Where No One Had Slashed Before

Meta
Title:	Where No One Had Slashed Before
Creator:	Killa
Date(s):	October 30, 2004
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:	Kirk/Spock
External Links:	essay at LiveJournal, Dreamwidth mirror
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Where No One Had Slashed Before is a 2004 essay by Killa.

The topic is Kirk/Spock fanworks and the history of K/S fandom. It was posted at Shipper's Manifesto.

This essay is a reprint of "Where No One Had Gone Before" which was printed in the 100th issue of the K/S Press zine, The Celebration Zine.

Excerpts

The Legendary Friendship:

The most difficult thing in writing about K/S is trying to capture the complexity of the relationship between two characters whose canonical voyage together spanned most of their adult lives. Captain James T. Kirk and his first officer, Spock of Vulcan, are such powerful figures of popular modern myth that they have arguably become new archetypes, and the sheer depth and breadth of the mythology surrounding that fictional voyage -- not to mention the richness and nuance of a fandom that brought the idea of slash into the fannish consciousness and has continued to thrive for thirty years -- really can't be expressed in anything close to 5,000 words. But I'll give it a shot.

That intimate connection seems to have begun in the earliest days of their acquaintance, with a mutual respect and admiration that never wavers but only grows deeper as the years pass. We see it in those first scenes from the pilot. Kirk teases Spock about his differentness, but with an affection that reveals his fascination with and matter-of-fact acceptance of those differences. Spock finds Kirk's unorthodox approach to chess and his assumption of friendship perplexing, but equally fascinating, and he can't resist the challenge. Further, they trust one another instinctively: Kirk values Spock's advice, and Spock, in turn, trusts Kirk to get all their asses out of the fire. They're already important to one another, as is made obvious by Spock's sensitivity to Kirk's feelings for Gary and Kirk's protectiveness of Spock. It's this combination of contrasting but complementary traits, competence, curiosity, desire for excellence, and common goals that allows them to recognize one another instantly as trustworthy and intriguing, their strengths combining to make them more than the sum of their parts.

Intimacy Taken to a New Level: The Vulcan Mind-Meld:

One mind touches the other. It is the ultimate lowering of personal barriers, and a hidden, personal thing to the Vulcan people. "I feel what you feel," Spock says when he touches a person's thoughts. "I know what you know." How terrifying -- and how addictive! To know the ultimate intimacy with another being, to share that kind of trust. And what must it be like for these two, who already share so much? The fannish mind boggles at the possibilities. Indeed, Spock touches Kirk's mind more often than anyone else's, and each occasion is overlaid with emotional significance. The physical contact the meld requires, the most sensitive part of his fingertips laid against the face of the person he touches, is undeniably erotic to watch. Perhaps that empathic vulnerability, and that potential for ultimate intimacy, is the magic key that let those who were fascinated by the Kirk-Spock relationship take the next step into slash, when no fandom before theirs had quite made the leap. How small a step is it from touching another's face, and his thoughts, to a kiss? Hardly a step at all, especially when that touch is happening between two beings who are already so intertwined. At the very least, it opens up a world of possibilities.

I fell fast and hard for the Kirk-Spock relationship at age 11, when I read the fantastic pro novel The Entropy Effect by Vonda McIntyre. In this book, Kirk is killed by a psychotic temporal physicist (around page 80 or so, I believe) and then Spock must unravel a maze of time loops to prevent the murder. I had no idea what Star Trek was when I read it, but it didn't matter -- the angst and beautiful pain of a logical, unemotional guy desperately trying to save the one person closest to him made a wreck of me. I was sold by the scene where Kirk lies dying in his own blood and Spock tries to save him with a mind-meld; the deal was sealed when I got to the end of the book, and Spock, waking in Sickbay to find Kirk standing over him, can barely control his laughter and tears.

Quickly finding other Star Trek books, I eventually clued in to the fact that it was a TV show, and not long thereafter went to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on opening day. That was all she wrote. Three years of adolescent obsession ensued, derailed only by the usual high school preoccupation with dating, sports, grades, etc. And then one fateful day, I decided to go to a local Star Trek convention. There, wandering through the dealer's room, I happened to pick up a K/S zine, having no idea what was within its plain covers. I started to read, and -- dropped that thing like a hot potato. I'd been obsessed with Kirk and Spock and their emotional bond for almost four years, but the thought of throwing sex into the mix? Oh, no, no, no. That was far too bizarre for my 15-year-old brain to deal with. I quickly got the hell out of there, and denied the concept even existed for almost ten years.

So what changed my mind? What made me wake up one day and realize, hey, this isn't such a crazy idea? In fact, it's so not crazy that even though I've never really read any of this slash stuff, I think I need to write some and post it on the internet right now!

The simple answer is that I grew up a lot in those 9 years, and my ideas about relationships and sex broadened to encompass the idea of slash. But it was living with the idea of those characters and how they interconnect, what really makes them tick, that gradually opened my eyes to the richness of possibility in their relationship, and it was watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock again after a number of years that finally made the pieces fit in my head.

Reactions and Reviews

Comments at the LiveJournal Post

[eldritchhobbit]: Beautifully done. ("Impossible... you were never alone." from ST:V says it all to me.) Great job dealing with the issue of sexual orientation, especially for Kirk. Thanks for a thorough and moving essay.

[zebra363]:Thank you so much for this wonderful essay.

Since I discovered slash and learned that Star Trek was the original slash fandom, I've always had a certain reverence for the K/S pairing. However, I've hardly read any TOS slash because I've also always felt that it was somehow sacrilegious to slash them. You shouldn't mess with Star Trek! And to sexualise Spock beyond his 7-year Vulcan cycle seemed to go against everything he tried to be.

Reading your essay was like being taken by the hand and gently led through a place I was afraid to go. You made it sound so right, so obvious and so joyful.

I loved your Top-10+ list and quotes, and was laughing out loud and clapping my hands at lines like Fanficcers, start your engines! and one of the most sexually-charged scenes I've ever had the pleasure of rewinding to watch again. The whole essay was great fun to read.

Finally, as a huge, huge fan of your writing (via Highlander), I was really interested to read about your 11-year-old self falling for pre-slash K/S, and your 24-year-old self starting to write the pairing. Thanks for sharing!

[shetiger]:

Wow.

I have a strange relationship with K/S. I was a Star Trek fan from a young age, and raised in a fairly repressed household. The concept of homosexuality wasn't one I was familiar with until late in junior high; hell, I didn't even know how het sex worked until 5th grade. But I can remember watching TMP, the recovery scene, and thinking "it's normal. it's just friendship, really it is." I had to work hard to push down the slashy thoughts that even my naive brain could see.

I discovered fanfic and slash about relatively the same time, my second year of college. By then I was way ok with the concept of sex, both het and homo. When I first saw a slash story (Picard/Q, I think) I quickly closed the file and hid my eyes. But I was curious, and soon got sucked in to the world of slash.

I knew there were people who slashed K/S, and learned that was where it started. But I held a certain...reverence for the two, and so I tiptoed around any stories. Until for some reason (I can't remember now) I read Turning Point.

I was totally blown away. You opened my eyes, made all the onscreen moments between the two come home. It was no longer sacrilegious, but worship to acknowledge the love between the two. Wow.

Strangely, I didn't really become a die-hard K/S fan. I read stories from time to time, but I mostly ran in other fandoms. But K/S is always special to me, like their love is so beyond bounds that I don't necessarily have to read about them to know that it's there. Weird, huh?

All of this is to express how much I enjoyed reading your essay. I haven't really watched a lot of eps since my conversion to a slashaholic, so I appreciate the recap for my opened eyes. You did a really great job fitting so much into one little essay. Very readable, and I'll be sure to check out the links.

Just a little more gushing -- that video! Just watched it, and I literally had tears running down my eyes. I've never cried at a video before. I loved the fades into the early trek moments. Just beautiful.

And I remember hating The Entropy Effect when I read it oh so many years ago. I'll have to put it on my reread list!

[Jane Davitt ]:I grew up watching Star Trek from a very early age and I've always loved it, with Spock being my favourite character. Had I been writing fanfic then, it would, undoubtedly have been 100% pure Mary-Sue ;-) This essay was so very moving and compelling and beautifully reasoned; thank you.

[killa]:Thanks so much for reading this. :D I did write a few little bits of fanfic in that adolescent adoration phase. The one Star Trek story that I started was a classic Mary Sue -- only I was too young to write myself with one of the guys. It was about the two of them getting stuck in the 20th Century, and my teenage OFC was the only person who recognized them and could help them get home. Spock suffered some dire injury and hovered near death for a while. Thank God I never showed it to anyone. *g*

[ likethesun2 ]: *exhales* Oh, wow. I too grew up on the original Trek -- and like a number of people above, had issues with slashing it even after I became a slasher myself -- and I think this is the first time that I've really gotten the pairing on a visceral level. I mean, I've always gotten the Kirk-Spock dynamic, but this is the first time I've seen why I might want to slash them, as opposed to why other people might want to.

[bethbethbeth ]:Really nice work, Killa! I watched TOS in its first run - and then at least a dozen times (for the *least* viewed eps) after that. I loved Kirk and Spock and could see the closeness, but since I'd been planning on marrying Spock from the time I was seven, it took me a *very* long time to come around to wanting to read K/S (I saw it...I just didn't think the pairing would work for me). Now, of course, I love the pairing, and this essay points to all the reasons why, which makes it perfect for someone coming fresh to the fandom (...and I have to tell you, despite knowing the show so well at one time that I used to be able to write down all the ep titles *and* guest stars in about five minutes, I hadn't remembered half of those moments you noted above. Now, of course, I have to rewatch "The Corbomite Maneuver." Immediately. *g*)

[tanacawyer ]:You know, there's such joy and love in this essay that I'm grinning like a big dope after reading it. My own awareness of K/S has always been more as a historical thing -- stuff They used to write Way Back When. Reading this essay by someone who is my contemporary and seeing the process by which you were exposed not only to K/S but to slash itself really brings it into the present as a live thing and not as the Turgid Classical Prose of slash -- you know, sort of the slash version of "Silas Marner" or something. You've made this real and present-tense for me, and your descriptions were so full of love and so damned witty that it was just a delight to read from beginning to end. *goopy grin*

[esteven ]:Thank you so much for this essay.It brought back those days of Gerry Downes' and Leslie Fish's K/S stories. "The deadly Innocense or the End of the Hurt/Comfort Syndrome" is, for me, still the most inspired reason for slash in the K/S context. But now I must go and get my copy of "Nightvisions" out for a good read ;)

[Mary Crawford ]:Oh, what a wonderful essay. You covered all the bases and brought back all the Kirk/Spock love for me. I started out with books as well, I don't know if I ever told you that; the James Blish Star Trek books, basically a short story for every episode, so that I already knew the plot of every episode before I ever saw it. And then, yes, Vonda McIntyre's excellent Entropy Effect and Marshak and Culbreath's dreadful-yet-somehow-compelling Price of the Phoenix, and then there was this story someone put up on alt.startrek.creative called Turning Point, and there was no going back...

[ex-luinil ]:Oh, I've just been sitting around since I discovered this community, waiting for this essay.

My sister and I danced around the computer, like Heathen Computer-Worshippers.

I watched my first Star Trek less than a year ago, and must tell you it didn't take me long, my love for these two characters came like a blaze of light, like a blaze of heavenly light, I say.

[polly bywater ]: and no one is more qualified to have written it than you, my dear. Although I was a bit startled to find out how much older than you I must be, lol, since I was 20 or so when 'The Entropy Effect' was published.

At any rate, I came early to fanfic but late to discovering slash, and as I've mentioned to you before, the first slash story I ever read was 'Full Circle', which lead me to 'Turning Point' (yes, bass-ackwards, I know, but here in Oklahoma we Cherokee have a running joke about being backwards). I'll be forever in your debt for changing my world-view as well as my 'Trek-view', not to mention, inspiring me to write slash, too, lol.

Wonderfully written piece of work here, thank you for presenting such a cogent and well-developed arguement. Now I have something to point to when people say 'I just can't see it'. Heh.

[ex-rosered75 ]: I was a similar age when I first discovered the concept of slash and my brain couldn't cope either. I just wasn't anywhere near emotionally mature enough to deal with it at that point in my life. I didn't really get into slash until I hit my 20s, and it's only in the last few years especially that I've come to enjoy slash more than het or gen. Go figure. Lovely essay. Thanks to this I've found a few really gorgeous pieces of K/S fanfiction I otherwise wouldn't have ever discovered. I tried looking for fic on my own via FF.net and Google search but it was a like a minefield and I was fast to give up. So my gratitude to you for putting an easy to use resource together.

[spookyfbi ]: But I recently decided to actually sit down and watch it, and actually, it was the whole Kirk/Spock original slash thing that made me want to watch it all. I haven't been into slash for a while, a het pairing has been captivating me recently, but reading this essay made me remember what it was like to slash. You can't just sit back and wait for them to start making out, you have to work for it, but once you do, oh you're so richly rewarded. When you finally get to that stage where evry look is a gaze, every smile is a flirtation, every touch is an invitation... Sorry, I'm getting a little sidetracked, I'm just excited because I'm getting into it! At first I was a little... Y'know, how do they get past the whole Vulcan no emotions thing? I'm only 14 episodes in, but this essay has given me hope that yes, Spock does have emotions (and not just the infected-with-an-inhibitions-lowering-virus emotions, but actual emotions that he can't control because JIM IS IN PERIL!!! And y'know, I think I'm gonna have to rewatch Where No Man Has Gone Before, because I did not pick up on the whole Kirk/Gary Mitchell thing (of course at that stage I was still all 'This is so 60s, how could anyone have ever slashed anyone from this period? They had enough controversy over Kirk kissing Uhura, there's not gonna be anything between Kirk & Spock...' I had no idea that it could be like that *points to your essay*)

Comments in the Print Zine, The K/S Press

I found this utterly fascinating and very possibly the best synopsis of K/S I’ve ever read. Killa has managed such concise and stunningly accurate descriptions of Kirk and Spock, who and what they are, all encapsulated in a few short paragraphs. I had never before considered how little we knew of our captain. Because he was human, I failed to notice the gaps in his background that are called to our attention here.

Killa, I love the way the quotes from episodes were woven into your essay.

I had no idea one could say so much about Star Trek and K/S in so little space. There is profound insight here—in an economy of words. Not surprising from a devoted fan and talented writer, but it still amazes me! The choice of episodes recommended for those who wish to understand the Kirk/Spock phenomenon is nothing new to this old K/S-er, but they are explained in such a way that the most cynical reader could be converted.

If you skimmed over this article because you didn’t need convincing, please do yourself a huge favor and read it! Profoundly discerning barely begins to describe it. Thank you, Killa, for convincing me again this is where I want to be!