Fanlore Live!: 2009 Escapade Panel Notes: Kathy Resch

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Interviews by Fans
Title: Fanlore Live!: 2009 Escapade Panel Notes: Kathy Resch
Interviewer: Shoshanna
Interviewee: Kathy Resch
Date(s): 2009
Medium:
Fandom(s):
External Links:
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Fanlore Live!: 2009 Escapade Panel Notes: Kathy Resch are rough panel notes taken by Shoshanna at Escapade.

Copy editing has been done for clarity and spelling.

See Fanlore Live! for more context.

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Notes by Shoshanna

Kathy Resch said:

We've done a lot to preserve K/S & fannish history & we're planning to put the meta articles from Legacy on a website. "Legacy" was organized by Jenna Sinclair in 2006 for the 30th anniversary of the oldest K/S zine. "Legacy would be a history of K/S fandom.

I helped Jenna Sinclair get in touch with people from the 70s and 80s, and interviewed people, including Diane Marchant, author of FIRST EVER K/S story, but later moved into het away from slash. I got a great letter from Diane Marchant about what it was like to write by letter, the webs of correspondence around the world (Diane is Australian), and how the concept of K/S developed. Her story never actually named the people in the stories -- people were paranoid about homophobia, not about Gene Roddenberry himself.

The first published slash stories triggered instant hate mail to the people doing it, really nasty letters. Gerry Downes lived in Alaska, which helped her feel a little safer -- angry fans at least weren't likely to vandalize her house. Everybody used their real names, real addresses, etc., so they were vulnerable. Gerry Downes took the brunt of it, but then the next people came in. Next was Leslie Fish -- when she got hit and she hit BACK -- Leslie Fish and Alexis Fegan Black were very strong-willed and not intimidated, so that helped reduce the level of ugliness & hatred. This all peaked 77-78 and slacked thereafter.

All the meta from Legacy will be put up & linked on the wiki.

Many people who wrote in the 70s/80 are willing to have their stuff archived electronically in the K/S Archive (ksarchive.com, set up by Killa), but it needs to be scanned, which is in progress.

Was I ever concerned about being outed as a slash fan? No: my parents died when I was in my 20s, & they were the only people would have worried about; I was living in the Bay Area, which was a pretty safe place to be involved in the stuff. The printer who did my first K/S zine loved it; the women in the bindery put the art on the walls. Slash fans were hiding in plain sight, since the outside world thought all fans were crazy trekkies anyway, so what the hell.

I remember that one gen writer accused slash writers of cherry-picking evidence to suit their prejudice, but she was doing the same thing in her gen. This fan went on a crusade to rid fandom of this evil. This fan was Mary Louise Dodge. She fell off the fannish map in the 1980s.

Pseuds really came in when Code 7 (a S/H slash zine) got sent to Aaron Spelling in the 80s; people freaked and went underground. This is why Code 7 #4 contains NO NAMES AT ALL -- not editor, not authors, no nothing.

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