K/S on Computers: A Taste of Armageddon?

You may be looking for the 1972 Star Trek cookbook: A Taste of Armageddon.

Meta
Title:	K/S on Computers: A Taste of Armageddon?
Creator:	Lyrastar
Date(s):	July 2007
Medium:	print, CD
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:	slash, K/S, Zine Fandom, Star Trek: TOS
External Links:
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K/S on Computers: A Taste of Armageddon? is a part of a three-part series by Lyrastar called "The Legacy of K/S on the Internet. It was published in Legacy #2.

"The Legacy of K/S on the Internet"

• K/S on Computers: A Taste of Armageddon?
• Blurring the Lines: Online or in Print, It's Still K/S
• If They're Called Web Pages, Shouldn't They Be Collected Into Zines?

About

The author examines the history of K/S as an underground fandom.

Some subjects discussed:

• Is K/S Fair Use under copyright law, quotes Judith Gran
• Farfalla's 2003 site All Ages Kirk/Spock Archive and its in-roads as a family-friendly slash site for K/S fans which included nothing explicit -- "She set out to collect fan works celebrating Kirk and Spock’s love that she considered suitable for a pre-teen reader. Some was K&S, some was pre-K/S, but much of it was stories that made it clear that Kirk and Spock were a romantic couple. She collected K/S love stories that—had they been about a heterosexual couple— wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows when directed at young readers, and she promoted it as widely as possible. In addition she also ensured the text did not contain any adult or anatomical terms that would lead to the site being blocked from schools or libraries."
• who takes responsibility for allowing underage readers access to materials, discusses age statements, the short-lived 1996 Communications Decency Act, SlashCity's guidelines, the problems Lady Kardasi’s Domain had with Pay Pal

Excerpts

Your humble associate Internet editor once confessed to a sadness that during the early 1980’s, she was unable to discover K/S zines at Star Trek conventions, although she now understands that they were almost certainly there. Said Jenna, “Of course. We wanted it that way.”

In the earliest years of K/S the fear of discovery and being shut down by Paramount ran deep. Operating underground seemed the most prudent choice. Through the years of this Legacy project, we see K/S creeping slowly and tentatively further out into limited view to reach more potential readers—from hotel rooms, to under dealer tables, to on the table but with explicit covers concealed—but always with fear that the next bit of exposure would be too much, attract the attention of the controlling corporations, and result in The End of All Things. None of those changes approach the change in magnitude of visibility of Kirk/Spock fiction appearing on the World Wide Web. As Miss Manners—Judith Martin—wrote, “You can hardly go more public than putting things online. We used to use the phrase ‘shouting it from the rooftops’ to indicate going public, but you could shout yourself hoarse, put it in the newspapers, announce it on television, and still not reach a fraction of the potential audience....” To make matters more unnerving, print Kirk/Spock fandom had been a close—at times, even closed—community. The active participants knew most of the others at least by name. These stories online were appearing from outside sources, and the element of the unknown added to the concern. And the online posters did have very different attitudes as to the level of exposure that K/S could tolerate. Not only were the online stories not hidden from general access, but they were actively promoted in general Star Trek forums or sites of other tangential interest such as The Nifty Erotic Stories Archive—nifty.org—where it seemed that flaunting of K/S might make it vulnerable to attempts to shut it down. Says long-time fan Ivy Hill, “I’ll admit when I first learned K/S was beginning to appear on the ‘net, I was appalled and frightened. Since I’ve always kept K/S a carefully guarded secret, I believed that placing it out there on an electronic platter for all the world to see was suicidal. I thought Paramount would come pouncing down on us with attorneys waving legal papers. I thought my neighbors and co-workers would discover K/S and be up in arms! I could see all sorts of dire consequences to making K/S public. I had always perceived it as an ‘underground’ concept, and I desperately wanted it to remain there where it was safe—where I was safe. I honestly believed exposing it on the Internet would be the downfall of K/S.

“But my cry went unheard, and Web sites appeared like toadstools after a summer rain. The men in suits didn’t come waving their subpoenas. My co-workers have never mentioned K/S or pinned me against a wall to ascertain if I am into ‘that kind’ of Star Trek. Nothing happened except that K/S began to flourish and grow in this entirely new environment.”

In this vein, I would note that as of the time of publication, the only action against an online K/S publisher (other than deletion/refusal of hosting) was over money coming in via the site. In 2003, PayPal—having changed its Acceptable Use Policy to “not allow accounts to send or receive payments for adult content or products”—confiscated the funds in the account of the owner of Lady Kardasi’s Domain for collecting donations toward the cost of site maintenance.

But that’s it. Twelve years of waiting for Armageddon, and nothing. If only the Eminians had been so lucky.

Here in 2007 it is the K/S audio/visual artists who seem to be poised to face the next historical challenge as the Recording Industry Association of America has begun sending Cease and Desist notices to some of those who have uploaded to the Web homemade videos set to copyrighted songs. So far there has been no notice specifically against a K/S songvid, but as the shape of music and video distribution changes, those who have shared their love of K/S via this medium are taking notice and watching to see what the decision about “fair use” will be.