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I have no good answer to that, Kathy. I do think you are wrong when you say

where you imply (or so I think) that many LnC fans truly believe that Lois might find (real) love with someone else. Just like I never saw that as a possibility when I read the comics as a kid, so I've never seen it as a possibility in the LnC fics I've read on these boards. Where has Lois ever moved on, except in Becky Bain's Ad Astra, Per Aspera where she was rather cruelly abandoned by Clark and married another man many, many years later and found a sort of quiet peace with him? Okay, there are also two Terry-fics where Clark either died or divorced Lois, and Lois remarried afterwards. But she was so unhappy that her new husbands had to go back in time and change history so that Lois could be reunited with Clark. That's not what I call Lois being happy with another man. So, Kathy, I think you are wrong when you suggest that many LnC fans believe that Lois might find happiness with another man (if that is what you really suggested - I might well have misunderstood you). In short, I have seen no signs that there is either a supply of or a demand for Lois-moves-on-and-finds-happiness fics on these boards. But there is a supply - a meagre one, but not a non-existent one - of fics where Clark falls in love with another woman and finds happiness, either for the rest of his life as in Ray's It Might Have Been and Classicalla's A New Hero, or temporarily as in Laura's new fic, where Clark was extremely happy with Lana until she suddenly died. I will also insist that there are more Lois deathfics than Clark deathfics posted here. There is a surplus of stories where Clark is widowed and alone or remarried to another woman and happy, and there is a shortage of stories where Lois is widowed and alone or remarried to another man and happy (not that I want to read such Lois stories).

But as so many other people have pointed out, there are really so few stories posted where Lois dies and/or where Clark moves on. And there are so, so many stories where they are in love and together. Why do I focus on the very few stories where (to me) awful things happen? How can I explain my reaction? I don't have a good or rational explanation, except that the stories that hurt me make me hurt so badly. I can't really explain, but let me try to tell a story:

Imagine a girl who was born to parents who were incredibly patriotic Americans. They named their daughter Georgina Freedom, in honor of George Washington and the freedom you can find in America. When Gerogina grew up, she too became incredibly patriotic, and her number one idol was George Washington. Georgina eventually started a fanclub for George Washington, and the members of this fanclub were encouraged to write stories about George Washington's heroic life. The George stories soon became popular, more and more people started to write them, and eventually they started diverging a little from "canon". After all, not everything was known about George Washington's life, and the fans started to "fill in the holes" with their own stories. Gradually the stories became slightly more fanciful. When someone came up with "a new idea about George", many of the members of the fanclub were grateful and supportive.

But then something happened. One member wrote a "George story" which crossed a line. Never mind how it crossed it. Most members of the fanclub found the story acceptable and were not upset, though the overwhelming majority preferred the "normal" George stories. A few members liked the new story idea so much, however, that they decided to write their own George fics in the same vein. And so a handful of the new George stories circulated on the internet.

Georgina Freedom was absolutely horrified. To her, the new stories were downright sacrilegeous. You'd think that with so many other George stories around, Georgina would be more generous and tolerant of of a few "alt-ideas" about her hero. Not Georgina! After she had read these stories, they burned themselves into her soul like acid, festering and aching as they kept her wondering how anyone could think of George that way. And what, she asked herself, would happen if more and more people got to know those stories and actually started thinking of George that way themselves? It was not as if George was alive and could defend himself.

And that is the end of my story, and the moral is... I don't exactly have one. Except perhaps that when you care too deeply about a hero who is either fictional or dead, seeing him presented in way that is awful to you is going to hurt a lot. And the fact that there are so many other stories that don't hurt you won't make the story that does hurt you hurt you any less. If someone hands you an enormous bunch of flowers and there is just one nettle among them, that nettle is still going to sting you if you are careless enough to touch it.

Is my hyper-sensitivity and downright allergy to some LnC stories reasonable? Is it normal that they can sting me like nettles? Of course not. What can I say? I'm not reasonable when it comes to my preferences about Lois and Clark. Kathy, as you pointed out, I can't fully separate what I know about the comics and movies versions of Lois and Clark from what I see of them on these boards. And because I know that Lois gets short-changed in most of the generic world of Superman, and because that hurts me a lot, seeing her getting short-changed on these boards, too, is going to hurt me even worse. And that is true even if we are only talking about a small number of stories.

But, Kathy, this is a very relevant question:

I had no right to assume that. You are right about what you said about Zoomway's boards. The true Dean fans, who care about Dean rather than about Lois and Clark, will read about the latest Dean gossip on Zoom's boards instead of reading fanfic about about Lois and Clark over here.

And now I don't think I can make myself a lot clearer, no matter how muddy my thought processes have been here.

Ann