed, and anger like that requires some deep emotion feeding it.

OMG. OMG!!!! Why didn't I suspect her of anything until this line? I am kicking myself for not thinking that Kelly was too good to be true. I just thought she was annoying.

How boring.

Too true.

This is a really awful woman, but, damn, that's funny!

Ok, again, awful, terrible woman, blah blah, but she sure is sharp. And it's funny to hear her tell him all the things he did wrong with another woman.

That's our Lois!

Slim to none, but, hey, you always were the lucky type, Lois.



Hmph. I bet that is Clark's kid.

Awww, MLT! I love L&C but I wish you hadn't negated the whole thing at the end, because it is a *great* story.

A reverse Tank ending. I like it!!

Wow!! Absolutely wonderful, and I for one LOVED the epilogue
(who thinks he's one of those who has a terrible time stomaching a non-LnC ending.. sorry )

Great story. Somehow, I doubted Kelly, if only because Martha did.

Well, when I opened this fic and read what all the disclaimers, I knew I had to stay up and read it. And I have several comments. But really... I'd better sleep on them, or I might put my foot in my mouth again - especially since I was initially given credit for the quote that started that other thread.

Hopefully, I'll have time to comment on the actual story, the details of, later. For now, I'll just say something about the fact that this is a Clark deathfic (but not really) and a Lois-moving-on fic (but not really).

Everybody knows that I hate Lois deathfics, and well, I totally, totally hate Clark-moving-on fics, too. For much of my life, I have been worrying about the fact that Superman treated Lois badly, and I have been afraid that he would dump her. I have felt, so intensely, that Lois has been treated unfairly.

I know, I know, she wasn't treated unfairly in LnC, and this site is dedicated to LnC, so I shouldn't let those other incarnations of Superman and Lois cloud my perception of LnC's Clark and Lois. For all of that, they do. I don't know if LnC's Lois deserves to be punished, to be killed, to have Clark leave her etcetera, but I do know that the Lois I grew up with didn't deserve to be treated like that. It hurts like hell every time I come across a Lois deathfic or a Clark-moves-on-fic. So I'm very grateful to the authors who write these fics for warning me to stay away from their stories.

I don't want to see Clark killed. I don't want to see Lois move on. But in view of the number of Lois deathfics, and the much talked-about recent Clark-moving-on fic, well, I can't help it... I needed a story like this one. A story that says that Clark can be killed, too (there's Kryptonite, remember?) and Lois can move on, too. And there are other nice guys who may like her, not just a scumbag like Lex who just wants to conquer her.

So I think of this story as a reminder that Clark, too, is mortal, and Lois, too, could move on. I don't want her to move on, and I don't want Clark to die, but in view of recent Lois deathfics and Clark-moves-on fics... Yes, I was glad to see this story here.

And somehow, I was a little depressed at the epilogue. It seems to me that we always offer Clark an "out". If we kill him, we usually revive him again. But if we kill Lois, she sure as heck stays dead. And if Lois moves on, she is usually made to go back to Clark again. (The only exceptions are the stories where Clark is absolutely unavailable, as in Becky Bain's "Per Aspera Ad Astra".) In the Clark-moves-on fics, he stays with his new woman, whether Lois wants him back or not.

I want to read Lois and Clark fics, where Lois and Clark both survive and get to be happy together. For all of that... yes, I liked this story, ML.

Ann

Well done. Well done.

I do agree that having it all be a bad dream lessens the story. So in my mind the Clark that wakes is the one in the Show's universe, the story of course took place in one of the many Alt'verses.

One of the things I liked best was having Clark be completely fooled by Kelly.

Again well done, very well done.

Patrick

Yes, Patrick, it was his connection to other worlds that gave him that dream.

So you posted, ML See Gerry is sticking to her guns about that epilogue.

Ah, but remember Lois had just spent two weeks searching frantically for Clark who had left town before her aborted first wedding. While she was going through all that heart-breaking angst he was catching some sun in the South Pacific.

I can see him now - bare chest gleaming in the tropic sun, swim trunks sculpted against his loins by the pounding surf....

c.

Glad to see you guys seem to be enjoying (or not ) the story.

I see the epilogue is causing a bit of a stir. But I could never write a true death fic. Sorry, guys, but I just don't have it in me. The problem is...

I agree with Ankit on this . I don't like death fics. I don't read death fics. And I really didn't want to write one. And hence, the epilogue. Call it my security blanket if you will.

And I like suez's comment:

But I also like this idea by Patrick:

I guess I can live with this taking place in some universe that I don't have to ever visit . Lois and David live happily ever in that far away, never to be thought of again universe after while our Lois and Clark are safely tucked in bed together still very much in love.

That's why I wrote the story, Ann. But I can only do what I can do and I can't actually let either Lois or Clark die in the end. I am too much of a Lois and Clark (together) fan for that.

Besides, in my mind the epilogue is the whole point of the story .

One more point:

Actually, Carol, it was three months (not two weeks) that she spent searching for him, crying herself to sleep every night. So please give poor Lois a break, guys .

Anyway, glad you seem to be enjoying my... what did Suez call it now... Reverse Tank ending .

ML

(I hadn't read the above comments before posting; didn't want them to color my own)

This was very well-done, ML. Depressing but well-written -- the way Clark sulked and then fell for Kelly, the way Lois was lost without him and ended up settling for Lex anyway. I don't like seeing either of them with anyone besides each other, but this was handled really well, and it was definitely believable.

It's just like Lex, too, to have some sort of scheme to keep Clark occupied & away from Lois. The slow poison was a little less expected, but explained a lot... and although I wasn't real happy that Clark died, at that point it was probably the best resolution. If he'd survived the poison, the news that he'd been raising Lex's kids would have killed him anyway. At least David's a genuinely nice guy; Lois deserved that after all the slow torture.

And the last scene that says it was all a nightmare (which it certainly was)... well, all the preceeding scenes were so well-done that the last one felt kinda tacked-on and disconnected. I know why you added it, but in a way, you didn't need to. Lois had fought her way through everything, made a good life for herself, and that was a happy ending. To have Clark wake up was like negating all that struggle and triumph. You know I love my happy endings, but the final scene at the DP *was* a happy ending, for me.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not planning on printing this out and re-reading it a lot of times <g> But I'm not sorry I read it. Good work!

PJ

Given all the epilogue comments (not to mention Patrick's brilliant idea ), I tried a rewrite. Do you guys think this works better? I need to hear from people who can't stomach Lois and Clark apart as well as people who felt that the epilogue negated the story.

I think I could live with this as a compromise. What do you guys think?

ML

I think that would work for me. It doesn't wipe out all the emotional energy I put into the story, but it's a nice reminder that this was, after all, only one story and that there are thousands others, with thousands of variations on the basic theme.

PJ

It would work for me as a compromise, too.

Ann

Interesting that no one's commented on all the satirical bits that are in the story. Does the epilogue negate the satire, I wonder?

Still Lois wound up with Mr. Right in both universes which is never a bad thing.

Well, ML, it is a better epilogue, but only because you need to see Lois and Clark together. I felt that the story was strong enough on it's own without you needing to massage our sensibilities.

The thing is that you wrote an excellent story that turned the expected upside down and gave us an opportunity to see how Lois and Clark would react when life was handing them lemons. That's okay because you made their motivation clear and their actions had consequences.

I thought Ms Lebonne (French for the Good) was a little too swallow since she was too Stepford, but I could accept her for who she was, and I only got suspicious when Clark was getting too tired. Bad Ms Lebonne

Gerry put things perfectly. I feel like a traditionally "happy" ending (even ending #2) is a bit contrived and excessive for a fic like this where things unfold pretty much like they should. It's not the satisfaction I get when they end up all happy, but it's a satisfaction of things ending up "in their place." And it's the best kind IMHO for a fic like this when a pasted happy ending seems out of place (even a nod to the happiness outside this particular 'verse when no alt-verse thing ever came up in the fic).

And maybe it's my own liberal take here, but I didn't find any of the plot points ridiculous in the story's context. That's why I have a problem seeing this as a satire. If in the scene where David tells her he hopes Lois will love him, she had looked at him and jumped into his arms and started saying she loved him, then I wouldn't hesitate. After all isn't satire the presentation of ridiculous things in a serious tone? (What is key to me is that they _remain_ ridiculous--so certainly if you think it is simply insane for Lois and Clark to even consider loving other people, then sure.) But things I would normally think odd were given a perfectly logical basis. And even moments when I arched the proverbial eyebrow had little flashes of awareness-- take when Kelly says she wants to be a mother, etc--she then shrugs and says she supposes it doesn't make her very ambitious. Just that awareness jarrs this out of satire for me, which as a genre is based on taking everything as what it is.

This is probably due to my own milage since genre is in the eyes of the reader. Still, I kinda felt like I wish I had known that the WHAM would be reversed before I started reading. All those warnings seem so empty now.

I feel like I should still reiterate that the fic was still pretty good regardless. Certainly, I like that it brings up these sorts of issues for me.