Kirk & Spock
| Gen Relationship | |
|---|---|
| Relationship: | Kirk & Spock |
| Alternative name(s): | Kirk+Spock, K&S |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: The Original Series |
| Type: | epic friendship |
| Canonical?: | yes |
| Prevalence: | very popular |
| Archives: | |
| See also: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Kirk & Spock stories, also known as "K&S" or "Kirk-Spock", are friendship stories and relationship stories. The term is used to distinguish them from K/S slash. It is important to note, however, that early on, sometimes the term K/S was used to describe intense Kirk-Spock 'relationship stories' and did not describe a intimate sexual relationship.
In Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987, Joan Verba dates K&S from 1975, and claims her own first experience with K&S was in Bev Volker and Nancy Kippax's zine Contact.
As Verba notes: "...[Many fans] did not view Star Trek as a science fiction program. They saw it as a "buddy" show, or as a heroic/romantic saga, in which Kirk and Spock were the focus. When these Star Trek fans wrote stories, they wrote about what they thought was most important about Star Trek: Kirk and Spock's friendship." She further notes that many of K&S writers did everything they could to get Kirk and Spock off the Enterprise, all the better to concentrate on their characters.
Verba sees K&S "relationship" and K/S "homoerotic" stories as part of a spectrum, since both were concerned about characters and relationship rather than, strictly speaking, science fiction, but she also notes that during what she calls "the great K/S debate," K&S and K/S fans "seemed to be on radically opposite poles." (Verba p. 23) (see also, The Premise.)
Beverly Clark articulated the K&S position, i.e. "There is no evidence that they have anything but a friendship., albeit a very deep one."
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