Anghraine

So the great chronological-by-airdate TOS watch with my housemates is nearing its end and I’m genuinely kind of sad about it, in much the same way that I was happy but kind of sad about my D&D campaign resolving.

I will say, though, that I’ve been trying not to be One of Those People but I truly hadn’t realized before this TOS household re-watch that Kirk/Spock on the original show was at this level. I didn’t clearly remember the little bits I saw as a kid (I was far more into TNG and Captain Picard as a tiny Anghraine) and so I thought it would be more like the standard action-adventure male friendships that inspire big slash ships, and not god-tier “these guys are truly unhinged about each other.”

I’d seen the various Spock/whomever shippers duking it out among themselves, but from a distance, and just vaguely felt that none of the ship warriors were covering themselves in glory. I hadn’t realized that—I’m sorry, I know I’m becoming the villain here, but I had no idea I’d end up feeling like every Spock ship in TOS vs Kirk/Spock is 100% coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb.

Tagged: #fine. the k/s girlies of yesteryear were entirely justified and spock especially has powerfully relatable closeted gay energy #(kirk does not. kirk's energy is powerfully bisexual)

ETA 4/21/2025: Somewhat relatedly, I was actually looking at how the characters' share of overall dialogue breaks down statistically between TOS and TNG. It turns out that, proportionally speaking, you'd have to combine the line shares of Picard, Data, Riker, and Geordi to reach the share of overall dialogue that Kirk and Spock have in TOS (~73% of all TOS dialogue). And this isn't only because Kirk gets so much of the dialogue (he does get a ton of it, though his share drops sharply over the course of the show; IMO he also gets the bulk of the bad dialogue in the later show, despite some great S3 scenes—he's not carrying so much of the show's bad writing earlier on). But the only TNG character who has a higher proportion of overall dialogue than Spock does in TOS is Picard, and only a few percent more at ~31%. Meanwhile, in TOS, there's a steep drop from Spock's share of lines/screen time to McCoy, who has only 13% of the show's dialogue; the line shares only get slighter from there. Meanwhile, Data and Riker both have slightly higher shares of overall dialogue than McCoy, and Geordi comes pretty close to his share as well. TOS gives a lot of centrality to Kirk and Spock compared to even other ST shows.

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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kungfunurse said:

Hiya! So I’m re-reading S&S (as one does) and I’ve got a couple of questions. 1) Do you think Mr. Palmer is on the autistic spectrum? The way he misses most social cues and whatnot - idk. And 2) Would it have been normal at the time for Marianne to go months without hearing from Willoughby and still not suspect that he’s lost interest, or was this another example of her being lost in fantasy? Thanks!!

I replied:

1) I honestly don’t know. I haven’t read S&S in a long time, so it’s hard to say. I’ll keep an eye out next time, though!

2) Willoughby couldn’t write openly to Marianne without raising very serious general expectations, so that’s probably how she justifies his silence to herself.

As a sidenote, this is why Darcy hand-delivers his letter to Elizabeth—it would be exceptionally awkward for her if he sent a letter. It’s also significant that the Gardiners wonder if he’s going to send a letter/note after Elizabeth when they leave Pemberley—they’re guessing that Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship has advanced much further than it really has.

An anon asked:

forgive me if you've answered this, but why do you think faramir was able to go from the way we saw him in ttt & early rotk (including seemingly having some prejudices against the rohirrim) to him suddenly being softer (& falling in love w/ a rohir) once in the houses of healing? it always seemed a bit of a jump to me & occurred so fast (although i guess having a near death experience is as good a catalyst as any) & id love to hear your thoughts on it (if you have any & want to of course!)

I replied:

Hmm, it’s an interesting question!

I will say that while I’ve seen the “Faramir is wrong and unfair about the Rohirrim in TTT” thing going around, I think that take pretty actively rejects Tolkien’s values and themes. I don’t think Tolkien remotely intended Faramir’s arc to involve coming around to respect the valorization of war and glory in Rohan, and increasingly in Gondor. He never does and he never will. If anything, it’s the reverse; Faramir’s reservations about the prioritization of martial prowess in the modern societies around him are Tolkien’s reservations, and Éowyn’s adoption of his ethos / at least partial rejection of Rohan’s is a conversion to a more mature and right way of thinking about these things in Tolkien’s treatment of it.

I mean, it’s fine for people to be uncomfortable with that (there’s a degree to which I am myself). But I think that people sometimes ignore that Faramir is the character most like Tolkien, and part of his function is to deliver Tolkien’s views within the story and influence other characters towards the values that Tolkien held. So that’s part of what’s going on.

Jumping back in-story, though:

I think the main issue is that in TTT, Faramir is acting as a commander among his men in a very tense situation, dealing with people he believes might have betrayed his brother to his death, and who certainly know more than they’re saying in any case (brief detour to the meta level: the ambiguity over what Faramir’s really like and what he’ll do in TTT also helps maintain tension in some very talky scenes).

Meanwhile, in early ROTK, he’s still acting as a commander, but with his own leader, whom he disagrees with about both his previous actions and their current tactics. Denethor is also his father, of course, and Faramir’s conduct there is influenced by their messy and painful mixture of love and opposition, but Tolkien notes in the letters that another major factor in how Faramir relates to Denethor is that Faramir views himself as a Númenórean before the last Númenórean head of state. This is a big deal for him.

And then he falls in battle, and when he wakes up, Denethor is dead and Faramir is the Steward of Gondor. Even though he still has someone he’s going to relate to in that Númenórean-to-Númenórean-lord way (Aragorn), it’s not the complex, concentrated thing it was with Denethor, nor the high-octane intensity of his situation in TTT. There’s no Ring, no soldiers, no dubious captives, no authority to answer to. He can simply act as he sees fit. Faramir with Éowyn is, I think, Faramir at his most natural, without these incredible pressures on him. He can afford to be softer, gentle, and compassionate, vulnerable in some ways, confident in others.

It’s more headcanon, but I also think that … yes, losing his family is freeing in some ways, but it’s also horrible, obviously. And I think part of what’s going on with him is that he’s dealing with loss, first with Boromir and then Denethor, and with the latter, that loss happened with everything unresolved, and he’s got to know there are things people aren’t telling him about it. I’ve talked about it before, but I do think there’s a lot going on in his head at that point, and he’s the sort of person whose grief makes him more sympathetic to other people’s. So I think that’s part of what’s going on, too.

And then after all of that, he just falls like a ton of bricks for this incredible woman. I don’t think he’d ever have minded that Éowyn is Rohirren—IMO his TTT remark that “we love them” is foreshadowing for this—but if he did at some point, he’s well beyond giving a single fuck about it by then. As we see with the very public kiss, of course.

So that’s pretty much where I stand on it all!

sulfin-evend responded to the April 13th 2019 post here:

The idea that Elrond is against Gondor somehow is a reoccurring idea in the tumblr fandom. So I went back to reread the Council of Elrond to make sense of it, and I can barely find one phrase that could be considered anti Gondor. Am I missing something?

I replied:

I think we must be interpreting Elrond’s description of modern Gondor very differently. For me, going on about how they’ve dwindled from imperial heights through intermarriage with inferior races is high octane Yikes and certainly negative towards modern Gondor. Especially given that it’s said with a Gondorian right there.

(It’s partly Tolkien being Tolkien, but only partly IMO: we later hear that the inclusion of non-Númenóreans in Gondor has contributed to the strength of Gondor’s people and is a way in which the Stewards were wiser than the kings.)

They also said:

Love the commentary on the names. Also i love that Elured is supposed to be a Taliska and Sindarin mixed name. The half elves do honour the human side of their heritage

I replied:

Thanks! I think Tolkien ultimately decided Taliska had died out by that point (since “The Problem of Ros” didn’t work out). But yeah, the peredhil are pretty consistently respectful towards their human heritage.

They responded to this post:

Headcanon; Gondor is full of various languages and bilingual people. Everyone knows Westron, but some speak Sindarin or one of many native ancient languages, words from dead languages come up in regional dialects.

I replied:

Total agreement! We know there are at least some place-names that have elements derived from indigenous languages, so it’s possible to extrapolate from that, and of course, many of the soldiers in Minas Tirith shout at each other in Sindarin. When we hear that people burst out singing in “all the ways of the City,” I like to imagine that it’s not just musical styles but all these different languages at once.

[ETA 3/18/2024: In the interests of full disclosure, they did later respond again re: Elrond and Gondor, but I find Elrond's characterization of modern Gondor so intrinsically indefensible that I had no interest in engaging further.]

jubaah responded to this post:

That has been my hc for so long i forgot it wasn’t actual canon tbh… I tend to imagine Númenoreans looking like whatever in general, but the people who go on to become Gondor to have the same Beorianelvish look…

I replied:

Yeah! I mean, I do think that the line about how Númenóreans gradually became near-indistinguishable from Elves refers to all Númenóreans, but that the specifically Bëorian, startling-to-other-Númenóreans variant is what’s going to lead to the Dúnedain of Arnor and Gondor.

(& I also think this is a great excuse to headcanon random Peredhil just being born and mingling with the locals in Andunie ;P)

*after discussing SW for an hour and a half*

me: honestly, I’ve had people ask me questions about the expanded universe to prove my nerdiness.

best friend: …you really don’t need to prove that.

me: well, there’s the thing where you’re less of a fan if you don’t know about the [Star Wars] EU, even though my thing is that I do know about it, I just dislike it.

best friend: you own and have read Splinter of the Mind’s Eye. I think you’re good.

me: it’s bad, though. Just … interestingly bad.

*cue discussion of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye for twenty minutes*

Tagged: #it is in no way canon but nobody will tear luke's space duolingo account from my headcanon

An anon said:

I'm glad you liked the question, I find the possible vagaries of Darcy's family fascinating (while the Gardiners are the only ones in Elizabeth's family of continuing interest to me) so I'm really enjoying your headcanons. And since he's close to Lady Mary, I can see Darcy doting on her daughters too, from the way you always write him as good with kids.

I replied:

Thank you! And yes, definitely—I was only thinking of the adults, but I imagine that he’s super fond of and indulgent towards the girls, and has a particular soft spot for Sophia, who is gangly and awkward and clever.