anghraine | Entries tagged with ch: s'paak

So 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:

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…

Okay, look, I swear I’m doing other things than this fic. I also wrote original fiction yesterday, and spent time with friends, and I’m going to re-certify my repayment plan today, and you know, anyway, here’s a prequel snippet to the one about femslash Spirk emotions after “Conscience of the King.” This is set earlier, as S'paak hunts down the clues about Kirk’s motives during the plot of the episode.

S’paak had been puzzled in her youth at the tales of her barbaric ancestors—the Vulcan ones, not the human ones. They had been a people of unrestrained passions of all kinds, prone to anger, violence, war, irrational attachments, even to hunting animals that presented no danger to them. They had been willing to incinerate their planet before forgetting a wrong to themselves or their clans. Only later had Vulcans found another path, the path of peace and reason to which she had long committed herself. It felt so natural to her that she often found this history of her people difficult to believe, difficult to even imagine, and yet it was so.

It took her until the first year of the Enterprise’s deep-space expedition to understand.

The inexorable activity of her mind had linked the captain’s uncharacteristic abruptness to the murder of Dr. Leighton. S’paak had not forgotten Kirk’s private inquiries about his professional reputation, and this left her all the more intrigued by the captain’s sudden demotion of a blameless Lieutenant Riley, as well as suspicious of their new guests. It was an easy enough task to order the nearest ship computer to correlate all known data on the individuals she thought concerned—Thomas Leighton, Jessica Kirk, Kevin Riley, Anton Karidian—but less easy to hear the results.

S’paak had not known the details of the starvation of the Tarsus IV colony twenty years earlier, nor of the eugenicist policies of its governor in determining who would receive the remaining rations, nor of the scale of slaughter that had taken place as thousands were marched into converted anti-matter chambers. She had certainly not known that Dr. Leighton, Kevin Riley, and Jessica Kirk—Jess, her friend—were among the witnesses and survivors. In addition, these three were on record as having seen the notoriously reclusive governor with their own eyes.

Nine survivors of the massacre had received that dubious honor. After Leighton’s murder, only two of the nine remained alive, Kirk and Riley. Leighton, older than both, might well have recalled Kodos’s face clearly, and now he lay dead. Riley had been a small boy. Jess, though, had been thirteen. Still a child, but old enough to remember. Old enough to be dangerous to the guilty.

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I wrote more femslash K/S, and spent hours more than I had anticipated on it because this section grew in the telling (i.e. it came to encompass multiple episodes’ worth of S'paak restraining both gay longing and seething hatred of certain individuals). So this is just an excerpt from a considerably longer section.

Also, the context of the episode this section draws from merits a massive warning for sexual coercion that is highly relevant to what happens here.

The Scalosians would have trapped the captain for the rest of her life if not for her own ingenuity in conveying information across time, and McCoy’s rapid development of a cure. Of course, he hadn’t known how to get it to Kirk, and had stared when S’paak promptly drank the Scalosian water.

“S’paak, you don’t know what that will do to you!” he exclaimed.

She did not betray herself with an indifferent shrug, but felt the temptation. He knew his field, even if she was loath to depend upon his judgment in many other matters. And they had no other way to reach Kirk. For S’paak, it was an easy risk to take, and within minutes, proved worth it. She quickly found the captain, and was only too willing to formulate a quick plan of attack with her. She would have done more if Jess had asked. Instead, they forced the Scalosians back through the transporter to their own planet, and S’paak handed McCoy’s cure over to Jess. It worked, thankfully; she vanished back into the ordinary flow of time while S’paak repaired the damage to the ship with her usual efficiency.

The silence and emptiness as she repaired consoles were pleasant in some respects; she could not deny that. But her skin crawled enough that when she was done, she hurried to the bridge in a less dignified manner than she would ever have done before others. Without hesitation, she drank down the rest of the antidote.

The other crew members frozen on the bridge began to move, slowly at first, and then at their usual bustling pace, several starting as they noticed her. For once, S’paak could welcome being stared at. She turned to see Captain Kirk smiling slightly at her.

“Commander S’paak,” she said, “my compliments to your repair work and yourself.”

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venndaai responded to this post:

LOOOOVE THIIIIS. You did my wife T’Pring justice 😍 and I’m obsessed with this dynamic between her and S’paak!!!

I replied:

Thank you!!! I was nervous about writing her POV out of nowhere, but I adored her in "Amok Time" and wanted to do right by her personality and voice in that episode in the AU context. When I thought about what her role would be in the AU, I thought it would be really interesting to focus on how the tense respect between her and Spock manifests when they have more common experience.

zingsthings said (on 31 Jan):

a) OBSESSED with this concept b) THE LAST PARAGRAPH is very rude and very perfect. but ouch

I replied:

Thank you very much! I love that line in TOS and thought that it'd be really interesting to see how Spock's mixture of composure and devastation would look from outside.

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Current Music: I Want to Break Free (Queen)

It’s well past midnight, but I felt like doing another piece of the femslash Spirk AU for WIP Wednesday (surprising no one) and what came out was … T'Pring POV? This is, of course, set in the direct aftermath of S'paak’s pon farr (as sketched out here), but in an AU version of “Amok Time”:

As a girl, T’Pring had harbored an irrational, and thus regrettable, envy of t’sai S’paak. She had resented S’paak’s status as the daughter of Sarek, and her superior performance on certain mathematical examinations given in childhood, especially as S’paak was but half a Vulcan. In a little time, of course, T’Pring overcame such childish emotions, and thirty years later, she regarded S’paak only as the obstacle to her own desires.

The death of the Starfleet captain sufficed well enough for her plans; indeed, she had considered this the most likely eventuality. The body of the captain and the doctor were transported to their ship, and S’paak, clearly rational once more, walked over to speak to T’Pau and Stonn—mainly T’Pau. T’Pring could not hear them from where she stood, but Stonn did not communicate any failures of their plan to her.

Before she could think further on any of it, S’paak strode directly over to T’Pring herself, perhaps due to information received from Stonn or T’Pau, or perhaps no more than her own deductions. It would not take great acuity of observation to recognize T’Pring’s hand in the proceedings, after all: certainly less than S’paak had always possessed.

T’Pring was not afraid. She lifted her head and met S’paak’s eyes, both of them smooth-faced and unflinching. Whatever human qualities S’paak might have inherited from her mother were nowhere in evidence.

“T’Pring,” said S’paak, “I am wondering why you sought my death, or that of my captain.”

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Femslash Spirk scrap for today (at a point around the end of “The Conscience of the King”):

“I will admit,” said S’paak, “that I do not find the governor’s presumed fate a particularly grievous one, captain. I see no reason that skill at performance should exempt anyone from justice, much less someone guilty of Kodos’s crimes.”

Captain Kirk’s lips curved into an unconvincing approximation of her typical expression. “His skill at performance wasn’t the difficulty, unfortunately.”

S'paak could not help but wonder what Kirk would have done if events had not taken the matter out of her hands. Dr. McCoy could talk with Karidian’s own theatricality about blood and severed heads and vengeance, but Kirk had been cautious to the point of near folly. True, the Jessica Kirk of Tarsus IV had been a girl of thirteen, and the uncertainty of human memory made caution understandable. But the weight of evidence was so clear.

Even so, Kirk—a woman more prone to leveraging emotion than hiding its existence—had not fully succeeded in concealing her true thoughts. At least, not from S’paak. Kirk had gone from uncertain and reluctant to grim, fearless, admirably unfaltering. S’paak guessed that, in the end, Kirk would not have hesitated to personally consign Kodos to the fate he deserved had circumstances allowed for it. That was not an irrational vendetta, however bitter, but deserved and necessary.

“Those difficulties are past,” said S’paak, “thanks to you, with respect to both him and his daughter.”

“Not me alone. But thank you, I think,” said Kirk. She turned slightly away, though not before S’paak observed the uneven inhalation of her next breath, the quick, repeated flicker of her lashes. “Riley deserves more of your sympathy, though. He’s younger than me, lost more, and I ... I’ve always needed challenges to struggle against. Something to overcome.”

“I see no logical reason for starvation to be among those challenges,” said S’paak flatly, “nor the massacre of civilians, least of all when they are sent to death on no pretext except baseless pseudoscience.”

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Femslash Spirk update: I’ve been brainstorming how “Amok Time” would even work and am really entertained by one solution I came up with:

The child marriage of Spock and T'Pring becomes one between S'paak and Stonn, who is still infatuated with T'Pring in this universe.
T'Pring remains the architect of the homoerotic duel and it still happens; I think she has already dealt with her own husband in some fashion or another and S'paak is now the only obstacle between her and Stonn.
I’d feel weird about the incredible “Kirk gets slashed across the chest in just such a way as to reveal his nipples” scene happening exactly that way with Jessica; I think the result here is instead very AOTC Padmé.
I think S'paak is surprised and unwillingly impressed by Stonn being capable of such calculating reason as this scheme required, not expecting it of him, and is rather relieved to discover that the real mastermind was T'Pring and her judgment of him was not mistaken.
Spock’s icy line to Stonn about how he may not find T'Pring as enjoyable to live with as to pine after becomes a warning from S'paak to T'Pring about Stonn’s mediocrity.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: SOS (Rihanna)

Speaking of femslash Spirk genderbending name considerations:

I was really torn between how Spock is such a masculine-coded name by Vulcan norms that it feels weird to do nothing at all with it. But also, it’s so extremely iconic as THE name for THE character that an equally feminine-coded name like T'Pel or whatever would be super jarring (and distancing from the original character, I think—the potential in-world rationales for a character’s name are one consideration when I think about this stuff, but only one).

Also, Spock’s name predates the development of Vulcan as a language, and iirc, it’s also slightly odd as a Vulcan name these days (if I understand correctly, inconsistent orthographical representations and erratically silent letters are not at all usual). This does not even slightly bother me in terms of canon, but I thought a transliteration that looks more like “modern Vulcan” might preserve the basic sounds of the name while shifting pronunciation and appearance just enough to seem less specifically masculine.

Still, I was really tempted to try and make T’[whatever] work somehow with this. I feel like Sarek is the kind of person who might well insist upon a daughter having the prestige of the t'sai in her name, even if Amanda thought otherwise. But I couldn’t figure it out aesthetically, so instead I settled on S'paak. (I’m not 100% decided, but it’s the smoothest result thus far of my attempts to compromise between norms of Vulcan names and their components as more fully developed later, and the ultra-recognizable consonants of the original name.)

I’m also deciding how other crew members even address her, because “Miss S'paak” feels like a really weird and inappropriate way to refer to someone of her position and responsibilities, and yet this could at least be partly said of the canonical “Mr” as well. Maybe it’s just this era of Starfleet being relatively slack about this kind of thing, at least below the commanding officer’s rank? IDK, it’s not my impression, at least with regard to women.

Hmm, I checked, and Uhura is occasionally addressed as “Miss Uhura” but far more often as “Lieutenant Uhura” or just “Uhura.” Mira Romaine in “The Lights of Zetar” (which I watched not long ago) seemed to also be addressed by name as “Lieutenant Romaine” rather than “Miss Romaine.” OTOH Scotty is “Mr. Scott” quite often rather than addressed by rank, same for Sulu, etc, so maybe it’s more of a relic of the ultra-gendered dynamics and evolving world building of TOS… I’m still undecided tbh!

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Further contemplated the femslash Spirk concept while I was going to sleep, inevitably, and concluded:

I am perfectly aware this has been done before in the last, you know, nearly 60 years of this ship’s towering fandom influence; I’ve definitely seen art and cosplay. However, I’m deliberately insulating myself from reading any other versions until the finer details are more nailed down in my own head.
McCoy is definitely still a man (specifically DeForest Kelley c. TOS) because it only later occurred to me that 1) thematically, I definitely prefer this trio as a mixed gender group and 2) the advocate for emotion and instinct and human warmth being a male doctor and the voice of logic and discipline being a woman and technically his superior pleases me greatly. I also like the McCoy-Kirk brotp as a male-female friendship that is intense, complex, and 100% platonic.
I’m still figuring out how Kirk being repeatedly menaced by the woman of the week would pan out with f!Kirk. With m!Kirk, it feels like the show pushes him having an irresistible appeal to women in general (regardless of the woman’s morality) that is in part where this ultimately comes from, but a) the show is also very concerned with matters of autonomy/violation mainly mediated through him as protagonist, and b) he’s got a lot of Odysseus tropes to him (among others) as a character that make his femme fatale allure and willingness to use it as a tool more interesting than as the inevitable fate of a female space captain. Also, even in a femslash context, it feels homophobic for it to always be women sexually harassing f!Kirk, especially considering just how far it goes in S3 (I think his first basically consensual kiss, in terms of both consent and all his faculties being online, is 16 episodes into the season, and that one is a result of deliberate deception; 18 episodes in, he has an actual if underwritten romance, but he's also being dangled by a third party before his love interest as a sort of glorified sex toy, though both he and the woman in question are allegedly truly in love, and at that point he's been raped at least once and I would argue twice, and had a purely non-con kiss and another that's dubcon at best).
Kirk’s going to be Jessica instead of my original idea of Deborah. I was thinking of what would be a sturdy, ordinary name in the Midwest comparable to James that would also abbreviate conveniently to a common short form (Jim / Deb / Jess). I wanted the shortened version to be something that could carry the emotional weight of Spock’s very occasional “Jim” without feeling that the nickname itself is more significant (gender-wise) than Jim is for a dude from Iowa. I also wanted to avoid the -y/-ie endings of so many English nicknames (sorry, Francophones). Deb seemed to work well, except I’d forgotten that I have a considerably older family friend who not only uses Deb (and is named Deborah) but happens to have very similar coloring and background to young Shatner. As I was plotting the femslash, the association with her felt increasingly weird and uncomfortable, so I switched to Jessica (chosen for reasons largely unrelated to it also beginning with J, but that helps!).
Does Jessica Kirk wear the miniskirt and go-go boots while issuing non-negotiable orders from her captain’s chair? Definitely.

Tagged: #i feel like jessica unironically loves the uniform and s'paak finds it deeply impractical for both of their positions #also the aesthetic is vaguely romulan and she doesn't care for that at all. except on kirk specifically for mysterious reasons #a mystery requiring further study obviously. lots of further study.

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Current Music: King (Florence + The Machine)

Technicallyyyyy it’s Thursday (12:28 AM!), but

brynnmclean tagged me in WIP Wednesday (thank you!!!) and I dutifully worked on some other projects before giving up and following my heart.

And what my heart wanted was … well. Okay. Look, I know, I know, but nobody can be that surprised:

S’paak had no way of knowing which Starfleet officer would receive command of the Enterprise after Captain Pike’s promotion, if promotion it could be called. It must be called that, of course, by the wish of Captain Pike himself, and by what all evidence suggested was a collective agreement from the highest ranks of the service. Therefore, the captain was promoted, and soon she would answer to a different man.

She had no data to aid speculation as to the nature, character, or identity of the person who would replace Captain Pike, since nobody in the crew, including S’paak, was privy to their superiors’ deliberations. Accordingly, she did not join the other crew members in guesswork about their new captain, even in the privacy of her own quarters—or her own mind. After all, to a disciplined intellect, there was little difference between the two, and she did not know who was even under consideration. Contemplating the matter would not produce greater knowledge.

Even with no particular expectations or thoughts about the forthcoming captain of the Enterprise, she felt an unfamiliar trace of surprise when she received the actual notification about it. She, S’paak, would be first officer on the ship, and as such, had been granted priority status with regard to personnel changes. No one else on the crew yet knew the name of the chosen captain.

The privileges of seniority did not startle her. The identity of her captain did, a little.

S’paak considered the notification a second time.

Commanding officer of the USS Enterprise: Kirk, Jessica T. (Cpt).

She knew virtually nothing of Captain Kirk, though the name sounded faintly familiar, enough that she thought it likely that she had heard it in some context in the past that had not struck her as worth committing to memory. A regrettable lapse, if easy enough to rectify with the many tools available to her. But S'paak had not expected that Starfleet would appoint a woman to Captain Pike’s position. Certainly not a young woman, as the (small and poor-quality) picture accompanying the name suggested Kirk was.

S’paak herself was not so illogical as to suppose that gender impeded a Starfleet officer’s capabilities in itself. But she had better reason than most to know that the practices of the Federation did not always resemble their ideals as closely as might be wished. Captain Kirk must have some unusual qualities, experiences, or connections—or some combination thereof—to rise so far at such an age.

“Fascinating,” S’paak murmured.

Tagged: #i would tag people but it's. uh. thursday #ALSO there is a method to the various choices made here i swear #also i am not AS hostile to post-tos sources as i am to the sweu etc but it's been years since i saw any of them #and i'm not concerned with accommodating long after the fact 'canon' material. this sparks joy (for me personally) and that is enough

[ETA 4/18/2025: After watching all the original ST movies, I feel more strongly than ever that ST is really many canons in a trenchcoat—engaging with each other but not actually compatible. This is especially the case with regard to Spock and Kirk, who take the biggest character arc hits via pop culture-ification and the soft reboot in even the original films, and only more over time (cf. the famous "Kirk Drift" article). I think movie Spock's arc is basically completely reset while defining him MUCH more by Vulcan culture throughout the films, but also swapping his and Kirk's TOS priorities pretty substantially. Kirk was often defined by The Good of the Many in TOS—few things infuriated him more than threats or harm to his crew, esp en masse—and I don't think it was TOS Spock's philosophy for a single moment. I also don't think that TOS Spock was truly all that normative as far as Vulcans are concerned; he often went out of his way to emphasize that he's half-human, his navigation of Vulcan identity was extremely fraught, and the function of that aspect of his arc was an attempt, however flawed, to engage with biracial problems specifically. So yeah, I super don't feel any need to bow to the movies or TNG or whatever, they're their own things—sometimes great, certainly engaging with TOS at times, but in an Aeneid to TOS's Iliad sort of way for me. And I do appreciate that ST historically has seemed less obsessed with welding a bunch of wildly disparate and not especially compatible projects into a single "canon."]

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