In the 1970s, if you missed the live airing of an episode of Star Trek, then you missed it. Maybe, sometime over the summer, the episode might be offered as a rerun at 2am. But without any VCRs or DVRs or DVD players, there was nothing to record an episode, let alone to view one. You watched what was presented to you, when it was presented to you, and how it was presented to you (no skipping commercials) on the TV or in the movie theatre.
Unless you were a die-hard Star Trek fan. Then you’d buy (for $14 in today’s dollars) a single audio cassette recording of your favorite TV show. And then, alone in your room, you’d close your eyes and imagine Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock…well, they *could* have been kissing. With your eyes closed, how would you know? Or not know?
And if you were really a die-hard fan, living in Australia where many US shows never aired, you might host a Star Trek (or Starsky & Hutch) audio cassette slumber party where you’d sit around the bonfire and listen to your favorite episodes under the stars.
some [Starsky & Hutch] fans in Australia, unable to attend Zebra Con, had their own little con. It was 14 people in a house, a book of clippings to browse, two episodes on video cassettes, and six sound tapes of various episodes. They remarked that like fans in the UK, they hadn’t seen season four yet and were being “driven white-haired” with frustration with the hints in the letterzine. Some fans slept in the caravan in the back yard, and they sat around singing into the night: “You Needed Me” (which they thought fit the episode “The Fix”) and “Sometimes When We Touch” (“whose chorus belongs in that scene in Wilderness”). Source: Fanlore.
Context: the first pan fandom slash mailing list, Virgule-L, was in its infancy. Safe spaces for women to talk about slash online were rare. And most fan fiction was distributed in print fanzines (which is why fanzine reviews like the one Sandy wrote were so important as a single fanzine cost $15-20 or around $25-35 today’s dollars.) Fan run conventions were the only way to meet other groups of fans and mailed letters and phone calls were the tenuous tethers that strung these fan groups together. The mailing list - and the Internet - was about to change…everything.
(links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki) **************** “Well, welcome to my adventure in mailing! I hope to have this set up soon as a ‘real’ mailing list, with it’s own address. Until then, I only know one way for one of you to write to everyone at once. Just reply to a letter from the list, and answer yes, when it asks, 'reply to all’.
So far there are 7 of us. I’ll let everyone introduce themselves.
I am Sandy Hereld, I write as Alyx (often with a friend who used Alys) the pen name is *not* a secret. I started in ”/“ fandom in trek, moved to Pros, and now am very crazed about B7. I still love Pros, and like a lot of different fandoms, including Wiseguy, Starsky and Hutch, and Muncle.
I helped run a slash con here in town last week, Virgule, and hope to make Escapade this year (in February, in Santa Barbara–one of the list subscribers co- runs it–memberships still available), but not Revelcon. Maybe, if I get a new job, Media West. I’ve never been there, and I’ve always wanted to go.
I just finished a great Multi-mediazine called Homosapiens Too. It has an interesting variety of fandoms and crossovers; even more important, there wasn’t a single story that stunk (though I liked some better than others, of course.)
Page count is Pros/Booker 18pgs (Bodie/Booker) Erioca/Muncle 5pgs (Erioca/Illya) Batman 4 (Batman/street punk) Nightflyers 6+ (cartoon, from the movie) TNG 5pgs (Beverly/symbiote) B7/TOS trek 5pgs (Blake/Spock) Dangerous Liaisons 7pgs (Valmont/Danceny) Damiano 2pgs (from the R.A. McAvoy books) MUNCLE 2pgs the usual Star Wars 4 (cartoon, original characters) Pros 4pgs the usual B7 50pgs (Blake/Avon) Perhaps I should mention at the there was a contest for most outrageous crossover pairing.
My favorites were: The Right Place To Be (Bodie/Booker) by Arcane Annie & Stew–Bodie quits in a huff after an Operation Suzie, and is too embarrassed to go back; Booker has quit somewhat similarly. Seeing how stupid the other’s foolish pride looks, they both learn things about playing roles and 'what really matters.’ They also have pretty good sex.
Do Blond’s Really Have More Fun? (Erioca/Illya) by Barbara T. This definitely is set at a time when Solo and Kurykin are having some problems. The crossover is a fascinating one, and it works. (Anyone needing Erioca explained, just e-mail me. It is a pretty new/small fandom, but growing fast.)
Brand New Day (Spock/Blake) by Jane Carnell follows immediately after Blake’s pod makes planetfall after Star One. A great Blake, and if not a totally convincing Spock, it’s close. Worth it for this scene alone. –Blake "What do you like?” “Anal penetration,” “Which way round?” Blake inquired. “I am a telepath. It hardly matters. Whichever way pleases you.”
Valmont (Valmont/Danceny) by Stew -is a romantic, but very plausible retelling of the movie Dangerous Liaisons, all from Danceny’s POV. For any that have read the book, you know it is told solely in letters and diary entries, so this collection of Danceny’s diaries is very faithful to the original feel. It is also an amazingly concise retelling, squeezing 2 hours into 6 ½ pgs.
Submissive It Ain’t (Pros) is basically just a sex story, but one firmly based in the very different personalities of Bodie and Doyle. Nice idea, beautiful sex, slightly weak ending.
Puppeteer (Blake/Avon) by Bryn Lantry is a convoluted but beautiful story where: the action is in the emotions, everyone has multiple motives, and no one truly knows their own minds, much less understands their crewmates. A bit alternate, set sometime in the months before Star One but after Blake has already got the idea in mind, this is a wonderful character study of Blake and Avon, with Vila and Cally in strong supporting roles. Not my favorite type of story – I think I prefer something a bit more straightforward, but undeniably compelling and well written.
The other stories weren’t dogs either…
The Muncle story, Hanging In Time, by Y.J. is a very disturbing portrayal of the hurt-comfort syndrome in Illya,
The Batman story will appeal to anyone who liked “The Dark Knight Returns” With All My Symbiotes -Susan Douglas- has some nice female slash.
Why Couldn’t It Be Me has gotten a certain amount of press as “Biblical slash.” It does have two biblical characters in it, but it is just a vigniette, and has no overt slash content.
A few caveats: I disliked the art in the first story, and was indifferent to the rest. I had a hard time reading the 2 cartoon sections; I thought the penning needed to be clearer, and the xerox needed to be darker for those sections.
With those few quibbles in mind, I recommend the zine highly. It has an interesting collection of stories set in an amazing variety of universes. The editor is joining a growing number of publishers and putting the word count down – 80,700, with 40,700 of it in Bryn’s B7 story.
It is available from Manacles Press here in the U.S. at [address removed]. There is no U.S. price on the zine; it says to SASE Manacles Press, and I can’t remember whether I paid $15 or $18 at the con.
From Australia, it is available from the publisher…[address removed] $12 within Aust, $20 posted overseas airmail. (I assume that’s $Aus)“ **************** *reposted here and everywhere with permission
We’re working on a fanzine preservation project and need help editing PDFs. The edits consist of re-arranging pages scanned from digest-sized zines and putting them in page order. You will need access to a basic PDF editing tool that can crop pages like Adobe Standard or one of these free tools here or here.
The zines are Spockanalia, once of the earliest Star Trek zines published in the 1960s and the scanning is being done with the publisher’s permission. Links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki.
Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world.
A man after my own heart.“Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are , many for the first time. It’s part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.”
Speaking of recording oral histories, we’re always looking for people who can conduct phone interviews of fans. It is something that can be done from home at your own pace. You will need access to a computer to start the phone call recording, but interviews will be done via telephone (or Skype if you prefer). Email oralhistoryfandom at gmail dot com and you can read more info here at Fanlore, the fan run wiki.
Visit to the Museum of Moving Images, New York. “Cut Up (Vidding) Exhibit. Image source and text from Vidding (Facebook) (see link below for more image/text credits)
“In 2007, the [fanvid Vogue] went viral. Luminosity Deville was nominated to be profiled in a double page spread in New York Magazine and Vogue was rated by the magazine as one of the funniest videos, and the best fan video, of the year.” - Fanlore.org: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Vogue
Visit to the Museum of Moving Images, New York. “Cut Up (Vidding) Exhibit. Image source and text from Vidding (Facebook) (see link below for more image/text credits)
“Vogue - 300 by the wonderful Luminosity Deville a member/admin on this [Facebook] page. "In a sea of easy parodies and quickie spoofs, Luminosity’s gorgeous, hilarious pairing of 300 and Madonna’s Vogue is the best fan video of the year. ” - New York Magazine 2009 as featured on their site http://videos.nymag.com/video/Vogue300“
Click the following link to view more pictures from the exhibit at the museum http://on.fb.me/Y4yC3J”
Visit to the Museum of Moving Images, New York. “Cut Up (Vidding) Exhibit. Image source and text from Vidding (Facebook) (see link below for more image/text credits)
“Closer, by TJonesy and Killa, is a Star Trek K/S vid about Pon Farr that asks, What if they hadn’t made it to Vulcan in time? Closer was shown for the first time at 2004’s Shore Leave, a Star Trek convention, went viral in 2006 and was discussed extensively online as an example of context collapse” - Fanlore.org : http://fanlore.org/wiki/Closer_%28Star_Trek_vid%29
Visit to the Museum of Moving Images, New York. “Cut Up (Vidding) Exhibit. Image source and text from Vidding (Facebook) (see link below for more image/text credits)
“The video monitor for the Vidding section contain a playlist of 3 videos. They are 1) My body is a cage by JT Helms (2009, 04:48) 2) “Star Treck + Nine Inch Nails -= Closer” by T.Jonesy and Killa (2006, 03:31) 3) “Vogue + 300 by Luminosity (2009, 04:50)
Click the following link to view more pictures from the exhibit at the museum http://on.fb.me/Y4yC3J”
And fans defy stereotypes. Here is a sweet little poem about K/S (written by someone with a male sounding name) and published in STAG, a gen UK newsletter (or N/L) sometime in the late 1980s. Hopefully if you click on it you’ll be able to read it full size.
You can read more about the UK fanzine publishers ScotPress here on Fanlore. And they have posted some of their early Star Trek zines on their website here.
To illustrate the adage: “That which does not get copied becomes extinct” here is a page of an old Star Trek zine from 1969 that I am preserving. It is so fragile that I had to disassemble it (gingerly) and I am scanning it page by page, by hand on a flatbed scanner. I will not be able to reassemble it because the paper is crumbling. What is left of the original will be sent to one of the fanzine archives. There are currently only two copies that I know of being preserved and one is a photocopy.
“An analysis of the data demonstrates that the DMCA safe harbor system as applied to YouTube helps maintain some level of access to old songs by allowing those possessing copies (primarily infringers) to communicate relatively costlessly with copyright owners to satisfy the market of potential listeners.”
To give some context to how slash fandom felt about the Internets, when I started on the Internet (1994), no one talked about slash in any of the public forums. There were few websites and even fewer devoted to fanfic and none devoted to slash. There was no central search function (you found websites by clicking on links and then following them to other links. A true treasure hunt).
In 1995, when one fan posted a list of fanzine publishers to her website (under password protection) there was an outcry and she took it down. On one mailing list newsletter, there were requests that fans not mention author or publisher names when reviewing zines, even in private one-to-one e-mail. I was a member of a slash mailing list (the first one as far as we know) and in order to join we had to give our real names, affirm our gender and promise to never reveal the existence of the mailing list (its name was Virgule-L and boy if time travel existed would I be in trouble for just mentioning it. Shhh, don’t tell anyone and maybe the mods won’t notice).
By 1999, fandom had exploded messily all over the Internet and slash fanfic archives and mailing lists were popping up all over. LJ didn’t gain traction in fandom until 2004, but in 1999 you could find a lot of slash on the Internet. By 1999 there even were a few search engines that offered up substantive slash results such as Alta Vista. Still, the concept of slash in the Internet was disconcerting for many fans. For more reading head over to Fanlore, the fan run Wiki: Internet Fans Controversy Du Jour (1997) by Sandy Herrold Slash and the Arrival of the Internet
Now on to the main topic. Here is something from a fan in 1999: “Well, due to a recent job change, I was required to purchase a personal computer. I’m not on the net and of course the first thing I did was to go to the Star Trek sites. I was very amazed and shocked to find out how easy it was to locate “slash” and K/S pages on the web. I did not realize how easy it was for anyone, and I mean anyone, to find out about K/S by simply typing in Star Trek on the search page and going to all the sites. And while I admit that it was a benefit to me, since I downloaded many of the stories to my PC, I was more than a bit dismayed that it was on the web so openly. It left a rather bad taste in my mouth. It cannot be argued by anyone involved in this wonderful fandom that we are a unique group. And while everyone [here] finds nothing wrong with the idea of K/S, there are many, many people, including Star Trek fans, who do and they can be quite radical and vocal in their opinions on the subject. The fact that it is now so openly displayed on the web, for anyone to see, will only add fuel to their fire and perhaps threaten our special fandom. As someone who has been involved in K/S right from the very beginning, I have to say that the one thing that meant a lot to me about being involved in this fandom was the privacy I had when I ordered my zines. Except for the occasional lost zine, there was no chance that anyone else except the editor and myself would read the zine I ordered….And while there is a certain advantage to just screening up a web page and downloading a story instantly and for free, I think it is negated by the fact that it’s displayed so openly. When I was going through those web pages, I noticed that none of the main K/S editors and authors had contributed any stories or pictures on those pages. I think it’s bad enough that both Bill and Leonard have been questioned in public about the subject of K/S (certainly something that has to be uncomfortable for them, no matter how graciously they may handle such questions), but to give people who object strongly to our special fandom a chance to see it openly displayed with “no holds barred” on the net I think is just asking for trouble. K/S is a big part of my life (albeit a private one) and I would hate to see it end or have people involved in it feel ashamed because now due to new technology, it is literally available to anyone with a PC (just think of the number). I am sure that there is going to be a number of people who are going to disagree with me on this subject, but it is something that I feel very strongly about. I think that if K/S is to survive, it must remain underground. …Can you imagine what Paramount might do if and when they find out about K/S being so openly displayed on the web? Especially since then they are already trying to shut down some Star Trek sites, because they feel it is a violation of their property rights to the series. I shudder to think what they might do if and when they find out about the “slash” sites. We don’t need any more nails in the coffin. K/S is not for everyone, so it shouldn’t be available to everyone. But it is and I think that is cause for worry.”
When You Had To Carry Your K/S Pron To Your Local Print Shop...
Back in the olden days, fanzine publishers had to physically pick up their K/S fic and art and hand carry it to a local print shop. And then another. And then another. The tales of their journeys to find a print shop that would publish Captain Krik and Mr Spock in…intimate situations…..are epic, amusing and inspiring. All hail to our brave Foresmutters. (links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki and the AO3).
Here are a few of them
Publisher 1: “Once I finished ”T'hy'la“ #1, I needed to get the zine in print and that would require finding a new printer. If I took "T'hy'la” to the printer I’d been using for my genzine, he’d have a heart attack….It was, I admit, a bit difficult to go in there for the first time. I was a bit…embarrassed. After all, I was asking them to print explicit art of naked men doing sexual things with each other…The people who owned the print shop were as cool as they could be….My printer really enjoyed printing my zines. By the time I’d done my 3rd or 4th issue, he told me the women in the bindery always looked forward to my zines. They’d post prints of the artwork on the bindery walls to keep them entertained while they worked.“
Publisher 2: "The manager, long inured to what she’s been so faithfully producing for us, engaged me in a discussion about a Gayle F picture! The one where Kirk is straddling Spock in the grass, he is obviously being penetrated, Spock is raised up just a bit so he can twist Kirk’s nipples, Kirk has Spock’s cock in his hand, and our captain’s head is thrown back in a fair imitation of ecstasy. I don’t know if you can get more explicit that this picture.
"Oh, look at this,” she said. That’s really nice.“
"Yes,” I enthused.“ She’s a terrific artist.”
“No,” the manager chided me. “I meant the quality. We caught most of the details.”
Publisher 3: “K/S Tale of Woe of the Month: So I was having [my K/S zine] printed a few weeks ago, along with some additional artwork reprints that I needed. Specifically, a computer-generated piece of art (CGA) that had been done….. It’s a fabulous work of art, one of my absolute favorites, and if I ever get a K/S room of my own, it will be up on my wall. Anyway, this work is reproduced by using a disk and not an original on a piece of paper. I was picking my order up when I casually asked the manager if there had been any problems with reproduction. She replied that she and her trusty assistant (both of them women in their 60s who aren’t too computer literate) hadn’t been able to get the disk to work properly, so they had enlisted the aid of "Jeremy.” I blanched. “Jeremy?” I asked. He is young and enthusiastic and has never impressed me as a reasoned thinker. “Did he, uh, give you any trouble with the content?” (The picture in question shows Spock in a white shirt sitting on the floor against the side of a bed, between Kirk’s knees, as Kirk sits, naked, behind him on the bed. Yeah, I did say it was a favorite….) “Oh, don’t worry about it,” the manager reassured me. “By now, almost everybody around here has seen your pictures. If they have a problem with what you’re doing, they keep it to themselves.” Oh. Great. So now I know why occasionally I get some strange looks…. Why the fellow who carries most of my boxes out to the car seems intent on talking about God all the time, and why the women up front seem so friendly…. “
Publisher 4 "The fanzine is a little late. Some of this is in the nature of fanzines, which always seem to take longer than planned to produce. A good chunk of the delay may be laid at the door of my original color printer. This man managed to leaf through [my sample zines] Mirrors of Mind and Flesh, The Price and The Prize, Greater California K/S, and T'Hy'La without noticing anything explicit enough to bother him. He seemed bemused but accepting of the project. Then, when I brought in my color art, he announced he couldn’t print it. Upsetting in the waste of time, and the additional expense, but who wants a blind printer?”
Star Trek offered a “Writer’s Guide” to writers who wanted to write scripts for the show. There are two versions that I have found: one a serious one that gives background on the characters, their inner motivations (“Captain Kirk is lonely in his command char. So very very lonely” or “Mr Spock has a secret crush on his Captain but will never admit it.”) Think of them as an early FAQ.
But there are occasional flashes of humor. In the two pages above, the wannabe writer is asked to take part in a quiz. Hopefully if you click several times you will get to a full size, readable version.
The guide ends with the following question
Q: Are you people on LSD? A: We tried, but we couldn’t keep it lit.
PS. Bonus points if you guess the real correct answer to “who would Captain Kirk hug on the bridge with only seconds to live?”
“The biggest fear in print fandom is that the internet will kill print zines. If it does, it might be a timely death. If it does, we will call it suicide - not murder - because print zine Editors and contributors will have chosen death instead of change. Fan fiction will go on regardless. Fan fiction is free. Long live free fan fiction.”
A yahoo mail server glitch is forcing me to move 65,000 messages (3 years of email) in small groups to a new folder. As I wait for the endless scroll to grab messages in batches, I thought I’d share with you the thoughts of a K/S fan from the year 1996.
“I agree that zines on line is basically a poor idea. I’m reminded of the late 1800’s, the magical new technology, electricity. They were so enamored of it they couldn’t stop making every gimmicky thing they could: bowties, etc. Also, just because we can do such a thing, it does not follow that we must. Too many of these conveniences are mainly just making our lives too speeded up for our own good.”
And to think I could have been moving 65,000 letters, one sheet of paper at a time, by candlelight instead. (links go to Fanlore, the fan run wiki)
“That was the first time I was exposed to erotic Star Trek art too; I’ll never forget there was a nude pencil sketch of Spock, reclining on his right elbow, with his left arm modestly concealing his manhood. As I recall, the picture was titled “R&R”. Of course my Mom wasn’t too thrilled with it –’That’s dirty!’ — But one could not deny the female fans their fantasies. In the end I was just forever grateful to my Mom for letting me go to this convention, and putting up with all the Trek mania around her.”
There are several blog entries posted under the tag so scroll down for more stories.
an Alternative Amok Time Trailer (or “The Romantic Version of The Closer vid’)
Direct link. "Instead of Spock beaming down to Vulcan, battling Kirk, overcoming his Pon Farr, etc, the Enterprise is unable to temporarily change course to Vulcan. After days of riveting impulses rattling his mind and body, Spock succumbs to his urges and asks of Kirk to act as a temporary manner of relief.”
“And, perhaps most significantly, the original draft did not have Spock grabbing Kirk by the arms and shrieking “JIM!” while broadly grinning. In the final draft, Spock wipes his tears on Nurse Chapel’s shoulder while Kirk gently chides him: “Come now — we mustn’t let our emotions run away with us. Be a man, Mister Spock — be a man.”
And in celebration of this fact I give you part 1 of the six part Amok Time opera. Direct link here.
In the first draft of the Star Trek episode “Amok Time” by Theodore Sturgeon, both T'Pring (Spock’s fiancée/wife) and Stonn (T'Pring’s chosen consort) are stripped of their rights after Spock kills Captain Kirk. Stonn because prior to the fight he flies into rage and attempts to murder Spock and is behaving irrationally and illogically. He is pronounced “not Vulcan” by T'Pau and becomes the property of Mr Spock. In this draft, being Vulcan is not an ethnic/genetic identity, but a citizenship status
T'Pring becomes Spock’s property because she challenged Spock and lost and is now obligated to give him absolute obedience. And then in a twist, Spock gives Stonn back to Vulcan (“it is possible but has never been done before” says T'Pau) and then “gifts” T'Pring to Stonn as his property with the requirement of absolute obedience. “See that you exact what is due to you - as her absolute owner.”
Much of this was removed from the aired version. Vulcan is a very harsh patriarchal world. And Vulcans know how to exact their due when their beloved captain is murdered.
This factoid brought to you courtesy a Star Trek fan who was given these scripts in the 1970s by someone who worked in the TV entertainment industry.
The Year Was 1998 and the Fanzines Were On Their Way To The Landfill
Submitted to a Star Trek newsletter in 1998:
“For those who wonder why I would destroy items, I’ll say it’s hard enough to sell original classic zines for dirt cheap prices. I would never go to the bother of trying to sell thousands of old n/l and adzines. So [the] five year n/l The LOC Connection as well as ancient Datazines, Treklink adult supplements, the long running Zine Connection, many of the On The Doubles, and lots of neat stuff became landfill. That’s probably what has happened with most everyone. You have to have acres of space just to store the materials — besides being physically healthy and in possession of a good memory to be able to work with it….. [But] computers aren’t the answer to the space problem. Who would want to scan everything to store in a computer or on disks?”
The fist two pics are the covers (illustrated by Sat Nam Kam and Suzan Lovett respectively) of Courts of Honor by Syn Ferguson, a Kirk/Spock slash novel with lavish black-and-white interior illustrations by Suzan Lovett. Yes, novel. It’s over 300,00 words long! The last two pics are sample interior illustrations by Suzan.
Originally published in zine form in the 1980’s, it’s widely considered one of the best pieces of writing in the entire K/S fandom. Its plot features Kirk and Spock’s epic quest to save the inhabitants of several Romulan-controlled planets from brutal slavery. Along the way, they explore Romulan culture and the nature of brutality as well as getting involved in a revolution, re-encountering the Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident , and of course figuring out what their relationship means and how to make it work.
The novel begins with Kirk and Spock having to face the consequences of Spock’s return to seeming asexuality after the events of the preceding novella The Price. In The Price, Spock comes roaring back into pon farr and Kirk makes the choice he always makes in slash fic: he has sex with Spock to save his best friend’s life, but ends up deeply in love with his First Officer. The novella abruptly ends with Spock no longer feeling any sexual desire or even ability to love at all after his pon farr is over, although Kirk’s feelings remain present. When Courts of Honor opens, Kirk and Spock are both avoiding each other because of the painful, seemingly unresolvable situation this has created. Things EVENTUALLY get better, but they absolutely have to earn their happy ending.
I highly recommend both The Price and Courts of Honor, but I would suggest reading them in the correct order, downloading them onto an e-reader of some sort due to the massively huge amount of text, and being in an emotionally balanced state before reading them, as they can get very dark in places, with murder, slavery, rape, violence to children, etc., as part of a plot that is ultimately optimistic but absolutely does not flinch from depicting horrific events.
Okay, I have totally been neglecting my actual fandom. Here is a wonderful Gayle Fpiece from 1981. It’s the cover of a (het and gen) anthology zine, The Captain’s Woman #3but is wonderfully K/S-y <3
And my Gods, the geometry.
Enjoy, everyone, and remember you can learn more by clicking the bolded words for links to their respective articles on Fanlore.org, the best place to learn about fandom history as a whole, and fanzines in particular.
This is the cover art of the zine Contact- its special double issue (volumes 5 and 6). It was a gen zine focusing on Kirk and Spock that was published from 1975 to 1987. I just found out that there is a website devoted to archiving the zines. It’s http://www.contactzine.com/
However, from the perspective of this younger fangirl and slash shipper, what was then thought of as “totally 100% friendship gen" looks…. different now~.
In the next few days, I plan to do a much longer and more detailed post about the “Kirk & Spock FRIENDSHIP" part of K/S fandom that Contact exemplifies so well. Until then, enjoy the oldfic, straight from the Seventies!
A quick note: this post discusses and links to works that contain rape/noncon/dubcon.
Okay everyone, time for another edition of DARKSNOWFALLING’S TRUE GEEK PASSION: ZINE-ERA K/S FIC AND ART!
Both selections of today’s art come from a team of fanartists called The Southern Cross. Such incredibly exquisite photorealism and shading~ It’s absolutely true that with today’s screencaps and photoshop tools the NEED for photorealism is gone, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t still appreciate the incredible skill and beauty inherent in the format.
The first image is from the zine The Price of Freedom, a novel-length epic about Kirk rescuing an abducted!made-a-slave!Spock. Written by Jean Lightfoot, it was published in 1986. Sadly, the zine has not been uploaded to the web. :( Thus, I can’t provide a link (I haven’t even read it myself!).
The second picture is the cover of To Catch a Unicorn, another novel-zine. Written by Deanna G., it was published in 1998. (The zine-oriented part of K/S fandom was still getting used to the internet at this point… but it persists tothis day.)
It isn’t posted on the internet either, but some of Deanna G.’s other fanfic IS! I recommend Caught in the Web, a post-“The Tholian Web” story. This was first published in the fandom-history zine Legacy #5 in 2007.
Happy classic K/S-ing, everyone!
Live Long and Prosper,
Darksnowfalling- your friendly neighborhood zine-era fangirl (who was sadly born too late)
If I recall correctly, The Price of Freedom should be going online this year (or next) sans art. I think.
Comment to the article: “My point is not that RPS is right, or that CS is wrong. My point is that all slash lies somewhere between black and white–legally, morally, culturally. We all have a place where we draw the line, and we all are forced to draw lines across a hundred different dimensions - age, genre, pairing, and more. Reasoned debate about where the lines should fall can only be a good thing, but I don’t think either side should forget that we are drawing all of these lines in so much grey sand.”
Since you’re here on Tumble and probably also library-related in some way, and because more than a few of you enjoy Avenger butts (you know who you are!), I’m going to assume you care at least a tiny bit about fandom history.
Which is why Yahoo!’s decision to delete 15 years of Yahoo Messages history is appalling and a worthy project for some volunteer time. Ian Milligan discusses the problem at the link above. As a longtime participator and lurker in several online fandoms going back to Harry Potter pre-movie fandom and even some X-Files groups, I would really hate to see the discussions, fan works, and general record of enthusiasm be lost to history.
Hop over to Milligan’s blog to see what we can do to help!
About a decade ago, I attended Nibmus 2003 — one of the first Harry Potter conventions. I got attendees to sign their LJ usernames to a piece of bristol board so I could make a list to post on LJ later. I just found that piece of bristol board.
As a friend of mine pointed out, this is a piece of fandom history. MsScribe left a kiss mark. Cassandra Clare signed some old version of her username (epicyclical). Aja’s on this. And lots of other people.
I have no idea what to do with this. I’d just recycle it, but I figure that there’s got to be someone out there who wants it/knows someone who could maybe auction it off for charity? IDK. Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone actually want this?
I spent a few hours on Monday reading un-aired Star Trek:TOS episode scripts along with un-filmed story ideas that never made it to script stage. My favorite tag comes from an episode where the landing crew is once again mistaken for gods:
KIRK: I’m not so sure about you, Mr. Spock. I’ve got a feeling you enjoyed your brief moment of divinity.
SPOCK: It had its pleasant aspects, captain. But I was unable to enjoy it completely.
KIRK: Oh? Why is that, Mr. Spock?
SPOCK: My divinity was shared by five humans. It quite took away the charm.
KIRK: (beat.., a final smile) Mind your station, Mr. Spock.
Today, I share with you footage from the 1973 Star trek convention (this was the second convention to be held and it was fan run). See video above
