Fanfolks Today Need To Remember How Important The Premise Was.

Fanfolks Today Need To Remember How Important The Premise Was.

Fanfolks today need to remember how important The Premise was.

Y'all have heard of The Premise, right?

See, historically there have always been people who saw an extra layer of gayness on certain pairs of fictional people (you just thought of several), and people Back Then even wrote their own fanfic (or as they were called at the time, "pastiches"), but the first widespread queer fanwork to really define the fanfiction genre was KIRK AND SPOCK. Kirk/Spock. K/S. The very first slashfics.

Why this work was vastly, overwhelmingly written by straight women is a discussion for another time, but it was, so that's the main perspective I'm gonna consider here.

Fanfolks Today Need To Remember How Important The Premise Was.

How do you - a statistically middle-class, 30+, stay-at-home wife and mother - how do you write slashfic ao3-style in the 1960's before the internet?

Carefully.

Through letters with friends, phone calls, pen pals, and sometimes - sometimes - clandestine meetings of small groups. Whole novels were written communally, round-robin style, by sending typed or handwritten additions chapter by chapter to each other. These were all underground, some deep underground; even the early Trekkie fanzines of the time wouldn't touch them.

And keep in mind, few of these stories were explicitly even sexual! But they were all about a very, very close relationship between two men. In the 1960's.

Guess how cool everyone else was about this.

Actually, for their part, Gene Rodenberry and the other writers were fine with it, saying that they had deliberately written the characters to be two halves of a whole, and if you wanna read it that way, yeah sure, go right ahead. Shatner and Nimoy took it all in good humor, and seemingly still do, each guy basically gesturing to the other and chuckling "I mean, who wouldn't?"

(CORRECTION: At least, they did until Nimoy passed away in 2015. Thanks @richie-is-rich!)

But elsewhere there was vicious backlash against The Premise, and not just within the fandom. This was still at a time in the US and UK when various "sodomy" and "decency" laws made no distinction between homosexual sex acts and just, like, directly lighting another man's cigarette with your cigarette in public. (That, sadly, is not a fucking joke.)

It was probably the closest some suburban cishet women came to understanding the pain of being in the closet. They had to protect this secret from their friends and family at all cost. There were cases of divorces where women lost custody of their children because their writing had come to light.

Fanfolks Today Need To Remember How Important The Premise Was.

Can you imagine having such a burning desire to write for your OTP that you were willing to lose everything over it? Even if you were never caught, you still had to be willing to wait weeks, months, to receive a letter in the mail that you had to carefully intercept, read in secret, and then add your own chapter t, also in secret, and then send off, perhaps never to be seen again.

These people were goddamn heroes, and they laid the foundation for the world we live in today. A world where we can read, write, comment on, or share - in a matter of seconds! - literature about two background characters from two different franchises enjoying a really specific kink involving vacuums or something. And that's objectively amazing.

Raise a toast to our fanfiction elders, who simped in the darkness so we could simp in the light of day.

More Posts from Andyrg099 and Others

6 months ago

In What Are Little Girls Made Of, there is something so adorable about jim, completely trapped, his only chance to be saved is by possibly planting a false idea into the androids mind, deciding to go with being a prick to spock because that would be so out of character it would warrant looking into


Tags
6 months ago

Actually so funny that McCoy gets so mad in "The Doomsday Machine" that Jim isn't in charge and Spock hasn't just fixed everything that when Decker tells him to leave the bridge he just leaves the whole episode.


Tags
11 months ago

it's always so fascinating and heartbreaking when a character in a story is simultaneously idolized and abused. a chosen prophet destined for martyrdom. a child prodigy forced to grow up too fast. a powerful warrior raised as nothing but a weapon. there's just something so uniquely messed up about singing someone's praises whilst destroying them.

1 year ago

when hozier said “the likes of a darkness so deep that god at the start couldn’t bear” and when hozier said “i’d still know you not being shown you i only need the working of my hands” and when hozier said “some part of me must have died the first time that you called me baby” and when hozier said “i would still be surprised i could find you darling in any life” and when hozier said “heaven is not fit to house a love like you and i” and when hozier said “but if we fall i only pray don’t fall away from me” and when hozier said “you were steering my heart like a wheel in your hands and darling i haven’t felt it since then” and when hozier said “if there was anyone to ever get through this life with their heart still intact they didn’t do it right” and when hozier said “if i was a riptide i wouldn’t take you out” and when hozier said “darling there’s a part of me i’m afraid will always be trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life” and when hozier said “do you know i could break beneath the weight of the goodness love i still carry for you” and when hozier said “darkness always finds you either way it creeps into the corners as the moment fades” and when


Tags
1 year ago

when the fandom is like six people and we’ve all reblogged the same posts from each other a bunch of times already… what else is there to do but kiss on the mouth

6 months ago

oh mirror spock i think of you constantly....... how jealous do you think he was of og spock for having an actual useful, reliable and cute jim kirk. that one talk og jim and mirror spock had before jim went back to og universe..... oh i know mirror spock thinks about it every night. maybe sometimes he gets slightly satisfied that at least, in another universe, he got to have a jim he could love (and one that could love him back)


Tags
8 months ago

hey hold on a sec. we talk about what baltimore was like for kevin, neil, andrew, but can we talk about wymack for a second. Can we just.

the year before the twins and nicky signed at psu, two of wymack's foxes, ian and kirk, died in a car crash.

the next year, kevin day broke his hand and went to wymack, the only person he thought would keep him safe.

the year after that, seth gordon, the only surving member of wymack's original lineup, overdosed after he was so nearly clean, and it almost destroyed allison.

months later, andrew was attacked in columbia and committed to easthaven. aaron killed someone. andrew was gone and the others came back shattered.

then neil claims to go home for the holidays, they don't hear from him all of christmas break, and on new years, neil calls him and asks wymack to pick him up from the airport. he's there instantly and god, he looks half-dead. neil sees the 4 tattoo and tries to cut it off his face. all he can say is that he didn't sign to the ravens.

then there's the blood in the locker room. wymack can't push away the feeling that something's getting closer, something is coming to hurt his foxes and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

then. the game at binghamton. neil looks on edge but wymack doesn't ask what's wrong. neil and andrew are above his paygrade. then the riot. he can't see any of his kids in the crush. he finally pulls them all out, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight–

neil's gone. neil's gone and they can't find him. andrew can't find him. neil got taken by someone. what was that like for david wymack? did it feel too familiar? did he look at his kids and think not again, i didn't lose another one again. does it ever scare him. does it terrify him. when aaron came back from the police station in columbia, twenty four hours in holding and he couldn't look wymack in the eye, did he think what if i can't save these kids? when andrew was lying in a hospital bed, too drugged to react, did he think what if i can't give them their second chance? when neil grabbed that knife, when he fell to pieces on wymack's kitchen floor, when he came back to them in baltimore, bloody and broken, did wymack think why am i always too late?


Tags
7 months ago

rewatching where no man has gone before and it's wild how different spock's characterisation is in this versus the rest of the series. like i know logically (haha) that the episode was so early that the show and nimoy didn't really have a grasp on the character yet (made evident by the "one of my ancestors married a human woman" line), but it also strikes me that this is technically kirk's first episode in timeline (production) order, meaning jim and spock have barely started to get to know each other. it's obvious from the chess game that they're already very close and likely have been joined at the hip since their very first meeting, so i like to think that spock is almost, ya know, giddy at this point, adjusting to the comforting warmth and joy and security he feels just by being around jim all the time because it's all so new, because he's never had anything like this before. spock likes jim so much and so immediately and wants to get to know him better and feels safe enough around him to let jim get to know him better, too. the interaction at the end, "i felt for him, too" and "there might be some hope for you yet, mr. spock." followed by a very not-subtle, fond smile from our dear vulcan first officer, just stands out so much against the rest of the series. young spock and his brand new blossoming crush for his captain and he hasn't gotten to the point where he's afraid of those feelings yet, just basking in how nice it feels to have a proper friend. so damn cute. it fills me with butterflies.


Tags
6 months ago

Kirk: You mean to tell me your people just walk into a disintegration machine when they're told to?

Don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV, don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV, don't make comparisons to Tarsus IV

Is this why Kirk is so instantly, adamantly, ready to disrupt this entire culture?

He's the survivor of a genocide, and I can't imagine that the thousands of people murdered by Kodos walked quietly, willingly, obediently to their deaths. Like those who walk into the disintegration machines, their deaths were painless, but they are all still dead.

And now Kirk is watching the same thing happen, only on a much larger scale. And it lacks the terror, the fighting, the starvation, the horrors that stain his early childhood, and because of that it continues.

No wonder he's almost gleeful when he threatens to give them the horrors of war - because he knows from personal experience that even the threat of that, even the memory of that, even the echo of what was or what might be - it's enough to make it stop.


Tags
8 months ago

I just got through a bad day by remodeling my tumblr blog. This is my personality now.


Tags
  • cityboys-modelgirls
    cityboys-modelgirls liked this · 2 weeks ago
  • swarovskinipples
    swarovskinipples reblogged this · 3 weeks ago
  • selena-is-a-midgeet
    selena-is-a-midgeet liked this · 3 weeks ago
  • littlehaize
    littlehaize reblogged this · 4 weeks ago
  • bobthebenevolentpirate
    bobthebenevolentpirate liked this · 1 month ago
  • nyanisms
    nyanisms reblogged this · 1 month ago
  • petras-a-delight
    petras-a-delight liked this · 1 month ago
  • humantaxidery7
    humantaxidery7 reblogged this · 1 month ago
  • humantaxidery7
    humantaxidery7 liked this · 1 month ago
  • mytrasheden
    mytrasheden liked this · 2 months ago
  • midnitewhiskies
    midnitewhiskies reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • khaosmrose
    khaosmrose reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • khaosmrose
    khaosmrose liked this · 2 months ago
  • lady-of-the-rose-and-thorns
    lady-of-the-rose-and-thorns reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • firedragon1321
    firedragon1321 reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • firedragon1321
    firedragon1321 reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • firedragon1321
    firedragon1321 liked this · 2 months ago
  • lovethespoiler
    lovethespoiler liked this · 2 months ago
  • cryptidcase
    cryptidcase liked this · 2 months ago
  • cherrytimemachine
    cherrytimemachine liked this · 2 months ago
  • roman0writes
    roman0writes reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • roman0writes
    roman0writes liked this · 2 months ago
  • girlboypower
    girlboypower reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • bookandyarndragon
    bookandyarndragon reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • fingerstealer
    fingerstealer reblogged this · 2 months ago
  • sheldarp
    sheldarp liked this · 3 months ago
  • lunastories
    lunastories reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • falbet
    falbet reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • kaorimaxwell-blog
    kaorimaxwell-blog reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • kaorimaxwell-blog
    kaorimaxwell-blog liked this · 3 months ago
  • lovillains
    lovillains liked this · 3 months ago
  • auntbabe
    auntbabe liked this · 3 months ago
  • the-lincyclopedia
    the-lincyclopedia reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • maerrison
    maerrison liked this · 3 months ago
  • wtftwwfte
    wtftwwfte liked this · 3 months ago
  • greattyphoontimemachine
    greattyphoontimemachine liked this · 3 months ago
  • nitvir-my
    nitvir-my liked this · 3 months ago
  • your-local-happiness-dealer
    your-local-happiness-dealer reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • your-local-happiness-dealer
    your-local-happiness-dealer liked this · 3 months ago
  • falbet
    falbet liked this · 3 months ago
  • charmed7293
    charmed7293 reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • tmarna
    tmarna reblogged this · 3 months ago
  • tmarna
    tmarna liked this · 3 months ago
  • anodyneer
    anodyneer liked this · 3 months ago
  • minxchester
    minxchester liked this · 3 months ago
  • yogi-bogey-box
    yogi-bogey-box liked this · 3 months ago
andyrg099 - And words are futile devices
And words are futile devices

But I can see a lot of life in youSo I'm gonna love you every day

148 posts

Explore Tumblr Blog
Search Through Tumblr Tags