On "Turning Point" and "Full Circle"

Meta
Title:	On "Turning Point" and "Full Circle"
Creator:	Mary Ellen Curtin
Date(s):	January 1999
Medium:	print, then online
Fandom:	Star Trek TOS
Topic:	two fan fiction stories by Killashandra
External Links:	online here
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

On "Turning Point" and "Full Circle" was an essay by Mary Ellen Curtin that was published in the January 1999 issue of The K/S Press and then posted (with permission) to ASCEML on April 14, 1999.

The essay contained her comments on two of Killashandra's K/S stories: Turning Point and Full Circle, two of the first K/S stories posted online.

This essay and the following comments are a strong example of the tensions between netfans and printfans defending their turf, teeth and nail, as well as the highly personal reality all fans bring to the table of concrit and review. One of the commenters (Karmen Ghia), had a history of being quite derisive of "older" K/S fiction , and states in their comments that they are "burnt out" on K/S fiction in general. Karmen Ghia also disliked the print zine community, and while "Turning Point" and "Full Circle" were posted online, they also appeared in the print zine, T'hy'la; this was something they were also pushing back against.

In essence, the comments below are about personalities, expectations, fannish power, BNFs, and turf wars.

The Essay

Killashandra's work -- especially Turning Point, originally published on the 'Net in 1995, and Full Circle, copyright 1997 -- have had an effect on web Treksmut fandom that is difficult to overestimate. I guess that the majority of people who got interested in K/S via the web are here because reading "Turning Point" was a conversion experience.

It's not just the "Oh my gosh, I'm not the only one who sees their relationship that way" feeling. What Killa did is prove, by demonstration, that there is no limit to how good K/S (or fan fiction) can get. She has raised the bar all the way. We can no longer say: "It's only fan fiction," or "It's only Star Trek."

I'm a professional book reviewer, and it is my professional opinion that the 80,000-word novel made up of these two stories is the best piece of erotic fiction ever written in English. One reason for my high opinion is that every sexual act in the story is both maximally sexy *and* important to the plot, the plot being development of the characters. There is almost no other plot; very little noncanonical "happens" except inside the character's heads. Yet none of the sex scenes is there just "for fun" (NOT that there's anything wrong with that): the sex is there as part of their psychology. It is sex with a purpose, while being some of the hottest stuff ever written. It's supremely hot because everything the guys do is foreplay, and then when the moment comes each touch, every kiss, is profoundly significant.

On the web "Turning Point" and its sequel have set the standards. The things Killa does are things we all, on some level, try to do. Killa's use of language is without peer, but her example at least gives us something to aim at. And a whole generation has been infected with her goal: unflinching emotional truth. It's a style that allows, sometimes wallows in, angst, but I don't think of it as h/c because the hurts do not come from external sources. All wounds are self-inflicted.

Some specific things Killa does have become part of web K/S convention. "Full Circle," for instance, is deeply engaged with canon -- much of it is interstitial to "ST:TMP." I know I am not the only person who now has great difficulty seeing that movie except through Killa's eyes. Killa also has the habit of taking her titles from popular songs and using them as epigraphs, which is common practice on the web.

There are also things Killa does *not* do that have influenced web K/S. In none of her stories are the words "I love you" the turning point. The feelings, oh definitely yes, but the words tend to be used, if at all, long after the first time they have sex. She also never uses adjectives of size to describe genitals, which I find a boon -- there's nothing like a 9.6 inch erection to spoil the mood for me (stay away from me with that thing!).

And if there is a happy ending, it's not unadulterated. Kirk and Spock come to their relationship from pain and grief, and they know that there will be pain and grief in their future. Their happiness, their love, is mortal, and so is both bitter and sweet.

It gives the story a weight, a heft: like life.

Fan Reaction

Curtin's original comments, and the first posted comment, by Karmen Ghia generated much discusssion. Some of them are excerpted below. For a more complete understanding of their statements, see them in their original form at ASCEML.

Comments by Karmen Ghia:

I have some issues with your essay on Turning Point and Full Circle, by Killa. They are:

Paragraph one: You say these stories have had an effect on web Trek Smut fandom that is difficult to overestimate and then you do, at least you do for me. You mention that most folks reading K/S on the web got there or stayed there because of TP. This is not true for me. I first heard about Trek Smut when I lived in Prague and knew it was impossible to get there. I read my smut on the web because I don't have the energy to go into the zine world to get it. I got to this newsgroup via a link on the Nifty Archives to the Slash Archive and an ftp archive. The very first thing I read was _A Job For the Young_. I think I then read Raku's _Never and Always_ and SR Benjamin's _In the City_. Both very fine stories; I especially liked Benjamin's use of shifting perspectives. Hard core fag porn readin' girl that I am even I was impressed. I noticed the newsgroup information at the bottom of some of the stories and decided to have a look. Too wonderful to have my smut delivered! I read TP and FS, among many other nice stories, out of a now defunct ftp archive and thought they were nice. Nice, just nice, not earth shattering, or mold breaking or making, as your essay suggests.

A little later in your critique you call reading TP a 'conversion experience.' I found reading TP and FC enjoyable but in many ways trying and, in the end, disappointing. 'Are these two men, one of whom has made countless brilliant life and death decisions for hundreds of beings in the vastness of space, the other whose mental abilities have saved the crew more than once, really this fucked up?' I say to myself, hoping for the best. 'It cannot be! And when they finally have some sex, will it be worth the wait? And will I even care?'

Paragraph two: You state here that we can no longer say, 'it's only fan fiction, it's only Star Trek'. If I understand this correctly, you are saying that great writing -- such as you tell us TP and FC are -- transcends its subject, and therefore Killa is a great writer since she wrote them. I wonder, because to me great writers are the ones who create their own characters and milieu and then transcend them. Such as Faulkner's Mississippi, Chandler's LA, Genet's Barrio Chino, and even, god help us, Burrough's Interzone. As far as I know, the above mentioned authors dreamed up all their characters all by themselves, although Burroughs might have had a little help from Mr. H. Killa's appropriation of the icons that Kirk and Spock have become is quite well done but not significantly better than most of the rest of fanfic. Perhaps not as good, since she is so wordy that much of the emotional impact she's going for is lost half way through the first reading, and completely gone by the second, at least for me.

Paragraph three: My main issue, or rather question, is at the end of paragraph three: Are you serious? Do you really think TP and FC are the best erotic fiction ever written? Does that include everything east and west, before and after, the _Song of Solomon_? If so, I wonder how much and what kind of erotic fiction you read. Alas, I'm not a professional book reviewer but I've been reading gay and other erotic fiction off and on since I was fourteen and have done some serious thinking about this. Have you read any of the titles in the Other Traveler series of gay erotic novels? Just off the top of my head, I recommend the _Gay Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_. I further recommend anything by Gordon Merrick, although he and Killa have a lot in common -- they both write angst-a-thons, except Merrick's are all on Fire Island. And if you're in a hurry you can cruise through the Nifty Archives on the web. One can spot a good story in the first ten words but, warning, these blunt and graphic stories appear to be written by blunt graphic males who don't mince words and don't have their characters spend four thousand or whatever words over dinner and a dopey floor show before they have wicked oral sex. This is just the tip of the gay erotica iceberg. God knows what's out there in the other erotica realms.

Paragraph four: Killa uses canon well, she extends what we already know about these characters into what we've always suspected. I, for one, wonder what she could do without the restrictions of canon on her.

Paragraph five: I found this paragraph extremely interesting. You tell us that PT and Killa have set "the standards." I rather think Paramount and Desilu before them have set "the standards" for Star Trek and its spawn. Is it your intention to put another layer of structure on fanfic with these "standards" when it seems to me the whole point of fanfic is to throw off the other imposed structural "standards"? To enjoy a little creative anarchy? Also in paragraph five, you tell us that Killa's use of language is without peer. I won't name names but I feel Killa's use of language is near the middle of the front of the pack as far as trek smut writing goes. In fact, I feel the girl uses a little too much language. As I read TP and FC I kept thinking 'make your point, please.' And as far as Killa's writing giving us something to aim at, you seem to be discounting the fact that many of us a) have been writing trek smut, among other things, for many years, well before the newsgroup and Killa, and b) those of us who write in other genres and professionally have our own standards and our own goals, not set by TP, FC, Killa or you. There's lots of good writing out there, some of it excellent, it cannot possibly have come from reading, even memorizing, TP and FC. It's something you earn through hard work and having the courage to follow your own vision and I was not amused to see you trash that so lightly.

Paragraph seven: Again, I think you are overestimating Killa's influence. The Trek Smut I've read appears to be written by people of some taste and sensibility that they could not possibly have garnered from even the most thorough study of TP and FC. If one reads other erotica, the same conventions you attribute to Killa's writing apply there as well as in non erotic literature. Saying 'I love you' is just not the line upon which much twentieth century writing hinges. I really don't know why you feel all or most of the good Trek Smut on the web is caused by Killa's influence.

I once wrote Killa a fan letter but it was for _Surrender_. It's a good, solid story and I liked it well enough to let her know. She sent me a very nice answer as I recall. This does not change the fact that I have issues with her writing, even in _Surrender_. However, these issues would likely have remained in the privacy of my head without your essay to out them.

Part of my problem with your essay is that I have K/S burn out. That relationship has been so picked over by so many that it's lost most of its charm for me. There really isn't much you can do with Kirk and Spock anymore after they've fucked each other in every conceivable position. Not even the addition of McCoy, Chekov, Uhura or the entire engineering department rugby team can save them from being boring. All the suspense for me is in wondering if the writer put some new spin on it. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. I say we need more of a break from canon, new characters interacting with old in old and new places. Why not? It's not as if the canon police will cite us for it.

Comments by Arachnethe2, addressing statements made by Karmen Ghia:

> Paragraph seven: Again, I think you are overestimating Killa's influence. The Trek Smut I've read appears to be written by people of some taste and sensibility that they could not possibly have garnered from even the most thorough study of TP and FC.

I have accidentally discovered R'rain's slash archive in summer 97, when I have had no clue neither about K/S slash nor about ascem or (in those times) asc. I have found lots and lots of Voy, DS9 and TNG, but only few K/S and the most of them were not good.

Killas Turning Point has been the exception. Because of the story, full of emotions and a bad ending, the length, which I never minded, bacause for me, TP wasn't long enough. Besides the drafts there TP was a master piece. Perhaps are there better stories, I don't know, but none of them touched me so deep. None of these stories there (and 'A Job for the Young' too) didn't manage what TP did: I, although I have never heard about K/S fandom and haven'T any idea, what a zine is, have decided, that I will write K/S too.

How I will make it with my poor english, I didn't know, but the first stories appeared in my mind and I have had to write them. This makes TP in my eyes so beautiful, despite all the reasons, Mary Ellen have wrote in her essay. It is the fact, that the Turning Point have been my turning point. And, as I have listened to the other K/S writers, then they have described their reasons for their writing in similar way.

Well, I have to admit, that I have never thought about someone, who finds Killa's stories 'nice'. Butt ok, I take it. This is live. Only I have to say, that the 'standards', TP and FC have set in the K/S fandom on ascem, are nothing for a person, whose got bored by K/S. These both stories are erotica, threksmut and not a core fag porn for a hot core fag porn reading girl.

Otherwise it would be illogical.

Comments by Rae Trail, addressing statements made by Karmen Ghia:

Yes, you're right, with the point of view that Kirk and Spock are actually the captain and first officer of the Enterprise. And they are, of course. But so few of us understand what that means. We are all writing the love we see before us. I doubt that most of us have your sort of ordered mind. We like the romance and scary bits. I'm sure that in the real ST universe Kirk and Spock would be totally upfront and honest and chatty with each other....

[some of your comments were nasty] No one is trying to nominate Killa for the Fuckin' Nobel Prize For Literature. She did take the Genre another step along the road from sleezy to wonderous. No kudos for that? Or are you looking for kowtow?...

Your serious thinking hasn't been serious enough, or perhaps it has been too serious. Erotic is as erotic does. People who enjoy the Song of Solomon as erotic fiction are few and far between. Not many people stumble across, can afford, or enjoy, Merrick. I Think (Correct Me If I'm Wrong) the reference was to Treksmut. Cheers. If the reference was to treksmut, then Killa is a Diva, and you're barking up the wrong modem.

Comments by Jungle Kitty addressing Rae Trail:

Rae, HUH??? Are you saying that prior to Killa, K/S was sleazy? I'm not devaluing Killa, and god knows I'm not a fan of early K/S, but *sleazy*?...

I believe Karmen was responding to Mary Ellen's statement that TP & FC make up the greatest piece of erotic fiction (paraphrasing there, but that's about it). So it *is* a discussion of more than Treksmut. I remember reading Doc's essay when it first appeared in the KSP and thinking, "Well, that's a little over the top, IMO." Don't get me wrong--I am a BIG admirer of Killa and I think she is an extremely gifted writer--but I remember wondering about that statement. Would people who have no interest in Trek or K/S find those stories erotic? I can't answer that, and I doubt that anyone really can. But I feel that K/S (and all Treksmut) is written to a great extent for a specific audience who share certain experiences, i.e., they've seen and enjoyed Star Trek. I doubt that any of us who are passionate about K/S can respond to a K/S story in a completely dispassionate manner, even when trying to do a scholarly review. Although I believe Mary Ellen was trying very hard to be objective in her essay, I think a statement like that can only be interpreted as subjective. As such, I didn't really take it seriously....

I really saw nothing inhumane in what Karmen wrote, although I disagree with some of it. But I did like Karmen's comments about getting burnt out on K/S, because t's been done to death. I'm starting to believe that the future of K/S may lie in A/U. As I said, I'm not a fan of early K/S, but one of the things that is refreshing is they didn't know the end of the story, or many of the components that are now canon, such as Gol, Spock's death and regeneration, Kirk's death and reappearance in the Nexus. People used to write all kinds of lives and adventures for them. Greywolf does a wonderful job with this in his Blues stories (which are too few and far between IMO), but most of the rest of us stick to variations on canon. Now that's a mold I would really enjoy seeing broken!

Comments by Jungle Kitty, addressing Mary Ellen Curtin:

>>One thing I wonder about this story is how necessary the Trek is to its impact. I suspect that unless the characters are people who have an existence outside the story, it will not have all that much oomph.

This statement really astounds me. That is exactly what I thought when you posted your review of Killa's TP/FC, in which you said those two stories were the most erotic piece of fiction in the English language, or words to that effect. I figured it was just you going over the top,but I wondered about exactly what you expressed above. Would someone who has no Trek experience or isn't into Kirk and/or Spock respond as you do to those stories, or, for that matter, as any of us do to our beloved Treksmut?

Doubtful, on this count.

Hell, I'm into Trek, Kirk, and Spock, and I don't react that way to those particular stories, although I'm extremely fond of at least one of them.

Anyway, that's what made that whole TP/FC review seem so strange to me. It seemed like you were mixing your "crit self" with your "Trekkie" self. If you love Trek the way you've told me you do, then I wonder how you manage to keep any sort of objective distance from those stories. I think it may be well-nigh impossible.

Feedback is a highly personal thing, as is writing. Readers reveal things to us in feedback, just as we do in our writing. That's why writing and feedback seems like a dialog to me.

To my ear, pro crit depersonalizes the response. The crit is standing back from the story and trying to assess it objectively. That's what sets it apart from other feedback, IMO. So I'm just wondering how one can use "pro crit tools" on something that one responds to on such a deeply personal level. Not saying you shouldn't view stories in a crit way or share those views, just really puzzled about how possible that is. I realize that all feedback (pro fic included) is subjective to some extent, but it seems to me that pro book reviews are less so. There's more objectivity. So I'm wondering: Can you really shut off your personal reaction to the extent necessary to be semi-objective?

Mary Ellen Curtin's comments:

I *really* appreciate the trouble you took to think about my essay and reply. I was being frankly outrageous, and it's nice to actually get a reaction.... What I called it was: "the best piece of erotic fiction ever written in English." This is wildly hyperbolic, even though English is not a language distinguished for its erotic literature. I meant to say, "best erotic novel ever written in English" -- which leaves the Song of Songs out on two counts. What I was hoping for was that someone would say "hold on a minute there!" and cite a counter-example.

I realize that much of what you dislike about TP is what I like. Specifically: "life is foreplay". Also, "sex is part of a relationship." Clearly you are quite impatient with the slow buildup approach, and prefer "hard core fag porn" that is "blunt and graphic." IDIC, of course, and to each her/his/its/their own. I am also confessedly a slut for lyric language, and love a style I can slather across my brain like butter. erk, what an image. In any event, I gather you don't care for that sort of thing, which is also perfectly fair...

No, I do not think fan fiction "transcends" its subject -- insofar as I know what transcends means in this context. I think media tie-in fiction, including Star Trek fan fiction, is actually good for something. So I no longer feel that fan writers have an excuse to write poorly -- the excuse being that "it doesn't count." It may not be paid writing, but it counts.

*No* writer truly creates a milieu and characters out of whole cloth. Tolstoy did not create Russia or Napoleon, Faulkner did not create Mississippi or the Civil War or bears, Joyce did not create Dublin or Odysseus. And conversely, the characters of (for instance) Kirk and Spock do not truly exist until we make them. They have no inner lives, no thoughts, no history, no feelings, and goodness knows no consistency. Canon gives some of the outer form of a human being, but there is no there there. We -- the viewers and the writers -- make up a person to fit the external signs.

When you wonder "what Killa could do without the restrictions of canon" (which is a comment I've heard from a number of quarters), I think you are overlooking how many restrictions there are on *any* art form, and how important restrictions are in giving an art form depth. Shakespeare's sonnets are not less powerful because they have a set length and rhyme scheme: in many ways the strict structure helps them, not least by making them easier to remember.

Yes, fan fiction has a restricted choice of personnel. But my observation is that this limitation lets authors explore the characters in great depth, and gives the fiction disproportion ate emotional impact. The readers pay for their experience with the coin of a prior emotional involvement. What they can get, when fanfic is at its best, is a level of truth-telling that is hard to duplicate elsewhere.

I'm thinking as I write here, so I may not make perfect sense... I guess that you haven't yet read raku's "The Learning Curve." It's proof that there's lot of life in the old boys yet, and that there is *plenty* more that can still be done with Kirk and Spock. Admittedly, little of what happens in that work qualifies as raw, pulsing sex, so by that standard it may be lacking. But for exploration of character, of choice, and of the role of sexuality in life, it's hard to equal and practically impossible to beat.

So in sum, I'm quite willing to concede that I was making sweeping generalizations about Killa's impact and influence. I suspect you may be surprised at the number of people who've posted their agreement with me. I don't actually think her literary style per se has had a tremendous influence. I think it's more that she showed a lot of writers that a serious type of literature could come out of fan fiction: that it could be something worth reading.

Again, thank you so very much for taking my essay seriously, and for giving me the opportunity to think these issues through some more.

Karmen Ghia addressed Arachnethe2:

I think you've slightly missed my point. I left off reading hard core fag porn because I found trek smut, much of it, superior to what I had been reading. I don't know if that's a compliment to the slash world but there it is... I don't really know what to say except that I wrote my opinion and it is still my opinion. I disagree with Mary Ellen that Killa is the best, I do, however, agree that she is one of the best. And I hope that if people like you are inspired by Killa that they are trying to write 'better' than she does, in their own way, and not 'like' her. I didn't feel from Mary Ellen's essay that there is anything 'better' then Killa and that is simply not true. I thought I made this clear in my essay but I guess I did not.

Judith Gran responded:

Well, I assume, for starters, that Karmen Ghia's aesthetic preferences are quite different from Mary Ellen's, or Killa's, for that matter. I think it can be very hard, when you feel passionately for or against a particular type of writing, to give equal weight to those who feel differently. But no one ever said practicing IDIC was easy.

I didn't read Mary Ellen's essay as prescriptively as Karmen Ghia perhaps may have read it. To me, it was a fairly straightforward and, I think, unexceptional description of Killa's influence on netfic. It accords very much with my own impression that perhaps as many as 80% of the K/S fans here who've talked about how they became active in the NG have mentioned the impact that Killa and "Turning Point" had on them.

I didn't read the essay as saying you *had* to have been influenced by Killa, but only that many of the folks here have been. That's just a fact, and it's hard to quarrel with a fact.

Opinions, of course, are a different matter.

Jungle Kitty wrote, re .>Mary Ellen's statement that TP & FC make up the greatest piece of erotic fiction [in English] <snip> I >remember ... thinking, "Well, that's a little over the top, IMO."

I assumed it was meant to be. Literary judgments are inherently subjective, after all -- is Yeats better than Eliot, is Shakespeare better than Dante, or the other way round? There's no final authority in such matters.

Yet, nevertheless, I think it's possible to speak "with authority" about great literature in a slightly different sense. I'm thinking here of the "authority" conferred by taking literature seriously. Seriously enough to read good writing, think about it, analyze it, try to understand how it works, how it measures up against criteria of literary worth that make sense.

To me, the TP/FC series isn't unique in meeting the criteria of literary excellence that Mary Ellen applied--not even in K/S fan fiction. Personally, I think that in any contest among great works of erotic fiction in English, the writings of [Gayle F and Syn Ferguson would very much be in the running.

But that's beside the point. I think the value of Mary Ellen's essay was that, by laying down the gauntlet about TP and FC , it did something a little like what Mary Ellen claims Killa did for the quality of fan fiction on the NG. To me, the essay said, "We fans can talk about literary quality, we can apply literary standards to slash fiction, we can be -- and are, at least in some fannish circles -- serious writers and serious readers." Remember, the essay was published in a newsletter for K/S printfen, where some of the most vocal people have insisted that K/S fic is not about literary merit, and that K/S writers and readers don't care, maybe even shouldn't care, whether a piece of K/S writing has value in general literary terms. I'm paraphrasing here, obviously. There have also been some awfully negative comments about netfic in that forum, many of them coming from people who don't even read fan fiction on the net but assume on the basis of general principles that it means The End of Civilization As We Know It. So I think it was salutary to make an authoritative statement or two in that setting. I bet it got people's attention, at least.

I think Mary Ellen posed some questions that no one else was posing in that forum, and they may have meant something a little different there, in that setting and context, than they meant to some readers here.