Talk:Slash Controversies

Reading a quote that was just added: is there a typo in here? the truths I've been telling lately is that Kirk and Spock are not only lovers. "not only" implies that they are lovers. Also, what a jerk comment, David Gerrold.--æþel 03:30, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Whoops. Thanks for catching that. I'll fix it. And I agree about the comment. What a dope. --Mrs. Potato Head 12:19, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

How to Footnote This?

[Trimble’s friend, science fiction author David Gerrold (best known to Star Trek fans as the writer of the popular TOS episode "The Trouble with Tribbles") is another vocally anti-K/S critic. In his revised edition of his nonfiction book The World of Star Trek (original edition printed in 1973 by Ballantine Books, revised edition in printed in 1984 by Bluejay Books), he has many negative comments to make about fans. Right after shaking his head over examples of a fan stalking the studio and another disturbed young man who tried to turn himself into Spock and then killed himself, he proceeds with this:]

Is this above section something a fan heard/saw Gerrold state (the "right after shaking his head" threw me.)?
Is this next section direct quotes from The World of Star Trek? If it is, we need to footnote it as such.

[An equally disturbing phenomenon has developed among a group of female Star Trek fans. To them, Star Trek is not about the Enterprise or its five-year mission, or the noble vision of humanity among the stars—it is specifically about the relationship between Kirk and Spock. More specifically, these women entertain themselves by writing stories in which Kirk and Spock are homosexual lovers. [He footnotes this with "I am not making this up. Honest."] Kirk?!! And Spock?!! The stories are collected and circulated in mimeographed fanzines. More than one unsuspecting Star Trek fan has stumbled unwarily into these zines at some convention or other. The result is usually a started expression and the question, 'Is this what Star Trek is really about?' (It is most definitely not what Star Trek fandom is really about, but more than one young would-be fan has been prohibited from attending Trek-cons or reading Trek-zines because his/her parents have seen this material. The network of K/S fans -- as they call themselves -- is small, but very active. Some of their stories are very explicit. And some of the artwork accompanying—well, never mind. These women use scenes from the episodes and specifically from the Star Trek movies to justify their belief that this is the secret message of Star Trek . . . . While the K/S ladies have never been vocal enough to be a problem, their projection of their own sexual fantasies onto Star Trek has at times been a nuisance for those who actually have to produce the show. Eventually, Gene Roddenberry, in his novelization of Star Trek I, had to acknowledge their unwelcome invasion of the universe he had created by including a footnote . . . explaining that Kirk and Spock were "just good friends." (This did not even slow the K/S ladies down.) One long-time Star Trek fan summed up her feelings about the K/S phenomenon this way: "I really don't mind the stories. Some of them are even quite well written. What does bother me though is the sado-masochism in them. Too many of the stories involve beating and rapes -- sometimes even between Kirk and Spock. I just find it difficult to believe that this is an accurate portrayal of the behavior of two of Starfleet's finest officers." Even more candid are the comments of a gay male Star Trek fan: "The K/S stories I've seen are offensive. It's a woman's idea of what gay men are like, and it's way off base. Besides, I like Kirk and Spock the way they are." What anyone wants to believe in the privacy of his or her own head, of course, is his or her own business. It's when you start messing around in other people's universes that you have to follow the rules of the local creator. If nothing else, it's good manners.]

And, who is the "including me" in this section below? Unless it is part of a bigger quote (the " at the end has me confused, as I can't figure out what it is bracketting), it should be removed. And the bigger question, is this whole section a direct quote from Langley? If yes, it needs to be clearer.

[With those comments, Gerrold unleashed a storm about his head. Many fans (including me) exchanged letters with him. His response letters declared that " . . . those who write these kinds of stories will find it increasingly difficult to sell them" and "the active dissemination of the K/S interpretation of Star Trek is something that Paramount would very probably view as damaging to their property—and the studio will act to protect their property."] --Mrs. Potato Head 13:17, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

It needs to be changed back to the original quote http://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Slash_Controversies&oldid=398355 The section was probably edited to break up the long quote, but the context and attribution get lost that way. --Doro 15:34, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Makes sense. Doro, would you revert it? And maybe add a quotation template to it? Then I'll add some wikilinks to it. --Mrs. Potato Head 15:51, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I was not trying to break up the long quote but to keep the Gerrold material together. The section on early objections started out with things Roberta Rogow and Bjo Trimble had said, then what Gerrold did at conventions (mocking slash during a lecture), then went into more things Rogow wrote (as quoted by KLangley), more things Trimble said, and then back to Gerrold.

My idea was to put all the Rogow material, all the Trimble quotes, and then all the Gerrold stuff together, and I thought it should start with his "eight paragraphs" from the book, then the part about what he did at the conventions. "Shaking his head over" fan excesses was clearly a reference to his attitude in the book, not to something he did at a convention. I didn't write "shaking his head" and I can see why that would be confusing, since both his statements in the book and his "live" activities at conventions are described. --KTJ 15:25, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

What I did not realize until I went back to look at the initial version of this article is that that entire section is a quote from KLangley and that is the 'long quote' under discussion. Since that's KLangley's arrangement, it has to be kept as is. I'm reverting everything back to before I began working on it and I'll stick a Quotation2 on it so it's clear which material is hers. --KTJ 15:40, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, KTJ. I wish there was a better way to display and use this info, as it is long and rambling, and doesn't fit well. The information is extremely fascinating (they are more along the line of oral histories), but I think was added in this way long ago before things on Fanlore had had a chance get a bit more "refined." If anyone has some suggestions on how to work with her long quote in a better ways, that would be super. As it stands, I don't know how and who added it -- it predates me -- and if there were stipulations regarding her quoted material. --Mrs. Potato Head 15:59, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

The reference clearly says who added it and when. ;) For what it's worth, the section was originally part of the Slash page and was moved to a separate page. See Talk:Slash#Klangley quote?. --Doro 19:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

As far as I am concerned, MPH, an oral history, even a long rambling one, is not out of place in Fanlore. It is pretty enormous though. At least marking it with Quotation2 makes it clear that all that material is Klangley's. I wonder if we could get hold of her to see if she would feel like rearranging it a bit just for this wiki, like dividing it into sections marked by bold type headings or something, while keeping it in a quotation on the page. It clearly belongs here, it should be preserved, it's not just important to slash history but fandom history. Wish she'd write a book. --KTJ (talk) 01:00, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The book: me, too. Getting a hold of Klangley is another option. --Mrs. Potato Head (talk) 02:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The issue of the Klangley quotes came up years ago, but we never actually did anything about it. Basically, someone made a promise to Klangley that they really shouldn't have: I'd like to run this past the wiki admins before a decision is made - ordinarily I would totally agree that the quoted material be somewhere off the page with a pointer to it, but the quoting was a specific condition of Klangley's agreeing to put the information on the Slash page, and she trusted me to make that happen. I don't want to just change it on her, not without a decree from above, as it were.[1] I have no idea if the committee was ever contacted or ever responded. But since no one has followed up since then, I don't see how we need permission from anyone to follow existing site policy and editorial practice; pages are supposed to be edited collaboratively and not controlled by any individual, and huge unmovable quotes by a single writer that constitute large parts of the page's main content actually interfere with PPOV. I still think the best solution is to put Klangley's entire essay into its own subpage (K.S. Langley/Slash Essay or K.S. Langley/Slash Research or Slash/K.S. Langley's Research), so we can still read the whole thing as it was meant to be read, but then we can break up the quotations more, paraphrase, remove parts, etc., as needed and link back to the whole version.--æþel (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Slash as OOC (here or in main slash article?)

I can't find anywhere a mention that some fans who are/were against slash, used an argument that it it forced to write the characters as OOC. I figured I'd add it, but I"m not sure whether I should add it here or in the main slash article. Thoughts? --Alex (talk) 22:40, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

I would put it here.--æþel (talk) 23:55, 23 February 2015 (UTC)