I have an idea for a story that I thought I would toss out to y'all. If anyone wants to run with it, they are welcome to do so. (Although for all I know, there may already be many stories out there like this.) It's for a deathfic. I don't even want to *read* that type of story, much less write one; nevertheless, I think this could be developed into a powerful story by someone with the talent and interest...

Perhaps five or ten years after their marriage, while Lois is still quite young, she is diagnosed with cancer. Clark is guilt-ridden because he is fully convinced that he caused it because of all the times he used his X-Ray or heat vision on her.

Has this story line been done before? if it hasn't been done to death (so to speak) and anyone wishes to use it, go for it!

cheers,
Lynn

Wow, that's a good idea! Especially because Clark could never be *sure* that he didn't cause it... Loads of angst potential right there!

Alas, I'm working on some other stuff right now. But this idea might percolate...

no angst potential for Lois though - she gets to be dead.

c.

...Unless of course there is a happy ending in that Clark discovers a new use for his eyes -- do it yourself radiation therapy. ;-) (I guess that it then wouldn't be considered deathfic, technically, but it could still be plenty angst-filled anyway.)

cheers,
Lynn

Very interesting idea. I definitely would read such a story. But as far as writing it, I'm going to let someone else travel through that particular minefield.

Well, this would be another Lois deathfic. I would hate it, sorry.

Ann

I find it interesting as well as very depressing that you said this, Lynn:

Quite a few people on these boards seem to reason like that. A deathfic is bad, but a Lois deathfic is okay.

Bobbart has just finished a fic where Jon and Martha were missing for a long time, and it seemed very probable that they were dead. They were brought back, and most people were very happy. Now, if we consider your story premise, it could easily have been turned into a story where Clark caused the death of his parents. Clark has spent more time with his parents than with Lois, and in the beginning, when he didn't know how to control his powers, he may indeed have zapped his parents with X-rays that may have harmed them. So it is more likely that Jonathan or Martha would get cancer as a result of Clark's powers. Yet such a story premise does not exist. And why not? Because it is unthinkable that Clark would cause his parents' death. Such a thing would be gruesome, and it can't be tolerated. But the idea of Clark unwittingly causing Lois's death is tragically beautiful. Why is it awful for a man to accidentally cause the death of parents, but tragically beautiful for him to cause the death of his wife?

My answer is harsh. The way I see it, it is because our society says that young women are not so interesting in themselves, and their lives aren't worth that much. But their deaths are beautiful. They leave such beautiful corpses. And they were only women anyway. Therefore people may cry over their deaths, but they don't need to feel truly devastated by the loss of these women's lives, because their lives weren't that valuable anyway.



Ophelia. What is most beautiful, her life or her death? Don't tell me you don't know the answer. Not only is her death exquisitely beautiful, but we may cry over it and feel cleansed and relieved afterwards.

Men, however, are valuable. The "defining narrative" of the western civilisation is the story of a man who dies and rises from the death to live again - I'm talking about Jesus, of course. Our civilisation doesn't have a similar narrative about a woman. When a woman dies, she should remain dead.

TOGOM, one of the most influential episodes of the LnC TV series, shows how Clark "died" and became alive again. Lois cried for him as if she had been Mary Magdalene crying over Jesus. But like Jesus, Clark "became alive again".

There have been so many re-writes of TOGOM on these boards. It would seem natural that some of them should tell us that Clark didn't return, that he stayed dead. (Perhaps he was shot with a kryptonite bullet?) I think Tank may have written such a story, otherwise such a premise is a no-no. Clark mustn't die, because he is a man. And therefore his life is more valuable than his death.

It makes me really sorry to see Lois deathfics written for their story potential, when Clark deathfics are so rarely written for their story potential. My explanation for this is that I think people respond to this deeper narrative in our western civilization which I have referred to, the one that says that a (young) woman's death is tragically beautiful, but a man's death is just devastating and unbearable.

It isn't over until the fat lady sings.

Ann

Umm, Ann, actually my reasoning (or lack thereof) was a lot simpler than that...Lois is more of a main character than Clark's parents are. Therefore, she was the first one to come to my mind when I thought of the story idea. To me the salient point of my idea isn't who dies; it is Clark's angst. And since, as I stated before, I do NOT like deathfics myself, I did not wish to put any additional thought into coming up with other alternatives.

As far as I am concerned, Clark's parents dying would work, too, although given their age, it would probably be a less powerful story. That is why I had emphasized in my story idea that Lois was still *young* when she got the cancer -- partly to make Clark's angst more credible, but partly because it is typically seen as more tragic when a person dies who is "cut off in their prime" than when someone dies who already has lived a full and fulfilling life. Gender has nothing to do with it for me.

- Lynn

Nor, I suspect, does it for most of the other authors on the mbs.

LabRat

Speak for yourself, Labrat.

The patterns in L & C deathfic do involve gender issues when you probe beneath the surface.

Perhaps it's because in North America there are still significant indicators that women still are not perceived as equal to men in mainstream and pop culture. Whether it's the percentage of women in top jobs in the film industry or in our political institutions, or the percantage of women who are victims of violence at the hands of their spouses or ... I could continue the list, unfortunately.

Story lines more often have as protagonist a male who is angsting over a dead spouse. Heck even in popular TV series, it more often a continuing female character who is killed off, not a male. ( e.g.NCIS, the Mentalist)

I'm guessing that in Scotland, where Labrat lives, these patterns must not exist. We in North Amercia aren't there yet.

Now of course I know that things are better than they were 100 years ago - heck we have the right to vote now.

Pop culture helps shape us, whether we like it or not. For many girls, Lois Lane was an icon - someone who stood for heroic values, had a career otuside the home - she was independent at a time when the truly independent woman was scarce. So when she is killed her death becomes symbolic too.

The deathfic pattern in L & C fic is that it is usually Lois who is killed off. And also that it's Clark's angst that is deemed to be the interesting pain to poke at and explore.

Lois does not count - she's expendable. She gets to be dead, as I said above. Woman as plot device, her dead body a prop to allow us to see Clark suffer.

Now some might suggest that it's more likely that Lois would die, given Clark's physical invulnerability. But given his Kryptonite weakness that's not the case. He would haave been dead on at least 2 occasions in the show except for human intervention (Sam Lane, and also that reactor). Also , consider the repeated exposures he has to K and you have to wonder if some serious damage might not have been done to his system. (Yvonne Connell explored this possibility in a really good fic some years ago)

So we have a pattern in L & C deathfic - Lois is the corpse most often. What accounts for that? -is it a subconscious feeling that the female character doesn't count for as much? She gets sacrificed on the altar designed to show us how truly, deeply, maddly he can suffer.

c.

I'm with Lynn.

Gender doesn't matter.

Lois is easier to kill.

Clark CAN be killed but Lois is easier.

Well, thanks for the spoiler, Carol. As a regular watcher of The Mentalist, which is behind, of course, the US/Canadian schedule, I'm a little disappointed to have advance warning of what seems to be a significant development.

As for the topic under discussion - my opinion is very much based on the responses given by many of the authors who post here to previous complaints by Ann on the subject. Very few appear to accept her - or your - version of their motivations for writing deathfic.

YMMV, of course. But I don't believe that there is any evidence that gender plays a terribly significant role in why such fanfic is written and nothing you nor Ann has said on the subject in the past or now has yet persuaded me otherwise.

LabRat

Clearly there's not unanamity. Also, I'm not sure that posts are the only measure to use. Labrat, you and I will always disagree on how many mbs members see gender as one of the issues involved in L & C deathfic.

Sorry about the spoiler - but it's not my fault. Well, maybe it is - my sloppy writing. I was referring to Simon's wife who is dead as part of the premise of the show - to set his character so to speak. Same thing with Gibbs in NCIS. We know their hearts are pure because they have suffered. Although NCIS - I don't think this can be a spoiler given it happened a few seasons back - did kill Kate.

From a technical point of view, yes.

But not from an emotional point of view - if the writer cares about the character she's no easier to kill than Clark is.

c.

I don't think Kate is a good example. The actress wanted out of her contract and said she wanted it to be in a way that made it matter rather than just having her character move or something.

Well, since I was talking about from a technical standpoint, Lois is easier to kill.

I have written exactly one deathfic. Lois died. Why? Because both the story and a bunch of people [FoLCs mostly as it happened] were pissing me off so she stepped in front of a truck and voila - end of fic.

Can't do that with Clark. Had nothing to do with her being female but with her being vulnerable.

I don't think anyone is going to change Carol Malo/Ann's minds and I doubt they're going to convince anyone who doesn't already agree with them...

Carol

First, I have to mention the enduring popularity of TOGOM fics, where Lois's angst is explored in great depth.

Second, I think the whole issue could be side-stepped if the story was about Lois being ill and contemplating death, Clark freaking out about his possible responsibility, etc, but with a cure being found at the end. (the trick is to make it look hopeless, let them work through their issues, make some sort of peace, then pull a surprise out of nowhere. Wendy did it in 24 Hours (Lois in danger) and For the Greater Good (Clark in danger) and so have many others.)

I must admit, though -- I'm a traditionalist, in some ways. I believe in some loose gender roles -- one of which is that the stronger person (usually the man, in a couple) has a responsibility to protect the weaker one. Adding in Superman magnifies that. So when the wife/girlfriend dies (or has anything awful happen), the husband/boyfriend has that extra layer of guilt. It was his *job* to keep her safe, and he failed. Reversing the genders just doesn't resonate the same way. Mind you, a talented writer could definitely make it work, and parents have a similar responsibility toward their children.

I also think it remotely possible that most of the FOLCs, being female, are more interested in a single, grieving male than a single, grieving female. Plus, for me, that second one might hit a little *too* close to home, thinking that something like that is (statistically) likely to happen to me, sooner or later. Did I mention my mom's been widowed twice? And men have a shorter life expectancy, and my husband's 7 years older than me, so...

Anyway, in this particular scenario, it would be difficult to switch genders, since only one of them has been using x-ray vision on the other (well, mostly ).

PJ

I'm not sure that proves anything other than that 'death' was still perceived as the only important change for the female character. There are lots of other ways of having the character leave in a way that 'mattered' and so her example still plays to the stereotype of the expendable female.

This is not to argue that death was not a possibibility, but instead that Kate's example fits into the overall pattern.

Pam, it's been argued before that TOGOM fics are the equivalent of Clark deathfics - but since we all know that Clark was not killed from the beginning, it's not a deathfic, but just an angst fic, an opportunity for a bit of a wallow.

But you're quite right that angst fics where either Lois or Clark worries about the death of the other are quite common. Wendy's fic (and that example is one of her best fics imo) is only one. It certainly was present in Jenni's excellent 'The Forgotten' and many others.

But in those fics there's a respect for both characters. One is not expendable in order to make a point about the other. Not sure that's a particularly untraditional point of view I've just stated so much as a humane one.

Either Lois or Clark grieving hits too close to home for me. It's a shattering time and I'm not sure it's something that one ever really stops doing.

But I do accept that there are other opinions out there, as there are on most topics.

I also think that this is an importnat topic and worth discussing.

c.

Even when I tell myself to stay out of it, I get drawn into almost every deathfic thread. Stupid of me.

I imagine that there are a number of reasons, when an author chooses to write a deathfic, as to why they're doing so and who they choose to kill. I personally do not ascribe to Ann's theory that if Lois is the one who dies, it's because "a woman's death is tragically beautiful, as opposed to a man's death being devastating and unbearable."

Carol wrote:
There are deathfics that I have felt to be incredibly well-written, cathartic to read, and thought-provoking. In none of these did I ever think of the one who died - either Clark or Lois - to be "expendable". For me, just because there are more stories that have Lois be dead than Clark, does not automatically mean that those authors - nor the readers who enjoy the story - think of Lois as any less worthy than Clark.

What if the tide suddenly shifted? What if, for perhaps no other reason than authors' muses at the moment, suddenly there was a spate of stories written with Clark being killed off in various ways? Would people start complaining that Clark was considered more "expendable"?

That word seems to come up every time Lois is killed in a story. I don't expect any of my comments to change anyone's mind, but let me go on record that I do not agree that this fandom thinks of Lois as more "expendable" than Clark. Since L&C is my main interest, I have no opinion as to the sentiments of the Superman universe as a whole.

And as to this comment of Ann's
From what I've read - either here or in any other thread - no one has ever said this. With the particular premise that Lynn speculated about, Clark would be the cause of Lois' cancer because of his powers, so it couldn't possibly be the other way around.

Kathy

No, it doesn't "automatically" mean that (not sure how you're using 'automatically here) - but it doesn't mean that they don't subconsciously feel that she is less worthy either.

Each of us brings our individuality and experience to how we perceive any pattern and the reasons for it. As well, what we write and how we read is a reflection of how we've been conditioned - the values and attitudes we each hold.

It is a pattern that's out there: there are more Lois death fics. It's reasonable to ask *why* the pattern exists, as it is with any pattern.


c.

Originally posted by Lynn S. M.:

I understand that.

The way I see it, Lois is used as a means to explore Clark's angst. If I may make a horribly crude and admittedly unfair comparison, imagine a scientist who takes a child's hamster and subjects the hamster to torture to explore the kid's reaction. In order to explore the full emotional repertoire of the child, the scientist kills the child's small pet.

Of course, this also means that the hamster is expendable. Under the circumstances, its death is far more interesting than its life. Or rather, the loss of its life is not such a big deal, but its death is valuable because it produces fascinating results - namely, the kid's grief.

In the "Superman as a Christ figure" thread that you started, Lynn, Marcus Rowland pointed out that several comic book heroes have died and returned from the dead. There is Superman, of course, but also Batman and Captain America. And let's not forget Mr. Spock.



Spock is dying. His death produces a lot of interesting grief in Captain Kirk. Ah, but Spock returned. His life was too valuable to be squandered just so that we could see Captain Kirk's tears.

Another fictional character who returned after we had been told that he was dead was Bobby Ewing in Dallas.

My point is that all the characters who died and then returned were male. Or am I wrong about that? Does anyone know of a female fictional character who died and then returned to her own living body so that she could go on living on the Earth as herself as before?

I'm not suggesting that there are a whole lot of fics on these boards where Lois dies. I also realize that extremely few people here would openly admit or even think to themselves that they enjoy Lois deathfics because they like seeing a woman die.

I am saying, however, that a pattern exists, that it is much larger than the small world of LnC, and that it teaches us that a male hero is always interesting for his life, but that leading female character may reach the pinnacle of her importance to the world when she dies. Because her death may provoke an interesting reaction in the leading male character, who is probably the real protagonist of the story anyway. Or else, if she herself is the protagonist, her death may be so tragically beautiful in itself.



Beautiful.



Beautiful.



Beautiful.



Beautiful.

Ann

This has developed into a fascinating discussion. I had had no idea that I would be starting a maelstrom with my story idea!

Your analogy is flawed in one very serious respect: If a scientist were to kill a real child's pet, it would take place in *real life*. the pet would be dead. Period. The child would have to live the rest of their life knowing that the pet had been killed. Such an act would be highly unethical.

By killing Lois, or any other character, in fanfic, we are dealing with fiction. No actual people are dying. Frankly, when it comes to fiction, especially something like fanfic, ANY character is expendable, and should be "expended" as necessary to further the story. This is not at all a callous statement, since:
1) We are dealing with FICTION (Yes, I am repeating myself here; I think this point is worth repeating)
2) The fictional universe "resets itself" when you put down that piece of fiction. Unless someone chooses to write a sequel, the characters will remain "alive and well" in other fanfic.

I won't argue with you there; but I will say that in each instance (and especially that of Mr. Spock), I would rather have had the character, once dead, remain dead. To me, the returns have always seemed to cheapen the powerful death scenes.

An interesting question. I'll have to think about that one. The two that leap to mind (Elvira Gulch and Phoenix) are not exactly positive examples...

- Lynn

I have to agree with Carol on how our society perceives girls and women as juxtaposed to men.I was and am still a Hilary supporter. Our recent Presidential campaign exemplifies what the male establishment will do to put uppity women in their place.

I don't like death fics, but I wrote two stories that flirted with death. In the first, The Circle Game, after many years Clark begins to suffer from the after effects of Veda Dootsen's youth sucking machine and is dying. In the second, The Portrait, Lois is apparently murdered. The second was much better received by folc than the first. Folc are mostly devoted to Clark and prefer their stories to be Clark-centric. At least that's the way I see it. Tank is one of the few who are Lois fans, but Tank's stories are a whole other universe.

Jude

I think that those who are pointing out that in traditional literature a woman is perceived as less valuable are correct. But remember, many of the characters you are referring to were written in a time when it was openly believed that a woman was less valuable than a man.

However, I don't think that is the case in L&C fanfic. Most of us did not grow up with the notion that men are more valuable than women...in fact, most of the people on these boards ARE women.

Also, I think it was Yvonne who made the point that for most of us (women) to explore Lois being left alone is a very hard thing to read, because it does hit too close to home with the idea of losing our husbands.

I'm not saying gender roles don't exist-they do, and in a way it is programed into us. There is a natural inclination for the male to be the "protector" (and as someone else said, Clark is the protector of the world, so that just enhances it.)

Also, just given the character's personalities Lois and Clark would both be devastated if the other died, but in very different ways. Just because of who he is he would naturally blame himself. In most situations, I can't see Lois blaming herself for Clark's death because she didn't protect him, but this is very likely scenario for Clark.

Just my $.02.

Another stray thought: It has been argued in several posts in this thread that women are killed more often because they are seen as being more expendable, and therefore of less worth.

An argument could easily be made to the contrary: If women are killed off more than men, perhaps it is because they are seen as being of MORE worth. After all, if you were going to write a story about a theft, would you more likely write it about someone stealing a pencil or about someone stealing a million dollars? All else being equal, an author would write about stealing something of value, precisely because it IS of value. Similarly, people are more likely to write about the deaths of human beings or pets as opposed to the death of a fruit fly, precisely because most readers would not care about the fruit fly and would not consider it to be of value. It could therefore be argued that if more female characters are killed off in stories than male characters, it is because they are considered to be MORE valuable than the male characters.

Although, to be honest, I think both this argument and the other one are reading far too much into the motives of the authors. I would expect that most authors simply want to tell an interesting and powerful tale, and will kill off any characters they think necessary to tell such a story.

- Lynn

Originally posted By Lynn S. M.:

I agree up to a point. Or rather, I agree, of course, that Lois is a totally fictional person and if an author kills her in a fic, that doesn't mean that a real person dies in any way. And just as you pointed out, any other person who writes LnC fanfic may bring Lois back as if she had never been dead (which she hadn't, since a wholly fictional character arguably can't be "killed").

But this is my point. I don't think fiction is harmless. I don't think stories about death are necessarily harmless.

One of the grandest stage performances available anywhere are opera performances. The music score is often sublime and so bombastic that the very exaggeration becomes sublime in itself. The actors' and actresses's voices are splendid. The orchestra and the director are magnificent. The clothes worn by the lead singers are fantastic. The entire play is like a gloriously opulent rite, a celebration - of what? Well, it is a celebration of a woman's death. Because that is what operas are about.

I don't think operas affect people's way of thinking that much. Those who watch operas are not the kind of people who are prone to using violence in their own lives. Those who do like to fight usually don't watch operas. To most people, operas are baffling and somewhat ludicrous.

I think, nevertheless, that if the killing of women becomes a genre unto itself in other venues than operas, then that may create a sort of subconscious consensus that a woman's death is not the same thing as a man's death, not in fiction and not in real life.

A strange and tragic case happened in Sweden last summer. A sixteen-year-old boy went out with a girl who wasn't his girlfriend. The girlfriend became furious. The boy regretted what he had done and wanted to prove to his girlfriend that he only belonged to her. So how could he prove that? The girl sent the boy numerous text messages and demanded that the boy must kill the other girl to prove his love for her, the true girlfriend. In the end, the desperate boyfriend obeyed and strangled his girlfriend's rival to death.

What strikes me most about this case is how a girl's life was turned into a means for a boy to prove his love for another girl. The other girl's life was expendable, since it had to be sacrificed so that the boy could prove his true feelings for his girlfriend. The boy's true feelings were more important than a girl's life. The boy and the girl were both sent to doctors to have their mental health examined, and both were declared perfectly sane. I believe that they reacted and reasoned the way they did because of the morals and ethics of the youth culture they were immersed in, and I actually believe that this youth culture may have told them that girls are less valuable than boys. Interestingly, the girl who egged her boyfriend on had absolutely no more respect for the other girl's life than the boy had.

I think that if fiction often portrays certain kinds of people as expendable, as people who can be sacrificed in order to elicit interesting reactions in others, then that does something to some people who partake of this fiction. I think it changes, very subtly, the way some people may view the very value of the lives of the people who are often sacrificed in fiction.

Now suppose that some people write a fic where they kill precisely the kind of person who is usually killed in such fics. And suppose, too, that they insist that their choice of victim was sheer coincidence which doesn't have any deeper meaning at all. To me their adherence to a general pattern, coupled with their denial that their adherence to the pattern exists, means theat they are accepting a troubling subtext of the society they live in.

I remember watching a crazy comedy from the late 1970s. In that movies a policeman was killed - and it so happened that he was the only black policeman, indeed the only black person, of that movie. I found his death troubling. If he was a "token black" of that movie, was it necessary to kill him? Was he present as some kind of anomaly only to be killed?

Or how about if there had been one Jew in a story, and one person in the story was killed? And what a coincidence, the victim was the Jew? Wouldn't many people say that the killing of this one Jewish character in the story made the whole story smack of antisemitism?

In most works of fiction the number of important male characters outweigh the number of female characters. That makes it doubly painful when the female characters are killed. Not only are they not sufficiently important to be present in the story in large numbers, but those few who are there can be killed, too. And this only underscores their lack of importance.

Ann

A small observation: LnC gave Lois and Clark an irritating rival each: Mayson Drake flirted with Clark and Dan Scardino with Lois. Dan Scardino was sent packing, but he wasn't killed. Mayson... well, she was a woman, so she had to be killed, hadn't she?

Ann

Lynn wrote:
I suspect you meant that tongue-in-cheek but thought I'd comment anyway.

You'd have to look at the motivation for the crimes - usually the women are killed because they got in the way of a criminal or because they were victcms of domestic violence or random victims of serial killers, not becuase they were worth something.

In the case of death by natural causes, you have to asses the motivation of the author by looking at how the story itself is told - whether it focuses on the surffering of the survivor or on the suffering of the person who is dying. If it focuses mostly on the suffering of the survivor that's significant.

btw it was Pam, earlier in the thread, and not Yvonne who made the observation Lynn mentionned. (although Yvonne may very well agree with what Pam said of course )

The comment about a real life analogy being inappropriate for a fictional character is interesting. I'm less certain because one of the things we strive for as writers is to reflect the emotions of real life, even when we're writing fantasies. (unless we're writing comedies in which case there are no rules ) Why else do stories have the power to move us? They do so because they strike a chord with us, something we recognise as true, something that is how it is with real people.

I'll use the story Pam mentioned - Wendy's 'For the Greater Good'. That moment of recognition for me was when Lois lies to her daughter who was afraid her daddy was going to die. Lois told her he wasn't going to die, but believing in her heart that there was no hope. It's the reality of that scene that makes it so powerful. I've lied to a child in a situation like that - I suspect I'm not the only one who has.

c.

I just came across this thread, and can't resist commenting.

I agree with Ann that there are cultures, including some youth cultures, where women are seen as less valuable than men. One example would be a street gang where the measure of someone's worth is a combination of their physical strength and their willingness to be violent toward others. Men with those values and the women who "buy in" to those values are going to see men as more valuable, because men as a whole are stronger and more agressive than women.

I also agree that Clark is seen as more valuable than Lois, but it has nothing to do with gender. Clark can save the world, and in the LnC universe has already done it. Lois can do great things with her writing, but she cannot save the thousands of lives that Superman can unless she becomes Ultrawoman permanently.

But I would disagree that Lois is expendable. In fact, I would argue that if you read everything in the archive, Lois comes across as a more complete character than Clark. She is smart, beautiful, strong ("Mad Dog Lane") and successful. Lois is the "top banana" that Clark has to catch up to. Perry, one of the two wisest people in the LnC universe, cherishes her. (The other wise person is Martha, who also comes to cherish her.) Yes, she has issues with family and men from the past; if she didn't, she'd either have no flaws or no warmth, she'd be a less interesting character, and she'd either be married already or she would have no interest in a romantic relationship. Female FOLCs identify with Lois and they write her as the character that they would like to be.

Clark needs Lois in a way that she does not initially need him. Clark without Lois is an intriguing contradiction, the strongest man in the world who has trouble surviving on his own. So a deathfic about Clark without Lois is more interesting than a deathfic about Lois without Clark. There are lots of human widows out there and, while I feel sorry for them, I am not particularly interested in reading about them. There are very few Kryptonian widowers out there, which makes reading about them more interesting. Also please note that Lois is irreplaceable. There might be some fics where Clark remarries, but the only popular one that I can think of right now is Nan's "Home" series, and in that one the woman he marries is Lois reincarnated.

Finally, there is one character who is truly expendable, who is routinely killed off in the LnC universe, and that is Jonathan. Clark and Martha mourn him, but that is never the center of a fic. They both manage to move on. It is a literary cliche; the hero must lose his father in order to fully mature. But he retains his connection with his mother, because she is his source of healing and wisdom. While there could be some fics out there where Martha dies and Jonathan is alive, I can't think of any. So it's not an issue of one gender being more expendable than the other.

Just my $.02.

While I think there is plenty of historical and societal evidence to support some of Ann's beliefs I tend not to give it much credence in regards to our fandom and the fics that are written.

To me the most telling factor in any 'deathfic' (a term I despise) is not who dies, but who lives. As Pam pointed out, most of the writers in this fandom who would venture a go at such a storyline are more interested in examining Clark's angst, therefore someone Clark loves would, by default, have to be the one to go. And Clark loves no one more than Lois.

Even given my 'reputation' I can only remember couple of fics where I included a non-phoenix death. In one, Clark had died on New Krypton and Lois was confronted with the idea of impregnating herself in order to raise a child of Clark's. And in the other, Clark dies on New Krypton and Lois dies because of a dangerous investigation. They were reunited spiritually in the end. (Yeah, hokey I know, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Besides, it was Lois' wish being granted.)

Death can be a useful tool in a story to bring about the most extreme emotions in another character. And, again, the victim is usually chosen to allow the reader to experience these extreme emotions of the lead of choice, be he he or she she. Unfortunately, such plot points seldom lead to happy endings, and lets face it happy endings are the preferred outcome in this fandom.

Tank (who points out that both Wonder Woman and Supergirl have died in the comics and both got better)

Originally posted by C-mom:

I don't agree with that statement. Jonathan has not been killed a lot in LnC. He has indeed been killed in the larger Superman mythos, though.

Siegel and Shuster introduced Clark's foster parents but never allowed the parents to be part of the Superman stories. (The kids were young and didn't want their own parents around, no?)

DC then created the character of Superboy, young Clark Kent, and suddenly Jonathan and Martha became very important, as they had to be there for their son all the time.

Superman and Superboy lived different lives and seemingly inhabited different universes. But DC realized that Superboy had to grow into Superman one day. And they decided that when Superboy had grown into a man, his parents couldn't be around. Everybody knew that they were never around in Superman's life.

So DC decided that Jonathan and Martha must die at some point during those transitional years when Superboy grew into a man. I actually read the story where they died. I know that they died at the same time and for the same reason, although I can't remember what it was.

Anyway, DC created the idea that when Superman is an adult, his foster parents are dead.

Along came Superman the movie in 1977. This movie said that Jonathan died when Clark was eighteen years old, and that was when Clark decided that he had to leave Smallville and grow into a man. Martha, however, lived on. So it was the movie that created the idea that Jonathan died while Martha lived on.

In 1986, John Byrne revamped the comics. He brought back both Jonathan and Martha into the adult Superman's life. Byrne made Jonathan and Martha important to the adult Superman.

When LnC premiered in 1993(?), they took their cue from the comics, so Jonathan and Martha were alive and very active in their son's life.

Then came Smallville. The show has been running for a million seasons, and the writers have to come up with new, interesting story ideas all the time. One such idea they came up with was that young Clark Kent should have sex with Lana. Another idea was that, yes, let's kill Jonathan the way they did in that old movie! So they did.

Interestingly, if I have got things correctly, Smallville tried to suggest that it was Lana who was going to die. Since she was the main character along with Superboy in that show, she couldn't die. So Clark somehow saves her, but at the cost of his father's life. In Smallville, Clark sacrifices Jonathan for Lana.

Ah, but in LnC, Clark came within an inch of killing Lois himself with his freezing breath in order to save his parents. That Clark would have killed Lois for his parents' sake.

Lois "came back from the dead" in that episode. To do so is an "anomaly" for a woman. Therefore that storyline has been "rectified" in LnC fic, so that Lois died and stayed dead. But TOGOM has never been "rectified" so that Clark died, shot by a kryptonite bullet. There has also never been a fic where TOGOM happened at a time when Clark was powerless after a kryptonite episode, so that he could be killed by a bullet like an ordinary man.

Killing Clark can't be that hard in a world where it sometimes seems as if everybody and his aunt is in possession of kryptonite.

Back to the idea that Jonathan is dead. Smallville reinforced the picture that had been presented by Superman the Moive. And lo and behold, now the comics have picked up the ball. Yes, Jonathan is dead in the comics, too. And if you saw Superman Returns, you must have seen how Superman fell to the world in flames, to be cradled by Martha the way Mary held her dead son Jesus in her arms. In Superman Returns things are the way they are in Smallville and the comics - Jonathan is dead, but Martha is alive.

Here in LnC, however, I think there have been very few fics where Jonathan has died. But if we start seeing more of the Jonathan deathfics here, too, it will because the larger Superman mythos seeps into this little fandom, too.

Which makes me wonder what it will take to kill off Lois officially and permanently in the larger Superman world. Superman doesn't need Lois now, does he, now that Lana is around?

Originally posted by Tank:

I don't know anything about Wonder Woman. But Supergirl came back from the dead? Really?

The Supergirl I grew up with was Linda Danvers. She well and truly died in a major DC story arc whose name I have forgotten. (Maybe Crisis on Infinite Earths?)



Yes, Crisis on Infinite Earths it was. Here Linda Danvers is dead, both as herself and as Supergirl.

Linda Danvers has never come back. Yes, the Supergirl character has been brought back, but she is "played by another girl", so to speak. To me, that doesn't mean that the girl who died has become alive again. Imagine that Clark Kent were to die. Then another guy comes along, named, oh, Brad Wilkins, and he becomes the new Superman. Does that mean that Superman has come back from the dead? Not if Clark Kent is the real person and the one that really matters. Similarly, you can kill Lois off and give Clark a new girlfriend. The "girlfriend function" has survived, even if the girl who used to be the girlfriend is dead.

So the way I see it, we have seen more than one Supergirl, but the Supergirl(s) that died have not come back again. Unless the new Supergirl has indeed died and risen from the dead without my noticing it.

Ann

Originally posted by Lynn S. M.:

I'm familiar with this argument from outside these boards. I certainly can't prove that the people who voice them are wrong, but I strongly disagree nevertheless. First of all, do you see any signs in the world today that women are seen as being worth more than men?

I agree that the "death stories" that get the most publicity in the media tend to be "death of women" stories. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the death of the women are considered particularly deplorable. It could be that these cases are considered titillating and sensational instead. Just a few days ago, a Swedish artist named Lars Vilks was named the target of a female Armerican jihadist, "Jihad Jane". Lars Vilks commented in Swedish media that he loved the idea of a female jihadist, "because every time the murderer is a woman there is an element of sex in the case, and that is so delicious". Similarly, perhaps, a sufficient number of people may think that there is an element of sex every time a woman is murdered, and maybe that makes the "death of women" stories worth devoting a lot of space to in the media?

I want to return to the roots of our western civilization again, and how its roots may affect our present-day thinking. One of the important roots of western civilazation and philosophy is ancient Greece and its myths and general thinking. Ancient Greece was an extremely sexist society, or at least it looks that way when you study the stories from that time. In them, women are often killed, but not because they are regarded as particularly valuable.

To me, the very essence of ancient Greek thinking can be summarized in the story about Agamemnon and his family. Agamemnon's brother, Menelaos, had had his pride mortally wounded when his wife ran away from him to follow Prince Paris to the city of Troy. Menelaos demanded that his brother Agamemnon, a mighty warrior king, must lead a fleet of battle ships and sail to Troy to start a war there.

Under the circumstances, Agamemnon was duty-bound to go to Troy. However, the winds wouldn't blow the way they ought to blow to bring the ships to Troy, and Agamemnon grew desperate. So what did he do? Well, he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the gods to get a favorable wind, of course.



Iphigenia on her way to being sacrificed. Sacrificing her was okay.

The way I read the Greek myth, it doesn't blame Agamamnon for killing his daughter. Why, he was duty-bound to help his brother and to bring his warships to Troy. What is a great warrior king to do, if nothing but the sacrificing of his daughter's life will achieve that end?

Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, however, didn't forgive her husband for killing her daughter. So when Agamemnon returned victorious from the Trojan war, Clytemnestra killed him.

The greek myth didn't blame Agamemnon for killing his daughter. It did, however, very strongly blame Clytemnestra for killing her husband to avenge the death of her daughter. What treason that was!



Clytemnestra and her lover kill Agamemnon. Killing him was not okay.

Clytemnestra and Agamemnons son, Orestes, now felt duty-bound to kill his mother to avenge the death of his father. So he did kill his mother:



Orestes killing his mother. Killing her was okay.

Now the furies pursued Orestes all over the land, demanding that he must be killed for murdering his mother. But just when they were about to kill him, the goddess Athena intervened. Athena declared that Orestes was right to kill his own mother to avenge the death of his father, because, said Athena, the father is the child's only true parent. Apparently the child was thought to exist fully formed but tiny inside its father's loins. Then it was transferred into the mother's womb which acted as an incubator, so that the tiny child could grow to its proper size. Incidentally, the Greeks believed that the "thermostat" of the womb was often off, and when that happened the child's natural masculinity shrivelled and died in the womb, and the child was born a girl.



The goddess Athena, exonerating the male murderers of females and telling humanity that a mother is not the true parent of her children.

So in summary, we have a story where a father kills his daughter, and that was right. To avenge the death of the girl the wife killed her husband, and that was wrong. To avenge the death of the father the son kills his mother, and that was right. And in the end the goddess Athena intervenes and declares that women aren't even true parents of their own children. This way, Athena puts down her own gender and sides with the men against the people of her own sex.

To me, this fic is the essence of the idea which says that it is okay to kill women but not to kill men, and women are certainly not worth as much as men.

I realize that the story of Agamemnon and his family doesn't have a lot to do with the story premise that was presented by Lynn. I just wanted to say that I don't believe that the preponderance of "death-of-women" fics in any way proves that women are considered more valuable than men in our western society. I think, instead, that the person who writes "death-of-women" fics to explore the grief of the widower is "playing by the rules" instead, and the rules actually say that it is more okay to kill a woman than to kill a man. Certainly the "sacrifice-ability" of women exists in fiction at least, which many people read to have their general world view reinforced and justified. At least I think that is usually the case.

Ann

Well, Ann, if you're going to reference several thousand years of history, you will certainly find expendable women there. For most of history, and in some parts of the world today, women are indeed considered inferior. Reference the "honor killings" in Islamic culture, where if a girl mis-behaves, her parents/brothers/relatives are expected to murder her. This is horrific and I don't think anyone on these boards would approve. Even the Superman mythos is grounded in a similar culture (less violent, with different hang-ups, but still emphasizing males over females), originally. This would be why I don't read old comics (I don't read new ones either, but for other reasons).

What any of this has to do with fanfic is a whole 'nother question. This is a group of people who prefer the "Lois & Clark" version of Superman precisely *because* of Lois's supreme importance in this particular sub-section of the Super-world. I'm not aware of any other version where Lois is treated as absolutely essential to the creation and function of Superman. We like that. That's one of the biggest reasons we're here.

So please confine yourself to fanfic examples when trying to convict us all of hating women, okay?

PJ

Lynn, regarding the story idea you proposed. If I get you correctly, an important reason for the premise you suggested was that you wanted to examine Clark's guilt. And that is certainly a worthy topic to explore.

But the question is what kind of guilt you want to concentrate on. Is it the guilt that comes from knowing that you have done something horribly wrong, which has led to awful consequences? Or is it the perceived guilt of having caused something horrible which probably wasn't your fault?

If Lois dies of cancer, then it probably wasn't Clark's fault. In LnC canon, as well in the larger Superman mythos canon, Superman's X-ray vision isn't dangerous to humans. So chances are that if Lois gets cancer, it wasn't Clark who caused it.

But even if it does turn out that Clark's X-ray vision was dangerous, it would have been very hard for Clark to know or suspect this. If Clark obsesses over his failure to realize the danger of his X-ray vision and take precautions, it is because he is holding himself up to an impossibly high standard. And that is of course a subject worthy of exploring. So is that what you want to write about, Lynn? Clark blaming himself for something that he is wholly or mostly innocent of?

Another possibility is to explore the guilt that Clark ought to feel if he really and truly has been the cause of something terrible. And while the idea of Lois's cancer is non-canon, the other scenario, with Clark truly causing another person's death, can easily be explored by just very slightly changing a perfectly canon concept. Namely, that Clark came within a hair's breadth of killing Lois with his freezing breath when he wanted her to appear dead in order to save his parents.

There is already a story in the Archive where Clark is unable to revive Lois after he froze her, and she dies. Interestingly, though, in this well-written and moving story Clark's guilt isn't explored. My impression is that Clark in that fic isn't feeling guilty. Maybe he is thinking that it wasn't his idea to freeze Lois, it was her idea, so he isn't guilty of her death. Or maybe he is too devastated by her death to feel anything at all except paralysing grief and bereavement.

My point is that Clark really, truly almost did kill Lois. It would take so little to change the scenario to one where Lois dies for real. And since no story has been written so far which examines Clark's guilt for really, truly killing Lois, the field is wide open for you to do so!

Ann

Pam wrote:

Totally agree with your observation about our liking of for the treatment of Lois Lane in LNC. Very obviously it's one of the biggest reasons we're here.

Although I do think that Lois Lane has been developed as a character who is essential to the *functioning* of Clark Kent/Superman both in the comics and in the movies.

I kinda enjoy Ann's tours through past culture, whether it's Greek legends or Victorian art. Comparing the themes there to the themes in our fanfic is interesting. But then I like to analyse things:) ( over- analyse, I know your thinking)

What we write in fanfic and what we enjoy reading don't come out of an intellectual void - our parameters were shaped long ago. Heck there are university courses (not serious ones of course ) that draw parallels between comic book themes and heroes and classic myths and legends.

I've never had the impressiion that Ann is trying to 'convict us all of hating women" at all. Holy Hyperbole, Pam! But seriously, though, I do have the impression that Ann is providing us with some of the cultural themes that underlie our culture. And our fanfic, however lowly it is, is part of the larger culture.

changing gears:

Martha and Jonathan killed off in our fics - I wonder if the reason for Jonathan being the one to be 'disappeared' is that of the two, he's the one more likely statistically. He's probably a couple of years older than Martha, he's male, and he's overweight. don't forget that both are likely about 60 when first we meet them and in most of the few fics in which either or both are 'dead' it's next gen fic and they died natural deaths (which doesn't make it any less sad but...)

c

I have no preferences in either direction. As far as I am concerned, the *actual* cause of the cancer isn't as relevant as there being a realistic possibility that Clark *may* have caused it.

Is his X-Ray vision really safe for humans? Obviously, one zap doesn't burn people to cinders, but neither does a zap from an X-ray machine. Repeated exposure from such a machine, however, can result in carcinogenous mutations. AFAIK, there is nothing within LnC (I am not considering the greater Superman universe, since this fanfic would take place within the LnC one) that indicates that Dr. Klein or anyone else has performed any sort of experiments to prove that repeated exposure to Clark's special vision is safe for humans. It is just assumed to be the case, and yet I can see no basis for such an assumption. In fact, the first time I saw We Have a Lot to Talk About, the first thing I thought about when Clark dried Lois off was that that couldn't have been good for her long term health.

Not really...Whether or not his vision is truly in the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to be labelled "X-Ray" or not, surely *somebody* somewhere in that universe would have opined that exposure to it could be hazardous. If so, Clark could easily have asked Dr. Klein to check it out. And even if none of this had occurred to anyone in the universe before, and if everything you wrote above were 100% accurate, "woulda, coulda, shouldas" appear to be at least as much a part of Clark's makeup as they do of humans. Rationality has little to do with such emotions.

Which would be completely in character for him...

Again, I personally don't want to write the story. I try to keep my stories light-hearted; I have enough stress and angst in RL, and I don't want to spend my precious leisure time feeling the characters' angst. If you, or anyone else, wanted to take my germ of the story idea and run with it, it would be that author's prerogative to choose the direction the story would take.

As is the vast majority of fanfic -- after all, if we only stuck to canon, why bother reading the fanfic when we could go right to the source and watch the show instead?

That is true, but I imagine that that has probably been explored to death (so to speak) within fanfic already. Plus, he froze her at her own insistence and for a worthy cause. I think if he were to have caused her cancer for something as relatively trivial as not wanting to expend the energy to walk across the room to see what she was doing in the room next door, or to heat her up when she has cold feet or hands (in other words, her cancer served no greater goal such as saving other people's lives), then that would be more tragic and would induce a lot more guilt in Clark.

Really? Such a story hasn't been written (at least that you know of, and I get the distinct impression that you have read quite a lot of the fanfic out there)? Wow! Even so, I have no desire to be the one to write it -- I'd much rather make myself and others smile with my writings than bring everybody down. For me personally, the cathartic value of tragedies is grossly overrated. But anyone who does appreciate such catharsis is more than welcome to write such a story.

cheers,
Lynn

I can't believe I'm getting involved in this, but as I had to do a lot of research into the story of Agamemnon for two of my AS Levels, I feel I must wade into this discussion. There are lots of different retellings of stories surrounding Atreus' family (Atreus being the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus), and in some, perhaps most, Agamemnon *did* sacrifice Iphigenia at Aulis. But I am aware that there is at least one version in which the goddess Artemis replaced Iphigenia with an animal, I think a goat, for Agamemnon to sacrifice. Iphigenia became a priestess and then later helped her brother Orestes while he was escaping the Furies after killing Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus (Agamemnon's cousin and Clytaemnestra's lover), but I will admit that I don't know so much about this part of the story as it was mainly Odysseus, Troy and Cassandra I had been concerned with.

Having said all that, and trying to get back onto the original subject, I think Lynn's story idea is an interesting one, if someone wished to navigate this minefield that has opened up to write it. And (with a bit of luck) this is all I'm going to say on this topic!

- Alisha