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Fanfolks today need to remember how important The Premise was.

Y'all have heard of The Premise, right?

See, historically there have always been people who saw an extra layer of gayness on certain pairs of fictional people (you just thought of several), and people Back Then even wrote their own fanfic (or as they were called at the time, "pastiches"), but the first widespread queer fanwork to really define the fanfiction genre was KIRK AND SPOCK. Kirk/Spock. K/S. The very first slashfics.

Why this work was vastly, overwhelmingly written by straight women is a discussion for another time, but it was, so that's the main perspective I'm gonna consider here.

How do you - a statistically middle-class, 30+, stay-at-home wife and mother - how do you write slashfic ao3-style in the 1960's before the internet?

Carefully.

Through letters with friends, phone calls, pen pals, and sometimes - sometimes - clandestine meetings of small groups. Whole novels were written communally, round-robin style, by sending typed or handwritten additions chapter by chapter to each other. These were all underground, some deep underground; even the early Trekkie fanzines of the time wouldn't touch them.

And keep in mind, few of these stories were explicitly even sexual! But they were all about a very, very close relationship between two men. In the 1960's.

Guess how cool everyone else was about this.

Actually, for their part, Gene Rodenberry and the other writers were fine with it, saying that they had deliberately written the characters to be two halves of a whole, and if you wanna read it that way, yeah sure, go right ahead. Shatner and Nimoy took it all in good humor, and seemingly still do, each guy basically gesturing to the other and chuckling "I mean, who wouldn't?"

But elsewhere there was vicious backlash against The Premise, and not just within the fandom. This was still at a time in the US and UK when various "sodomy" and "decency" laws made no distinction between homosexual sex acts and just, like, directly lighting another man's cigarette with your cigarette in public. (That, sadly, is not a fucking joke.)

It was probably the closest some suburban cishet women came to understanding the pain of being in the closet. They had to protect this secret from their friends and family at all cost. There were cases of divorces where women lost custody of their children because their writing had come to light.

Can you imagine having such a burning desire to write for your OTP that you were willing to lose everything over it? Even if you were never caught, you still had to be willing to wait weeks, months, to receive a letter in the mail that you had to carefully intercept, read in secret, and then add your own chapter t, also in secret, and then send off, perhaps never to be seen again.

These people were goddamn heroes, and they laid the foundation for the world we live in today. A world where we can read, write, comment on, or share - in a matter of seconds! - literature about two background characters from two different franchises enjoying a really specific kink involving vacuums or something. And that's objectively amazing.

Raise a toast to our fanfiction elders, who simped in the darkness so we could simp in the light of day.

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Explain it to me like I am 5

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I feel seen

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Travis is 6'5", 250 lbs of solid muscle. Handsome, smart, broad-shoulders, great sense of humor. Let Taylor have her fun. She's overdue for a guy who appreciates who she is.

I have to say I think Travis Kelce is the most attractive man Taylor has ever dated. Like he's not my type but I get it.

Get it, girl.

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what they dont tell you about growing up as a very lonely little girl is that you grow up and still a part of you remains that very lonely little girl

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365 days of captain swan :: day 112

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I'm not usually attracted to guys with hairy chests, but he's working it.

I swear to god he closes his eyes and sort of savors the closeness for a moment in the first one

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Happy 21st of September!

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Caitriona Balfe as the Bonnie Wee Swordsman™

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This is fascinating!

Please watch this. It made me wonder if this is what Jamie did to make a book in his printshop. So interesting and the book was a piece of art.

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Looking good! Giving off some Paul Newman type vibes. 

Blue🔥

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I miss Fergus! And I’m so sad we won’t get the scene from Book 7 between Jamie and Fergus. "For a long time,” [Fergus] said at last, “when I was small, I pretended to myself that I was the bastard of some great man. All orphans do this, I think,” he added dispassionately. “It makes life easier to bear, to pretend that it will not always be as it is, that someone will come and restore you to your rightful place in the world.” He shrugged. “Then I grew older, and knew this was not true. No one would come to rescue me. But then--” He turned his head and gave Jamie a smile of surpassing sweetness. “Then I grew older still, and discovered that, after all, it was true. I am the son of a great man.” The hook touched Jamie’s hand, hard and capable. “I wish for nothing more."

OUTLANDER (TEMPERANCE)    ⤷  César Domboy as Fergus Fraser

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Yes. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

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Jules Verne's striking tomb in Amiens shows him breaking out from his own grave and reaching to the sky, a sign of his immortality. Sculptor Albert Roze used Verne's own death mask to make the statue's face.