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Natural As Breathing
Apr. 22nd, 2018 07:35 pmSometime in the late 1990s I read a magazine article about this crazy thing that the participants were calling "slash." Somehow or other, I got the idea that the queering of various Star Trek canons was happening in the form of, like, essays or something; it sounded interesting, so I tracked down a Star Trek: The Next Generation zine called "Science Friction" and ordered it.
The naked android on the cover was my first clue that this was, in fact, not a collection of essays, but I wasn't wrong about it being interesting. I opened the zine and read my first-ever work of fanfiction.
It was a mixed het&slash story called "Natural As Breathing." I've forgotten the author's name, but it was in the Vulcan style. It was based on the TNG episode "The Perfect Mate," in which the Enterprise carries a woman to what you might view as either an arranged political marriage or sex slavery in all but name.
Last night I finally saw the episode for the first time.
Once I finally had both parts of the story in my head -- the story itself and the canon it was based on -- I could see that it was doing a lot of things that I've often seen done in the years since:
- It was taking an episode told mostly from Picard's POV and telling it again from the guest star's POV. (In the process, it was fixing this thing where the complete destruction of Kamala's only hope for happiness is somehow portrayed as Picard's tragedy.)
- It was fixing the absolute weirdness of Trek heteronormativity.
- It was dramatic, poetic, beautifully written -- and also explicit at the same time.
It was the first time I'd seen any of that.
It's really no wonder I fell so hard for slash. The thing that amazes me now is that I was ever able to bear to watch any sort of mass entertainment without it. Because ever since then, the only thing that has allowed me to enjoy most of what I watch has been the ghost of the unwritten fic that will fix it.
The naked android on the cover was my first clue that this was, in fact, not a collection of essays, but I wasn't wrong about it being interesting. I opened the zine and read my first-ever work of fanfiction.
It was a mixed het&slash story called "Natural As Breathing." I've forgotten the author's name, but it was in the Vulcan style. It was based on the TNG episode "The Perfect Mate," in which the Enterprise carries a woman to what you might view as either an arranged political marriage or sex slavery in all but name.
Last night I finally saw the episode for the first time.
Once I finally had both parts of the story in my head -- the story itself and the canon it was based on -- I could see that it was doing a lot of things that I've often seen done in the years since:
- It was taking an episode told mostly from Picard's POV and telling it again from the guest star's POV. (In the process, it was fixing this thing where the complete destruction of Kamala's only hope for happiness is somehow portrayed as Picard's tragedy.)
- It was fixing the absolute weirdness of Trek heteronormativity.
- It was dramatic, poetic, beautifully written -- and also explicit at the same time.
It was the first time I'd seen any of that.
It's really no wonder I fell so hard for slash. The thing that amazes me now is that I was ever able to bear to watch any sort of mass entertainment without it. Because ever since then, the only thing that has allowed me to enjoy most of what I watch has been the ghost of the unwritten fic that will fix it.
