so Jim doesnt do romance with his crew. Do you reckon that if he had encountered Spock earlier in his Starfleet career, he would have made a move, realized how compatible they are? How long do you think Jim and Spock need to... latch onto each other?
Sadly I think he probably wouldn't have, but for nerd reasons instead of ethical reasons. As for the second question: not long at all, it's getting them to communicate that's the difficulty!
There's this whole fanon about him having this ladykiller reputation at the Academy and after, but there is nothing to support it and I actually think TOS-the-show suggests young Kirk wasn't only ... not that but back then, was someone who could easily just fail to notice when someone was into him. Arguably this obliviousness extends even to early S1, when Spock and Bones sometimes are the ones to clue him in until "Dagger of the Mind"—which, unfortunately, is quite easy to believe could be a turning point in him deciding to at least take control of his own sexual objectification.
One of the first things we find out about Kirk is that a lab technician had fallen in love with Kirk in the past, and a young Gary Mitchell orchestrated an entire campaign in order for her crush to catch stack-of-books-with-legs Academy teacher Lt. Kirk's attention at all. Even though she was enough Kirk's type that he not only dated her as a result of Gary's machinations, but nearly married her. Kirk had been teaching long enough to have built up a reputation among upperclassmen as a notoriously difficult instructor by the time Gary showed up as a first-year cadet (Gary helped her out in hopes that it would get Kirk to lighten up in class), so we don't know how long she was pining after the oblivious 20-something Jim Kirk. We know Kirk had likely been teaching for at least a year or two by the time Gary helped her, so this could easily have gone on quite awhile without Kirk noticing.
And in TOS, we're only given reason to think he had a few relationships (all serious, romantic, and long-term) between Ruth leaving when he was 18 and him gaining command of the Enterprise at age 32. Those known relationships are invariably with a very specific type of person: sophisticated, cerebral, professional women, most of them in Starfleet, all near his age and attractive in a cute glossy way, and all very driven and decisive people who pursued him as much as the other way around.
Janice Rand is doing this in her own way; he admires and loves Areel all the more because his guile and silver tongue have never slightly worked on her, and she takes the initiative yet is respectful of his boundaries, allowing him to be soft-eyed and affectionately romantic with her (he does things like kissing her hands); Edith is blatantly if decorously courting him as much as the reverse if not more so; and there was clearly a mutual give and take between him and Jan Wallace, even in their break-up (my personal headcanon is that Jan was the blonde lab technician but even if not, this holds).
Even Janice Lester probably seemed like this type to begin with: certainly physically, and she was driven, focused, and ambitious (and in a warped way still is). She's in the sciences like most people he's into; and pretty clearly was the dominant force in their relationship even before it turned into an abusive situation (the relationship lasted a year, so the timeline allows for it). She idealizes a domineering, aggressive masculinity that he evidently fell short of, and she's contemptuous of him for not fitting that ideal, even though in terms of physical strength, he could have easily overpowered and attacked her. She's half-convinced herself he wanted to but never had the spirit to do it ("you were afraid. you were always afraid") but is also outraged that he managed to get away from her control—she's basically the worst-case scenario of his type, not a completely different one.
Contextually I think the year they were together likely occurred during his 2-3 years as an Academy student, before he got immediately transferred to space service without the usual teaching gap that people like Finney had to go through (probably only reinforcing her projection of resentment onto Kirk). So they would have been no more than 19 or 20 when they got together, very young.
Aside from these, Kirk has no unforced romantic encounters in S2, only femme fatale situations, and in S3, the amnesiac Kirk readily goes along with marriage to a woman he barely knows because she seems nice and people tell him he should. Odona deliberately pursues him, and once it seems they're going to be stranded alone together, he's receptive; even in the weak "Requiem for Methuselah," Rayna does the classic gentlemanly flirtation of guiding his movements at pool and defiantly broadcasting her interest.
Basically, I think Kirk could easily fall like a ton of bricks for Spock at any time, and would fall quickly. He uses sex appeal a lot, especially in S2; he is more straightforward and emphatic about his desires and lack of them in S3 and the "femme fatale" scenarios shift towards much more overtly violating territory in S3 as a result, but, when he's not using his desirability as a tool to navigate some desperate crisis, he doesn't fall in love often, just quickly and in a very swept-off-his-feet way that markedly contrasts with the other scenarios. That's definitely what would happen with Spock IMO.
However, I don't think younger Spock would be at all clear about his feelings, and I think he's very unlikely to pursue Kirk in anything like the way that Kirk's canonical old flames and those he uncomplicatedly falls for in TOS do. I feel like Spock's emotional baggage, if anything, would only be worse at the time.
—FWIW, I am not remotely convinced by the SNW apologetics about how he would be expressive and emotional in his younger years because he's trying out his human side and we don't bear in mind that it's earlier and he hasn't evolved into his final form of TOS Spock!! And so on. IMO S1 TOS Spock is very obviously taking his first baby steps towards the rootedness and sense of belonging and commitment he shows in S3, and every indication is that he had been profoundly isolated and deeply unhappy prior to that, and never really experienced anything like Kirk's icily outraged defense of him in "Balance of Terror" before that moment. The way he's treated in "The Galileo Seven" is a much more typical Day in the Life of Spock; there's a reason that Amanda is so pleased to discover Spock has a friend when Kirk indignantly sticks up for him wrt Sarek.
Anyway, the point is, young (basically married and deeply repressed) Spock is absolutely not in a place where he would take any kind of initiative in any kind of ... anything with Kirk (I do not get where the "he's not yet gay slutty Spock of TOS" is coming from, early TOS Spock would rather die than reveal a desire). Even befriending Spock would be a challenge in their younger days, I suspect.
And moreover, while I think Spock would also fall hard and fast, even if he were constitutionally capable of being receptive at that point and was letting on à la S3 Spock, young Kirk is himself not really in a place where he'd likely even notice. Especially if he knows Spock is married/betrothed (which he might very well not know, Spock being Spock—but if he did, I think the ethical issues would come screaming back into relevance).
However. All of this isn't to say there is no scenario where I could believe that a romance could happen between early career Kirk and slightly older Spock, just that I think there'd need to be more to the AU than their paths crossing early.
Maybe Spock is involved in the initial investigation into the tragedy of the Farragut, and the XO canonically on record as saying don't listen to what Lt. Kirk tells you, he did nothing wrong and nothing he might have done would have changed a thing draws Spock's attention to 23-year-old James Kirk, traumatized by mass slaughter again.
Or maybe Spock is the lab technician, rather than the unknown blonde, when Gary Mitchell plays matchmaker vs Kirk as the terror of PHIL101 (I don't think I've yet seen teacher!Kirk K/S scenarios where Kirk's subject isn't some hyper military thing or STEM, but I can more easily imagine super intense sharp-edged Lt. Cmdr. Spock who is almost entirely withdrawn into his turtle shell and super intense sharp-edged hyper-scholarly humanities guy Lt. Kirk hitting it off).
Maybe it's an even more off-the-beaten-path-of-TOS-canon AU scenario as a result of some other change that involves T'Pring eloping with Stonn (or whomever) when Spock ran off to Starfleet, and a year later, 20-year-old Spock is stepping in on behalf of bullied 17-year-old brand new cadet Jim Kirk (then a mere four years out from surviving starvation and genocide). That would shift to a primarily epistolary romance after Spock ships out and maybe it's easier for Spock to be a bit clearer and Jim a bit less oblivious in writing (I fully believe Spock would find Ensign Kirk's conduct wrt Finney's mistake 110% correct and his support might well slow Kirk's tendency towards isolating himself while projecting composure and charm, while Kirk would intentionally and unintentionally drag young Spock out of being mired in his own head for so long).
There are any number of other possibilities, too. Maybe Spock has a transitional period between missions when he's ~27 and decides he might as well get Academy credits for his PhD while on leave. Given that TOS only ever indicates that Kirk was a teacher (and a straitlaced, demanding one, not the "I'm the Cool Mom" type of prof), not Spock, and it's just one of the many Kirk qualities grafted onto Spock in the various ST movies, it could be fun to have a scenario where Spock is the genius student who thinks he's too advanced for the required philosophy course, and Kirk is the strict regulation-loving nerd at 24, teaching his class for only the second time, still processing [insert horrors] and in extra think-or-sink mode. What happens after the course? Did Kirk destroy Spock's perfect GPA? Lots of fun ways that could go, too, where they're more mutually challenging than the usual.
But basically, all of this is to say that I can't see it happening given where they were at emotionally and circumstantially at earlier ages (according to TOS) with no change other than their paths happening to cross. There needs to be a bigger change baked into the premise to make it plausible for me that Spock is going to be proactive enough and reveal enough of his own feelings, and the two of them thrown together enough, for young Kirk to "make a move."
(For me, as someone who feels the original movies are pretty transparently a reboot in all but name and many of the characters irreconcilably different as written from the versions in TOS, I think what's most probable in terms of what we see in TOS is Kirk and Spock quietly getting together after the five-year mission when, at least for awhile, Kirk is no longer his CO. Kirk is visibly getting ground down in S3 and Spock is if anything only more insane about him and indifferent to higher considerations than Kirk's welfare as S3 goes on. Kirk said Spock was closer to him than anyone in the universe in the series finale, Spock mind-melded with him without a single word or moment of difficulty, and they immediately tried to run away together hand-in-hand, and the court martial as well is just ... they seem closer and more devoted than ever, this doesn't feel like an impending estrangement, it feels like the second to last chapter of a will-they-won't-they romance. I can see Spock having a bunch of Very Logical reasons that Kirk —known T'Pau stan who thinks Vulcan is "lovely"—should rest on Vulcan after the mission wraps up and see the silver birds and put his off-duty phone on starship mode and have proper coffee for reasons other than staying conscious etc. And knowing the clock is ticking until the chain of command snaps back on, it's Spock who sets out to (very logically) court Kirk rather than Kirk having to do all the emotional heavy lifting.)
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kjfd;jkadj my last two posts collided in my mind—the one I just posted, about Kirk and Uhura not only caring intensely about each other behind their professional personas, but also handling said personas in essentially similar, synergistic ways as communications and commanding officer + the ramble last night about how I haven't yet found a fic that takes up the concept of Kirk making a fantastic psychologist (I've only seen direct role-reversals with him and Spock thus far) that's mentioned all the way back in S1 of TOS.
The psychologist!Kirk post basically split into two scenarios which I babbled more about in tags: one where Spock is captain, most likely of an all-Vulcan Starfleet vessel like the Intrepid until Kirk is transferred to that ship as part of some human-Vulcan collaborative effort going on, and another where they're still on the Enterprise, with Spock remaining chief science officer and Kirk as head of the psychologists and counselors on board. The TOS psychologists are always science division, so in that version, it's Dr. Kirk answering to Spock (likely his direct superior would be McCoy but ~mysteriously he ends up working more directly with Spock).
But I did think idly, "I wonder who the captain would be if it's neither Kirk or Spock, the next in the canonical command chain is Scotty, but I don't see that at all, certainly not McCoy, I'm not sure Sulu is all that suited to it at this point—"
BUT UHURA. CAPTAIN UHURA. Her age is never mentioned in TOS and I don't care about anything else for these purposes, but iirc Nichelle Nichols was actually close in age to Nimoy and Shatner, so it doesn't beggar belief that she could have gotten so far, so fast. And her professional accord with Kirk makes her a less plot-disruptive choice than someone really dissimilar like, idk, Pike or whomever.
SO. In this scenario, Spock is Captain Uhura's unflappable chief science officer/XO, Kirk is essentially her Troi (still virtually psi-null—just an incredibly incisive and adaptable judge of people and perfectly ready to share his observations with Uhura), Scotty is still living his best life communing with the warp drive, and McCoy is basically unchanged.
Kirk's notoriously demanding class at the Academy (implied to be a philosophy one in TOS) was an ethics course informed by his specialization. Elizabeth Dehner worked directly with him before, well, events, and he's along on the attempt to stop Mitchell and Dehner. The "Dagger of the Mind" mission is an Uhura-Kirk field trip. Uhura defies Starfleet to get Spock to Vulcan without even knowing why—Spock won't explain and Kirk won't break his confidence, but she knows whose judgment she values most and her trusted chief counselor >>>> some asshole admiral. Uhura also goes on a bunch of planetary exploration missions as captain, still in her mini-skirt and boots and winged eyeliner (though her clothes don't get torn quite as much as Kirk's), and is a natural diplomat who is not above a) lies or b) fighting if necessary. Something like "The Corbomite Maneuver" is resolved largely the same way, for instance.
Spock and Kirk still play chess games that Spock more often loses, but this regularly happens in the science labs. McCoy and Kirk are still old friends and regularly talk shop with some mildly illegal beverages involved. Uhura is split into Good Uhura and Evil Uhura that one time but is also still the one to bring the tribbles onboard.
I'm going back to outlining my f/f K/S AU but. do you see the vision
J and I had an involved conversation about gender and surrogate parenting and leadership in Star Trek, and which captains are the most loose cannons and which are the most severe about protocols and regulations, and how they deal with their respective baggage, etc. The end result was a sudden AU concept that we were both charmed by, which was a swap of the captain-first officer duos in Voyager and TOS, with Janeway ft. Chakotay as the relentlessly driven leader of the historic five-year mission of the Enterprise + Kirk ft. Spock "stuck" with no option but to lead the exploration of a distant region of space he's never been to and knows virtually nothing about, oh no,,,
I've read and enjoyed some role-reversal AUs where Spock is the captain and Kirk is the first officer, but I'm kind of wondering if there are any where Spock is the captain and Kirk is the lead psychologist, occupying a role on the ship somewhere between Elizabeth Dehner and Deanna Troi. Or even an AU where Spock is still chief science officer, but ship psychologist!Kirk answers to him.
I mean, it seems inevitable that someone has written that AU in the *checks hand* 58 years since the possibility was brought up onscreen. And I do think Kirk's "lol no fucking shit" response to McCoy suggesting he'd make a good psychologist—given how much Kirk operates by instantly reading the people and situations around him and calibrating his persona as needed—kind of invites it!
So it's definitely a different science division Kirk scenario, but fun to think about now and then. Especially given that he canonically has such strong opinions about the importance of ethical approaches to clinical treatment and so on.
A conversation with my housemate about the most uncanny forms of life in the sea has me thinking about an AU of The Voyage Home where everything is the same except the potentially Earth-destroying space probe thing is trying to communicate with squids
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As for crazy Gondorean bastardages, I’ve seen it proposed that Faramir is actually Aragorn’s son.
This used to be a pretty popular theory, though I think mainly as an elaborate form of Denethor-bashing. I actually read a few of the fics back in the day and they all had ridiculously evil Denethors and maximally woobie Faramirs, so not really my thing.
If someone wanted to go there, though (sorry Finduilas, there is zero evidence she cheated on Denethor or ever felt the slightest desire to do so and yet...), I think Boromir actually would make more sense logistically! IIRC, Faramir's birthyear is at pretty much exactly the wrong time to be the result of an Aragorn/Finduilas fling—it's long enough after Thorongil's departure that Finduilas couldn't have been pregnant when he left, but early enough that it seems unlikely that Aragorn would have already returned to Gondor. Boromir is five years older, though, so it's at least possible where it's really difficult to make Faramir Aragornion work outside of AUs.
I suspect that Faramir's greater similarity to Aragorn, in some respects, makes him fannishly preferred over Boromir, as well as him just being widely beloved in a way more similar to Aragorn's fannish reception than Denethor's or Boromir's. But Faramir as written is framed entirely in terms of Denethor's and Finduilas's characters and heritages, and those very satisfactorily explain basically anything about him that could require explanation, and the timeline doesn't work at all for a Faramir Aragornion scenario.
(I am normally not a fan of Aragorn/Finduilas at all, but I'll admit that Boromir Aragornion could definitely appeal to my tastes in tragedy. Denethor's son inheriting the wacky Númenórean shit coupled with Boromir's pride in the Stewards and not knowing his full connection to the line of Isildur, Aragorn actually knowing Boromir as a child and then being the only one with him as he dies, esp the bookverse death where Boromir never acknowledges him as king and instead his mind fixates on his shame and his fear for Gondor's people, and he'd never know the full truth ... I'm not above the appeal of that, tbh.)
A bunch of the responses to this post of mine brought up the appeal of a (bookverse) scenario where Denethor lives.
I always find this fascinating! As I said in the post, while Denethor's tragic arc is a fantastic one that makes sense for his character, it also feels a bit like he (and to a lesser but still present extent, Faramir) gets steamrollered by the plot for the sake of Aragorn's ascension.
So what happens if he doesn't get driven to suicide by the plot? I've only read a couple of fics dealing with this, long ago (not on AO3), and both resolved it by having Denethor ultimately come around to Team Aragorn. Personally, it's difficult for me to imagine him doing this of his own free will in basically any scenario.
But what does happen?
I'm not sure, but personally, I always think of three basic ways to avert the "Denethor conveniently removes himself from the picture, leaving a dying Faramir to be convinced by mystical kingly healing" situation without drastically changing the circumstances. Here they are:
Scenario 1
In canon, Denethor briefly regains his sanity when Faramir calls out to him and vacillates for a moment before committing to self-destruction. This scenario can split off there: what if he'd swung the other way and come out of it?
At this point, multiple people are dead as a result of Denethor's despair and Faramir is still dying. His position is about as shaky as possible. What now?
Scenario 2
Let's rewind further. Faramir is brought in per canon, sickened from an arrow + the Black Breath. Denethor considers one last, desperate look into the palantír, but stays with Faramir instead. He never despairs completely and never goes mad. He's right there when Aragorn heals Faramir.
This likely means that Faramir loses his TTT ambivalence the same way as in canon and is a firm supporter of Aragorn. But Denethor (though affected in some way by the restoration of his son) still has major reservations and hasn't jeopardized himself nearly as much as in Scenario #1. This is going to be messy.
Scenario 3
But if we really want to unwind the way the plot is structured to brush Denethor's and Faramir's initial reservations aside without really engaging with them, we've got to go further back. Change exactly one thing: Faramir isn't dying. He's not even that sick, at least not yet.
As a result, Denethor isn't driven to despair. Faramir is basically fine at this point and does not need to be pulled out of the shadows by Aragorn (and thus unlikely to immediately recognize Aragorn as king). Aragorn is not going to push the kingship matter during the height of a war for survival. The best case scenario (IMO) is that, somehow, Denethor is still convinced to send troops to the Morannon as a tactical maneuver, the Ring is still destroyed, and the question of Aragorn's claim is handled afterwards.
Thinking of Darcy/Emma after your poll and how they would 100% encourage each others snobbishness lol can you think of a scenario where they could still have their respective awakenings as a couple?
Hi, anon! I agree that they would absolutely reinforce each other's snobbishness (and tendency to interfere in other people's lives! Harriet is totally Emma's Bingley).
I think a lot would depend on when the divergence that leads to their romance happens. I don't think either character's growth is 100% contingent on their canon romance—that is, I don't think Darcy is intrinsically incapable of ever realizing the error of his ways without Elizabeth or Emma without Mr Knightley.
Buuut what makes those canonical events so powerful is that Darcy/Emma is hearing something that nobody else was really able and willing to tell them. Emma in particular is basically stuck in a community where vanishingly few people would ever call her on her shit. And while Darcy has more mobility, he's still not going to run into many people who would seriously object to how he thinks and be in a position to tell him so. The Hunsford rejection was a totally new experience.
You could rearrange the timelines so that the AU for one of them is after they've basically already had their awakening and that one is able to influence the other (e.g. Darcy meets Emma after Elizabeth's rejection). I don't like the imbalance there, though, so my preferred scenario would be one where either a) they've both had something of their respective awakenings already, somehow, when they marry, or b) neither have, but they still end up challenging each other enough that eventually they do end up mutually course-correcting.
The second is preferable to me, and I can sort of see it? Like, I think Emma cares more about day to day courtesies than Darcy does and would disapprove of behavior like that at the Meryton assembly. At the same time, I think Darcy has a stronger sense of societal responsibility when it comes to dependents or vulnerable people (Emma also has some, but I don't think on the same scale) and would be uncomfortable at best with something like Emma's approach towards a poor dependent on her community at Box Hill. So while they have plenty in common, I can see their values colliding at certain points that lead to a more gradual character growth.
Whether that would ever take them past their snobbery and interfering ... hmm, it would depend on the particular scenario. Their social world would be so different from where they end up in canon (if Darcy and Bingley don't go to Hertfordshire in the first place, there's no connection with the Bennets or Gardiners, while after Mr Woodhouse's death, I think Mr Knightley and the Highbury community would be largely out of the picture for Emma) that I can think of ways they could grow beyond themselves together, but it wouldn't really be tied to their canons, so not particularly rewarding to write about.
