K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits)/Issues 5-6
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| K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) Issues | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Issues 001-002 | Issues 003-004 | Issues 005-006 | Issues 007-008 | Issues 009-010 | Issues 011-012 |
| Issues 013-014 | Issues 015-016 | Issues 017-018 | Issues 019-020 | Issues 021-032 | Issues 033-054 |
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) |
| Publisher: | |
| Editor(s): | Central Mailers: BH (#1-#12), NS (#13-), DM (1988), LB (1993), BA (1997-1998) |
| Type: | APA, letterzine |
| Date(s): | 1982 until at least 1998 (as print), however, it also moved online in 1996 to become K/S Circle |
| Frequency: | supposedly every two months but was more erratic than that |
| Medium: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) is a Kirk/Spock Star Trek: TOS bi-monthly apazine.
They were published between 1982 and 1998.
Issue 41 was published around July 1992. Issues 61-65 were published in 1993.
Issue 5 (1983)
K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) 5 was published in June 1983 (deadline for the next issue was August 15) and contains 93 pages. The central mailer says it is two months late.
There were 17 tribs from 28 members.
Tribs: AC (Opposite Poles), AC (no, he isn't Jim...), DD (Just Words), JG (Unity of Opposites), CH (Lamartian Lune), CH (Unaccustomed as I Am to Public Writing), BL (Imagine), RKL (Ruth's Riteings), PJM (Hearts Entwined), WR (Out of the Halls of Vapor and Light), GJO (Star Trek Lives!), (SBS (Ears Only), KS (Defying Gravity), CAT (And What We Were Before), T'R (And in This Corner), JT (Superior Intellect), SW (Fantasies).
Fanworks:
- illo of a nude Kirk, by SW
- graphic panel comic by SW
- Trust Me, Spock!!, humorous ni var poem by AC
- illo of a nude Spock, by PM
- Rebirth, fiction by JG
- Why Me?, poem by CAT
- untitled poem accompanied by a Gayle F illo, by KS
- From Zh'james, Devil, T'hy'la Lost, Two Men—four poems by WR
- Loves Tender [unclear word] (a tribute to the zine T'Zadu), poem by BL
from issue #5, SW, a fan in the next issue wrote: "Nice illo, but I think you may have made the upper lip a bit too thin and the nose a bit too wide...(Well, who's looking at the face anyway...)"
from issue #5, SW
from issue #5, PM
From DD:
Why is it that only Roman Catholics identify themselves as "fallen Catholics"? Or some similar erm. I know that the church and the priests still consider they own you, even if you haven't been in a church for 20 or more years. Do we ever hear of "fallen Baptists", or "fallen Buddhists"? I"d never thought of this before. By the way, congratulations on getting kicked out by the nuns. I tried, but wasn't successful.
From AC:
About why women are so attracted to the male bonding theme wherever they find it. I don't think we're "acolytes of some lost religion" (Nice turn of phrase) but rather victims of our culture. We are attracted to relationships and deep feelings and our literature views this as a strong and positive idea, but is willing to attribute the capacity only to men. Women are generally viewed as too superficial, and you find damned little about strong bonds between women in books or movies -- just in real life. You want to hear an even more cynical theory? Because relationships and bonds are so important to us, we want to believe men are capable of sustaining them, and in general, they are not. So we turn to literature to reassure ourselves that these men are out there somewhere -- we just haven't found them yet.
From AC:
I personally love bondage stories. But "Why?" I don't know. I do like the aspect that so many bring up -- that it takes away individual responsibility. I've never been afraid of responsibility but a person does get weary. Any reading or writing that I've done lately has been for the escapism to at least some degree so these stories particularly if you identify with the bond offer still another step in that escape. Hurt/comfort stories are all right if they're not too graphically sadistic, The element that appeals to me in these is that there is another there to support and help in the truly there often isn't. I even like an occasional Mary Sue story, but it sometimes embarrasses me to admit it. Those stories are purely author wish fulfillment and most times nothing else, but sometimes the author's dream comes close enough to my own that I have a heck of a time in her story.
From JG:
My own answer to your question, "Would. . . Kirk and Spock ever really enter into a sexual love relationship with each other...within their own reality...?" is an emphatic yes. No alternate universe is necessary. The fact that each writer seems to be writing her own Kirk and Spock in K/S stories is not unique to K/S. I think it's inherent in the nature of written fiction based on an audio visual product—by writing it, rather than showing it, you are both adding something (the interior thoughts of the characters) and taking something away (the visual effect of the actors' mannerisms)—so true correspondence is almost by definition impossible to achieve, no matter how brilliant the author. No fan writer, whether K/S or straight, has yet made me feel that her Kirk and Spock were the Kirk and Spock (the same goes for pro Trek stuff), but a few have come awfully close. The characterizations in Gayle F's Cosmic Fuck series are superb. I only wish that she had shown them freely choosing to enter into the sexual relationship, instead of having it initially forced on them by the pon farr. The portrayal of Kirk in Leslie Fish's "Shelter" was also very believable, at least until the tears at the end. (The portrayal of Spock doesn't really count, since he was hallucinating throughout the story.) Syn Ferguson has probably come the closest of any fan writer to convincing me that she's writing about the real Kirk (on the bridge and in the briefing room as well as in the bedroom), but there were a couple of things that kept "The Price" from being, for me at least, the "real thing" in first-time stories. First was a plot that sprawled all over the place—Syn threw everything but the kitchen sink into that story. (I like the idea of a first time taking place within the context of an adventure-type story; chances are that it would happen that way in their own reality. I just wish the plot in "The Price" had been more focused and less episodic.) After a multitude of events unrelated to Kirk's and Spock's relationship, suddenly, in the middle of the story, wham-O! Spock goes into pon farr. Kirk takes appropriate action, and a series of luscious erotic scenes follows. And then, on the last page, a whole new story begins...well, this isn't the place to go into a discussion of the famous ending of "The Price." There just wasn't enough buildup to explain why Kirk fell in love with Spock so easily and so deeply—and there should have been, considering the length of the story and the skill of the writer. Another distraction was the presence of a young male crew-member that Kirk was shown having the hots for—presumably he was there as a surrogate for Spock, to help Kirk work out his feelings about loving another man—and also to create an incipient triangle that was never really worked out—but I would have preferred it if the story had concentrated on the development of Kirk's feelings for Spock, not just any old Joe T'Shmoe. Like you, though, I keep wondering if the K/S story will one day be written and agree that it will some some incredibly talented person to do it. I expect great things from Syn Ferguson's "Courts of Honor," which I assume won't repeat the flaws of TP. Of course, I wonder sometimes how many K/S writers really are trying to write about the real Kirk and Spock—I mean those whose interests lie in alternate timelines or alternate universes. Then too, there are fans who are primarily interested in homo-eroticism rather than in Kirk and Spock as such, and write K/S because the characters are so easy to plug homoerotic fantasies into.
From JG:
If the violence in slavery/bondage stories represents sexual violence against women, then I have another question about these stories. Mo.t people who write these stories write lots of them—some write nothing else, in fact. Isn't the message they are symbolically conveying, then, "we'll let you go on raping us over and over—as long as we have the satisfaction of knowing we can rise above it and survive it!" That's not what I would call a constructive solution to the problem of violence against women. My final question concerns the working out of one's own personal problems by writing h/c stories. This is probably the major justification offered to the non-h/c world for why these stories need to be written. However, if you are using Trek fiction as a way to work through a personal problem, presumably you will resolve the problem at some point and go on to other things. But most h/c writers have been writing the same story over and over again literally for years, with constant upscaling of the level of torture and violence along the way. Judging by the volume of what they write, some of these writers must spend very significant amounts of their time writing these stories. My question is, are they really "working out" their "personal difficulties", or are they exacerbating them? Freudians talk about how one can symbolically re-enact a traumatic event over and over—the result is not growth or resolution, but fixation. (I'm not much of a Freudian, so I won't pursue that argu ment.) An aside—I doubt that women who write slavery/bondage stories have all been victims of "devastating sexual experiences"—conversely, the only Trekfan I know who has been a rape victim (a woman who has achieved a healthy resolution of the experience) thinks these stories are absolute junk.
From JG:
I'm not sure fandom has lots its unity merely because fans find it difficult to accept TWOK into the canon. Fans could ignore episodes like "And the Children Shall Lead" and didn't find it necessary to consider whether they were authentic Trek or not. It's not that easy to ignore a full-length feature film, though. Don't forget that fans have been disagreeing over interpretations of the episodes since the early days of Trek. Fans also differ on which episodes portrayed the characters most authentically. And don't forget that some of the earliest ST fans were primarily Spock fans who would just as soon have booted James T. Kirk off the Enterprise and re-named the show, "The Mr. Spock Hour." I gather that you don't have too much regard for Der Kapitan yourself, so you might not see that as divisive of fannish unity. Some of us Kirk fans might see it differently, though. Sure, fans disagree over K/S, but they also disagreed over Kirk/Uhura, Spock/Christine, Kirk/Janice, and every Mary Sue that ever came down the pike. And now K/S fans have the opportunity to disagree over Kirk/Mitchell, Spock/Pike and goodness knows what other unlikely combination of male characters. Fans have always been skilled at decoding STAR TREK: in screening out what they see as irrelevancies and retaining what they regard as the essential in the series. Let's not carry neo-orthodoxy so far that we feel we have to justify every single line that was spoken in TWOK. We never went that far with the series, did we? Why not accept what you can believe in, and reject the rest? Not ex cathedra but sola fidei.
From JG:
Well-written stories on the "mutual-death-bonding" theme certainly are possible, although I can't recall one at the moment. What I object to is the attempt to elevate an acrophyphal no tion (one that originated with fans) into STAR TREK orthodoxy. It's silly to ask "why didn't Kirk die after Spock's death in TWOK?" because there is no reason, given the premises of aired Trek, that he should have. Asking fans to explain that away simply creates a non-existent problem.
From JG:
On aired Trek, there was always a certain reserve between Kirk and Spock that was part of the chemistry between them. You knew that they cared deeply for each other, and at the same time respected each other's in dividuality enough to let the other ^ what he is. In a way, that's the ultimate trust and acceptance. I've always felt that Spock and Kirk would carry that reserve over into their sexual relationship. Of course, their moments of love-making would be times of total communion and unity; but they would not cease to function as the strong individuals they are. That is essential to the creative tension, the unity-in-diversity of the K/S relationship. I realize that there is not a lot of reserve between the two in many K/S stories. But while those fucking-in-the-turbolift stories are great fun and I love to read them, I know that in their own reality. Kirk and Spock would relate somewhat differently. The romantic, mushy stories in which they are in total communion every waking and even sleeping moment of everyday are a bit unrealistic for the Kirk and Spock of STAR TREK. Those stories are fine as a particular author's own fantasy expression. But, I wonder, wouldn't Kirk and Spock, if they were lovers, behave pretty much the same as they do on aired Trek? One thing I like about Gayle F's stories is that this is what they suggest. Her Kirk and Spock are two very strong individuals. They come together in in tense moments of complete union. A mushy, soppy, everyday "togetherness" cannot substitute for this. Nor should it.
From JG:
My identification is with Kirk, and while I enjoy ogling beefy types like Kirk for sheer fun, in real life the men I'm seriously attracted to are quite Spockish: calm, logical, and intellectual. Perhaps it's because my emotions are already engaged in that area (my "significant other" is much like Spock in those respects) that I've never particularly been attracted to Spock as a sex object. I must confess that Spockfen sometimes make me a little uncomfortable. They can be so serious and so singleminded in their devotion to Spock, and to the actor who plays him. I may be wrong, but my impression is that it is quite rare for a Kirk fan to be as obsessed with Shatner as many Spock fans are with Nimoy. Shatner fans mainly seem to want his body—a healthy urge, it seems to me. . . . But Spock/Nimoy fans . . .that is where you see the dark, almost frightening urge to deny the barrier between fantasy and reality. Why is this so?
From JG:
As for tolerance: I find it hard to believe that a Real Printer would reject a printing job because of content. Real Printers are craftspersons. No matter what their personal opinions apout homosexuality (and most RP's are blue-collar types who do not eat quiche and have little in common with Alan Alda), when they look at a K/S explicit nude, they are probably thinking mainly of the camera setting they will use to shoot it. I'd like to hear some factual examples (NOT rumors) of fans' experiences with refusals to print their zines. Della reported one such incident in NAKED TIMES. I'd like to know if there have been others.
From JG:
[BPG], I don't agree that [CH's] comment to you in the last apa was "ungracious." I think her candor was admirable, and I am surprised that you apparently are unwilling to listen to another fan's honest reaction to your comments in INTERSTAT in the spirit in which it was given. In a similar vein, I hope you will also think seriously about [LB's] comments to you concerning your artwork. You spend an incredible amount of your time and energy attacking and criticising other fans and their work; if you can't take it, then why are you dishing it out?
From JG:
Though I admit that the bonding is a fan-created concept, I think it's a very attractive idea to use in a K/S story. I think most of us feel that Kirk and Spock are drawn to each other at a level which transcends accidents of time, place, and universe. The bonding is a wonderful way to show that. The problem, for me, is to keep the concept of the bonding from degenerating into a vague, amorphous deus ex machina which has no rhyme or reason of its own but merely serves to bind the characters together. In other words, the problem is how to put the science back into the science fiction.
From JG:
I agree with you that the British authors' attitudes toward STAR TREK are different from ours. I've read only British K/S zines, not "straight" Trekzines, and that may not be a very good basis on which to build a hypothesis. Nevertheless, I have one, though it may sound off the wall. I think that the liberal/individualist ethos of STAR TREK is something peculiarly American, and that it has a particular attraction for U.S. fans because of our own deeply individualist heritage. The attitudes in our stories tend to track the attitudes of the show, though in ways we may not always be consciously aware of. British historical experience and social attitudes are more collectivist and less individualist than ours, and the British have a different tradition of relating to authority. I think that these cultural differences are reflected in British Trekzines, and that is one reason why the ST "universe" in those zines is so different from ours. Of course, this is only a wild generalization, and I certainly realize that attitudes vary by social class, region, and, of course, from one individual to another. To explain what I mean, I'd probably have to go over a couple of stories line by line (an explication de texte); here; (I'm just tossing it out for what it's worth. [snipped] This is not meant as a criticism of British zines. Actually, I love the English zines for their spontaneity and lack of contrivance—and the matter-of-fact way in which they present the most outrageous ideas! Even their no-frills approach to production and editing is part of their charm.
From CH:
Considering how many of us use other names to write K/S under, I'd be willing to suggest that if you collected up the names of everyone involved in K/S, you'd have only half as many people as names. There are some people I know who have more than 3 names. I think that's going overboard myself.
From CH:
Not many are as brave as to admit that hurt/comfort is a sexual for them. I've discussed with other fans why they write the type of story they do, and I think one aspect of it is that some of us are working out, through our stories and the themes we prefer, some of our own problems. I admit my own interest in rape stems from some disagreeable child-hood experiences, and that it's of interest that my stories usually have the victim ultimately regaining control not only of her own life but usually that of the rapist, too. Revenge takes many, many forms, and some are very curious.
From CH:
I I've since heard that story about Harlan Ellison, the "little fuck" joke, was a hoax perpetrated by some pro-authors on the east coast. Phil Klass had something to do with it, I suspect. However, my respect for HE is still low, as I have heard from three people who personally heard him tell about taking a rock and breaking all the fingers in the writing hand of a teenage fan who was bothering him. That's disgusting. Note that I don't deny him his position as one of the most brilliant writers of our time.
From BL:
From RKL:
How do I feel about: 1. Violence in K/S—it has no place. 2. S&M in K/S—a little is OK as long as both partners enjoy it and it is written well. [Gayle F's] "Mirrors of the Mind and Flesh" had just about enough for me (maybe a little too much). 3. Humiliation/degradation in K/S—I think that is disgusting. The only place where it might be feasible is in a story like [Gayle F's] "Night of the Dragon", where Spock is so freaked out that Kirk almost died, that he "punishes" Kirk by the violent way that he takes him. Wait a minute, maybe this is an example of #1 and not #3. Besides, Spock is ashamed and sorry afterward.
From RKL:
I'm kind of starting to get into S/H myself, but my friend [MB] has really gone apeshit over it. I guess it provides us (right in front of our eyes) with a lot of the things that we imagined Kirk and Spock would do. By the way, have you seen that little five minute piece of the Starsky and Hutch blooper reel that is available to the general public. Boy, hot stuff! It makes you wonder what exactly is in the rest of the blooper reel that the stars have and that we can't get our hands on.
From RKL:
Here! Here! I applaud your stand of raunchy sex without violence. That's just the way I like it. Raunchy sex, but no violence. I love it. Give me more.... I think the violence is what turns erotica into pornography, especially if the violence is gratuitous.
From RKL:
I, too, have heard the "little-fuck" Harlan Ellison story, and I don't know whether it is true or not, although it certainly is within the realm of possibility. You ask whether he is offensive as you've heard. The answer is yes... but... You hear stories about his abrasive side, but it is hard to convey in words his incredible charisma. You really have to see him in person to judge what kind of person he is (actually that is true of anyone). He devotes himself to many important issues of the day. He is willing to go down to the line for any cause he espouses (more than most people will do). He does not compromise his positions. This makes him a very abrasive, but a very caring person. In a sense, he does our dirty work for us. (Of course, this is all only true, if you agree with his stand on the various issues he throws himself into.) He dontated quite a bit of money and time and effort to try to get the ERA passed. He has a wonderful and raunchy sense of humor. He is a terrific stand up comic and extemporaneous speaker. He has helped many writers get started. And most of the time he tells it "like it is" without much of the bullshit you get from other people Of course, he does embelish his stories a little for dramatic or comic effect, but that stuff is easy to tell. Basically, you have to see him in person. As you can tell, I really admire and respect him, although I do sometimes feel sorry for him, since he seems in pain much of the time.
From RKL:
I have thought a lot too about the question of why the theme of male bonding appeals so much to all of us women who are into K/S (and S/H, etc.). I'm not sure that there is a definitive answer, but I think it has something to do with society's view (and ours, ingrained by decades of training and socialization) of the difference between men and women, If we try to visualize a completely equal relationship between a man and a woman, where both have power, and both have equal mutual respect and the relationship is not stuck into a stereotyped view of who should do what; we find it virtually impossible to visualize such a relationship. As egalitarian as I feel my marriage is, I am the one who feels guilty if there is no food in the house, or if there are no clean clothes, etc. But I don't feel guilty if the carpentry in the back yard is not done. You may feel that this is my own hangup, but I know many professional women who share housework with their husbands (or live in lovers), but when push comes to shove, most of the women feel a sense of responsibility for the housework and child care. Haven't you ever heard a man say (with pride, yet.) that he was going to "babysit" for his kids while his wife got away for a day? Think about it. How many women say that they are going to "babysit" with their own kids, while their husband gets away. "Babysitting" is when you take over someone; else's responsibility... Anyhow, us fantasizing a male bond situation, allows us to visualize a completely equal relationship where both people have power ("male" trait) and mutual respect and no sexist stereotypes to either live up to, or fight against. In a certain sense, it is like having a clean slate on which to start your drawing, instead of having to color between the lines.
From PJM:
I have been a fan of Star Trek since the show originally aired. I was in college from '65 to '69, and Star Trek was quite the rage. I was a big Spock fan then,and I still am. However, although I was a fan, I wasn't a "fan." As a matter of fact, I didn't even know about fandom until the spring of I980, over a decade later. By the time I had discovered fanzines, I was already fantasizing about a sexual relationship between Spock and Kirk, and I was thrilled to find that other people were not only thinking about it, but writing about it. The first K/S zine I ever read was The Price and The Prize. I've been hooked ever since.
From WR:
About Harlen Ellison and his offensiveness. I don't think he's as offensive as you've heard unless you get him mad or quote him out of context so he sounds offensive. He has a weird sense of humor and a mind that travels over subjects at light speed. He's really very harmless and usually right about what he's screaming about. He doesn't make his opinion public unless he's researched it and knows through experience or what ever that he's right. And he makes the best damned coffee this side of Ceti Alpha Five.
From WR:
If you want to see a K/S relationship between the accepted real Trek characters I think Marshak and Culbreath are the ones I've read who are consistent with aired and movie Trek. Their new novel Triangle could so easily and acceptably become K/S still being consistent with aired Trek. They just don't write the K/S scenes in because the book is going to the general public which may not be ready for that. But, yes, I can see the "real" K and S enter into a lover relationship. The only possible difference between theirs and the idealistic stories of K/S is that I really think theirs would be somehow more peculiar than what we read—at least at first. No relationship is the same as someone else's. Their's would be strange to say the least, and I don't see it as ideal, at least in the beginning stages for them.
From GAR:
Just read Triangle by Marsha and Culbreath. I have liked all their books, especially The Price of the Phoenix and its sequel. For pro work they really have an amazing amount of pain and suffering, although the cause for which they suffer is such a worthy one like saving the galaxy, it is acceptable. [snipped] More than h/c, the Marshak and Culbreath stories seem to be more like shared hurt. Triangle was the 1st such story with a really strong woman character Sola Thane, who in the end, was stronger than both K & S snd only she could save them and possibly the universe by sacrificing herself. A nice change from Kirk always doing it! I cried when she had to leave them to go with the Totality. The plots in their stories have been good SF ones.
From GAR:
Whatever happened to the good h/c stories. Seems they started to vanish as soon as K/S got popular. I miss them. Though I haven't been keeping up with zines lately and may have missed some. That dark TWOK movie really dampened my Trek enthusiasm when I most needed a boost. (What movie! Since they killed off Spock I only count it as a fanzine story.) Anyway, can anyone recommend any good zines with just plain h/c type stories? To be on the verge of getting to know someone, just the initial touching and caring and possibilities of a deeper attachment is much more exciting to me than stories that dive right into K/S and keep doing it the whole story. H/c seems to be the most logical way to break down stoic resistance to emotions, especially for Spock.
From SBS:
Regarding the comment about not caring enough about the movies to "play the game" with them. Do you ever read [BH's] copy of Apa Enterprise? The reason I ask is that a couple of the members are ST fans only as a result of the movies—one said she was only just getting a chance to see aired Trek—and I find their opinions of the movies refreshingly different. They seem to be falling in love with the Trek universe and just as eager to defend their baby against the criticism of us first generation fans as I was to defend the series when it first arrived. It's strange to think so many of us complain about how they've changed things now—how will they react to "old Trek"? Will they make the same connections with the Vietnam war, the Pueblo incident, the protest movement of the 60's? Will they find some of the episodes dated? just this weekend I watched Forbidden Planet again, and although the story is as good as ever and SFX (beautiful matte work!) stand up remarkably well despite the 3 decades of improvements since then, the social mores expressed and the character of Dr. Morbius's daughter (an innocent, ignorant blonde twit) are jarring to 80's sensibilities. Still, wouldn't you love to be seeing The Trouble With Tribbles for the first time? And those tantalising teasers (He's dead, Jim) that guaranteed you'd be in suspense for a whole week...
From CAT:
Hello, everybody. It's less than two weeks away from the Iowa con and expectations are running high. A good majority of us can hardly wait to see Hudson in the flesh. In fact so many of us are going that we have a real space problem in the cars and have to pack extra light. Should be a grand time, though. Will talk about it next time.
From CAT:
Oh, I love to rummage through rock songs and pick out the K/S ones. In fact, I've put them on tape, and I inundate my friends with them in the car on the way to cons. Are you interested in a list—perhaps we can see where we intersect? Besides, the most obvious ones that everyone I know accepts as K/S, my favorites are TODAY by Jefferson Airplane which I think is a perfect Spock song and THE LIGHT DON'T SHINE NO MORE which is a perfect end of the five year mission for Kirk. In fact, I want to write a story with that as the title and I keep telling myself I will actually do it—next.
From CAT:
I've always wondered, too, why it was all right for Spock to have hair on his chest and Kirk not. But the explanation abomt the '60's audience seems plausible—can you think of one western from that era where the hero had hair on his chest? Maybe they subscribe to the theory that all aliens aire hairy, hoary green things and so Spock fit right in. Or maybe LN said absolutely not when all I'm going to be allowed to take off my shirt is once in this whole series, I wish someone would actually ask Nimoy.
From CAT:
Let me tell you of one thing I have learned. For all the heartache that Leonard Nimoy and Paramount have given us over the years concerning the contintiation of the role of Spock, at least in the final smalysis we always have Spock, Regardless of whether LN wants or doesn't want to play Spock or what Paramount has to offer him to take the role, we do continue to have an open-ended life there. In contrast I think of another actor who wanted out of another role I love and who was either not courted enough or interested enough to return to the role except the one time when it was written in his contract that his character must die permanently. The episode was probably one of the best ever written and pulls the series together with a continuity that far surpasses Trek, and leaves me in tears every time, but the upshot is that due to that contract, there is no hope of ever bringing the character back,
From CAT:
Beta vs. VHS. VHS gives you more recording time per tape if you don't care about quality. Beta gives you far better quality, even on the slower speeds. When dubbing. Beta to Beta gives you the best reproduction—on fast speed you generally can't tell the dupe from the original, there's so little lost. Next best dubbing is VHS to Beta and finally VHS to VHS. There is quite a lot of difference be tween a dub made on VHS and one made on Beta. All my friends who own VHS's, and that is most of them, have gone the extra route of buying enhancers. And I'm told they make a world of difference. I've tried enhancers with the Beta and the improvement is so slight if at all that it generally isn't worth the trouble. But the longest you can go on a Beta tape is 5 hours as compared to 6 and 8 hours and generally I don't use the L-830 tapes so the most I get is 41/2 hours per tape.
From CAT:
I remember a class in which we had to write which character we wanted to be most like and which one we were. The first was easy because for me it's Kirk. It's almost instant attraction to those sparkling eyes and devastating smiles. But it's more than that, because I'm also a Blake fan whereas about 95% of Blake's 7 fandom are Avon fans with the other 5% probably Travis fans. I have an identity and an attraction to the hero types that take a moral and political stand and follow through on it. I may not always live up to what I would like to be but these are the people I admire. And understand. I can understand what motivates Kirk in practically every situation he's in, whether I like his decisions or not. I can't say that for Spock. His way of looking at things isn't always mine and thus on a gut level, we sometimes don't relate, but Kirk I can always relate to. I'm not searching for myself-identity either, so on a gut level I have more trouble understanding Spock here also. Part of the reason I became a scientist was the desire to make a mark on history and that love/lust for the stars, which unfortunately my mathematical ability couldn't live up to. But when I was a child, I wanted desperately to be an astronaut, and if there could have been any way back then...
From CAT:
I never thought I'd like another story better than "Summer's End" until I found "Brother's Keeper." That has to be my all time favorite story, followed by Nightvisions. "Brother's Keeper" made me wonder what I was doing even attempting to write stories, and you can't imagine how long I wished I could write like D.T. Steiner. I've always felt that the biggest tragedy in Trek was that she never wrote the sequel.
From CAT:
There's inspiration and encouragement in two men exist who can fight and triumph over that prejudice. In fact, that's always what made K/S so special to me and why it was important. That two heterosexual men could find love in a homosexual relationship only because of the intrinsic qualities of who they are rather than anything else, is very beautiful and important and encouraging. And I didn't mean that Star Trek was a beautiful world and wow and wonderful—I meant that it is men and women like these who can make a world as beautiful and wonderful as this one and so can we. It'll never get to be like that unless we start acting, believing, and living like them.
From CAT:
Whenever I read someone else's view of K/S, whether I accept their version as being compatible with the aired characters is of course going to be influenced by my picture of the real characters themselves. No one can step outside their bodies and view the world from another's perspective. For example, Leslie Fish's Kirk has far too many hangups for me to ever accept him as the real Kirk or as anything other than Leslie's Kirk, but I can see from where she draws him. I'm sure she could defend her viewpoint as well as I can defend mine. Of course, that doesn't mean that every writer can defend her characterizations, and that is the question that has always intrigued me—how much difference in characterization can be or ought to be tolerated under the umbrella that different life experiences leads everyone to view a different Kirk and Spock, before you consign something to poor characterization or just plain sloppy or lazy writing? I mean, I have seen stories in which Kirk and Spock act in a manner that I begin to wonder if the writer has ever had an intimate relationship with anyone in her life, yet I know that some of these writers are happily married and should know from whence they speak. Yet, when you read their writing....
From CAT:
"Metamorphosis" was my first realization of K/S not because it was a K/S episode but because it taught me something about the tolerance and acceptance within those men and what could be possible between them. The scene that originally got me thinking was the one in which Kirk and Spock were outside with the cloud, and Kirk was talking about love and loving. It was what Kirk was saying and how he was reacting to the concept of an alien being in love with a Human and the way Spock was looking at Kirk and reacting to the alien also. Later, when I thought about this scene and the scene in which Spock calls Cochrane parochial and illogical and Kirk agrees with him, I realized what this scene was saying to me. Spock chastizes Cochrane for rejecting a relationship that has been satisfying to both of them just because a name is put to it that he doesn't want to hear or admit. What does this say about K and S 's attitude—would they reject a pleasurable relationship between them because it has a name attached to it that other people object to it? If they don't look with horror upon a relationship where a cloud creature is crawling in and out of a Human, draining him of energy (Cochrane's description), would they look with horror upon a relationship between the two of them if the circumstance ever came up? How they tolerate and accept the unconventional love they find here tells me a lot how they would react to an involvement between themselves if the circumstance should ever arise. And I always had a feeling that the look Spock gives Kirk during that scene signifies that he realizes the possibility that a relationship could exist between them without Kirk shrinking away in horror or disgust, and rejecting him.
From JT:
Two or three years ago, I discovered zines through a friend. My first reaction to the K/S concept was; "Wow! Why didn't i think of that!' God knows I'd thought of everything else, but never Kirk & Spock...with each other. I immediately sent off for The Price & the Prize, Sun & Shadow, Cheap Thrills... *sigh*
From T'R:
I've read both The Entropy Effect and Black Fire. My hair stood straight up through most of the former, and I giggled through most of the latter. I just can't imagine what all those terrible romantic-slush type damsels in distress are doing out in space getting captured by the pirate fleet. Who let them out of their boudoirs, anyway?
From T'R:
Can't say I'm exactly thrilled about the idea of 70 or members in this APA. 30 people is about all I can handle without feeling I might get mobbed if I say something they don't like.
From T'R:
I find the ending of "The Price" a little bit fishy. I mean, isn't it just a little odd that a race with as much control over their body functions as was demonstrated they had by Spock's self-inducted near-suspended animation in the episode "By Any Other Name" is unable to "get in the mood" if they want to? That ending always comes across to me like Spock is selling Kirk a bill of goods. I'm waiting for Courts of Honor to see if I'm right or not.
From T'R:
I used to belong to STARFLEET. I wasn't very happy with them, though. I requested active duty, was assigned a rank and ship. and then apparently forgotten. Numerous inquiries to my CO and, when that failed, the Chief of Personnel, never got any answers (and I sent a SASE every time), so I finally just gave up and let my membership lapse. If they want to ignore me, they can jolly well do it for free.
From T'R:
I do think that 'The' K/S story is impossible. Perfection is an asymptotic and subjective quality, and it is asymptotic because it is subjective. A good thing, too, because if it were possible to write a 'perfect' story, someone would write it and by so doing out an immediate end to all fan fiction.
From SW:
If there's anything that torments me more than a story that's continued in the next issue, it's a story that should have been continued in the next issue and wasn't. Arrghh! What happened to the next segment of "Friday's Child is Full of Woe"? I was looking forward to reading the next part in K/S #4 and nothing! Have you no pity on your readers? Aren't you ashamed? I want you to write 500 times 'I will not torment my readers.'
Issue 6 (1983)
K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) 6 was published in September 1983 (deadline for the next issue is November) and contains 96 pages.
"[This is] our anniversary issue, to be exact. We are now exactly one year old."
One fan says other fans are free to call her: "I just splurged on a mechanical butler to answer my phone for me so you'll never be answered by endless ringing."
There are 20 tribs by 28 members.
Tribs: T'R (And in This Corner #6), KS (Kosmic Strippers), CAT (And What We Were Before #6), DD (Just Words #5), NE (Out in Left Field #5), SF (Emissions from the Shuttlecraft Columbus), CD (From the Suburbs #3), BL (Imagine), RKL (Ruth's Riteings), LDB (Spocking of Trek), CH (Lamartian Lune), JT (Superior Intellect #2), SW (Fantasies), WR (Out of the Halls of Vapor and Light), SL (8/15/83), AC (No He Isn't Jim...), JG (Unity of Opposites), MB (Amazing Space #2), AC (Opposite Poles #6), BH (For the World is Horny and I Have Touched Spock's Thigh #5)
cover of the issue #6: "I guess you could call this a cop-out of a cover. No one sent in anything, I didn't draw anything, and so, well, it was the easiest thing to do.... It's from something that someone sent in to the current issue Apa Enterprise. One of those little cable guides, or something. I enlarged and re-screened it, but I thought it came out kinda dark. I tried to get it lighter but found that that wasn't really the problem. This particular picture just doesn't translate well from color to black and white. I thought it was really quite a magnificent pic, too -- K and S really do look like they're in love. I mean, they both look like they're just about ready to suck face, don't you think?"
Fanworks:
- Kosmic Strippers, paper dolls by KS
- Dreams I Never Knew I Had, poem by CD
- Paths Not Taken, poem by SW
- From Spock, poem by WR
- a flyer and excerpt from Eclipse
- Rebirth, fiction by JG
- T.J. Hooker Quiz on the Constitutional Rights of the Scum, satiric quiz by JG
From PJM:
It has always surprised me that the zine, FUTURE WINGS, which explores relationships (sexual) between humans and aliens in the Star Trek universe, is not more popular. There seems to be a double standard here. It is one thing to fall for a humanoid or Vulcanoid type, but quite another to fall for an avian or aquatic type, or some other such species. After all, even the cloud creature ended up as a human.' I'm afraid an awful lot of liberals (or pseudo liberals) are really closet xenophobes. Whatever happened to "diversity is the spice of life" or IDIC.
From BH:
Do you think that one of the reasons we can't find a suitable female partner for either K or S is because we secretly or unconsciously believe the female to be interior to the male? Is it possible that we are secretly or unconsciously dissatisfied with being female?
From BH:
Has anyone else read Dreamlovers by Pete Fisher.? I found it to be the pits, the worst, Gag City. I thought the parts where he described how his characters evolved were quite interesting as they dealt with the creative process and writing, but I simply did not understand his fixation on WS, nor did I understand the relationship between him and his lover(s). Though the journal style the novel was written in (I think he termed it "semi-autobiographical") you get in in-depth, close-up picture of the personality of this guy, and I found that I didn't like him at all. I was actually rather disgusted by him.
From JG:
Despite all the differences between Pete Fisher and the average female STAR TREK fan (assuming for the moment that there is such a thing), I was struck by the mixture of identification and sexual attraction in his feelings about Kirk and Shatner. As I said before, I think his attitude is very fannish. The way he divides his persona between Duke (an alter-ego, idealized version of himself) and Kirk (a sex object whom he also desires to become) reminds me a lot of fan lit. So I wonder: is the love we feel for Kirk and Spock, the love we imagine them feeling for each other, really love we are blocked from feeling for ourselves? Is the ultimate goal of our K/S fantasies, really to become what we want ourselves to be? What do you think of Pete's answer, fellow K/S fans?
From JG:
Re your remark about reading and writing for escapism, I realized when I was reading it that "escapism" is one of those expressions I have been tossing around for years without really knowing what it means. I asked [B] what she thought it meant and she said "a respite, rather like a vacation." I'd be interested to hear more about the whys and wherefores of escaping via bondage stories or anything else.
From JG:
Something I've noticed in fan fiction, particularly in K/S stories: namely, a tendency for fans to use "Oriental" or Middle Eastern motifs in their portrayals of "barbaric" alien cultures. I find this interesting in light of a recent, much-discussed book by Edward Said called Orientalism which analyzes "the Orient" and "Islam" as ideal types constructed by our own minds, as derived more from our own psychological needs than from empirical data on what is there "objectively." For us, the Islamic world represents "the Other": that which is the opposite of ourselves. Said's argument is that our own cultural self-image requires that we define ourselves as rational and logical, as creators of and initiators of economic and social progress. If these qualities are what make us what we are, there must be some place, some people, where these traits do not exist. For us, that place has historically been the Middle East. This is primarily because of our long and complex history of love/hate involvement with the region.
From JG:
The Search for Spock: We knew already that Spock was going to return. So, the only cause for rejoicing I can see is that the story doesn't completely torpedo K/S (I refuse to consign K/S to an "alternate universe," and my worst fear is that the next movie will squelch The Premise once and for all). I know (as Harve Bennett's zealous defenders in INTERSTAT can be counted on to remind us) that the outline is a first draft that has "already been discarded." I don't know why that is supposed to comfort us. It was a preliminary version of TWOK that Roddenberry described as "pure action-adventure, and not even good action-adventure at that"—but he could just as easily have been talking about the final product. If a script isn't built on a decent foundation, there are limits to how much you can do to shore it up. It looks as though ST III is going to be an other house of cards (the phrase [L] used to describe TWOK). And has everyone but me given up on the idea that ST is supposed to have something to do with science fiction???? The scenes on Vulcan are the worst, Sarek's berating Kirk for not bothering to notice that Spock's radiation-charred, regulation- autopsied corpse was just in a healing trance is so hokey it makes "Spock's Brain" look like high realism. (I didn't notice any other explanation for Spock's return to life in the outline, but maybe I missed it.) Kirk sure is going to be embarrassed when he gets around to explaining to Spock about his oversight. Also, if Spock's death could inspire large numbers of Vulcans immediately to discard three of four thousand years of history and revert to lirpas not logic, then all I can say is that the Reforms obviously were so superficial they shouldn't have bothered to pretend, on the series, that Vulcan culture actually was shaped by them. If Saavik wants to throw herself at Kirk, OK—I can hardly say I blame her, after all. But for him to respond in anything other than fatherly affection is crummy taste, regardless of one's attitude toward K/S.
From WR:
Most people in this APA seem to hold to the opinion that K and S are not gay. Maybe we should say they were not gay in the past but in K/S stories if they are having an exclusive relationship with each other they are being quite homosexual about it to be technically correct. I mean, they are both male, aren't they? And if they stay together forever as the "bond" would have us believe that means no more females for either of them. That is a gay relationship. And the people in it are being gay.
From SW:
I, too, once belonged to STARFLEET and got ignored for my yearly dues. I get notes every once in a while telling me things have improved and asking me to rejoin but I don't feel any inclination to get involved with them again. "He who stumbles twice on the same stone, deserves to fall."
From LDB:
I also applied for active duty and rank in STARFLEET and discovered that all it was was participation in the local STARFLEET fan club... that I never heard from...and considering there don't seem to be all that many ST fans in Dayton I suppose the club must have been for i kids! Anyway, I've let my membership lapse. I did like the news letters they sent out which were really beautiful although sometimes there were SO MANY typos they were laughable...and pathetic!
From CH:
Oh, sure, Apa Enterprise was fun. It paled for me when the bimbo count went up. There were and are many nice people there, but there are others who have such a fascination with LISTS. And the discussions have no depth, as they do here.
From CH:
The stories in the FIRST New Voyages weren't written for them, they were taken from fannish sources, as were two or three in the second. I guess the editors wanted more control in the second book. Anyway, as I understood it,[S] submitted an outline to NV2 same as you might to any pro anthology. The problems with getting stories from fanzines is that you had to deal with the zine editor as well as the author. The times they printed w/o seeing to the credit and rights of the zine editor cost them money. It made sense to deal directly with an author for an all new story.
It wasn't an easy process to have a fan story picked up for pro publication. The changes they asked for were sometimes rather large. Also, share of profits, nothing. Flat fee. In some cases this went to the one holding the copyrights (zine editor) and the author had to threaten to sue to get part of it. This was before zines started including the copyright statements about rights reverting to the creator of a work.
From RKL:
It's too bad that you don't have access to a word processor. I, too, am a sucko typist, but a computer is all forgiving and you don't need a bottle of white-out, just a touch of the finger. Believe me I wouldn't be writing this APA at all, if it weren't for the fact that we have a word processor. I have always hated writing and typing, but this [word processor] is heaven.
From RKL:
Regarding your comment about Gayle's Cosmic Fuck series—that you wished that she had shown them freely choosing to enter into the relationship, rather than having it forced on them by the pon farr She wrote these stories before 1977 (I don't know how much earlier), and at that time hardly anyone was writing K/S and those who were, were getting blasted for it (i.e. Winston Howlett's denunciation of Gerry Downes' Alternative in Winston's zine Probe). At the time fen were trying to find "reasons" for K and S to get together, almost as if we had to force them together. Now, there is so much K/S, that there are some stories out that have them falling in to bed together for the first time with hardly any motivation whatsoever. Of course, these are the badly written stories. I do think that you have to show some motivation in terms of something that happens in their lives which changes them in some way, so that they decide to enter into the relationship, but I do agree that it doesn't have to be forced. Leslie Fish in effect "forced" Kirk to enter the relationship with Spock in "Shelter" by having Spock semi-conscious and very vulnerable. The way she wrote it, they wouldn't have become involved, if Spock had been in his conscious mind. But, there again, Leslie wrote this over six years ago. A lot has happened in K/S and in fandom in the intervening years.
From RKL:
When I was in a car with George Takei and a couple of other people, I asked him what Paramount thought of fanzines. He said that he didn't think that they cared much for the x-rated ones. He changed the subject fairly quickly and was pretty non-committal. He is a politician, you know. So I figured that he probably understated the case. But this was a couple of years ago and maybe they have realized that we are a large part of the group that is buying all the books and going to all the movies that they are putting out. And, of course, the bottom line is money.
From RKL:
Years ago, [Gayle F] wrote a script where Spock dies in the end and everyone told her that Paramount would never make a movie in which Spock dies in the end...Who would have thought...
From RKL:
About a month ago, our neighbors next door invited us over for dinner. They said that [we] might be interested in meeting their friend [Larry Y] who was coming over for dinner that night. Larry is a professional writer who has written many books about the history of Chinese in America ... Trying to make a long story short, we had dinner, met Larry, and then he and [G] went off to talk about his previous books, and I was in the next room talking to my hostess. Then [G] said to Larry, "So what are you working on now?" And Larry said, "Oh, I'm just doing the final revisions to the Star Trek novel that I am writing for Bantam." [G] said, "Hey, [R], come over here." The first question I asked him was if he was really a fan, and he said he was. Then I said, "Do you know anything about fanzines?" He said, "Oh, do you have the erotic ones? David Hartwell was going to show me his collection, but he had them in his office and someone stole them." Needless to say, the party ended up at our house where I proceeded to show him my zine collection. I lent him a copy of the Cosmic Fuck series. He says that he is not sure when his book is going to be published, but probably at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
From T'R:
Define gay?... I refuse to get caught up in an attempt to define abstracts. My belief that K & S are not gay is based on an equally abstract concept; a gut feeling that they don't think of themselves as "gay" (I subscribe to the idea that as people believe themselves to be, then so shall they be).
From CAT:
Sometimes I wonder, [JG], at people's need to analyze everything we do, as if that's the only way it can be legitimized. As if the only way something can be accepted or put down is to tie it to some deep psychological explanation, I don't think h/c stories, in themselves, have ever helped me work through any problem or hangup, whether writing or reading them, I read them because I enjoy seeing people loving and caring for each other—for the comfort part mainly. Especially two men, since we so rarely see it in men. The culture is set in such a way that this is usually the only way we get to see men respond in loving and caring ways.[snipped]
But perhaps you have a point when people constantly focus on one theme and never seem interested in investigating any others. Then, however, very few Trek writers deal with themes, anyway.
I never knew I had a fascination with rape, torture, and violence. Isn't it kind of you to point it out to me? I'm surprised you didn't analyse my motivations while you were at it. Funny how I always thought I was dealing with a variety of themes of which the above were only a few. In fact I always thougt I was dealing with different themes every time I wrote something, so that I wouldn't bore myself. And I usually tried to avoid themes other people were writing on so there weren't any conflicts. For example, I never finished my rape victim story because a friend was doing a good one on it.
Writers also respond to what their audiences want. After all, writing is communication and if you get feedback in some areas more than others, you tend to get excited and stimulated about them and the creative juices flow. Hence the reason for asking people what they thought of S&M, B&D, etc. It's interesting to note that almost everyone in this apa professed a disliking for these kind of stories, yet they are so popular. In my fannish life, I've heard maybe three people indicate a disliking for violent stories, I've admitted that I like rape stories if the hero triumphs over it and his oppressor much as I like it when the hero triumphs over any sort of violence or injury, or triumphs over oppression or over evil. But very few rape stories I've read measure up to that, and I long ago gave up in despair that they ever would when so many people tell me that they like stories that I cringe at.
From DD:
Guess what was waiting when I returned from Shore Leave? Yes, the APA. What a shame it wasn't a week earlier, then I could have replied to many people personally ...sure would have beat typing. Wasn't Shore Leave great? There were certainly a lot of the APA members there, and new K/S zines! That explains at least 2 of the missing people on the list of contributors to the APA this time.
From DD:
I stopped reading the Trek pro novels: 1. because of their bad characterization, 2. because I got more pleasure out of the better fan stories. A friend lent me 2 recent pro novels, and I read them, hoping I'd like them.In my opinion, "Web of the Romulans" by M.S. Murdock is good. The affectionate computer from "Tomorrow Is Yesterday" puts humour into the story. Unfortunately, it is dropped when the action speeds up, and is only brought in again at the end, as if the author had forgotten the computer problems. Otherwise, the story is a 'good read'. I suspect the author is a fan writer, turned pro, and the dedication to Teri Meyer supports this idea.
"Triangle" by Marshak and Culbreath: I found this one embarrassing to read. In my opinion, these authors have had some excellent story ideas, but have never had an editor that insisted on judicious pruning, careful characterization and tying up loose ends. It could have been good, if handled with care.
From DD:
I agree that eventually, they will have to introduce new characters, if Trek is to survive. I object very strongly to different actors playing the roles of the established characters. That would be the ultimate insult. New characters, introduced gradually, could be acceptable, as successors, but not as replacements.
From DD:
On Harlan Ellison breaking someone's fingers: sounds like another of his wild stories.
From NE:
Just when I think that the APA is getting easier to write, it starts to get hard again. Once more I'm sitting here...in eager anticipation...waiting for an idea to come. I'm sitting so erect, my back is stiff. It's driving me nuts. Hopefully if I stick it out long enough, something will pop up. All this heavy thinking should culminate in some sort of an inspiration, but it's an awful strain. Already my brain is throbbing...pulsating. Actually I think I've just overdosed on all the K/S zines I picked up at Shore Leave and my mind is so sated, it refuses to ejaculate any new ideas. Balls.
From NE:
To those who went...wasn't SL a great con! It was even worth driving all night to get there early Friday morning. The most fun was seeing so many K/Sers there from all over the country... and Canada. It sure is a warm, comforting feeling to know that a perversion such as this is shared by so many.
From NE:
British zines and, while I read them: I can't say I'm too crazy about them. They must fall into the same category as brussels sprouts or escargot...a matter of personal taste. Last APA, [J], you explained some of the reasons why you thought the British stories reflected different attitudes than their American counterparts. Did you mean this to include characterization as well? One complaint I have about British stories is that Kirk is portrayed as a wimp in so many of them. Inevitably he'll break down and cry halfway through a story. According to the British viewpoint, the poor guy must spend part of his life running around with red rimmed eyes and a runny nose. This brings me to another point. A lot of British stories start off with a good idea...something new and enticing...and then halfway through the story (yes...about the time that Kirk starts blubbering) it falls back on the same old tired cliches. It's as if the writer just lost interest and shoved any old ending together. A story that has potential and fails to develop it is worse than a story that is just plain awful. It's a waste. The writer has cheated herself and her readers because she settled for something less than the best she could do. I realize that bad stories come from all directions, and I'm not saying that the British have the market cornered on them. But this is the overall feeling I've gotten so far. Maybe their editing standards are more relaxed. Some writers need editorial guidance...or a kick in the ass...to turn out something decent. If editors demanded more from their writers, the quality of zines might improve.
From SF, something that sounds like it could turn into a vid:
One idea I'd like to toss out before closing [is it would] be fun to put together a video tape of K/S moments. We've already mentioned a few here in these pages—does anyone have any other moments, scenes that suggest K/S. If so, please mention them. [N] and I are going to try to put such a tape together. Sounds like just another excuse to watch all the episodes again.
From AC:
I have on occasion read [NH's] copy of Apa Enterprise, well, parts of it anyway—that thing occasionally grows to monstrous proportions. I understand what you're referring to and it is (to coin a phrase) fascinating to read the viewpoints of brand new fans. I would love to be seeing Trek for the first time too, but not with the movies as my introduction. I'm glad the movies were there if they gave Star Trek to a new generation -- they are in for a treat. But in my view of Trek, the movies had the philosophy completely wrong-—at least TWOK did. Why did they ever pick that plot?? Where the only possible resolution was the destruction of a sick man driven mad by grief and hate. The series would have offered hope, not death.
From AC:
I have a feeling I should let this issue lie, but I never could leave well enough alone. Are you serious about owing LN unswerving loyalty and devotion and total acceptance for the rest of our lives just because he's a wonderful person? Granted I've never met Leonard and he just may be everything you say he but even if he personified all the best of human qualities he wouldn't get unswerving etc. from me. He would get affection, understanding to the best of my ability and my honest appraisal of his undertakings and his actions. And if he is indeed the best of people, I bet that's all he'd expect or want from anyone.