An Easier Time

Fanfiction
Title:	An Easier Time
Author(s):	Michele Arvizu
Date(s):	1987
Length:	38 pages
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:	art by Pat Cash
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An Easier Time is a 38-page Kirk/Spock story by Michele Arvizu. The art is by Pat Cash.

It was published in Nome #10.

Summary

"After the fal tor pan, Spock has dreams of his pon farr on the Genesis planet, deals with Spock's efforts to regain his personal memories."

Reactions and Reviews

1987

... starts out a little slow and muddy, beginning after the end of ST4, and dealing with Spock's efforts to regain his personal memories. Stay with it, the ending is worth all the rest, and Saavik's characterization is great.

1988

I'm sure there'll be some strong debate on this, but in my mind the Saavik in this story could only have been Robin Curtis. The ST IV Spock (as opposed to what I consider the "normal Spock") was rather charming, though it did take me awhile to warm up to him, as it did when I first saw the movie. I enjoyed him as the aggressor and liked his ease at discussing sex and his feelings in his conversation with Kirk. Again, would have liked to have seen a sex scene between Kirk and Spock, though I didn't miss it as much in this story as I did in "Sea Change."

"An Easier Time" by Michele Arvizu is the best in this issue. Saavik played an important part in the Star Trek story, and she seems to have fallen by the wayside. Nobody seems to know quite what to do with her. Michele has developed a very plausible role for her. Incorporating Saavik's past history into the story was a good idea. It lays the foundation for what comes next.

Reactions and Reviews: Some 1988 Meta on the State of K/S Fiction

In 1988, this story was discussed in several larger reviews. One fan, Jane Carnall wrote two letters of comment to two different zines about this story in the context of Nome. In it she , compared "An Easier Time" and the other stories in Nome #10 as examples of the way 1980s fanfiction represented K/S:

This is one of the most interesting issues of the series. It contains six good length stories plus poetry and art. All the writing is of the high standard we have come to expect from Nome, so this review is on the basis of a) personal preference and b) an idea I have about current trends in K/S.

I enjoyed Nome 10 because whether or not I agreed with the themes and characterisation, each story provided something to think about rather than the usual first time 'wallow'.

For example "Sea Change" by Barbara Storey, my favourite in the zine, is a post ST IV story which sets Gillian's adjustments to the 23rd century against Kirk and Spock's relationship. Spock has forgotten his previous life as Kirk's lover. He must make changes before he can return to Kirk. I liked this for the lovely warm pictures of Spock from Gillian's POV.

Michele Arvizu contributes two pieces. The first is not strictly K/S but shows the Series Spock trying to understand 'the grand fallacy' of his existence on the Enterprise and his place among the crew. I felt uncomfortable with this one. To make it work. Kirk must be bumptious and insensitive with Spock, which in the series he isn't - bad-tempered, yes, but quick to apologise. Here he orders Spock to strip (in his quarters at least) so that he can see what he's got! Then he instigates nude wrestling with his discomfited F.O. and afterwards cheerily tells him that he's had his first homosexual experience! Later Kirk openly flirts with a woman while silently mouthing "I love you" over her shoulder at Spock. As Leslie Fish has said, "Not my Jim" - thought-provoking though.

Michele's second is post ST IV. Spock vows things will be easier with Jim this time (they were not lovers in the past), but only after he has sorted out the pon farr business and had sex with Saavik! Again out of character for me but interesting.

"Mirror Allegiance" by Flora Poste finally reaches a sort of conclusion to the saga (although a postscript is promised). Written in her customary meticulous style, this segment seemed rather wordy to me. All the action is retrospective, which is hard to handle with variety. I could feel the author shifting her characters from sofa to fireplace to window to break the monotony. I do like her careful exploration of relationships but I think she has overdone it this time.

Elwyn Conway also reaches a stopping point but as usual, I wish she would give us more of her excellent plotting and minor characters and less saccharine. This time under the influence of the Etife's love and peace hippy style planet nearly everyone pours out feelings for everyone else (as usual, too, no one does anything).

The least satisfactory story for both style and content is "One More Door" by Ellen Morris in which Kirk and Spock produce a daughter by genetic and McCoy's manipulation and Kirk contracts a nasty bug which will probably carry him off - pure soap! It may be unkind to say so but I suspect the author has no experience of impending bereavement or if she has, she can't write it.

The poetry, real poetry not prose-in-chunks-on-a-page, is of very high quality, especially the work by Flora Poste.

As a whole Nome interested me because I think I detect an intriguing reflection of K/S in general in its present form and I think, too, I may have found at least part of an answer to that perennial question, why not more established stories and why so many first-timers. To explain I'll have to take you back to the 70's when K/S was just getting into print.

With Thrust, Companion, and others, writers and readers found they had a phaser on overload in their laps. The idea of K/S was not well received by fandom in general, so that those first zines and their immediate successors were faced with the task of explaining K/S not just to the outside world but to K/Sers themselves. It was special, they said; it was not gay, they said; two heterosexuals who love each other; it was pon farr; it was unique; etc, etc.

Yet as the years passed, instead of readers and writers getting accustomed to the idea - yes, OK, they're lovers, so what happened next? In 1988 they are still flailing with desperate explanations, and Nome 10 is a case in point. Six stories, five writers, and all trying to justify, rationalise, explain in heterosexual terms the K/S premise. Kirk and Spock produce a daughter (born naturally in a tank, 'delivered' by McCoy). Only after sex with Saavik can Spock express his love for Jim. Elwyn Conway states time and again that Kirk isn't homosexual, that the relationship is unique, spiritual, transcendent and blessed by the Etife, her and their guru (very 60's). The ambivalence runs deep.

Even Flora Poste has them agonising at length. Only Barbara Storey seems comfortable, describing them as lovers before her narrative starts. Still Spock has to talk to a female (albeit a well-spoken whale) before he can return to Jim.

In general the relationship is not accepted, not taken for granted and always worried over. Is this part of the 80's backlash? Is this why there are still the endless first timers, because even K/S fans cannot accept what they created? Is it also the reason for the lack of established relationship zines? I can only resort to rhetorical questions.

Kirk and Spock are long term lovers, yes, but their relationship is not complete until they produce a child (by McCoy's genetic manipulation) and this baby is delivered in the most "natural" way possible. The story seems to imply that the relationship cannot be considered as complete in itself but must be ratified in (what is in this century) a heterosexual manner.

Michele Arvizu's "An Easier Time" seems to produce the same answer to the problem. The post-Voyage Home pair have no relationship and, it seems, cannot have one until Spock has had sex and converse with Saavik. Only through her can he learn to accept and later voice his love for Kirk. "He thought of his time with Saavik. She had given all this to him. She had put things in perspective, made him feel unique, special, loved. Given him the courage to speak of love to Jim and the chance to reinvent himself." So again, homosexual love has been somehow verified by heterosexuality.

Michele's other story, Ampersand, echoes the theme. Although not primarily K/S, it is made clear that Spock cannot begin to understand Jim without detailed reference to McCoy and particularly Uhura (with whom at one stage he wishes to spend the night).

"Sea Change" approaches the dilemma more easily, but even here the intervention of a female is needed, albeit of Gracie, the whale! Barbara is, however, more comfortable with her characters; Kirk and Spock were lovers before Genesis.

Flora Poste's "Mirror Allegiance" is A/U and therefore not subject to quite the same criteria, but Kirk and Spock still agonize desperately over the simple fact of sex, this in a universe of extreme sophistication. Still, we don't have the he's-heterosexual-he-can't-possibly tangle.

The story that is the keystone of the argument is Elwyn Conway's continuing saga. Her heroes are heterosexual and she states this firmly and often. For example. Kirk says of himself and Sulu, "He'd never been sexually attracted to any man and wasn't about to make an exception now." Elwyn seems to need to explain and vindicate Kirk and Spock's love time after time. It is spiritual, overpowering, different from that of any other couple, "A love that transcends sex" and finally is blessed and sanctioned by a guru figure, the Etifa.

Having gone carefully through the zine, it seems to me that NOME 10 is quintessential of the 80's. There is no matter of fact approach. (A British writer once defined the ultimate K/S story as, "the red alert goes, Kirk and Spock jump out of bed and get on with the adventure.") There are no established stories (and very few at all in K/S).

Is this the result of the Puritan backlash of AIDS? Is this why there are still so many first time stories? I wait hopefully for your reaction. (By the way, when the infamous Clause 27 of the Local Government Act is passed in Great Britain, which forbids the 'promotion' of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle, the writing of K/S will become technically illegal.)

Finally, I must say that I thought NOME 10 one of the best of the series; well-written, a good variety of stories, and thought provoking.