#WritersCoffeeClub How do you feel about fan fiction?
I have nothing but love for Fan Fiction as it so often is the way people get to see themselves. As far back as young me watching the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and Star Trek, I wanted *that* but, y’know, queer.
I adore retellings, especially queer retellings or other versions that shift the POV to a marginalized voice and show what else then shifts with it.
I still write fanfic, even as a published author with multiple novels.
Taking Star Trek as a single example of a thing I’ve loved my whole life—it didn’t even start to kinda-sorta touch “queerness” until somewhere around TNG’s “The Outcast” (’92!) which ended *terribly* (literally the message I got as a queer person was “they *can* deprogram you, but they shouldn’t” but… uh, they can’t?)
Then “Rejoined” on DS9 (’95) and—also DS9 gave a bunch of evil-bisexual-trope in the Mirror universe…
“Cogenitor” in ENT (’03) and… less said the better.
We didn’t get any sort of main-character, not a “very special episode” approach to Queerness in Trek until Discovery, with Stamets and Culber (and even then, they did a "bury-your-gay/oops!/promise we plan to fix it" thing, which nearly had me ejecting from the show). That was 2017.
If I didn’t write my own queer Trek, I simply wouldn't get it. Until 2017.
So, I am ride-or-die for Fanfic authors. Go play in a world you love, and include yourselves.
The silliest, most earnestly heart-on-sleeve Kirk/Spock romance fanfic is more of a real part of Star Trek than Star Trek Picard ever could be.
@NathanBurgoine But there was progress ... there's Sulu having a husband on the Kelvin timeline, and Discovery having not only a gay marriage, but a queer couple.
I do agree, though, the "non-heteros are evil" trope was tiresome in the older shows.
’Nathan Burgoine
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
I've moved to 
GayDeceiver
Ian Smith
Code of Amor 💘