Telling people not to write Lois Deathfic: Yes, this is poor sportsmanship. Or ficsmanship. I don't know the right word here.
However, it *is* worth bringing up as a general point of discussion with an aim to encouraging more variety and thought in fic.
Telling people not to write about certain themes is censorship. And I am opposed to censorship.
Is this subject worth a reasonable discussion? Yes. Should we encourage "more variety and thought in fic"? Yes.
But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is like many others, in that it was begun to protest Lois dying in fan fiction, specifically fan fiction posted on this site.
If we were being deluged with a spate of Lois deathfics (we're not), if writers were treating Lois' death as a mere inconvenience in Clark's life (I know of no such instance - please let me know if there are any such), if Lois was written as a one-dimensional generic character whose death was used only to show us how profound Superman's respect for all life might be, then I would join the chorus. I would object to any writer marginalizing Lois Lane. She is, indeed, essential to the fiction posted on this website, and to the love story continued by the tales written and posted here.
Discussion rights are surely not limited because a fanfic has been written on any given theme. I don't read deathfic. Period. But do I have views on the ease with which we kill off female protagonists and gush about the suffering of the entitled male?
You betcha.
You have the right not to read deathfic, Carol. And I respect your right. But since you don't read deathfic, are you sure that you're accurate in characterizing any female protagonist's death as "easy?" Or that "we...gush about the suffering of the entitled male?"
Tossing every Lois deathfic into such a category isn't discussing the issue. It's profiling. And doing so reveals a strong bias in your worldview, just as any author who writes female characters as disposable reveals a strong bias in his or her worldview.
Nearly every time a dead-Lois story pops up, a thread such as this one either appears or is revived. My experience is that the same thing doesn't happen with dead-Clark stories. If it did, I'd have little or no objection to these threads.
But the propensity of some FOLCs to protest Lois' death without balancing it with protests of Clark's death bothers me. And I think it has a dampening effect on writers. I've written two stories where Lois and Clark are separated permanently, once by death and once by a personality change in Lois, and both times I've been clobbered pretty hard. I accept that not everyone will love every word I post here. People just aren't that way, and not every story touches every reader. But we're going to squash someone's creativity and drive if we aren't more careful.
If we want to have a discussion of deathfics in general, I think that's a good idea. If we want to discuss Lois deathfics or Clark deathfics specifically, that's probably a good idea too. But condemning any genre out of hand is a bad idea and leads to a form of censorship, whether mandated by the sysops or by the tenor of public reaction. It would be akin to someone condemning nfic because he or she dislikes reading erotic literature. Hey, if you don't like nfic,
don't read it! It doesn't mean that you should condemn its existence.
Same goes with deathfic.
