Collected Thoughts

Reading is about making connections. We look to stories (books/fanfic/short stories/poetry whateever---shortened here to "stories") to make some sort of connection with the story and the characters. Sometimes we are looking to make that comfortable connection of belonging, where we can look at the what's being said and say "Yeah! I can see myself in that, I went through that, this is what I know." Sometimes we go to stories to make a connection of understanding, we look for stories where the viewpoints and settings and characters are vastly different from our own experiences because we still want to make a connection but it's a connection of "So that's what's it like to live like that, feel like that, think like that, be like that, I had no idea, I didn't know. Not until I read this." Writing is all about connections, about the reader making connections with the story, the writer making connections with the reader, the story exploring connections between the characters and their world.

Reading can be a safe, comfortable place where we go to make that connection of belonging. But reading can also be that unfamiliar terrain where we go to have our world turned askew, where we the story is told or the emotion expressed or characters are so vastly different from our own selves that we are thrown for a loop or made to feel uncomfortable. And feeling uncomfortable after you've read a story isn't bad. It can be great if your world's been shirt, your ideas altered, if you've been taken out of your safety zone of always making a familiar, safe, happy connection with a story and you know are making an unfamiliar sometimes unhappy unconnection with a story.

Writing is supposed to evoke emotions. Good and bad. I don't expect any less when I read fanfiction.

So on to Grail's Immortality which is getting talked about all over the place.

I have to admit my biases first. I like stories that explore how Clark and Lex become enemies. I'm fascinated by that aspect of their relationship, Clark/Superman and Lex are destined to be enemies and I want to know, if they are lovers first, how do they become bitter enemies. I realize it's not a popular subject for people to write about and it seems like it's not a popular subject for people to read about. But, for me, it's the story I'm most interested in hearing about--how they become enemies rather than how they end up together. As a reader and writer of fanfiction I'm more interested in the individual characters rather than in particular pairings.

Normally it's difficult for me to make a connection with Clark as a character, it's usually Lex I'm making a connection with. However in this story from the very first sentence I started making a connection with Clark.

I made the connection with Clark as Grail laid out why Clark isn't making a connection to those around him: he's not going to die, he's used the same razorblade since he started school (implied), he doesn't need to eat or sleep, he can't get drunk, he remembers his lectures and doesn't need to take notes. Here are all the reasons Clark isn't human, how he's different and separate from everyone around him. Grail says that Metropolis can't kill Clark. And then this:

Clark is never going to die, and it scares him so badly that he wonders sometimes how he's supposed to live.

That's the key line for me. How is he supposed to live? Clark has to figure that out. He's scared and disconnected from those around him and frustrated by his life he's suspended in, not aging, not getting hurt, not feeling pain and he has to figure out how he's going to live because he's never going to die. He's afraid even to be himself, when he's alone in his sanctuary that Lex has made for him.

Clark is scared of Lex dying and he hates himself because he can't stop people from dying. He even feels like he doesn't deserve Lex. He loves Lex and Lex loves him, even if Lex doesn't understand him. And Lex doesn't quite seem to fully understand Clark, and perhaps that's Clark's failing. Lex doesn't seem to know that Clark doesn't really need sleep. He slips up and says Clark is only human, or almost says it. Lex is offering Clark shelter from a city that can't hurt him.

At some point when Clark is with Lex, after he's thought about being scared of how he never gets hurt, how he never ages, how he'll never die, how he has no control over his life, he makes a choice. He decides to do something that will give him some control, some pain, a chance to die.

He's going to try and make Lex hate him.

He's so scared of not dying that he's willing to do anything to figure out how to live.

Even this.

So Clark goes and does very human things, makes very human, very wrong, very bad choices. He sets out to hurt Lex because this is the decision he's made. He doesn't understand Metropolis, he can't control it, but he understands Lex. He knows how to fight Lex. Lex could hurt him, Lex could kill him, he might even have to kill Lex. And, as twisted and as fucked up as it is, that reality--that he could kill Lex, that they could hate each other and Lex could cause him pain, that he could have pain in his life--that gives him what he needs to live.

Clark burns his bridges to Lex, tears them down and destroys them. But that's what he thinks he needs, it's the decision he's made.

Is it a good decision? No. It's a colossally bad decision, the kind of decision a scared, screwed up,twenty year old would make. Clark acts very human in this, he may not feel human and he may feel disconnected from the people around him but he's making a human mistake.(I also don't think that Clark is actively turning away from his family as well as Lex. I think he's just turning away from Lex, he just doesn't want to talk to his family about Lex)

Will this make Clark a better Superman? I don't know, I can't tell. But making sane, logical choices isn't a prerequisite for being a superhero, if it were most of the superheros would have to turn in their uniforms/masks/capes starting with Batman. And at this point in Clark's life he isn't Superman, Lex calls what he's doing "vigilante justice" and that's what it is. Clark isn't out there with a cape and a name fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, not yet. He's just trying to keep people from dying, from killing themselves and each other. He isn't Superman yet. He's a 20 yr old kid who's never going to die and that scares the hell out of him.