December Talking Meme #9 and 10
Lois Lane, any incarnation
For
selenak
Lois Lane is my foremost formative role model. Lois and Marion Ravenwood.
I loved Lois fiercely, she was at the time I first saw Superman so different from other women characters I've seen in movies. She was brash, fearless, and flawed. She misspelled things. She's ballsy and everything in between!
She was everything and I've loved almost all incarnations of Lois Lane (well, almost being the operative word because Bosworth!Lois is not my Lois).
DCU!Lois, DC Animated!Lois, Teri Hatcher!Lois, Smallville!Lois, and Man of Steel!Lois (I think I'm missing a few Lois-es there but I love them all the same).
But Smallville Lois in particular, barring the bad writing and some questionable plot decisions... that Grant plotline went nowhere fast but the moment Smallville stepped into Metropolis and ran headlong into Lois and Clark's iconic destinies the more Lois became Lois.
Although I've loved her before then, I loved her introduction in Smallville where she runs into naked!Amnesiac!Clark and proceeds to catch Lionel Luthor's attention and then through the course of the series they show how morally compatible Lois and Clark are. And, in a show where people feel entitled to other people's secrets Lois is refreshingly cool about not knowing everything and letting people come into telling her their secrets on their own time.
I love that she had her own journey, that the thing that spurred her into a more investigative realm is a death of a friend (also I love the parallels how both Lois and Clark are silent witnesses to each other's grief and slowly moving into not just silent witness but actively becoming comfort for each other).
I love that she has such a capacity for forgiveness, that she wasn't perfect, that she got into the Daily Planet in a circuitous route but she still got there, that she might not have finished college but that didn't stop her from becoming something more.
I love how Lois was such a breath of fresh air in Smallville where everyone took themselves way too seriously.
And as for the iconic love story, I love the slow burn way Lois and Clark, in Smallville was done. You can see them grow into each other that they had different relationships but at the end, when they finally were drawn to each other you know why and its not just because they were destined.
I love that Lois discovered Clark's secret (really, season 9 is a gem) but didn't say anything about it and let Clark take time to tell her, and that she was so invested in keeping his secret too. The smile on Clark's face when he travels to the future and realizes how much Lois knows about him and she doesn't freak out? It's so brilliant.
I always love Lois's reaction to the different times she learns about Clark's secret, its always amazement and wonder but most of all I love that Lois fell in love with Clark Kent first and the Blur (Clark's pre-Superman name) second.
I also love that one of the things Man of Steel does right is to get the idea that their Lois knows about Clark's secret. It solves the whole 'Lois doesn't know who Clark' is thing that's just really... at this point of time unbelievable.
Honestly though, I love Lois for being herself throughout everything, that she knows superheroes and supervillains but she's not fazed at all. She rubs elbows with them and isn't afraid.
She's relentless, pragmatic, cynical but also filled with hope and wonder and she wants to right the wrongs in the only way she knows how--- by becoming a truth teller.
The awesomeness that is Olivia Badass Motherfucker Dunham for
bleedingheart80
Olivia Dunham.
Man, what else can I say about her? Except that Olivia Dunham is a goddamned superhero.
She has the superhero Origin story, and the complexity and damn every critic who called Anna Torv's acting blank, because she wasn't. She has worlds in her.
Olivia started out as an FBI agent, outside of the realm of the 'secret', and the secret being there were large scale anomalous things happening around the world following a 'pattern'.
Fringe Division is run solely by Broyles and led by Olivia. She's the one who puts the team together but it isn't until she was kidnapped and experimented on do we know how extremely badass Olivia is. Because she rescues her damned self, captures the people involved her own kidnapping and finds the truth.
The truth is that as a child, Walter Bishop and William Bell did experiments on her and other children like her.
And the moment when Olivia confronts Walter about this? It was so fantastic because Olivia's anger is righteous and justified. She is angry not only for herself but for other children traumatized like her.
Every time Olivia gets angry, it feels so right because she has her reasons to be angry and its never about her, its always for other people. The one time that is just solely for her breaks my heart, and that's when she realized the truth that when altOlivia took over her life, no one realized they made a switch.
It was so hard to watch Olivia suddenly play second fiddle to Peter's story when the show started with Olivia firmly as the lead. She had such a fantastic premise and backstory, she can travel worlds, she has super powers! She had a group of people like her!
And, Olivia can nail a shot. Every. Single. Time. Right between the eyes so much so when Fringe was on the air, fans call that shot getting Dunhammed.
Olivia was a badass but she was also kind, and compassionate. She knew how to reach out to people and connect with them, she can make allies out of almost anyone and its this compassion and empathy that's her best kind of asset to top of all of the other things that make her unique and fantastic.
In whatever world, Olivia Dunham will always be fantastic.
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