anghraine | Entries tagged with ship: kirk/spock

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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Characterization poll responses part 2!

The original Tumblr poll got over 500 notes and over 1000 votes, so I can't realistically compile everything, but I did want to include some that I particularly appreciated. I'm organizing them by subject for convenience.

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Poll #33056 TOS characterization details

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Which is your favorite character detail from TOS?

View Answers

Kirk used to teach an infamously tough class at the Academy.
2 (28.6%)

Spock is ashamed of his affection for Kirk and guilty about being ashamed.
0 (0.0%)

Technically, Kirk isn't the first white person Uhura kisses; Nurse Chapel is.
0 (0.0%)

Kirk's only stated religious beliefs are that he's a strict monotheist, a god needs compassion, and he particularly rejects Hellenic polytheism.
0 (0.0%)

McCoy avoids revealing Dr. Jones's blindness out of respect for her privacy.
1 (14.3%)

Uhura finds Kirk's voice soothing and hates kissing him for that reason.
0 (0.0%)

The original Gorn were just trying to protect their homes from colonization.
0 (0.0%)

Spock hasn't been on familial terms with Sarek for 18 years by S2.
0 (0.0%)

Sulu and Chekov refuse to fly the Enterprise when given unethical orders.
2 (28.6%)

Kirk was 13 when he survived starvation and genocide.
1 (14.3%)

McCoy marries a high priestess who survives and retains her political authority.
1 (14.3%)

Spock is a firm vegetarian who dislikes meat.
0 (0.0%)

1. Kirk as a notoriously challenging teacher -> "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (S1).
2. Spock's shame over his feelings for Kirk -> "The Naked Time" (S1).
3. The Uhura/Chapel kiss -> "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" (S1).
4. Kirk angrily refusing to convert to Hellenic(/ancient alien) polytheism because he's a firm monotheist -> "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (S2); his insistence that a god needs compassion is from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (S1).
5. McCoy honoring the privacy of the woman of the week's disability -> "Is There In Truth No Beauty?" (S3).
6. Uhura hating kissing Kirk because she's always found his voice so platonically reassuring -> "Plato's Stepchildren" (S3).
7. The Gorn Did Nothing Wrong -> "Arena" (S1).
8. Spock hasn't had a father-son relationship with Sarek for 18 years, or visited his parents in 4 years -> "Journey to Babel" (S2).
9. Sulu and Chekov don't believe in just following orders (and Starfleet regulations allow for this) -> "Turnabout Intruder" (S3).
10. Kirk was a thirteen-year-old genocide survivor -> "The Conscience of the King" (S1); his age is established in both "Shore Leave" (S1) and "The Deadly Years" (S2).
11. McCoy's marriage to Natira, one of the few female authority figures who is capable and noble and survives and is triumphant, gaining full leadership of her people, and Kirk promises to help McCoy visit her periodically -> "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (S3).
12. Spock is a firm vegetarian and dislikes meat, which is a clue to how powerfully the ancestral memory effect is working on him ("All Our Yesterdays," S3).

Tagged: #i had to leave some other interesting or fun ones out sadly. like baby spock's sehlat

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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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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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In response to this post,

venndaai responded:

I'm so so glad you liked TOS! I love it and it's so fun when a friend loves something you love despite all its flaws :D

I replied:

<3333 Thank you so much! I'm also thrilled that I ended up loving it so much, flaws notwithstanding. HONESTLY I was thinking of messaging you specifically about looking for "Requiem for Methuselah" fic and discovering a few desperate attempts to cast the final scene as fodder for het Spock somehow, because I was like "Venn would understand the depth of LMAO NOPE that I am feeling right now"

[ETA 4/28/2025: the context of my reply is that Venn and I have talked multiple times over the many years of our friendship about their general preference for m/m over m/f and mine for m/f over m/m, though both of us like other configurations, esp f/f.]

bailesu also responded:

Turnabout Intruder always makes me bonkers because the whole 'no women in high command' thing makes no sense when women are seen in the chain of command! And it never gets referenced again. But i love TOS too.

I replied on Jan 30th:

ngl I don't remember any women being given command of a starship in TOS, though there's one among the Romulans. Of course there were no more episodes of TOS because it got cancelled, so it's hard to say if it would have gone anywhere or not (certainly I would not trust TOS to handle it well, lmao). Personally I would prefer that legacy franchises engage with in-world misogyny rather than handwaving it away, but... well, that's me.

sqbr responded on Jan 30th:

Are you going to watch the movies? They're actually what got me into Star Trek but since I was 14 I make no claims as to objective quality.

I replied:

Yes!! We're planning on watching TMP this weekend :D

sqbr responded:

Nice! Curious to hear your thoughts, though I have only seen 2-6 myself

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Current Music: Time After Time (Cyndi Lauper)

I finished TOS today :’(

From J’s loathing of the series finale, I thought it would be worse tbh. It is not good, to be clear! Obviously the whole conceit of the episode is intensely misogynistic (and transphobic, though I think that was less intentional). And Janice is so completely identified with Gender Rage while also being so mediocre as a person that her characterization is somewhere between insulting and comically stupid, but with a bit of generosity there are some things I still find intriguing about it.

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In response to this post about my particular femslash Kirk/Spock concept, smallblueandloud reblogged with my tags attached and then added (on Jan 23rd):

#goddddddddd i am loving this #LOVE the thought you put into kirk’s name #i can see why deborah was your first choice but i’m excited to see where jessica goes! #the idea of kirk as an odysseus archetype is something i’m really fascinated by and i want to think about that more so

I replied:

Thank you on all fronts!

I actually put even more elaborate thought into Kirk’s name and cut most of the explanation out lol, so I’m glad it works and that you’re enjoying this deeply Anghraine™ dive into ST feelings.

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In response to this post, yavieriel said:

I don't have particularly strong K/S feelings - TOS Shatner has Dad Vibes too strong for me to overcome - but this has been a delightful journey to watch you take.

I replied:

Interesting, I see that more easily from Nimoy than Shatner, but we all feel the Dad Vibes differently, lol. And thanks, haha—I went from "this is just part of the fabric of the universe of me, I'm not passionate but it just kind of IS to me" to "beating my head against the wall to avoid going insane" so fast it feels like whiplash!

yavieriel said:

Oh that is fascinating, Spock is entirely "hot but unapproachable college prof" to me. I can't even slightly imagine him drinking beer while grilling, or mowing the lawn in cheesy tshirts, or coaching t-ball. Whereas I feel like Kirk would be entirely comfortable with those things, and probably somewhat enthusiastic. My own dad's very stereotypical middle class cishet guy-ness is definitely somewhat performative, but it's not insincere, if that makes sense? Which also matches with Kirk's vibes for me.

I replied:

Ah, I see! My own dad is an extremely reserved and intense programmer from LA with zero interest in the various sportsballs and a great value for reason and debate (and board games that require some amount of tactical thinking), and we've always been conspicuously similar and close. Also Spock continually being on the receiving end of microaggressions is pretty true to the ways my dad has been targeted (as a multiracial Mexican-American man), so Nimoy's Spock feels all the more familiar. That said, I think partly the show sexualizes Kirk so much that I personally find it hard to see him as exactly paternal despite the strong Father To His Crew vibes. But I can see that as a way to read, for instance, Uhura saying she finds it soothing to listen to his voice through the intercom when she's nervous—it could be seen as a shippy thing, but obviously isn't intended that way.

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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.

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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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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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I've already talked a lot about it on Tumblr, but it's still kind of incredible to me that TOS Kirk (who tbh I cannot believe is the same person as TWOK!Kirk) is like "no I am not a strong father figure, you be the strong masculine figure or, I don't know, find one ... oh, this robot probe thinks I'm its male creator? haha I'm a mom now" and responds to obnoxious men questioning him about his clothes with "this little thing? just something I slipped on" and is like, "I may or may not wear eyeshadow but I definitely never leave my room without three layers of mascara."

Meanwhile, Spock literally says within a single episode (THEE episode, in fact) that he's a man and also that he is not a man.

(I love thinking about my inevitable f/f AU, but they're genderfluid4genderfluid in my heart)

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Current Music: Any Way You Want It (Journey)

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.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: SOS (Rihanna)

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.]

( Read more... )

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: You're My Best Friend (Queen)

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Anghraine

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