Kirk and Spock: The Real Story

We’re about to delve deep into the dark underbelly of geekiness here, folks, so you might want to strap yourselves in. Here there be dragons…

First, the background: There is within many fandoms a sub-culture of people who like to write their own stories using characters from whatever their favorite media obsession may be, and within this “fanfic” (short for “fan fiction”) scene, there is a sub-sub-culture of those who write so-called “slash fiction.” In broad terms, slash stories take established, heterosexual characters and reimagine them in homosexual relationships with each other. The original such pairing (as far as anyone can determine) was between Star Trek‘s Kirk and Spock in mimeographed stories that got passed around at early Trek conventions back in the 1970s; the name of the genre actually originates with the way these particular stories used to be categorized (i.e., “Kirk/Spock” or “Kirk-slash-Spock” stories).

All of which leads to my observation that some ideas never die:

(Hat tip to SF Signal for this. And if you haven’t dared play the video yet for fear of what you might see, go ahead and click it. It’s harmless, and more funny than anything.)

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5 comments on “Kirk and Spock: The Real Story

  1. Cranky Robert

    Classic!

  2. Brian Greenberg

    I must admit, I knew what fanfic was, but never understood what they meant by “slashfic.” See? Learn something new every day…
    Thanks!

  3. jason

    Just doing my part to educate the public on obscure aspects of the fan-boy (and girl, since it seems the majority of slash writers are female) experience!
    (Besides, I thought this clip was really funny… unfortunately, I’ve had that damn song running through my head for about 24 hours now…)

  4. chenopup

    Perfect! That Kirk will do ANYTHING!
    Great choice of song for the edit though. Like Robert said. Classic!

  5. jason

    I especially love the clip the editor paired with the line “I love myself…” It’s the perfect, self-satisfied Shatner/Kirk expression.