My New Vid: Kirk/Spock + Book IV of the Aeneid

I swore I would get this Dido & Aeneas/Kirk & Spock parody mashup video done in time to clean my apartment before Fidel comes to stay over Thanksgiving, and I have! Finished, that is, not cleaned. Art before dust, I always say.

I was torn about what song to set this vid to--romantic or raunchy? I went with Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Relax" because it throbs with ridiculous '80s sexual energy, which somehow felt fitting. (All sexuality is ridiculous, unless you're in the middle of it. And even then...)

Kirk/Spock: Virgil Says Relax

The still frame here ("they call it marriage") is a photo manipulation ("manip") of images from the episode "Plato's Stepchildren," by the excellent Mortmere.

[Later. I ended up posting 2 versions, the second set to "Nessun Dorma," for a very different feel.]


A picture's worth a mess of words, so I cut and cut and cut the text of my original Virgilian "Rude Person" slash story [links to the Fanlore wiki entry--"Rude Person" stories are literary riffs on a Kirk/Spock parody] to make the vid.
But here's the complete text of my mashup of The Aeneid, Book IV, and the Rude Person story, for posterity. The words are almost all Virgil's--though obviously not ones such as "Pon Farr"-- they're just not in his order.

Oh yeah, and I can't believe I did, but I threw away my translation of parts of the Aeneid I did in Latin class, so this is cobbled together from several different translations, including John Dryden's rhymed version.

Virgil: The Aeneid, Book IV
Translated for the 23rd Century

I. The Shuttle Crash

I sing of the arms of two men, who first entwined on alien shores, and how Pon Farr drove a Vulcan, noted for his Logic, to endure such pleasures, and his proud friend, who loved him above all others, to embrace his inflamed passions.

Captain Kirk and the loyal Vulcan Spock enter their proud vessel.
The craft flies with rapid force through heaven.
But a storm hurls the ship downward, towards a planet,
in foggy vapors bound, and lashed by winds.
They land where vast cliffs and twin crags loom in the sky--
under an overhang opposite is a cave, curtained with rock.

Disembarking, the brave Captain speaks,
“The ship is wrecked, and skies are hostile.”
Thunder rouses the heavens, and dark rain pours down.
Lost in obscure night, the men take shelter in the cave,
and stretch their storm-tossed bodies on the ground.

II. Pon Farr

Then Pon Farr seized the Vulcan and fed his veins a hidden flame.
Wounded by all-pow’rful love, his anxious mind recalls his Captain’s courage, and the noble body of his friend.
Sick with desire, the Vulcan ponders: “I know these traces
of the ancient fire, but truly I think that man’s majestic:
bold in mind and battle, with what grace he speaks.
Like ivory eggs held tight his buttocks seem to me!
He’s the only man who’s stirred my senses.
If my mind was not set, I might yield to this one temptation.
But rather let the ground rip before me, down to its dark abyss, before I violate Logic, or break its laws.”

He tries to stifle the pain deep in his heart, but what use is logic to the impassioned? Pon farr raises hopes in his mind, and weakens his sense of shame. Fettered in the chains of love, Spock burns.

III. Spock and Kirk Speak

Wretched, love-sick, with what words dare he tackle
the Captain? and how should he begin?

His lips unused to love, he begins to speak:
“Hear my misfortune, Jim: I’m driven by a savage longing.
It is in your power to grant solace for my swollen passion.
I beg for this favor: unless you grant it, I’ll repay all by dying.”

Yearning madly, he hangs on his captain’s reply.

As soon as the Captain saw his friend gripped by such heart-sickness, he thought, Though he is not pleasing to my eyes, yet he has touched my mind. In all my trusted secrets he has part.
I owe my life to his boundless favors. How can I scorn his offered bed?

Great-hearted Kirk spoke to the Vulcan:
“I’d be crazy to refuse such an offer, or to let you die.
Certainly take the prize, and quench your hunger.
But the truth’s not escaped me, you’ve always been suspicious of desire. Free your heart of fear, you’re my friend.
Follow up what you say with action. Do it.”
The virtuous captain finished speaking.

IV. Let Love Rule

Spock gladly obeyed his command at once, and let love rise.
Burning with passion, and the madness in their very bones,
they join themselves firmly (marvelous, but not to tell).

They trade roles, just as bees both receive the bounty of the fragrant fields, and swell the cells with liquid honey.
Trembling Earth below and Heavens above approve their union:
The tawny lion roars on mountain heights, and lightning flashes.
So their love is crowned with due delights.

V. The Jealous Doctor

Jealousy races at once between earth and sky:
Immediately she sets her course towards the Doctor
and inflames his mind with words and fuels his anger.

Now she fills the ears of the Doctor with this unwelcome news:
The Captain, a manly presence with whom the Doctor longed to unite, Now reclines all night with the Vulcan,
pressed close, the two abandoned to their pleasures.
With tears for such things, the jealous Doctor hurries
on wings to the planet’s shores.

VI. The Marriage

Meanwhile rosy morn rises up, and the chosen men appear:

The Vulcan first, blazing in green and gold,
His hair dressed with tender leaves, a purple scarf about his waist.
The Captain, the most handsome of all, joins hands with him.
His eyes starred with tawny jasper, hair gilded, so Kirk moves, like Apollo, beauty shining from his noble face.

Virtue has its rewards: the two make no secret of their love, they call it marriage.

The Doctor turns towards the lovers. Viewing these wonderful sights, amazed the doctor stands there, rapt, with fixed gaze.
Humbly, he thinks: Truly I arrive too late. The Captain’s master of what he takes. If such alien people inflame him, how can I begrudge his plans? Who would seek the breaking off of such a love?

Kindled by the glory of destiny, the party was eager to be gone in flight.
The Captain called the winds with the message: “Let us sail.”
So he spoke, and, while speaking, the three vanished, and melted into liquid air far from our sight.