#tarsus IV

[a-trek-trough-the-stars]

Barry Trivers and Gerd Oswald dropping “The Conscience of the King” on December 8th of 1966, only to never elaborate on Tarsus IV and Kirk’s past there

[xiaq]

New Fic Alert!

It was a last ditch effort.

Then again, everything Jim tried at that point was a last ditch effort.

[ilovefredjones]

i have not stopped thinking about tarsus iv ever

[major-comet]

bones and spock both strike me as people who are likely to skip breakfast in the morning. they both know better, of course, but some habits are hard to kick. maybe it’s morning nausea, maybe they’re trying to squeeze just a bit more work into their day - who knows

they both notice, however, that jim seems to be a bit twitchier on the days where spock skips breakfast to go to the labs for a bit before reporting to the bridge. or mornings where bones shows up just to have some coffee and nothing else. it’s not super noticeable, they probably only notice because they pay a Lot of attention to him, but he’s just a bit jumpier, a bit more distracted

maybe they discuss it with each other, maybe they both notice it independently. maybe it’s something they noticed about him even before the 5 year mission, but just really fell into place after they semi-established their breakfast routine. he’s usually fine after lunch anyways, and he doesn’t generally get like that if they just skip lunch or dinner. spock tested this, of course. logically.

so it’s probably not worth worrying about; just a weird little quirk of their captain’s. but they start trying to be a bit better about making themselves eat at least an apple or something with jim before work every morning. it seems to get better, and the new habit is mostly sticking, so they kinda stop thinking about it

that doesn’t last, of course. ‘conscience of the king’ happens. they learn about jim and kodos and tarsus, and now all of a sudden the prospect of jim being in a weird mood whenever the two of them skip breakfast seems to be a much higher priority.

because if they skip breakfast, jim has no way of knowing for certain if they’ve eaten anything until at least lunch - if not dinner, if they’re too busy to have a proper lunch break together. jim, who probably regularly went without food to make absolutely sure that kevin riley and the others had something to eat, because making sure everyone else is okay is far more important to him.

i don’t think they really talk about it, after. at least not for another few years. but they stop skipping breakfast.

[ironicandpunny]

Recently been obsessed with the idea of Jim being just a little chubby. Jim, always finishing his food, always saying yes to dessert, always agreeing to cafe and meal arrangements, and gaining a little weight cause of those habits, and he loves it. Loves his body, loves the way his thighs touch and his arms jiggle, all because of Tarsus IV. All because he can remember a time where he could easily count all of his ribs, where even just staying awake was a struggle, cause he had no energy, cause he hadn’t eaten in days.

That’s just me though

[kaffkanya]

must write something about spock just *observing* jim, noticing his habits bad and good. like the way he kind of waits for everyone to finish eating first to finish his own food (as if hes waiting for someone to say "im still hungry" and then share what he has. spocks sure jim doesnt even notice hes doing it). like how he always faces death as if it was something he already knew intimately (he does, spock learns later). how he likes to sleep with a leg dangling on the side of the bed and is a *very light sleeper* (this is just something spock cataloged, doesnt mean anything. its just. a thing. a jim kirk thing), and so on and so forth. but slowly, spock realizes, hes finds himself falling in love with jim. no, not falling. but getting to the logical conclusion that, yeah, it makes sense hed be in love with jim. He Is The Man. spock shall be his Companion.

[2063april5]

Every time snw producers say they're gonna do something completely new that has never been done in trek before I think "like address the Tarsus thing?" and I remain hopeful to this day

[firstofficerkittycat]

in stressful situations jim will say shit under his breath like we're never getting off this fucking planet and spock will touch his arm and whisper in his ear what year it is and he'll be like oh

[smilingscully]

Star Trek after dropping the most important part of Kirk’s backstory in one episode and never bringing it up again 😹

[orangexmachina]

"So signed Kodos, Governer of Tarsus iv."

Episode: The Conscience of the King Song: August Underground by Ethel Cain

[bergamont-trek]

nobody will ever understand the way tarsus iv fics have fundamentally changed something in my brain.

[wizard-amulang]

highschool au Jim Kirk 💛

Here I decided to draw different highschool!Jims. In fact, they are all perfect, nerds, traumatized by tarsus. It's just different for everyone

Let me know if you want something similar with Spock

[emptyjunior]

Undergoing the 6 month cycle where I can't stop thinking about Tarsus IV and baby Jim

Oh James, his father's fancy ship and fancy medals couldn't save him

[major-comet]

thinking about tarsus and the mirror universe, and wondering in what ways the events may or may not have differed between the two. how can an already nightmarish situation have been twisted even worse - and what kind of effect would that have on young james?

our jim likely came out of tarsus with an even deeper sense of compassion for his fellow man - kindness forged in fire. he’s been through such hardship and pain that all he wants to do is alleviate that in others - his idea of “let me help” perhaps being even more romantic than “i love you” being cultivated there

and what the mirror image of that must be. any sense of trust or heart mirror!kirk may have possessed as a child completely shattered - kindness quite literally starved away. he’s been through such hardship and pain, so why should everyone else get off easy?

[qwertyisqueen]

I love Star Trek because we know a lot about Spock (I love Spock, don’t take this the wrong way) but we know Jack shit about Kirk’s childhood.

like, we’ve got 2 backstories that they flip flop between. in tos and snw we see mentions of Tarsus IV, and we get little hints as to how it impacted him but nothing concrete

in all Star Trek media, we get that Kirk is from Riverside, Iowa. but we see no mentions of Tarsus IV or Kirk’s childhood besides a couple deleted scenes in AOS with Sam Kirk.

like, it’s just hilarious that there’s this famous media character who’s impacted pop culture for generations but we know little to nothing about his childhood or Tarsus IV.

[anewstartrekfan]

People make fun of snw for having tarsus iv survivor on Jim’s Starfleet bio but honestly all of this was public information in conscience of the king. There are two scenes dedicated to Jim and Spock separately finding out Kevin Riley was one of the other survivors. It’s public information but the public doesn’t care.

Yes it’s fun for fanfiction to have the tarsus 9’s names redacted from the survivors lists and to have Jim go out of his way to keep that shit private but the reality is that the massacre is regarded by the galaxy at large as a horrible thing that happened, but that it was one of many horrible things and the case is closed.

Bones trying to brush Spock off when Spock is explaining everything he’s learned, and Bones’ response to Spock bringing up Kodos had his own theories of eugenics, are the most telling here.

“Unfortunately he wasn’t the first.”

The general public know the basic details of what happened, and the person who orchestrated the crimes seemingly died. And despite no positive ID on the body, Starfleet stopped looking into it. Everyone wanted it to go away. They choose not to bring it up. I’d argue that’s part of the point. All of this is public data but almost everyone involved wanted it to die. Even some of the victims. (Jim). But the thing about an untreated wound is that it can fester, and get worse until it’s impossible to ignore. And now you’re in a situation where 7 out of 9 survivors of a massacre are dead, all around the same time a company of actors performed in the area they lived.

Conscience of the King stands as a greater lesson on why willfully ignoring uncomfortable history will lead to people not learning from their parents’/ancestors’ mistakes and/or worse, make the same mistakes/commit the same crimes.