What Am I Supposed To Do With The Fact That Kirk Is Like "oh Btw The Words 'let Me Help' Are Stronger

I can't get over how beautiful the name "The City on the Edge of Forever" is.

I want it tattooed. I want it engraved in my soul. I want it to be a painting I can hang in my room and stare it all day long

Icebear!

star trek is great because the episode i watched last night was like: have we as humans progressed to the point where there is no longer any need for gods/faith? maybe the only thing we can and should have faith in now is each-other.

And then the episode i watched today was like: yeah so kirk has this bitch computer son thats weirdly sexist? and then kirk tells his computer son to kill himself and he and spock stick bombs to it and fling it out the window and then spocks like wow captain that sure was a great display of logic when you molotov cocktailed your bitch computer son out the window and kirks like yeah i ate that fr

Please, let me crawl inside your ribcage, because when she looked at me wearing that cruel little smile that no one else gets to see, I could see in her eyes, once again was 8 years old, with blood on my lips, looking up at her and feeling so very small that I knew there was nowhere I could run away.

Please keep me inside your ribcage, I'll be tiny, I'll be quiet, you won't even notice me, but I think maybe there I could smile, maybe there I could heal, maybe there I could feel safe.

You know what else drives me crazy about The Naked Time? This exchange:

It isn't just because of Spock saying, "Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I am ashamed" or "Understand, Jim. I've spent a whole lifetime learning to hide my feelings." Although, that absolutely is part of it, the fact that Spock is locked into his regret over not telling his mother he loved her and his shame at realizing that, despite all his work to adhere to Vulcan principles, he still feels love. It's that gap between duty versus desire, between expectations versus wants, and what remains in spite of the pressure. (I realize his words parallel a love confession in any other context, between any heterosexual couple, and that fandom looks to his shame as a confirmation of internalized homophobia, but the biggest issue for Spock is that love, sorrow, shame--all powerful emotions--still exist for him. He is not a Vulcan if he feels these emotions and gives into them. He is only a half-Vulcan and half-Human, caught between worlds and the judgments and expectations of two very different societies.)

It's because Kirk changes his phrasing of "We've got to risk a full-power start!" to, "We've got to risk implosion!" Implosion, like many words, holds multiple meanings. The intended meaning is "a violent collapsing inwards," the opposite of explosion. But implosion can mean integration, a coming together towards a single center point. We've got to risk coming together. We've got to risk integration. And Spock responds, "It's never been done." They repeat these lines twice. Repetition is a device to call attention in writing. Why have Kirk say they have to risk a full-power start twice before only to change it to implosion and repeat it twice? The two phrases mean something different, but it's important enough to bear repeating. (One could argue it is sloppy writing, or perhaps a case of actors failing to remember their lines, but what are the odds it was either of those, especially with someone as thoughtful as Leonard Nimoy. Either a writer is a professional who understands the power of words, or everything is somehow coincidental, holds no actual meaning, and writers don't think carefully about word choice and meaning, especially in an era where nuance can make or break a story on the screen.)

In the 1960s, during the time of the Hays Code, of course, two men couldn't be together as a couple on TV or in film, not even in space, in a time set centuries beyond our present. But damn if the dialogue can not hint at it, dance around it in plain sight. Again, Kirk and Spock's relationship must exist in the margins, between the lines, encased in nuance and multiple meanings, because to use explicitly clear phrasing would mean it all gets cut.

Hence, this bit of dialogue. The slaps become Spock catching Kirk's hand and holding it steady--direct sustained contact, a coming together, implosion. Spock is torn between regret and shame and love, while Kirk shouts about the ship being destroyed and ending the lives of the crew, their shared duty to the ship. The dialogue is Spock's turmoil writ large--do what must be done, accept two separate halves becoming a whole (is it Spock's two halves or Kirk and Spock? I'll leave that up to you), or remain apart and give into despair. But Kirk tells him their only chance is to risk implosion, to come together, and they have to take that chance.

In What Are Little Girls Made Of, there is something so adorable about jim, completely trapped, his only chance to be saved is by possibly planting a false idea into the androids mind, deciding to go with being a prick to spock because that would be so out of character it would warrant looking into

When the moon fell in love with the sun.

The way Neil Josten switched into Nathaniel in order to process and handle the abuse and trauma of being found by his father's people and the reality of his looming death will never not fuck me up, he literally said I can't handle this but maybe the Butcher's son could. And then. And then!! The way those two versions of himself coalesce into Neil Abram Josten (legally recognised) after Nathan is dead and the truth is out? The Neil Josten we see in The Sunshine Court has all of the attachments of Neil Josten, the slow unraveling of family and care but all of the hard edges of Nathaniel, unflinching from the reality of the world he lives in and the decisions he has to make to keep his life. Nathaniel would never have stuck around long enough to care about Jean Moreau and call a hit out on his abuser. Neil would never have trusted those resources available to him (or potentially the trail it could leave) in order to deal with the problem in one brutal but efficient move. But Neil Abram Josten reforged could, would and did.

I'm gonna start going through my Andreil playlist and making more of these

Andrew Minyard Neil Josten

your random blorbo who happens to die is not doomed by the narrative. edith keeler is doomed by the narrative.