cherry-topped Sunday

[buggery]

Hope rosenho and, apparently, LaT (though not in her LJ), have been talking about Clark's powers and abilities and just which manifested how much and how early. There are a bunch of clues in the Pilot, and more scattered through the rest of season 1, and (it being Smallville) plenty of them contradict one another.

I don't know much about immunization shots... unless you count the factoid that one can duck two consecutive scheduled tetanus boosters, impale one's foot on a rusty nail (beside a pigsty, no less), refuse another booster at the time of said accident, and still not come down with lockjaw -- not that I'm recommending that sort of behaviour, just that it worked for me and my own extreme needle phobia, largely, I'm sure, because I was stupid and lucky in equal measure.

I do infer that the Kents had some foreknowledge of Clark's imperviousness to needles simply based on their conversation in "Shimmer" about the blood drive and why Clark can't participate. There's no question of whether it might be okay (whereas the wood-chipper incident obviously shocked Bo, and all three of them seemed surprised by Clark's increasing tolerance for being shot with bullets). And it's clear, too that it's the issue of puncturing Clark's s skin that's a problem: the suggestion is to say he has "a problem with needles" as opposed to "a problem with having blood drawn." Though the degree to which Clark is unnerved and his parents confused when he bleeds in "Leech" suggests that if Clark's skin had ever been broken before, it was long ago.

I don't buy, however, that Clark was as powerless as a human child when he found the Kents. The pod might have been, and probably was, so constructed as to protect him during descent through the atmosphere and the inevitably rocky landing. But. He walked up to their overturned truck, naked and barefoot. Even if he didn't need to touch the outside of the pod getting out, he still walked up the steaming furrow it had left gouged across the field. Sure, normal humans can walk beds of coals, but it's not so pedestrian a feat that it's not a spectacle when it does happen.

To detour back to continuity issues again... Re-watched the pilot tonight, largely so as to finally see and tape Metamorphosis, and I just have to harp on the skateboard again. It boggles my mind to see Clark casually carrying it -- to school! -- when his parents won't even let him play football. (I have to wonder what Clark does in gym class besides run laps, and how he's managed to be excused from team sports). Skateboarding presents even more opportunities for Clark's otherness to be revealed, not least when the inevitable wipeouts don't break his bones or even leave so much as a scrape.

Hrm. Unless only his strength and speed were known to the Kents pre-pilot, and the invulnerability was as completely new a development as the floating and x-ray vision that followed...

Comments

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I've only seen Metamorphosis the once, so I could be wrong, but I believe the board only appears in the pilot proper -- it's hanging from Clark's backpack in the morning as he heads to school.

If nothing else, Clark riding the skateboard in a future ep would be dependent on Tom being able to.