THIS LEVEL OF GLEE FEELS INAPPROPRIATE

[strina]

BUT I MOSTLY DO NOT CARE, BECAUSE I HAVE WANTED A TARSUS IV REC LIST SINCE I FIRST WIKI'D THE DAMN PLANET.

No, really, I feel actual shame for this? Because um, it should be srs bzns and not a fic kink. But Tarsus IV is basically the angstiest backstory anyone has ever had in a mainstream Western fandom. Adolescent Jim Kirk was staying with relatives on the colony Tarsus IV, population 8,000. Then a fungus killed the crops and the colonial governor decided to kill half the colonists so that half might live to see the relief ships arrive with more food - aaaand then he used his personal theory of eugenics to decide who lived and who died. We don't have a lot of details! But Kirk? One of only nine survivors who saw Kodos's face.

So there are a bunch of stories where Kodos took Kirk as a protege (with optional bad-touching) or where Kirk was a survivor on the run or a captured rebel or a very pretty boy trading sex for food and I am over here all OM NOM NOM DELICIOUS ANGST. What piles of dead babies, give me more of Kirk's manpain! (I am a terrible human being.)

Also, "Tarsus gave Kirk food issues" = the only eating disorder fic I have ever liked, true story.

Comments

[rivkat]

Which story is that one, where Kirk gets food issues? Or is it a story type you like? Because I would totally read and enjoy that.

[strina]

It is a recurring Tarsus theme! Sadly a theme and not a plot (I would 100% read a story just about Jim's food issues). Favorite example, this section from Graduate Vulcan for Fun and Profit:

It's probably just as well that McCoy is such a fucking mother hen, though; the thought of him finding out about Jim's tiny, easily managed tendency to forget to eat is almost as good as the sign in Klingon on his mirror, reminding him that it's at least two thousand calories a day or back to the special peanut butter for him. Jim has no idea why he saved it all these years, but it does remind him to eat. There's a rumor going around that one of the other guys -- not that they've stayed in touch, exactly -- has to have a special synthesizer in his house so he'll eat correctly instead of binging and purging. He and Jim got off pretty light; of the ten or twelve kids in his group that made it off the planet, three died of complications, four have committed suicide and one girl is in a quiet room with a flower garden attached, and on her good days she gets to fingerpaint. She had been strongly empathic, though -- they reckoned the overflow of emotions had just sort of burned her brain out, like wiping a memory chip with a magnet. Jim tries to visit her as often as he can.

It really does show up fairly often; I've read four stories that mentioned it from that rec list alone and I haven't read that many. Yet.

[rivkat]

Thank you! Oh, fandom, how I love you.

[strina]

Ooh, this one is significantly about food issues: while lights were paling one by one.

[rivkat]

Thank you!

[asitor]

IDK whether to thank you or glare at you silently between hitting backspace and clicking another link.

*glares*

*clicks another link*

*too caught up in wonderful manpain to glare*