Dear Readers,
Welcome to the Lois & Clark: The New Adventure of Superman Writer’s Showcase. With a lot of new auhor’s entering the fandom over the last few years we thought it was time to bring out some fresh me … er, interviews.
Now, in keeping with Annie’s famous words, without further ado I am proud and honored to present this week’s Writer in the Writer’s Showcase …
Labrat, Elena, and Annette
Featured Writer of the Week
Ann Sidbrant
Personal Information:
Author name:
Ann Sidbrant
E-mail address(es):
annsid@hotmail.com, ann.sidbrant@gmail.com
Location:
Malmö, Sweden
Favourite FoLCdom sites you hang out on/recommend:
Hmmm…. I’m not absolutely sure I understand the question. I’m here for the stories, so I primarily read the fanfic and the nfic folders. (Fanfic Messageboards – http://www.lcficmbs.com/index2.html) Of course I’ve read stories from the Archive (http://www.lcfanfic.com/) and from Annesplace, (http://www.annesplace.net/) too. I used to visit Zoomway’s boards (http://www.zoomway.net/cgi-bin/boards/ultimatebb.cgi), too, but they concentrate so heavily on Dean Cain and Teri Hatcher that I’ve more or less given up on them. But when the discussion about “Superman Returns” was in full swing, I visited Zoom’s boards almost daily.
Lois and Clark/Superman History:
How long have you been watching/how did you become interested in L&C?
I’m a diehard fan of the L&C stories and of the Fanfic Messageboards, but my interest in the ABC TV show is… lukewarm, at best. But several years ago, somebody sent me a few stories about Lois and Clark. I loved some of those stories, got bored by others, and saved the stories on the hard disk of the computer I had at the time. But then the stories got lost somehow and I got a new computer. And then – when was it? In July or August 2005? – I just felt severely Lois and Clark fanfic-deprived, so I surfed the net and found the Fanfic Messageboards.
What was the episode (either entire or in part) that made you love the show?
Okay, confession, confession. I can’t remember seeing even a single episode in its entirety! I’m not saying I never have seen an episode from beginning to end, but I am saying that if I have, I can’t remember it. But I can remember snatches of episodes that made an impression on me. My favorite by far is that scene from the rainy park where we were all expecting Clark to tell Lois that he is Superman. But he proposed to her instead. It was so intense, so disappointing, so infuriating, so typical of Clark and so… so… so “I have to see the next episode!!!! Goodness!!!”.
How long have you been a fan of/enjoyed other versions of the Superman myth? (If applicable)
Oh, wow!! A fan of other versions of the Superman myth is what I am. No, correction. I love – I just love – the Lois and Clark I meet in so many fanfic stories, and these stories are so great because they use the ABC TV show as their starting point. And I just know that the other versions of Superman simply couldn’t do our favorite reporters similar justice. There is something about the intensity of feeling, the human passion, that is there in L&C but is missing from other versions of Superman.
Nevertheless, I am in so many ways a Superman comic book fan. Or rather, I used to be a Superman comic book fan. When I read my first Superman comic book back in 1968 – it was a translated Swedish version called Stålmannen, and I was thirteen years old, by the way – I was totally, instantly hooked. The reason why Superman affected me so strongly may have had something to do with my religious upbringing. Unusually for a Swede, I was raised in a religious home, and I spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about religious matters. When I came across Superman, I think I saw him, subconsciously, as a sort of god. And while the Christian God confused me, Superman was just the sort of kind and good and delightful god that made perfect sense to me.
Well, I became a Superman fan in 1968, and then in 1969 I became a Superman and Lois fan. Wow!!! I’ll never forget that story where Lois got superpowers, and Superman was so unbelievably happy about it, because now he could marry her. Yes, because now his enemies couldn’t hurt her anymore. Anyway, that story convinced me that Superman was totally, honestly in love with Lois, and that was just so incredibly thrilling and amazing to me. I couldn’t wait to see them married – boy, if I’d only known how long I’d have to wait….
Let’s return for just a moment to what attracted me to Superman in the first place – his godlike qualities. Ultimately, human beings aren’t gods, they aren’t perfectly good and serene and right about everything, and it’s impossible to write good stories about saints that have no flaws and faults. In 1987, Superman was revamped in the comic books, so that Clark Kent, not Superman, became the real character. Three years later Clark proposed to Lois in the comics, and she said yes to him. The ABC TV show just took off from there, so it’s not true that the human and passionate Clark in LNC:TNAOS was created solely by this show. But it is true that Clark became more interesting in the TV show than he ever was in the comics.
Who interests you more – Clark or Lois?
I like both Clark and Lois very, very much, but I find, nevertheless, that I tend to prefer the stories that are told from Lois’s point of view, and which somehow take her part. I don’t much like stories which blame Lois a lot and treat her like someone who deserves to be punished.
Which is your favourite supporting character?
It’s probably Perry. Lane Smith’s portrayal of Perry was amazing – his Perry is such a wonderfully warm person. Considering how many dangers and difficulties Clark and Lois would be likely to meet, especially if they tried to be a real couple, it would be very, very good for them to have someone like Perry on their side. My second favorite character would be Martha. I love her warmth and optimism.
Which is your favourite villain?
Ugh!!! I don’t have one. I find villains utterly unattractive, and they are never more than a distraction to me. Yes, I agree, of course, that Lois and Clark need to face difficulties if there is going to be story to tell at all, but goodness… the world is full of problems and difficulties, you don’t need a Lex Luthor to create them for you.
Writing History:
How long have you been writing? Have you written for other fandoms? Other non-TV/SF genres? Or is LNC your first venture into writing?
Hmmm… I’m the sort of person who is forever spouting opinions. I need to clarify my own ideas and opinions so that I make sense to myself, so I have spent quite a lot of time writing down my own ideas about things that interest me particularly, such as religion, astronomy and feminism, among other things. But I have never written any stories before I came to LNC and these boards.
Which genres of fanfic have you written?
Well, I have only written three stories, or four if you count the round robin that I was a part of. Our round robin was definitely comedy – and I thought our story was actually wildly and absurdly funny! Similarly, my first story, A Valentine Revelation, had quite a bit of comedy in it, but mostly it was – well, a bit of romantic fluff, I guess. My second story, Home Is Where The Heart Is, is a sort of gothic fantasy about love and fear and life and death, and it has, of course, a happy ending. My third story, Sara Lois Rose, is – well, what should I call it? It, too, is a fantasy about how love conquers death, but it is more ambitious than Home Is Where The Heart Is. Sara Lois Rose is a sort of myth, giving a sort of mythological explanation to how Superman, the man from the stars, came to be human in the first place.
What’s your most recent story?
It’s our round robin, Strange Revelations. My most recent solo effort is Sara Lois Rose.
What’s your personal favourite of the stories you have written? And why?
It’s Sara Lois Rose. I’m really happy with it, because I think I managed to give Lois and Clark’s love quite mythical qualities, which is what I set out to do. I give a mythical answer to the question of how Superman can have a human body, if he was born light-years away on another planet, and I explain how he could make the journey to the Earth at all. The answers boil down to the same thing: it was the love and the bond that existed between Lois and Clark already when they were babies that gave Clark his human shape and which guided his spaceship to the Earth.
I actually think that Sara Lois Rose is a story that resembles a myth in very many ways. The way I think of myths, they should deal with human problems in a larger-than-life, colorful and fantastic way. Also the myth should be relatively simple and straightforward, both when it outlines its premise, when it explains the problem and when it reaches its conclusion. Consider the myth of Samson, for example. He was inhumanly strong, because God had promised him superhuman strength, as long as he didn’t cut his hair. But Samson fell in love with a deceitful woman and revealed the secret of his strength to her, and she had his hair shaved off. So his enemies easily defeated him. They cut out his eyes, so that he could never again be the man he had been before, and kept him prisoner. But his hair grew back and his strength returned, and Samson made an entire palace fall down on himself and on thousands of his enemies. There, that was larger than life as well as simple and straightforward, wasn’t it?
I actually think that Sara Lois Rose is almost equally larger than life and that it is also almost equally straightforward. It all deals with the fact that Clark was not born a human but that his and Lois’s love is a truly, truly cosmic force. Because I love Lois and Clark, and because I’m also an astronomy buff with a religious background, I had so much fun writing this story, and I’m happy with the way it turned out.
What was the inspiration for your first foray into writing LNC? What if? An episode moment you wanted to explore further or ‘fix’? Other? What is it about writing fanfic that you enjoy?
Well… the first time I wrote a L&C fanfic I just wanted to take advantage of the fact that I could turn it into a Valentine story. I’m here because of Clark and Lois’s love, after all. The second time I wrote a story, I was just incredibly inspired by the outline of a story that Tank wrote as a challenge for Wendy, to make her write one more L&C story. I so, so wanted to finish Tank’s story, so I wrote to him and asked for his permission to put my own twist on his story, and he gracefully gave me that permission. As for Sara Lois Rose, that whole idea was something that had been sloshing about at the back of my mind for years and years really, but I had never tried to turn it into a stringent story. I suddenly decided that I wanted to do just that, and it turned out to be a lot of fun and very satisfying to write it. As for the round robin, I just saw that it had started over at Zoomway’s board, and since I had a lot of time on my hands right then I jumped in enthusiastically. It was a lot of fun!
Give us a peek into your current Works In Progress?
Uhhh…I have nothing in progress right now, I’m sorry to say. I actually startedto write something, but I got stuck, for two reasons. As I took a hard look at what I was writing, I realized that it was a variation of Sara Lois Rose, only a lot more complicated and less natural and satisfying. In astronomy, they talk about Occam’s razor, which just means that the simplest explanation is probably the best. I suddenly felt that the new story I was trying to write would be a lot more convoluted than Sara Lois Rose and its point would be harder to understand, and still I wouldn’t be able to say anything I hadn’t said already. Moreover, my new story would have Luthor in it, and as soon as I even started trying to write that first Luthor scene, I realized that, naaaaahhh…. I can’t do this, and it isn’t worth it anyway.
I am toying with a new idea, but I don’t know if I’ll ever write it. I do think, actually, that it is a good idea and a worthy premise to explore. It would be a sort of counterpart to Sara Lois Rose. In SRL, Clark is saved by his love for Lois (and her love for him). However, in Superman II, the movie from 1980, Superman was seen to reject Lois. He made love to her, but later he took away her memory of their lovemaking as well as her memory of his secret identity. In the new Superman movie, Superman Returns, we learn that Superman has been absent from the Earth for many years. But when he returns, he finds out that Lois became pregnant from their one night of lovemaking, and now she has a son by Superman even though she is living with another man altogether.
However, I was thinking… what if the events of Superman Returns didn’t happen? What if Superman just discovered that Lois was pregnant, and then he was unhappy about it because he now knew that he really didn’t want her to be a part of his life at all? What if he simply refused to tell her his secret and share his life with her, in spite of the child he knew she was carrying? I’d like to see what such an all-out rejection of Lois would do to Superman. In Sara Lois Rose, Clark literally becomes human because of his love for Lois. Would Clark lose his humanity if he rejected Lois? And if so, what kind of person would he become if he lost his humanity?
There is one big problem with the story I just outlined, and that is that it wouldn’t be a L&C story. The Superman in it would be the Superman from Superman II, not Clark Kent from the ABC TV show. I could try to make it an L&C crossover, but I don’t know…. I think the story would be less clear-cut, more needlessly convoluted, if I try to turn it into a crossover.
Personal picks of other fanfics you have read?
I just have to mention C.C. Aiken’s When The World Finds Out. In particular, the portrait of Clark and Lois’s mature love for one another, after many years of marriage, and in the face of an incredibly frightening change – the world has found out that Clark Kent is Superman – that portrait is so incredibly moving, strong and beautiful. And the small nfic scene in it may be the most beautiful I’ve ever come across.
Recently, there have been truly great stories by Sue S. and Caroline, the best newcomers this site has seen for a long time, in my opinion.
What is it about L&C universe/characters that you enjoy exploring the most?
To me, it is the constancy of the idea that Lois and Clark belong to one another, even though they were born light-years apart. Their truly cosmic bond. These two people have been in love with one another since Superman was created as a character back in 1938. Lois was there in the very first issue of Action Comics, the comic book that introduced Superman to the world. And I also love the fact that Lois and Clark are, on the surface, a normal, almost everyday couple… and then it turns out that their relationship and their life together is so extraordinary. I mean, just think about it. What would it be like to be the only woman ever who is loved by the only man ever who can fly?
What is your best way to cope with/overcome writer’s block?
Hmmm…. I don’t know. Somehow I suspect that when I have a real writer’s block, then I just don’t have a sufficiently good story to tell.
What is your opinion about the following LNC fanfic genres (Like/Dislike/Don’t Care Either Way <g>):
Aplot/B-plot?
To me, the B-plot is the reason for any L&C fic. If a story doesn’t have a good B-plot, I don’t want to read it. Of course, a good A-plot is icing on the cake, and a really good A-plot helps make the B-plot even better, provided the writer has any talent for B-plots at all.
Next Generation?
It depends entirely on how the kids are portrayed. I have read – or I have started to read – a couple of Next Gen stories that I just couldn’t finish, because I couldn’t care less about those kids. But there have also been some really, really great portraits of Superman’s kids.
Deathfic?
No. No, no and no. Okay – small correction. I can’t stand the stories where Lois is made to die just so that we can feel sorry for Clark. I hate it when she becomes so unimportant – when her life or death seems to have no value in itself, beyond what it means for Clark’s happiness. However, when Lois’s death is Clark’s fault – when Clark has reason to blame himself for Lois’s death – then her death becomes interesting, if nothing else.
Drama?
Well-written drama is a great read, of course.
Humor?
Who doesn’t love a good laugh???
Tearjerker/Angst?
That depends. As I said, I don’t want to read any stories that reduce Lois to some lamb-to-the-slaughter just to make me feel sorry for Clark. But a good angsty story with a happy ending can be incredibly captivating, positively addictive. Many of the most popular L&C stories ever have been just this kind of tale.
Round Robin/Co-Authored?
I had an incredibly good time taking part in our round robin, Strange Revelations. And without Tank’s challenge for Wendy, I would never have written Home Is Where The Heart Is. Other people’s ideas can be a truly great inspiration for a story!
Nfic?
I simply love good nfic, but the ‘n’ should be there for a reason. It should be a part of a larger context, part of the characterization of Lois and Clark. If a story consists of nothing but an nfic scene, then it is difficult indeed to make that little romp interesting. C.C. Aiken once said that passion must be earned. There has to be, pardon my choice of words, sufficient narrative foreplay to make the reader ready for the literary lovemaking. And of course, I at least want to see Clark and Lois’s characters explored in the nfic scene as well. Nfic scenes are actually great places to shed light on Lois and Clark’s personalities.
Has *everything* been done in your opinion, and if not, what is left?
Well, one thing that has not been really explored is this question: What if Clark became really, really evil and corrupted? But I don’t think there was much in the TV show that gave us reason to think of Clark in those terms, so it’s not as if the subject is crying out to be explored. And I’d need a very good reason for Clark to be evil before I’d read a story like that. I guess that the reason why I’m thinking about an evil Clark at all is that all those recent Lois deathfics have made me think of possible stories where Clark is really responsible for her death.
Another thing that I don’t think we have seen is this: What if Lois did find out about Clark’s secret and really exposed him to the world? But I don’t know if I’d want to read that one, either. I have to say, when it comes to Lois and Clark, to the characters who were played by Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain, I so much prefer stories with happy, waffy endings to the dark and disturbing stuff.
But as long as there are talented new writers coming along to these boards, we can be sure that there will also be new angles and new situations explored in the stories posted here.
What do you think makes the best story?
Well, what a question! Hmmm…. It has ‘it’?
No, seriously, a great story is always written by a good writer who knows his or her craft. A writer who knows what he or she is doing, and why. And a great story is also written by a person who really has something to say. It is written by a person who has a clear idea about who Lois and Clark are, and who knows how to show us how s/he sees them. Preferably, of course, the writer has also come up with an original idea.
Where is the best place for a reader to locate your work?
The Archive and Annesplace, I guess.
Open Forum For General Comments:
I have nothing to say here, except that, well, that’s it, actually.