Anghraine

I was actually slightly on edge about getting into a frankly notorious fandom without encountering this kind of thing sooner. After getting a somewhat clearer sense of trends and fun conversations and persistent annoyances (at least on Tumblr), and after monologuing my TOS feelings, I still hadn't received any particular unpleasantnesses on a personal level, and was like ... well, maybe people are nicer now, even to someone like me. But mostly I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, especially given that I'd found TOS in particular very different from what I'd expected via fandom and pop culture osmosis on many, many levels.

But it would have never occurred to me that my controversial TOS hot take would be "Spock's co-workers are racist to him a lot and this is the main vehicle for TOS's exploration of racism as a thing." But yup, I got anon hate about how "funny" it is that I'd been complaining about bad Kirk takes (specifically, I'd recently seen a conversation about how "TOS Kirk actually doesn't experience angst over anything but challenges to his authority" when I'd been very surprised to discover that a) TOS persistently returns to how lonely and fearful of being left alone he is, and b) TOS Kirk is a genocide survivor struggling with his options of "doing nothing" or "ruthless vengeance", and he was bullied in the Academy for being "grim" (no shit?), and that's not even the only massacre he survived, and a lot of his infamous romances are blatantly coercive towards him). See, it's funny because I'm so biased towards Spock that I don't even realize it and have said people are just always being mean to him.

(I don't think I said "mean." I said racist.)

Anyway, I was so utterly baffled by that of all things being my big controversial ST opinion that I read it to my housemates for shits and giggles, though normally I keep fandom drama away from RL. Since my BFF J is a massive Trekkie and Ash has watched a few TOS episodes with us, they got the context and J was just laughing his head off while a very confused Ash was like, "Has this person seen it?"

On the bright side, we had a whole conversation about the various desperate flailing attempts I've seen to defend the general racism against Spock within the show, or at least to suggest that it's no different from Spock's or Kirk's own behavior, and that ended up being actually interesting, so at least something deeper came of it! But I'm still baffled at how you watch something like "Balance of Terror" and come away thinking the point of Spock's experiences and Kirk's outrage is "Spock gives as good as he gets, though, so it's not REALLY racism."

On top of that, J and I had actually been talking days earlier about how there seems this strange fandom embargo on engaging with, particularly, McCoy's racism in interpreting his character, its function, and especially his relationships with Spock and Kirk. Not only "I prefer to headcanon something different" but indignation over anyone anywhere even acknowledging it's part of the show. J and I are actually really interested in the ways that TOS sets up this Spock vs McCoy tension in which Kirk is either the mediator or battlefield—or the tension rises because he's not there—but this is never really a balanced tension because both Kirk and the narrative itself so obviously favor Spock over McCoy. And Kirk himself is even more favored. There's a reason that Spock gets twice McCoy's share of the overall dialogue even though McCoy is chattier. J actually has a theory that a more balanced version of the triad might have been more effective in a lot of different ways (thematically, their relationships with each other and how those reflect on their individual characters, etc), which I do find interesting to consider, but there's so much defensive dogma about how they're all totally balanced and equally important and favored that it can be difficult to figure out where these interpretations are even coming from. Just about every conversation I've seen about McCoy in any capacity, or about the bigotry directed at Spock, becomes a very strange game of Telephone very fast.

It's wild to me that I had heard of the prime Kirk/Spock content in various TOS episodes long before I saw them, but had never heard of what IMO is the shippiest moment of all thus far, in an interestingly O_o goddamn I do not want whatever you two have but you do you?? holy shit though what a moment way.

I'm of course referring to the otherwise rather mid episode "Requiem for Methuselah," in which Kirk has an underwritten love affair with a clueless woman whose various secrets have to be discovered before her inevitable death.

At one point in this relationship, her.......uh, guardian??? sort of???????? had Spock play the piano while she and Kirk waltzed, which (in-story) Spock did perfectly while somehow managing to silently exude even more intensity than usual. After the plot (and her life) were over, we end not with the usual cheerful bit of snark on the bridge that ends most episodes, but with a weary Kirk falling asleep with his head on his arms, and Spock hovering not far away. McCoy shows up to exposit the last bit of plot detail, and then goes on an unprompted and honestly pretty viciously racist speech about how Spock, unlike Kirk, can't understand love triangles and will never suffer from the joys and agonies of love because of his inherent lack of feeling as a Vulcan. The speech is longer than usual and just really mean-spirited for no reason as McCoy waxes rhapsodic about all the aspects of passionate true love that he claims Spock will not and cannot experience, before he just leaves.

Spock then turns to look at Kirk, and now just bleeding intensity, he takes a few slow, deliberate steps towards sleeping Kirk, lays his hand against Kirk's cheek and neck, and then very obviously mind melds with the unconscious Kirk while murmuring, "Forget."

Is this healthy, respectful behavior that honors Kirk's autonomy? No, obviously. Is it god-tier repressed homoerotic passion between two people who should probably just work their issues out and stop inflicting themselves on anyone else? Yes.

Tagged: #there are a lot of oddly paced slow physical staging bits in the episode so at first i wasn't sure it was significant that spock is so slow #in his approach to kirk at the end - coming right off the mccoy speech about passionate love/love triangles it was something else #but i wasn't sure what he was even going to do until he laid his hand against kirk's face and i was just thinking wait WHAT #and then the - wait is he MIND MELDING with SLEEPING KIRK as a response to the accusation that he is racially incapable of passionate love? #and then realized that this episode - in which he admits to one feeling ('envy') culminates in him wiping his rival from kirk's memory #jesus. what the fuck. i'm sorry if i ever thought the kirk/spock fangirls of the last decades were exaggerating #blandly healthy and supportive spirk is out toxic yaoi spirk is in #(also there's a bad episode in which shatner is forced to give a godawful ramble about losing command! i'm losing command! #and kirk is just melting down as he and spock get into an elevator and it's just going up floors as kirk loses his shit #and it would just be unforgivably awful but his fixation on losing authority of his beloved enterprise is stopped by one word from spock #spock literally murmurs 'jim' and kirk just sort of collapses on him and then immediately relaxes and calms down. wild shit) #mccoy critical #i actually love him in most episodes but this was awful and out of nowhere #in terms of the stakes at that point. but the fact that it's this huge rhapsodic speech about the grand passion of LOOOOOVE #not only talking positively but also about the torments of love that spock allegedly can't feel #and w/o a scene break it leads /directly/ into spock wiping this woman from kirk's memory????? well. i am not blind to the function it serves. let's say.

If you follow me on Tumblr, you've seen me trip into an unexpected (for me) Kirk/Spock spiral. I knew, of course, that the ship is the granddaddy of modern western slash fandom—and fandom as many of us know it wouldn't exist without the ship's passionate early fandom—but given that a) ships can be wildly popular without me personally finding them compelling and b) I don't tend to be into m/m in general, I really didn't expect I would fall head over heels for it.

I think partly it's because sometimes I was watching with people who strain to ignore all hints of homoerotic subtext between anyone when it's not explicitly spelled out, and I was annoyed at the refusal to even consider any other possibility than The Holy Bond of Totally Platonic Heterosexual Dude Friendship despite the truly copious amount of material in this case. But even apart from that, I went from being a bit surprised the foundational slash fandom juggernaut wasn't "more or less typical bromance filtered through fandom goggles" but actually the real super homoerotic deal to "losing my mind about this" due to some particular, uh, incidents in TOS. The final straw for me was actually the season 3 episode "Requiem for Methuselah" (in which Kirk has a decidedly mediocre het romance Spock visibly dislikes, leading to a final scene in which McCoy claims Spock can't understand love triangles or the victories or agonies of love that Kirk has experienced, and without so much as a scene break Spock just waits for McCoy to leave and then wipes his rival from Kirk's memory. unhinged gay shit is what I needed to truly succumb, I guess!). But there were also three major S1 episodes that heavily contributed to my eventual "AHHHHHH MY SHIPPP" downfall. These weren't the only wildly shippy moments in the season (hahahahahaha), just the ones that were the emotional equivalent of being punched in the stomach:

1) "The Naked Time": I love this episode for many reasons, not only K/S ones (in fact, more for Spock feelings in general). However. This is the episode where everyone gets space drunk and loses all their inhibitions, so they just start doing whatever their repressed instincts and fantasies and emotions drive them towards (the fantastic "I'll rescue you, fair maiden!" -> "Sorry, neither" Sulu-Uhura scene happens in that context). Most people are just kind of silly. However, there's a point where Nurse Chapel passionately declares her feelings for Spock, and he gently rejects her but is deeply upset about it. The next time we see inhibition-free Spock, he's jumped from feeling terrible about Chapel to feeling terrible about his mother's emotional isolation on Vulcan, and his own participation in it. Kirk tries to shake him out of it, and an increasingly anxious Spock confesses, "Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I'm ashamed." Kirk keeps trying to shake him back to his senses and he just says in agony, "Understand, Jim. I've spent a whole lifetime learning to hide my feelings..."

I will say that normally, I am not one of the lesbians who finds much catharsis in m/m or mediates my own feelings about my own marginalized sexuality through it (my main exception to this was Faramir/Aragorn as a teenager). But Spock's "in vino veritas" being not daring escapades or wish-fulfillment fantasies, but misery and shame over both his feelings and his detachment (in the fourth-aired episode of the nearly 80 episodes of the series), and also shame over his lifelong attempts to conceal what, and how much, he truly feels just hit so hard. The fact that we later discover that his cultural norms led to him getting railroaded into a het marriage as a literal child and that he clearly loathes the necessity of sex with his wife only intensifies the sense of déja vu I started getting. Who knew that watching subtextual pining from a science-fiction show aired in 1966 could tear off the scabs on my "lesbian raised Mormon" damage? Not me until this episode!

[ETA: I know some of you are SNW fans, so note that I'm pretty harsh about it under the cut.]

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Just kidding, I've watched a bunch more Star Trek: TOS episodes with my best friend!

7. What Are Little Girls Made Of?

I liked this one! I mean, the phallic stalactite/stalagmite was hilarious, but I actually enjoyed Ruk's design (especially the make-up) and the way the whole episode was shot and lit and everything. I love how vibrant the original series is in general, honestly, but this one stood out. Also, I enjoy how clever and resourceful Kirk is even though he does fuck up at times—he's not just dashing space captain or whatever. Also, the fact that he implants a racist remark to Spock in his android clone as the specific thing that will make it 100% clear that it's not actually him, with the assurance that Spock will understand that He Would Never, is really interesting because it both speaks to what their relationship is like and because Spock (in a very Spock way) asks Kirk to find some other way of signaling problems because it's so distasteful.

I loved Nimoy's projection of doubt.jpeg while behaving entirely correctly around the android clone, but was also rather impressed by Shatner as the clone. I really liked poor Andrea, too. It's ostensibly a Nurse Chapel episode and it feels weird not to even mention her, but the script didn't give her all that much to do except stick to her values while having feelings (admirably but very repetitively). I did love the way the crew is initially so excited for her and Uhura even kisses her, I think! (This is obviously meant to be platonic "yay your man is back" female bonding, but my mind immediately went to Uhura/Chapel, haha.)

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I reblogged this incredible supercut of Picard and the TNG crew set to "Let It Snow."

Tagged: #i am completely charmed by this

When I wrote last year's au_bigbangs, I vaguely referred to two other fandoms within the stories - for the lulz! - and then amused myself by stuffing as many references to as many others of mine as I could shove in. I always meant to do a proper attribution post, but just ... forgot. But now I've remembered! So here they are. (The citations are in white, so feel free to guess if it amuses you.)

( attribution time )


( memes )

I ranted about Han's skeeviness in ESB for yesterday, so I'm doing the unpopular opinions today! Though probably not for every conceivable fandom.

UNPOPULAR OPINION FRIDAY SATURDAY

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And tree just reminded me that I have been slacking on my mission to spread memes like a bacterial outbreak, so here are some proper ones.

( Memes! )

Well, I survived Tuesday, Day of Doom. I turned in: four one-page essays, one sixteen-page essay on women and Star Wars, gave a presentation on the same, all for one class, and that afternoon gave my quarterly asexuality presentation, which this time was in an auditorium classroom with 100+ people, several of whom I personally know from the former class.

( The presentation! )
( Even MORE plotbunnies )