fic: The Right of Truth, part 1
Jun. 15th, 2007 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotNext week we (hopefully) will return you to your regularly scheduled fic. For now - gratuitous Clex h/c, set in late second season. If I had been watching the show back then, this is just the sort of fic I would've been writing: slash angst-fluff, pretty much, exploring an issue about Clark's secrets (and in fact most superhero secret identities) that's been bothering me.
Warnings for a bit of good old fashioned Lex!torture in the beginning, and generally woobie!Lex. Also the Kents are perhaps not very nice here, which wasn't my intent, but how it worked out. Hopefully in an IC way, but still. (And may I say *sigh* that being an asshole is in character for SV's Jonathan...)
Smallville: The Right of Truth (1/2)
R, Clex, h/c; second season
Lex is kidnapped and it's Clark to the rescue as usual, but he might not be ready for all he finds.
Read it on AO3
Warnings for a bit of good old fashioned Lex!torture in the beginning, and generally woobie!Lex. Also the Kents are perhaps not very nice here, which wasn't my intent, but how it worked out. Hopefully in an IC way, but still. (And may I say *sigh* that being an asshole is in character for SV's Jonathan...)
Smallville: The Right of Truth (1/2)
R, Clex, h/c; second season
Lex is kidnapped and it's Clark to the rescue as usual, but he might not be ready for all he finds.
Read it on AO3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-06-15 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 01:02 pm (UTC)I love this! Can't wait for the next part
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:04 pm (UTC)You & me both! ^_^ More soon, glad you're enjoying it! (also I was wondering if you'd mind me posting it to
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:10 pm (UTC)The trouble is that I like the Kents, at least in theory...I like how they were developed into complete chars, and I love their loyalty and love for Clark. I just wish I could like them more otherwise...
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Date: 2007-06-16 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 04:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:12 pm (UTC)(your icon cracks me up!)
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Date: 2007-06-15 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 06:15 pm (UTC)exploring an issue about Clark's secrets (and in fact most superhero secret identities) that's been bothering me.
The problem with secret identities (for superheroes) is that that there's no real alternative for it - if you don't have one, you don't get privacy at best and your loved ones become targets at worst. And it's always a gamble telling someone, and each time someone new becomes a secret keeper, everyone else involved also is put at risk. For example: Lex has proven himself in this fic, but Clark decides to tell Chloe and Lana as well. But can he be sure they'll stay loyal? No. Especially not since he's been raised to trust no one and deny everything ;)
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:19 pm (UTC)The thing about the secret identities...it is a problem, sharing your secret with too many keepers. But with a secret this potentially dangerous - and Clark is putting people in danger. "Mortal", when the freaks come after his family & Lana to get to him? Whether or not it was Lex's plan, it's still because of Clark, if not his fault. The only way to deal with it fairly is to only get close to people you can trust with the secret. I don't think Clark's obligated to tell everyone - but if there's someone close to him that he feels he can't trust, then there is an alternative: he should cut off ties with them. He shouldn't put them in danger. It's lonely but it's the only way that's fair...later he decides not to tell Lana to keep her safe, but really to keep her safe he needs to break off all relations...
...The problem with SV is that it makes one think realistically about comic book scenarios which really don't hold up well to the difficulties of real life!
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Date: 2007-06-15 07:24 pm (UTC)Speaking of hurt/comfort, (and this is something I meant to mention in the previous post,) I look forward to hearing yoru reaction to Doctor Who ep: '42', which is MADE of H/C.
At any rate, this is another spectacular piece of writing and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I hope the kidnapp issue is resolved too.
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:20 pm (UTC)I've now see all the DW that's out, and while "42" wasn't my favorite (it felt a bit too much like a retread of "The Impossible Planet" to me) - eeee to the h/c. David Tennant does 'pain' so very well... XD
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Date: 2007-06-15 07:28 pm (UTC)Also, have you ever read Identity Crisis? It's a really powerful piece of DC storytelling that looks at the selective morality that have a secret identity requires. Their take on that issue is different than the one you've poised here. I think taken together that story and this one really challenge the idea that a secret identity protects people rather than endangering them.
Also, I really like the general banter of this story. It's sweet but not treacly and set back when Clark was (for me at least) still a likeable character. I'm excited to read the rest!
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:26 pm (UTC)"Identity Crisis"? hmm, no, never heard of it - worth checking out? I'm intrigued! Is it Superman, or...?
I always thought the real reason for a secret identity was so the heroes weren't sued for property damage and the like (see the beginning of "The Incredibles"!) There is a certain degree that it does protect your loved ones - but not if you're keeping it from them.
--er, yep, this fic is really an essay in protracted, dialogue form! But glad you're enjoying it on the story aspect as well, and I'll be getting the end up soon-ish! ^_^
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Date: 2007-06-16 06:53 pm (UTC)Identity Crisis was, I guess they call it an 'event.' It was a storyline that affected the entire DC universe. The writing is incredibly powerful. It focuses mostly on the core members of the JLA.
The premise is that someone seems to know the secret identity of a bunch of different heroes and is attacking their loved ones. It causes a panic in the hero community and quite a few people are suddenly much more willing to ignore due process and take the law into their own hands. The story addresses the necessity of secret identities and lengths to which it is acceptable to go to protect them.
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Date: 2007-06-15 08:16 pm (UTC)Smallville will always be a strange town, because Clark is the biggest fish in a sea of oddities that he should have a local reputation given his relationship with the two most famous/sought-after residents in town and the rate of his involvement in many strange happenings. No one seems to want to look more into Clark Kent beyond his farm boy facade, but I'd like to think that there's always a danger of someone smart getting a clue and wanting to capitalize on it, which the show should have explored rather than rehashing the Lana stalker storyline, which makes less sense because it focuses on her virtues that she doesn't even affirm of herself.
I've been tallying at the back of my mind the relative costs that people around Clark had to pay by not knowing his secret (if Clark in the show had been more thoughtful rather than mopey, he would realize that shield/alibi allegory you mentioned in the fic). Lana and Chloe had sacrificed a lot (physical harm, heartbreak, etc.) and have repeatedly shown willingness to suffer for that, because they love and are devoted to him without knowing he's an alien (their reactions to finding out were dramatic, but not angry). Lex would have been just like Pete, who would be angry for a while but would soon prefer to deal with the practicalities of that new information about a friend that he will never turn his back on as long as it's in his power. But because Clark is Lex's only friend, because he's a Luthor and has Lionel for a father, because his life has been altered by an alien since both his arrivals in Smallville (not even including), because he's got trust issues and needed someone to teach him that you don't have to control people all the time, Lex had the steepest price to pay, because Lex may be more powerful than Lana, Chloe and Pete combined, but he's all the more vulnerable for it. Lex could become whomever he would have wanted, but since he is so inexorably linked to Clark, he couldn't have pulled away even if he knew he should.
I'm not saying that Lex had unknowingly paid enough to earn Clark's secret, but he has shown more than enough willingness to provide whatever he can for Clark and his family in ways that he couldn't profit from. How could the Kents have handled Lex's consistent gestures goodwill so badly then? I'm not putting a direct causality here, but they essentially made Lex more dangerous than he initially was.
And wow, I can't believe I've blurted out my own issue with Clark's secrets here. While I'm saying with little knowledge on how this is handled in the comics, I think the superheroes should be more conscious of the responsibility of having two identities, which Clark hasn't realized the necessity of due to his desire for a normal life, the poor boy.
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Date: 2007-06-16 05:41 pm (UTC)I wish the show just once had really established the dangers of Clark's secret. They harp on and on about the danger of Clark being carted off to a lab - but is that such a realistic threat when no one else in the town was ever carted away? At least not until 33.1 really got going. But then everything about the freaks of SV makes no sense from a real-world perspective...there's people avoiding contemplation of the Unknown, and then there's the insane blindness of everyone in the town!
Lex...it's not that Lex has paid to learn Clark's secret, even, so much as I think he has a right to it. At least to part of it - Lex is involved. The meteors changed his life. He's got a right to investigate them...and investigating them means investigating Clark. Everyone in the show behaves as if Clark's secret belongs only to himself, but it really doesn't. It's had far too much impact on too many people for that. For that matter I think Lana has a right too, considering her squished parents. But for Lex to look into it, when Lex knows from early on that the meteors changed him - to deny him studying them, to deny him that understanding of his own self, that's just wrong.
...don't worry about blurting out your Clark-issues, I'm certainly using this as a forum to spread my own all over the place! ^^
The thing about SV's Clark, too, is that he doesn't have a secret identity yet. His other self (his true self?) is known only to his little cabal. In the future, I feel he's less obligated to tell Lois his secret, because Lois is friends with Superman - she knows the risk she's taking, being close to the hero. And she gets in trouble for it, but she thinks it's worth it...(I have different issues there, with Clark Kent getting all close to Lois and asking her what she thinks of Superman and such...that's not endangering her, it's just kind of a slimy thing to do, like spying in a way...)
As for Clark now...I think that sometime around 3rd season, Clark internalizes the Kents' directives. He has to, because it's the only way to handle the lying that is really counter to his personality. Early on, Clark protests the lying, and only keeps doing it for love of his parents - whenever he's on Red-K he loses that inhibition. I think Clark actually believes that he's protecting other people by keeping his secret; he's convinced himself, psychologically warped himself to be able to manage...
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Date: 2007-06-15 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 09:53 pm (UTC)I've been thinking about how maintaining a secret identity...
Date: 2007-06-16 06:20 am (UTC)I know it's not quite the same thing for Clark. Clark is the last Kryptonian, as far as he knows, so there isn't going to be a Kryptonian Liberation Front waiting in the wings. His parents are the first to know his Kryptonian identity, not the last, as is often the case with gay people and their gay identity. His identity as an alien is far more dangerous for his friends and family to know about, than would be his identity as a gay person. So I'm not suggesting it should be as easy for him to 'come out', and that he should come out publicly. I'm saying that hiding his identity as an alien must have something of the same effect on him.
In fact, the original comics did realize this. There is that split between 'Clark Kent' and 'Superman'. They're two different people, really. And Clark Kent from the comics was a rather unpleasant person, which was why Lois Lane didn't like him much. It was 'Lois and Clark' that really made Clark the hero of the show, I think. Though Christopher Reeve's Clark was an improvement on the comics Clark, too.
SV's Clark is shaping up to be much more like the Clark of the original comics. And it is his lack of any sympathy for, or understanding of, how his lies affect other people that I find distressing.
People keep saying he's young. Well, how mature do you have to be to realize that you hurt people when you lie to them? When Clark ran off, leaving Lex to be taken back inside Belle Reeve and essentially tortured, all to protect himself... that was unspeakable. But when he and his parents justified his actions, by saying it was all for the best, and Lex was happier for having his brains fried.... Gah! That was the worst. He'd just had a terrible revelation of how he hurt people by lying. If he'd seriously questioned his own actions, if he'd even seemed to consider whether or not it was worthy of him to allow his friend to be tortured to protect his secret, if he'd shown any sign of maturing through his experiences and being less judgemental of other people's faults, I'd like him more. But there it is.
Re: I've been thinking about how maintaining a secret identity...
Date: 2007-06-16 10:21 am (UTC)I've read that meta before! Ah, here it is, in the context of Asylum.
I knew Comics!Clark could be such a dick, but I've never thought of SV!Clark being like that at all. *wibbles between accepting that interpretation and hoping that SV!Clark is the most realistic version of Clark Kent*
(Sorry, I don't mean to focus on the meta provoked by the fic instead of the fic itself, but next to Lex-nalyses, I love discussions that give me more insights on SV!Clark. :D)
Re: I've been thinking about how maintaining a secret identity...
Date: 2007-06-16 05:36 pm (UTC)I don't think SV Clark is such a dick, just that he's heading in that direction... and, oops! What a Freudian slip. Heading in the direction of dick?! :-)))
(I don't think xparrot will mind if we discuss the issues involved in the story for now, since chapter 2 has yet to be posted.)
Lex can't hide who he is. He's Lionel Luthor's son, and everyone knows it. He's instantly recognizable. People keep turning up in Smallville, with stories about his shady past. (Though most of those stories aren't all that evil.) He's definitely out of the closet.
Clark isn't alone in his differences. There are all those mutants around. But Clark keeps denying he's really one of them. And of course he isn't a mutant -- he was born that way. Is that why he feels he can't come out even to the extent of pretending he's a mutant? He's too honest to take such an obvious out, by claiming to be a mutant. He just clings to the lie offered by his parents: Move along, move along, nothing to see here, folks!
I was struck by the discussion in that link, about how Jonathan and Martha want to keep their power over Clark, and how Lex threatens that. Yes! It's horrible, but true. There isn't really much difference between the Kent parents and Lionel, when it comes right down to it. No wonder Lionel eventually worms his way into Martha's affections.
I remember discussions on TWOP, back during the early seasons, about this issue. Some people defended Martha and Jonathan by saying Clark was like a special needs child, who must be protected at all costs, and that M & J only did what they did out of love. But how loving is it, to teach your child that his or her secrets are more important than anything else, even the life and health of their friends? I can't see a self-sacrificing Superman coming out of this environment, so I'm not sure how it's going to happen. I'm trying to figure it out, to come up with a scenario.
(Ponders.)
Re: I've been thinking about how maintaining a secret identity...
Date: 2007-06-16 05:47 pm (UTC)(and no problem about the meta discussion - this really is another essay not-so-cunningly disguised in fic-form; in fact I almost wrote it as one, but then realized I could work in some h/c if I fic'ed it, so there you go ^^)
Thanks for the meta link, btw, will haveta check it out!
Re: I've been thinking about how maintaining a secret identity...
Date: 2007-06-16 06:00 pm (UTC)One difference between Clark and most gay people is that Clark's parents knew before Clark himself does. They take the secret so seriously that they kept it even from Clark himself for over a decade! The Kents really seem to feel that they own Clark's secret, that they have a right to control it, even when it affects and involves other people to the point of life-threatening danger...
As for Clark...I think Clark in later seasons completely internalized his parents' instructions. And I think he did it by convincing himself that protecting his secret really is protecting other people. He doesn't think beyond this axiom because to do so, he'd fall apart psychologically. Lying does not come naturally to Clark (as it does to Martha...less so to Jonathan; Jonathan would just prefer for Clark to stay hidden, so the issue doesn't arise at all...) I think subconsciously Clark must be aware of how his lies hurt people...Clark has too much compassion and conscience not to realize it. But he's hiding from that truth, because otherwise he'd have to betray his parents, and he can't do that. (It doesn't help that every single person who's brought into Clark's secret feels so privileged that they don't want anyone else to come in on it and lessen their specialness. Not a single member of his cabal has ever done anything but reinforce to Clark how vital it is to keep the secret at any cost.)
Spoilers?
Date: 2007-06-22 04:45 pm (UTC)I read the warnings and saw the Lex!torture warning. I was just wondering is there a non-con plot in this story? I don't read rape stories and didn't want to start reading the story if that's what the "torture" was. Just wanted to check beforehand. I do like to be spoiled in those cases. *g* If you don't want to say in a public post, you can e-mail it to me.
Thanks!
Re: Spoilers?
Date: 2007-06-22 05:30 pm (UTC)Oh, and I was so into the entire subject...
Date: 2007-06-16 06:22 am (UTC)Re: Oh, and I was so into the entire subject...
Date: 2007-06-16 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-16 10:57 am (UTC)♥Story, I think the Kents are very in character. Eee~ woobie!Lex, he lost this battle with Lionel.
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Date: 2007-06-16 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 05:37 pm (UTC)Hearing footsteps through the door, Lex hastily tucked his hands under himself. He was halfway through the rope, not quite ready, and couldn't blow his chance until the time was right. Which hopefully would be soon; he was quite thoroughly bored. The only thing keeping utter ennui at bay was the knowledge that he had seen his captor's faces, enough to pick them from a lineup. That did not bode well for his future chances, if he failed to procure his own freedom.
In the next-to-last sentence, it should be 'captors' faces' rather than 'captor's faces.'
Love this story!
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Date: 2007-06-18 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-17 06:52 pm (UTC)And your dialogue is always so clever. Love this bit:
"A necessary nightcap. Fortification for facing my father."
"If you're alliterating, you definitely should be going to bed. Not staying up drinking."
Awesome!
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Date: 2007-06-18 05:57 am (UTC)Glad you're enjoying it! ^_^
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Date: 2007-06-18 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-19 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-21 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-23 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-24 08:52 am (UTC)he is soooooo much .. better than he could be on the show.
and your lex is equally so much better.....
and alas, i love the kents in the first seasons, and dont want to taint my pink-colored tinted memories of them, so i mostly skipped the parts, where clark talked with them, coz i assume, if you go the realistic - show - course, they would say something along "lalala, your secret is big, lex is bad, you shouldnt tell, no matter who else get hurt, lex or others..."