Flamingo's Police Complaint

Fanfiction
Title:	Flamingo's Police Complaint
Author(s):	Flamingo
Date(s):	1999?
Length:
Genre(s):	slash, meta
Fandom(s):	Starsky & Hutch
Relationship(s):
External Links:	Flamingo's Police Complaint; also here
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Flamingo's Police Complaint is a Starsky & Hutch metafic by Flamingo.

This story was originally published on VenicePlace, a Starsky & Hutch slash discussion list. It was later published in Indigo Boys #6. It is also at The Starsky & Hutch Archive.

Summary

While the story is described as "a parody," the story actually more of a meta fanwork. It references fandom and fans, describes fans interacting with canon characters, and gives shout-outs to specific fanworks.

While written in a humorous style, it addresses a serious real life fan event, that of a fan/fans who did not like the content or genre of another fan/fans' fiction, and sent anonymous, threatening hate mail to them in retaliation.

One of the messages was quoted or paraphrased in the story: "Death to all slash-writing, slash-loving, slash-reading filthy sluts." And, "Anyone who'd take those nice, normal, heterosexual boys, Starsky & Hutch, and make them queers is a sicko pervert who should die."

From the online version, "Special thanks go to Elaine H. for saving the original email files so I could reconstruct the story!"

In 2021, Flamingo added: "It's an old story. I'm sure you notice there are no modern fandoms in it. I wrote it in response to all my friends who were always in other fandoms they thought were "better"."

Fandoms, Characters, Fanworks Included or Mentioned

• David Starsky and Kenneth Hutchinson and his "Glorious Mustache"
• Tim Bayliss and Frank Pembleton, Homicide: Life on the Street
• Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg, The Sentinel
• Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Krycek, The X-Files
• jat sapphire's story, I Wear My Sunglasses at Night
• Flamingo's Miami Vice slash discussion list, St. Vitus
• Rosemary C, fan
• Flamingo, fan
• a shout-out/reference to Candy Apple's story, Outside Influences, in which Starsky is Blair's father
• a shout-out/reference to Glow and Flamingo's story, Talkin' Dirty Pool
• Sonny Crockett, Ricardo Tubbs, Martin Castillo, Miami Vice
• Frank McPike, Roger Lococco, and Vinnie Terranova, Wiseguy
• Benton Fraser, Diefenbaker, due South
• Ray Doyle and William Bodie, The Professionals
• a reference to incompatibilities with VCRs: PAL and NTSC
• lotsa dogs

Author's Notes from the Print Version

As posted in Indigo Boys #6:

Author's note: This little parody was inspired by our S/H discussion list, called VenicePlace (VP). Venice Place is a real building in Venice, California, used as the exterior of Hutch's apartment in Starsky & Hutch. The tenants of VenicePlace consider it a virtual apartment building, where everyone has an apartment with the perfect view of the boys when they come home. Numerous "tenants" have added to the mythology of the list, and references to the mythology will be footnoted so that non-residents will not be overly-confused by the in-joke references.

One day, several tenants of VP, including myself, received a particularly obnoxious piece of hate mail. Most of us had stories on the S/H Archive, but one of the recipients wasn't a writer, and had no connection to the Archive. After a little detective work, we did discover who the sender was, and were able to deal with things in a reasonable way.

However, the entire incident, which I treated as a possible hate crime, led to some comical moments. I was urged by my ISP to call the police and report the hate mail, in the hopes that the police report would give me the paperwork needed to talk to the district attorney about getting a subpoena for AOL's records so we could possibly learn the identity of the sender.

Well, I called my local police department, which of course was baffled by the nature of the complaint. The whole time I was dealing with the cops, it struck me as so ironic -here I am, a woman who spends entirely too much time writing romantic homo-erotic fantasies about the police, trying to explain to this mundane uniform about the problem of hate mail on the internet and the difficulty of finding out who the perpetrator was, and why this had the potential of being a hate crime. Believe me, there was nothing romantic or homo-erotic about this exchange:

Prince George's Finest (staring at piece of hate mail and trying to decipher it): "And you say you were targeted for this hate mail because you're gay?"

Me: "Yes. See this sentence here? (I underline it.) This refers to me and —

PGF: (clearly uncomfortable): "You're uh, urn, ah. friend?" (not looking at me)

Me: "My partner." (instant comical thoughts of Starsky —"But, Hutch, we tell people we’re partners. You think they think—?" "No, babe, they don't think —they know." I jerk my mind back to the moment at hand.)

PGF: "Right. You’re partner, (deciding he's glad he doesn't work with a "partner") "And you want the police to do what with this?"

Me: "I don't really expect you to do anything. I was told I’d need an official complaint report to be able to deal with the district attorney's office. So, here we are!"

PGF: (still staring uncomprehendingly at the letter, unsure if it is really written in English) 'The district attorney?" (he looks at me with the same expression)

Me: "I was told the district attorney could subpoena AOL to get their records to find out who sent the mail."

PGF: (blinking) "Why won't AOL just tell you?"

Me: "It's against their privacy policy."

PGF: (trying to digest why AOL would have a privacy policy) "Uh-huh. Okay. Let me write this up. You’ll be contacted by a detective." (pause as he writes) "Probably from Homicide.

Me: (my turn to blink) Homicide?!?

PGF: (bland) "Yeah, It goes in as a crime against persons. That's Homicide." (he keeps writing)

Me: (Brain goes into uncontrollable overdrive.) "Oh. Homicide detective.

I told all this to my partner, [A], and we began wondering. Homicide detective. Starsky or Hutch? Frank Pembleton or Tim Bayliss? (We are close to Baltimore.) Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg...I'm not sure they're in Homicide, are they? And one of them isn't a detective, so that lets him out. Mulder and Scully are FBI, they wouldn't be involved...unless Mulder thought it was an X File, and in our house anything is possible. Bodie and Doyle are C15 and in the wrong country, unless they're visiting. And Sonny and Rico, and Marty are in Vice. Wrong department. Unless....

And now on to the story...

Author's Notes from the Later Online Version

Author's note: The story behind the story. Several years ago, someone visiting the S&H Slash Archive was incredibly offended by its content, and decided to share their outrage with several of the authors on the archive. The archive was much smaller then and virtually everyone on it was also on my S/H slash discussion list, VenicePlace. Venice Place is a real building, the place where Hutch had his apartment, so the listmembers of VP all have "apartments" in our virtual building, and have various virtual adventures with their favorite tenants, Starsky & Hutch. Well, word quickly got out that someone was sending really abusive mail to SH slash writers. The person did nothing to hide their identity and they had an AOL address.

I was angry enough to call the police and put in a hate mail complaint. Of course, they had no idea how to deal with such a complaint. The poor uniformed guy they sent over couldn't even understand the obscure fannish content of the email. But he dutifully wrote everything down, then told me that complaints of this nature were considered "crimes against persons" and would be investigated by a homicide detective. When I told my partner, [A], that we'd have to deal with a homicide detective she wondered aloud whether it would be Starsky, Hutch...or possibly Tim Bayliss or Frank Pembleton from Homicide, Life on the Streets (since we live so close to Baltimore). That led to further speculations about what kind of homicide detective might show up to investigate our hate mail crime. Well, as it turned out I was able to discover the perpetrator's identity through a weird chain of events, and they were freaked to discover there might actually be repercussions to their writing obnoxious hate mail. I never needed to talk to the homicide detective at all, which was probably just as well.

But after sharing the story with other VP members, most of whom do enjoy other fandoms as well as SH, the beginnings of the following parody were borne. The dogs in the story are mine, as are the fluffy pink flamingo-headed slippers. You might see me wearing them at the next con. "Ro" is my roommate Rosemary (writer of many of the fine stories on the slash site), and several other stalwart members of the list are mentioned as well. There's also a reference to a cross-universe story of Candy Apple's in which Starsky turns out to be the father of Blair (of the Sentinel), and references to some stories of a good friend of mine who went through a spate of cross-universe stories with X-Files in which just about everyone ended up in bed with Mulder. I hope you'll enjoy this little bit of VP lunacy. It's a strange place to live, but we like it. Flamingo

Reactions and Reviews

I don't know many crossovers but this really took my fancy. The list above are only the ones that I recognised, there are others. Regardless of that, the story is very funny and Flamingo as always has the banter between partners spot on.