A Missed Opportunity

[ffutures]

I think I may have missed a bet with my story The Return - I don't want to rewrite it now, but it belatedly occurs to me that I could have turned up the angst to 11 by going with Larry Niven's Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and assuming that the only reason that Lois Lane survived sex with Clark is that his powers were temporarily switched off at the end of Superman II - the world cannot have an active superman and a happily married Superman simultaneously. Unless Clark loses his powers again, or Supergirl has kids (and would the father survive the experience?) Jason would be a one-off event.

Because everyone who writes in this fandom seems to be a Lois / Clark shipper (or occasionally Bruce / Clark but let's not go there) this is a fairly uncommon viewpoint. I really must use it some time.

Comments

[vitruvian23.livejournal.com]

Much as I like Niven's classic article, I think the Superman both of most comics continuity and of the Reeve/Routh movies has more fine muscle control, even of usually involuntary things, than that. The vibe I got from the Lara AI insisting on depowering Kal-El in II (not to mention lying about the possibility of repowering him) was much more of a, "gods and mortals shouldn't mix" moral/ethical thing (though quite misguided to my mind) than a "you retard, you'd kill her if you actually tried to make love to her with your powers on".

Not to mention that, even with the Steel/Kleenex rules in effect, a sealed chamber with a red sun spectrum lamp would presumably have just as good an effect on the safety of coitus, but be strictly temporary and non-risky. Just because red-sun radiation projection isn't within Luthor's technological means just yet doesn't mean the Fortress couldn't be programmed to deal with it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh, I tend to agree, but there are some interesting plot ideas in the alternative. Maybe each time his powers are drained they take longer to come back, or come back a little weaker, or there's an increasing probability that he'll lose them permanently.