#this fanlore shit is easy

[magnetic-dogz]

Making up my own Sonic lore is so fun because any question I've ever had about the series and the way certain things work in the universe I can just answer myself. If Sonic Team's not gonna acknowledge it then what's stopping me

[uss-genderprise]

I read Alien Brothers so that you don’t have to

Giving up on my usual no caps writing style for this post cause. Holy shit, man.

For those of you not in the know, Alien Brothers is a K/S fanzine published in 1987 by Seabright Publishing and curated by Helena Seabright. It is best known for being the only fanzine that is relatively easy to find a PDF of online (shout-out to @princenimoy for sharing it with us. You can find the full story here). But also, it's well known for being the fanzine that finally published The Ring Of Soshern, which is considered to be the first widely known K/S fic to circulate fandom spaces, back in 1968. It's also the first pon farr in a cave fic.

Alien Brothers was highly controversial for publishing multiple fics, including the aforementioned Ring Of Soshern, without the authors' knowledge or consent.

(Huge shout-out to Fanlore, where I got a lot of the background information on this zine and the fics published in it. I highly recommend looking through it. The review section is particularly fun.)

TW for: lots and lots of talk about rape and sex. Mentions of homophobia, polyamphobia, and racism. Possibly excessive use of the /s (sarcasm) tone marker. Also, I don't censor myself AT ALL, so. Language.

Disclaimer: I complain a lot. None of it is against the authors specifically - I don't know them, I don't know what they were going through, and I don't want to psychoanalyse them. Any time I complain about something the author said or did is not an attack on their person.

Disclaimer 2: I tried reading through this and editing typos and stuff, but it’s a really long post and a lot of it pisses me off, so I’m sorry if any slipped past the cracks.

Now that all that's out of the way, let's get to the reviews.

The Ring Of Soshern by Jennifer Guttridge

Yes, this is the fic everyone talks about. In it, Kirk and Spock are stranded on an alien planet with no way of contacting the ENTERPRISE (that’s how it always looks in fanzines lol) so they try to wait it out until the crew starts looking for them. Unfortunately, Spock seems to be sick, with what we later find out is Pon Farr. They end up hiding out in this cave in the mountains after killing the pterodactyl looking aliens that lived there (the art made them look like those purple flying aliens in tas, but the fic was written before tas existed so idk how accurate that is). They fuck only once and then it’s over, which is interesting because that’s not how Pon Farr is in more modern fics. Because they killed the flying monsters, the local humanoid population regards them as gods and offers them food and stuff. Then the Enterprise comes back and they leave. The end.

I'll be honest, I expected more from this. It's still a good fic, the worldbuilding is nice and the writing it good. I've heard some people complain that it's too slow, but that didn't bother me. I think that if I had read this early on in my time in this fandom I would have enjoyed it more, but as it inspired so many fics that I read before, it just kinda fell flat. It's still really interesting to see how certain words and terms have changed meaning over the past 50 years, so as a delve into history, it was quite fun. 4/5

Tickling the Dragon's Tail by Jane Mailander

Man, old PWPs really didn’t know what they were doing, did they? Apparently, annoying your SO with dirty talk until they stop working and fuck you was already an established trope in ‘87. That’s basically all that happens in this one, except we don’t actually get to see them fuck, which, like, isn’t that the whole point? What are you doing??

So, yeah. No plot, set up to be smut but ended up being fade to black. Still, well written and not too bad as a filler fic between heavier, longer works. 4/5

Odds and Abbs by Jenny Starr

Five year missions are long and boring in the time between aliens trying to blow up your ship and your captain getting split in two, I guess. The crew on the Enterprise decides that a fun game to play would be to leave cryptic messages on the bathroom wall and let the senior crew attempt to guess what that’s all about. The latest message says K/S? And people are voting whether or not they think that ship is canon. Spock overhears some girls talking about it and realises it’s about him and Kirk, and has a hell of a good time no telling anybody.

This one was honestly really good and funny, and probably the only one worth reading in this entire zine. Good vibes all around. Definitely would have been better as a new fan, but still enjoyable nonetheless. 5/5

The Air Is The Air by Vivian Gates

It’s really funny to me how you can so easily tell when a fic was published in this zine without the author’s consent, because all the other ones have a little bit of info about the author before the fic, and these ones don’t. Anyway, The Air Is The Air was originally published in As I Do Thee #5 in 1986, and you can read it on ksarchive.

In this fic, Kirk and Spock are captured by Klingons, who were about to rape both of them before Spock offered himself up to distract them so he can nerve pinch them and they can escape. Unfortunately, Jim sees the whole thing and things become awkward as they wait in their hideout on this planet for the Enterprise to come back, because now Kirk knows that Spock is bi, and oh no, what if he’s not accepting??? (Can you tell how much I hate when this shit happens? I hope so.) I don’t actually remember how this ends, but I’m doing some further background reading now and apparently Bones has to talk to Jim about it and it has an unsatisfying ending. Okay.

Honestly, could have been a lot worse. The rape scene was kinda weird cause Spock clearly wasn’t into it but also he wasn’t bothered at all? And like, he doesn’t need to be bi to offer himself up to save his captain. I have some conflicted feelings about this. Still, once again, saved by being well written and no as bad as the other fics on this list. 3/5

Homecoming by Sethera Dragon

I need y'all to know that I read most of these like three months ago and made notes. This one just says 5/5 pleasant read. I literally remember nothing of it so must have been pretty okay. It's a post TMP story about why Spock left for Gol and that’s literally all I know about it.

I Thought I Saw... by A. T. Bush

The Enterprise is exploring this new planet that seems to have no fauna, except that crewmembers keep claiming they saw/heard things, and then Jim’s hanging out by this pond (river? Either I don’t remember or it was unclear) and gets a kick to the ass and falls in, seeing that the fish in the water are half invisible. He comes out to find Spock standing near the water and obviously assumes that Spock pushed him in. As we all know, assume makes an ass out of u and me, so this bit isn’t fun at all, until eventually they figure out that the fruit on the trees makes the animals turn invisible and also a crewmember said they saw a unicorn. Jim realises a unicorn probably pushed him in so he reconciles with Spock. The end.

This one has been plaguing my every thought since I finished reading it. Not because it's particularly good or particularly bad, but because I'm sooooo mad about it. Just. So mad. There was all this build-up, exploring this cool new planet that really gave me This Deadly Innocence vibes (and I like that fic a lot so this is a good thing) but then. But then. We get nothing! Just absolutely no resolution! I wanted proof of the invisible unicorns, and got none!!! Also miscommunication as a source of drama sucks major ass. 3/5 still well written and kinda fun.

Limits Exist Only in the Mind by Marcella Belton

Boy oh boy, we're getting to it now. This one. Where do I even start. This one I finished a few days ago so it's still very fresh in my mind and man. I wish it wasn't. Oh how I wish to forget this fic exists. Okay, so it's not the first Kirk/Spock/McCoy fic, that one's The Third Wheel by crfaddis, published in 1976, which I do not plan on reading unless someone pays me to. Still, this is an old one, and oh boy does it show. This is gonna be a long one.

So, like usual, let's start with a quick summary: Spock has just been revived (maybe a few weeks before? Unclear) after the events of SFS. He and McCoy are still mentally connected and it's causing problems. Sarek tells Kirk and take them both and run, but then a Federation ship shows up to take them into custody, so they take the bird of prey and fly straight into an anomaly near the Vulcan sun which has apparently been there for a very long time and lots of criminals have used it as an escape route. Now inside the anomaly, the ship is ambushed by some of the aforementioned criminals, headed by a big guy who's name I don't remember and his Romulan first officer/lover, who's name I also don't remember but it was cool and better than Big Guy's name. They manage to make peace and Big Guy takes them to their planet. Spock goes into pon farr and rapes Kirk. Truly 0-100 up in this bitch. Kirk is all like "I wanted to help but he was too rough" and Bones is all like "you shouldn't go in there again" but Kirk does anyway and they fuck while Bones is watching to make sure they don't go too hard. Spock is still in pon farr but now Jim has to make sure they can get back home so he tells Bones to jerk Spock off until he can come back and finish the job. Then he comes back and they have a threesome. Genuinely the best part of this fic if only because of the sheer ridiculousness of it (it’s just so funny to me. Just. Absolutely wild). Then they build a ship so that some of the planet's inhabitants can come through the anomaly with them, still having sex between scenes. They leave the planet and go through the anomaly, the ship they built almost gets destroyed and some people die but they're back home safe. The newly made thrupple tells Sarek they're together and then go talk to Saavik who is carrying Spock's child from his pon farr that he had in that cave with her in SFS that we're all trying to forget about. Anyway, after some fighting she agrees to let them all be the kid's father. The end.

Okay so. Now for the actual review.

Starting off strong with Sulu being described as "Oriental". I myself am not Asian and I have seen some conflicting opinions about whether or not this is problematic, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

There are only three female characters in this fic: Uhura, Saavik, and some Romulan healer. Amanda seems to be dead, having been fridged off-screen. They talk about her in past tense. No idea what happened there. The Romulan healer was actually pretty fun, I liked her, but she also literally only said one line. Uhura was seen as a sex object. Saavik was the only one with agency, and even she was boiled down to "mother of unborn child". Hard to believe this was written by a woman. Was it really so hard to make the Big Guy Captain/ Romulan first officer couple that are clearly meant to mirror Kirk/Spock lesbians? It would have been sooo much fun, and then we'd actually have some women, too!

Sarek fucking sucks in this fic. Like, genuinely, so much more than he does in the show. He's a terrible person. Absolutely awful.

Now, to the real juicy stuff: polyamory. I have been in polyam relationships in the past, I have polyam friends, so I know what I'm talking about when I say: Bitch, wtf? It was implied that the Federation allows for multiple people to be married to each other, as in, more than two, but it also seems to be frowned upon, which is really weird to me. Then again, it seems that being in a homosexual relationship is frowned upon there too, but that's pretty common in this era of fics (and continues way into the 2000's, which, really? Why?). Anyway. Other than that, the relationship is actually pretty good (other than the fact it literally started with Spock raping Jim, but again, very common in this era).

One last grievance to air out before we move on: WHY DID SAAVIK ENTER INTO A RELATIONSHIP WITH THREE MEN WHO ARE TWICE HER AGE AND SHE VIEWS AS MENTORS/FATHER FIGURES???? WHY??????

Okay I'm done. Good writing, good worldbuilding, a little slow especially towards the end, 2/5. Moving on.

To Great Lengths by A. T. Bush

Amazing how an author that can write something I hate as much as Limits Exist Only in the Mind can write something I enjoy as much as To Great Lengths.

This is a Mirrorverse fic, where Kirk got kidnapped and Spock kept searching for him until he found him presented as a sex slave in a bar where the highest bidder gets to decided what the slaves will perform. Everything in this is absolutely horrid, disgusting, vile, amoral, etc., but it's all presented as such, which makes a world of difference. I'm not gonna go into any detail, but let's just say it's not for the faint of heart. Really well done, 5/5.

Midnight in Venice by Jenny Starr

This was a breath of fresh air between all these fics. It was pretty mediocre, though, told entirely through dialogue, just Kirk and Spock expressing their admiration for one another while trapped in a forcefield that made everything around them look like Venice (which apparently no longer exists, because it’s all covered in water due to global warming. Nice to know we’re still dealing with the same problems /s). 4/5

Loveslaves by Dale Campion

Alright, it's time. This fic is why I'm making this entire post. If you thought my review of Limits was long, you ain't seen shit yet.

But first, a bit of background.

Loveslaves is a story in 3* parts (*keep this in mind, we'll come back to it). The first part was originally published alongside a poem in Duet #3 in 1981, under the title Love Slave's Song. I haven't read the poem, so this review is only about the fic. The second part was supposed to be published in Duet #4 in 1982, but the editor rejected it because it included fisting. Yes, fisting is a Star Trek thing. We'll come back to that too. You can read more about the history of this fic on Fanlore.

Our story begins with the space station Spock works on coming under attack. His crewmates are dead and he is taken hostage by some humans, including a captain named James Kirk. Boy oh boy, what ever shall happen next? This is a slave fic. Kirk decides he wants Spock to be his slave. Spock says no. Kirk says that if he doesn't agree the human fleet will destroy Vulcan. Spock agrees. Kirk rapes him, then says Spock will "learn to like it". We are only on page 2 out of 36, and I already want to murder someone. Jim comes back a little while later, he and Spock 69 and Spock enjoys it. A little loud voice in my head goes "Stockholm syndrome. This is Stockholm syndrome." "Of course it is," I reply. "This is a slave fic, what did you expect? Even in the year of our lord 2022 people still haven't figured out how to make slave fics not have rape and /or Stockholm syndrome in them, it's an inherent part of the trope". The voice in my head shuts up, because it's my voice, and I can tell it what to do. Anyway. We're three pages in, and this is what we know so far:

Kirk is a dick

Kirk is a rapist

Kirk is a manipulative bastard

Kirk is obsessed with Spock and will do anything to keep him for himself

Spock really, really does not want to be there

Spock doesn’t know what sex is, which only makes the rape thing worse

Let us continue. They go to a planet to drop off their cargo including some Romulans for the slave trade. Jim doesn't sell Spock but instead takes him as his share of the spoils, and buys him a Vulcan lyre that they find in a shop. Then, they go to a bar with McCoy, Kirk goes to fuck a lady, and Spock makes plans for escape, but he doesn't want to leave without taking Jim with him. Unfortunately, Kirk is nearly murdered, and Spock has to put all his plans aside to save his life. They beam back to the ship and warp away. End scene.

This is the cliffhanger you would be left with if you had read Loveslaves in Duet #3. Frankly, I wouldn't have asked for a sequel. (Then again, I wouldn't have asked for a sequel of Shelter, and yet plenty of other fans did, so I guess I'm not really the authority on the matter.)

Now, let's see where part II takes us. We start off real good (/s) with Jim waking up in sickbay and Spock being there to play him a song on the Vulcan lyre but Kirk instead tells him to get on his knees and suck him off and not stop even if anyone comes in. Cool /s. Spock spends the next three days while Kirk is in sickbay basically trying to avoid thinking about it. Then, Kirk comes back and shoves his entire hand inside Spock's ass up to the elbow, and let me tell ya', I usually don't care much for fisting, doesn't really do it for me, but I usually am also not bothered by it all that much. This was absolute hell to read. Just, completely horrid and disgusting. It felt filthy. I literally stopped and took a shower right after. Not Fun.

They keep fucking every morning and every night for a while until there's this party and then Jim goes to fuck Uhura and tells Spock to stay in sickbay for the night. When Spock is finally allowed back the next evening they don't fuck for a few days and Spock is sooooo worried about it because Stockholm syndrome. I hate it here. Then Jim almost gets assassinated and falls into depression and it turns out he found out about Spock's escape plan from like months before at this point and he spanks Spock with his belt and then says he's gonna sell him, and Spock gets really mad about this, not because he doesn't want to be a slave but because he only wants to be Kirk's slave, so he straight up. Just. He rapes Kirk. That happens. Comeuppance, I guess? So then Kirk starts to enjoy it, because of course he does, and I still wish I was doing literally anything else. Then! Then, he makes Kirk "bath him with his tongue", cause his dick is "still damn and musky from its sojourn inside Kirk's body", and I seriously considered just putting the fic down. But the incomplete review will haunt me forever, and I must tell you everything or else you might seek it out yourself. I'm not kidding with the title, I read this so that you don't. Please. Spare yourself.

Continuing on with the horrid monstrosity that is this fic, apparently going through that whole ordeal made them fall in love more and now they do CNC. Yes, this fic obsessed with rape is now still obsessed with rape but this time it's consensual. God, are we close to the end yet?

The answer is "eh... Kinda? We still have seven pages left to go". So let's continue.

So now Kirk and Spock are fully in love and heading back to earth for plot reasons. Kirk gets promoted to Fleet Captain and the Enterprise finally appears (before they were on a ship called the Vengeance). Now, the fic spends two pages worldbuilding and doing actual plot stuff, becomes good for like half a page, and then we're right back to trash when Spock suddenly goes missing after Kirk spent the night drinking with Gary Mitchell (who was about to assassinate him) and fucking Areel Shaw (I'm so fucking tired). Kirk decides to give up everything and steal the Enterprise to go after Spock. End of part two.

Part three begins and we find out the Spock was kidnapped and the escaped and he's waiting for Kirk to find him. We get half a page that seems promising, almost actually good, and then a to be continued, which, well. Alien Brothers had a very poor reception, to say the least, so it never got a sequel, so Loveslaves never got completed, so I am finally free and never have to think about this fic ever again.

I think it’s pretty obvious how I feel about this fic. For all that it was well written and didn’t have any typos, it’s still quite possibly the worst fic I have ever read in my life. It’s the only fic I’ve rated 1/5 on my K/S fic list, and that’s saying something. It’s rated lower than any fic I had ever bothered to rate. I’m gonna spend the next couple of days reading coffeeshop AUs and trying to bleach my eyes and cleans my soul with those. Thank you.

Now that we’re done with the fics, let’s go over the art and poetry.

The art, for the most part, is really impressive. I could point out ones that I don’t like, but that’s really down to personal preference, and I don’t want to single out anyone. I might share some of my favourites in a later post, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

The poetry, unlike the art, is pretty mediocre, even bad. I could do a review of each and every one, like I did with the fics, but frankly, I don’t feel like it. I’ll just say that most of them are from Spock’s perspective, and my favourite is probably The Lyrist.

All in all, is this zine worth reading?

No! Did you not read a single thing I wrote?! No, it’s not fucking worth reading!!!! Stick to things posted on AO3 in the past few years and you’ll be so much happier, believe me.

Thanks for reading. If you’ve made it this far, reblog with a picture of your cat. If you don’t have a cat, other pets will do. If you don’t have a pet, just any animal picture. Also, if you want me to do this again, please send a PDF of any fanzine you may have. As much as I hated this, I will be willing to do it again.

[snakeslide]

A “quick” & “simple” guide to finding old fic off of AO3

I wrote this in a fit of hyperfocus while looking for old LOTR fic for a friend, and figured I’d share it, for fandom posterity if nothing else. So much has changed just in the years I’ve been in fandom! This is how I started reading fic... though I had way fewer broken links to deal with back then.

Quick guide: If you are looking for unread/old fic from an older fandom, go to Part 1. If you know some vague info about a fic you once read but don’t remember the name/author, go to Part 2. If you have a broken link, go to Part 3.

Part 1: New Old Fandoms

1. Just got into an old fandom? Congratulations. Looking for fic for it? ….good luck. But I’m an old hand at this, and I’m pretty good at it. Step one: lower your expectations, and be prepared for disappointment. Lots of fics have been lost from zines, listservs, down archives, the loss of Geocities, deleted LJ’s and dead personal fansites. More than that, you can’t be picky: sometimes only the shit survives. Also, I’ve found that the quality of fic writing has gone up over the years. Stuff that people viewed as masterpieces years ago might look to be cliche or mediocre now. But it’s like Star Trek: they’re full of cliche tropes because they invented the tropes.

2. You’ve probably already looked at AO3, but take a closer look. For old fanworks that have moved onto AO3, sorting by kudos/bookmarks/hits doesn’t work. A work could be remembered as a masterpiece and only have 2 bookmarks on AO3 simply because no one’s thought to look for it there. Check by date: backdated works show when it was originally published. Summaries used to be shorter and vaguer, and most people don’t bother updating them or using descriptive tags other than the pairing when they post them, so sometimes the only way to tell what a fic is about is by opening them all and reading them. You’ll find plenty of shit, but sometimes you’ll strike gold. Now that AO3 lets you exclude by dates, this is even easier. Pick a range of time, perhaps the height of the fandom, and THEN sort by kudos/bookmarks. It’s not bulletproof, but it’s better.

3. For stuff that hasn’t been moved onto AO3 at all, my first step is always checking two places: the Fanlore page for the fandom + pairing(s), and the TV Tropes fanfic rec page. Fanlore often lists popular authors, archives, and even links famous fics. The TV Tropes recpage is just a handy place to start: always organized the same, sometimes amusing, and still updated. (Don’t be afraid to go to fanfiction.net if you get linked there. There are gems there, no matter what anyone says.) If you find a fic or archive you want to read but the link is broken, go to Part 3.

4. Now, my fave: reclists. Personal reclists are easy enough to find: just google “(fandom) + fic + recs” and a bunch will pop up, on LJ, DW, and tumblr. There are rec communities out there too, posting old fics, or just with extensive archives that you can troll through at your leisure. If you find a fic you want to read but the link is broken, go to Part 3.

5. Depending on the fandom, any fic archives might be down or not. A simple “(fandom) + archive” google works, and you can add more specifics, such as “slash” or a specific ship. Some archives don’t allow anything above PG13, some don’t allow anything queer. Most don’t have any form of sorting other than by pairing, either. There’s a commonly-used website form that creates “Top Tens” reviewed, favorited, etc., that may or not exist on the archive, depending on its age.

6. If you’re more about talking to people than lonely googling, you should ask people in the fandom (if you can find them) what their favorite fics are and where you can get them. Sometimes older fans will have them stored in a harddrive and will give them to anyone who asks: but you have to ask.

7. That’s about it. It’s a lot of effort, but it can be worth it if you find what you’re looking for. And sometimes you make new friends along the way.

Part 2: Lost Fics

1. Knowing some vague info without any easily findable keywords is one of the hardest spots to be in. This is the time-sink: google the shit out of it. Any vague term you can think of, any random phrase you remember. Use search operators and quotes. Look through reclists to see if anything looks familiar.

2. Skim fics to see if the writing is similar - or identical. Sometimes what you remember is just a single paragraph in a 7 chapter fic, and if you’re not careful you could skip it entirely. If you still can’t find it, it’s time to get active: it’s time to ask other people.

3. Some fandom history: before archive search functions and AO3 bookmarks, if you lost track of a fic, you could go to a “fic finder” forum or community and make a post describing the fic you were thinking of, and people would comment with a link if they knew what it was. Some of these still exist, but they’re much less trafficked these days (especially since comments on tumblr are such a mess). If you can find a ficfinder LJ/DW community: Make an account, and post a description of everything you remember from the fic. If it’s on tumblr, send an ask/submission. 

4. On tumblr, a post in the general fandom tag might also work, though I’ve never tried it myself.

5. If you’re lucky, someone will know the fic you’re thinking of, and you’ll get the name/author, if not a link. If the link is broken, go to Part 3.

Part 3: Broken Links

1. If the website/link is broken, try googling the author’s name and/or the fic name to see if they uploaded it anywhere else. Try googling the username and fic name together and apart, plus and minus the fandom name - authors change usernames but fic names almost always stay.

2. Then try using the wayback machine (an internet archive that screenshots and saves old websites, if you haven’t heard of it. Very handy!) to see if there are any screenshots - sometimes there are saves of some chapters and not others, which is the absolute worst. Always check all the saved dates!

3. Go back to googling. It’s possible someone else has asked for a downloaded copy on some ficfinder forum, tumblr, or livejournal post somewhere. If they did, you can try commenting on the same post or DMing the person to see if they found it/still have it.

4. Wait and see if you get lucky.

Finally,

If you still can’t find what you’re looking for, wait. Ask around. Sometimes archives come back up; sometimes you run into the right person in the comments or at a con who has it downloaded as a txt file or has a printed copy. And if you do find it, finally, and manage to get in contact with the author: ask the person to upload it and backdate it on AO3. AO3 even lets them orphan it if they don’t want their name attached to it. But if they say no, RESPECT IT. People don’t want their stuff online for many different reasons, and that’s fine. Ignoring someone’s wishes for your own personal gain is NOT.

Good luck, and happy hunting!