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anghraineSo I'm sorting through my many, many notes for the K/S femslash AU jotted down in email drafts and elaborate notes on chronological outlines and grumpy additions to passages where I'm like "actually it needs to happen differently, more like blahblah, especially if I want my version to correspond with this conceptual detail from TOS I really like..."
Between moving across the city, asthma problems, a death in the family, looking for work, etc etc, some notes are hyper-organized and others are all jumbled together with no rhyme or reason. So it can be silly and fun in its own way to impose some kind of order when it's like:
- Post five-year mission, but barely - mandatory leave, Spock's COTEOF invite to recuperate on Vulcan (would come more organically later in Spock's/S'paak's development IMO anyway...), the follow-up to "Amok Time" T'Pring POV convo with S'paak when she has a chance encounter with Jessica - surprisingly civil, but T'Pring doesn't know (at least not with certainty) that, from Jessica's POV, a near-death experience as the cost of freeing S'paak from Stonn forever and making their current romance possible is a pretty small price and she's not holding that much of a grudge (unintentional gay ally T'Pring is always a cause for joy tbh) - T'Pring mentions returning for the festival with the intention of seeing her brother's family, and asks with some bemusement if Kirk has siblings or other relations at the embassy, perhaps - evidently not going to show or admit to bafflement at Kirk spending protracted leave on Vulcan, but finding it curious enough to seek an explanation. At the question, Jess flips into full Kirk-Leia classic disassociative mode and says with absolutely no emotion that no, her only sibling was murdered in a planetary massacre several years ago, before moving on to remarking on Sarek and Amanda's generosity. T'Pring is still "......" about the whole encounter but is finding it a bit easier to understand S'paak's respect for this younger human woman. She notices that Captain Kirk clearly lacks the secondary protective eyelid to go by the extreme contraction of her pupils in Vulcan's sunshine and is wearing her hair loose despite the heat (the latter is absolutely vanity with a side of experimental curiosity; Jessica wants to see how much Vulcan's sun is going to affect the color). In the interests of good will towards someone she could easily imagine holding a vendetta, T'Pring recommends protective gear for her eyes and keeping her hair up before sweeping off.
- S'paak has obviously found it painful and unpleasant to witness the handful of occasions on which Jessica's flirtations followed from actual, unforced interest, but post-"Turnabout Intruder" she starts contemplating how to approach the appropriate romantic overtures, given that Jess is 100% never in a million years going to proposition her as a crew member, least of all one directly below her in the chain of command, except perhaps for pon farr reasons or something else that would be years away. So she thinks back on Jessica's relationships she's observed and judges to have been genuinely-felt, and what interactions appeared successful or to forward unambiguous establishment of romance (I'm pretty sure she builds a spreadsheet). The unfortunate conclusion is that Jess very obviously seeks and responds well to overt sentimentality and romance, so she's contemplating how to essentially court her in ways that respect Vulcan tradition, but which are different enough from their usual for Jess to even notice. (I kind of like the idea of a comedy of errors around S'paak's attempt to strike some kind of compromise between these motives, as her attempts grow increasingly obvious but between their usual intense intimacy and S'paak being S'paak and Kirk's tunnel vision when his - or her - mind is already made up, Jessica doesn't even know she's being courted until S'paak finally just tells her.)
- Jess generally does not intrude on the S'paak-Uhura music sessions throughout the mission, though not because she thinks their relationship is romantic (it isn't, really; I read the 23rd century of TOS as intensely cisheteronormative across multiple cultures, so people of this era on something like the Enterprise are vastly less likely to categorize the interactions between two women so readily in romantic terms—and for another, I think the Spock/Uhura relationship in TOS doesn't amount to much more than a slight and unrequited crush on Uhura's side despite the wobbliness of early Spock characterization and she quickly moves on - I actually don't think Uhura and Spock are all that close as TOS unwinds, despite their mutual respect, and certainly not by comparison to Uhura and Kirk's powerful and persistent platonic friendship, and Jessica doesn't assume that S'paak swings that way, or any way). But music night is more of an intra-crew thing that Jess thinks might well be less relaxed and companionable with the captain there, so she keeps her distance and quietly retreats into the company of, well, her own virtue and loneliness. She totally eavesdrops now and then on S'paak playing, though.
- Minor drama c. early S3 when S'paak is invited to handle the Kollos thing, by no means the first Starfleet attempt to transfer her up to a position of being In Charge of something important (S'paak: ugh). She has some concern that it's inappropriate to depend on Jess to field so much of this pressure to transition S'paak into more authority away from the Enterprise (and more to the point, away from Jessica - this is welllll before S'paak accepts her feelings as Good Actually and is confident enough in Jessica's to pursue her romantically). She presents this concern via some unintentionally unfortunate, very S'paak phrasing and for a few moments, Jess thinks S'paak wants to leave and her heart nearly stops. S'paak can tell she's taking the whole thing badly but as they're talking past each other, only gradually realizes how upset she's getting (just a few steps short of shadowkiss turbolift meltdown territory).
- Kind of want the early phases of their sex life (all post-Turnabout Intruder) to be very clearly a bit strange. Jessica has never slept with a telepath before, and is thinking it's somehow both the best and weirdest sex she's ever had (after their first time, it takes her a bit to jumpstart enough brain cells to realize that S'paak never even took her clothes off while Jessica's own uniform is, yet again, unsalvagably damaged). And S'paak has sharply limited direct experience while in her right mind (IMO it's clear in "Amok Time" that Spock hadn't seen T'Pring since childhood and neither of them had any true sense of the other as autonomous adults, and I really don't think he'd be having affairs nor seems at likely to much desire them during their betrothal, and there's a reason his romantic scenes are always dubcon at best). There's a lot of blurring of human and Vulcan norms in their sex life, they definitely meld, S'paak isn't quite as overwhelmed by Jessica's mind as the first time but still kind of psychically swept off her feet. Also, I don't actually see Kirk even in canon as likely to be all that relaxed and uninhibited about sex in general (I think he's likely to be generous but is also neurotically controlled in his own way, hence his occasional wistfulness around some scenario where he could stop making decisions) and I feel like he/Jessica would have a certain... stage manager approach to sex that isn't altogether healthy. ngl I think if Jessica was actually capable of being totally honest about it, she'd really prefer to be more of a pillow princess but has absolutely not let herself (meanwhile S'paak has a bit of that "Troi fantasizing about psychically pegging Riker" energy she also isn't fully able to articulate at first).
So yeah, the notes are pretty much a genderbending potluck at this point :P
Between moving across the city, asthma problems, a death in the family, looking for work, etc etc, some notes are hyper-organized and others are all jumbled together with no rhyme or reason. So it can be silly and fun in its own way to impose some kind of order when it's like:
- Post five-year mission, but barely - mandatory leave, Spock's COTEOF invite to recuperate on Vulcan (would come more organically later in Spock's/S'paak's development IMO anyway...), the follow-up to "Amok Time" T'Pring POV convo with S'paak when she has a chance encounter with Jessica - surprisingly civil, but T'Pring doesn't know (at least not with certainty) that, from Jessica's POV, a near-death experience as the cost of freeing S'paak from Stonn forever and making their current romance possible is a pretty small price and she's not holding that much of a grudge (unintentional gay ally T'Pring is always a cause for joy tbh) - T'Pring mentions returning for the festival with the intention of seeing her brother's family, and asks with some bemusement if Kirk has siblings or other relations at the embassy, perhaps - evidently not going to show or admit to bafflement at Kirk spending protracted leave on Vulcan, but finding it curious enough to seek an explanation. At the question, Jess flips into full Kirk-Leia classic disassociative mode and says with absolutely no emotion that no, her only sibling was murdered in a planetary massacre several years ago, before moving on to remarking on Sarek and Amanda's generosity. T'Pring is still "......" about the whole encounter but is finding it a bit easier to understand S'paak's respect for this younger human woman. She notices that Captain Kirk clearly lacks the secondary protective eyelid to go by the extreme contraction of her pupils in Vulcan's sunshine and is wearing her hair loose despite the heat (the latter is absolutely vanity with a side of experimental curiosity; Jessica wants to see how much Vulcan's sun is going to affect the color). In the interests of good will towards someone she could easily imagine holding a vendetta, T'Pring recommends protective gear for her eyes and keeping her hair up before sweeping off.
- S'paak has obviously found it painful and unpleasant to witness the handful of occasions on which Jessica's flirtations followed from actual, unforced interest, but post-"Turnabout Intruder" she starts contemplating how to approach the appropriate romantic overtures, given that Jess is 100% never in a million years going to proposition her as a crew member, least of all one directly below her in the chain of command, except perhaps for pon farr reasons or something else that would be years away. So she thinks back on Jessica's relationships she's observed and judges to have been genuinely-felt, and what interactions appeared successful or to forward unambiguous establishment of romance (I'm pretty sure she builds a spreadsheet). The unfortunate conclusion is that Jess very obviously seeks and responds well to overt sentimentality and romance, so she's contemplating how to essentially court her in ways that respect Vulcan tradition, but which are different enough from their usual for Jess to even notice. (I kind of like the idea of a comedy of errors around S'paak's attempt to strike some kind of compromise between these motives, as her attempts grow increasingly obvious but between their usual intense intimacy and S'paak being S'paak and Kirk's tunnel vision when his - or her - mind is already made up, Jessica doesn't even know she's being courted until S'paak finally just tells her.)
- Jess generally does not intrude on the S'paak-Uhura music sessions throughout the mission, though not because she thinks their relationship is romantic (it isn't, really; I read the 23rd century of TOS as intensely cisheteronormative across multiple cultures, so people of this era on something like the Enterprise are vastly less likely to categorize the interactions between two women so readily in romantic terms—and for another, I think the Spock/Uhura relationship in TOS doesn't amount to much more than a slight and unrequited crush on Uhura's side despite the wobbliness of early Spock characterization and she quickly moves on - I actually don't think Uhura and Spock are all that close as TOS unwinds, despite their mutual respect, and certainly not by comparison to Uhura and Kirk's powerful and persistent platonic friendship, and Jessica doesn't assume that S'paak swings that way, or any way). But music night is more of an intra-crew thing that Jess thinks might well be less relaxed and companionable with the captain there, so she keeps her distance and quietly retreats into the company of, well, her own virtue and loneliness. She totally eavesdrops now and then on S'paak playing, though.
- Minor drama c. early S3 when S'paak is invited to handle the Kollos thing, by no means the first Starfleet attempt to transfer her up to a position of being In Charge of something important (S'paak: ugh). She has some concern that it's inappropriate to depend on Jess to field so much of this pressure to transition S'paak into more authority away from the Enterprise (and more to the point, away from Jessica - this is welllll before S'paak accepts her feelings as Good Actually and is confident enough in Jessica's to pursue her romantically). She presents this concern via some unintentionally unfortunate, very S'paak phrasing and for a few moments, Jess thinks S'paak wants to leave and her heart nearly stops. S'paak can tell she's taking the whole thing badly but as they're talking past each other, only gradually realizes how upset she's getting (just a few steps short of shadowkiss turbolift meltdown territory).
- Kind of want the early phases of their sex life (all post-Turnabout Intruder) to be very clearly a bit strange. Jessica has never slept with a telepath before, and is thinking it's somehow both the best and weirdest sex she's ever had (after their first time, it takes her a bit to jumpstart enough brain cells to realize that S'paak never even took her clothes off while Jessica's own uniform is, yet again, unsalvagably damaged). And S'paak has sharply limited direct experience while in her right mind (IMO it's clear in "Amok Time" that Spock hadn't seen T'Pring since childhood and neither of them had any true sense of the other as autonomous adults, and I really don't think he'd be having affairs nor seems at likely to much desire them during their betrothal, and there's a reason his romantic scenes are always dubcon at best). There's a lot of blurring of human and Vulcan norms in their sex life, they definitely meld, S'paak isn't quite as overwhelmed by Jessica's mind as the first time but still kind of psychically swept off her feet. Also, I don't actually see Kirk even in canon as likely to be all that relaxed and uninhibited about sex in general (I think he's likely to be generous but is also neurotically controlled in his own way, hence his occasional wistfulness around some scenario where he could stop making decisions) and I feel like he/Jessica would have a certain... stage manager approach to sex that isn't altogether healthy. ngl I think if Jessica was actually capable of being totally honest about it, she'd really prefer to be more of a pillow princess but has absolutely not let herself (meanwhile S'paak has a bit of that "Troi fantasizing about psychically pegging Riker" energy she also isn't fully able to articulate at first).
So yeah, the notes are pretty much a genderbending potluck at this point :P