Kirk/Spock (TOS)

Kirk/Spock, widely known as K/S, was the first openly slashed couple of media fandom. While fans had been privately creating fanworks about Holmes and Watson, Bruce and Dick, James and Artemus, Buz and Tod, or Napoleon and Illya, Star Trek was the first show in which amateur stories with a homosexual theme were more widely shared among fans.
No one person or group "invented" K/S. Instead fans wrote it in the form of drawerfic, stories written only for themselves and perhaps a friend. Some of this fic was in the form of circuit stories, fanfic meant to circulated among a small group of friends.
 
K/S fic rose in visibility after 1974, in part because Star Trek was the first television program to grow a fandom that generated fan-published fanzines. These amateur publications allowed stories, poems, and art to be circulated outside of a circle of friends to a wider audience of fans. 
Early on, the speculation that Kirk and Spock were romantically or sexually intimate with each other was referred to as The Premise.
In Boldly Writing, the history of Star Trek fan fiction and publishing, Joan Verba says that the first fan-written fiction in zines mostly played with the original, science fictional Star Trek universe, then gradually, more Mary Sues and Kirk and Spock friendship stories started appearing, then the Kirk/Spock stories. 
Mild jokes about Kirk and Spock getting it on appeared as early as Spocknalia 3 in December 1968. In Joyce Yasner's Lennonesque "The Mysterious Yellow String", when Spock confirms he's investigating the string, Kirk says "Frabjous! I'm coming!" and Spock whispers "Not now, later," to which Kirk replies "How can I? I'll miss out!" In Eridani Triad 2, Doris Beetem's "Star Dregs" has all the characters confessing to one another, "I have always wanted... loved you!"
Some very early examples of specifically Kirk/Spock fic are The Ring of Shoshern (1968), Green Plague (late 1960s), A Fragment Out of Time (1974), and Alternative: The Epilog to Orion (1976).
==Origins of the /==
In the early days of Star Trek fandom, the symbol, "/", (a virgule) between two character's names did not necessarily indicate a sexual relationship, but rather denoted a story that focused on an intensely described portrayal of a close friendship. In the late '70s-early '80s, many fans meant friendship when they spoke of "K/S". At this time, the symbol was seen on stories with and without descriptions of sexual intimacy. For more information about the history of the term "slash" and the / symbol see Slash Terminology.
== History of K/S ==
: Also see History of Slash Fandom.
The foundations for K/S were actually laid by Isaac Asimov along with some of the Star Trek creators, including Robert Justman and Gene Roddenberry Himself. According to Justman in Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Captain Kirk had been intended from the beginning as the central, focal character in the series, and William Shatner was paid accordingly; but fan response to Mr. Spock was much greater. In order to turn audience attention back toward the Captain, Roddenberry asked for ideas. In a November 1966 letter reprinted in 'Inside Star Trek see at Letters of Note: Getting Star Trek on the Air, Isaac Asimov suggested that the scripts and actors should show the two men becoming close friends, including incidents where they save each other's lives. That way, when viewers thought of Spock, they would also think of Kirk, and they would think highly of him because Spock did. Asimov also suggested that Kirk be given lots of intriguing, interesting things to do, e.g. solving mysteries, going incognito, etc. Roddenberry and Gene Coon worked this out, and wrote to Asimov: "Shatner will come off ahead by showing he is fond of the teenage idol; Spock will do well by displaying great loyalty to his Captain. In a way it will give us one lead, the team."Marc Cushman, These are the Voyages: Season Two.Jacobs Brown 2014.Kirk did get many opportunities after that to dress up and to have plenty of adventures with dashing, heroic deeds. The idea of solving mysteries also seems to have been passed on to Jean-Luc Picard. Solow and Justman do not speak of fan fiction at all, let alone K/S; but it is possible that this is what fans picked up on as they began to speculate about just how close they were.
Another factor in the development of K/S was the idea of a mental bond between the two that preceded, and for some, became a part of the sexual relationship between Kirk and Spock:
K/S fans had an uphill battle for acceptance, or to be simply left alone, in early fandom. One of MANY examples of anti-slash commentary was in a January 1980 zine which, ironically, emphasized IDIC: 
In 1984, Carol Frisbie, the editor of a very early K/S zine, Thrust, said: 
===Roddenberry's Views===
Star Trek Lives!, edited and written by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, Sondra Marshak and Joan Winston, was published by Bantam, 1975. While there is a chapter on fan fiction, slash is not discussed. Some stories covered are "Joy in the Morning", The Price of a Handful of Snowflakes, see ...A Handful of Snowflakes and Other Trek Tales The Daneswoman, Spock Enslaved, Judith Brownlee's T'Pelle stories, and the Federation and Empire series, which all involve Spock and Kirk with women. However, the authors do illustrate that Kirk and Spock love each other in a nonphysical sense. There are also many pages devoted to the idea that women's liberation can also mean the liberation of men to express feelings more openly -- an end to the idea that "men don't cry". They discuss this in interviews with both William Shatner and George Takei. Male feminism was at its height when Star Trek Lives was written and published. Will Farrell, Michael Korda and Mark Fasteau all had books out about how feminism would help men. Ironically, Farrell is now one of the foremost "blame feminism" pundits.
Joan Winston also describes Shatner camping it up during the filming of "Turnabout Intruder", where he had to play a female, and at one point turned a serious line into a confession of eternal love for Spock. The stage crew called this episode "Captain Kirk, Space Queen."
Gene Roddenberry revealed in Star Trek Lives that because he did not enjoy the typical amusements of his father's hyper-macho Southern culture, particularly seeing animals pinned to a line and killed for food, he was perceived as having something wrong with him: "Probably, say, I was... [different]". It is likely from the context that "different" was substituting for "homosexual", ensuring that the book could be sold to and read by children and teenagers, Star Trek's presumed audience.Star Trek premiered in 1966, the same year that Alfred Kinsey's book Human Sexual Response was published. This book and the development of the birth-control pill, plus several landmark court cases in which explicit works of literature were declared not obscene, helped to launch the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. By 1974, mainstream libraries and bookstores, especially at or near college campuses, had begun to carry books dealing with or mentioning homosexuality, but children might have only limited access to these. Books with explicit heterosexual content, on the other hand, were routinely sold in supermarkets and drugstore check-out aisles. The descriptions of sex in Star Trek Lives were mild compared to what children could pick up on a newsstand, but books about or mentioning homosexuality might be, in some places in the U.S., particularly in the South, confined to the adults only section. As David Gerrold points out in his book, "more than one young would-be fan has been prohibited from attending Trek-cons or reading Trek-zines because his/her parents have seen this material." Elsewhere, Roddenberry spoke about being a police officer and having to kill an injured dog to stop its suffering: "I hated animals to be hurt. I did not like violence for violence’s sake. I had many female traits, which is certainly a part of any whole man or woman. I wasn’t part of the crowd that sat around on the sidelines and made fun of people. I always had great respect for people -- even those with different ideas." Gene Roddenberry, interview with David Alexander in The Humanist, April 1991. Quoted in Mark Cushman, These Are The Voyages: TOS: Season Three (Jacobs Brown Press, 2015). In the culture and time in which he was raised, men with female traits were considered gay, whether or not they were.
When asked about his views on Kirk and Spock, Gene answered:
Shatner: Where No Man by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath includes interviews with Roddenberry. Asked if he still saw the Kirk-Spock friendship as "two halves which come together to make a whole" (in reference to the previous interview), Gene replied:
He says he was inspired by Shatner's portrayal of Alexander the Great when choosing him as the actor to play Kirk. The interviewers draw a parallel between Alexander and Hephaestion's friendship and loyalty, and that between Kirk and Spock.
Even though Roddenberry brought up the subject of "physical love", the interviewers were speaking of friendship, and barely brush on the sexual aspect: "There are poems, stories, articles, some of them of professional quality, along that theme. Never mind so much the idea you mentioned of physical love, some do see a possibility of that, too."
Asked about why people found Kirk and Spock's friendship so interesting, he compared it with heterosexual relationships, stating that the physical aspect of sex is not the most important:
The interviewers don't mention slash, but it's apparent that Gene knew of it, since he says he saw some fan magazines, and also the straight magazines. 
The novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry, 1980, contained the much-discussed t'hy'la reference, possibly inspired by his conversations with Marshak and Culbreath. Until this incident, many fans had not realized that they were not alone in imagining a gay love affair for Kirk and Spock. See The Roddenberry Footnote.
=== Early Stories ===
There is no record of the first K/S story to be written and passed around to friends. The most likely candidate is The Ring of Soshern, written by English author Jennifer Guttridge. Editor Jenna Sinclair at Beyond Dreams Press, based on personal correspondence with Guttridge, placed it as having been written in 1968 or possibly 1967. Since the story describes pon farr it could not have been written earlier than September 1967.Jenna Sinclair, "Short History of Early K/S."
Another early story may be "Green Plague" by Audrey Baker, later printed in the zine Son of Grope. An ad for this zine states that the story was "written in the '60s but still wearing well. This was probably the first K/S story to be printed in a British zine; certainly one of the first written." from Universal Translator #22 
The theme was hinted at in some of the very earliest issues of STAG newsletters in late 1973, something that caused quite a bit of discussion. see STAG #3, #4... The first K/S story to appear in a zine was "A Fragment Out of Time" by Diane Marchant, published in Grup 3 (the first 'adult' Star Trek zine) in 1974.Boldly Writing: A Trekker Fan and Zine History, 1967 - 1987 It was written so obliquely that it wasn't clear to many readers that the two people having sex were both men, much less Kirk and Spock.It's rather clear when a Star Trek fanzine prints a story where one person has a "blond head" and the other has a "logical mind". (though in an essay called "Pandora's Box... Again," in the next issue, the author 'outed' the story and defended the idea of K/S)A SHORT HISTORY OF EARLY K/S The piece usually given credit as the first K/S story was published a year later, Alternative: The Epilog to Orion, published by Gerry Downes.
During the "golden age" of K/S fandom in the 1980s, dozens of zines would be published every year. K/S fans also made songvids, attended K/S conventions, and argued with non-K/Sers over their ardent support of the idea. Meanwhile, many fans wrote K&S non-sexual, platonic friendship stories.
Even long after most Star Trek amateur writing moved to the internet, some K/S fans are still publishing and circulating print zines in 2014.
Possibly the first K/S story to be posted to the internet was A Job for the Young, first circulated widely in January of 1995. The author remains unknown.
==="The Premise"===
As the stories about Kirk and Spock as lovers started to appear, conversations both for and against K/S appeared in Trek letterzines and lettercols. 
The entire controversy was unofficially titled "the Kirk/Spock premise" or simply "the premise", as in "I don't believe in 'the premise', but I don't mind those who do" or "I can't stand how all the good writers have started writing about 'the premise'." 
The phrase was used by both sides throughout the late '70s.
==Fandom==
===The Early Print and Online Fandom Divide===
From a fan in 1997: 
* Internet Fans Controversy Du Jour (Sandy Herrold) (1997)
* Slash Fandom & the Internet: An Escapade Perspective by Sandy Herrold (1997)
* I feel the need to say again how important K/S print zines are. by Shelley Butler (1998)
* Please don't interpret the rest of this as a dismissal of zines, because it isn't intended that way. by Jungle Kitty (1998)
* It is said 'Life is Change.' It seems 'K/S is Change,' too. by Nefertari (1998)
* I sometimes wonder if my reluctance to fully embrace K/S on the net may just be a sign that I’m turning into an old fogy. by Mary S. (1998)
* Print Fandom vs. Online Fans, statements by Judith Gran (1999)
* Print versus 'Net Publishing: One Very Biased Fan's View by Lorelei Jones (2001)
===Waves and Patterns in K/S Fiction===
All fandoms seem to have ebbs and flows of certain "types" of fiction, and K/S is no different. Ironically, some of these arguments echoed the reasons some anti-slash fans condemned the genre in the first place. One can also deduce that these kinds of public statements illustrated a more mature fandom in that it was now large enough and old enough to encompass not only cycles but more divergent points of view about what was considered acceptable.
Many fans in the mid-1980s began to complain the rise of what they saw as the rise of offensive and degenerative fiction, specifically that of slave and of BDSM fiction. one fan in 1984 writes: 
In 1988, another fan comments:
In 1993, a fan wrote about hostility to K/S fans: 
Beginning in 1984, and again in 1997, K/S fan writers, feeling that their slash contributions were not getting enough recognition, began holding their own awards: the K/Star Award and the Philon awards respectively.
===Conventions===
A very incomplete list of conventions focused on K/S.
*1984 - 1988 IDICon -- the first true K/S or slash con -- in Houston
*1987 - 2014 Closet Con 1-10, in the UK, run by Rosemary W
*1989 - 1990 Koon-ut-Cali-Con (held in California, of course)
*2004 - 2008 KiScon, run by Kathy Resch
*2011 - 2012 KiScon, run by Amanda Warrington & rhaegal (2011 held in LA and 2012 held in the UK)
*2005 - present KisMet, held in the UK
*2003 - 2005 K/S CONnections, a UK Kirk/Spock slash con
==Early Fan Reactions==
: For some examples of early fan reactions to K/S, see the letters in many issues of The Halkan Council, R & R, Probe, Interstat, and, The K/S Press.''
The early debates over whether or not they 'did it' could get very heated. In May 1977, in the midst of political and social turmoil both pro- and anti-gay rights in the everyday worldSee Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade for some history of what was happening in gay rights at the time. See LGBT History in Michigan and Daniel Tsang, "Gay Ann Arbor Purges," Midwest Gay Academic Journal 1 (1977): 13-19, cited in the 'Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader' by Henry Ablove (1993)) for a look at gay rights in Michigan at the same time as the convention. The Christian Right had begun its takeover of the Republican Party in 1964, but the movement picked up steam around the late '70s-early '80s. See the articles on Moral Majority and the Christian Right for more; also, Holy Terror by Conway and Siegelman, and Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal for some of the history and origins of this movement., the second SeKWester*Con was held in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was the first convention to include panels specifically discussing "The Kirk/Spock Relationship" and "Porno and Sex in Star Trek Fiction". Although there were other panels at this gathering, these were the two sessions to cause controversy and highly emotional debate. Due to the intense popularity of stories like Leslie Fish's "Shelter," the number of explicit sexual pieces in the art display, and a PA glitch which resulted in Connie Faddis' reading of an explicit (but non-slash) narrative getting piped throughout the hotel, many anti-slash fans felt outvoted, and some left the convention with the impression that the majority of ST fandom was now in favor of hardcore X-rated material. The now-familiar age statement was instituted as a result of this discussion, and it's likely that the idea for modern labeling practices ("gen", "het", etc.) started here as well.
When Leslie Fish declared at August Party in 1978 during a panel on whether or not they'd do 'it' that "it's natural: animals do itHomosexual behavior in animalsThe Fabulous Kingdom of Gay Animals in Salon, March 16, 1999.The Gay Animal Kingdom in Seed, June 2006. and Kirk and Spock could do it" her arguments were mind blowing to many. These early debates would often draw huge crowds. The panel room at August Party was jammed with 75-100 people, all shouting and red-faced, trying to convince others of their viewpoint. It was an exciting to be a slash (or an anti-slash) fan. And at first, anti-slash fans seemed to be in the majority, with some wearing "buttons with “K/S" with a circle/slash through it (like the “no smoking” signs.)" at Star Trek conventions. From Vicki Clark's 2007 interview which was published in Legacy.
Reasons for opposing K/S varied. Many fen thought it was immoral to depict them having sex. Others thought it was simply out of character, or fell all over themselves laughing at the thought of Kirk or Spock saying 'I love you' to one another. At least one fan felt that K/S fanworks were "a blight to the minds of fans of any age who believe in ST and see its philosophic goals for the future. Outsiders, such as reporters, insult fandom enough, must we insult ourselves with this trash?" from a fan in Spectrum #29 (December 1976) Others felt that these scenarios were created by people who'd clearly never had that sort of "deviant sex". "...plumbing the depths of the K/Sp relationship, I feel fairly secure in having the opinion that the majority of the people writing have had almost no actual experience with the subject matter. This is not to say that we should not write what we don't know per se - obviously we would all have to give up right now. But since sex in all of its various and deviant forms, already exists with fairly well-defined basics, the people without the experience are standing out like sore...well, make up your own analogy." -- from Spectrum #29, likely Jeff Johnston answering as "Fandom Annie" "Think of the children" was a common argument. "I am not terrified of being propositioned by a man. But I have an 11-year-old brother, and I have a distant fear of him one day being trapped in a room with a desperately lonely full grown male, who might take a liking to my brother...and not take "No" for an answer. (And don't try to tell me that this doesn't happen, because we both know that it does.)" -- from Open Letter by Winston A. Howlett Regarding His Review of "Alternative: Epilog to Orion" (1977). Howlett was likely not speculating. He would have been aware of Walter Breen and Ed Kramer's pedophilia -- an open secret in regular SF and fantasy fandom. "Hey! My ten year old son and I are both avid zine readers and I do not care for him to come in contact with some of the explicit material mentioned in your article. Although he is probably a more mature reader than many adults and even though he already has a more than adequate sex education, I have my hands full handling sex on television and peer questioning in grade school." -- from a letter by Dawn M in Spectrum #38, commenting on the essay The Wall 
The vast and vocal majority of the early slash opponents in Star Trek fandom were female. Some of this may be because male fans either didn't object, didn't have anything to say about the topic, The Myth that Men Don't or Won't Support Slash. This demographic was Fan blogger phene-thyla-mine, March 11, 2014., were unaware that the genre existed, or may have simply cancelled their subscriptions and/or left Star Trek fandom entirely. Or they were active, but wrote using female names or otherwise disguised their identities, just as female writers did. Much of this lack of male opinion about K/S is most likely, however, due to demographics; male fans were a very distinct minority in the writing, purchasing, and creating of Star Trek fiction zines in the first place. David Gerrold and conservative Christian fan Winston Howlett were among the more outspoken male objectors to K/S.
===Fan Comments: 1976===
From a fan in December 1976: 
===Fan Comments: 1977 ===
From the zine Implosion #5 (1977): 
From the editorial in the zine by Vicki Kirlin Berengaria #9 (June 1977): 
In August 1977, Winston Howlett, the conservative Christian editor of Probe, wrote an editorial for issue #11 of that zine where he objected to "adult Trekfic" in general. He called K/S "Kirk and Spock go gay crap", and said fans were "rushing about to jump on the Homosexuality-in-Trekfic bandwagon", but that they were quick to condemn a story in which McCoy has an affair with a younger woman who turns out to be his daughter.
===Fan Comments: 1979===
===Fan Comments: 1980===
From a fan in January 1980: 
From a fan in May 1980: 
=== Fan Comments: 1984===
In 1984, Harlan Ellison wrote a scathing review of The Search for Spock, which was published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In this review, he mentioned "a flourishing underground of soft-core Kirk-shtups-Spock pornzines." In 1985, a fan commented upon this statement: "Ellison hasn't been reading much K/S lately, or he'd know it is likely to be the other way 'round." from JG in K/S & K.S. (Kindred Spirits) #12 
=== Gen Viewpoints===
In response to the slash, there were fans who held the "We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other" opinion. Such views may be attributed to the "Oblivious Gen Fan."
Not all fans agree that the close relationship they see on the screen between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock translates into a sexual one. As K.S. Langley argues, fans are often reading physical intimacy into what is mainly an emotional intimacy. And because slash is in the eye of the beholder, neither position can point to canon for definitive proof:
:...some of the earliest debate about K/S, when the K/S fans would point to instances of physical and/or emotional intimacy as "proof" of the slash, and the non-K/Sers (and anti-K/Sers) would respond that physical and/or emotional intimacy is not necessarily proof of a sexual/romantic relationship. And, K/S fan that I've always been, I agree with that. With Kirk and Spock, Starsky and Hutch, and countless other "buddy pairings," epic friendships, etc. you also would expect to see such intimacy. Now, you can make a case that such levels of intimacy certainly don't argue *against* the possible extrapolation of a slash relationship, but, in and of itself, it cannot be taken as definitive "proof" either." "Spock Shaped Snickerdoodles, dated July 27, 2009, accessed Feb 9, 2011; WebCite.
As evidence of the subjective nature of what is and is not "K/S" she goes on to say: "For example, I recall a very moving letter from Spock to McCoy in another zine, in which Spock wrote that he loved McCoy. He did not mean it romantically. It was not unusual for gen writers (then or now) to include things like that in their stories. They didn't see it as slash, and they didn't include it as slash." Ibid. 
There is still a tendency on the part of some slash fans to regard this attitude as naive at best. Some respond by pointing out numerous instances in the original episodes where they feel that the dialogue, stage blocking, and other theatrical elements were deliberately engineered to subtly convey the message that Kirk and Spock were, or would become, romantically involved. See Brittany Diamond's Analyzation of Amok Time and Killa's Where No One Had Slashed Before. Leonard Nimoy was once asked by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath about the prevalence of slash and other sexual premises in fan fiction. He refused to speculate, merely stating that he and Shatner must have done something they were unaware of which caused fans to respond with such ideas.In Shatner: Where No Man, p. 193.
====D.C. Fontana on "Canon Slash"====
D.C. Fontana, a prominent TPTB and fan herself, was asked about K/S in May 2016, and replied as follows:
Numerous blog entries and discussion board contributions enumerate instances of perceived slash in the professionally published Star Trek novels and theatrical films.Why Slash was the Whole Point of Star Trek, The Motion Picture. Apparently one of the reasons the film had to have a secret slash message was that without it, "it is simply inconceivable that the creator of such an intelligent series would let its first foray onto the big screen be such a trite science fiction story."
See discussion on Controversies Over Slash and Hurt/Comfort.
===Did K/S Save Trek Fandom? ===
Some fans believe that slash in fandom provides a rich premise for creativity, and in fact, can rejuvenate discussion and creativity. In 1984, one famous zine's author said: 
===Fan Love for K/S===
====2000====
 
====2014====
====2023====
== Visibility of K/S ==
In some ways, Kirk and Spock were always "out" yet never out.
Because of the early objections to K/S (and because it was the first visible slash media fandom), K/S has always struggled to find a balance between being hidden and being 'out' to other fans. The matter of visibility to the mundane world and/or TPTB was to some fans a separate issue; other fans lumped all forms of 'outing' together as equal threats to fandom. (See TPTB).
Early K/S fans would often operate with general fandom as part of a sublayer - while they fully participated in the media fandom community, they often had a parallel and separate second slash life. Zine publishers struggled to find printers who would publish their zines and art, to find conventions where they could openly sell their zines and to find other fans who were interested in K/S. It was not until the 1980s that the first K/S conventions were held. Some Star Trek fan clubs demanded a 'loyalty oath' (swearing they were not, not had they ever been, a slash fan). In her interview in Legacy Kathy Resch recounts an incident from the late 1970s: "Person A, a Big Name Fan who ran a fan club for Unnamed Trek Actor, was pitching a fit about this Horrible Nasty Zine and was asking fan club members to basically swear a “loyalty oath” that under no circumstances would they ever have anything to do with said Horrible Nasty Zine or K/S at all. (Almost all my tribbers [contributors] were members of said fan club.)" However, most Star Trek fans turned a blind eye to slash and allowed K/S fandom to operate on the basis of careful screening, segregation and the fannish equivalent of secret handshakes. This may have led to the mentor or gatekeeper practice mentioned by Camille Bacon-Smith in her book Enterprising Women"Mentors, particularly for complete neophytes like myself, are often more traditional members of the community and act as gatekeepers. They lead the new member to the art and literature that either requires minimal decoding for an outsider, or that will not shock the sensibilities of a reader who has not yet learned to decode the messages embedded in the community's product. Judy [Segal] mentioned the hurt-comfort genre as one she found personally troubling; she dismissed the relatively new homoerotic fiction." Camille Bacon-Smith, Enterprising Women, p. 93, "Training New Members"., and the concept of the feral fan who enters fandom without said mentoring.
Once media fandom fractured into multiple other fandoms, which in turn each had their own slash communities, some of the pressure on K/S fandom was removed. But perhaps because of their early experiences in fandom communities, they remained remarkably closed and distrustful of outsiders, long after other fans had moved online and had openly begun talking about and posting slash. In fact, even as late as 1999, K/S fandom viewed the Internet and Internet fans with hostility and fear.To contrast, the The Starsky & Hutch Archive went online in the mid 1990s. Sentinel fandom had their slash fan fiction archive up by 1996. The Due South Archive began in 1994.
In September 1999, Judith Gran penned an essay on the fears of K/S fandom titled "Censored" where she attempted to demystify Internet fandom by pointing out that K/S fandom has not really been as underground and hidden as the community liked to believe and that these 'new" fans were not posing a risk to the K/S community. 
The editors of the K/S Press letterzine refused to print Judith's letter, deeming it too inflammatory for their community. Some fans noted that Judith's letter disagreed with the letterzine editor's argument that K/S needed to remain underground, and, in some minds, the refusal to print the letter only validated Judith's position. The letter was then posted openly to the Internet. Link to original post, archived here.
Like all media fandoms, the back and forth debate proved to be moot as the global reach and immediacy of the Internet permanently transformed fandoms and their communities. K/S, like other fandoms, became as visible (or invisible) as any other online activity.
===Outsider Reactions===
Outsider reactions to K/S and to slash in general vary. Fans often do not distinguish between academics or the press writing about K/S - both carry the same potential (in fannish minds) for ridicule and mischaracterization. 
Fan fiction is often synonymous with slash in the press. Non-fans reading these articles could easily receive the impression that all fan fiction is slash.
Press
*Going Boldly with Kirk and Spock (1994)
*Please Captain, Not in Front of the Klingons (1996)
*Luke Skywalker Is Gay? (2000)
*Hobbits Gone Wrong (2004) concerns fan fiction in terms of the Victoria Bitter Wank described in When a Fan Hits the Shit.
*Five Reasons Pop Culture Is Run By Fan Fiction (2011) "As you might anticipate from fans who suddenly realize they have the capacity to mold and shape the universe of their favorite stories, most fanfiction revolves around characters boning one another."
Academia
*Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992)
*Pass the Crisco, Spock (1996)
===Earliest Use of "K/S" and "Kirk/Spock" as a Sexual Relationship===
See Slash Terminology. 
Also see The Premise.
Fannish tradition holds that the word "slash" originated with Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction, when Kirk/Spock was used as the label for a story where the relationship between Kirk and Spock was laced with sexual tension, whether it was acted on or not. This label allowed fans to differentiate those sexual relationship stories from the ones about Kirk and Spock’s friendship, which were sometimes labelled using "&". As fandoms gathered around new films and television series, the / mark became common as an indicator of a sexual relationship between same-sex characters.
Klangley explained:
Not all fans were familiar with the term. This fan in 1992 wrote: 
Terms like gen and het arose to distinguish these types of stories from slash. Although heterosexual narratives can of course be explicit on the level of an R, X or NC17 rating, they were more acceptable than slash at that time. Labeling a story as slash could provide a warning of criminal risk as well. In the early 1970s, any literature depicting homosexuality, even if not explicit, was considered pornography in most states (see Slash Controversies#Illegality of Slash) and illegal to be sent through the U.S. mail.
These are some uses of "K/S" and "Kirk/Spock" as they specifically referred to a sexual relationship, though even that can be hard to untangle:
* "Kirk/Spock" from a review by Connie Faddis of Grup #4 in the letterzine, The Halkan Council #12 (Nov 1975) ("Diane Marchant wrote an article on the Kirk/Spock homosexual love affair premise that's been buzzing around fannish conversations for at least a year.") 
* "Kirk/Spock" from an ad for The Sensuous Vulcan, printed in Stardate: Unknown #2 (1976) ("It's going to include a Kirk/Spock pon-farr-in-the-cave-story (first of a series) by Gayle F that will knock your eyes out."
* "Kirk/Spock" from a review for Contact #1, printed in Spectrum #23 (February 1976) "The best aspect is its concept...the exploration of the Kirk/Spock relationship. (If that isn't clear to you, you are probably a Klingon and shouldn't be reading this anyway.) This is a fantastic field, one of much interest to many of us...")
* "Kirk/Spock" from an ad for Thrust in Scuttlebutt #2 (July 1977) ("An exploration of the erotic/sensual side of Star Trek. Focus has narrowed to center on one multi-faceted theme: the Kirk/Spock sexual relationship.")
* "K/S" from the editor in R and R #5 (November 1977) ("In most of the K/S stories we've seen, the authors seem to want to eat their cake and have it too — to turn the relationship into a relationship of sexual intimacy without dealing with the quite fundamental changes this new closeness would impose.")
* "K/S" from a fan in R and R #5 (November 1977) ("Basically, I am against it for other logical reasons. Most important of all, if we accept a Kirk-Spock homosexual love affair (hereafter called K/S), we are saying in effect that the only way two people can have a close, caring relationship is with sex.")
* "Kirk/Spock" from a letter by Susan J. Bridges in Obsc'zine #2 (1977) ("I am not trying to attack a Kirk/Spock sexual relationship in general.") 
* "K/S" from a review (author not credited) of Obsc'zine #1 and #2 in Time Warp #1 (1977) ("Also, if the K/S homosexual relationship does not thrill you, be forewarned that many of the stories in the first two issues of OBSC'ZINE were oriented in that direction.") 
* "Kirk/Spock" from a submission request by Ellen Kobrin for Companion #1 in Scuttlebutt $5 (Jan/Feb 1978) ("This zine will trace the development of the Kirk/Spock relationship from its beginnings. The editors view the relationship as a warm and loving and acknowledge the validity of physical expression of that love. If you have any hangups about physical intimacy between members of the same sex do not read Companion.")
* "K/S" from a review by Ellen Kobrin in the fanzine Turbolift Review #1, printed in Scuttlebutt #6 (Apr/May 1978) ("It’s heavy on the K/S relationship, and will delight K/S fans. Not X-rated, nothing you wouldn't let your mother read, though mine did.")
* "K/S" from the editorial in the letterzine, Not Tonight Spock! #1 (Jan 1984) ("We hope NTS will become a place for all K/S fans to share thoughts, ideas and opinions concerning our 2 favorite guys as well as a place one can drool over what’s available and what’s proposed in K/S zines.")
==Influential K/S Works==
:For a full listing of K/S fanfiction on Fanlore, see :Category:Star Trek TOS K/S Fanfiction. For K/S Art documented on Fanlore see :Category:Star Trek TOS K/S Art
===Zines and Fanfiction===
thumb|The Price and The Prize 2nd edition (1986), artist is Gayle F 
*A Fragment Out of Time by Diane Marchant (1974)
*Alternative: An Epilogue to Orion by Gerry Downes (1976)
*A Brief Moment of Light by Tracey Alexander (1976)
*Shelter, by Leslie Fish, came out in Warped Space 20; the sequel Poses was printed in Obsc'zine #1 in 1977.
*Desert Heat, a (novella) written and illustrated by Gayle F in The Sensuous Vulcan in 1977
*Mahko Root #1 publishes a single K/S story; the second issue in 1978 contains six of them
*Thrust, the first K/S-only fanzine, published in 1978 by Carol Frisbie. At the time, it was considered to have a shockingly explicit cover (by Gayle F).
*Naked Times, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had thirty-two issues, publishes issue #1 in 1978.
*Between Friends by Gayle F, believed the first published threesome, a Kirk/Spock/McCoy story, printed in Obsc'zine 3 in 1978.
*The Rack by J. Emily Vance (1977), a novel-length story that attempted to refute K/S.
*Nightvisions by Susan K. James and Carol Frisbie, one of the first K/S novels, pub'd in 1979. Kirk is blinded, and Spock decides to leave Star Fleet to be with him. Beautifully illustrated.
*The Price and The Prize, published in 1981, 141 pages of the most scorching fiction fandom had read up to that time, published and illustrated by Gayle F. (Most copies of The Price and the Prize coming into Britain were seized by Customs, even the trib (contributors') copies. The Foresmutters Project)
*T'hy'la, the longest-running K/S anthology zine, first published in 1981.
*First Time, a K/S anthology zine that eventually had over sixty issues, published issue #1 in 1984.
*Courts of Honor by Syn Ferguson, a huge, novel-length zine by Syn Ferguson, published in 1985, with a K/S storyline but featuring a number of secondary characters and romances as well as an intricate political plot. Sequel to The Price, the first story in The Price and The Prize.
:Here is a list of Kirk/Spock_Zines. Also see :Category:Star Trek TOS Slash Zines. Also see: The Foresmutter's Bibliography of Early, Early K/S.
===Fanart===
*[listening to your first officer's heartbeat is totally logical] by lupeymoony on Tumblr
*[its those little moments] by penncilscratchins on Tumblr
*[Oh, to see without my eyes] by dontdierobb on Tumblr
*K/S Calendar by Liz Liz made at least two calendars, which a fan described in an issue of The K/S Press.
===Non-fiction === 
*NOME 8, K/S anthology zine with occasional articles, published Joanna Russ' "Another Addict Raves About K/S" (which Russ later publishes in one of her own books.)
*Universal Translator, was an adzine with occasional reviews. Fans would circle zines they wanted desperately to buy much like kids used to circle toys in the Sears Christmas Wishbook.
*The Footnote: An Explication de Texte, a 1980 article, was an awe-inspiring step-by-step refutation of the idea that Roddenberry's footnote in the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture disproves K/S.The Footnote by Judith Gran, 1997 on alt.startrek.creative
*A Logical Look At Amok Time, by K'Sal, circa 2003, an essay that argues that K/S is 'subversively' written into the canon in this episode.
===Letterzines/Reviewzines===
*Not Tonight Spock! (June 1984-Winter 1987)
*On the Double (November 1986-January 1996)
*The LOC Connection (January 1989-December 1993)
*Come Together (January 1994-August 1996)
*The K/S Press (September 1996-present day)
===Vids===
*Both Sides Now -- the first fannish songtape created by Kandy Fong ~ 1980
* Total Eclipse of the Heart -- vid by Caren Parnes ~ 1991
*Dante's Prayer -- vid by Killa ~ 1996
* Closer -- pon farr vid by Killa and T Jonesy ~ 2005
*Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps -- vid by Killa ~ 2007
*Justify My Love -- vid by T'Gin ~ 2007
==Online Fandom== 
For much of K/S history, K/S fans have participated in fandom through conventions, fanzines, and other offline spaces. However, K/S fans have also found and created spaces to gather online since the very beginning of online fandom.
From a fan in early 1995: 
===Usenet===
*In 1982 net.startrek net.startrek was created as one of the first 20 or so newsgroups. As part of the Great Usenet Renaming, it became rec.arts.startrek in 1986.
*In 1990, alt.startrek.creative appeared. Soon after, alt.tv.star-trek.tos started, and almost from the start, the k/s-ers and gen fans pushed back and forth. One prominent k/s fan got tired of the same arguments being used against k/s over and over, and created the K/S Retort sometime after 1990.K/S Retort
*In 1996: Killa (as Killashandra) posted "Turning Point", the first attributed K/S story on the internet, to alt.startrek.creative.
*In 1998, the Rude Person meme began on Alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated, which resulted in a group of K/S parody stories written in various styles and dialects.
===Mailing Lists===
*KirkLovesSpockFic
*KirkSpockCentral
*The Kirk/Spock Zine Review Mailing List
===Archives and Challenges===
*The Kirk/Spock Fanfiction Archive accepts both TOS and AOS stories
*All Ages Kirk/Spock Archive
*Kirk/Spock Advent Calendar - 2002 - 2017 (allowed both TOS and AOS fanworks)
*K/S Valentine - 2010 - 2016 (allows both TOS and AOS fanworks)
*K/S Big Bang - 2012 - 2014 (allowed TOS, AOS, and RPF fanworks)
*Kirk/Spock slash on Fanfiction.net, a Star Trek: TOS community archive
*T'hy'la Bang (2013 - present) welcomes TOS, AOS, and mirrorverse
===Social Media Groups===
*The Kirk/Spock Slash Community on LiveJournal was created in 2006, and is still active in 2019, with posts about fanfic, zines and KisCon. Its tagline is "Boldly slashing since 1966!"
*The Kirk/Spock Slash Community on Dreamwidth dates back to the launch of DW in 2009. The most recent posts are from 2014.
*Now defunct: KirkSpockSlash network on the social media platform grou.ps: founded in October 2011 by Kelli Bastet, closed in September 2017.
*Kirk/Spock Forum on Slack
*Kirk/Spock- Poetic/Slash/Art is a Facebook group that dates back to 2010, and is still active in 2019. It describes itself as "a place where we can share the love of the very first slash pairing."
*Spirk.OTP: a Facebook group that was active between 2011 and 2015
*Spirk: A Kirk/Spock Facebook group active between 2013 and 2015
=== Awards ===
* In 2023, the relationship won 1st place in the second MLM Ship Bracket Tournament out of 32 entrants.
==Further Reading & Meta==
*for a full listing of K/S Meta on Fanlore, see :Category:Star Trek TOS K/S Meta
*Kirk Loves Spock by D. Trull (1999)
*Kirk and Spock: The Straight Story by Gamin Davis argues that Kirk and Spock are not in a sexual or romantic relationship (early 2000s)
*Where No One Had Slashed Before by Killa (2004)
* (2015)
*When a Man Loves a Vulcan: The beautiful history of Spock and Kirk's unrealized lust. (2017)
Please, Captain. Not in front of the Klingons.
*In Case You Were Wondering, William Shatner Knows Exactly What ‘Star Trek’ Slash Fiction Is by Ross A. Lincoln at thewrap.com (2020)
==Notes==
==References==
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