courtofspacelaw - Tumblr blog

[courtofspacelaw]

In the recent past, women were told by society that they could have a fulfilling relationship or a career, but not both. There’s been a push to “have it all!” more recently, of course, but that’s not what this post is about. This post is about how James T. Kirk occupies the unique position of a male character who had to choose one or the other. There are few male characters other than him who are genuinely and unabashedly hopeless romantics who want to settle down but aren’t allowed to by the narrative. And if you view The Search for Spock as a romantic drama, then Kirk also kind of fulfills the typical female character trope of “learning that romantic love is actually more important than a career.”

As you can see, Captain James T. Kirk’s arc mirrors many female romance protagonists, and he is therefore, textually, wife material. In this essay, I will—

[courtofspacelaw]

Amok Time being Chekov's first episode will never not be funny to me. It's his first day on the job and the first officer is in heat

[courtofspacelaw]

i do get why people critique star trek for having not very 'alien' aliens but i also think it's based on a kinda narrow understanding of what makes an interesting alien character. two lil thoughts. a) trek, as a tv show reliant on mostly practical effects, is not going to be able to do what, say, animation can do with character design. every medium has strengths and weaknesses and it seems a lil silly to not take that into account b) more importantly, i'm less interested in characters that LOOK alien than characters who FEEL alien, that is, who have points of view and experiences that are fundamentally different from humans. odo and jadzia, for example, look a lot less alien than, say, hemmer from snw, and i do like hemmer, but except for his rarely-mentioned psychic abilities, what makes his experience of the world different from any of the human characters? meanwhile, odo and jadzia come from species with different understandings of individuality and consciousness, who can experience things their human counterparts can't (and vice versa in odo's case), and this constantly influences their storylines, choices, and perspectives on the world. even in tos, you have one-off aliens like the horta and medusans that are about as far from humans as you can get on a '60s tv budget. the prophets, even as they sometimes appear as humans, are never really 'humanized' (except maybe a tiny bit at the very end) tl;dr i don't really care if trek aliens are visually alien so much as if they're conceptually alien, and I think you can do that even when your alien is just a human with funky ears or whatever!

[courtofspacelaw]

i love that brent spiner had the TNG men sing backup on his album 😭

[courtofspacelaw]

[courtofspacelaw]

i simply believe that we need to headcanon more cantankerous old men as ftm. hence, doctor leonard horatio 'bones' mccoy, owner of an incredibly transgender name might i add, is the perfect addition to the transsexual fictional character collective. in this essay i will-

[courtofspacelaw]

congratulations it is weird wip wednesday friday (day i just made up) so below is an example of what i mean feat. the bonkers shit i'm working on rn. please enjoy.

like honestly i might as well be finger painting

(a note on scale: the little gray blurry thing sitting on the clip stand (wet paint prevents me from photographing it at this time) is/will eventually turn into the command chair. my kirk fits into it perfectly. i carved that chair out of a pencil topper eraser.)

making star trek art is so funny the second you have to start coloring. like ohoho lemme break out the primary color acrylics for this one... nothing like a cutesy lil colorway to make me feel like a real serious artist...

[courtofspacelaw]

making star trek art is so funny the second you have to start coloring. like ohoho lemme break out the primary color acrylics for this one... nothing like a cutesy lil colorway to make me feel like a real serious artist...

[courtofspacelaw]

I would love to know more about when you first started thinking that there was more than friendship between Kirk and Spock and when fans first started talking about it. Was it Amok Time that first gave you the idea?

I started thinking about it before Amok Time aired.

In the summer of ‘67, watching the reruns of the first season, I very clearly remember a growing sense of, “They really love each other.” I did not jump to “they are in a romantic/sexual relationship,” but I was increasingly aware that there was love and devotion between them. I wrote a speculative essay about their platonic love in our summer fan club newsletter, which I remember being well-received.

With the start of Season 2, our whole fan club (and often others) watched the show together, at the house of the one person we knew with a color TV. The show was on Friday nights, so we would start the weekends by piling into her living room and watching “in living color” for the first time. Afterwords we would stay and discuss.

When Amok Time aired, we definitely had a lot to talk about. I am pretty sure no one suggested that they were gay – that would have been quite a scandalous suggestion at that time; and I don’t think I thought it myself.  But we did have quite a discussion about how much Jim was willing to sacrifice for Spock, Spock’s reaction to seeing Jim alive, and what did Spock mean by “having not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting…?”

Did Spock … want Jim?

Two camps formed: one believing that Spock was in love with Jim and was pining for him, the other believing no way! that’s ridiculous!

Single copies of “Spock pines for Jim” stories started appearing and being circulated hand-to-hand. Two other women and I were doing most of the writing in my circle of fan friends, and because distribution was so difficult, we started having Thursday night gatherings. Anyone could come and we would read the latest installments in our Spock-loves-Jim stories out loud to the group.

Sometime between the second and third season, my primary writing mentor – an established, published sci-fi writer who was much older than me – told me in private conversation that she thought their love was mutual, quite possibly physical, and that she thought their relationship was worth exploring in writing.

She and I each started working on long pieces exploring the Kirk/Spock relationship, and it was the first time I had seriously entertained the idea that their love was also physical. That was a very secret project. We only ever shared our work with each other for comment / revision, and never mentioned it to anyone else at the time.

The first time I realized that the K/S relationship – which was called “The Premise” in those days – was being explored by other writers and even artists was in the summer of ‘69. Star Trek had been cancelled and I went to another state to meet with a handful of people who were forming a fan network to try to get Star Trek back on air. While there, a fellow fan showed me a set of drawings, all very tame by today’s standards, that depicted a physical relationship between Jim and Spock.  I remember how shocked I was — not by the subject matter, but by the fact that someone had dared depict it.

Slash stayed very much underground until late 1974, when the first published K/S story used very coded language to suggest a love relationship between them.

[courtofspacelaw]

Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT. I had a talk with a nice old lady at the old persons home that my great grandma is in and she noticed my Spock shirt and was like “oh I love that show I thought the premise was lovely” and you all know THE PREMISE is trekspeak for spirk and I was like “do you accept the premise because I do” and she looked at me with the eyes of someone who is reliving their otp moments and she said “the premise is all I wrote about, dear” and we just talked about spirk for a hella long time and I just love how age doesn’t matter in this fandom you can be ninety and still be the biggest spirk bitch ever how rad is that

[courtofspacelaw]

I love accidentally typing “I love jim” instead of “I love him” like ok we get it mr spock

[courtofspacelaw]

Either Data or Lore could 100% be like "we are NOT related, we are two robots built by the same person" but they never are, they're always like "ugh, that's my brother 🙄" and I love that.

[courtofspacelaw]

feel like there's a lot of posts going around lately abt how machines can't crochet & how data startrek would be sad if he heard u say that and yes those posts are totally correct but you guys are like. remembering to keep that in mind at the store right. like i know we can't all tell stitches apart at a glance--but in those instances where you can, you're taking it into account when you determine if a piece of clothing you're about to buy was ethically produced, right? right??

[courtofspacelaw]

Ok so, in TOS Pon Farr is a big sexy secret and by VOY everybody and their EMH knows about it, so...

[courtofspacelaw]

i think the primary reason why K/S has such overwhelming appeal is and always shall be that it is, at its core, a soulmate bond that has to be forged. the only way a t'hy'la bond can manifest is through shared toil, hardships, and undying devotion; it must be given effort and put together piece by piece - but at the same time, by the nature of its creation, it alters all realities on a cosmic level, to the point that Kirk and Spock must meet in every universe.

t'hy'la is not spontaneous. it is not a soulmate mark, it doesn't spring to life at first sight or first touch or first word. it is destined - because it is chosen, time and time again. you cannot have one without the other

[courtofspacelaw]

now i don't know much about star trek but data being an android named data is kind of funny it'd be like if there was a human being called memories

[courtofspacelaw]

Live (laugh love) long and prosper 🖖