I just started watching Star Trek from the beginning, and… this is it, isn’t it? This moment in ST:TOS season one, episode eleven, has got to be the genesis of modern slash fandom. The first ten episodes had slash potential, sure, but there’s slash potential and then there are slash moments, and I’ve watched slashy canons in rooms full of fangirls enough times to know which lines are going to cause synchronized heart-grabbing. This is a moment. If I were watching this show without the context of decades of fannish history, if I didn’t know what I was looking at, this would have been when I paused to go check the pairing tag on AO3.
As it is, with all that context, it’s when I pause to pay a little respect to my cultural foremothers. It’s when I post these screencaps on Tumblr, write an accompanying post referencing AO3, link it on Twitter, and think about the communities associated with each of these spaces that I wouldn’t have if not for the women who took this moment and ran with it.
Love you, fandom. <3