Your mind powers will not work on me, Terry. I read that and I'm curious.
I wanted to consider this question:
how do we know that author A has presented Lois as in love with someone who has supplanted Clark as “the love of her life?” Or vice versa?
And add my own to it in the discussion as it resembles Terry's: Can Clark/Lois be moderately happy with someone else without it looking as if the person has has supplanted either as “the love of his/her life?” I think this is also an important question, because it's easy to see that not-Lois is not "the love of Clark's life" if a writer has Lois or Clark meet the other person after being in love, or overemphasises not-Lois' faults (or not-Clark's) or includes an obvious huge problem of any sort (domestic abuse, being controlling, cheating, ect).
So, as an example, when Mayson dislikes Superman, then it's easy to see where she and Clark can go wrong (and conversely where he and Lois can go right). It's another matter entirely if Clark and Mayson are "moderately happy" with each other to begin with. But this leads to another question: What makes "moderate happiness" anyway and how can a writer show this?
Going to the series for a guideline-- is there an example to follow of a not-Lois/Clark who doesn't have a huge flag indicating how wrong he/she is as far as our heroes as concerned? Scardino comes to mind (and here I might be way off my rocker, so someone correct me if he's signaled as blatantly not being for Lois the way, say, Mayson was--it's been a while) but the situation is different since by then Lois was already in love with Clark (and vice versa so neither actually had a chance to begin with).
Turning to fic for a sec. A similar situation happens in SQD's excellent When Galaxies Divide. I attach a spoiler warning, mild as it may be. If you (generic "you") haven't read it you should.
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Both Clark (as Kal-El) and Lois are involved with other people at different points in the fic. If I recall correctly (and someone please correct me, since I don't want to misrepresent the fic), Kal-El's Zara doesn't have feelings for him (providing the aformentioned "huge problem")and Lois meets Scardino only after she and Kal-El separate and she's already in love with Kal-El. While the fic is fair to Scardino, her already having loved Kal-El and the Zara situation makes it so that there is no question they are each other's "love of a lifetime." How could a writer make this clear, if, say Kal-El had some feeling for Zara or if Lois met Scardino first? That would be a different fic I think.
So the question ends up being: What about when a fic shows not-Lois/Clark already in a "moderately happy" relationship with one of our heroes? In what way can these not-Lois/Clarks be marked as not "the love of a lifetime" without it being obvious (like the overemphasis of faults or a huge problem is)? I want to be clear that I'm not making an argument here, I honestly don't know. I get the sense though that this would be a gut wrenching, tear your heart out type of fic. I suspect that's why good soon-to-be exes get offed so often. Things are cleaner that way.
On the side, I want acknowledge my terminology error. Sorry about that *hand to forehead*. What a dumb mistake!
I did take "canon" as the general "what I see in LnC," where characterization was really what I meant (aka interpretable stuff). I think I lost the difference between the two when the 'soul mate' thing came up. Lameness on my part. The sad thing is it probably won't be my last trip up thanks to the ever-increasing cobwebs in my head.
Thanks, Labrat, for pointing it out.
alcyone
