Fic: ...Clark Is Actually Pretty Ok With This, Thanks (Part 2, 1/3)

[josephina_x]

Title: ...Clark Is Actually Pretty Ok With This, Thanks (Part 2 -- Lois Gets In On The Bromance Shipping)
Author: josephina_xFandom: Smallville

Comments

[nicnac918]

Lois, love, don't ever change. It's so nice that *someone* can actually see that Clark and Lex are really good for each other. Much trouble and heartbreak on that show could have been avoided if the world hadn't been bound and determined to sink the Clex friendship ship. And good for her being able to set her personal desires for vengeance/justice aside.

[josephina_x]

*g* *nods* Yeah, she's really rooting for them, even if (especially if?) it helps shove Lex onto the straight and narrow.

Yeah, she's struggling with setting it aside. I think you've seen her inner struggle a bit more pronounced later, when she isn't so caught up in trying to fix Clark a bit, too ;)

Yeah, darn writers, having to kill the friendship!Clex. *shakes fist* Why must Lex be "evil"?

[nicnac918]

I'm going to go with "especially." *g*

I really think they wrote themselves into a corner with that one. Half the audience was going to be pissed if Lex didn't turn evil, because *Lex Luthor* and the other half would be pissed if he did, because they wrote him way too sympathetically.

[josephina_x]

*lol* Me, too

[nicnac918]

I guess I don't mean they wrote themselves into a corner so much as took on something bigger than they were able to handle.

Because while I absolutely agree that Lex was one of the main factors in me watching the show (he, Clark, and Martha were the only characters I liked for the first couple of seasons until Chloe stopped annoying me), they clearly weren't able to to really handle writing the character progression from how Lex started to being *evil* like he was supposed to be.

See I disagree, I think that not telling Lex's story was exactly the wrong choice. We needed to see why he was doing what he was doing to make his switch from, "generally good guy" to "evil guy who would experiment on people" feel more believable. If it was done right, then we could get all his justifications while still seeing him as evil.

[josephina_x]

Well, I an only be so sad about that, because if they didn't try anyway, we wouldn't have had the cracky goodness that is Smallville! *lol

[josephina_x]

With the ones who broke out of Level 3 and complained about their treatment, they were mostly angry that they weren't being treated as well as they had been before -- and considering how very not-well-behaved they were (still very homicidal), I could see why not continuing to 'pamper'/reward them for such attitudes might be a good idea all around. (Lex should've used somebodies else ;) With the group Tess pulled from the Black Creek facility with the Doomsday mess, it was pretty obvious that they didn't really want to be out and doing what she wanted, and if I'm remembering correctly it sounded like she was the one who had the bombs put in their heads (...and then used them). --Not to mention how common it still is and has been (oh god, don't get me started on has been) for the people in charge to use prison and mental hospital populations to test drugs and other things. It's not -right- or "good", but "bad" is kind of iffy by comparison. :-P ...So yeah, not "evil" in my head. Not "good", probably "bad", possibly justifiable depending

[nicnac918]

But see my point is not to critique it on what I wanted to see (because what I wanted to see was something along the lines of the Clark and Lex Super Bro. Hour, but that's not going to happen), but on what they were trying to portray and how good of a job they did at showing it.

It seemed pretty clear that by the later seasons the audience was supposed to see Lex as a very bad character (I would say evil, but I define the term a little more loosely than you do, and I'm not really looking to get into a semantics debate) by the way that the other characters react to him (and their reactions to each other's reaction as well), by the way his actions are framed in the narrative, and by the little cinematography tricks they used to make you think "this character is bad!" And in the abstract, I'm okay with that. It's not what I want, but it's their show and their character and that's what fanfiction is for anyway, right

[josephina_x]

Ahhhh

[nicnac918]

And I think here we'll have to agree to disagree (well, aside from the biting off more than they can chew part). Because I would infinitely prefer to see them try to show Lex's descent and bumble it a bit (or a lot even) than just leave it as "bee-tee-doubes, Lex is totes evil now, just take our word for it," and leave us to fanwank the crap out of it if we aren't happy with that pronouncement.

[josephina_x]

*lol* But who doesn't love fanwank? ;)

But yes, agree to disagree :) *nods and shakes hands*