anghraine | Entries tagged with ch: s'paak

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.”

( Read more... )

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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.

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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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