#justice for T'Pring

[sallux]

Rewatching Strange New Worlds and honestly guys T'Pring deserves better! May she find a partner who respects her and will communicate healthily!

[allegriana]

My boy really did that 🥹

[startrekfandomh8speopleofcolor]

SNW has left me scared. It is going to take time to heal.

In the 1960s we saw all these characters Spock, Uhura, Kirk, Chapel,Pike, Scotty. Regardless of what you thought about gay couples, if you believed in tolerance Spirk gave you hope from watching Star Trek in the 1960s.

The Spirk pairing is the grand dad of slash. If you did not like slash and wanted to pair spock with a girl. Uhura>>>>>>>>>Chapel. Finally, There was a black girl in the 1960s who people were willing to pair with Spock or Kirk over any other girl. A black girl who was not a maid or a slave on TV, but a black female character that was shown to be the beauty and the brains . This was groundbreaking. Still is.

We did not need the JJ Verse films to push a spock/uhura romance, we can just compare the Spock/Chapel and Spock/Uhura scene from TOS to realise Uhura was the better female character to pair Spock with, if you did not se as gay for Kirk.

This was in the 60s when gay marriages or even interracial relationship were still illegal, frowned upon. Yet Trek chose to be progressive in the 60s by floating the idea of a gay and interracial pairing that fans can play with.

Fast forward 2023, we are now backwards to the 1950s were it is about worshiping the hot blonde woman that society has been doing for hundred of years. A woman who Spock already rejected in the 1960s. The woman Spock would never have been with even if he had the chance. the woman that was not even a big part of spock's life like the main crew he still carried photos off till his death.

I am a minority,a person of colour. I knew how important Uhura meant to women of colour and why she was the lead female in TOS and all the guys liked and respected her.

Since when is Chapel, sexy? can fight Klingon and Gorns? She is meant to even be a nurse.

SNW claims it is progressive but all what the show has done is take a lot from the black girl (Uhura) and the potential gay guy(Kirk) and merged their traits into SNW Chapel, all to push the spock/chapel thing that fans and writers already rejected in the 60s.

I feel a lot of black fans, especially black female star trek fans who watch SNW are going to be traumatised- because again, we are seeing society and hollywood still pushing the narrative that the hot blonde woman will always win, always get the guy, always be the status quo.

In the 1960s TOS Uhura challenged this narrative as not necessarily the truth. This is the reason she was far more popular as a character than Chapel. Nearly 60s years later SNW has told us ....yes, that is the truth. the hot blonde women still wins the war, you women of colour only win battles.

As a trek fan who came to respect the spirk pairing and the spuhura paring because they did not represent the status quo-as both pairing been a gay and interracial couple. I am not sure I can ever look at TOS the same again, knowing how the prequel has re-written the narrative. spock should not even be paired with Uhura in SNW either but please anyone but Chapel.

I am sorry but the spock/chapel pairing is an assault and an insult to gay and interracial couples

honestly I don't know about most of this but "I am not sure I can ever look at TOS the same again, knowing how the prequel has re-written the narrative. spock should not even be paired with Uhura in SNW either but please anyone but Chapel."

I cannot stand by that statement. Its frankly disgusting that you are praising TOS!Uhura but still shitting on SNW!Uhura.

Personally I ship T'Pring/Spock and I think that Chapel doesn't even know what she wants (but that she doesn't want to be tied down to anyone at all, like she's even reluctant to have The Talk with spock).

Frankly I think its unfair of Chapel to be playing with spocks feelings (that song about wanting her freedom? hello) but also I'm willing to wait to see if we get a new take on TOS after SNW. I think they should do it just so that we can get justice for Sulu and Uhura (who lets face it were basically sexy lampshades in TOS).

But again your comment that Spock shouldn't be with Uhura... is plain misogynoir. I'm willing to wait for a slow burn romance. And right now they're solidly in the friends phase and I would love to see it blossom into the flirty/romantic gazes we see in TOS (if they opted to redo the original show). I think that spock is figuring out his shit right now but as much as I'm angry that they turned Chapel into a manic pixie dream girl I don't think its an assault to gay and interracial ships.

Like in my mind I can see Spock getting traumatized by Chapel and being afraid to pursue Uhura towards the end of SNW even though he has great respect for her because Uhura is his subordinate.

But if I see you come back in my inbox with this divisive bullshit again I'm just gonna delete you. We don't need these goddamn shipping wars. We're not running this blog so you can spew your misogynoir unchecked.

mod laina

[heartwarminghockey]

"Charades" was okay. There were no actual charades, which...feels like a wasted opportunity, but still.

I had a lot of issues with this episode. I hate love triangles. I hate this love triangle in particular. In the very first episode, someone mentions chemistry between Chapel and Spock, which I thought was just a bad joke at the time because I didn't feel it at all and still don't. Later when it came up again, I realized it was in fact intentional, and they were trying to push a love triangle thing. It frustrates me for a few reasons:

One, I feel like Christine and T'Pring's characters are so interesting on their own, why can't their storylines focus on something other than a man? They get mentions of other stuff, like the fellowship and T'Pring's work, but their main storyline is this.

Two, T'Pring has been nothing but nice and understanding with Spock when literally everyone she knows is telling her not to be. She's bent over backwards trying to help him out and be there for him, and he continues to like half-heartedly be in the relationship, forcing her to do all the work, refusing to let her in at all. She keeps trying to meet him halfway and he keeps icing her out. I wish he would've just told her the issue. She has demonstrated before that she can put up with shenanigans. Man, justice for T'Pring.

Three, there were so many ways they could have avoided this storyline. Yes, canonically Chapel is into Spock, but he doesn't really reciprocate. They could've just fully left this aspect of their relationship out of the show altogether. For all we know, her crush doesn't develop until later on, you know? Instead, in trying to fix it, they've just kind of taken it in a new, also bad direction. They could've shown Spock and T'Pring as already being estranged. Instead, they've let Christine have a hand in the estrangement. They could've just not included a love interest for Spock at all, since we all know his greatest love is later down the line. I don't know, it's just an unnecessary choice. Are we supposed to feel happy for them, at T'Pring's expense? Fuckboy Spock just doesn't do it for me.

But there's other stuff, too, that bothered me. The implication that all vegetarians are dying to eat bacon, the racist Vulcan trope, the implication that Amanda's whole life has been nothing but silently suffering, the alien cloud suggesting that friendship isn't as strong or valuable as romantic love when Uhura and Ortegas were literally standing right there, having risked their lives to help their friend save their other friend. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

I did really enjoy Sevet, I hope he and Pike get some buddy time in the future. I loved T'Pring standing up to her mom, and her being so done and over her mom was hilarious. I liked the "gotcha" scene where Spock reveals he was temporarily human for the whole ritual. I absolutely loved the deeper connection between Spock and Amanda. The fashion was on point, minus Spock's ridiculous "regulation" hat. I liked girls' night. I always love Pike cooking. This is a show that loves food, and I love that. The alien cloud was also kind of funny, friggin AI customer service sounding ass. There was a lot to like, and I love the show, this one just rubbed me the wrong way a little.

[vulku]

vera! i've been writing with you for maybe... 3 days? but i feel like i instantly clicked with you and your spock. i'm already in love with your portrayal; he's layered and nuanced and you have such a solid grasp on him and his voice, and it makes me so excited to keep writing with you!

pardon me as i just incoherently yell for a moment! i definitely feel the exact same way. i've loved looking back to read all that you've written so far, and knowing how much you adore t'pring ang seek to do justice to that, and expand beyond what we have shown. it's so exciting to have t'pring be more than this one - off, almost villainous figure but as someone who is also struggling under the weight of strict vulcan ideals from her own family, and desires to find her own path. like i said, you're stuck with me. ♥

[winterofvulcan]

i both hate and love T’Pring’s look in amok time, it’s just so iconic but i will never reach her level in my lifetime

[spockandstars]

If they make Spuhura canon in SNW and they don't break up before the finale of the series, it'd inevitably decanonice Amok Time, bc if they were together for at least 5 years Uhura should know who T'Pring is and what Pon Farr is. There's no way they can explain that Spock and Uhura were together for that long and Spock wouldn't have gone to her in his time of need. Also, can we please have a version of Nyota that is recognized by her talents and her personality instead of by being someone's gf?

I absolutely agree! Uhura is such an awesome, important character, and I really hope they do her justice. 🥺❤️

(Another thing worth mentioning is that there’s honestly no way I can imagine them together during the TOS movies. Uhura would have reacted a lot differently to the events going on if that was the case. I mean, she’s not the one who runs down to Spock in the radiation chamber, or steals the enterprise because she feels responsibility over his soul. She doesn’t have a dramatic reunion with Spock before realizing that her love for him is a part of what gives life meaning.)

[thisisnotahetship]

my opinion on the T’Pring subject

Maybe the way to start the debate wasn't the best, but I'm glad we can have this conversation, because star trek tos -at least- portrays a utopia of a future imagined in the late 1960s, and not by the most progressive people of the time, so it's obvious that many of the things we find along its episodes don't match our sensitivity and our current ethical opinions.

First of all, I am of the opinion that science fiction is only interesting insofar as it says something about what concerns us as people, as humans. Yes, it allows us to abstract ourselves from our reality, but more importantly, it changes the scenario to explore our reality with other eyes. To quote Stanislaw Lem  (in Solaris): "We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors".

Vulcan has always fascinated me. As far as I know, Vulcans identify ethics and rationality, for rationality is the common place where we all can meet as intelligent beings, the place where we recognize facts and undeniable truths, where we can detach ourselves from personal circumstances and think of what is beneficial and just for everyone, as opposed to passions that incline our actions towards biased gains. Vulcan culture is collectivist, it seeks the common good. But next to logic, there is tradition, a tradition that seems to hide behind the veil of its authority and its antiquity the undomesticated heart of Vulcan. Spock says that Pon Farr is something they don't even speak of among themselves. It seems strange to me that something so important is not talked about, a taboo, and -I assume- not investigated. A society that can travel to the other end of the galaxy, that can regenerate organs with a pill, that can transport the atoms of a being from one place to another... it seems to me extremely suspicious that something that affects its entire population, as a matter of life or death, remains an unspoken mystery. In my opinion when something like this happens, we find that someone is benefiting from the status quo. 

From what we find out in Amok Time and in Journey to Babel, I would say that Vulcan is a patriarchal society. I don't expect any male writer of the late 60s to give me an example of social justice with regard to women, it's frankly difficult to find it now... the intention may have existed, but it seems to me that they were not concerned about what feminism might say about their notion of that justice. Ok, there is the figure of T'Pau to disprove my guess, but the existence of a woman with great power does not entail an egalitarian society. Women in position of power is something obviously important for the feminist cause, but their presence inside patriarchal institutions does not garantize the end of the patriarchal nature of these intitutions -that's why many feminists voted Sanders instead of Clinton-. The authority of the other Vulcan women we see in the movies has some religious or spiritual element, so I wouldn't know how to fit them in. Again, their existence does not prove that Vulcan is not a patriarchy, but the interactions between Amanda and Sarek and the millenary traditions that articulate the life of Vulcans do seem to contain a patriarchal tone.

In tos, Pon Farr seems to be a matter of male biology and the whole family system seems to be built on it. Changing something that affects so intimately and so massively a society may not be easy, perhaps many resistances are found from the conservative sectors. I don't believe T'Pring has feminism as the motivation for her actions and no, she doesn't really question the system. But I do understand why a feminist would take her figure and claim her. The fandom is not only a place of reverence, it is also a place of interpretation, it is a place of expression; here we hunt elements of the culture that is transmitted to us from the media and we mold it according to our needs and desires, and the transformation we make is also a way of criticism. When we reinterpret T'Pring we are not accepting blindly what we are given, we change it, and that change already says something about what we don't want. We don't want to accept that a woman in such a fucked-up situation is presented to us simply as a villain, we don't want to simply see psychopathy in a woman who is cornered. It is true that Spock is also tragically compromised by the situation, but he is the beneficiary of the system, the privileged one, because it is the men who benefit from arranged marriages, it is the men who own the women so that they don't have to worry about their biology. And it is the women who have to accept to be raped by animals without intellect, to get pregnant -because it is not sex detached from procreation-; it is the women who can only get divorced by getting another consort to fight for them and then accepting the random outcome of the combat. In this system they are the ones who are dispossessed of their body. -But men's lives are in stake! Yes, but as a feminist I believe every woman has the unalienated right to control her own body. Everyone should have that right. It's not about romance, it's about agency, it's about owning your own body and not being a second-class citizen. Because... truth be told, I can't believe that there isn't a fairer solution to the problem. It rather seems that these things they do not speak of have remained undiscussed and unchanged since the "dawn of their days". T'Pring may not be a feminist, but she is an oppressed woman who twists the oppressive system and turns it against its beneficiaries. And that's kind of admirable.