It simply occurred to me to clarify this. I don't believe that the prevalence of Lois deathfics as opposed to Clark deathfics are indicative so much of misapprehensions on our part as the demographics on the boards. We are clearly a majority of women here, and I haven't yet read a Lois deathfic written by a man. (unless it's Tank, but then he's just a naturally evil sort of man and cannot be counted.
) My theory is that as women, we asociate ourselves with Lois' role in the relationship. Not because we relate most to her, but because she is the feminine vessel of this relationship. Why do we want to believe in their love? Because we like to fantasise ourselves being a woman like Lois, who is able to find true and unconditional love for the rest of our lives. She is the wife, the mother, the girl-friend in whose role we cast ourselves. It is through her that we act out our fantasies.
Sometimes our fantasies include thoughts of death. Not death itself, of course, but how we would like our death to affect our partners. We like to fantasise about a man who would go to pieces if we left them, who would never again find true love, perhaps, and remain always faithful to our memory. It's a pure ego-trip for women, that we call 'high romance'. Or we would like to feel good about ourselves by helping him find love again and letting him get on with his life. In all cases, it's not something we would want in real life at all, but something fun to imagine, which is what fiction is, really. We sure as hell don't want to die, no matter how much we love our partners and there is really nothing romantic about being dead for real.
So why don't we kill Clark? Well, why would we want to? To a woman, that's associative of losing our own lovers and husbands. It's fun to wonder how much others would mourn us, but a highly uncomfortable thing to deal with how much we would mourn another. So unless it's a cathartic experience, I honestly don't see that Clark deathfics would hold a great deal of appeal for a woman who's just after a little romance and an ego-trip on the side.
So if I think Lois deathfics aren't that big of a deal, why am I still so interested in your topic? It's because you said that people told you moral stories as a child and expected children,
regardless of gender to feel good about girls dying and bad about boys dying. In that case, it moves from a simple case of gender-based preference to an all-encompassing social commentary. It is this aspect of the topic I am intersted in, although I don't think Lois deathfics bear any relation to the said topic at all. Which is why I'm asking we dispense with the Lois deathfic theory to pursue what I feel is a more valid topic.
