Nothing like finally having a m/m OTP and then being BUT IS IT REALLY

[anghraine]

I've already talked a lot about it on Tumblr, but it's still kind of incredible to me that TOS Kirk (who tbh I cannot believe is the same person as TWOK!Kirk) is like "no I am not a strong father figure, you be the strong masculine figure or, I don't know, find one ... oh, this robot probe thinks I'm its male creator? haha I'm a mom now" and responds to obnoxious men questioning him about his clothes with "this little thing? just something I slipped on" and is like, "I may or may not wear eyeshadow but I definitely never leave my room without three layers of mascara."

Meanwhile, Spock literally says within a single episode (THEE episode, in fact) that he's a man and also that he is not a man.

(I love thinking about my inevitable f/f AU, but they're genderfluid4genderfluid in my heart)

Comments

[elperian]

I do enjoy/respect the hell out of how you took the iconic foundational m/m ship and were like "what if...f/f???"

[anghraine]

afd;kjjka;df I am delighted and flattered by how many of my friends went "wait YOU fell hard for THEE m/m ship of ultimate destiny ... oh you've got a f/f version, it makes sense now" hahaha. But also I do genuinely think the original version was already doing a certain (very unexpected!!) amount of genderfuckery, so I live in my happy genderfluid4genderfluid version when I'm not going full-throttle for the butchSpock/femmeKirk f/f AU of joy :D

[alias_sqbr]

Well now you have me thinking about nb4nb canon TOS Kirk/Spock. HMMM!

[anghraine]

Yessss it's absolutely my preferred reading of canon TOS! Kirk was iirc deliberately constructed to blur masculinity and femininity (and relatedly, he is way less caught up in the Spock and McCoy masculinity sweepstakes and uncomfortable with exclusively or overwhelmingly masculine roles, and often filmed like a Girl of the Week) and he's just super easy for me to read as a semi-closeted nb person. And meanwhile Spock is just out there referring to himself as "a man who is not hers" in "Amok Time" and (when alone with Kirk) "Nor am I a man" also in "Amok Time."

(I personally believe that TOS is happening in a not just metaphorically, but in-world literally, queerphobic era that is early in slowly shifting towards a less reactionary culture, and that both Kirk and Spock are currently somewhat closeted on a sexuality front, though they're bad at it in different ways. And given the obvious in-world misogyny and gender essentialism etc, I could easily believe that is also true of gender—though it doesn't have to be the case, I just see TOS Kirk's "I'm entirely happy to take up a maternal role and super weirded out by a paternal one for Reasons" and the rest as more transfem nb, and Spock as more of a general genderfuck type but not a woman—I saw an interesting argument that Vulcan make-up tends to be more muted on men and more flamboyant on women, and Spock's distinctly Vulcan make-up style much more closely resembles the make-up style of female Vulcans like T'Pring rather than his father's or most other Vulcan men's, but without any implication that he is a woman per se).

There are a lot of trans K/S headcanons on Tumblr but they're overwhelmingly binary transmasc esp with Kirk, and I'm thinking "well it's the only trans Kirk interpretation I absolutely cannot see, but whatever floats your boat. Meanwhile I'm going to play happily in the nb sandbox elsewhere."

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah I can't not read the setting of TOS (and also most other Trek I've seen, though maybe not like... Lower Decks) as pretty cisheteronormative, its SO baked into the writing and the ways characters relate to romance/gender etc.

[anghraine]

Yup, exactly. The characterization and tensions make so much more sense in that context, esp in TOS, and hit a lot harder as well.