Trekkie Lit: Kirk ♥︎ Spock
You may be looking for Kirk Loves Spock, a 1998 article.
| News Media Commentary | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Trekkie Lit: Kirk ♥︎ Spock |
| Commentator: | Chris DeVito |
| Date(s): | September 1994 |
| Venue: | |
| Fandom: | Star Trek |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Trekkie Lit: Kirk ♥︎ Spock is a 1994 article by Chris DeVito about slash fanfiction printed in "Out Magazine."
Despite the venue in which it was printed, the article grabs at low-hanging fruit, and makes a lot of lazy and dated assumptions.
Some Topics Discussed
- those "Kirk/Spockers"
- fandom and fanworks as a "cottage industry"
- sexual and emotional intimacy between two male characters being defiling
- David Gerrold's help in spreading general disdain about Kirk/Spock
- the assumption that women who write m/m slash are trying to improve pornography in general
- the statement that women who write m/m are all straight
- some discussion of the story The Ring of Soshern
- a mention of George Lucas' attempt to control explicit fanworks
- a cheeky quote from the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture that quotes Kirk as if he were a real person, as ignores the fact that the book is an official source
Excerpts
"Slash Lit" remains the best-kept underground secret of the Star Trek cottage industry. The "slash" is the one between Kirk/Spock in the homoerotic tales about the two, advertised in enigmatic codes only at the back of Starlog and other fan 'zines, signed with Vulcanized pseudonyms.
As Star Trek: Generations wraps filming for a fall release, slash lit's relationship with the Trekkie main stream remains tenuous. If slashers manage to slip a table into the dealers room at a corporate-run convention, it's never for long. The "Kirk/Spockers" are told by security to pack up their sexually explicit 'zines, buttons, and T-shirts at warp speed. (They're better-tolerated at unofficial, fan-run conventions.)
Kirk/Spockers, curiously enough in the male-dominated sci-fi fan universe, are almost always straight women, the "K/S ladies" that Star Trek writer David Gerrold has referred to with disdain. But are these women doing their gender a service? Are they building better pornography?
"Nova," a lesbian writer of slash tales involving the women of the Enterprise, thinks Kirk/Spockers represent an "ongoing heterosexual fascination with homosexuality."
One of the earliest and most imitated slash love stories is The Ring of Soshern in which [very brief synopsis not quoted here].
The corporation behind Star Wars has raised a copyright force field to prevent any slash lit about Luke Skywalker and Han Solo playing hide the lightsaber, while other slashers have gotten away with defiling the brotherly innocence of Simon and Simon, Starsky and Hutch, and Miami Vice's Crockett and Tubbs.
What does Kirk think of the stories circulating about him? "I have always found my best gratification in that creature, woman." he says in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. "I would dislike being thought of as so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years."