[ SECRET POST #4543 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4543 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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02.


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03. [SPOILERS for Avengers Endgame]



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04. [too big]


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05. [SPOILERS for Godzilla: King of the Monsters]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of child sexual abuse]



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07. [WARNING for discussion of rape]

[Vorkosigan series]










Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #650.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 (spoilers) - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[rosehiptea]

I'm not in either of those fandoms. But I never shipped Kirk and Spock in Star Trek TOS. I thought they loved each other and were devoted to each other but not in a romantic way. It definitely makes me feel sometimes like I'm doing fandom wrong, even though I've never tried to discourage anyone from shipping them and I have no interest in doing so.

[(Anonymous)]

I just did a ToS rewatch and so many ToS plots depend on Kirk, Spock, or Bones being heterosexual and nearly instantly smitten with female guest of the week.

[rosehiptea]

I don't know if they're all heterosexual but they do all get linked up with women. I've heard people argue that Kirk doesn't really like women and I don't relate to that. I understand people thinking he and Spock are a couple even if I'm not into the idea but I don't get saying he was faking it with all those women. But I have no desire to argue with people about it.

[(Anonymous)]

Mmmm... I would say that there are certainly episodes where he flirts with a woman for pragmatic reasons. Like The Gamesters of Triskelion, where he's trying to get his guard on-side to help him and his crew escape. (He uses his masculine wiles and sexuality *a lot*).

But there are other episodes where he's clearly smitten with a woman, or was smitten and now they're renegotiating their relationship.

So yeah, enjoying sex with women is a solid part of his character. But also, he's clearly *deeply* invested in Spock and Bones emotionally.

Eh, I'm a multishipper, and I enjoy platonic love affairs/passionate friendships in their own right, so I have no desire to argue about it either.

[rosehiptea]

I don't disagree with anything you're saying. And I'm a multishipper too. This is just one ship I never got into even though it's so popular.

[(Anonymous)]

Depend on them being attracted to women you mean ? Heterosexual men aren't the only one to be.

[(Anonymous)]

Sure, but bi men were almost completely invisible in media, particularly in the 60s with Hays-era limits. Frakes wasn't able to sell that to Berman in the 1990s, and TNG was even more successful than TOS. So the idea that a bunch of episodes about guys in uniform feeling conflicted about exotic women was really some secret code for pre-Stonewall bi men is a huge leap.

In fact, Star Trek has always been a late adopter when it comes to LGBTQ science fiction. You can ship it anyway. I do. But queer Trek is a transformative fanon. Trying to rationalize it as canon isn't necessary and sells a lot of explicitly LGBTQ contemporary authors short.

[(Anonymous)]

Star Trek the TV show, yes. Star Trek the novels (and fandom) absolutely not. And Gene Roddenberry was quite happy for people to ship Kirk/Spock (and he read fic about it), although he didn't ship them himself. He is the one who wrote the t'hy'la canon, though...

[(Anonymous)]

The books are quasi-canonical, came over a decade later, and had a general policy against slashing the crew. They do establish that LGBTQ people existed in universe.

[(Anonymous)]

SA: Kinda a big sticking point to me is how we're good enough for low-budget/low-readership comics and books, barely good enough for TV, and rarely good enough for cinema unless it's Oscar bait for a straight actor.

[(Anonymous)]

That's why I can't ship any of them, even though I really want to. It's supposed to be an enlightened future society and homophobia shouldn't exist, so I can't suspend my disbelief. In my mind them frequently and only going for women means they're not hiding anything, they're actually just straight.

I know they couldn't be shown as anything but straight even if the writers wanted it because of censorship and the social attitudes of the time, but my mind won't let it go.

[(Anonymous)]

Trek is often less enlightened than it claims to be. Characters often express some variant of "it's sweet and proper to die for Starfleet." It's a particular model of heterosexuality where dudes leave family or romance behind to go off and have adventures because duty and brotherhood are more important. There's never any real question that Spock will choose the Enterprise over happy drugs and cannoodling in meadows because he's "married to the Enterprise."

Challenging that narrative is a radical act that's still not in mainstream acceptance, at least in the United States.