Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT.

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Title:	Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT. (The post does not have a title. The title used here on Fanlore is the first two sentences.)
Creator:	bitchydragondoodle
Date(s):	May 15, 2019
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Star Trek
Topic:
External Links:	Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT., Archived version
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Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT. is a 2019 Tumblr post by bitchydragondoodle.

As of September 11, 2019, it had 34,525 notes.

The Topics of the Post and Comments

• Kirk/Spock
• The Premise
• Star Trek
• fandom olds
• fandom youngs learning new things
• some clashing of terms: spirk, the premise, and K/S

The Post

Yknow what I LOVE about the Star Trek fandom? It’s ANCIENT. I had a talk with a nice old lady at the old persons home that my great grandma is in and she noticed my Spock shirt and was like “oh I love that show I thought the premise was lovely” and you all know THE PREMISE is trekspeak for spirk and I was like “do you accept the premise because I do” and she looked at me with the eyes of someone who is reliving their otp moments and she said “the premise is all I wrote about, dear” and we just talked about spirk for a hella long time and I just love how age doesn’t matter in this fandom you can be ninety and still be the biggest spirk bitch ever how rad is that

Excerpts from the Comments

[roomtemperature]: This just renewed my desire to live until I'm old

[brightlotusmoon]: I knew about The Premise over twenty years ago... but that was because I was surrounded by Star Trek Original Fans Who Started The Movement.

[whodearmedear]: I now realize how many times the premise is mentioned in texts about Star Trek and I never knew.

[trainingforstarfleet]: I went to convention for a couple Star Trek things this year and it was so much fun! I talked with so many older people about the different shows and characters and they invited me to a couple local Star Trek events!

[wireslide]: My Nana was the one who told me they were married

[space princess]: Shit i didnt know there was a secret code, i've just been telling people straight up that i ship that

[barryallenisravenclaw : That's gonna be me, still talking about spirk at 90 watch me

[razziecat: Old ladies rock Spock.

[kittyweasel]: We all share the Prime Directive™

[persephone-victorious]: I love fanfiction history! Trek was, I think, a catalyst for the mainstreaming of fandom as we know it. I’m happy that the phandom is so rich in history, too.

[teiandcookies ]: Aaaaaaa I visit so many retirement homes for work but I have no way of visibly signaling to the fans 😢

[cameoappearance]: I was today years old when I learned that particular euphemism

[dr-archeville]: #another reminder that it was women who carried the fandom and saved Trek

[gardnerhill]: We were writing stories and passing them along in plain brown envelopes before the Internet. At conventions the "special" zines were under the table and we looked thru them with one eye over our shoulder cause the concom could throw us all out if we were caught selling/buying Kirk/Spock slash zines.

[phd-mama]: BUT HER WRITING?? CAN WE READ HER WRITING????

[bitchydragondoodle]: AAAA SHE SAID SHE GAVE HER PERSONAL JOURNALS TO HER FAMILY SO SHE DOESNT KNOW WHERE HER FICS ARE NOW BUT SHE DID TELL ME THE PLOTS OF SOME OF THEM

[diandrahollman]: Whenever someone sneers at the idea of thirty year olds still being fangirls, I will think of this.

[ssandmanss]: I am 19 and me and my sister (who's 22) were both named after Star Trek characters, Star Trek fans are the oldest fuckers around and they're still triving.

[witchmachine]: #yes good#i strongly believe we should go back to calling it The Premise#if we’re rolling back the clock let’s skip right past citrus ratings

[gamebird]: How did I manage to get to this point without knowing that’s what the premise means?

[some1onao3]: Exactly! Nothing like Star Trek to bring generations together. I've bonded with my professors, my bosses, old ladies I met on the street simply because I did a Vulcan salute. I got my bff because of my Starfleet Academy hoodie. Star Trek was way ahead of its time and even now it's still relevant. It's a world of wish fulfillment, where there's no longer boundary between species, races and sexes. Planets band together for peace and they build giant spaceship carrying hundreds, thousands of nerds...

[a-sundry-bag]: There are lots of those old ladies out there that embrace spirk. I’m not one of them, but I salute the ones who are still out there keeping it alive

[marithlizard]: Awesome. If I live to be ninety I swear to support any youngfolk who visit me and encourage them to tell me all about their fandoms, because the torch should pass like this always.

[ladivvinatravestia]: I too was today years old when I learned that, and I have been watching Trek since the early 80s

[flash-the-geist]: Spirk is a ship name more legendary than 'Enterprise'

[broadwaytheanimatedseries]: Spirk shippers practically invented the Star Trek fandom it would seem

[jeruffe]: I accept The Premise but I never heard it called that before. SPIRK ❤💖🌈

[uhura-stole-my-man]: One of my college professors has her computer background as the enterprise (she's around 50 y/o) and i know she ships spirk because when i asked her "so, professor, is your background from star trek?" Knowing full well the answer, she said, kind of not looking at me "it seems to be, right?... I watched it a lot when I was younger and i wrote about it..." but then she deadass ended the conversation.

[evieplease]: Now do y’all wanna come at me with ‘old people cannot be fans’? Bitch, we invented your fandom!

[lang-lassiter]: Spirk shippers invented fanfic and shipping as we currently know them.

[earth-tastes-nice]: yea star trek stayed alive originally because a bunch of ladies had a letter campaign

[dragonkeeper19600]: I did a lot of research on this for my undergrad thesis, but basically Star Trek fans invented slash back in the 60s. The female Trekkies basically codified modern fandom culture. Fandom as we understand it today already existed surrounding pulp sci fi novels and such, but female Trekkies were the ones who started writing fan fic and producing fan zines.

[sponfawn]: Ok but I love that this elderly woman wrote spirk fanfic??? Probly like in the 60s and onward?????

[I was also today years old. Fandom codes man]: I was also today years old. Fandom codes man

[gnollgirl]: Reblogging to spread knowledge about the Premise, because I absolutely love that bit of fandom, and I want to make sure that it survives. (and yay to everyone who is part of today’s 10,000!)

[sixtailedcat]: HOW did I not know this? My trekkie parents failed me.

[armada-of-ships-against-antis]: Everytime I hear someone say that adults should not participate inf fandom anymore I just fucking point star trek and yell over the internet to them, that they are not going to throw out 30 year olds or even 70 year olds from a fandom they love!

[beatriceeagle]: There are people calling BS on this, and like, I dunno if this story is real or not, it’s an internet story, whatever. But what exactly do you think happened to all the 40-year-old women who were writing K/S slashfic for fanzines in the 70s? Do you think they just, like, vanished when the internet came along? When their hair turned grey? When they got wrinkles? There are K/S shippers in nursing homes right, I promise you

[senacat]: I’m honored to be one of the day’s 10,000, and reblogging to remember our forerunners. You might not even know it, but you might have a kindred spirit in your line somewhere

[starskyarofsky]: I had this experience with a older woman who came to redo my windows. She was obsessed with Starsky and Hutch and had been since she was in middle school 😍

[atmeridiem-miger224]: Meanwhile spiced peaches has faded into the void :( where my spones fans at? 😭😭😭 Also all the trek oldies that didnt ship S/Mc cause they didnt find De sexy are wrong.

[rainyphoenix22]: I did not know this. I have always loved Star Trek. And now I am older and totally shipping more things....The Premise is visible.

[epoxyconfetti]: The Premise. OMG. I haven’t heard that since the early 80’s. K/S zines. Oh Great Bird...

[bipoloar-bubbeleh]: My mom lived in a co-op organized by Star Trek fans in the early 70s. It was apparently hardcore fandom

[movie-watching-monster]: Well, you learn something new everyday. All hail our Fandom Elders!

[drgaellon]: *sigh* I am sufficiently fandom-old that I have known about The Premise for DECADES.

[erudipitous]: I learned recently that my grandma was hella into Janeway/Seven of Nine back in the day and tbh I'm not even surprised

[sunni-808]: My dad was about 20 when the show first aired, and he even said that back then people knew. They knew that they were hella gay. He just said, ‘their love transcends romance, I think. Like Holmes and Watson.’ He didn’t openly ship them, but according to him a lot of women would write fanfiction, his sister did a lot. XD

[flightfoot]: I didn’t know that! Huh. Makes sense though. It probably couldn’t be discussed openly in the 1960′s.

[drgaellon]: In Ye Olden Days, Spirk was called "K/S" - AND THAT'S WHY WE CALL IT SLASH. Trek fandom invented the term!

[hopesterling]: not to be That Pedantic Fandom Historian on main but "spirk" is... new? I guess? I mean I accept it because life is change but the former euphemism "kirk/spock" is the literal, actual source of the term "slash fic" as in "kirk slash spock"

[witchbabywigg]: ok but please stop calling it "spirk" it's "spock x kirk" or "kirk x spock" that's how we established it and that's the way we like it. spirk makes it sound like skeet or spork please stop

[blackroseshiori]: I'm still pissed that this ship isn't called Spork.