Monday, January 11, 2010

My Idiosyncratic Star Trek (TOS) Web-Bibliography/Link List

NOTE: I know I missed many wonderful stuff out there--if you have suggestions, I am open to updating this list. Please let me know! But I don't aim to compile an exhaustive list: this is just a personal webliography.

* * * Also, I only follow 1960's Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS).

UPDATE 2014
For the motherlode of William Shatner photos, visit zainin666's photobucket. As of this date (10/1/14), she has posted more than 5,000 photos of the man there:
http://s747.photobucket.com/user/zainin666/profile

Fanfic Update 2015
 An Archive of Our Own (AO3) provides 28,817 works in Star Trek, 4,471 of which are works in Star Trek: The Original Series

"A fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic"

__________________________________________________________
The Radiology Technician Schools posted "Top 50 Blogs for Trekkies" (radiologytechnicianschools.net/top-50-blogs-for-trekkies).
I'm familiar with many of the blogs, but mostly they're either more commercial, more actor/star focused, or more techy than I'm interested in.So, I finally did something I've been meaning to do: I trawled all of L'Astronave's 227 posts tagged "Star Trek" TOS (The Original Series) for some of the good stuff I'd linked to.
Among the 33 links I chose to pull out, the only one the radiology guys (I'm betting they are guys) and I both listed is My Star Trek Scrapbook (#3.1, below).

Just like you can tell a lot about a person from her bookshelves, weblink lists are also revealing--especially for a fandom like Star Trek's, which generates thousands and thousands of possibilities.
My links reveal that I am most interested in:

1. Captain Kirk (Shatner), in all his sexy, silly, self-confident splendiferousness

2. The inventiveness--especially if humorous--of fans who love Star Trek, as expressed in art (all sorts), video, and creative nonfiction (but not particularly in fiction)

3. slash (exploration of the erotic tension between Kirk & Spock, or K/S)

4. wondering "Why?" about all of the above

In the name of full authorial disclosure--and because bink suggested it--I'm starting with my autobiographical Star Trek vid, Star Trek, My Love (In My Life)



^ I made this summer 2008, but I see it could almost fulfill an assignment for Henry Jenkins's grad seminar in 2010 [see no.16 in the link list below]:
"Students will write a short five-page autoethnography describing their own history as a fan ... how you became invested in the media franchises that have been part of your life, and how your feelings about being a fan might have adjusted over time.")

You can also watch this in Russian, translated by J. L. Paparazzzzi for RusCon '09: Стар Трек, любовь моя ("Star Trek, My Love," in Russian).

And, finally, here is my Annotated, Illustrated List of Star Trek Sites I've linked to since I watched Star Trek again for the first time since the 1970s.

BLOGS

UPDATE 2016:
Star Trek tagged on TUMBLR

1. Look at His Butt
(lookathisbutt.blogspot.com) "The podcast where LT and JK, two geek babes, talk about Star Trek, science fiction, books, TV, the Internet, sex toys, and William Shatner's butt."

The Shatner Butt Girls (right) are Lene Taylor and Jungle Kitty.
Look at His Butt is sort of a clipping service/clearing house, a Guardian of Forever of Kirk/Shatner blogs. Probably everything I link to here has been mentioned on LAHB at some point. (That's how I knew about the 50 Top Blogs in the first place.)

2. Live Journal's ontd_Star Trek
(community.livejournal.com/ontd_startrek)
For hot-off-the-press fangirling, every so often I stop by this blog. Though they are mostly about 2009's ST: XI, the reboot, which I'm only tangentially interested in, the energy of the community is a lot of fun, and there's some Shatner action there too. 

They are already counting down the days until the next movie, Star Trek: XII (theoretically June 29, 2012).  
("ontd" = oh no they didn't/ "GQMF" = GQ [magazine] mother-fucker, i.e. guys like Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine who are hot enough to grace GQ, and, by extension all Star Trek fans.)

3. The Captain's Blog (uppercase.squarespace.com/captains-blog)

Started in 2007 by Uppercase Gallery, in Calgary, Canada, to accompany their Shatner Show, an exhibition and book of 76 illustrators' and artists' responses to what Shatner has meant to them.

3.1) Oh yeah, and My Star Trek Scrapbook (mystartrekscrapbook.blogspot.com): "Since around 1971, when I was first bitten by the Star Trek bug, I have been collecting all sorts of items for my scrapbooks; photos, articles, ads, and more."

3.2) Shatner's Toupee: The Definitive Oracle
http://shatnerstoupee.blogspot.com
Riffs on this important topic, 
"And while in my lifetime I've seen science make extraordinary inroads into solving the most complex questions of life, after all this time I admit that I am thrilled that there are some things that forever will remain a mystery. For example, do I wear a toupee?"
--William Shatner, Up Till Now: An Autobiography 
  FAN FICTION

A motherlode, added 2015: 
An Archive of Our Own (AO3) archives fanfic from 18,000+ fandoms!
It provides 28,817 works in Star Trek, 4,471 of which are works in Star Trek: The Original Series

"A fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks, like fanfiction, fanart, fan videos, and podfic"


4. Invisible Planets (invisibleplanets.com) is fan fic from Jungle Kitty (half of Look at His Butt, above). A good place to start, as she posts Recommendations and other links, though they are now a few years old.

5. Live Journal's ontd_Star Trek hosts FRIDAY FAN ART/FIC/VID/MISC posts. The post for January 8, 2010, has 92 comments with links, so this seems a good place to start looking for current stuff (generally slanted toward the new crew).

6. Rude Person Stories--literary parodies of bad Kirk/Spock fan fiction (badfic)--are the only fanfic I have wholly loved. Written in the style of Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad, they are are hilarious, and inspired my own Dido/Aeneas Kirk/Spock Virgilian mashup.

7. The Fanlore wiki also has some links in its entry on the fandom of Star Trek: The Original Series.

FANVIDS

8. Anna Francesca's playlist on youTube is good place to start. She's created a veritable archive of Star Trek vids.
Anna, displaying the kind of generosity common in ST circles, but even more of it, has gathered together 200 music vids, 400 non-music vids, 120 slash vids, vids of Star Trek actors in non-Trek roles, and more. (She links to her other loves too, such as Sherlock Holmes.)Anna, who is devoted to Spock prime, makes fine vids of her own, and unusually thoughtful ones too (www.youtube.com/user/annafrancesca1). My favorite is Spock - It's a Sin, about Spock's complex relationship with his father.

9. Trekspeare: Shakespeare in Star Trek
From the blog "Bully Says: Comics Oughta Be Fun!" Bully embeded 20 Shakespeare-related Star Trek youTubes (not fanvids; only half are TOS) on April 23, 2009.

+ I list other favorites on my youTube channel.

SLASH Vids
[You could start with Anna Francesca's Star Trek Slash Playlist on youTube]

10. Mortmere (youtube.com/user/mortmere), is my favorite vidder, for her quirky tales of what Kirk & Spock get up to during slow shifts on the Enterprise.

11. Gin (youtube.com/user/gin1119).
One of her best, imho, is her remix Slash Trailer--Star Trek III: The Search for Spock-aside from the music, it's unadulterated canon (straight from the original source material).

11.1) Imaginary Sanity (youtube.com/user/ImaginarySanity)
With the above 2, she forms a sort of triumvirate of slash vidders. Margaret suggests "Hot N Cold".
Imaginary Sanity 's old blog on blogspost has some links to other slash sites. In 2010 she moved to Live Journal (lindzsanity.livejournal.com/).

12. But I am not insulting anyone, I think, to say that no one has topped the excellent editing of the in/famous vid Closer, by T. Jonesy and Killa, which proposes a [disturbing] answer to the question, "What if they hadn't made it to Vulcan in time?" (during Spock's Pon Farr) and sets it to the Nine Inch Nails' song "Closer."

[Killa did not want her vids on youTube, they were all uploaded by other people. Issues of theft aside, I'm glad they did. (Ownership is a fuzzy issue, as we fans all "borrow"--or "poach," to employ Henry Jenkins's {no. 17} word--other people's work to make our fan vids...) "Razzle Dazzle" (youtube.com/watch?v=Ur9r8Y5vZOk) nails Kirk's hocus pocus charm on the head.]

SLASH [not video]

13. "The Big List of K/S Cliches"
(invisibleplanets.com/kirk_spock/KSCliches.htm)
For my money, everything you need to know about slash fan fiction is summed up, tongue-in-cheek, in this list by Jungle Kitty (of Look at His Butt).

14. All Your Trek Are Belong to Us
The funniest, most exhaustive look at kinky K/S, by Laura Goodwin, who states:
"Kirk and Spock: Not only are they lovers, but they are kinky as hairpins. HERE'S PROOF!
...Bear in mind this is an adult humor site featuring parodies of TOS (especially K/S) fanfic, Star Trek (the show), Gays, and BDSM people. I utilize broad, unsubtle caricatures toward comic effect, for entertainment purposes. Mistakes are probably intentional. If you don't think this stuff is hilarious, don't blame me: maybe you just don't get it."
(allyourtrekarebelongto.us/contents.html)

15. "The Erotic Space"
The text of a talk given by Sheenagh Pugh (sheenagh.webs.com), at the Cultural Exchanges Conference at de Montfort University on March 1, 2006 (Slash Fiction Study Day) From the intro:
" I soon found that almost everything written about fan fiction was from the cultural, sociological or media studies viewpoint: as often as not, it boiled down to "who are these strange people and why do they do it? ... I wanted literary criticism of fan fiction as a genre, and since there didn't really seem to be a study from that literary viewpoint, I had a go at writing one, which turned into The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context (Seren, 2006)."
(Pugh is a poet and novelist who also blogs about writing on Live Journal: Sheenagh Pugh's Writing Blog.)

16. "How to Watch a Fan Vid" (Sept. 18, 2006), by Henry Jenkins (#17 , below), was written in response to the interest in the fan-vid "Closer" (no. 12, above) is one of the best things ever on fandom and slash.

ACA-FANS [Academic Fans]

17. Confessions of an Aca-Fan (henryjenkins.org)
The blog of the prolific and highly readable Henry Jenkins, a professor of communication, journalism, and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California.
He's also the author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (left), and more.

Momo points me to H.J.'s exemplary syllabus, with reading list, for his graduate seminar Fandom, Participatory Culture, and Web 2.0 (Jan. 9, 2010). Wow. (How's this for a clever title: "Cunning Linguists: The Bisexual Erotics of Words/Silence/Flesh"?)


Lots more on Organization for Transformative Works' peer-reviewed journal, Transformative Works and Culture (TWC).
"TWC publishes articles about transformative works, broadly conceived; articles about media studies; and articles about the fan community. We invite papers in all areas, including fan fiction, fan vids, film, TV, anime, comic books, fan community, video games, and machinima."
18. Star Trek Studies Online
Catherine Grant's blog Film Studies For Free (filmstudiesforfree.blogspot.com) "brings you its Enterprising link list of freely-accessible, online Star Trek studies." A list of live links to academic works with words like "performativity" and "liminal" in the titles.

19. The Politico-Cultural Economic Analysis of Star Trek (mtholyoke.edu/~sgabriel/futurological/ST_coursepage_.htm)
The course description/syllabus of a college course offered in 2006 by Dr. Satya J. Gabriel, Professor, Economic Department, Mount Holyoke College offered a J-term Star Trek-based course:
"This course introduces students to political economy, post-structuralist methodology, and the application of economic theory to an important body of cultural artifacts. These cultural artifacts are the Star Trek films and television series."

ART

20. Live Journal Icons by Mrs Spock (http://pointy-ears.com/cowsparkle/).
She also explains something about how to make icons--a very popular fan-art form--if you scout around, and she blogs on Live Journal too: Spock Is an Elf (lemonrocket.livejournal.com/).

21. Edward Gorey's "The Trouble with Tribbles" (shaenon.livejournal.com/48834.html#cutid1) by the most excellent cartoonist Shaenon Garrity.
I always thought this episode was a little too cute. Garrity remedies this.

22. "We Has Tribbles and Also Troubles" (granades.com/2007/05/02/loltrek)
The LOL Trek (LOLcat talk applied to Star Trek) version of the episode "Trouble with Tribbles".
Cuteness put to good use.

23. Star Trek Fan Art (58,958 pieces, as of today) at at Deviant Art (deviantart.com)

24. "Whipped Kirk" (right), one of the photoshops by bink, my Fly Off The Wall collaborator. Many more of them, featuring her wire-haired fox terrier Joop, turn up in bink's ST vids:
Star Trek: So Fluffy and Star Trek: Dog Gone

24. b3ta's Shatner Image Challenge (b3ta.com/challenge/shatner)
19 pages of fan art in response to the challenge: "The new Star Trek film [2009] is out, and it's great. The only problem is it completely lacks William Shatner. So let's see Shatnerised movies: Shatner on the Roof, The Good The Bad and The Shatner, Indiana Shatner, Shatnerman! SHATNER!"

25. Mortmere's Live Journal blog (http://mortmere.livejournal.com)
Only a few "photo manips" (photoshopped images) here, but they're all good.
I used this one (left) in my Virgil Kirk/Spock parody vid.

ARTICLES

27. "Captain Kirk's Bulging Trousers" (salon.com/story/ent/tv/feature/2003/02/26/trek/index.html) by Mark Simpson (marksimpson.com), Feb. 26, 2003, Salon.com
A smart and funny homage to The Captain (there can be only one): "It was Shatner's Kirk, with all his magnificent flaws and vanities, however, who made "Star Trek" more than just another canceled '60s sci-fi series. He saved the show from its own appalling virtuousness --or, to put it more pretentiously, he was the Dionysian bass line to Roddenberry's Apollonian synth music."

28. "William Shatner, You Are a Very Special Guy" by Chris Michael, May 22, 2009, guardian.co.uk

Simpson's article (#27) explains the appeal of Kirk, this helps explain the baffling appeal of The Shat.

29. Autistic Trekdom, by Matthew Baldwin, The Morning News, May 15, 2009, (themorningnews.org/archives/op-ed/autistic_trekdom.php).
An interesting take on Spock, by a writer who is father to an autistic son: 
"In the latest Star Trek movie, Gene Roddenberry’s message of diversity takes on new relevance as more people are diagnosed with Autism. ...As I watched this film last Saturday, and Mr. Spock walked onto the bridge with his stiff demeanor and his formal language, my initial reaction was: 'Oh man, that guy is so Asperger’s.'"

THE THING ITSELF

30. You can watch all the original episodes online at
startrek.com/videos/star-trek-the-original-series
also
 CBS: Classic Star Trek (cbs.com/classics/star_trek), in the USA anyway. As of 2015, you have to be a CBS member, but you can get a 1-week free trial.
Many are also on youTube now.

31. Transcripts of all TOS episodes (voyager.cz/tos/transcripts.htm). Not full screenplays with names and directions, just dialogue. Can be handy when you're looking for a certain phrase.

32. Trek Core
The almost miraculous (to those of us who grew up pre-Internet, anyway) multimedia site Trek Core has screencaps of every episode, audio clips, and more for every Star Trek series and movie, including Star Trek: XI, which is where I finally found this still (right) of Pine sitting like Shatner, at the very end.

And finally...

33. L'Astronave (gugeo.blogspot.com)
Oh, hey! That's me!
My personal favorite is "Captain Kirk's Parted Lips". I wrote it before I read Simpson's "Bulging Trousers" (no. 27); but we come to awfully similar conclusions because, well... Kirk is all that.

The one angle I took that I haven't seen elsewhere is my series of 17 posts setting Star Trek's look in the design context of its times, from the shape of bras and Jell-O molds to Op Art and Sputnik:
Star Trek and 1960s Design.
I still think this should be a shiny coffee table book.
My proudest moment came when I noticed the uncanny similarity of the Guggenheim museum and the Enterprise.