The Slashiest of Profic: K/S Literature 101
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| Title: | The Slashiest of Profic: K/S Literature 101 |
| Creator: | Susannah Mandel |
| Date(s): | January 19, 1999 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | Star Trek: TOS |
| Topic: | |
| External Links: | The Slashiest of Profic: K/S Literature 101 |
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The Slashiest of Profic: K/S Literature 101 is a 1999 post by Susannah Mandel to alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated.
Note: The essay has "Part I" in the title. The post that has "Part II" appears to contain two unsubstantial comments by fans.
Some Topics Discussed
- Star Trek Tie-in Novels and their slash quotient
- Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath: Star Trek: The New Voyages, The Prometheus Design, Triangle, The Price of the Phoenix, and The Fate of the Phoenix
- Strangers from the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonnano
- The Entropy Effect by Vonda McIntyre
From the Essay
Welll, folks, I'm sure we've had this discussion before. But for some reason I can't seem to get my mind off it the past couple of days (I'm sure it couldn't have _anything_ to do with academic procrastination, could it, Susannah? No, of course not!) So I figured: this'd be a great time to try to stike up another "canonical" literary discussion!What's the profic that you've read -- the stuff published under the aegis of Paramount and its people, the stuff halfway between beast and angel, I mean, between fanfic and canon -- that first made you think slashy thoughts; that you reread for pleasure and murmur "This writer really _gets_ it!"; or (and this is my present situation) that you read and reread to get your fix between doses of fanfic? (Yes, I admit it, the tables have turned; I do in fact scan profic in order to try to get my K/S fix during times of drought (or, worse yet, multi-part stories) from my favorite fan writers here. Sigh. *fans self*) Now, I'm a K/S'er myself, so that's the corpus I know (and the one for which I'd be most *keenly*, keenly interested in recommendations for further reading! ;) But I'd be happy to throw the doors open to hear about other people's pairings -- if in fact they ever get any page time.
[...]
Anyway, I'm gonna toss out a few titles, and I'd love to hear people's reactions (and/or, as I said, recommendations.) Hey, maybe we can form a reading group... What d'you say, TSU-ers? The Department of Semi-Canonical Lit.: Detecting the Subtext in "Official" Serialized Novels, 101.
1.) First and foremost, there's the two _New Voyages_ collections of short fanfic, edited by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, of course. Originally published in the late 70s; reissued up through the 80s. There is nothing in here that is literally slash, but WHOA baby is there ever K/S subtext galore! Some of it's h/c; some of it is just humorous, sweet, almost unbearably tender. But it's so brimming with love that... well, this is the sort of thing that makes you wonder whether the editors were actually _reading_ the stories. Sweet, excellently written stuff, too. I mean, this is sheer beauty. These two little volumes were the gateway drug that expanded my thirteen-year-old mind in directions I hadn't even realized were lying in wait. I happen to think every K/S fan alive needs to spend a weekend curled up with these books, but that's just me.
2.) Marshak and Culbreath, of course, were also responsible for co-writing the "official" (but pre-numerical) ST books "The Price of the Phoenix" and its sequel, "The Fate of the Phoenix." While the former has some absolutely beautiful gentle bits (which put the finishing touch on the warping of my youthful brain, as it happens), I find that the books swiftly devolve into -- well, they're really sort of hard to explain (and have been discussed and debated here before, IIRC). Let's say that a consideration of these texts, on ANY level deeper than the surface, reveals them as thoroughly S/M-oriented, homoerotic, violently h/c (but a lot more h than c), and, perhaps most strange of all, weirdly subverted all over the place... by which I mean that a K/S dynamic gets sort of spread around, onto sadistic torturers, onto clones, onto the Romulan Commander. I really can't wait to see a paper written on these books... You could call them slashily suggestive (and o, they are!), but they're also quite sadistic and carry very disturbing psychosexual overtones... like the episodes suggesting, oh, say, Kirk's rape (metaphorical? physical? you decide) by his super-strong male captor (a gigantically butch immortal guy who runs around his private subterranean dungeon in black leather zapping his male captives with torture devices), whom Kirk later forgives and... uh... Look, the books are an _interesting_ read. I find them weirdly frustrating and more than a little disturbing, but hardcore h/c -- and s&m -- fans may love 'em. (Picture this scene: Spock has gotten beaten up trying to trace Kirk via their mind-link through the evil dungeon, so Kirk has to use the Magic Kool-Whip Of Life to save him, and he literally taken off Spock's pants down to the knees and starts spraying, and then Spock regains consciousness, and... Um, I'm a-gonna stop right there.)
3.) Marshak and Culbreath again!: in _The Prometheus Design_ and _Triangle_. Frankly, I haven't re-read these in several years, and I get their plots confused. They're very K/S-suggestive. But, again, they seem to try to stifle and subvert the ruling dynamic, diffusing it through pain and unhappiness for all the characters, and so I find them intensely frustrating. One novel maps this tension across the body of a woman both desire fiercely, thus setting them against each other (a tactic with a venerable and still fertile history in fanfic; consider JK's "The Uneasy Dancers" in juxtaposition?), and another imports some sort of hyper-masculine super-Vulcan named Storm or some such, IIRC.
M&C are _very_ into generating "hyper-masculinity," super-strength and literal body growth beyond the normal (but only in men), and then making the men fight each other and make each other bleed and graphically break each other's bones, with all *sorts* of weird psycho[sexual] sub-dynamics going on underneath. They are also into having a very "delicate," physically weakened, and fragile Kirk obsessively protected by a super-repressed, nearly animalistic, and painfully on-edge Spock. This is OK for a while, I suppose -- it shows up to some degree in fanfic often enough -- but I find it annoying as heck when it gets protracted; it makes my teeth hurt! Plus, in their full-length novels, M&C *don't provide release*: no comfort after the tension and the pain. (They also dress their characters in black leather altogether too often, but that's really beside the point.) All of which, BTW, should be considered in the context of M&C's _extremely_ interesting genderfuck story in _New Voyages II_, "The Procrustean Petard," in which Spock (hyper-masculinized) and Kirk (turned into a woman, literally, at last) dance around the edges of all sorts of unspeakable chasms. But I find that an extremely well-written (and politically trenchant) story, and it's a fascinating read in contrast with the novels.
4.) Whoa... That's just about enough of that. Okay -- how about _Strangers From the Sky_, by Margaret Wander Bonnano? (An ST "Giant Sized Special" or something; makes me feel as if I'm reading a comic book or a Harlequin romance, I can tell you.) But this is actually a great book, from my perspective; *lots* of good funny bits, intriguing side characters, an interesting main plot, and much K-S affection and mutual reliance at the core (especially near the beginning of the book.) Our boys spend just about the whole book locked in a mind meld, if that tells you anything -- which it probably doesn't. Anyway, it's one of my faves. The K-S affection/bonding stuff is really just the icing on the cake.
5.) Vonda N. MacIntyre, _The Entropy Effect_. This is, like, ST novel #2, or something -- it's early. It gets a little hysterical toward the end but I generally enjoy it, even its fast-paced "adventure" plot (alternative future/time-slippage premise; Spock must slip through the time streams to save his reality!) Features the most damn authentic death scene I've ever seen in ST fiction, and *it's Captain Kirk's.* Yowza!
Painful stuff. You can imagine the angst! (Those who go "aww..." when they read Killa's descriptions of feeling a beloved's "thoughts under your hands" will like the last scene, too -- very nice indeed. Suggestive? Sure. Plus, I'm sure I saw background characters from this one in "Bitter Glass.")