I was reading a story today where Lois is seeking entrance to Clark's apartment when Clark isn't there. Anyway, beside the door is a flower pot and Clark being from Kansas... She looks under the pot and finds a key to his place.

Anyway, it got me thinking. I mean, I have used that myself - the key under a flower pot outside Clark's apartment. But I don't think anything like that was ever mentioned on the show.

So... then I thought about other things that we writers have sort of adopted as a pretty regular ideas in our stories - things that weren't in the show:

- Clark being afraid of flying in an airplane
- Clark being unable to carry a tune

And I thought it might be fun to hear some of the other ones that people have noticed.

ML

Hmm... I seem to remember she found his key outside one time - like above the door jamb or something like that, but I don't remember for sure - anyone?

I think the 'can't sing' thing comes from Dean not being able to sing [or so I seem to remember...].

The airplane thing... Not a clue why - makes sense, but we know he flew in planes in the series [to Smallville in GGGOH if nothing else - unless they drove which seems highly unlikely].

Other stuff... nothing is coming to me at the moment...

And should you be getting ready to post?!?!
Carol

How about...

- Naming the bear Clark won for Lois in Smallville as "Clarkie" is very popular

- (I might be wrong on this one, maybe we saw it in the series but) The assumption that Clark is a morning person while Lois isn't is fairly regular too.

I've never thought of Clark as being afraid of flying in a plane, but I have used the notion that he dislikes doing so and I'm sure other authors have too.

For me, it came from a scene in the Lex Files arc, where Clark wearily returns to the Planet after flying out to...Atlantic City?...to interview a death row prisoner. He looked so worn out, I just went with the idea that it was partly because flying in a plane is so boring and confining for a man who can zip through the skies without boundaries.

I'm blanking on adding any fanon ideas (or FoLC-Lore as some long ago wit once termed it).

The only things off the top of my head are names. I recall that after one author named a favourite cafe that Clark and Lois frequented, (Angelina's?) it stuck and other authors ran with it, apparently believing that it came from the show, until it found its way into fanon.

Something similar happened when I gave Claude a surname in one of my stories and was greatly surprised about a year later to be told that it had been used in two or three other stories because the authors thought it was canon. Not that I minded. <G>

IIRC, there was a thread on this one a while back. Might be worth trawling to find it and see what came up on that, too.

ETA: Oh! Oh! Remembered one. Clark's favourite movies being either The Princess Bride or The Bear. (Because Dean mentioned both as being favourites of his in an interview at one point).

I've got the same impression, but dashed if I can remember where it would have been.

LabRat

I am not an expert but I only remember Lois using her lock pick on his door.

The writers seemed to do a lax job of fleshing out many names and ideas that might have defined the area more clearly.

Oh, darn. I called it Fandom instead of Fanon. I knew that didn't sound quite right. Okay, anyway, going back to change the title of the thread.

ML

I know Martha tried to pick his lock. She'd read a book about it. If anyone would know where his key was, I guess it would be her. I still have this image of her looking for it but it's been a while.

I think the Clark is a morning person, Lois not so much thing comes from All Shook Up [which may be where Martha's lock picking skills come in]. She says something about not having anything resembling a story and he says something about anything being possible in the morning. It may come from something else too.

I had something else but it's escaping me at the moment. But I also just had a ficlet pop in my head and it pushed everything else out...

And ML - you should finish editing and get to posting soon? Right? Or just send it to me...

Carol

I would think Clark could be a morning person since he requires little sleep. Lois is a night person you can tell!

How about Superman rescuing a cat from a tree or something... is that canon (if so I'd love to know the episode)

Didn't he tell his folks he did that when the Church group was out in force?

Superman rescued a cat from a tree in the Superman movie with Chris Reeve. Maybe FoLC authors extrapolated the experience to our Superman from that.

LabRat

Finally figured the key of Clark's door when I saw "House of Luthor" tonight. I mean, it's not definite but it might have been the source...

Clark's talking to his parents on the phone and he hears Perry outside his door. So he calls out "The key's under the mat, Chief."

So not the flower pot, but still...

I've always thought of Lois as a night person, too, but maybe not. I just watched "The Prankster" yesterday and when she goes over to Clark's with the Lethal Weapon movies, he says something to the effect of it being after 11:00 pm (of course we don't know how late after 11, but I'm assuming sometime before 12) which incidentally isn't in the script so I watched that part of the Prankster again to see if I was right. Anyway she falls asleep on Clark's shoulder right away. Would a night person fall asleep before 12? I'm a night person and if I'm asleep before midnight, I'm really sick. And speaking of the script - wow, it has Woody Allen movies instead of Mel Gibson. I'm glad that was changed because those were before LnC's 'time'. Yes, they were alive but I doubt they would have been into those movies as children. I can't imagine that the writer would even have used those no matter how much he might have liked Woody Allen movies. Of course, I never much liked the Woody Allen movies. But I did have to read a couple of his short stories in college - they were pretty good.


And how about the idea of Lois not being able to cook at all? She does say at one point that she can only cook 4 things, but in Season 4, she prepared a meal for them at least once (and I believe it was steak which isn't easy to fix). Surely she must have learned something from Katey Banks. And she prepared that big Christmas meal, too, so maybe she was being too hard on herself by saying she could only cook 4 things.

Well, in Ghost, at the end, she does remark that Clark has "that look" on his face. He asks her which look and she replies that it's the one that says "Lois cooked something and I have to eat it." So I have inferred from that that she really doesn't cook very well. Also the London broil at the beginning of the same episode seemed to be done a little too well -- Clark had to exert some force to cut through the charcoal, and it crunched, so I think the fact that Lois is not a good cook is probably not all fanon. And let's not forget her oatmeal in Metallo.

Nan

And there's one ep [s3?] ep where she says something about not being able to cook and Clark says 'it's not lack of time' and she says 'no lack of talent' while testing some sauce[?] in his[?] kitchen.

Carol

Chip of the Old Clark?

That's "A Chip Off the Old Clark".

Nan

Yes, that's true, Nan. I'd forgotten about that. She probably had the big turkey dinner catered...

I've read fanfic where she was a good cook after Katey Banks and where she had catered in the Christmas feast rather than cooking it herself and, for me, those fit in rather well with the general theme presented in the show that she wasn't a good cook. Not canon, of course, but they make sense to me.

LabRat

I always look at her cooking as one of those things that got overlooked in the continuity dept. She said she could cook 4 things only 1 without chocolate, a pasta salad and then there is the Christmas dinner which she told Clark you had to put the stuffing in the bird which always led me to believe that she had cooked the turkey.

Then we have the lack of interest comment when she and Clark are talking about cooking once they are married. It fits Lois' image as a tough career woman not to be able to cook.

I always had the opposite impression from that. It's been a while since I watched that ep, so my memory could be entirely out of whack, but as I recall it, the way that she made that comment, her tone, made me think that it was more like something she'd read somewhere and that she was using to make it look as though she'd cooked the meal herself, make herself seem more knowledgeable than she was.


LabRat

She definitely learned a few things from Katey Banks. I remember at the end of the episode (and boy, it's been awhile, so the memory is a little flaky) that she made Eggs A La Katey Banks that were good. So perhaps there were some other recipes and cooking skills?

And don't forget that Lois didn't keep enough items in her refrigerator to be a real cook. Remember Bobby's Bigmouth's comment, "What am I? A beverage?" I know I have a lot of staples on hand since I cook (sugar, flour, milk, eggs, butter, rice, spices, pasta, dried beans...), but I wouldn't have had anything that wasn't premade in college when I didn't cook.

Elisabeth