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"Who needs a theory of deviance? Why? What about a theory of 'normalcy'?"
(Esther Newton 1979:xv)
"Shut up . . . we're by no means setting a precedent. "
[The first sentence of the first printed K/S story]
(Marchant, quoted in J. Sinclair nd: np)1
Known by various names (Spirk, K/S, Kirk/Spock) K/S is defined as fangenerated art, stories, novels, poems, songs, or other creative media that take as their starting point an imagined romantic relationship between the two principal characters of the original Star Trek film and television series.2 K/S represents a fan folklore in which an aberrant reading of a genre-specific narrative has had the power to transcend issues of genre, gender, sexuality, medium, time, as well as the retirement of the primary narrative source. This paper will provide an overview of the history of K/S and its tropes, and will use K/S as a launching point to explore broader issues of queerness, character archetype and the role of the audience in constructing new non-hegemonic narratives outside the bounds of the "poached" parent narrative. It posits that the enduring success of K/S is that it is not about two characters but about situationality between two character types.
FANS: CELEBRATING FORTY YEARS OF QUEERING THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE
K/S is not a unique genre, but belongs to a larger body of "slashfiction"-named for the "/" or "slash" between the names of the characters that the stories queer.3 Slash, by definition, deals with same sex characters that in the parent narrative are avowedly or assumedly heterosexual. By most accounts, slash subcultures emerged in the mid to early 1970s,4 and have since sprung up around a variety of popular films and television series.5 Jenkins (1996) has complained that academics writing about slash go straight to K/S because they and their audience are familiar with the subject matter a priori, while he sees Star Trek as "one text among many."6 In fact, the importance of K/S as a flagship for the slash genre is more complex than that. Not only was K/S the first manifestation of a slash narrative,7 but it has also proven to be the most widespread and enduring because the Star Trek narrative is ongoing, whereas many other slashed programs are either short lived (Twin...