Workshop: "The Clex: The Agony and the Ecstasy" by Bradygirl_12
THE CLEX:
THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY
By BradyGirl
I gotta admit, that title sums it up nicely! ;)
The Clark/Lex relationship on TV's Smallville is a wonderfully complicated, tangled love/hate relationship that has spawned a thousand fics and inspired truly inventive art, manips, and icons.
Superman And Lex Luthor: Eternal Adversaries
As the Joker is to Batman, Lex Luthor is to Superman: an archnemesis worthy of the name. Lex has appeared in all versions of the Superman mythos.
In the Golden Age, the red-haired villain (he would become bald in other incarnations) was a smooth adversary, and in the Silver/Bronze Ages, the element of growing up together in Smallville was added . The friendship was prickly at best, Lex and Clark recognizing each other's differences in smalltown Kansas and their intellectual equality. Lex's family was not wealthy and he started his life of crime early in his teens. His hatred of Superboy continued as both he and Superboy grew into men. Lex's obsession with Superman has definite slash vibes going on, too. He still continues to be Superman's main adversary in the comics.
Toonverse has Lex as definitely an enemy, but his obsession is the same as in comicsverse. In a recent episode of the animated The Batman, Lex uses Poison Ivy to put Clark under his power, and there are subtextual undertones if you look for them. Also, while Clark calls him 'Luthor' in the presence of others, it's 'Lex' when the two of them are alone.
In the movieverse, Lex is played so broadly that there is nothing there but the hatred and the ambition to be the world's greatest villain. There are no nuances here, unlike comicsverse.
Unlike Smallville.
It's All Michael Rosenbaum's Fault
The series was originally conceived to be about Clark and Lex, the friendship that would be “the stuff of legends”, but has evolved more into Clark and Lana, unfortunately. However, in the first three seasons, they stuck to the concept and gave us a complex, delightful, frustrating relationship.
Producers Al Gough and Miles Millar also got thrown a curve by Michael Rosenbaum.
MR is a very talented actor, and he brought up Tom Welling's game as well in the scenes they had together. MR infused Lex with so many nuances and shadings that he wasn't just a cardboard villain as in the movieverse, but a character who does have good in him and genuinely cares about Clark as a friend, and in a Clex reading, lover.
Clark and Lex met with a bang in the Pilot: Clark was on a bridge and Lex was driving too fast and hit him, careening into the water and had to be rescued by Clark. He comes back to consciousness with Clark kissing him! Okay, it was mouth-to-mouth, but we Clexers will take it. ;)
From that moment on, each man is drawn to the other. We see a growing friendship and easily see romantic/sexual overtones in their caring for each other. Clark sticks by Lex when no one else will, and when he has been warned repeatedly not to trust a Luthor by his father and townsfolk. He has close friends Pete Ross and Chloe Sullivan, but spends quite a bit of time with Lex.
Lex is pretty friendless except for Clark, and he tries hard to help others (especially the Kents) and keep his father Lionel at bay. Lionel is a great character created for Smallville, a man of even more shadings than his son, cruel and calculating yet capable of real emotion and generosity. Unfortunately, his desire to make Lex 'strong' and 'to be a man' often meant abusive behavior in the past, and continues even when Lex is an adult. When your father constantly belittles you, it is probably difficult to believe in yourself.
Lex has had breakdowns in the past and has another after becoming friends with Clark. Clark sticks by him and we see the depth of the bond the two share.
Eventually, as canon dictates, lies and other misunderstandings begin the Rift that will destroy the friendship and chart them on the course of enemies instead of friends.
Yet the bond will remain.
A Clexian Explosion
The incredible chemistry between Clark and Lex (and Tom and Michael) on-screen created a Clex fandom overnight. The looks that both men gave the other was a great argument for a sexual attraction between the two. If you've ever seen screencaps of the two together from the early seasons, you'll understand why so many people got caught up in writing these two in the first three seasons. There are long, devoted looks between them, so much that the actors themselves joked about them.
I completely buy Clex in the Smallville universe, while I prefer Clark paired with Bruce or Dick in comicsverse. It's also frequent that Bruce is involved with both in fanon, as the similar backgrounds of Lex and Bruce (wealthy, powerful families) often crops up as knowledge of each other in boarding school and college days. It's an interesting triangle to write about, as Lex and Bruce are very similar: two driven, ambitious men who have suffered tragedies in their childhoods (the murder of Bruce's parents, Lex's mother dying young and leaving him with Lionel, a twisted parent at best) and who use their wealth and power to achieve their ends. Both are brilliant scientists and engineers, and both are in love with the shy farmboy Clark who becomes Earth's greatest hero.
The happiest Clex fiction is set in the first three seasons, and then as further seasons give us the beginning of the Rift (we are currently in Season 7), writers have to decide whether to write them as estranged or enemies, and continue that in the future, or allow Lex redemption and forgiveness by Clark (and Clark needs some forgiveness, too, though not as much as Lex).
Futurefic in Clex fandom has to make that choice: change what we know canon will be, or branch off into an AU.
That includes a Rift never occurring. In my story, Champagne And Apple Cider, Clark tells Lex his Secret early on, while he still can trust Lex, and Lex is so proud of being trusted with such an enormous Secret that he swears to protect Clark and his Secret with everything he has, and he does. Eventually they marry and Lex funds the Justice League of America along with Bruce and Ollie. His considerable talents and wealth are funneled into good causes, not evil ones.
Which is the tragedy of canon Smallville Clex: how misunderstandings and missed opportunities set them on a path of discord, when they are a perfect fit for each other.
The Tragedy of The Clex
Lex worries about becoming his father in the early seasons of Smallville. He knows he has a darkness inside him and he struggles against it every day. Clark makes him want to be better, to do good things, and he is in desperate need of a friend who trusts and loves him.
Clark is alien, different, and Lex makes him feel not quite so out-of-place. He understands him in ways that no one else does. While he can fit in at times (thanks a great deal to the upbringing of Jonathan and Martha), he is not the average Smallville citizen beneath the surface, and he and Lex share that bond of difference.
Both men could have found solace and fulfillment in the other. Instead, they let misunderstandings and mistakes snowball, until it became too late to fix things (at least in canon).
Should Clark Have Told Lex?
There are fans who blame Clark for not telling Lex his Secret and causing suspicions from Lex. I can't say that I blame Clark. Ever since he can remember, his parents have stressed to him that he must hide his powers. And for good reason! What if the Government or some unscrupulous person (Lionel, for example) took him away for experimentation? Martha and Jonathan could disappear, too. This is Smallville, home of meteor freaks on a weekly basis! An unexplained disappearance would barely cause a ripple.
Clark has been so conditioned and the stakes are so high that it would have been difficult for him to tell Lex his Secret. In fact, everyone who found out usually did so by accident (Pete) or was told by someone else (Chloe). Clark doesn't reveal his Secret to anyone.
Lex was curious about the boy who had saved him and started investigating him, which started the beginnings of the Rift when Clark found out. This looking into his background set off alarms in Clark, whose conditioning makes him angry and fearful. I do believe that if Clark had told Lex before this investigation, things could have turned out well, but there's no guarantee. What if Lex couldn't be trusted after all? Pretty big risk for Clark, so I can't blame him for keeping quiet, yet the secrets and lies (on both sides) end up destroying the friendship.
Whither Goest The Fandom?
Is there hope for the Clex fandom? Many writers have left, unhappy with the Rift that developed on the show, though of course canon dictated it. However, the show should be focusing more on the two, even if they are becoming enemies. Instead, Gough and Millar are fascinated by Lana Lang, and the show has become more Clana than Clex. The only thing that keeps me watching is the development of the Superman mythos within the Smallville universe and the occasional Clexian thread.
Also, perhaps they or the TPTB saw how much Clex there was out there and decided to take the show in a safer heterosexual direction. Even the arrival of Kara, Clark's Kryptonian cousin, started with her saving Lex from drowning in a car that had plunged into the river…sound familiar? She didn't 'kiss him' (at least Clexers have that!) but Lex was convinced at first that she was an angel sent to cause him to mend his ways. Which, of course, Clark represented to him when he first came to Smallville: a friend who made him better than he thought he could be, and who kept him in light instead of darkness.
Fandom, as detailed above, can ignore canon or fix it, and there are still hints strewn throughout the show. In a recent episode, “Fracture”, Clark literally ends up in Lex's head after Lex is wounded. Lex is the only one who knows where Lois and Kara are (and they're in danger), and time is of the essence. An experimental procedure allows Clark's consciousness to enter Lex's mind while he is in a coma.
Clark finds Alexander, the little boy that Lex used to be, and who is the good part of him still surviving despite the Evil Lex slowly taking over. Alexander calls Clark his friend, and Clark is heartbroken by a scene from Lex's childhood: Lionel verbally and physically abusing him as he tries to find out who opened his briefcase until the child spills the information that Lillian, his mother, opened it. Lillian storms into the room and she and Lionel argue, and she winds up on the floor after Lionel pushed her, then he stalks out. Alexander goes to his mother in apology…and here is the most chilling part of the scene: Lillian coldly rebuffs him, getting up and walking away from him.
It's been fanon (and perhaps canon) that Lex's mother was the parent who cared for him and when she died, he was left in Lionel's not-so-tender care. The scene shocks not because of Lionel's verbal and physical abuse (we've seen how he treats his adult son so are not surprised) but by Lillian's emotional coldness toward her son, who has just been bullied by his father into giving her up as the one who broke into his briefcase.
If this is not an isolated incident, then Lex truly had no one on his side in that house. His memories of his mother were probably colored by a child's love, as Bruce's is for his own departed parents. A child of eight, the age of Bruce Wayne, would have an idealistic memory of his parents. The same could be said for Lex, whose mother died when he was young.
Clark sees it all, saves Alexander from Evil Lex who would like nothing better than to get rid of him, and when it's his time to leave, assures the child Alexander that he'll always be looking for him and know that his friend is still within Lex.
This is canon for the reasons why Superman will never completely hate Lex Luthor, will always hope for his redemption, and why Clark will always hope for the friend (and lover, in slash versions) that he lost.
Clexian Goodness
Where to find Clex? There are three comms on LJ that I subscribe to:
old_school_clex,
sv_fanficand
sv_slash. The latter two also deal with other couples from SV, but Clex is one of the major couples.
old_school_clex is only concerned with the first three seasons of Smallville, and only Clex. All welcome fiction and for other details on art, icons, manips, etc., check them out.
There are several archives of Smallville fiction: the Smallville Slash Archive, Level Three Records Room and Wild Coyote.
Will canon show Lex committing an unpardonable sin yet to come? Previews of the episode scheduled for three days after this essay is published hint at such a thing, but we all know that previews don't always tell the whole story. But even if it does, that's what we have fanfic for!
So you see, the Clex still lives! It depends on how you want to view the pair. While it seems they are destined to end up enemies, that's canon's view. The good thing about fandom is that we are textual poachers, and we take the text and re-work it into our own image. If we want Happy Clex or Redemptive Clex or Subtextual Enemies Clex, we've got it!