on a more serious note (yes yes even within smallville) i do actually think it is very telling how even the closest of clark's friends (chloe and lex and jonathan shitass kent especially!) will at some point in the relationship go to the 'you're not even human/you were never human' line when clark refuses to do what they want him to (lex with clark's secret leading to his season 7 arc/approach/goals, chloe with bringing jimmy back in s9, jonathan rescinding his place in the family when clark's actions result in magi-abortion in s2). i think its a reality you see in a lot of marginalized identities -- this conditional acceptance or even this weaponizing of power (their power of being human while he is not) when they -- chloe & lex & clark's parents -- are at their most hurt and upset. they are at their lowest and clark is refusing them something they think they are owed from him, and so they take away his temporarily granted status as a human/their acceptance of him into the dominant group (humans).
and i actually think clark's a great character to talk about this specific issue because he's a character that strives so hard to assimilate that wants to badly to be normal and to blend in and to make himself as small as helpful as nice as possible to be accepted and that while the initial realization that he never will be truly seen as human no matter how small he makes himself is brutal, this can be a freeing realization too. i think even a necessary one on the path of self acceptance, and its genuinely a pity that clark kent is so rarely allowed to move beyond that desperate striving to prove he's 'one of the good ones'.
tangentwithtanner
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stormborns
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