When I was younger, before I'd ever heard of slash fic, the first thing I always thought of when presented with two strong male characters with a very intense relationship was to create alternate versions of them where one was a woman.  Some people might interpret this as homophobic, or at the least hetero-centric; I tend to interpret it as female-centric, actually, and I've always bemoaned the fact that women were so often (and still are, fairly often) written to be second banana characters, far less interesting than the males.

Two examples of fabulous female characters that were originally written as men, and then cast as women at the last minute, are Avengers' Mrs. Peel and Blake's 7 evil Servalan.  Both ended up as incredibly strong, dynamic characters, rather than being mere sidekicks to men.

When I first heard about Voyager, and its decision to cast a woman as Captain Janeway, I read that their intent was to return to Classic Trek's roots, and I had fantasies about what this would mean for Janeway.  I envisioned her as a Kirk-like character, a tough action heroine in control of her own sexuality, able to handle the problems the Delta Quad would throw at her because she'd always been a maverick anyway.  Well, we all know that isn't what we got.

So, what if James Kirk had been Jane Kirk, instead?

The first blatantly obvious thing that would happen is that everyone would expect her to have sex with Spock. Even the people who don't do K/S would be seeing some serious UST there. And unfortunately, with the captain being shorter, blonder, weaker and more emotional, that dropped straight into a dynamic I didn't want to do-- the protective strong male second-in-command supporting his lover and commander.  So I decided to swap Spock too.

My goal with this series is to explore gender issues in a world which, I can extrapolate, is a lot more similar to ours today in terms of gender dynamics than the TNG/DS9/VOY era. TOS paid lip service to equality, but like our world, it wasn't truly equal by any stretch of the imagination... but it was getting there.  How would a female Captain function in Starfleet in the days when she was the only one? How would the specific pressures placed on Vulcan women, as opposed to the specific pressures placed on Vulcan men, by the demands of biology change my Vulcan character's life?

So. Here are the adventures of Jane Kirk, T'Kae, and their ship, the Enterprise. It's the same five-year-mission you remember, but the details are changed.

Sacrifice