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Next scheduled post:
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Previews

Chapter 134
Chapter 135
Thanks .
Carol

and bam!

boo hiss at previews though

If Lois goes into lockdown "Clark is leaving and that's final" mode this will get really bad...

I knew it. And The result was to be expected. Bernie is living on Clinton? You know, I actually expected that to be Mayson. But now I think I remember them meeting her while shopping for clothes.

The whole problem with the sequel is, that it is very much possible the sequel is actually about how Clois and Van-El will get together, err I mean how Lois and Clark will patch up their first marriage, right?

You wouldn't give us a divorce for Christmas, would you?

/glares at Carol

I'm back!
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Don't do it!
Will be back after christmas

Sorry but you've lost me. Clark had accepted Chris as his, did you go back and edit some parts? If so please post a list of the parts so I and others can re-read those parts. As it stands his sudden about face, let alone the one Lois does later
don't come across as believable.

If there is anyone major fault with this tale it is this. Your character's emotions zig zag all over the place. It is almost as if you write a scene, later do in between scenes and the events and emotions in these in between scene never last.

Before you send this to the archive you need to do a major rewrite. Trying to read it as one story instead of separate parts will make the retrograde motion stand out like a sixty foot neon sign.

Edited

I'm going to step in and defend Carol's story as written. It isn't perfect - no story on the archive is - but it's still an outstanding story. If the characters' emotions zig and zag, that's how real life is, folks. I don't feel today the same way I did a week ago, and I won't feel the same way a week from now. And neither does anyone else. There's nothing wrong with that, either. It just means that we're all human.

Without a DNA test, Clark and Lois don't know with absolute certainty that Christopher is Clark's son. They can be relatively sure because of the similarities in the two pregnancies, the resemblance between the two boys, and their strong resemblance to Clark, but they don't know for certain! The fragment from the next chapter is meant to beguile us, to entice us to read (not that many of us need such enticement!), to make us hungry for the whole story. Without any context, we don't know why Clark phrased his response to - say, we don't even know what prompted this statement, do we? Why don't we wait and find out?

Please don't think that I'm advocating a position whereby no one ever says anything bad about any writer or any story! I don't mean that at all. I can think of some otherwise excellent stories on these boards which had some problems which detracted from the whole. Should an author be told about such things? Yes. But I believe that such critiques should be respectful, gentle, and in most cases should be very private.

Carol has some good betas working with her on this tale, and any criticism aimed at her as a writer also splashes over on the betas. Surely they would have spotted such glaring errors and inconsistencies as some have claimed occur. Surely one or more of them would have yelled, "Hey, we got a plot hole the size of the St. Lawrence Seaway here! Got to fix it before it's posted!" What looks like a plot hole in the middle of a story is often a pivotal plot point when viewed from the end of the story.

It's perfectly acceptable to say, "You know, this story just doesn't grab me. It isn't my cup of tea (or coffee or soda pop or whatever)." I don't know of any author who wouldn't regret reading a comment like this, but at least it's a criticism of the story and not of the writer. It's a different matter when a reader tells an author (before the reader has read the entire work!) that the story in question requires a complete re-write. Not only is that a premature judgment, it's unfair to the author and to the readers who are enjoying it.

I recall a couple of years ago when an author produced a multi-part tale in a dramatically different style than is normally seen on these boards. It was daring, it was different, and it was effective. But not everyone liked it. However, all of the feedback posts I read were respectful of the author's daring attempt - except one person who quite vehemently insisted that the story - and the style in which it was presented - was complete dreck. This person even attacked other posters who were encouraging the author, and I do not believe that either of them remained around very long.

And I think that was a shame for them as well as for us. We lost the opportunity to appreciate that author's future work, and we lost the viewpoint of that feedback poster. Just as important, they lost us. And I think we're all the poorer for it.

Please don't think that I'm accusing anyone of attacking other feedback posters, because I'm not. And please don't think that I believe that anyone who doesn't think this story is the best thing written since "War and Peace" is an idiot. No piece of writing will please everyone. I am thinking of a particular story on the archives which has been complimented many times, praised many times, and the author has been lauded for this story many times. It often shows up in the Off-Topic folder under a "Favorites" thread or a "Recommended Reading" thread.

But I don't care for it. I just can't get into it. Is it bad writing? No, it's very well done. And I can see why so many others praise it so highly. It simply doesn't tickle my fancy. (And no, I will not list the title!)

This story is a bit different in that it is taking Clark and Lois from a non-canon meeting to whatever resolution we're headed for by alternating their subjective viewpoints, and in first person, too. That's very hard to do, and it can be confusing if the reader doesn't keep in mind that what we are reading at the moment is colored by the current emotional state of the character who is speaking. For example, if Lois were to accept Lana's assertion that Clark loves her and wants to stay married to her, if she were to couple it with all the little things Clark does for her and for the boys, and if she were to put all that together with his tenderness towards her despite her "wall of separation," then she probably wouldn't have wished Clark luck in getting back together with Lana.

But that was how she felt at that moment! And it's logical within the story line. Maybe you, dear reader, don't care for this story or for the groundswell of support it obviously has. What other current story has a support group for its addicts? None that I've seen, and there have been some dynamite stories posted on these boards over the past few years. I ask only that we all allow Carol to follow her story to the end.

Then we can bring out the brickbats and literary criticisms. Only then, dear FoLCs, will we have the coherent whole to review.

And I still pity the GE who gets to work up this beautiful monster for the archive.

Gah! *beats Lois* Lana's already told you she doesn't want Clark back. Wake up! *does a for Navance being dead!*

Quick flyby.

Thank you Terry and I too pity the GE who undertakes the monster .

Thanks to everyone for the FDK. I will say that I didn't plan it but tonight's posts are not happy fluffy Christmas fare =/. That's just the way it fell.

Okay - off to make stromboli and cookies [for dinner and Santa], cinnamon pull aparts, mashed potatoes, BBQ Brisket [to be cooked tomorrow, except the brisket which will go in tonight]. And probably something else I'm forgetting - oh right - new stockings for kids cuz we lost a couple...

And then eat, watch a [age appropriate] Christmas movie [and maybe Christmas Vacation later], read Night Before Christmas books, wrap presents, make sure the Wii works properly , stuff stockings and try to actually get some sleep tonight...

And post in there somewhere .

Carol

I haven't even read these parts, but I will, but not for many hours - I'm off to bed soon....

But I will say this. Carol, you threw me for a loop when you introduced Clark's brother. I'll be honest and say I hate his guts. Not because Bernie Van-El Klein is bad in any way, but because he has no business being Clark's brother, since Clark, in my opinion, is and should be the ultimate cosmic orphan.

But that's my opinion. It is not 'the truth' about your story. All those other faithful readers of OTOH who were unbothered by Van-El didn't show any sort of bad judgement. They showed a different judgement than me. That's all there is to it.

So I wish that your story had turned out differently. The fact that it turned out the way it did doesn't make it 'bad', much less 'wrong'. It was the wrong plot development for me, that's all. Tough luck.

I hope I can finish reading OTOH. I want to see what happens to Lois and Clark. Unfortunately, when I was reading chapters 130 and 131, I was so weirded out by Van-El that I couldn't concentrate on Lois and Clark. I was so busy being offended by the mere existence of the brother that I couldn't pay attention to my favorite couple.

I'll try to do better. A bit better. I'm not interested in trying to like Van-El, but I'll try to concentrate on what happens to Lois and Clark. Except I'm not going to like any plot development where Van-El acts like Clark's mentor or helps steer Clark down the right part. (That's the sort of thing Clark should do on his own, or with the help of his parents, or with the help of Lois!)

But the point is, I don't have the right to condemn the story, much less the author, for entertaining me and fascinating me mightily until the infuriating brother turned up. The point is that I have been mightily entertained and enormously fascinated. This is a brilliant story, Carol, and it is not your fault that Van-el and I turned out to be incompatible.

Ann

Hi Carol! Wow what a rollercoaster you've had us on!
Navance is leaving office in a body bag. Our favorite couple can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Lois is on the defensive with Clark and is giving him an out, even though she has been told by Lana that he loves her (Lois) not Lana. Part of me wants to knock some sense into Lois, but I can understand her emotional state. She's been told by her husband through most of the time that she has known him that he's "in love" with another woman. She desperately wants his love and not to play second fiddle to someone else. I don't blame her. I just hope that she gives Clark a chance to make things right.
The whole Van-El/Bernie Klein angle doesn't bother me. It gives Clark a chance to connect to his Kryptonian roots and gives him a chance to feel jealousy where Lois is concerned. It also gives an opening to another storyline in UP, which I am truly looking forward to!
All in all, great work Carol. I am looking forward to the second post for today.
Merry Christmas!
Melanie

Doesn't matter. Right now I'm just looking for my next fix /shivers/

Michael

Terry,


I am not saying it is not a well written tale. Nor am I saying she needs to change it to suit me.

What I am saying it that the patchwork nature of the posting hides a flaw that needs fixing before she places it on the archive.

In one part she will have L&C acting as if they no longer doubt that Chris is Clark's son.

In a later part they are acting as if they do have some doubt.

Then in another part they act as if they have no doubt.

Then back again to doubting.

If you don't believe me take all the parts in order and paste them into word and sit down and read it from the start.


I should not have used the word emotion. I should have found a better word to describe it. Perhaps paradigm.

The characters, Lois & Clark, their paradigm zigs back and forth. As a result their emotions are all over the place.

As Terry correctly points out changing emotions is normal and does happen all the time. But when these emotions change because the underlying reality changes it is JARRING to read.

It is sort of like those early TV programs when the actors changed clothing going from one room to the next and back again as they re-entered the first room.

Have been reading every part, but I don't comment so much because I don't always agree with every plot point in the story (for example, I'm with Ann about Van El -- don't like him, don't like the idea of him -- but I'd like to see where the story takes him)... but even when I don't, this is a story I am very attached to and look forward to reading every day.

That being said, I did want to defend a line in these latest parts:

I did not read that as Clark denying that Christopher is his son. I read that as Clark saying that it didn't matter, he married Lois because he needed to protect her, and that he would have done it whether or not Christopher was his son. I read it more as a reference to his frame of mind at the time of the marriage decision than his current frame of mind. So... perhaps it's not a flip-flop so much as a testament to the character of Clark Kent?

Noelle -

I edited that part after Patrick's comment but forgot to note it here...

Carol