Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Types of love and "L & C: tNaoS"

Sorry, Barbara, but I have to question another thing you wrote in your previous post:

In my opinion, what I know about LnC: TNAoS (and what I know about it I have chiefly learnt from reading about it here) suggests that the TV show gave us more evidence of Clark turning down Lois than the other way around.

In my opinion, Clark rejected Lois when he turned her down as Superman in that first season episode, and his rejection of her wasn't much better than her rejection of him as Clark. Yes, I can see that he found it hard to trust her with his secret when she was involved with Luthor. But why couldn't he at least warn her against Luthor as Superman, when he knew that she would almost certainly listen to him as Superman? She dismissed what he told her as Clark, so warning her against Luthor as Clark did no good. But refusing to warn her of Luthor as Superman, he pretty much made sure that she wouldn't receive and really hear the warnings she needed to hear about this criminal. So in my opinion, Clark's "love" for Lois in that episode really was mostly jealousy and a hopeless need to be loved by Lois for being Clark. In other words, it wasn't really would we could call unselfish love.

And what about Clark's decision to leave Lois, his fiancée, and go off to New krypton and fight a war? Okay, I can understand that he would feel obliged to help the people on New Krypton. But how - oh, please, how - could he consider it his duty to marry this New Kryptonian woman whom he had never seen or heard of in his life?

I read FDK on Becky Bain's story on the boards a year or two ago, and the poster (who loved the story very much) talked about how the story was about doing one's duty. Let me respectfully suggest that it wasn't Clark's duty to marry Zara no matter how you look at it. Clark's biological parents had sent him to the Earth, not to New Krypton. His foster parents had raised him as their own son according to their own beliefs and traditions. He had proposed to Lois, telling her he wanted to love her and be hers for all time, and she had given the same promise to him and pledged her heart to him.

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And then, in Becky Bain's story, Clark just up and leaves for New Krypton after giving the matter some thought for just a short while, certainly no more than a week. He not only goes to New Krypton, but he marries Zara right away, too. And he didn't just marry her, but he certainly consummated his relationship with her, too. And he had children with her. And he never sent any kind of word to Lois to inform her of what had happened. Like a sailor's fiancée, Lois walked the "shores" of the Earth for years and years and years, wondering about her loved one who had left her so many years ago, and who had promised her to love her forever. Finally, after a long, long time, she married another man. And then, after still more years, a teenaged boy arrived in Kansas, close to where Lois was now living with her husband. It turned out that Clark had sent his surviving son to Earth to keep him safe from the war that kept ravaging New Krypton! The boy stayed with Lois and her husband and their son, whom Lois had poignantly named Clark. Lois and her family grew to love the boy. But then, after several years, Clark finally returned to the Earth - but only to bring his son back to New Krypton, so the boy could marry his birth wife. Ah yes, because Clark had adopted the sexist culture of New Krypton so thoroughly that he even had his own son birth-married.

All of this didn't happen in the TV show, certainly. But still, wasn't it a most horrible rejection of Lois, his fiancée, to go to New Krypton to fight a war and marry a woman that the New Kryptonian had decided all on their own was Clark's birth wife???? Did Lois ever reject or let down Clark in a way that even comes close to what Clark did to Lois when he agreed to marry Zara?

And, Barbara, like you point out, there is the Contact thing, too. So did Clark turn down Lois as badly as Lois turned down Clark? Most definitely, in my opinion. And if people find it easier to imagine that Lois would turn down Clark than that Clark would turn down Lois, couldn't that just possibly have something to do with double standards in the assessment of men's and women's behaviour?

Ann