Hello! I absolutely love your commissioned fanart of Spock and Uhura playing ka'athyra and kora for @jolaoso48's The Returning! I'm doing a project for a class on Islamic pop music that involves making fake magazine ads and if you're willing, I'd love to use your piece to make a fake ad for a musical fusion concert with the two of them. Totally okay if the answer is no, but thank you in advance!

Hi there,

You have my blessing to use the piece, absolutely! I only ask that you cite my name in the bibliography for your project and include a link to one of my socials.

If you're up to it, I'd love to see the final project when you're done!

I so appreciate you asking, and best of luck with your project! 💕

I’m rewatching Star Trek Discovery, with my partner who is watching it for the first time. I have listened to the naysayers smack talk this show for years and I am officially over it!

I’ve laughed, cried & cried some more. This show is bold, new, incredible, exciting and groundbreaking.

I for one didn’t even begin to watch Discovery until I was stuck home during the pandemic, because I just didn’t want to watch another cisgender 💀 male captain, that storyline was old and stale. So I was pleasantly surprised to see NEW characters and stories in Discovery.

A phenomenal black female is the lead character rather than just in the background, a multi cultural, LGBTQIA+ & species cast! I’ve loved exploring the different relationship dynamics between the characters.

There hadn’t been a new Star Trek series since Enterprise and that one almost killed the Trek franchise in my opinion.

Discovery does what Star Trek was always intended to do, make people think… not about the way things were, but the way things could be in the future. To challenge society’s status quo’s and explore other possibilities.

Michael Burnham is a Superhero and Sonequa Martin-Green is a freaking Goddess!

Like it or not Discovery breathed new life into the Trek franchise. It launched Strange New Worlds, gave Picard a snowballs chance and even probably launched/ saved Paramount.

The entire cast of Discovery is awesome and honestly it’s now my favorite Trek series of all time! I’m so sad that it was cancelled along with Lower Decks, but I’m so glad that it was made!

The “oh I could definitely write this fanfic in under 5000 words and it really wouldn’t take me that long” voice in your head is actually the devil speaking

The secret wish is to write a fanfic that someone loves so much they make fan art of it, or to create a drawing that someone creates an entire fic based off of it.

This beautiful rendition of Spock and Nyota created by @thecitybee /  thecitybee.tumblr.com for the fanfic The Returning. https://archiveofourown.org/works/32464492/chapters/80505541

If you sincerely believe that Nyota Uhura was “better” or “more empowering” in the original Trek series as a “strong Black woman that don’t need no man” and that she’s ruined in the reboot series because of her relationship with Spock…

I’m going to assume that you’ve got no idea how antiblack racism informed her role in TOS and that you had your eyes and ears turned off during her scenes in the reboot films where she was a badass whose importance to the films wasn’t centered on her relationship with Spock.

Straight up, if you think that being a part of a romance between equals ruins or lessens Uhura’s character and makes you wish for when she wasn’t in a canon ship back in the Good Ole Sixties, you have got some serious rethinking to do because your misogynoir is showing.

Basically.

How's it's always gonna be.

*Nichelle Nichols voice* Happy birthday, Commander!

✨ 🐝 Commissions | Instagram | Buy Prints 🐝 ✨

Fans celebrate the casting of Nichelle Nichols as Uhura as a moment for actors of color, which they should be.

But I also wanted to spotlight the casting of these iconic guest starring characters, seen in episodes of TOS.

Percy Rodriguez was cast as flag officer Commodore Stone, who was Kirk's superior in the chain of command. Stone is one of the officers that presides over Kirk's court martial.

Booker Bradshaw was the original Dr. M'Benga, seen in two episodes of TOS. at the time, M'Benga was Starfleet's first and only medical specialist in Vulcan Physiology, having spent a year's residency on Vulcan.

One of the finest minds in computer technology in the 23rd century, and creator of the duotronic computer, Dr. Richard Daystrom, was played by William Marshall, whose work in Shakespeare, and his roles as Paul Robeson and Frederick Douglass, added to the gravitas of his portrayal.

A flag officer, a specialist in Vulcan medicine, and one of the finest minds in a field of technology, played by actors of color, during the turbulent 1960s.

Girl You Really Got A Hold on Me

by @thecitybee

I was browsing Pinterest when I saw this and felt immediately that I had to paint my OTP in the exact pose. The people closest to me know I’m completely obsessed with Spock and Lt. Uhura and have been since I was a child. As someone raised on Star Trek (specifically the Original Series) who also happens to be a Black woman, Star Trek represents the promise of a utopian future that exists because of the inherent value of people of color. I have eight billion things to say about how important the original intention for Spock and Uhura to be a romantic couple is, but suffice it to say I love them. The title of this piece comes from a song I always associate with these two, Childish Gambino's "Me and Your Mama". Painted with Clip Studio Paint in one session because I have no impulse control.

Can't get enough of @thecitybee's gorgeous art commissions? Go ahead and place your own order. You won't regret it.

Chapters: 6/6 Fandom: Star Trek Rating: Explicit Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Spock & Nyota Uhura, Spock/Nyota Uhura Characters: Spock (Star Trek), Nyota Uhura, James T. Kirk, Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, Pavel Chekov, Hikaru Sulu, Sarek (Star Trek) Additional Tags: Angst, Katra (Star Trek), Reincarnation, Grief/Mourning, Interspecies Romance, Post-Star Trek Beyond, Established Spock/Nyota Uhura, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ultimate Joy, Hurt Spock (Star Trek) Summary:

"Spockʻs old crew mates Sulu, Chekov, and Scotty had fanned out to supervise the faculty and cadets while Kirk, McCoy and Spock observed. They were all there together again.

All but one…"

Vulcans mate for life, and Sʻchin Tʻgai Spock has suffered the loss of his tel-ketelau, his one true love. Or, has he?

Nichelle Nichols (Uhura and the relationship between Spock and Uhura - TrekFest '09 in Riverside, Iowa)

This is one of the first interviews where Nichelle Nichols talked about JJ’s star trek and the Spock/Uhura relationship in it. When asked about her reaction to the relationship in the new movie she replied saying that it surprised her but also explained that there are hints of it even in TOS and Gene Roddenberry had thought about it too but couldn’t do so much in the 60s. In this quote she gives some interesting tidbits about how she created Uhura’s character and why Nichelle believes that Uhura was probably closest to the character of Spock although there were only hints of that on camera.

Nichelle: Um. Gene Roddenberry originally did not want to write, was not writing a science fiction film. He wanted to write about the human condition between men and women of all races that reflected American and reflected out to the world. And, uh, thereby have high drama. Um. *sigh* So when I went on interview for the role before Paramount and NBC knew I was going to be on, the roll had not been written and I read a scene that they asked me to read that was three characters: Somebody named Kirk, somebody named Bones, and somebody named Spock. And they asked me if I would read for this role of the person named Spock. And I said “Fine” because it was a long scene and he had a big part. And I thought this was the role and I said,  “Tell me about this character. What is she like?” And they looked at me like I was crazy and said “It’s not.. He’s not.. Spock is not a she, Spock is a he, we just haven’t written a role yet but this can… we can see from here.” And I said, “Could she be a woman” And they said “Leonard Nimoy would not like it”.  *laugh* And so I said tell me something about the character and I’ll read as though I was reading for the character. To make a long story short I got the role. But, I took my reading from what they told me Spock was about. In developing that character, and I told Gene Roddenberry about it when he decided on the book I was reading which was a Treaty from Africa called “Uhuru”. He said he wanted to use that but he said why don’t we do a little alliteration on it it because he said it was too harsh. And, I said “make it Uhura” and he said you’ve named your character it belongs to you. And I set forth then, he said “You come from the United States of Africa. I’ve just decided.” And I decided then from the character that I read [Spock] that I wanted to be very much like that character but in a feminine way. And Gene said, and I was sharing this with George the other day, when I told him that I thought of Spock as my mentor. Because if you remember Uhura was the only one he was able to teach the Vulcan lyre to and he sang and spooffed on Spock. Now, you could have never had a love scene in 63 between Uhura and Spock but there were several hints and Gene was one in the kind of beginning to follow that and he wanted to do episodes if we had gone past the third year, because this is about the 3rd year we were talking, he wanted to do episodes that got into all of the stars life so that you had not one star or two stars and supporting cast, which we really are not. *laugh* But that was the essence of that. And, JJ was a big Star Trek fan and he invited me to lunch and I told him about creating the character. Whether he got and what my relationship with Spock, um, whether he got that idea from there I don’t know. If he took it and ran with it and thought “Wow”. - TrekFest ‘09 in Riverside, Iowa (x)

Sona Jobarteh - Jarabi

Sona Jobarteh hails from a long West African tradition of Griots and kora players; her grandfather was the master Griot Amadu Bansang Jobarteh. Creating her own history, she has broken from the male-dominated kora tradition to become the family’s first female virtuoso of the instrument. Here Sona Jobarteh performs the traditional Malian song, Jarabi, accompanied by Femi Temowo on guitar and percussionist Robert Fordjour.

Playing the complex West African instrument called the kora | 60 Minutes

Stephen Langa "Black Monalisa" 2023

“Letting Go” by Art by Andileh