Well, I find it interesting that I am the first one to bring up the question of the death penalty at all. If the LNC version of Metropolis couldn't have sentenced Lois to death, then in time, Lois's name could have been cleared, and she and Clark could have been reunited. Lois would still have been a victim of the injustice of the legal system, but things could have been put more or less right again for her and Clark. And Catherine's story wouldn't have been a deathfic.

Like I said, I respect deathfics that shed some serious light on the world we live in. But in my opinion, if you tell a story about an innocent woman being executed and then fail to discuss the death penalty, you are not trying to discuss the injustice of the real world. You are trying to break your readers' heart, but you are not encouraging them to think and draw conclusions.

I have checked the comment threads about Catherine's story and the comment thread here. No one before me thought of even bringing up the question of the death penalty. I take that to mean that Catherine wasn't too interested in the question herself, and that she didn't write her story so that people were encouraged to challenge the fairness of the death penalty itself.

Let me return to Clark's position on the question of the death penalty. You'd think that, when he saw Lois being sentenced to death, he would have wondered what he himself might have done to other people, when he brought them to justice. Or did he bring them to "justice"? He should have asked himself if he had actually contributed to the execution of innocent people - if he had, indeed, innocent people's blood on his hands.

To me, this would be a legitimate story if it seriously discussed the death penalty, since the death penalty is the absolutely necessary prerequisite for Catherine's story to evolve the way it does. The fact that no one before me commented on the death penalty means, to me, that whatever Catherine was trying to accomplish with her story, it wasn't to make us ask ourselves the most crucial questions about the injustice of the judicial system in the world today. Catherine's purpose was only, as far as I can see, to make us feel extremely, extremely sorry for Clark.

And finally, because I feel so terribly bad about Lois and Clark deathfic, I would much appreciate it if deathfics here had to carry a compulsory deathfic warning.

Ann