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Top Banana
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OP
Top Banana
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 1,483 |
Gat is too a real word, and I bet it's in one of my dictionaries. (The one that weighs 10 lbs.)
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Hack from Nowheresville
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Hack from Nowheresville
Joined: Sep 2006
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I *know*! To tell you the truth, every single example of Boggle craziness I retold in this chapter has happened to me with my family or my best friend. "Gat" is an argument we get into every time. I uphold that it is most certainly a word, though archaic in form. But the dictionary we looked it up in *didn't have it*. I still think it's a word, but I usually just let them cross it off anyway.  Oh, well. SmirkyRaven
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Columnist
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Columnist
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Bwahahaha, offical founder of Boggle Society of Smallville High. I don't know if it's just the stress of finals getting to me, but that cracked me up for a good long while. I can just see teenage Clark sitting in a class room playing Boggle all by himself. On a sadder note, aww  The last thing Clark needs right now is more insults from Lois about being Mr.Greenjeans. But he still needs to tell her! And call your parents, Clark!!!
"Lois Lane is Clark Kent's Superman." - Brian Miller
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Merriwether
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Merriwether
Joined: Apr 2003
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This story has been chugging right along and has stayed pretty compelling throughout, but I'm just a bit confused.
From what I gather, Lois and Supes have been 'hiding out' in her apartment for several days now. Aren't there people looking for them? Not just the bad guys, but folks like Perry and Henderson; aren't they wondering where the heck Lois might be? Even if they don't know that Lois and Superman have escaped, wouldn't Perry try to check up on her on some sort of regular basis?
Also, isn't anybody wondering where Clark is? I would have thought that Lois might at least have tried to contact Clark to let him know what had happened and that she and Superman had escaped. After all, he is supposed to be Superman's friend also. And even if we aren't at a stage where Lois thinks of Clark as her best friend yet, he is still her partner and someone she knows she can trust. He would sure be helpful in getting her stuff that she might need, so she wouldn't have to go out.
I know that the focus is on Lois and Superman, and that we are seeing everything from their points of view, but they have to think of the outside world some of the time, and discuss some sort of plan to deal with it, even if it's to just pretend that they don't exist until Superman is better. I would think it would be a more obvious topic of conversation than playing a game of whatever.
Tank (who isn't critcizing the story which he finds very good,but just wonders about some of the side issues that they seem to be ignoring)
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 9,362 |
Gat" is an argument we get into every time. I uphold that it is most certainly a word, though archaic in form. But the dictionary we looked it up in *didn't have it*. I still think it's a word, but I usually just let them cross it off anyway. My dictionary has it.  Gat vb. Arch. a past tense of get. Merriam-Webster Online has it, too: LabRat 
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly.
Aramis: Yes, sorry.
Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
The Musketeers
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Features Writer
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Features Writer
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Can't it be colloquial/urban speak for "gun" as well? Cute chapter.
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Posts: 3,145 Likes: 3
Pulitzer
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Pulitzer
Joined: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,145 Likes: 3 |
"Gat" was used as slang for a handgun in a lot of older gangster movies. I don't know if it came from real life or not.
To respond to Tank's very reasonable concerns, it seems to me that the irrepressible, amazing, undefeatable Lois Lane has gone walkabout and left in her place a woman frightened almost to death for the super-hero she has worshipped but now sees as less than god-like, but who is now falling in love with that same less than god-like hero. I think the time spent in that white room affected Lois mentally and emotionally as much as it affected Kal-El physically. She's not acting like herself yet, as if she is suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress. (Which would be a perfectly reasonable explanation to me.)
And when she does find out? Whew! That promises to be a really stinky kettle of fish! I can hardly imagine Lois accepting Clark's explanation and apology now. There's no way she'd believe that he was trying to protect her somehow, or that he just "couldn't find the proper time" to tell her. One of the previous feedback threads intimated that Clark was digging himself a really deep hole with Lois. I agree. In fact, this situation has the potential to destroy any deep trust Lois might have for Clark, and if you don't fully trust someone, how can you truly love that someone?
Life isn't a support system for writing. It's the other way around.
- Stephen King, from On Writing
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Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 9,362
Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Boards Chief Administrator Emeritus Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Joined: Apr 2003
Posts: 9,362 |
"Gat" was used as slang for a handgun in a lot of older gangster movies. I don't know if it came from real life or not. Would it have been because of the Gatling gun? I always thought that was a type of machine gun, though, not a handgun. But then what I know about guns you could put on the back of a postage stamp. And have lots of room left over. It just strikes me as a bit co-incidental that you have a gun called a Gatling and guns gansters used were called Gats. But OTOH, in the 'stranger than fiction' category of life it could very well just be that and nothing else - a co-incidence. Sorry for hijacking your thread with irrelevencies, Smirky! Am I forgiven if I say I'm waiting for you to finish this and send it to the Archive, at which point I'm going to read it and offer you lots of FDK? LabRat
Athos: If you'd told us what you were doing, we might have been able to plan this properly.
Aramis: Yes, sorry.
Athos: No, no, by all means, let's keep things suicidal.
The Musketeers
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Joined: Aug 2005
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Nobel Peace Prize Winner
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Nobel Peace Prize Winner
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 5,797 |
Hmmm, I'm feeling a bit annoyed after reading this, Smirky. You told me in the previous fdk thread that you are 19. Okay, I'm 51. And I've been a Lois and Superman fan since early 1969, for 37 years, almost 38. And I've spent a good many of those 37 years wondering why the - *expletive* - Clark won't tell Lois about his double identity. I hate his secrecy. People keep telling me that this site is devoted to the ABC TV show, and the ABC TV show Clark had very good reasons to lie to Lois, and I have no business judging Clark by what another guy with the same name did in the comics or the movies. I'm sure they are right, but guess what? I keep judging Clark because of his comic book sins and movie sins anyway. So the long and short of it is... tell me a story where Clark feels unable to tell Lois the truth about himself, and try to make me feel sorry for the poor guy because he has to keep lying. Guess what? You'll fail at making me sympathize with him. I'll seethe and simmer and think to my self, that no-good, lying, deceiving, cowardly, spineless, abject, expletive-expletive excuse for an alien posing as a man, why can't he be honest with Lois????  Okay, but... I love this, though: Morning came and Lois slept on. Clark had awoken from his latest nightmare and had finally determined that he had no desire to go back to sleep again, for now. He wiped sweat from his brow and took a deep breath, turning on his side to look over at Lois beside him.
She was so beautiful.
Slightly curled up, her hair in slight disarray. The fire of her eyes hidden as she looked the picture of perfect innocence. Like a little angel.
But if he called her that to her face she’d likely turn into an angel of doom, he thought with a slight smile.  And I love this, too: She still looked tired, despite the fact that since they got back they’d done nothing I]but[/I] rest. He wondered, now that he was awake and aware, how much Lois had slept while he was going in and out of consciousness during their imprisonment. It had seemed like she never slept at all—that she was always awake at his side, ready to help him. That she was always there for him. Yes, she did everything she could to save your life, flyboy. How about thanking her by telling her the truth about yourself? (By the way, Smirky, you missed one of those pesky little right-angle parenthesis signs needed to make italics here. Gaaaah! I'm Swedish, and sometimes when I try to explain things I feel just how inadequate my English is.) Her brow furrowed in sleep and she whimpered softly. Clark reached forward and brushed her hair from her brow gently.
“It’s all right, Lois,” he murmured. “It’s just a dream.”
She leaned unconsciously into his touch, then settled back down into her pillow and slept peacefully away. I absolutely love the way Lois leans into Clark's touch here. It is purely instinctive on her part. She loves him and needs him every bit as much as he loves and needs her. He reached the bedroom door. Three full steps from the bed.
A small step for mankind, a giant leap for Superman. Poignant, funny, sad and adorable. Clark Neil Superman Armstrong Kent makes it all the way to the bedroom door. It could almost as well have been the moon. This from the man for whom it was said, “Can leap tall buildings in a single bound.” Can't resist showing off my Superman-savviness. Did you know, Smirky, that at the dawn of time - that is, in 1938, the year when Superman made his debut and not even I was born - Superman really couldn't fly, only jump? That's why they said about him that he was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. These days, when he can fly - well, normally he can fly, anyway - why would he leap tall buildings in a single bound, rather than fly above them? He hadn’t looked in the mirror yesterday, even during his brief time in the bathroom. His mind had been too fogged up, and if he had seen he hadn’t recognized what he was seeing.
He didn’t recognize himself.
He was pale as a ghost, his eyes slightly sunken. His hair looked like a shock of black against his white complexion, his eyes darker than ever—haunted, frightened.
He looked like a terrified kid. He looked like an old man. He looked like a surreal creature from a cheap Hollywood horror movie. It would be really, really scary to see yourself like that. I find that part about looking both like a kid and like an old man particularly moving. Both are images of weakness, of frailty. He was all right. He was here. No green, no terrible white. He was safe.
He needed to see Lois.
It was a much more hurried, painful journey back to the room.
Lois was still sleeping.
Clark let out a breath of relief.
He hung onto the doorframe, quivering like a fallen leaf in the wind. I love the way you line up short sentences like that, charging each of them with an incredible emotional significance. I can feel Clark's terror and his relief. Love the comparison with the quivering leaf, clinging desperately to the doorframe. There was a sudden curse from the bedroom, the sound of frantic shuffling, and Lois staggered into the room, sleep-disheveled, stopping only when she saw Superman laying there, his eyes pained as the flickering of the television danced across his pale face.
“Kal-El! What are you doing?”
Clark looked at her slowly. Her heart wrenched at the guilt in his expression. She walked forward, catching sight of the ruin from the earthquake in China.
She swore and stepped forward to turn it off.
“What’s the matter with you?” she grumbled, her voice rough from sleep and she rubbed her eyes. “You crawl in here, eager to soak up guilt? Sunlight not enough for you?” You tell him, girl. Love that soaking up guilt and soaking up sunlight comparison, by the way. “That’s what I thought,” she said as she helped him take a couple steps towards the bedroom. She noticed his faint quivering from the strain of standing erect. “Walking nothing. Hobbling is more like it. Don’t you want to get better? Now come here, sit in the sunlight like a good super hero while I go make some coffee. You’ve had coffee, right? How do you like it?” Just keep dishing it out, Lois! Lois grimaced. “Well, you can tell that it was Clark Kent that introduced you to Earth’s coffee. Let me tell you something, flyboy. Just toss everything he’s taught you out the window, because it’s not worth anything next to what I know.” She helped him sit at the couch and pulled up the plaid blanket from the gas station and handed it to him.
Clark couldn’t help it. “You don’t really think that, do you?” he asked, his voice serious.
Lois paused, looking back at him from the doorway through sleep-blurred eyes. “Why? Does it matter?” she grumped.
Clark just looked out the window. “I just thought you two were friends, that’s all. He…he speaks very highly of you.” Lois is certainly irritating when she speaks of Clark Kent like that. But since the real Clark Kent has given her no reasonable explanation whatsoever for his weird behaviour, I'm not going to find fault with her for dismissing her partner from Kansas. If you want her to think differently about Clark, Clark, now is the time to tell her. And Superman was gone, for now. Maybe for good. But Lois still didn’t care for him—Clark Kent. And that was all that was left. That was all he was, except for an increasingly flimsy façade. Oh yeah? Lois doesn't care for you, ex-flyboy? Is that why she worked her butt off and risked her life to save you? Is that why she still tries to do whatever she can to make you better? She doesn't care for you. Yeah. Right. :rolleyes: He woke up in a start, not remembering his dream but feeling a shadow of doom and terror clinging to his soul. Lois was not in the room.
Clark forced himself to keep calm. To breathe. To stand up slowly and limp out of the room at an unpanicked pace.
Calm. Just calm.
“Lois?” Why did his voice crack? He was all right. Lois was just right there. No need to shiver…
“Good morning, sleepy-head,” Lois called from the counter. She was dressed in casual jeans and a blouse, but to Clark she had never looked better. He felt his body relax, even down to his toes. “You really are walking, aren’t you?” I love how he totally needs her. “Okay. We’ve got Chinese take-out, Italian take-out, or we can order pizza. What’s your choice?”
Clark lifted his injured arm onto the table and ran his hand over the cast. There was a faint tint of darkness to the underside where dark blood had long since dried. “Whatever you want, Lois.”
Lois glared at him. “I told you what I wanted. I want Chinese take-out, Italian take-out, or pizza. Goodness, Superman, if you weren’t the man of steel I’d tell you to grow a backbone!” I'm glad she keeps telling him! He needs to hear it. And I'm glad he chose Italian, by the way. The Boggle game was fun, but it didn't make me feel like quoting anything. Okay! Now I'm waiting for that lunkhead to tell her the truth about himself. Hmmmmphh. Men, you know? The way they can find a thousand excuses for lying to you - for your own good, or because they feel so sorry for themselves! (Ann ducks and covers to protect herself from pillows thrown by Terry Leatherwood, Tank, Framework, Arawn and other guys frequenting this site.) Ann
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Hack from Nowheresville
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Hack from Nowheresville
Joined: Sep 2006
Posts: 234 |
Thanks for the reviews, everyone. I just got out of my first and hardest final, and it was great to come home and be able to enjoy them.
So, the Secret and Outside Business.
Tank, first of all, it was great to see that you had reviewed and were following the story. I'm honored. <bows> After all, I've read all about you in the forums and around lcff in general. Nice to 'meet' you at last.
For the whole Outside Business, I was actually wondering if someone was going to mention the fact that the past 2 days they've completely cut themselves off from...everything. It was a weakness I noticed, but figured I'd just shrug it off until later--they are in shock, as Terry L. said, and I thought that could excuse the fact that they are still trying just to live moment-by-moment right now. The big picture is too much to take in, and they're still reeling from everything. And as you mentioned, Tank, I am writing this story from a very closed Clark and Lois perspective--which, in this case, is indeed a weakness. I'll see what I can do to fix that.
Thanks for the questions, comments, etc. Contructive criticism is as welcome as anything.
As for Clark's secret, I'm putting it in the same kind of boat. He's been through a *very* traumatic experience, and even if he does trust Lois, any insecurities that he had about himself and being rejected would be magnified 1000000+ times. Of course Lois wouldn't reject him at this point, but Clark's not thinking that way. You really can't blame him for a little irrational fear after all he's been through. So, no. He doesn't have a good excuse at this point. But you really can't blame him.
Again, thanks for the reviews, questions, concerns, etc...
I'm off to edit the next chapter. Hopefully it should be up in an hour or so.
SmirkyRaven
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Merriwether
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Merriwether
Joined: Jul 2006
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“He’s not a bad guy. Too naïve for his own good, and he’s got a crush on me, you know? I think he thinks he’s discrete about it, but it’s just…awkward. He’s too soft, and I’m way out of his league. You can’t get more old-fashioned, tight-buttoned, or farmer-boy than Clark Kent.” Oh, Lois! That comment may just finish him off. I can't see him telling her the truth now. “I told you what I wanted. I want Chinese take-out, Italian take-out, or pizza. So pick one! This is me and my husband all over. Boggle was one of his favorite games—he had used to play it late into the night with his parents, and had been the official founder of the Boggle Society of Smallville High. But that had started small and ended smaller. By the end it he had gone to the meeting place to find that he was alone in the empty classroom. He had played a few rounds alone for the fun of it. But, of course, he soon realized that there was no point and little fun in playing Boggle alone—he always ended up crossing off his own words, and no matter how much he cheated, he always lost. That is so sad! I broke that cheap hourglass thing years ago. Snort. I can just imagine how that happened. “Enjoy it, flyboy,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” Well, Lois is on her way back to full force even if Kal-El isn't.
lisa in the sky with diamonds
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