#kirk meta

[marlinspirkhall]

Laughing evilly at a recent comment on my five-year-old Spirk fic, FSTLY:

“The most striking part is how you described Jim‘s trauma in this story. It was so vivid and felt so real that it absolutely broke my heart. Also your Kobayashi Maru and Jim‘s solution to “cheating” it? Holy shit. I think that is the best and also most fucked up interpretation of the test I have seen so far. I think it really added to Jim’s character journey but Jesus Christ.” [X]

[trekkiehood]

Ok I keep seeing posts about AoS erasing Tarsus IV and specifically how they made growing up without a dad somehow worse than witnessing genocide.

But I have to disagree.

For one, we have no confirmation that Tausus IV didn't happen. It still could have happened.

Second, I don't think AoS says that what happened with his dad was more traumatic. It's just a different kind of trauma.

Tarsus IV was something horrible. Something that can be blocked from the memory. Something that happened to a boy from a stable family who got help. It was traumatic. It was terrible. But it was a piece of his life, not his whole life.

Now losing his dad was horrible in a different way. It was not an event. It was not a horrific thing that he saw or experienced over months. This was his life. From the moment he was born he was dealing with it. There was no stable family to recover with. There was an absent mom and abusive step dad. There was no getting help and moving on. This was a constant and daily trauma.

It's PTSD versus C-PTSD.

TOS!Kirk could compartmentalize. He could shove that horrific event back and get back to life. He still had nightmares. He still had flashbacks. He still remembered. He still had survivors guilt. But it happened and he knows he needs to focus on what's next not what happened.

AOS!Kirk didn't have any compartments available. He couldn't shove it away it was his every waking moment. When he did get out of the house it was all he'd ever known. There was no "pre traumatic event" to fall back on and adjust to. Not until Starfleet when he does have something new to focus on do things fall into place. But this is new when we see him. This is him finding a stable life for the first time after a straight twenty years of trauma. So even by ST:Beyond he's better but still not completely healed (in comparison to Kirk having two full decades to heal from the trauma of Tarsus IV as of s1 of TOS).

It's not that AOS!Kirk is more traumatized or that losing his dad was more traumatic than the events on Tarsus IV, it's just that TOS!Kirk had a more stable life and thus was able to compartmentalize his trauma better than the life long unstable AOS! Kirk.

[wisteria-lodge]

Concept: Kirk’s Enterprise *did* have a designated First Officer.

BUT he was tragically eaten by a lava monster about a month into the 5 year mission. They’ve been telling Starfleet that Lieutenant Commander Smith is fine. He’s just in the bathroom. Away from the coms. All the time.

(I mean. It’s not like Kirk actually wants a Riker-type who goes on on awesome planet adventures while he has to STAY BEHIND). 

[adenil-umano]

I’m rewatching the original series right now, and one thing I love is that anytime Kirk fucks up he isn’t afraid to apologize. Kirk yells at McCoy? He apologizes. Kirk gets snippy with the bridge crew? Apologizes. He says sorry every time he lets the stress of the situation get the better of him. He never blames any of them for “causing” his reaction; he just says he was wrong and tries to do better.

Honestly, the world needs more men who are willing to take responsibility for their actions.

[botanycameos]

Which allergy did Kirk have in TOS?

He was allergic to Retinax V, something he would have needed because of his vision going down in later years. Bones gave him a pair of reading glasses as a birthday gift so he could read comfortably despite not being able to take the Retinax. :)

It’s possible that he had other allergies we don’t know of in TOS as well. Or, it might be that he has more allergies in the new timeline (such as the one that triggered his reaction to the vaccine in the 2009 movie) as a result of being born premature, which comes with a higher risk for that.

In TOS, Jim was born on Earth, after the safe return of his parents on the USS Kelvin. In AOS, since that didn’t go well because of the Narada, he ended up being born much earlier than he would otherwise have.

[obaewankenope]

but what if Jim trained tkd in secret because he dreamt of kicking his step-father's ass he probably learnt to fight when he was younger... i bet he read books and learnt all the techniques but before he could beat his step-dad's ass sam ran away and he drove the car off the cliff and got sent to tarsus iv and had to survive six months of hell and then he never saw frank or his mum again b/c he decided to go and travel

[deathbygorgeous-golden-captain]

Kirk-Centric Meta Post 01: This Side of Paradise

Long delayed, I know, and I am so sorry. /ooooooooooooooooo\ Turns out college screws with me a lot more than I realized.

ANYWAY, to recap, and to clue all the new followers in (welcome, by the way! :D), greenscrewdriverand I (@academicgangster) liveblogged This Side of Paradise, Obsession, Metamorphosis, Balance of Terror, A Taste of Armageddon and A Piece of the Action back in March, and I promised I'd write up our meta for this blog because a) this is a TOS-Kirk blog and you can never have too much TOS-Kirk meta, and b) we are pretty awesome at it together. ;) (Green is seriously awesome and her meta for both TOS and nu!Trek is absolutely excellent, just saying. :D) We totally intend to continue the liveblogs too, so this is post one of several. :D

Without further ado! This Side of Paradise.

Jim is very physical with his friends, but he doesn't like being touched by people he's unfamiliar with (he's pretty disgruntled at Sandoval grabbing him by the arms): this is corroborated by A Piece of the Action, and it may be natural or an effect of Tarsus; I'm inclined to think it's the former, because it's not all that significant.

“Gentlemen - we’re debating in a vacuum. Let’s go get some answers.” Jim's turn of phrase is hot, 'kay thanks

This particular mystery must have given Jim one hell of a bellyache (ref. The Man Trap)

Jim is sometimes just cut off before he can imply something rude. Both Green and I love the hell out of this (fiery not-quite-politically-correct!Jim! =D) aaand would totally love to see it happen to nu!Kirk. AND ALSO IN FIC SET IN EITHER UNIVERSE YES PLEASE. This episode: Bones: "Would you like to use a butterfly net on him, Jim?" Jim: "No, I think we’ll use a—" Corbomite: Bones: "What are you going to do with that six percent when they give it to you, Jim?” Jim: “I’m gonna take it, and I’m going to—”

I love how Bones denies ever saying things he definitely said to Jim ("I thought you said you might like him if he mellowed down a little?" "I never said that!") (This remembering-throwaway-lines-people-don’t-remember-saying thing happens to me pretty often, so I'm inclined to think Jim is the sort of person who remembers odd little details. I find this adorable.) This happened in Corbomite too: "Aren't you the one who always says a little suffering is good for the soul?" "I never say that." ... "Doctor McCoy, I've heard you say that man is ultimately superior to any mechanical device." "No, I never say that either." "I could've sworn I heard you say that."

I once saw a theory somewhere that Jim wasn’t affected by the spores because of jealousy over Spock (re: Leila), but it could just as easily be a) the frustration with this whole maddening situation and b) anguish at what is not just insubordination but basically betrayal of his trust by Spock. So yeah, this scene/episode is heartrending for shippers and non-shippers alike. :D? Also, whatever it was that prevented the spores from working the first time, they worked the second time because Jim was in despair and therefore more vulnerable than if he were in the throes of some more active emotion (like, hey presto, anger.)

Just quoting Green directly here because she says it all: Jim actually chokes with surprise when he first sees drugged-up happy lady-macking Spock. He croaks instead of speaking. Jesus, Jim’s so wrongfooted when Spock’s abruptly not cooperating any more. For somebody like Jim who builds such strong emotional trusts with people, Spock suddenly not having his back is… not what he was expecting to deal with today. At all I’m thinking his proverbial bellyache just got worse.

Quoting myself: Jim does NOT buy the idea of an external-agent-imposed paradise. Sometimes I think he’s the most sensible member of that crew of people who are…well, as nuts as he is. XD Then again, he did take the Kobayashi Maru. Maybe this wasn’t what it was meant to teach, but this is what he took away from it instead. …In sort of an inverted way, because the Kobayashi Maru was an external-agent-imposed dystopia he didn’t buy. …I swear I was going somewhere with this...

Quoting Green: Jim’s increasingly distressed to be met with mutiny from his crew and no support from his dearest friends. :( And here’s where they explore the theme of the episode, which I love because meta-wise it’s a good message, and because in-story it tells us a lot about Kirk’s POV. His determination that a full life requires challenge and difficulty ties in with what he later says to Sybok about needing his pain because it’s part of what makes him who he is.

Jim is torn between having his lady all to himself (but I cannot pilot her alone) and desperate worry over his crew (and the fact that he has nothing to offer against paradise) and it is heartbreaking. T________T He literally has no one left to talk to except her - which he promptly does. Also, re the previous point, quoting myself: "I don't know what I can offer against...paradise." A paradise I can’t subscribe to because there is no true paradise - not to my belief, or possibly not for men like me.

The little black non-medal-containing case in Jim's safe might possibly be the recording Spock and Bones played after his 'death' in The Tholian Web. Yay continuity!

Ending this with a headcanon (which is not my asthma!Jim one because I'm pretty sure you've all totally had it with that one :P):

Bones: “I’d like to see the medical records of this expedition.” Jim: “Yes, I thought you might.” *produces tape with glorious smirk of smug radiance*

I bet Jim likes to do this sort of thing for everyone. Like if Scotty were talking about some new technical journal and poof, he finds it on his PADD the next day. Or Uhura talking about missing a particular variety of flower that grows in her home country and suddenly there’s a bottle of that flower’s scent in her room. Or Spock and Bones mysteriously receiving a lovely warm sweater each after City on the Edge. Or newfangled software for the Enterprise computer.

And I bet he does it with his significant others too. JIM. <3

[academicgangster]

Oh man yeah, and he did get bullied at least a little while he was at the Academy as well. :( And Gary Mitchell being the manipulative douche he turned out to be, at least while he was in the Academy (see: his manufacturing a fake relationship for Kirk that got so serious poor Jim literally nearly married her) and I guess the picture of Jim's time at the Academy is a pretty lonely one. :( no wonder he was glad to get out into space

Finnegan, yeah. Jim being the sensitive intellectual he is, he’d definitely have been bully-bait in the Academy. :( And YES, even apart from that manufactured relationship (…which could possibly have been Carol Marcus according to fanon, but I’ve never been able to make up my mind whether I believe that or not; I actually tend to think it was Ruth…) I’ve never thought Gary was really the good friend Jim thought he was. :/

So what my headcanon boils down to is, in essence, that Jim never had as many friends, or even as many kindred spirits or as malice-free and sensible an atmosphere, as he did on the Enterprise. I’m just going to quote myself here: Charm-The-Daylights-Out-Of-Everyone-Possible is simply Jim’s default mode. It’s the way he’s made. It’s the way he copes with all the people he’s surrounded with in his chosen life among the stars, because he’s really an intensely private person (if you meet someone you click with, well and good, but what of all the others? The way I see it, he’s constantly grateful that the Enterprise has so many like-minded, accepting, wonderful people aboard who care exactly as little about stereotypes as he does - and when requesting new personnel, he combs their files carefully for signs of just such characteristics.)