Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic FDK: An Unplayable Lie - 2/2

Okay, since this is me, and since you said that this story was inspired by something I said, Terry, let me start this thread with some possible OT rambling.

I have often accused the United States of punishing people too cruelly, what with the death penalty and all. Well, Sweden errs in the opposite direction. A few months ago, a particularly horrible murder happened here in Sweden. A ten-year-old girl had been playing soccer with some friends. The soccer field was situated two miles from the girl's rural home, and the other girls didn't live in the same village as herself. On this very day she had been allowed to cycle home on her own for the very first time. However, she had her cell phone with her, and her mother talked to the girl twice while she was cycling home. They agreed that the girl would call her mother again in another ten minutes, but the girl never called.

On her way home, the girl passed a man who was out trying out his new cell phone camera, and he took this photo of the girl on a bicycle:



About thirty seconds after the girl had passed the man with the cell phone camera, a red car came driving along that rural road, and the man with the camera photographed the car, too. This is the photographer's picture of the car, and on the left you can see the owner of the car:



It turned out that this man was a serial sex offender. However, with Sweden's lenient laws, he had never been sentenced to more than a few months in jail for repeated cases of flashing and assault. And now, when he came upon the girl, he just stopped the car, grabbed the girl and killed her.

In my local newspaper, there is a columnist named Ann Heberlein, a Professor of ethics. In her first column, she wrote about how she had been raped as a twenty-year-old, and how that made her almost disintegrate as a person and how it sent her to a psychiatric hospital for years. Now, after the case of the murdered girl, Ann Heberlein discussed forgiveness of criminals in general and forgiveness of sex offenders in particular, and she also discussed forgiveness of those who have hurt us in more general terms.

According to Ann Heberlein, we in Sweden have been taught to be too forgiving. That is why our laws are the way they are, and why people who are notorious criminals aren't punished more severely or given more serious psychiatric treatment. Instead, our laws forgive the criminals. That is why the murderer of the girl was "forgiven" by Sweden's judidical system for his repeated sex crimes, and that is why he was out, unattended and untreated, so that he could murder that girl on a sunny spring day in Sweden.

And, said Ann Heberlein, those who are the victims of the perpetrators are asked to forgive, too. Ann Heberlein herself has often been told that she shouldn't dwell on the fact that she has been raped; she should forgive and forget. When she brings it up - which she definitely doesn't do much in her columns, I can assure you - some people treat her as if she was the one who was in the wrong. Why does she keep talking about this? How can she talk about it at all if she has forgiven the perpetrator, as she claims that she has done?

Forgiveness, says Ann Heberlein, can be a weapon that is turned against the victim. You said you had forgiven, so how can you still be angry? How can you still be hurt? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

I was reminded of all of this when I read this in your story, Terry:

This kind of logic means, to me, that if Lois is angry at Clark for lying to her, then it is Lois who is in the wrong, because Lois said she had forgiven him.

In other words, Clark is using Lois's forgiveness of him as a weapon against her. He treated her badly, but he doesn't allow her to be angry at him, because she said she had forgiven him.

What Clark did to Lois does not come close to rape or murder. Of course not! That goes without saying. But the principle, that Lois has no right to be angry any more as soon as she has forgiven - well, that principle is the same.

In her column about forgiveness, Ann Heberlein said that maybe we shouldn't be so ready to forgive. At least, victims shouldn't waive their right to be angry at the wrongs that have been done to them.

Instead of concentrating so much on the victim and the victim's duty to forgive, maybe we should concentrate more on the perpetrator, said Ann Heberlein. What has the perpetrator done to really prove that he or she has understood that he or she was in the wrong? What has the perpetrator done to show respect for and empathy with his or her victim?

Fortunately, Clark seemed to realize that there were things he had to do after all, and not just refraining from lying to Lois in the future:

Ah! I wonder if it was not this that may have inspired you to write this story, Terry? Because I do think I have argued that Clark hasn't taken Lois seriously.

I'm sure that if Clark takes Lois seriously, then he can't ask that she must never again be angry at his lies, even if he has now stopped lying to her. Then he can't ask that she gives him that sort of forgiveness.

Of course Lois mustn't let her own anger take over or poison her relationship with Clark. She can't live in the past. If Clark starts taking her seriously, like he said he would, then she mustn't bring up grievances from the past, where he didn't take her seriously. Because no one can change the past.

And I loved the ending here:

An unplayable lie! Yes, even Superman should not use lies as rules to play by. Even for Superman, there should be such a thing as an unplayable lie.

Ann

Terry this is a nice twist on the aftermath ATAI. I am not a member of the poor Lois was lied to group. I think there was a greater reason why Clark kept his identity from her even after they fell in love.

He of course did try to tell her more than once and was thwarted by various problems.

I do think Clark had a point about forgiveness. Lois clearly hasn't forgiven him if she is still that angry about it.

I look forward to seeing what you have to offer in the final chapter.

Terry, I liked this. It really showed both of their emotions clearly.

I'm sort of split on how guilty Clark is. I do think he had a legitimate reason to hold off on telling Lois and while I wish he had told her sooner, I could see how her behavior the first season made him too unsure of her feelings to tell her when he should have (in my mind, probably somewhere around That Old Gang of Mine).

But while I can understand his waiting past that point and even as long as he did, I've always been annoyed by the fact that he asked her to marry him without telling her who he was first. No one asks that question without at least having a good idea that the person they are asking really loves them even if they aren't sure the answer will be yes. If Clark has decided he is sure enough of Lois' feelings to propose, he should be sure enough to tell her his secret so she can make the decision based on all of the relevant information.

As a result of this, though, I understand both Lois and Clark's annoyance at that time - how Lois feels lied to and how her refusal of his proposal fuels old insecurities of Clark's based on their past.

What I liked best about your story was the fact that it explored these so well. Clark's outburst to Lois,

is unfair, as Lois thinks. That was a long time ago - it's been a year since the last offense. But the wounds feel fresh to Clark now after Lois' recent rejection.

Additionally, I'm with Ann on the topic of forgiveness. Forgiving someone for bumping you on the street or some random accident is the type of thing that you can blow off easily. For bigger offenses, forgiving someone is a process. Lois may have been sincere when she said she forgave him, but that doesn't mean she isn't still working through her feelings and this is a sore point for her (and thus, likely to blow up again at random times). I can see how that's frustrating for Clark, but to some degree that's just too bad. Lois was the one who was wronged, he needs to be patient while she works her way through her feelings.

And so, I really liked the end of this story where Clark seems to get that and shows his willingness to do what he needs to do to help her get there - which shows the sincerity of his apology more than anything else.

The problem is casual, incorrect use of the language. Forgiving may be a process, in which case Lois can say "I'm working on forgiving you." But she can never say, "I forgive you" until she is ready to set aside her right to judge him for his actions. As long as she is still (rightly) struggling with feelings of betrayal and anger, she hasn't forgiven him, and when she says she has, she's lying, too.

So, if Clark, who has an excellent understanding of the English language and its rules, hears her say, "I forgive you," but is treated with unforgiveness, he has a right to feel that she isn't playing fair with him. I'm not saying that Lois has to offer him easy forgiveness regardless of her feelings. But she needs to stop saying she has forgiven him when she really hasn't. She has started the process, but forgiveness doesn't occur until the process is completed.

Interesting story, Terry. The only part I had a problem with was Clark's saying there was no unplayable lie for Superman. It seemed so weird and contradictory to his repeated statements that he wasn't using his super powers. OTOH, his being irritated by Lois's competitive sniping seemed reasonable to me--not because she was doing it more than normal, not because he wasn't used to it, but because he was upset with her, so even normal behaviors were irritating.

Thanks for the feedback, y'all. I thought that Lois's adjustment time in the show was "compressed" too much, and that the writers missed a great opportunity to have Clark try to woo Lois as one person instead of two while Lois struggled to reconcile both men into one in her mind. The title came from reading one of Ann's many posts about how horrible Clark was for lying to Lois for so long combined with flipping channels and accidentally finding a golf tournament where one of the players put his ball in a tree. (I seem to remember that he tried to hit it out of the tree instead of taking the drop and the penalty strokes and ended up in a water hazard.)

Anyway, there are legitimate positions on both sides. Did Clark lie? Yes. Was he justified in not revealing his dual identity to Lois? At first, yes, because he wasn't sure how she'd react, but I definitely believe that he should have told her before proposing. But the writers did it that way to generate more story arcs, not to show us how Superman behaved so perfectly all the time. Because he didn't.

Shelia, you're correct when you say that Clark wasn't supposed to be using his powers. But Lois had already accused him of cheating with them, and he'd just used his vision gizmo to find the lost ball. Besides, without that line, I don't have much of a story, so he kinda had to say it.

There have already been several good comments on forgiveness, so I'll just add this one. Forgiveness is the province of the individual, not the state. If I get mad at someone on these boards and send a deliberate flame, I need to ask forgiveness. But if I get mad at someone on these boards and leave home and rob a convenience store, I need to pay the legal penalty.

A political entity such as a nation or a state cannot be expected to "forgive" a criminal offense. In the case which Ann brings up, that little girl's family may or may not forgive the man who murdered their daughter. That is their choice and theirs alone. The nation of Sweden does not have that option. The nation must decide whether or not to punish that man, and how severely. The state's job, in this case, is to decide whether or not he is guilty of the crime with which he is charged.

And I refuse to compare the legal systems of the US and Sweden here. This isn't the appropriate forum for that discussion.

All that aside, I'm glad you liked my little story. It's an area that I've wanted to explore for some time, and I'm pleased that it was received so well. Thank you all.

Very satisfying ending to the story. I believe it was Sheila (but am too lazy to check) who said such poignant things on the process of forgiveness.

My only nitpick is that Lois didn't have the opportunity to say that she truly thought she had forgiven. I am certain that she didn't deliberately set Clark up for failure. She just didn't realize she still had unresolved issues.


Elisabeth
edit: PS I like your sig. Ollie is a great character. Top notch!

To me, there is still somethong about how forgiveness seems to shift the responsibility for what happened from the perpetrator to the victim. If the victim forgives the perpetrator, then the perpetrator doesn't truly have to be sorry for what he or she did. The perpetrator can just let go of the whole thing. And if his or her transgression is brought up again, then that is the victim's fault.

Carol Malo dealt with this so beautifully in her fic, Recognition: The Only Way . Here Lois once again had to forgive Clark for lying to her. He promised that he wouldn't lie to her again. But it is very hard to teach old dogs new tricks, and when Clark was threatened by some villains and was scared that Lois would get herself in danger by getting involved in the case, he simply didn't tell her about it. Then he went off to deal with the criminals himself and walked straight into a kryptonite trap. Lois had to figure out on her own what had happened, and she had to try to save Clark on her own (well, with the help of Jimmy and her father). As long as Clark was in danger, her only concern was trying to save him. But as soon as Clark was out of the woods, she started thinking about whether or not she could really have a relationship with him, seeing that he apparently couldn't be fully honest with her.

I think Carol's fic is a compelling one, and the ending hasn't quite let me go. I agree that it was a very good ending, really 'the only way'. But what happened afterwards?

Ann

Ann wrote:
I've not yet read Carol's "Recognition" trilogy, although it is on my to-read list, so I don't know how she handles the situation you've described. But I do know that you have not described forgiveness, Ann. The responsibility of the wrong remains with the person who did the wrong. The responsibility of making things right remains with the person who did the wrong, assuming the wrong can be righted. Never does the person doing the forgiving become responsible for anything except releasing his or her responsibility for correcting the wrong.

Forgiveness is not a method for shifting blame. It's not a way to escape justice. And it's not a "get out of emotional jail free" card, either. As our favorite couple stand in this story, Clark must work to regain Lois's trust. That's not only reasonable, that's what I would expect Lois, as a mature and self-assured adult, to require of him. If he assumes everything's just peachy now that he's apologized and asked forgiveness, then he's got another assumption coming. And if he pulls something like this again, it means he hasn't really accepted that what he did was wrong. A person who asks forgiveness must also acknowledge that his or her actions were the actions which created the hurt in the first place.

But Lois, if she has truly forgiven Clark, must release her emotional bond on that hurt. Her feelings of betrayal are perfectly legitimate, her belief that Clark should have trusted her is completely justified, and her caution at diving into marriage with him indicates a healthy person, not a needy or frightened one. But she can't keep holding Clark's offense over his head like the sword of Damocles. She can't use it as a lever to keep him at a disadvantage. She doesn't have to forget what happened, but she does have to stop holding onto it. If she doesn't, she'll never be able to fully trust him, and without trust, how could she truly love him?

You put that very well, Terry.

Ann