Setting Sun, Rising Star

Fanfiction
Title:	Setting Sun, Rising Star
Author(s):	Patricia Roe
Date(s):	1997
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Setting Sun, Rising Star is a Kirk/Spock story by Patricia Roe.

It was published in the print zine Heroes in the Wilderness.

Summary

"After the Klingon Peace, Spock's career is at its zenith; Admiral Kirk is redundant. Their relationship is in ruins until Jim encounters Kelly."

Reactions and Reviews

1997

Set after ST:VI, Spock is pursuing his ambassadorial duties while Kirk has a position at Starfleet which he describes as being "a glorified PR man". He feels useless; he's depressed; and the twenty year bonding he has had with Spock seems to be collapsing.

This is a story in two parts. To start with, you want to shake Kirk and tell him to pull himself together and stop being so silly, yet that never works for a depressive. Emotionally, I didn't like the first part, while conceding that it is effective. I had to struggle to carry on reading the story past the first half dozen pages. I get the feeling that Patricia has dealt with, or known well, someone suffering from depression; nobody who hasn't could come up with this sort of scenario purely from imagination.

The second half is far more emotionally satisfying for me, and made the effort of continuing to read worth while. I do have a quibble about the behaviour of the man Kelly after he meets Kirk - you'll probably understand what I mean when you read the story; I don't want to go into detail because it would mean giving away an important bit of the plot - but I'm talking quibble here; all it means is that if I had been writing this, I would have included a few additional lines that would have covered this point.

Over all, the story is well, even powerfully, written, and it's not the writer's fault that I don't feel it's one I'll want to reread. On the other hand, I think it's one that I'll remember, and I think a lot of people are going to enjoy it.

I love this story. Wait a minute, that wasn’t emphatic enough. I love this story. Really love. As in warm-glow- in-my-mind-and-heart love, I’m-going-to-remember-this- one-for-a-long-time love. As in, I’m definitely nominating this story for an award when the balloting for 1997 stories comes around next year. As in, I’m dying to tell the author how impressed I am by her work.

Not that Setting Sun, Rising Star is perfect. There are parts that made me frown, and the ending is not as clearly defined as I wanted it to be. It’s possible that Kirk’s characterization is stretched to allow the plot to take off. But the parts that work, and most of it does, make me stand back in admiration.

Nevertheless, I have a feeling that I might be in the minority in the pleasure I take from this story. It is very unusual for our genre. Not so much sex, and though some of it is extended beyond what we normally get from some of our English sisters, it’s still much less explicit than it could be. And the time of the story is far from a favorite for most folks. It takes place after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Spock is in the midst of the transformation from Starfleet officer to Federation diplomat, spurred by his success with Gorkon and at Khitomer, while Kirk.... Kirk has been removed from active duty because of his age, basically he’s been retired, and for him the future suddenly looks bleak. He and Spock have been bonded partners for 20 years. The story takes place on Earth, so in a sense you could call this one of those “domestic” stories. Much of the action occurs in the homes Jim and Spock share, and I know that many K/Sers cringe at such a setting, while I’ve always rather liked putting them in different places, especially places where I myself have some experience. Like a house. A home.

Have you ever had a conversation with your significant other, where you just aren’t agreeing, and you’re in a really bad mood you can’t quite explain, and everything that comes out of your significant other’s mouth rubs you the wrong way, and everything you say back just makes the situation worse? Soon an innocent “just got out of the bed on the wrong side” mood has spiraled into a full-blown depression. Everything looks bleak, you’re disgusted with yourself for being so disgusting. You love your lover but nothing he can say or do can help you, and everything you say to each other just seems to make the situation worse. If you’re lucky, you manage to hit bottom while standing on your feet and bounce back up into each other’s arms, all in the same day. If you’re not lucky, you fall flat on your face in the muck of your own ugly existence, and with genuine emotional agony you claw through the depression and all the bad feelings for days and days....

Well, I’ve had times like that, and this is the situation into which Patricia Roe draws Jim and Spock, with consummate skill. I felt the hopelessness of Jim’s depression, I felt Spock’s concern. I am totally impressed with her skill in making the whole scenario come alive in every tiny emotional nuance, and for making it ring true to the characters I know and love. After twenty years, all the love is still there between them, they still want their relationship to work. But day after day, it doesn’t. Day after day, they follow that darkening spiral down, down, as even small talk over a meal becomes strained, as they avoid rather than seek each other’s company.

This story is 50 small-type pages long. As I read the first few pages, was entranced and yet so distressed by what was happening, I felt sure that it would descend into one of those “Kirk leaves Spock for a blonde bimbo and after many escapades finally realizes the error of his ways and returns to his Vulcan” stories. But it never happened. That would have been an easy way out, and the author is made of stronger stuff than that. She follows Jim and Spock all the way through, and it’s an agonizing, compelling read.

What I think is so remarkable about Setting Sun, Rising Star is the way through all of this depression and distress, through thoughts of separation and life apart, not once is there any doubt at all that the guys love one another and want to stay together. It’s as if one of them is helplessly caught in a strong ebb tide while the other, who can’t swim, is stranded on the beach. They reach towards one another but they can’t, quite, touch.

I’m trying hard not to give away the actual plot of the story, just to convey the emotional nuances. For me, this story conveyed a wonderful feeling of togetherness. There are some deeply-moving conversations between the guys, and such wonderful things that Spock says to his t’hy’la! It might sound like a real downer, but for me it was exactly the opposite. It’s not just the conclusion that is relationship-affirming, every page is suffused with devotion and love, even through the very worst of times. Wow, I just reveled in it.

McCoy is in this story too, he comes alive with his puttering on his vacation house on Lake Geneva in Switzerland (I could just see him!), and in his genuine, right-on-the-characterization concern for his friends. He also injects just the right element of levity that the story needs.

Things I didn’t care for too much: the presumption that a supposed “dream” was in fact real. The a-little-too- obvious-and-silly conversation with the woman Delina at the party. (“You used to be Captain Kirk, didn’t you?!”) The confusion over the true origin of Jim’s discontent, which transforms itself from one thing to another during the course of the story. I tend to agree more with Spock’s interpretation, and this was barely addressed at the conclusion with just one sentence of intent from Kirk. Also, it seemed to me that Jim’s plans at the end of the story weren’t quite enough to give back to him what he needed. It was the transfer out of Liaison that was required, and though the story comes close to providing this closure it doesn’t quite make it.

But I don’t care. Re-reading this story so I could write the review was a tremendous pleasure, and I simply couldn’t pull myself out of the plot enough to take my usual notes.

Have I mentioned that I love this story? Read it!

A very impressive story, I didn't like ST VI at all, but with this story I see it in a new light. The relationship between Kirk and Spock makes sense now. Kirk feels old and is jealous at Spock, who is still successful and right in the limelight. He's getting so depressed that he's loosing his grip on reality. He's living from day to day, without really living, merely existing, being sorry for himself and sinking even deeper into his depression.Only when he leaves Spock and meets two fateful persons, he starts thinking and detects that his life is in fact good, so much better, than that of the average people. And he learns, that the only help for his disaster can come from himself alone. Life as such has no sense; everyone has to give his life a sense himself. He has to learn to appreciate the things he took so far for granted and he has to learn, that he has responsibilities to himself and to others. I think, many of us were in similar situations and this is a very insightful lesson for all of us. By the way... first I wondered, why they hadn't a mental awareness of each other and didn't have mind-speach, but later in the story I discovered why; they didn't share the complete death bond. This made me very sad because I don't see how Spock can continue decades without his love. On the other hand I tried to imagine, that I would love a being with a lifespan of perhaps 45 years (Half the human lifespan!). Would I really be ready to go in two years? With only half of my time behind me? What a terrible decision....

An exquisite and apt title, especially as I got into the story and saw the significance.

I have mixed feelings about this story, but they are deep mixed feelings anyway, and I value a K/S story that does this to me. And knowing this is a very long story was pleasing, wondering where the author was going to take us on the way to whatever resolution she had in mind.

Speaking of long, I'm not one who thinks more is better [I know, I'm trying to keep this short, but I can't seem to help it], but in this case the wordy detail felt rich, not tedious. Nor did I feel the story was overly long as far as the progression of the story events. But what did feel overly long were all the psychological head-trips. I know there arent ever quick answers to these kinds of dilemmas, though, so I guess the author really had to let it go on and on and on and on, to fully express the kind of thing Kirk was going through, I wasn't feeling that it was overly long throughout the story, only in some places, and it's not that things are repeated redundantly, but there's just so damn much. No wonder people get crazy when they're so full of intense stuff going around in circles in their heads. And perhaps the author also did this for the drama, for the relief we would feel after finally breaking clear of such a strangling depression.

I was finding myself liking this almost in spite of myself, and partly out of prurient interest Very generally speaking only, established-relationship/domestic-squabble K/S stories are not my favorites, but this is such a vitally important consideration for their later lives, because of Spock living so much longer.

I have to amend the above. It's not that I don't love established-relationship/domestic-squabble K/S stories, I just don't love them when they seem to be about just regular people, when the story feels more about ourselves and our relationships than about Kirk and Spock and theirs.

I know we all have our different takes on the characters and also on what K/S means to us, what K/S is "for" (such as exploring our own relationships), but the characterization in this story felt to me like a bitter, bitchy, withdrawn wife (Kirk), suffering from depression because the husband (Spock) is so successful and the wife feels his best times are behind him. These don't feel like our heroic Kirk & Spock characters. However, I would say that what these characters — kind of regular middle-aged men (granted they are beautiful men, men with astounding careers, but more like two humans than the epitome of 23rd century human male spirit and his extraordinary Vulcan)...what these characters do accomplish in their personal growth and love, is indeed heroic.

It seems Spock's Vulcan mental abilities would clearly have been instrumental here, but they were not utilized, and little mention is made of their bond as a viable, visceral mental/emotional tie between them. Surely this would make their relationship extraordinary, not mired mundanely in these struggles.

Anyway, it was also just a good story, taking place right after the events of ST6. Kirk and Spock's San Francisco-based lives, all of this detail was quite interesting. Local color was fun, too, says this coastal Californian. Although there isn't exactly a place like that described (inaccessible by land) "just south of Los Angeles/1 Well, maybe there will be, after the Big One.

What I mean by prurient interest, were all the painful scenes such as Kirk banging around in the kitchen, miffed at little things blown out of proportion, such as getting the shopping done, taking messages for Spock; and Spock trying to get through but Kirk petulantly not talking. And the time Kirk sarcastically bakes cookies and sets Spock's dress uniform out.

I know it's a pivotal time for Kirk psychologically, feeling he's just a figurehead in the Admiralty, fading into obscurity, that the peak of his career was over so quickly, and Spock's new career is just beginning. It could be said he deserves to indulge in this self-pitying depression (I should know; I just wrote a story of a self-pitying alcoholic Adm. Kirk); and I also felt this a realistic portrayal of someone we might know, or even ourselves, sinking into these pits and then coming out of them; and some of these passages were so poignant they made me cry, but still, it was bugging me that they seemed to have to deal with this as just regular people would. Again, the fault, to me, seems to lie in not making Spock Vulcan enough. Except when he's frighteningly almost-violent, but that's not really being Vulcan, just being a powerful-male.

A number of really great scenes with things intensely wrong between them. I loved the first desperate sex, although again, it was painful, just like a man getting his rocks off real quick and leaving his partner unfulfilled while he falls instantly asleep.

In a later scene, Spock wants sex but feels that gives only the illusion of reconciliation, considering Kirk's present state. Kirk feels the same, that sex isnt a solution for their estrangement. This would be true for "regular" people, but I feel that with their bond, this kind of estrangement wouldn't happen, and sexual union would go a long way toward reunited them.

I suppose if we'd been given an explanation why there seemed to be little mental communion between them, then I could have happily gone along with this painful period in their relationship.

A few words about the music. First, I adore their house in Malibu; and Spock playing the white grand piano turns me on. But I think Rachmaninov, Paganini, Stravinski, etc. is such pompous, bombastic music. I've always thought Spock would prefer baroque — so logical and exalted; and I dont think those would be Kirk's favorite composers, either. But as the author describes the music -- the wit and passion, the plaintive unease and pessimism — I can appreciate it nonetheless. And she used the music to excellent effect for the story.

As to what actually happens in the story, it's a satisfying combination of setting and drama, plus mysterious things happen.... What seems to be a metaphorical struggle Kirk goes though, was written just right; where lines between reality and not are not so clear.

Kirk comes back to himself through the use of a chance character who makes Kirk see where he's been bogged down. Even though some specific depression-curing events led up to this point, it still seems that the depression being gone overnight was too sudden. Also, as to Kirk's realizations now of what will bring fulfillment back into his life, I felt...duh, they never thought of these things before in the past 10-15 years or so?

There's a wonderful scene that turns from Spock's livid, tightly controlled anger into wonderful passion on the floor, but then, argh, banter and silly love-play. Then "consummation came quickly." Thafs it, folks. Never any actual explicit sex in this story.

So Kirk gets it together, but the pain of their estrangement is not really relieved; a sad note underlying a heart-warming, Sunday-night-movie kind of ending, or I should say Sunday-night-novel ending, because it was lots of told words of lofty sentiment at the end, words said outside of showing us anything Kirk and Spock were doing or actually feeling.

I hope I didn't go off on this tangent having missed the point, as can tend to happen. As I said, this was a valuable exploration, and such deeply felt emotion I was definitely affected by it.

A detailed story of Admiral Kirk and Captain Spock after the events of ST VI. They face a critical time in their relationship as bondmates. Kirk is grappling with the demons of uselessness and old age.

I found the portrayal of this situation very realistic. I could really hear two people talking and reacting exactly in the manner shown in this story. However, I'm not certain I could see or hear Kirk and Spock talking and reacting in this manner.

I understand the intent was to show the underlying feeling of Kirk's own lack of self-esteem and his "Captain Dunsel" feelings, but when has Kirk ever lacked self-esteem? I know he hated being an Admiral and wanted to do more in his life, but I just couldn't accept that he'd fall apart so profoundly to the point of destroying himself and his relationship with Spock. In addition, part of the reason for their problems was Kirk's jealousy of Spock's success. Spock's recognition and achievement made Kirk feel even worse about himself. I found myself really trying to suspend my disbelief that Kirk, even though it wasnt the whole problem, would be jealous of Spock's life.

I also understood the author's intent to show exactly what was happening between them with all the inner turmoil, and especially their difficulty with communication with each other, but I still couldn't hear Kirk or Spock talk that way.

Perhaps part of the problem for me was that I saw them as somewhat robbed of their unique strengths and abilities to not only cope with life, but to transcend the ordinary.

But an even bigger question was exactly what it was that Kirk felt. I thought I understood at a certain point in the story, but then I really wasn't sure. I tried to go back over all the things that were said, but I couldn't figure it out satisfactorily. If it was the author's intent to show a confused Kirk, that's one thing, but if it's the reader who's confused, thats another. Kelly, the young man whom Kirk meets during his crisis, was rather sketchily drawn. I couldnt believe Kirk would open up to and learn so much from such a nondescript character And often over-writing marred the reading experience for me. Almost every time Kirk or Spock said something, their thoughts behind what they had just said were told. This technique lessened my enjoyment considerably because I was told what was going on instead of interpreting it from their dialogue. If all the italicized thoughts were edited out, the story would have been much stronger.

There still was a lot to like in this story, however. I loved Spock's reaction to Kirk's suggestion that they separate for a while so that Kirk could think. His reaction was so strong, so very Vulcan and so very Spock.

I loved the description of Los Angeles in the 23rd century! Since I live in LA (albeit in the 20th century), reading about its future counterpart was particularly fun. I'll bet the author's been here! I just adored her futuristic Hollywood Bowl and gorgeous Malibu where K & S have a beautiful ocean side vacation home.

And speaking of vacation homes, McCoy's place in Zurich really impressed me. The author set a scene of not only a global outlook, but an interplanetary one as well. Beautifully done. And need I say that I am relieved, thrilled and glad that they get together in the end? After all the angst, I really needed the happy payoff. I just wished I could have believed all the angst.

But it's not faint praise at all to say that Patricia Roe is a very fine writer.

1998

Sometimes an author hits on the most brilliant and memorable title, so that when the experience of reading the story is behind you, those words will never be quite the same. Such is the way with Setting Sun, Rising Star So descriptive and so fitting for two men faced with inevitable, inescapable change — the passing of time. Kirk's and Spock's paths have always been so parallel they were almost one. But this is changing after Khitomer, for Kirk is facing retirement and inactivity and the setting of his careers sun, while Spock, in his effective role as diplomat, is Starfleet's rising star, I am at a stage in my life where I can relate to Kirk's feelings in a way that I'd almost rather not admit No matter what we do or how well we do it TIME is something over which we have no damned control. There are many ways to be impotent, and while Kirk is not so in the physiological sense, it hurts him immeasurably to be mistaken for Spock's aide or have a misfit socialite address him as the man who "used to be Captain Kirk/ The author writes him with spirit as a man who really tries not to let this get the best of him, but we can see in subtle and not so subtle ways, that he is slowly losing sight of himself. The portrayal of this strong man's thoughts of walking into the sea and letting it claim him do not weaken him one iota. He isn't on a "pity party/ he just truly and deeply feels there is no place for him. This eventually becomes an insurmountable barrier between him and his bondmate* Still, though, the writer makes certain we realize underneath all his misgivings, Kirk continues to love Spock as he has always loved him. Kirk hates the way he's feeling, the way he's behaving, but he can't seem to help himself. The reader is never allowed to feel that these are two ordinary beings whose lives can be torn asunder by ordinary circumstances of life. The waters may be muddied, but there is a ripple of clarity there that keeps whispering to us that this will be overcome. This was necessary for me to believe in the story. You see, ordinarily I hate strife between Kirk and Spock. I am naive enough and dreamer enough to think it can't happen to them, that they are above such petty things and I don't like to read it This was different, as I said, because Spock s love was clear as a bell, never faltering, and Kirk was just trying to sort things out. And while Kirk did have the inevitable accident while out searching for his soul, this wasn't used as a convenient vehicle to springboard them back together The problems were still there and had to be faced. These are two mature beings who. above all, love each other more than they love themselves. The very core of what K/S means to me. told in a truly well-written story. Read it and you'll understand a little better what it's like to be on the high side of 50, even in the 23rd century.