Ah this is so great. My first introduction to Star Trek was via the movies, which used to air incessantly on one of the local stations here, in fact I think the first Trek movie I saw was The Search for Spock when i was 7 or 8 or something, and I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, this spock guy must be someone real special if this Kirk person is willing to blow up his car and can deal with losing his only son to get him back. I'd watch whenever it came on my earliest memory was kirk standing on the disintegrating genesis planet with spock in his arms like the epitome of a romantic byronic hero, except that his FLAW was that Spock was missing. And the end of that movie when Spock recognizes Jim, that love is one that is universally recognizable. But of course i was too young to think of them as space husbands. But fortunately, lol, that's where YOU came in because after I read Surrender (my first K/S fanfic, first slash fic, EVER) I simply couldn't see them as any other way, because it JUST. MAKES. SENSE. Even at 13 (yes... i read it at 13 like a very bad girl) I simply refused to see it any other way afterward and immediately ran to consume all the TOS episodes and to me it's just so damned blatant and damned beautiful. My hope for the new movie is that they preserve that, the fact that kirk and spock mean *everything* to eachother and that they make eachother who they are. Your essay captures that beautifully.