Noble Blood - The Forbidden Star Trek Fanfiction [from Very Special Episodes]

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

In 1968, a woman wrote a romantic story about Kirk and Spock, passed it quietly among friends, and hoped it would never see the light of day. But before vanishing entirely, The Ring of Soshern had become the stuff of legend. The quest to recover it would lead to a community of women who'd been building something remarkable in the shadows for generations.  Listen to Dana Schwartz on Very Special Episodes wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey, Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akela Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every family has its secrets. But what happens when you discover that your dad has been living a double life?

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A soft knock came at the door. Kirk, who had begun to doze at his desk, started awake. The chronometer read 159. Come in, he said, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. eyes. The door opened soundlessly, and without a word, Spock slipped inside. Their eyes met, and the confines of the room receded into limitless distance. Time expanded, and in all eternity, there were only the two of them. Very slightly, Kirk inclined his head, and Spock turned to the door and locked. You heard that right. There was some serious romantic tension between two

of the most famous characters in sci-fi. However hearing that made you feel, I want you to pause right there, because in this episode, we're going to make a case. What you heard is actually really important, a little piece of history even. This story was so subversive that it took on mythical proportions for a niche audience.

But over time, it became so impossible to find that many thought it had been scrubbed from existence. Was it snuffed out on purpose by disdainful readers? Or was it just the inevitable rot of pre-internet media that no one remembered to save? More than 50 years later, someone would travel a dozen hours just to bring this mysterious story back from oblivion. But now, some wonder if it was the right thing to do.

This little piece of history is a bridge across three distinct time periods. This is a tale about a famous story that may not have wanted to be found. Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an IHeart Original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is Searching for Sojourn, the Forbidden Star Trek fan fiction. Welcome back to very special episodes. My name is Jason English, joined as always by Dana Schwartz. Hey, hey. And Zarin Burnett.

What's up, y'all? We have a very interesting rabbit hole. We're going down today, the world of fan fiction. Oh, I loved this. Totally. Dana, is there anatomy or arcane arts fan fiction that's come on your radar yet? I mean, Arcane Arts is pretty much its own fan fiction in terms of content. But no, I would love fan fiction.

I find that subculture so fascinating. It's not something I've ever participated in, but I love the idea of just like people writing purely for themselves and their audience. There's nothing commercial about it. I just, I love it. I'm right there with you. I have to admit, I've never read a single piece of fanfix. So this story was like a window into weird and wonderful world I knew nothing about, but I loved it.

There are some great examples out there. I asked one of our researchers to just dig up. What are some unexpected topics for fan fiction? The insurance industry mascots seem to be a big target. The Geico Gecko holds lots of different stuff, sometimes with flow from Progressive. The Geico Gecko. The Geico Gecko. Oh no.

The Lehmu, Emu, and Doug. Some of it, wholesome. Some of it not. We probably can't quote from it. But Thomas the Tank Engine, my kids are a little bit older. You know, that's kind of a darker show that I remembered, just reading about it. The fan fiction leans all. the way into that side of it.

Yeah. The possibilities must be endless. And someone wrote a Seinfeld spec script, I guess, where Jerry and Kramer discover fan fiction about them. So very meta. Love that. Ha! Yes, that is great. Ninthex Sixty-Sterk hits the air.

I'm sure you know it well. A diverse crew of spacefarers boldly go where no man has gone before, encountering a strange new world. and otherworldly creatures. What may surprise you is it wasn't an immediate hit among wider audiences. It was ambitious and expensive, and it teetered on cancellation for the three years it ran. But ratings can only tell you so much. From the very beginning, Star Trek created Superfans. I was 12 when it premiered, but let me tell you, I definitely had top.

drawer fiction that I had handwritten. Sometimes I would stay home from school. Oh, mom, I'm so sick. I really can't go to school because I wanted to write about Kirk and Spock. This superfan will be guiding us through most of our story today. My pen name is Jenna Sinclair, and that's what I would like to be known as. And I am a fan fiction writer and passionate advocate. Jenna would grow to have a deep connection with Star Trek and the community that sprung up around it. But at first, sitting in front of the TV in her living room in 1966, it was just her and the show. And the best thing about the show was Kirk and Spock. The mission of the enterprise is to seek out.

contact alien life. Has it occurred to you that there's a certain inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you've already made up your mind about? It gives me emotional security. There was a sense of connection between

two extremely different people. Spock being a Vulcan and so didn't like to express any of his emotions, although everybody knew deep down that he had them, right? Yeah. And Kirk, the Action Man, the leader, expressive, where Spock was introverted.

And yet, if you look on the screen, you can see that they appear to have a deep friendship. And, you know, I could point you to different episodes, say, oh, look at them, walk around the top of the bridge. See how they lean towards each other. See how Kirk stands in front of the science station and asks interesting questions of Spock and how they look at one another. Now, you know, it sounds bizarre. It sounds bizarre to me, okay? And yet I was not the only person who reacted to that. This unique alien human relationship, couched in a unique and exciting show, brought on a deep creative energy in tons of fans.

And hey, maybe today in 2026 you're noticing some subtext in the way that Jenna described that relationship. And don't worry, we'll get there. For now, let's just say Kirk and Spock had an intriguing friendship, creating many fans. Those fans needed a creative outlet, and that outlet was fanzines. A fanzine is printed stories, poetry, and art based on a particular fanish subject, based on a media presentation. it could be television, it could be movies. Fanzines emerged out of love. For some reason, when people become really, really interested in a television show, let us say,

creativity seems to follow immediately. There is a tremendous urge to use your imagination and go way beyond what is presented to us on the screen. The very first Star Trek fanzine came out in 1967, It was called Spockenalia, the zine featured art of the characters, poetry, and original stories, some of which were penned by authors who'd go on to write official Star Trek novels. Later, Spockenalia issues would even include letters from the show's actors written in character. DeForest Kelly as Dr. McCoy complained about Spock's wacky anatomy and Leonard Nimoy as Spock, dryly claps back, that kind of thing.

So that's what the fandom looked like early on. But it wasn't long before a turning point hit the show in the form of an unusual episode. The first episode of the second season, which was a mock time, which was explicitly sexual because Spock goes into the version of the Vulcan Heat, where he must mate or die. So that was an episode that slapped everybody right in the face and turned Spock into a sexual person. This Vulcan heat is called Ponfar.

In order to overcome it, Spock must mate with his space fiancé, who he telepathically bonded with as a kid. But when she rejects him, he has to undergo a ritual battle instead. So who does he end up fighting on the sands of Vulcan? for the right to his fiance, if you want to call her that, it was Captain Kirk. So here they are rolling around together on the sands, one directly on top of the other. And if you hadn't had thoughts like this before, that certainly brought them to your mind. According to Jenna, that episode planted a romantic seed in the minds of so many viewers. And you can see why, right?

It's a classic trope, the Mr. Darcy, if you will. It turns out the handsome, restrained, and mysterious character actually has more emotion under the surface. It lit a fire under the brewing obsession with Spock in the fandom. And who is the recipient of that emotion in this episode? Why, his best friend, Kirk. Was this just a deep friendship? Or could it be more?

Imagine watching that in real time. You're a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old all of a sudden. Thousands of miles away from young Jenna, watching that episode in the UK, was a woman named Jennifer Gutridge. Jenny was a private person. Not a lot of information about her is publicly available online. We know she was a talented, descriptive author. She loved sci-fi and western. like Bonanza. And when she saw the Ponfar episode of Star Trek for the first time, she was likely in her 30s or 40s.

When Jenny saw that episode, she started writing, and she penned a story that would grow into something much larger. The Ring of Sojourn. The Ring of Sojourn holds a very special place in KS. Anum because it is pretty well documented that it is the very very first piece of fan fiction ever written, or KS, which kind of makes it the very first slash story ever written. This is where we delve into a strange new world for many listeners, I'm sure, but that's in the spirit of Star Trek, isn't it? It's time to define a couple terms. First, that word Jenna used slash. It's certainly more mainstream now than it was in the 60s, but just in case let's make sure we're on the same page. Slash means romantic fiction, usually fan fiction,

about two same-sex characters. It's called that because of how couples are usually written out. For example, Kirk slash Spock, or K-slash-S, simply pronounced KS. KS would eventually become the name of a bigger fandom, but for now we just have Jenny and her. story. I communicated with the author back in the aughts to confirm most of this, and she watched the Ponfar episode in the second season, which was a mock time. And like so many other people,

she was inspired and thought about it a lot and had the writing chops to sit down and write the very first KS sexually charged story. And she told me that she wrote it just a few months after the episode. So let us, since that was 1967, September, I believe, I think she finished writing it in very early 1968. So what is it about? Well, Kirk and Spock wind up stranded on an alien planet. They're accosted by aggressive prehistoric creatures and end up camping out

in a cave. But Spock is showing signs of emotion and distress. It turns out, shock of shocks, Spock is undergoing the dreaded pawn far. But there are days from any help. Maybe you can see where this is going. Spock has to mate, or he won't live much longer. Kirk can't stand to see his best friend suffering, and so, well, he agrees to help him out. They both realize pretty quickly they're in love with each other. And when the enterprise manages to rescue them, after much more danger and hardship from the local fauna, the dynamic duo decide to continue their relationship and live happily ever after. The end.

What in the world do you do with such a thing after you have finished writing it? When you creatively express yourself, it's meant to be shared. So she did, and she passed it around to a few other people that she thought maybe would be open-minded enough. And think about what a chance she took there. That's not something that you just talk about. Oh, yeah, I just met you, my neighbor down the street. What did you think about homosexuality? Especially cross-species, Vulcan and human.

But she did, and she managed to find like-minded people. Ring of Sochern became what is now sometimes called drawer thick. That's a story passed covertly among friends, hidden away in the top drawer among socks and underwear, not meant to see the light of day. But people who got their hands on Ring of Sojourn passed it to others, who passed it to others, and the story even found its way across the pond to the United States. I would say more than anything, that story is what solidified and even created a community that was able to call itself KS fandom. For years, it was the primary piece of fiction that people knew about.

Ring of Sojourn was popular, but not published. The fact is, this was a dangerous story, and the folks who read and circulated it were playing a dance. dangerous game. First of all, was fan fiction even legal? One author who knew Jennifer Guthridge said in an interview, Jennifer told me that Ring of Sojourn would never be published anywhere because she wanted to meet Mi-moi, but not in a court. There was a fear, I suppose, that if the actors heard about it, they'd sue. Many fanzines that were published were intentionally small circulation and intentionally made little profit, if any. Even if the actors and the creator of the show enjoyed fan culture,

the TV network could have other plans if a zine got too big. And what if that fan work depicted the two most famous characters in a sexual way? At that point, you might even lose the support of the actors and get hauled off to court. Because of course, most importantly, at this time, gay relationships were massively stigmatized. That created an even greater risk than the possibility of a lawsuit. This was the 60s. Homosexuality was taboo. People were being fired from government jobs because they were found to be gay.

So any thoughts that they might have had to be deeply underground. I cannot tell you the number of women who never told their husbands what. they were doing. And there was one very, very, very sad instance where one of those women did tell her husband, and he reacted very poorly. And they talked about divorce and decided they wouldn't divorce. And instead, for the next 20 years, because I was friends with this person, so I know, for the next 20 years, it was, you know, just a chilly, chilly kind of relationship. And as a side, And also the need to keep it quiet were the morals clauses in teachers' contracts. Many, many teachers were in the fandom.

And they were all afraid of being found out. And that's one of the reasons why we use pen names or did use pen names. It's important to understand just how vital it was to many women for their drawer fic to remain just that. So in the 60s, in the 70s, I really admire the women who organized themselves, even in the smallest bit at that time, because they were pushing back against a massive societal disapproval for their interest. But they were open-minded and they were compelled by this interest to be creative. Despite the need for secrecy, these women found each other. And as a result, Ring of Sojourn, Gron, Gwere, and grew and grew until it became a ubiquitous legend.

It wasn't just that one story either. Something had begun, and it wouldn't be long before that something would burst out of the top drawer and into the world. But how would the world respond? Osiaga, with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal, flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 cash. Arlarsen, Tena Gray, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHard Radio. Listen to IHard new music for 10 minutes and enter to win.

Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame, fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult.

There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called, Hey Jonas. We've here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well.

And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with slow on. hands. The old hands is not about anything else really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food.

You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This Black Music Month, the Questlove show celebrates the artists, innovators, and cultural voices who continue to

redefine music. We're sitting down with a groundbreaking country artist, Mickey Guyton. The way that the country music community accepted Post Malone versus Beyonce versus Shibuzi those are very

eye-opening things. Hip-hop visionary, Fat-Fi Freddy, genre-bending musical genius, Thundercat. And the always-legendary revolutionary voice, Chuck D. Yeah, we changed tires, man. I had 18 jobs before

this became my occupation, man. I wrote, I wrote Barmer's show as a messenger from Unforgetable Story to deep conversations about creativity, culture, and legacy. These are the voices shaping the soundtrack of Black Music Pass, present, and future. Listen to The Questlove show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. 1987, the original Star Trek series, the TV show, was off the air,

but the flames of fandom kept rising through the release of several movies. I have been, and always shall be, your friend. The fan culture around KS was only growing. At that point, there were many fanzines specifically for KS. Stigma had not completely thawed, but the community had found its niche, and it managed to find places to gather. Throughout the 80s and 90s, and still today, really,

Star Trek was a huge feature of fan events and conventions. But while sci-fi conventions drew thousands, it wasn't always easy to find the slash community. KS fandom, I would imagine almost any of these fandums, were so welcoming once you managed to find them and get in. And it was never easy to find them. People have told me so many stories about how frustrated they were. It took them years to gain.

entree to get the information that they needed. But once you had a name, a telephone number, an address, maybe the name of a KS. Zine, then you were in, and you were in the sisterhood. And that as almost any person in a fandom will tell you, that's the most important part. These women were carving out their own secret spaces within a massive male-dom-dom-and-a-maid massive male-dom. And as the 80s progressed, the energy did too. It's the community that thinks like you think, that is energized the way you are energized.

So, boy, did I ever get energized? Through the 90s, I was invited to one of the big Star Trek conventions in Baltimore called Shoreleave, and I would go every year to Shoreleave, and a contingent of KS fans would always meet there, there would be, I would say, 60 KS fans who would have a convention within a convention. And I decided that we needed to organize ourselves a little bit better than just meeting in the hallways

and having room parties. I organized a party for us on Saturday nights where I had a specified gathering room at the hotel. And we put up art. We sang songs. Eventually, we had wine. That was a good one. We had art auctions.

We had other creative work auctions. And of course, we talked. For Jenna and many others, the KS fandom became a source of lifelong friendships and endless creativity. I met somebody by writing letters back and forth to her. And we each wanted to sing. We didn't know what each other's voices sounded like. We wanted to write filk songs about Kirk and Spock, and we agreed that we would go to the Shore Live Convention,

and in their talent show, we would get up on the stage and we'd sing. We met for the first time at that convention. We sang together with the guitar anyway at that convention, and yet you meet them and you are instantly friends. I have so many deep relationships which came from fandom. I have been asked, what was the happiest time of your life, Jenna? My happiest time was my deep involvement in KS fandom, other than, you know, family. But it's true.

The things that the fandom gave me the opportunity to do with people who were smart, engaged, so creative. open-minded like I am was priceless. As the community grew, so did the fanzines. Fan-fictions that were once passed around from friend to friend under the radar were now being distributed on a larger scale. With all the benefits and challenges you'd imagine going along with that. To illustrate just how challenging it could be to bring one of these slash scenes to life, Jenna shared a story about her journey to publish her first slash zine on a wider scale in the late 90s.

Of course, to get hundreds of copies of a 200- or so page fanzine, you're going to need a printer. But these zines were filled with sexual poetry, writing, and art of the not safe for work variety. Jenna was turned away from print shop after print shop, toting this thick stack of pages with her as she went. At last, she found a print shop staffed with female employees who were happy to get the business, no matter the content. But just as she thought she was in the clear, I get a call, come and get this stuff. I go down to the print shop, and I am told to go into the office with the boss, who was male. And he looked at me in total indignation, pulled out the original piece of art, shoved it under my nose, and he said, do you know what this is showing?

And I said, yes, I certainly do. It's two men naked hugging. And I said, I was given the okay. I was told that you would, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. We have printed your text, but take this smut away. And let me tell you something. That was a moderate. picture. Okay? So did I finally find a printer? Obviously I did. I went to an all-female shop. And sure, they had no problem. They also had no interest, but they had no problem. And I used them for almost 15 years. Hundreds of zines managed to overcome these challenges and find circulation among this dedicated group of mostly female fans. And it was in the heyday of KS storywriting that a familiar story would resurface. But the editor of a zine, which was called

Alien Brothers, somehow got her hands on a copy of Rhinga Sochern. And the presumption is that there was some sort of contact with the author so that it was indeed printed in the zine. Alien Brothers was 275 pages of stories and art. It cost $25, over $70 in today's money, and there on page 9 was Ring of Sojourn. In an introduction, the editor wrote. Written probably before 1976, this story has never before appeared in a fanzine. It is one of the first and certainly the best underground KS tales

circulated very privately and discreetly in manuscript photocopies only. Ring of Sojourn set the pattern for many early chaos stories and had many imitators, but none surpassed it. The zine was controversial on a few different levels. While some praised the writing and variety, others criticized it heavily. It was too violent, too expensive, and the editor was pretty unpopular at the time. But one troubling question surfaced after the zines publication. We wouldn't be talking about this if there were not some sort of controversy about it

because I think the author was shocked from what I have taken from the little bit of research that is available and did not want to have her story printed. Remember, she wrote this in 1968. Okay, so she had the attitude, people from the 60s. from the 70s, from the 80s, that this was an extremely dangerous thing, even

to have it printed in a zine. Some fans claimed that the editor had permission, while others claimed she didn't. Remember, this was 1987, the pre-Worldwide Web days. We're talking about an American supposedly communicating with

someone in the UK. It's hard to know exactly what happened. And there is really a question as to whether Ring of Sojourn, which has such a special place in our fandom that basically helped found it, might have been published without permission. It's a very murky subject. I don't think that anybody can say for sure what the real story was there. Believe it or not, the Alien Brothers controversy doesn't end there.

To understand how this story evolved over time, we also need to hear from a fan who dove into Star Trek later on, a sort of modern-day archivist. There's a way in fandom that stories can spiral and escalate and become legend. That's Edie, the producer who reported on this story. She's been a Star Trek fan for a decade now, following the lore and development around the Ring of Sojourn every step of the way. That gives her a bird's eye view of the role this fan fiction plays in the 21st century. Though many old-school KS fans knew about the Ring of Sojourn for quite a while before it was

published, coming out in Alien Brothers was a turning point for the story. This is the beginning of the Ring of Sojourn as an online urban legend in the fan fiction community, an example of what happens when a drawer fic is released. into the world. Back in the 80s, somebody did apparently write in a fanzine that one vindictive fan in the southern U.S. was so offended that you wanted to censor the fick and, like, burned copies. On one hand, both the zine and the fan fiction itself were controversial. At the same time, though, sometimes these things aren't what they seem.

And I've also talked to a lot of fans sort of specifically. And there are a lot of people that knew of Alien Brothers but hadn't heard of this controversy and or just contended that maybe this didn't happen at all. Or that maybe it wasn't on as large of a scale as perhaps the fandom legend snowballed into it being. Whether or not a fan went on a vindictive destruction campaign, over the next few decades, something strange happened. The zine and the famous story inside of it became very hard to find. Of course, we know these zines didn't have a huge circulation, even if they were famous within the KS fandom.

But this zine just seemed to vanish in a way that felt out of place for how famous the story inside it really was. And the zine stayed disappeared, even as the World Wide Web came to be. Decades passed. The 90s tipped into the 2000s. Windbreakers fell in and out of fashion, and the Ring of Sojourn stayed gone. The Notties turned into the 2010s. Low-rise jeans became skinny jeans, became high-waisted jeans, and the Ring of Sojourn stayed gone. I stumbled upon this fan lore article.

Fan lore is a wiki that has a lot of fan and fandom related pages. And there's a really extensive article on The Ring of Sojourn. It's been there for many years. And there are even segments of the fanfic in the article. It describes the history, like where it wound up, where it was published. So of course, I see this. And I'm like, oh, like, there are segments, there are photos, there are scans of the original publication. But it's not there in its entirety.

So I'm like, well, they have segments, they have quotes, they have a lot of things. It must be online somewhere. So I go digging and I don't find a thing. There is no ring of sojourn on the internet. In an era where we're used to being able to Google and find essentially everything we want, it's hard to believe something can truly be impossible to track down. Sure, someone may have had an old copy kicking around the house, but no one thought, hey, I'll put this online. So I looked everywhere, I couldn't find it, and I ultimately stumbled upon a Reddit post,

as folks often do when they are traversing the internet from somebody else who is trying to find, this story. And the title of the Reddit post is simply, where can I read the Ring of Sojourn? And someone in that Reddit post responds, this could be a challenge. Apparently, it was so controversial that one fan acquired as many copies

as she could to get her hands on just to burn them. The author didn't intend for it to be published, but shared privately among friends. Someone else responds, essentially saying the same thing, you're going to have a really hard time finding this. It wasn't meant to be published in the first place. And they go on to say,

I did, however, find the zine. It was published in the holdings of Texas A&M University. If any enterprising person is able to go there, copy it, and upload it, I'd love a copy. So at this point, I'm like, oh, someone's going to have to go to Texas A&M University. Oceaga, with four nights at residents in downtown Montreal, flights from Porter Airlines, two weekend gold tickets, and $1,000 of cash. Please, love it. Lord, Zara Larson, Dima Gray, Sombor, 21 pilots, and more. Download IHeart Radio. Listen to Iheart new music for 10 minutes and enter to win.

Osiaga, 2026. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kodak. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression.

I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called, Hey Jonas. But here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show.

How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall. It's the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This Black Music Month, the Questlove show celebrates the art. innovators, and cultural voices who continue to redefine music. We're sitting down with a groundbreaking country artist, Mickey Guyton. The way that the country music community accepted Post Malone versus Beyonce versus Shibuzi, like those are very eye-opening things. Hip-hop visionary Fat 5 Freddie, genre-bending musical genius, Thundercat, and the always-legendary revolutionary voice, Chuck D.

Yeah, we changed tires, man. I had 18 jobs before this became my occupation, man. Okay. I wrote, I wrote Barmer's show as a messenger. From unforgettable stories to deep conversations about creativity, culture, and legacy. These are the voices shaping the soundtrack of Black Music Pass, present, and future. Listen to the Questlove show on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Good morning, Tumblr.

I just woke up in my hotel room in college. Station, Texas. It's morning. The library where Alien Brothers is housed will open shortly. It's 2020, and someone is on the hunt for Alien Brothers. The audio you heard is from a Tumblr user called Prince Nimoy, our fan fiction anthropologist, on the hunt for this long-lost copy of Alien Brothers. And I stumble upon a Tumblr post from March 6, 2020,

essentially saying that they are going to make the pilgrimage to Texas to find and scan the ring of Sojourn. Prince Nimoy writes, Monday, I'm driving 15 hours round trip to finally meet Alien Brothers. Hopefully, I will be allowed to scan it or take photos. Worst case scenario, I type it up word for word. All of it. I really can't believe it. The fandom has mourned its loss for decades, and now it's back from the dead.

The next video update from Prince Nimoy shows her flipping through the pages of the legendary Alien Brothers zine. She flips slowly through the title page, a page granting awards to submission, and finally to the table of contents. She points at the title and zooms in. Ring of Sojourn by Jay Gutridge, page 9.

She finds the zine. They don't necessarily let her scan it or use any of their equipment, but she takes a picture of every page of the fan fiction and she put it first on a drop box and then she put it on internet archive. So now, when you Google, ring of so shern, you can just read it online. It's just there in PDF form.

Years after first hearing of this fabled tale, Eadie finally read it. And how was it? That's a good question. I think that as a piece of history, it is fascinating to read. the fledgling sort of versions of tropes that have become well known in the fandom. So it's fine. Ring of Sojourn is a pretty run-of-the-mill, well-written, entertaining piece of fanfiction. There's nothing particularly stand out about it if you place it next to a piece of KS fanfic from today.

And that's the point. no small part of this story's legacy is the fact that 60 years after a fan penned it and stashed it away in a drawer, it still resonates. It is beautiful to see how fans have always explored dark themes and written stories that are messy and griddily realistic and human or Vulcan, as it were. And yeah, like, would we have a heated rivalry if we didn't have, you know, the sort of middle-aged moms in the 60s and 70s who were blazing this trail? And that is beautiful to read. I love to imagine this community of people, a bunch of women independently, maybe watching the same thing that I watched. feeling like, hang on, I can have angst in my queer romance between an alien and a human. It's like the same sort of recurring themes and motifs that we see throughout fan literature.

And now those things have hit the mainstream. So to see the baby version of those things, the early version of those things coming independently out of someone's brain, that is like fascinating to see. So the Ring of Sojourn is online now. In many ways, it is a thread connecting fans today to fans from 60 years ago. But keen-eared listeners may remember a key detail, a detail that's easy to forget in the frenzy of finding a piece of history that had been so hard to find for so many decades. Jennifer Guthridge may have never wanted the story published in the first. place. She died in 2004, and now there's no way to ask if she wanted it put online. Oh, it's such a difficult subject, and I have such mixed feelings.

That's Jenna again. There was this hunger for the older zines that were not still available, because these were only out-of-print zines, and there were a lot of out-of-print zines. It hurts my heart that they're not available. But considering the environment in which so many of these zines were written, published, the stories, you know, this was a deep fear that many of the writers had, that they would be outed in a sense. And I am so sorry these stories will not be read and enjoyed. It's so interesting to see the evolution of the writing, how it changed over the many long years. But where I come down on is that we have to respect the wishes of the

And I don't think it was right to just put that up online. Sorry to say that. I can't say I'm terribly upset about it. But, you know, it's always like the right to privacy. Where does it end? I still haven't worked out my own thoughts about it completely. I see both sides of the issue for sure. And ultimately where I land is that I think it's sad when things become lost media

and that we should find ways to archive things and make sure that they are not lost, that we should tell our history, remember our history, archive things where possible, in sort of safe and accessible ways. Whether or not it was the right thing to put Ring of Sojourn online is up for debate.

But one thing is certain. It is a piece of history. When you read about Ring of Sojourn or Alien Brothers, the reviews, the controversy, the excitement, you get a window into a vibrant fandom that has existed for decades. You can almost imagine hanging out with Jenna and 60 of her friends at a convention within a convention being part of the sisterhood. And it's so easy for these stories to be dismissed and erased. We had one KS writer. She was really a good writer and a marvelous artist who died,

quite suddenly. And those of her friends did not find out about it for a couple of weeks because the intention would have been to get into her apartment and take all the chaos stuff out. And instead, what happened was her family. Obviously, you know, along with their grief, found that their dear daughter was writing and drawing Kirk and Spock stories in art. and all of it was trashed.

Her original artwork was trashed. That hurts me even today to say that there's something precious about original artwork. It was so important that somebody took the time to sit down and create this new world because you put something of yourself in these novels and in these stories. So when you lose the fiction, you lose the person. And you also lose the place of the story within the community. Because every single one of these stories and every single one of these zines stood next to the human beings who were in the fandom too. In the 1960s, it wasn't clear whether fan fiction was even legal.

Thanks to stigma about writing fan work and about gay relationships, everything had to be done completely under the table. But now we see stories that were once fanfictions becoming published novels, like the after series, the love hypothesis, maybe even city of bones, and even hitting the big screen, 50 Shades of Grey anyone? This once secretive art form is now mainstream. Sure, fan fiction isn't necessarily seen as high art by society at large, but maybe people are starting to understand that there's more to it than meets the eye. Fan fiction has gone through such an evolution over the last 50 years plus 60 years.

And so has its place in society, starting out being absolutely anathema for the content, but also because primarily it is a woman's space, it has been dismissed through misdemeanor. misogyny and through our position as, you know, not people who are doing anything serious creatively. Okay. Times have changed. And I think people are beginning to understand that the work itself is worth something. It is a creative explosion from the heart, okay? Regardless of the source, regardless of what has compelled people to write, they are writing, they are drawing.

they are singing, okay? And I don't know, can we ever dismiss an upwelling of creativity? I don't think so. And that's to say nothing of the real-world impact communities like this may have had on the perception of queer relationships in real life. For community members like Jenna fighting to make space in sometimes hostile fandoms and supporting friends experiencing the effect of stigma in their lives, That impact is real.

There is a streaming series called Heated Rivalry, which is about a gay relationship between two hockey players, and it has taken the internet by storm. People are not afraid of the content of this series. I can think that this is nothing but good, and I frankly think that my role and other fans' roles in keeping slash fandom going through tough times encouraging it, proselytizing for it, getting it up online, making archives online,

contributing to archive of our own, has played a part in this openness and the opening of understanding about homosexuality. So, yeah, we're in the middle of a wonderful story, and I'm glad that I was part of it. All right. You know, if we were still in the era of podcasting where we were doing a lot of limited series. I think we could have stretched this one out into eight episodes. The whole search head down to Texas A&M. That could have been like a three episode arc. We did a whole podcast about looking for one comic book. That's right. This was our thing. This was our lane. Right in the wheelhouse with this one. Zarin, were you able to think about this as a motion picture or series?

I did, actually. And I have to say, I really liked the characters in it. As I said earlier, I was like, this is just a new world to me. So I had some fun trying to cast it for Jenna Sinclair, the fanfiction writer and the passionate advocate. I went with one of my favorites, Rooney Mara, because I'd think she could hold down anything literary. And then for Jennifer Gutridge, the author of the fanfic, I went with Tilda Swinton. I know she's Scottish, but I think it still works for an English lady. Oh, Tilda Swinton can do anything. Right? That was my thought. I was like, you know, come on. I think she would just eat this up. And Prince Nimoy, our female fanfic anthropologist, the one that goes on the hunt for the copy of Alien Brothers, I thought

Kristen Stewart, and that would be a sly shout out to 50 Shades of Grey being a fanfic of twilight. So you get it all. Love it. That's smart casting there. Right. Did you guys have any favorite special moments? I had two, but if you need time to think, I can tell you mine or I'd love to hear yours. Yeah, what are your moments? All right, for one, I loved how far would you go to help a buddy out? Just that question alone was like awesome, right? And, And then the other one was, how far would you drive to help out a fellow fan online? And both of them were just such, like, beautiful little moments. And I love that it's 15 hours round trip to go and do this.

I was like, I would totally be that person. So I love the Prince Nimoy's like, put it on my shoulders and give me a map. I'm gone. I love it. I love the camaraderie and the community and the sense of belonging that fandom can give people. And something that I learned was how female this community was. I loved it. Totally. I didn't know that it leaned so female, but I then wanted to almost kind of like safeguard it. Like just let them cook. This is amazing. Oh, also, I have a very special question of ethics that came up in this. Was it or was it not the right thing to put Ring of Saus Shearn online? I think it was the right thing. I think it's like a museum piece. I agree. It's history. It's history. I think it's kind of like one of the things. I mean, as creators, we know this. Once you create something, it no longer belongs to you. I mean, yes, maybe the rights belong to you. But the. the actual work doesn't.

It now is given to the audience. So it's like kind of their call. And I agree with you, this deserves to be in a museum. Yeah. I want to give a quick shout out to IHeart's outspoken slate for inviting us to participate

in their Pride Month programming, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, pride. We are always down for a theme. So thank them. And bring it on. Any other network here at IHeart, let us know we're game.

Totally. Happy Pride Month, y'all. Very special episodes is made by some very special people. This show is hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zarin Burnett, and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Edie Allard and edited by Carmen Borka Carrillo. Editing and sound design by Chris Childs. Additional editing by Mary Dew.

Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Original music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Kintanilla Social clips by Yarberry Media Executive producer is Jason English Today's episode was produced in partnership with ACAST Creative Studios Very special episodes is a production of I-Heart Podcasts

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