Starsky & Hutch

Fandom
Name:	Starsky & Hutch
Abbreviation(s):	SH
Creator:	William Blinn
Date(s):	1975 – 1979
Medium:	television, novel, film, game
Country of Origin:	USA
External Links:	at IMDb at Wikipedia
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Starsky & Hutch is a 1970s crime drama about two police detectives and partners, classic buddy cops. The show has themes of partnership, hurt/comfort, and homoerotic undertones strong enough that even the actors and mainstream critics noticed; the fandom takes these elements and runs with them.

Many of its fans came to this fandom by way of Star Trek: TOS, one of the other handfuls of media fandom at the time. See Star Trek and Starsky & Hutch.

While the fandom has been active since its beginning, interest increased in the 1990s when TNT began running reruns of the show on television.

Another bump in fannish interest was due to 2004 comedy movie starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. This movie wasn't particularly popular with original fans, but it did bring new fans into the fandom.

Show Synopsis

Starsky and Hutch on Still the One cover by Linda Cody

Detective Sergeant David Starsky and Kenneth Hutchinson are cops in Bay City, working Homicide, often doing undercover work. Rounding out the main cast were Captain Dobey and their informant and friend Huggy Bear.

Riding around in Starsky's red Torino, Starsky and Hutch are the most conspicuous undercover cops you’ll ever meet. Many episodes had darker elements amid the comedic tones, and it was often said to be the most graphic and realistic show of its time due to the issues it dealt with—racism, rape, and drug abuse (Hutch got hooked on heroin in one episode, "The Fix"). The women of the show didn't last long, almost always ending up getting attacked, killed, or scared away by the gritty reality of the job; sometimes all three.

The main emotional focus of the show was the relationship of the two leads, with many of the stories centering around the love, the devotion, the caring between these two partners and best friends (and possibly more). David Soul appeared as a guest on Merv Griffin's talk show multiple times throughout the 1970s, and in one episode, of which there is existing video, Merv reads an article from TV Guide which refers to Starsky & Hutch as "Television's most violent show." David replies that they "have a right to say that, but my opinion of the show is that it's a love story... it's a love story between two men who happen to be cops." David continues, "...who could be anything... could be bricklayers or attorneys or doctors, or... anything."

"My Fandom Shares Clothes!" -- photo included in the 2016 SHareCon goodie bag, creator: samudee

In 2004, the show was remade as a movie starring the comedy duo of Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, a pastiche playing mostly on the camp '70s aspects of the TV show. Many fans disregard this movie as any sort of canon or of particular interest, but they appreciate the interest it created for the fandom; the TV show was released on DVD along with the movie's release, helping it gain exposure among a new generation of fans.

Popular Episodes

Episodes that are fan favorites or which have a lot of impact on fan discussion and fanfic include:

• The Fix (Hutch is kidnapped by bad guys and addicted to heroin. Starsky comes to his aid.)
• Shootout (Starsky is shot during a hostage situation, and Hutch comes to his aid.)
• A Coffin For Starsky (Starsky is injected with slow-acting but lethal poison. The partners search for the antidote.)
• Gillian (Hutch's girlfriend is secretly a prostitute, Starsky attempts to help, leading to an emotionally-charged confrontation between the friends.)
• Bloodbath (Starsky is kidnapped by a cult. Hutch comes to his aid.)
• Survival (Hutch is trapped under his car after a murder attempt, and Starsky rushes to find him.)
• Starsky's Lady (Starsky's fiancee is mortally wounded by an ex-con with a vendetta against Starsky.)
• Death in a Different Place (Starsky's mentor, John Blaine, is murdered and revealed to have been a closeted gay man. An early serious depiction of homosexuality on primetime TV.)
• The Plague I & II (Hutch falls victim to a plague epidemic sweeping the city, Starsky works to save him.)
• Hutchinson for Murder One (Hutch is framed and arrested for the murder of his ex-wife Vanessa, Starsky rescues him and they go on the lam.)
• Partners (Hutch fakes amnesia and then eggs Starsky into telling him several stories about their friendship to help him "remember.")
• The Game (Hutch dares Starsky to prove his ability to track criminals down by playing a game of hide-and-seek with him throughout the city, and eludes Starsky so determinedly that Starsky cannot raise him when things go dangerously wrong.)
• Targets Without A Badge I, II, & III (Starsky and Hutch quit the police force over the tragic mishandling of a major case, and work to solve the case on their own.)
• Starsky vs. Hutch (Boundaries are crossed regarding a woman, and the two cops have their most serious fight in the series.)
• Sweet Revenge (The last episode aired—Starsky is shot by a corrupt and powerful industry leader's hitmen, and it appears unlikely that he will survive. The episode is a jumping-off point for many speculative fannish what-ifs.

Characters

See more at: Category:Starsky & Hutch Characters

• David Starsky
• Kenneth Hutchinson
• Captain Dobey
• Huggy Bear

Pairings

Almost all fiction that involves a pairing is Starsky/Hutch.

Starsky & Hutch RPF

Not very common! See Starsky & Hutch RPF.

The Fourth Season: Rifts and Opportunities

interior art from Suzan Lovett's The Thousandth Man, an influential post-"Starsky vs. Hutch" story

The fourth season. Some fans hate it. Some fans love it. And for many of the same reasons.

Many fans felt this last season was full of tension, somewhat uncomfortable to watch, and had a lot of implications to those who saw slash. The show itself was filmed in a different style with film techniques that made it stand out from the first three season. The characters appeared tense and moody. And then there was Hutch's Mustache.

The fourth season, for all these reasons, was also an incubator for a lot of fanworks!

[flamingo]
On the simplest level, most SH fans despise the episode Starsky vs Hutch, yet this episode is directly responsible for more stories than any other episode, possibly more even than Sweet Revenge. If that episode had never been aired, we would be missing some mighty fine fiction.

Regarding the controversial episode, "Starsky vs. Hutch":

[moonaloon]
One of the most befuddling (and tragic) aspects of the Starsky & Hutch canon is the misplacement of the episode "Starsky vs. Hutch". Though it was filmed earlier in the season, and both the emotional tone as well as key visual elements would place it correspondingly, the episode was not aired until just prior to the series' finale, interrupting the obviously sequential plot arc of the last four episodes. Many fans flatly reject its airdate as canon; some, however, take a different approach toward explaining the confusing relationship "backtrack" that seems to occur when the episode is viewed as chronologically taking place after the "Targets Without A Badge" arc.

Most theories about the tone of season 4, in both discussion and fanfiction, incorporate, to some extent, Hutch's disillusionment with police work, which he confesses in "Targets Without A Badge Part I" (sometimes this attitude is extended to Starsky as well). In several interpretations of the partnership's rough patch, the episode "Starsky vs Hutch" is portrayed as a last straw that causes things to come to a head before "Sweet Revenge." Slash fans often interpret their tension as UST or domestic strife, while gen fans lean towards non-sexual sources of interpersonal tension hinted at in the series, such as frustration and insecurity about the strength of their partnership in the face of increasing strain from their jobs, or fear that their affection and loyalty is an exploitable vulnerability. Most, but not all, fans concur that Hutch's demeanor is more strongly and negatively affected than Starsky's.

For more, see The Fourth Season of Starsky & Hutch.

Common Tropes

• Hurt/Comfort
• drug addiction
• Post Sweet Revenge
• Angst
• Smarm
• Case Fics
• Episode Tags
• Missing Scenes
• Whump
• Starsky's Torino and Hutch's car, "The Squash"
• Starsky's junk food and Hutch's health food
• Hutch's Mustache
• Hutch's greenhouse
• Starsky's memorable red long johns

• 

  art by Suzan Lovett portrays Starsky's red long johns

Starsky and Hutch Fanon

cover of Ten-Thirteen issue #1, Connie Faddis (xerox copy) -- A fan writes: "Honour...like my all-time favourite of SH zine covers -- '10-13 (i)' with its twin swords of strength and justice." This cover was the winner of an Encore Award

Popular topics of fanon speculation include (needs more examples):

• Common assumptions about their lives:
  • Starsky is the child of poor Brooklyn Jews, and his extended family was large, eccentric, tight-knit, loving and happy.
  • When young, Starsky was a troublemaker at best and a teen gang member and juvenile delinquent at worst, until John Blaine straightened him out.
  • Starsky's father was a police officer who was killed by the mob (in a conversation about him in the episode "The Set-Up," it was revealed that Starsky's father was murdered, and that mobster Joe Durniak stood for everything Mr. Starsky fought against.) Other theories include the idea that Starsky's father was an old friend of Durniak's who was killed for not joining the mob too or for not paying protection money, or that Starsky's father was in fact a mobster who was killed by a rival family.
  • Starsky's military experience: in canon, he only references having been "in the army," but it is widely presumed that he Served in Combat during the Vietnam War, and suffered great emotional anguish and trauma there. See also Starsky's Military Background.
  • Hutch had well-to-do parents, ranging from suburban middle-class to obscenely wealthy country estate dwellers.
  • Hutch's family was unsupportive, stifling, and dull, ranging from merely somewhat cold and demanding to outright emotionally or physically abusive, and he had a somewhat lonely and friendless youth, of varying severity.
  • Hutch's parents and his ex-wife Vanessa pressured Hutch to have a lucrative career, and disapprove of his decision to become a police officer, sometimes disowning or disinheriting him.
  • Hutch's schooling: He canonically went to college ("The Omaha Tiger"), and fanonically studied pre-med or pre-law, or dropped out of law school or medical school.
  • Canonically, it appears that the writers had one idea for Hutch's past or present marriages in the pilot and another later in the series. Fanonically, the question of how many wives Hutch has had (and what their names and personalities are) has excited nearly as much fanwank as Watson's marital history.
  • Starsky's longtime girlfriend and almost-fiancee Terry Roberts and Hutch's short-term but serious girlfriend Gillian Ingram (both deceased in the same episode they are introduced) were the (female) loves of Starsky and Hutch's lives, in both gen and slash fanfics and interpretations.
• Perpetual speculation, controversies, and theories:
  • The emotional ramifications of the numerous traumas and tragedies the two cops suffered in canon, but which were never followed up on due to the Reset Button.
  • Pre-series era: the development of Starsky and Hutch's early friendship with each other and John Colby at the academy, their time as rookies before being partnered, and their early partnership as detectives.
  • The aftereffects of Hutch's brief forced heroin addiction in "The Fix." Hutch often develops a phobia of needles and a powerful aversion to opiates and narcotic painkillers, resulting in heightened angst in fics where he is injured or hospitalized. He is almost always extremely guilty and ashamed for giving his kidnappers the location of his girlfriend under duress and of his begging and threatening Starsky to give him more heroin. Sometimes, sequels to "The Fix" depict Hutch as struggling with lingering cravings or even falling off the wagon again; or have someone discover his secret and try to blackmail or discredit him and Starsky.
  • Depictions of Starsky's homophobia prior to the episode "Death in a Different Place" and his process of dispelling it.
  • Starsky's stormy relationship with his petty-criminal younger brother Nicky and Hutch's stormy relationship with his ex-wife Vanessa.
  • Explorations or explanations for why Hutch slept with Kira in "Starsky vs. Hutch" and how he got Starsky's forgiveness, often apologyfic or Partner Betrayal.
  • Many, many, many theories abound regarding the motives behind Hutch's often belittling and abrasive treatment of Starsky, phrased at least as early as S and H #8 (1980): "why does “The Golden Boy” (Hutch) play those “prove you love me games” with “The Street Kid” (Starsky)?"
  • Many, many fanfic explanations abound regarding the characters' bickering and tense relationship in season 4 (also see meta section above).

Its History as a Closed Fandom, as an Old Fandom

For all its longevity, the fandom itself had, at least in the print-era (1995 and before), a relatively small footprint in the bigger world of fandom. Its zines were rarely advertised in the adzines, and its fans tended to be a pretty tight congregation.

An extremely rare fandom pimping flyer from Fantazine #6 (1996): "Did you love the show when it was on the air? Do you think Starsky & Hutch are two incredibly appealing characters? Did you notice that they also happen to be extremely attractive men? (Come on, now, most of us weren't in it for the car chases!) Above all, did you love their RELATIONSHIP? Are you interested in reading stories about these two terrific guys and meeting fans with the same interests? If the answer to any of these questions is "Yes," then we want to meet you! SH fandom has been around since the show was on the air in the late '70s. We're a small but friendly group, and we welcome both "&" and "/" fans. Unfortunately, we're small enough that many people don't know we exist! The purpose of this flyer is to spread the word. If you're interested in learning more about the Wonderful World of Starsky & Hutch, just contact one of the people listed below."

One of the reasons behind this may have been because this fandom was one in which there was very little contact, if any, with TPTB. Unlike Star Trek, there were no large cons featuring actors and other official creators. Fannish interests, then, tended to fold in on themselves and become very insular.

In 1990, a fan wrote:

[anonymous]
small is beautiful. That's not to say we don't welcome new people. I'm sure we've never consciously sought to be exclusive. Yet, I'll admit a smaller, close-knit group attracts me more than the idea of a vast, impersonal fandom. However, there must still be fans of the show out there, who don't know we exist. They could provide us with a needed boost, even rekindle enthusiasm.

A fan in 1992 wrote:

[anonymous]
The smallness of the SH fandom appeals to me. I am not a small fish in a big pond. I feel like I know what is going on and that my opinion counts. I am involved in other farndoms (Please forgive me!) but I don't know about half of what is going on. This is the only newsletter I get. I can follow what is happening in this fandom. I really feel that my opinions count.

In early 1993, a fan wrote of the recent tensions in SH fandom:

[anonymous]
I haven't written to FRIENZ in a while, but I have been keeping tabs on what's been going on. Which is why, to be honest, I haven't been writing. And if all the bickering and arguing is turning me off, I can't help but wonder what it will do to prospective new fans. Starsky & Hutch is a small fandom, a closed fandom. No one advertises outside. But we need new blood if we're to continue to flourish. Is it that we don't want to flourish? Is it like the last season of S&H, we just want to get it over with? If so, the thing to do is step aside for the next generation. If not, we've got to show them that we can overcome our problems and pull together—show them the warm and open people that I encountered when I first ventured in all those years ago. I'm talking about most of you! Yes, believe it or not, there are new fans anxious to join in. Most of them never even realized we existed. I don't want this fandom to die, I don't want the message of love S&H taught us to be lost— disillusionment is rampant enough in the 'real' world... Love each other, be good to each other, respect each other. Failing that, don't spoil it for the others who are coming to bring us a breath of fresh air. They are our future. Remember your good experiences in the beginning, and let them have the same chance. Show them how special it can be. If you don't, eventually this fandom will cease to exist, and Starsky & Hutch will no longer live forever in our hearts.

A fan in 2001 commented, and erroneously mentioned a password protected fiction site:

[anonymous]
Even today we're still tippy-toeing around publishing S&H slash on the Internet because we're afraid of repercussions. I haven't seen that any other fandom. There's an absolute cornucopia of slash stories in every conceivable pairing and fandom out there (some of which I don't even want to consider <shudder>), but you still need a secret password to get to the S/H archives! If this fandom is tame compared to some, why are we so paranoid?

[flamingo]
that is absolutely not true!!! Have you even been to the archives (you've got a story there, you know!)? The slash archives is a completely public place, locateable on search engines all over the net, and linked in many places. It's not the least bit secret and never was. You never needed a *password* to get in it! You need a PASSWORD to get into VenicePlace's private website which is for VP's members only (which is why a password is necessary). I can see why you think this fandom is so screwed up because you're misinformed. I hope we've straightened that out.... Some veteran fans are paranoid because they've been personally threatened years ago. Veteran fans come from a time when slash was a dangerous new idea, not open to the entire world. To this day teachers, librarians and others need to be cautious about being associated with pornography in any way. However, the fandom itself is hardly paranoid. I can't *find* most of the veteran authors of early slash fic but whenever I do, these days, most of them give me permission to post their stuff. Many of them have simply dropped off the world. I can't put stuff up I don't have permission for. And many authors still prefer to publish in zines alone and don't want their stuff on the net, not because of paranoia but because they prefer paper publishing

Another reason for the fandom's slight step out of the bigger fannish world was that it, along with The Professionals, was the first to step into the pool that was slash. Fans had watched this subject play out in Star Trek, a fandom that unlike Starsky & Hutch, had the varying support of TPTB. Perhaps, too, discussion and fiction featuring two characters in the distant future was easier to get one's head around than two cops who "lived" in present day. In any case, there was a lot of underground fiction, some of which morphed into zines, and much which did not:

[Paula Smith]
The Black Notebook, by the way, is the big black three-ring binder, or expandable manila folder, or large cardboard box, in which are kept the early drafts, critique galleys, or complimentary copies of a fan's own or someone else's unpublished stories. The Black Notebook is an artifact of the second period of the fan literature, late 1980 to 1982, the hush-hush period. Not til The Professionals emerged was there a fandom with as many unpublished or downright subterranean stories about. There were secret series, secret round-robins, even a secret letterzine for a while in 1981. Most of this underground stuff was S/H, and the reason that it was so encrypted was the fear and occasional paranoia that Spelling-Goldberg would sue the writers. Hence "The Zine With No Name"; CODE 7 1. There are no editors, no artists, no writers credited in this 1981 publication. Other stories remained buried because their authors gafiated before they were finished. From time to time some incunabula surface, but sadly, most may molder away, in obscurity, forever.

In 2002, fans discussed an article called Kirk, Honey. It's Me, Spock!. Some of their comments: {{NQuote2|user=Betty Plotnick|quote= I'm sorry... Kirk/Spock and Starsky/Hutch? What year do we think this is? They couldn't mention Smallville or LotR or West Wing or Harry Potter. No, it had to be the antediluvian slash fandoms, the ones without a significant internet presence or much influx of new blood. -- Betty Plotnick |child={{NQuote|user=carraway54|quote= It's odd but unsurprising that writers explaining slash to the larger culture prefer to concentrate on older fandoms. It strikes me as a way for the culture to distance itself from slash. They're maintaining order by identifying as slashy only texts or types of media that they'd be rather embarrassed to admit they enjoy. Starsky & Hutch, these days, is the kind of show aired on daytime TNN. William Shatner shifted from being an actor to being a punchline years ago. Most of these articles also mention Holmes & Watson which, to somebody not involved in fandom and many people who are, seems not just absurd but absurdist. -- carraway54

|child=

[Betty Plotnick]
Maybe Starsky and Hutch make people feel all warm and comfy about homosexual fanfic; I dunno. But I've been in fandom for six years, and I've never read any, or known anyone who did, or felt any desire to. It's a bad example of what I do as a slasher, and I think that most slashers that are involved in the current online slash community would say something similar; I could be underestimating the continued vitality of S&H fandom, but I dunno. -- Betty Plotnick

[anonymous]
I don't know exactly how alive S/H is, since the only I've read were xovers, but there are S/H slash sites and archives on the net, like this archive: http://www.squidge.org/~flamingo/starskyhutchslash/index.htm (with amazingly bad web design, and lots of blinking). There are mailing lists, I've seen a couple of S&H author pages, zines are still being published etc. and that all without even looking for S/H, so it's not as if S&H fandom was dead or invisible. The fanficweb.net directory lists 27 pages in the S&H category, of that 22 slash, and I remember that not too long ago a slash virtual season has been started, which I think is now its second year: http://www.zebra3productions.org/. So it may not be the latest and hippest fandom with hordes of people rushing to that pairing, but it's not exactly the mummified aunt long dead in the attic either. -- Anonymous

[jat sapphire]
Honest, if you look for it, it's there. And as someone who found all slash through the internet and who has been in online fandom only since 1999, I actually find K/S and S/H to be a great place to look for fundamental slash conventions and concerns that I don't necessarily see as clearly in, say, LOTR or HP. -- jat sapphire

Starsky & Hutch and Hurt/Comfort

The show spawned a great deal of hurt/comfort attention due to having several episodes that heavily featured canonical hurt/comfort scenes and storylines, and the closeness of the two main characters.

[elspethdixon]
My general memory/impression is that pretty much all Starsky & Hutch fic of reasonable length is h/c of the old school variety.

a classic h/c scene for Mojave Crossing fic, by Connie Faddis in Zebra Three #1 (1977)

Get em stories that highlighted the main characters' friendship were the most prevalent type of story in early fandom, with influential stories such as "Mojave Crossing" and cross-pollination with Star Trek spawning an enduring tradition of hurt/comfort.

Issue #2 (April 1986) of the zine The Who Do We Trust Times had a TOTM that elicited several comments about the appeal of the hurt/comfort stories in the show and its fanfiction:

[anonymous]
For me, the h/c in S&H is simply beautiful. The touching of foreheads in SHOOTOUT, the stroking of throat in THE FIX, the butterfly-light touch of hand on knee in THE TRAP, the head-hug in COFFIN, the incredible hug in GILLIAN - the list is endless. What we saw on the screen was nothing short of perfect. And that is just some of the dramatic physical comfort. This blockbuster type of h/c shows us the heroic side of the characters and their relationship - look how bravely he bears the pain, see what his partner will go through for him. Seeing the boys being wonderful and strong is terrific on its ovn, but this h/c also allows us to see their vulnerability, too. Their greatest strength is also their Achilles' heel -- as all the bad guys seem to know -- cut one and two bleed.

[anonymous]
[...] the reason [h/c in SH] works is because the emotions of the characters are there. It's not only the physical demonstrativeness that we look for in h/c, it's the feeling. We all look in our zines for those stories that grab us by the gut and hold on and don't let go. The kind of hurt/comfort that works best in fiction is the kind that is so powerful that we worry and care and hurt along with the characters and that leaves us (and the characters, too) feeling satisfied when the conclusion is reached.

[anonymous]
[...] when someone first "discovers" S&H, there's a very strong tendency to become immersed in writing or reading h/c, because, at the beginning, there's a "rush" you feel that's almost like being in love... Sounds corny, I know, but that's what it was like for me, over ten years ago. You want to write situations in which the two characters you love so much are thrown together, as much as possible, in as demonstrative a way as possible - thus h/c!

[anonymous]
Many of the old, perennial favorites deal with h/c as their focus; their plot mover; the detour to lead into deeper psychological explorations; or the means to test the metal of the famous friendship. In later (and especially "/") fanfic h/c often a starting point, a trauma which strips away pretense, false machismo, and gaming, to provide an emotionally satisfying and psychologically valid shortcut to true feelings, desires and needs. Besides... love IS a helluva comfort, and sex ain't bad either!

[anonymous]
Someone, a while ago, labeled h/c an expression of 'sublimated homoeroticism'. Sadomasochistic tendencies; a yearning to express tenderness; the safest device to break down inhibitions and bring out the drastic/dramatic in characters - all these have been mentioned, pondered and debated as reasons for 'hurting the ones you love', then 'making it all better'. Undeniably, h/c carries a strong, sublimated sexual element. It can also satisfy a more overt need, (with romantic leanings), for tactile and verbal expressions of love, belonging and tenderness. The hurt serves both as sexual gratification in itself, (portal gates have always held a strong link to the libido); and as justification to overcome our own ingrained inhibitions and allow free rein to the tenderness/comfort component. S & H, with their police work and daily life of danger, provide a perfect framework for h/c scenarios, both from the series and the fertile minds of the writers. Add to it the legitiaizing aspects of a fandom - the mildly demented throng of like-minded people who all 'do it' - and you have the perfect setup. Which might explain, to a degree, why fandoms like S&H have such resilience, and why they rely so much on fanfic for their continued existence.

[anonymous]
One other issue I'm curious about is the theory that h/c as a substitute for sex in a lot of the fanfiction. I don't buy that in S&H literature. I know that when I'm looking for a "sexy" read, I do not reach for "Mojave Crossing," or "Wilderness," or the like. And the reverse is also true. Hurt/comfort conjurs up none of the feelings and emotions that come from "/" stories. I read each to satisfy a certain mood. I guess I tend to read h/c when I need comforting, it's been a particularly hard day and I need a hug. Those are the feelings which these stories recall.

Starsky & Hutch Fandom and Slash

illustration from the early slash novel "The Cost of Love" (1982)

The Starsky and Hutch fandom is ongoing and has managed to sustain itself for more than thirty years. In the '80s and '90s, SH fandom never got as big as Trek (and S/H, never got as big as K/S), but it was a major fandom with an extensive zine culture. Most stories in the fandom are slash or friendship-related gen; though het subplots are not rare, 99% of fics are firmly focused on the relationship between Starsky and Hutch.

[flamingo]
Most of the early SH fan writers came out of Star Trek fandom where they already had been producing very excellently written and edited zines with amazing artwork. There were certain kinds of fans, mostly women, who were mostly interested in the relationship aspect of Trek fandom, and in the hurt-comfort aspect of the relationships. Many of these fans were drawn to SH due to the intense relationship, and the hurt-comfort episodes. Many of the earliest writers can be found on the S&H Gen Archive -- Teri White, who had written in Trek, and eventually became a pro writer, was the first person to produce S&H stories that were put in zines, and shortly after other Trek writers and zine producers came into the fandom. At this point, everything was gen, though Trek had already produced the first slash stories and slash zines.

[...]

So, it wasn't too long before some of the writers started exploring a slash relationship between S&H. Many of those first SH writers were Teri White, as I said, Connie Faddis, Jan Lindner, Dargelos, Karen B, and a number of writers who've gone on to the pro ranks. You can find a lot of the early writers in the Starsky and Hutch Archive, but there are many more who can't be found for archiving approval, or who don't wish to be archived. Early slash writers were people like Alexis Rogers, Terri Beckett & Chris Powers, Dargelos, Pamela Rose, Rosemary C., Billie Phillips, Peruvian Gypsy, Elizabeth Lowry, Cheryl M. and Lucy-- all of whom can be found on the S&H Gen and S&H Slash Archives.

In 1984, a fan wrote of the transitions and growing pains the four major slash fandoms of the time were experiencing:

[anonymous]
The appeal of Starsky and Hutch, for me, lies in the open closeness of the characters. And, in reconciling that with the restrictive environment they live in, not only in the sense of them being cops but in terms of today's social values. I do think though, that many writers of S/H have tended to focus on the question of sexual preference. For K & S, gay is a difficult label to apply because Spock is a Vulcan from a different value system and both are men of the galaxy. With S & H, that label can allow for the production of great stories as the characters come to understand them selves, each other, their love. I tend to see Hutch as gay despite his marriage. Starsky is a heterosexual who may have bisexual tendencies which come to the fore when he accepts his love for Hutch. But I must admit that it is fun to change this scenario—to make S & H more like K & S in that both were primarily heterosexuals who find the love they share so compelling that they risk everything for it. I elaborate on this because I see in S/H stories a tendency to focus on this question and the permutations of sexual preference rather than on the much larger, potential S/H universe which includes cop plots, LA's weirdness and the like. I think this may be, in small part, why there is a writing crisis in S/H fandom. Maybe now that so many stories dealing with the issues of sexual preference and the revelation of true love have been written, writers can move on to the fascinating universe there is to play with if one writes S/H. ... I wonder if each new fandom doesn't extend what we learn. K/S was the beginning. It often did, and still does, focus on sex/sexual preference. Many stories never stretch beyond these topics (which is fine if the underlying aspirations weren't for a "real" story). S/H seems to have carried on the tradition yet, because the characters were so open with their Love, there were more stories that didn't just focus on these issues. With H/J, the issues were resolved immediately and became rather lame plot lines so other stories were written. In B/D we see the next stage, one we'd like to see K/S in. One where the issues of preference and sex are not so important. What is important is getting and keeping the characters together in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do they part (with K/S there is the wonderful opportunity to realistically extend the relationship beyond "death"). Maybe we're on the verge of closing a circle. Writers who've begun in TREK, moved through S/H and into B/D may come full circle and bring that maturity as writers back to K/S. As a result, there may be more maturity in the characterizations we see in K/S if these writers can be lured back into the universe. Ultimately, I think some will gafiate back because they will see from writing other characters new challenges that Kirk and Spock's more mature versions present. In stories such as "Resting Place" and "Cycles", we see a more mature form of writing and characterizations; the characters are living the life they've chosen. The challenge is one of stressing their commitment and seeing if the love can endure. I think that eventually other writers may see this sort of challenge in K/S again.

In 1985, a fan wrote a tongue-in-cheek history of the fandom for The Paul Muni Special program book. An excerpt:

[Ima Fool]
"/" is not some kind of crazy Chinese writing, nor is it a lopside #1 with ears. It is possibly the straw that broke fandom's camel and deals with the off-duty orientation of our erstwhile guys (or, in some quarters, gays). I refer, of course, to the extremely long-winded They Do/They Do Not debate. The Do-ers made much of the fact that Starsky had curly hair, drove a red and white car, and everybody thought he was cute. The Do-not-ers argued that Starsky had curls, drove a white and red car, and everybody thought he was cute except Hutch. Touche! (Wars have been fought over less significant issues, after all.)

Experts (who are no longer of this fandom and were never of this world) were called in to enforce the absolute-truth-proof-positive-yessirreebob-position (which is related to the missionary, but not quite as straight) that They Do! They asserted that it was proven fact that. S&H met in the army while attending Police Academy together but at separate times, and while driving around one day looking for a place to park, a stray cat ran into the road. and, they were, thus, irrevokably bound by the blood 'n' guts all over the front left tire. only to find that they desired each other every few accidents/illnesses/gunshots or so, and, gazed upon each other in lust/love/like meaning-fully. but unbeknownst to the other/other, and, consummated same said passion some time between 1966 and 1990. The Do-not-ers scoffed. shrieked. and created a whole new language for the homophobic generation, but the trend of love in the backseat of the Torino could not be curtailed.

Soon, stories of illicit love, meaningful moustaches rides. and unbelievable dialogues came to light...

[...]

S/H (who used to be called S&H) became so busy having sex, and talking about sex, or wanting sex when the other didn't want sex, or having sex but enjoying it less, or talking about sex and enjoying it more, that they no longer had time for minor things like police work, plot lines, or plausible characterization. But, no matter, the partnership survived. As has fandom.

And, so on this decade anniversary of S&H, S/H, S%H, S#H, S?H, or what have you, it is good to recall what it is really all about... no, not buns tightly encased in faded denim that clings to... or ruggedly worn blue jean fabric that strains with the blond manliness of... but, caring. On this, at least, we all agree.

[lamardeuse]
To be honest, I resisted this one as long as I could, because, well, I lived the '70's, and even as a kid I knew I was living in a pretty shitty decade. I mean, my god. The hair. The clothes. The music. Did I really want to go back in my time machine to that bell-bottomed and macraméd era?

Apparently I did, because I started reading some fanfic by Flamingo and Rosemary and others, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to rent the DVDs. And then I sat around and stared at my TV screen until my jaw found a home on the floor.

Because, yes, the hair and the clothes and the music. But also: the slash.

Holy mother of K/S. This is as slashy as they come, folks.

You want real, undeniable, painfully obvious man-love? This is it, kids: the groping and the fondling and the hugging and the banter and the bitching and the looks they give each other as though no other relationship they ever find will even come close to this. And they'd be right, because Starsky and Hutch are as canon as you can get without being Queer as Folk.

Not all slash fans saw the slash -- from The Divine Adoratrice in 1997:

The worst tongue-lashing I ever received since getting into slash was when I revealed my deep, dark secret... I don't find Starsky and Hutch especially slashy. I can certainly understand why others love them, and I've read stories about them that blew me away. God knows I've given this fandom my best shot. I've tried reading these stories to get myself in a slashy frame of mind. I then sit down with tapes and try to see the relationship on screen.

I've never been able to pull it off. I sit there, and I look at the TV set, and I feel my slashy mood draining away. I finally exclaim, "Oh, fer crying out loud, the man has a goddamn mirror above his bed, and I'm supposed to take these guys seriously?" So I turn the channel to CNN and do a little crocheting to cleanse my palate.

Now, I want all the S&H; fans to put the tar and feathers away, because I know what the problem is. As far as I'm concerned, "Starsky and Hutch" was a show that I watched when I was eight years old. I can't see it now without having flashbacks to sitting on the couch with my brother, arguing about which of us is going to get up to fetch more Cheetos and why he felt the need to flush Malibu Barbie's head down the toilet. That's not a mindset conducive to slash. It has much more to do with me, and my history, than anything "wrong" with the characters -- and I think it's highly significant that people younger than I am, whose exposure to the show is from either cable or tapes and who might have been looking for the slash on their first viewing, can see the relationship at once. I could get over it if I tried, I suppose... but why would I want to? There are too few hours in the day as it is.

And, of course, other people have the same reaction to characters I love. That's cool. (When you think Arthur and the Tick are doing it, you get used to people giving you funny looks.) People whose opinions I respect have told me, "I simply can't see Benny and Ray together," or something similar, and that's fine. IDIC and all the rest of it. Just as with personal relationships (with actual living breathing human beings, yet), rationality is one of the least significant things involved when we get interested in a fandom.

Inevitably, I will someday hear people talking about my favorites the way I talk about S&H.; I can see it now... someday, many years from now, I'll be sitting on my front porch, rocking up a storm. A crowd of little baby slashers will be gathered at my feet. They'll gaze up at me, waiting eagerly for my words of wisdom. I'll pound my cane on the floor and yell, "You younguns don't know good slash when you see it! Why, in my day...."

Tensions Between Gen and Slash

Code 7 #1 (1981). Quote from the title page: "This is a privileged and private publication; it was sent to you because you know the value and the need for discretion. You are being trusted, if you misuse this trust, you will be harming not only the contributors but all of S/H fandom. Please keep this zine entirely to yourself! Thank you."

Because of the close relationship between the show's main two characters, slash developed quickly in the fandom.

The first gen fanzine, Zebra Three was published in the fall of 1977, with the first slash zine appearing a few years later.

What was even more ironic is that while several contributors to the S&H letterzine bemoaned the rising tide of slash and worried that it would overrun their fandom, for the first few years of the letterzine's existence only one slash zine, Forever Autumn, was published.

[klangley56]
S&H was the next big US fandom to publish slash. S/H fandom went through some of the same do they/don't they debate that had rampaged through K/S fandom, but a lot of S&H fans also were ST fans, so they had heard it all before and fewer people expressed shock at the concept. The first S/H zine was a non-explicit single story British publication, Forever Autumn, by S. Meek and Sue S., (March 1980). The next published S/H piece was also British, a short story, "Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn," by Pamela D. (10:13 Vol. 1, 1980/81, Terri B. and Chris P., eds.). The first US S/H zine was Code 7 #1 (1981, Karen B, ed.). Karen had been advertising this zine (and some other S/H zines) for upcoming publication within the pages of The S&H Letterzine when suddenly it was listed as cancelled with no explanation. In reality, the zine hadn't been cancelled. Word had gone through fandom of troublemakers who were planning to "out" these slash zines to TPTB. So Karen went underground with the zine, publishing it with no names listed: no authors, no artists, no editor. In the meantime, however, other S/H was going forward, such as Graven Images by Jane Aumerle (pre-S/H, 1981). Terri and Chris published a "Statement of Intent" in the Letterzine, stating that they were not going to be intimidated into pushing any slash material in their zines underground. [Billie Phillips] and Pam R. began advertising Trace Elements (which was published in 1982). Leslie Fish jumped feet first into the fray, asserting she would publish a fanzine that couldn't be used against the fandom. This resulted in Pushin' The Odds (which didn’t see publication until 1983), a mixed gen and slash zine, with slash stories printed in blue ink on red-patterned paper to render them "copy-proof." It also made them almost unreadable without the sheet of red plastic that was included to put over the page. She also required a signed "statement of compliance," numbered the copies, and used coded hole-punches on the pages, supposedly to identify the purchaser of any copy that "fell into unauthorized hands." However, by the time that zine saw print, everybody was going ahead with their S/H zines anyway, regardless of threatened repercussions. Later issues of Code 7 (there were four total) were published openly in fandom. There was supposed to be a second issue of Leslie’s zine, but that never materialized. (See also "One Finger on the Mouse scroll bar", Kelly Boyd (1997))

In 1982, a fan commented on the arrival of the first published S/H fiction, but also expressed her fears, as well as hopes that if trouble were coming, she hoped it would hit someone elses' fandom instead of Starsky & Hutch:

[anonymous]
It's nice to see a little cautious (emphasis on cautious!) pubbing going on. There's really a lot more at stake than the risk of financial ruin. I suspect that few of us really fear that particular bogey very much longer. I for one, though, don't feel like becoming embroiled in any unpleasantness. Nor do I feel like causing it. There are a great many more important things in this world beyond the matter of do we have the right to rip off characters for fannish use... but the fact remains that the characters do belong to someone else, and that is, in a purely technical sense, copyright violation. Ferchrissake, every time you xerox a page from a book, or reprint a cartoon or quote in the Lz, without permission, that's copyright violation. EVERYBODY does it. What I'm getting at... is this: I'd like to see the smash come in another fandom, and if it comes in ours, I'd like to see it happen over the straight stuff... There are no medals for conspicuous bravery in fandom. The race is to those who know the shortcuts. We do what we have to do, but if we're wise, we'll shut up about it.

frontispiece of Bonaventure by Suzan Lovett. What makes you special a breed apart? You're my friend, and you have a hero's heart.

A 1990 fan clash was over some of the fanworks in the zine, Bonaventure. One point of conflict was the frontispiece by Suzan Lovett that was reprinted as the cover of Frienz #27 where it generated some controversy due to some fans' belief it went over the line between gen and slash. One fan stated it "reeks of slash" and is "disgusting." See for more on this fanart. Some fans also removed the slash (which was extremely mild and certainly non-explicit) from the zine so that they could read it without being offended. See this section at Bonaventure for more that topic.

In 1997, a fan asked another fan if gen fanfic for S&H had the emotional impact that the S/H stories had:

[anonymous]
"I mean, one of the reasons I like slash better is the emotional depth to which characters are pursued/written.

[Michelle Christia]
On the whole, I'd have to say no. There was such a *huge* schism in S&H between the gen and slash (Oh, yeah, like it's never happened *since* then! Or before), that a lot of the gen seemed so paranoid that no one think that they might even be implying that there was any kind of hanky-panky going on that they took out *all* the affection between S&H. I distinctly remember quite a few stories where one of them is tortured and the other let's him stay on the couch or even just says to call him in the morning to let him know he's okay! Good grief, these guys were constantly all over each other in this show, even if you don't think that they were actually having sex.

In 2000, April Valentine described the difficulties facing early Starsky & Hutch slash fans:

Those who are new to fandom may not realize what those early slashers had to go through. The theme was unconventional, daring, even illegal in some states. Friendships were broken up over whether someone "saw" characters in a slash relationship or not. Printers were throwing out masters of zines, threatening to destroy photographs of illos. In SH fandom, you could only find the slash if you knew someone who knew about it. It was like a secret society. The first S/H zine was published without names of either authors or artists. One editor published her slash pages on paper with wavy red lines making it practically impossible to read the pages, much less to Xerox them. (You needed a little pair of 3D glasses or even a piece of red acetate to hold over the page would do.) I heard a story that at ZebraCon people were secretly holding a slash party — but it turned out that most of the fans at the con ended up at the party after all.

In 2001, a fan was perplexed that the zine she'd bought on eBay had had the slash fics removed. Flamingo speculated as to why this had been done and of the zine's origins:

I can give you the most likely scenario regarding this zine. There is another lending library besides the S&H Lending Library that The Committee runs. This other lending library is a gen only library that will tell you right up front that it not only limits its selection to gen material, but it also will take mixed zines, like Bonaventure, remove the slash content, and then offer the zine to its members with only the gen content. They do not remove the indexes. Many of its library members, like ours, copy the zines that they borrow, so it's not unusual for these altered zine copies to be passed on from fan to fan. This library also offers in-print zines, and we have obtained copies of mixed in-print zines, like TLC, with the slash removed. It is likely that the fan who sold it may have gotten this altered copy passed on from another or even a third hand, and may never have compared the list of stories in the index with the actual contents and may not have realized it was censored. I know Bonaventure has lots of very short stories in it. Also, it is most likely the way she got the zine from whomever sold it to her. These censored zines are floating around fandom and will surface from time to time, so be aware of them. The people who do this (remove the slash from mixed zines) feel very strongly against promoting slash material. I've been told they will even remove the slash content from an individual story. I have not seen these individual stories altered, but I have seen altered zines. This is the most likely scenario regarding this particular zine. My experience is that most slash fans would not *remove* stories from a zine, but rather copy it, since most slashers promote slash fandom and selling a zine without the slash certainly won't promote it....

The situation with mixed zines is kind of interesting, when you go over the history of it. Of course, when Star Trek came out there was only gen, and then the Trekkers invented slash. It was so outrageous, so revolutionary that I don't think initially anyone would have considered mixed the two...

By the time SH became a fandom with zines to publish, slash had been around a little while. But SH had always been a small fandom, especially in comparison to Trek (remember, we're talking of a time when there were 2 fandoms essentially -- Trek and then SH), so SH people weren't fussy -- they read everything since there wasn't but so much being published (and there was no net. In fact, there were no computers. In fact, early early on there were no photocopiers. Can we say mimeo machines?) Since there was less slash than gen being written, and since editors often didn't have enough stories to fill a zine anyway, and since zines were so hard to produce, and since SH fans were just damned glad to get any kind of story, mixed zines were the only sensible way to go. There were always editors who would not take slash stories, but it wasn't like today where there were lots of places to put a story so you could make a choice. It was the editor's choice, and if you were lucky, your story would fit her zine and people would get to read it. Even today, there are only so many SH zines (and the net is a newer phenomena, and many of the out of print zine material will never be presented on it since the authors can't be found), so if you want to read SH, especially classic SH, you've got to get your hands on out of print zines like Bonaventure, so you don't really have a choice. The way people strongly opposed to slash expressed their choice was to remove the slash. I know that the editor of Bonaventure received an envelope of shredded pages that were the slash stories from Bonaventure, and a very nasty letter, as a protest that she had permitted slash in the zine. Another thing was that these zines were almost always produced in very small quantities, maybe 100 if that many, and the way most people got them was through copying one other fans. So, usually buying the zine or not buying the zine only impacted the reader, not the producer.

Because SH has been around so long, some of these issues do seem rather strange in light of today's multitude of zines, internet access, etc.

In spite of slash fandom's perseverance, the legacy of caution regarding openly discussing slash fan fiction continued in the fandom. Early mailing lists were not well advertised and a few required sponsorship in order to join along with dire warnings about publicly discussing the lists' existence. See VenicePlace and The Pits. Only with increasing online exposure of all types of slash fan fiction in the late 1990s to early 2000s were Starsky & Hutch fans emboldened to more openly make their presence known in the online world.

Today, Starsky & Hutch gen and slash fans are significantly more tolerant of each other. However, there are still gen only mailing lists that exclude any discussion of slash (SHGFanFic and Hutchfans).

Tensions Between Gen and Slash: Further Reading

• Forever Autumn, Code 7 #1 and Trace Elements (1980, 1981, 1982), three early slash zines
• Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn, story by Pamela Dale and its inclusion in Ten-Thirteen #1 (1981)
• The Boxer, story by Jane Aumerle and its inclusion in Ten-Thirteen #2 (1981)
• The Kiss in the Alley Debate, discussion (1981 onwards)
• many, many discussions in S and H, the first Starsky & Hutch letterzine (1979-1983)
• Pushin' the Odds, zine edited by Leslie Fish, the zine with the clunky presentation meant to thwart non-slash fans (1983)
• General Thoughts on "/" (Homosexual) Zines-Stories essay by [S L] (1988)
• Examples of Some Tensions Between Gen and Slash Fans: "Mixed" Zines, discussion (1990)
• GARBAGE LIKE THAT HAS NO PLACE IN FANDOM, essay by Nanci Casad (1997)

The Fandom of Nice?

Starsky & Hutch fandom has always seen itself as friendly and welcoming to newcomers. One of its early online communities VenicePlace is centered around fans becoming virtual tenants in a fictional apartment complex that just happened to also be the home of the show's two main characters. New members were welcomed and an informal mentoring took place.

However, some fans paint a different picture. Certainly in its early days Starsky and Hutch fandom was small and most members knew each other. The pages of the S and H letterzine show a robust - if at times sharp and caustic - debate on a variety of issues, including the presence of slash in their fandom, the relative quality of fanzines and the role that reviews should play in fandom. After the letterzine folded in 1983, fandom lacked a central place to meet and greet although several letterzines did try to fill the gap.

It is not surprising then the arrival of the internet was welcomed by many fans as a means to reconnect as well as a means to recruit new members. Perhaps this may have been the reason that many Starsky & Hutch mailing lists felt uncomfortable with their fellow fans expressing differing or critical views about the show, the writing or fan culture. Contrast the fan fiction review policy of the The Pits (mailing list) with that of Loveofmeandthee and one can see how the latter tried to shift the discourse into the more positive territory.

When a fan in 1999 wrote and posted a sequel to The Thousandth Man to The Pits mailing list without permission from the story's original author, there was much discussion. One fan, Flamingo, explained:

I don't know who contacted Sarah originally, but I feel very comfortable in saying that their intentions were honorable. How can I know this? Because I know SH fandom. I've been in and around other media fandoms since the early 70's and science fiction fandom before that. I know how clannish and cliqueish most fandoms can be. I know of fandom discussion lists where people will flame you if you *agree* with them! I've been told by a fan in another fandom that on their lists, "those people eat their young." There's a lot of insecurities out there. Honestly, though, SH fandom has much less of this than any other. (We're not perfect, heaven knows.) I'd like to think that we take after our "founders" and so we know more about love than they do in other fandoms, but that's my conceit. I'm sure whoever spoke to Sarah was just trying to enlighten her about a common practice, especially among most of the original SH fans, like Suzan. (Suzan came up through original Trek, so she has been there for most of the active media fandoms.) Because SH is such an old fandom it has many traditions that some of the newer fandoms may not, yet fan etiquette, especially regarding the "ownership" of story lines is fairly common. I'm sure they had the best intentions. If this were some other fandom, I might not say that. Besides, SH fans are greedy for stories and would only interrupt one for the strongest of reasons.

Participation in The Pits began slowing down in the mid 2000s and by 2005, some fans felt that "cult of nice" had held sway for so long that it had become the norm. Many felt that there was a reluctance to say anything bad about any story and believed they ran the risk of being publicly reprimanded "for daring to suggest that a story was not perfect in it's entirety." As one fan put it, the general consensus was that all writing was "a gift from "the gods" and not to be judged or seen wanting. Negative words were going to scare all the writers away! So negative words weren't allowed. (Or were very strongly discouraged)." If any stories were to be critiqued, it had to be done in private conversations and email.

The Fandom of Content Restrictions?

The vast majority of fic in the fandom has traditionally been those that feature happy endings, and in the case of slash, Starsky and Hutch together, exclusive and forever.

There is very little RPF. There is very little BDSM.

In fact, the fiction had the reputation of being so "safe" that a fan decided to publish a series of zines that included pointedly "unsafe" stories. See Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions.

In 2000, editor of Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions, explained how this non-edgy culture lost some people in the fandom:

[Some Pros fans] will tell you they left the fandom because they could write things in Pros they "could not" write in SH. They will tell you that SH was too restrictive, that the fandom didn't want certain kinds of stories. They will tell you there are no restrictions in Pros which is why so many writers went over to it, and, more significantly, stayed with it all these years. I am not making it up, and I sure don't like hearing it, and I haven't just heard it from one person, but over and over and over.

And I've come from another fandom where there were absolutely no restrictions, and I do find SH much more restrictive than Vice ever was. That's reality. It happened in my first SH story when it was not canon-faithful -- not that I had any trouble getting it published, but I've had a fair share of criticism over it, and you have to remember this wasn't even an issue in my old fandom, so I was pretty weirded out by it.

SH is an old fandom, and fandom itself has changed. Many of the fans on this list can't really appreciate this argument because it's hard for them to realize that before the internet what you wrote and what happened to it was largely dictated by how or even if you could get it published. It was *hard* to get things published. It could take a long time to get a zine out. There were only so many editors. You didn't have all the options for self-publishing you have today. Fandom was a very small place. Things you worked on were influenced by other fans in this small society, many times for the better, but not always. Anyone can publish anything today on a website or even a zine since they are far more easier to produce, but in the past, these were not options. I just had this discussion with a zine-published fan who told me a story I'm about to put on the Archive originally had a different ending. But it was a downer and the people she'd shared it with really objected to it and told her no one would publish it, so she changed the ending but she wasn't happy about it. (Now, mind you, this is just from discussion with other fans through snail mail or phone or in person. The editor had nothing to do with it.) Because of this fan pressure, she changed the story, and it was the changed story that was published. I asked her to send me the other version so that we can have both for the Archive along with her story of what happened in the development of the tale.

So, I think a lot of this argument about the restrictions in the fandom has lost some steam, because publishing is so much easier, but I think writers restrict themselves in this fandom, and the general fandom itself is not as open to a lot of ideas as other fandoms are.

In 2002, Flamingo, publisher of Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions, wrote:

Now, understand, [fan comments regarding BDSM] were nothing more than playful emails where nothing definitive was ever said, things were just implied, I don't remember any fiction ever posted about it, not a single piece of leather ever impacted on a single inch of Starsky's butt...but people unsubbed over it. They were so upset that we were playfully talking about a leather "playroom" they couldn't handle it. I was pretty rattled by this reaction and ended up polling a bunch of the members (I think we had about 60 VPers at the time) about whether the few of us playing with this thread were upsetting everyone, and while we were assured that no, most of the members either thought it was funny, or boring and deleted the thread, only a few people were upset by it. But, it pretty much killed the thread.

And BDSM stories have a history of being discouraged in this fandom going all the way back to the earliest print fic. A writer I know who used to write little vignettes about an older S&H and their "playroom" was so castigated about these fairly tame (by today's standards) stories that she basically stopped writing SH and moved into Pros which has a broader history of this type of story (as does Blake's 7).

Now, I'm speaking in broad generalizations here, but the fact that SH is known as the most vanilla of fandoms (not that there's anything wrong with that -- vanilla is, after all, the world's favorite flavor) has a tendency to make people interested in this kind of fiction less inclined to be public about it. Me, I'll read anything and decide how I feel about it after I read it. I see BDSM in fan fiction as no more preposterous as slash, which I always have trouble seeing. But that's me. BDSM in fiction, especially in SH fiction, has a tendency to evoke strong reactions, and a lot of people just don't need the hassle. Hence, the desire for privacy from some.

Contact with The Powers That Be

The fandom had no or very, very little contact with the stars, writers, or producers of the show.

David Soul's autograph on a 1982 illustration by Freda Hyatt, a very rare example of fanworks and an actor from the show crossing paths

Conventions were all fan-run and did not have celebrity guests.

The controversy regarding the zine Code 7 stirred up discussion about possible contact, but the only fall-out from that ended up to be perception rather than reality: In 2001, a fan wrote:

I was told that in SH during the letterzine era you're referring to, people *threatened* to send zines to the PTB and the stars, but I was told either it never actually happened or that the people receiving the zines so didn't care that it amounted to nothing. According to my source it was a tempest in a teapot that had repercussions in the fandom for years for no good reason (her words not mine). Immediately after Code 7 NO 1, the anonymous issue, came out, fans who thought this was an unnecessary reaction put out a zine complete with their full, real names on it and nothing ever happened. Yet, the fear alone kept many SH slashers from being open about publishing fiction while other people continued publishing fic and selling it at cons with no repercussions at all.

At one point, a fan proposed putting together a zine of appreciation and sending it to the actors, but there is no record of any reaction from TPTB about it.

In 1979, a zined alluded to sending her zine to TPTB, but no other mention is made of this action. See the editorial for Dirtball Dispatch.

A Fandom of Less Feedback?

In 2001, a Pros fan who'd written in that fandom complained to a mailing list that the Starsky & Hutch fandom (specifically S/H fandom) was very ungenerous with its feedback. Another fan, Flamingo, replied:

I've been around fandom long enough and on enough lists, and have enough friends on enough other lists to know that fandoms are very different in their membership, their reactions, their culture, and their methods of communication. What started this was the fact that a lack of LOCs is a particular problem in SH *slash* -- SH gen generates many more LOCs. So if there is that big a difference between SH slash and SH gen, your getting a lot of LOCs in Pros or UNCLE -- regardless of the reason -- seems irrelevant to SH slash, just as my getting no LOCs in Miami Vice slash fandom meant nothing when I started writing SH slash.... Why are we're lacking in LOCs and acknowledgements in this fandom specifically.? I was not actively in fandom when SH was new, when there were letterzines dedicated to story reviews and LOCs and the culture was very different. (Though having read the letterzines, I know the editors had to dun people for LOCs even though. But at least they got them.) Back then there were two primary fandoms, Trek and SH and then three when Pros showed up. There was no internet, not even computers yet. Producing zines was an arduous, expensive, multi-person process (just getting it collated could take a crowd), and most fans were used to waiting years for promised zines they had to pay for in advance. I think if there were 5-10 zines a year produced it was a banner year. From all the years I've been around fandom, in fandom, and involved with internet fandom, there's been a huge evolution of fandom itself. There are now hundreds of fandoms and literally thousands and thousands of stories available instantly at no tangible expense. If you want to read slash you can find it by the pound. It's everywhere. SH is not a big fandom and the majority of its fans are also into other fandoms -- fandoms with far more fiction in it. There are only a small percentage of fans on VP who identify themselves *only* as SH fans or who only *read* SH, like me. So, the fact that there aren't that many stories available in SH doesn't bother a lot of fans who can enjoy reading tons of stories in Pros, Sentinel, Phantom Menace and other fandoms with large archives. And because slash fic, which was once a rare and threatened commodity spoken of only in whispers and passed secretly from fan to fan, is now so blatantly and easily available, it's simply not appreciated that much. Its common. It's always there. Just reach out and download it. Slash fiction is taken for granted by fans these days. When you take something for granted, you don't bother acknowledging it. And when a fandom is only one of many you enjoy, you're not going to focus on what's happening or not happening in it as much. We all only have but so much time. I think that if the writers sending unacknowledged stories to VP were writing in Pros and UNCLE, many of them would be getting LOCs, too, as this fandom has always been blessed with good writers. Pros is a much, much bigger fandom than SH and its fans have a tendency to be more focused and UNCLE, which may be around the same size as SH, has a high percentage of fans who've been in it from the beginning and never got into other fandoms, so they're pretty focused, too. I think this issue is specific to this fandom.

Transition to the Internet

In 1990, a fan brought up, for the first time in a Starsky & Hutch letterzine, the Internet:

The growth question comes up in part because of an offer I made to Pat Massie to publicize this letterzine on the Internet, a wide-area computer network that reaches hundreds of universities and organizations world-wide. (If any of you are affiliated in any way with a college or university, there is a fair chance that you have access to the Internet newsgroups.) In the year or so that I've been reading the Internet newsgroups. I've never seen any mention of SH. But I'll bet there are plenty of people out there who remember it and who love the boys just like we do. If we do decide to grow, we face some challenges that other fandoms don't. Most people haven't seen SH in over ten years. It's difficult to remember the episodes in any detail. And since the show isn't being aired anywhere, it's hard to get people caught up with fandom as it exists here and now. Fan fiction demands an intimate knowledge of the episodes, whether you're a reader or a writer.

Her question went ignored.

some fans made the move to LJ, (sample LJ icon depicting a classic scene from Starsky & Hutch)

Flamingo has been instrumental in getting older zine fiction online and encouraging earlier members of the fandom to make more use of the internet. Despite frequently declaring herself hopeless at using sites like livejournal, she ran a panel at SHareCon 2010 that covered web resources for SH fandom.

New Fans and New Perspectives on Fandom

Starsky & Hutch fandom still has the ability to pull in some new, younger fans. In October 2014, one fan whose profile lists her birth year as 1992 wrote a lengthy reflection, entitled Reading a 1977 Zine in 2014: Zebra Three #1, about the experience of buying an old copy of the first ever Starsky & Hutch zine, her appreciation for the long documented history of Starsky & Hutch fandom, and the contrasts between fandom during the show's era and fandom in the internet era.

A fan in 2001 missed the passion of pre-internet fandom, and the passion of the desperate:

To me, it seems the biggest loss in the metamorphosis to an online existence (which, by its ease, allows many more people to find fandom) is passion. Because it was, for starters, so difficult to even find *out* about fandom -- let alone figure out how to be a part of it -- fandom was restricted to those who were highly passionate about their particular show. There was too much an effort in being a fan to attract those who were only casually interested. Most all fans gave back to fandom, because they realized how rare and precious it was, and looked upon it as something special and unique.

Now, the net allows the most casual of fans to participate, and they come into it wondering what each fandom has to offer them. They want to know what fandom is going to do for them, rather than what they're going to do for fandom. The sense of shared passion about a mutual obsession is gone. I think, for many fans, fandom is just another one of many interests -- which is why they're puzzled as to why some old-timers feel so strongly about "bashing" a story -- and there isn't that feeling of sharing something unique with others who are equally obsessed. I miss that most of all But you can't fight "progress".

In 2002, a fan responded to another fan's complaint that too much fiction in this fandom was only available as zines, hence a "gate-keeping, elitist" fandom culture. She said:

You have to realize also that SH has more zines and more old zines than some fandoms because it is a fandom that began before the internet ever existed. I did the first 3 issues of [zine name redacted] on a typewriter and didn't even own a computer until then. I wasn't on line until about six or seven years ago. I'm delighted that SH has an online presence because that means the fandom is still alive and growing, but it distresses me that the fanzine publishers are now being considered criminals and net authors are considered okay. In my humble opinion, the same respect should be given to all authors of fanfiction, whether its in a zine or on the net.

Some Sample Very Early Websites

These are not only a glimpse as early S&H fandom, but also of late 1990s website design and graphics.

• BUC252
• ZebraCon
• Starsky & Hutch's House on the 'Net
• Tooki's Tree House
• Green Stamps
• Cindy's Page
• The Starsky & Hutch Story Archive
• GLYN DAVIES' Starsky & Hutch PAGE

The Consequences of a Small Fandom and Competition

Starsky & Hutch, while a long-lived fandom, has never been very large. Some fans feel that its smallness is one of its charms; fans tended to congregate in the same areas, tended to be familiar with each other. That same smallness could also be a source of tension.

In 2001, when the fans who were behind the Starsky & Hutch Virtual Season created a new mailing list, and made the announcement on an existing list, there was much discussion. The mod of the original list, Flamingo wrote:

as I mentioned before, I've seen good discussion lists, lists that other listmoms worked on for years, completed gutted with the formation of a new list. After all that work, it's painful. And every list does compete with existing lists, often lessening their membership and their activity level, sometimes shutting them down completely. Sometimes that's a good thing. I was *grateful* when it happened with my Miami Vice list because I did not have the time and energy to run it properly, and was happy to shut my own list down in the face of a new one that served the fandom better. But the list was totally shut down by the formation of the new list and it was a list I'd been working on for several years. So the issue of "competition" is very real. No one likes their time and effort to be for nothing....

I disagree with the need for another SH list, and have disagreed with it in the past. My disagreement has done nothing to prevent anyone from starting any other list, as the large proliferation of lists in this small fandom can attest to, nor has it stopped anyone from wanting to from joining them...

This is not Sentinel fandom or Phantom Menace, it's not even Pros. All of these fandoms are considerably larger by many times than SH. SH has always been a small fandom, from the very beginning, and its numbers have largely been stable with people coming in and going out, often reducing down to a very small amount (usually when the show wasn't on anywhere at all) but the overall fandom has never been very large. A fandom that can have a *list* of 1100 people can well afford to have multiple lists, as each person on that list might well represent 5 others who aren't interested in any list activities. SH fandom is simply not that large, not by half, and to host 12 lists or more in this one small fandom is to divide its membership up into smaller and smaller groups.

Fan Comments

1985

front cover of Zebra Three #1 by Connie Faddis, the very first S&H fanzine published

My earliest memory of the fan lit is lying on Connie Faddis's carpet in 1977. paging over the second draft of "Mojave Crossing" and thinking, what the hell is this stuff? It wasn't science fiction and it sure wasn't Star Trek, not even the K/S version. (Yet.) But since a quantity of people I liked to talk with were hoofing over into this new fandom, it was either hoof with 'em or forever hold my peace. There followed the quarterly excursions to Pittsburgh and Chicago and Columbus to crank out (sometimes literally) the latest mimeo zine: ZEBRA THREE, ME & THEE I, ONE-SHOT. Our vocabularies acquired new words and phrases like "scrod". "corflu". and "Die, you bastard!" We o.d'd on butterfly sandwiches and contracted blood poisoning from paper-cuts. Best of all, we got to read the stories as fast as they flew out of the Gestetner. Those were the days.

[Lynna Bright]
Starsky and Hutch must be seen for what it is: a transitional -- and seminal TV cop show. Intended from the beginning (by creator William Blinn) to be a show with a different slant. it stands uncomfortably between "programmed" crime dramas like S.W.A.T., The Rookies, Hawaii 5-0 et. al, in which the leads are presented with 2-D characters. and expected to play out a weekly, formulaic story -- and the "non-programmed" show. Hill Street Blues being the most obvious example, where characters live and change. and have darker sides. You can sense the conflict Glaser and Soul must have dealt with, trying for something better, something almost like reality.

God bless them, they tried. Rewriting scripts, exchanging parts as written, improvising dialogue and bits of action... See David and Paul hammer away at an old form. See them try to find room to breathe. light to grow in as actors. See them earn a reputation in the business for being "difficult". That there's more life in their show now than in any of its contemporaneous peers -- S.W.A.T., CHIPs, Charlie's Angels -- is due almost entirely to them! (Certainly producer Aaron Spelling learned nothing from their example. His shows are still programmed into utter lifelessness -- witness T.J. Hooker -- and boring with a capital B.)

Starsky and Hutch ended up being more not less And how rare that is on the tube -- or in any medium -- I don't have to tell the show's fans. You cannot program into a show a complexity like the look that passes between Starsky and Hutch over the roof of that car in "Pariah". or the resting of blond head against dark in "Shootout". You can't program cameraderie. and you can't manufacture love where it doesn't exist. Two-D characters are incapable of moments of tenderness. Two warm. sensitive three-dimensional men prove themselves capable of that and more in Starsky and Hutch, and that's something to celebrate.

1995

I just don't get it. I didn't in the 70s and I don't now. What is the appeal? (That's rhetorical — I don't really care.) I tried watching a few episodes, really I did, but they were just so obnoxious that I couldn't stand it. That they wear tight jeans and crawl all over each other just isn't enough; the characters don't interest me. Yeah. I could think up all kinds of excuses - brain dead scripts, mindless car chases, dead girlfriend syndrome -- but I think the problem is that they're both American. I really need a British accent in order to get turned on enough by at least one character and watch the series. So it's really a personal kink and I'm not criticizing anyone, but it's just not doing anything for me.

I've been watching S&H on TNT, and while this is without doubt the slashiest network show I've ever seen, it doesn't do much for me. Not enough barriers. They are so open and loving all the time. I miss B7's dark edge. Some very angsty situations, but I keep wishing it was Tarrant and Avon in them, instead of S&H.

2007

In 2007, Flamingo had a three-page thank you in the very last ZebraCon program book. It stated her appreciation of the fans she felt had been especially supportive and influential in Starsky & Hutch fandom and listed many fannish activities and accomplishments, historical and contemporary.

First page of three of thanks

Second page of three of thanks

Third page of three of thanks

2009

[...] okay there are mistakes, ad libs, repeated and pasted scenes, bad casting, lazy writing, and by the forth season the engine sputters badly. But that’s the magic of it. It’s not overwritten or over-produced. There are unexplored allusions and innuendos, holes and spaces. The intention always overshadowed the product – it’s these spaces, these holes, that become a mine of riches, allowing us to enter into imagination and extrapolation.

Compared to the tightly scripted, music-laden, tougher and generally much better television today, Starsky and Hutch can be a bit of a bewildering mix of the astonishing, spontaneous, haphazard and earnest. The actors are fearless and instinctive rather than calculated or self-important. It may never have occurred to either Glaser or Soul they were making anything approaching greatness. If anything, you get the feeling it was the most modest form of alchemy – how to make make lead less leaden. Yet they take control of their characters from the first scene and never let go. Dialogue is improvised or altered, including uncredited changes to pivotal moments, like “The Fix” and in “Gillian”, when the confrontation following her murder (arguably the best single moment in the entire series) was extemporaneous.

[...]

All this marvelous invention, this what-the-hell approach, gives the energy between the two lead actors a crackling electricity that is almost never seen any more. And add to this the thousands of subtleties – looks, touches, grins and personal in-jokes (the “Paul Muni type”, the Stan and Ollie moments) – they work into the scenes. Who today would be allowed to alter a script so often and with such impunity? Union crack-down, anyone? Despite famous stand-offs and threats and contract problems – and flaring egos, particularly Glaser, the despair when the integrity of the show began to crack and split at the edges – they still care enough to imbue their characters with subtlety and consistency. There hasn’t anything remotely like it before, or since. Making what many at the time considered trash, what I suspect the producers, actors and directors might have considered – in their darkest moments – as trash, they were making something unique, complex, and surprising.

Fanworks

Fanzines/Fic

A Fandom of Early Drawerfic

According to Paula Smith in 1985, no other fandom had as much drawerfic as this show, with the exception of The Professionals.

See Starsky & Hutch Drawerfic for some examples.

Zines

Scales of Justice, art by Connie Faddis

• For all Starsky & Hutch gen zines published, see Category:Starsky & Hutch Gen Zines.
• For all Starsky & Hutch slash zines published, see Category: Starsky & Hutch Slash Zines.
• For all non-fiction Starsky & Hutch zines, see Category:Starsky & Hutch Zines
• Another list—at the bottom, it includes all multifandom zines that have Starsky & Hutch content: List of Starsky & Hutch Fanzines.
• For articles on individual stories on Fanlore, see Category:Starsky & Hutch Fanfiction
• for a list of Starsky & Hutch zines proposed but not published, see Proposed Zines

Sample zines:

cover of Forever Autumn, art by Min

• Zebra Three (six issues; gen, from 1977, the first Starsky & Hutch zine published, contains some of the most popular hurt/comfort stories)
• Forever Autumn (the first slash zine published, British)
• Code 7, #1 - #4 (the first US slash zine)
• Who You Know, What You Know and How You Know It, 1983
• The Fix, #1 - #22 published by April Valentine
• Strokes, the slash zine with the story Surrender by Paula Smith
• Trace Elements, the third S/H zine published
• No Pants, No Badge, No Gun
• One More Mountain, One More River, and No Easy Answers (trilogy of slash novels) (available online)
• Shadowplay published by April Valentine
• Scales of Justice - gen, a rare historical AU with intricate and detailed interior b&w and color screened art by Connie Faddis
• Distant Shores (slash novel) by April Valentine that touched on the fannish story trope of the brain-damaged partner
• Pushing the Odds (slash anthology, ed. by Leslie Fish in 1983), renowned for its hard-to-photocopy (and hard-to-read) red printing and other features that the publishers hoped would incriminate the buyer if a copy of the zine was given to TPTB.
• L.A. Vespers 1 and 2 (gen, and what would now be termed smarm)
• The Goliath (gen novel, written and illustrated by Suzan Lovett, this zine contains fantastic artwork) (available online)
• The Thousandth Man (gen novel, written and illustrated by Suzan Lovett, this zine contains fantastic artwork) (available online)
• Strange Justice (gen, an anthology that focuses on supernatural stories, a rare topic in the fandom)
• Ten Thirteen (multi-issue anthology of mostly gen with one slash story in each issue)
• Coda (gen with some ambiguous installments, series of tags to every episode, notable for crossovers with other canons)

cover of the first issue of the long-running and influential letterzine S and H, artist unknown

Non-fiction zines:

• Cops (1976-1979): Dutch newsletter zine
• S and H: the first Starsky & Hutch letterzine (1979-1983)
• Between Friends (1984-1985)
• The Paul Muni Special (con zine) - a convention fanzine (1985)
• The Who Do We Trust Times (1986-1987)
• Frienz: A Starsky & Hutch letterzine 1988-199?
• Starsky & Hutch Episode & Character Guide (1980s?)

Sample online fanfiction:

• Seidhrman Universe a slash series by Jen Hall (2002)
• Unbearable Loss gen (2000s)
• gen fiction by Heather Williamson (early 2000s)
• Dumping Delores
• Interference, Turbulences, Uncertainties a Starsky/Hutch series by Keri Mera

Fanart

Like other early fandoms, most S&H fanartists did illustrations and covers for zines, as well as some standalone art destined for art shows at conventions. Early(-ish) artists includ Suzan Lovett, Connie Faddis, Warren Oddsson, Jean Kluge, and Jean C..

In 2009, a new online fanart archive opened: Still Life, to gather online S&H gen and slash art in one place. It went offline sometime in 2013.

• Starsky and Hutch Digital Dreams CD - "a treasure-trove of over 600MB of goodies which begin with 100 original wallpapers featuring the spectacular digital art of Jade"

Sample art gallery of Starsky & Hutch art, showing a variety of styles and subjects:

• 

  from Code 7 #1, the artist is not identified; all of the contributors to the first issue of this zine were anonymous

• 

  Softness Too, by Maureen B. Not all Starsky & Hutch fanart was published in fanzines. This drawing was sold as an art print at various fan conventions.

• 

  L'chayim, Suzan Lovett, illo from The Thousandth Man (1985). It won a 1986 Huggy Award.

• 

  Strangers, Connie Faddis, illo from Graven Images (1981). In 2014, this drawing was featured in a anonymous review which can be read here.

• 

  ever-popular hurt/comfort by Paulie Gilmore, illo from Promises to Keep

• 

  Interior illustration from The Goliath by Suzan Lovett (1986), a somewhat rare example of an author who illustrates many of her own stories.

• 

  Starsky's most popular...asset is featured on the back cover of S and H #10 (1980), by Connie Faddis, this may be a primitive precursor to subject-specific fanvids

• 

  a portrait of Hutch by an unknown artist, interior art from S and H #1. letterzine art often was not credited by the publisher

• 

  portrait of Starsky from S and H #26, Jean C.. Another example of fanart that appears in letterzines. Since letterzines were often small digest sized, art was inserted into the text as can be seen in the edges of this drawing.

• 

  illustration for the slash story White Feather, by J. Jones. The image is unusual because the center focus is not Starsky & Hutch, but rather a detailed portrait of a female OC. Most fan art focuses on the main characters. (More details at Nightlight #2.)

• 

  Art focusing on the other regularly appearing characters was less popular in fandom. This drawing of Huggy Bear appeared inside The Pits #2. Art by Signe Landon.

• 

  Another regular character was Captain Dobey. This sparse ink sketch interior art by Betty de Gabriele shows Dobey in a reflective and somber mood and appeared inside S and H #23 .

• 

  erotic slash fanart by Merle Decker from the zine Nightlight, notably features Starsky's bullet scars

• 

  another example of erotic Starsky & Hutch art. The drawing shows Starsky & Hutch in various sexual positions. However, by placing these images around the exterior, the artist showcases the emotional core of their relationship. Art from Day by Day, art by TACS. Note: Marked as sexually explicit; minimized.

• 

  The Torino is subjected to some humorous reimagining by Greg Franklin, from S and H #16

• 

  art by SVE from The Fix #1 (1987), showing a less realistic style reminiscent of a newspaper cartoon

• 

  An example of a frontispiece, intended to set the general mood or theme of the zine, such as passionate romance for The Collected Starsky and Hutch Stories of Alexis Rogers

• 

  half of a two-page spread by Jean C. for the story "Kindred Spirits" from the zine Strange Justice. A reviewer comments "...the eyes in particular are breathtaking. She does that better than anybody else; cleaving through the surface expressions of her subjects by lett[ing] their eyes speak."

• 

  Color art in the early years was often limited to fanzine covers, if at all. This drawing was the rare exception and is from Scales of Justice an intricately illustrated fanzine published in 1985. The method used to produce the drawing was silk screening and was quite expensive. As a result only 250 copies of the zine were printed, making it one of the sought after - and expensive - fanzines in the fandom. Artist: Connie Faddis.

• 

  Interior color fan art did not re-appear inside zines until the early 2000s. By then the popularity of fanzines had begun to wane as more fans took to the Internet. Art from Dance with the Devil, artist: Patt

• 

  This drawing by Merle Decker uses pencil to create a soft and reflective feeling. It was used for the cover of Dangerous Lives, Dangerous Visions #2 which was published in 2003.

• 

  Because Starsky & Hutch fandom began long before the computer digital age, photo-manip art is a relatively new addition to the fandom. This novel was a slavefic AU with BDSM themes. Cover of Dark Side of the Moon (Starsky & Hutch zine), art by Suzan Lovett. Starsky & Hutch fanfic was deeply rooted in the "now," keeping the number of AU stories few. For an earlier example of photo-manip art in the fandom, see the cover of The Fix #22 with art by Virgina Sky, published in 2002.

• 

  In later years, a few artists began experimenting with oil paintings. This painting is by Lorraine Brevig and is part of a set of matching covers for the two-volume Evolution published in 2004. The cover of part one won a 2005 SCREWZ Award for "Starsky & Hutch: Best Artwork: Cover."

Vids and Vidding

Two Starsky & Hutch fans, Diana Barbour and Kendra Hunter are credited for making some, if not the, earliest songvids set to live TV footage. At Sharecon 2000, Flamingo put together a vid show of the history of Starsky & Hutch vidding. Below are excerpts from the booklet accompanying the songtape Flamingo later made available to fans.

How Place and Time Shape The Early Vids: 1970s/1980s

cover of Starsky & Hutch Historical Vids

Flamingo begins by offering the reader some background on the fandom and the limited technology and limited source material available when the first Starsky & Hutch vids were being made:

The first VCRs were called VTRs, and showed up around 1978. Blank tapes cost $25 apiece. SH was in its heyday. It stayed in syndication — mostly uncut — for many years. Many [fans] can still only find uncut eps [episodes] from tapes made by generous fans in the early 80's. About the only source of uncut copies of The Fix [episode] are from these tapes as every station in recent times has cut the bedroom scene and often the scene of Hutch's addiction. Likewise, the charming tag of [the episode] "Starsky & Hutch Are Guilty hasn't been seen in almost 25 years except on these uncut tapes.

Flamingo goes on to describe how these limits shaped the format of the earliest vids:

In the earliest vids—then called "song tapes" — there were less story vids since it was difficult to frame one with the limits of the equipment. There were no flying erase heads. Every time a vidder cut in a clip there was usually electronic garbage left on the tape, some of it altering the soundtrack. Some early equipment could do fadeouts. What VTRs could do was hold a freeze frame cleanly, and this was used a great deal. Some of the earliest vids consisted of a freeze frame of the guys' faces over an entire song. Early vidders would use a scene even if it had credits over it if they needed it. They would use freeze frames and stills to extend the desired clip so it would be as long as they needed it to be. These are not things vidders could get away with today, but even with the wobbling soundtracks, freeze frames, and very long clips, fans greeted these early vids with astonishment and appreciation. The fact that it was possible to overlay a different soundtrack over familiar scenes gave fans an outlet to view familiar footage in new ways. This is demonstrated very well in early [single frame] vids like "Somebody's Knockin'" by Jean C. and Kendra Hunter and Diana Barbour's "The Rose."

As Technology Improves, So Do The Vids: 1980s

The advent of flying eraseheads meant that vidders could insert clips with less tape distortion and vidders began telling more complex stories with mutiple parts and punchlines. It also mean fans could start visually exploring the concept of slash in Starsky & Hutch fandom:

"The Laughing Torino" by [?] was this kind of vid and also incorporated pornographic footage of men ejaculating or men stroking other men's bare rears with dialog of the guys taped over it. "The Laughing Torino" was originally broken up into its individual jokes and scattered throughout a collection of song vids so that the tape was broken up by these short moments of humor. Another early vid was built around seven frames from [the episode] "The Fix" from the hug in the alley in The Fix. These frames, when shown slowly and advanced one at at time, made it look like the guys were kissing. The frames were called the "Magnificent 7" and debate raged around it in letterzines and among fens at the time.

The 1990s: Song Choice Helps Drives Vidding Forward

In her booklet, Flamingo points to several musical selections that vidders used to illustrate the relationship between Starsky & Hucth. Music by the rock group Air Supply was a favorite and she points to April Valentine's vid "Just As I Am" as a vid that uses the music particularly well. Gay themed music also helped slash fans visually create their version of Starsky and Hutch, with Megan Kent using the music of Romonovsky & Phillips in "(Don't Use Your) Penis For A Brain." Her vid set to the Indigo Girls "Secure Yourself To Heaven" is "considered by many to be one of the best of all SH vids—excellent use of black screen, and incorporates a frame-by-frame slowdown (not just an advance) of a scene. Most VCRs can no longer do this effect in this way." German vidders Elk M and IrisS produced a 45-minute long songtape, much of which was Starsky and Hutch content.

Vidding: 2000 and Beyond

In her booklet, Flamingo reports that the first Starsky & Hutch computer vids were made by C.A.R. and were shown at the Connexions 2001 vid show.

Overall Trends In Starsky & Hutch Vidding

Flamingo argues that because Starsky & Hutch fans focused on the intense bonds between Starsky & Hutch, "...it was rarely that a sad vid was made. SH may have the smallest percentage of melancholy vids." Notable exceptions are Linda Brandt's 1980s vid "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?." Flamingo describes this as "Possibly the first altered reality vid — very early story vid — early use of black fade — at the time it was shocking to suggest that things might not work out for the guys."

In the mid 1990s, Morgan Dawn made "Don't You Need" a vid set to a Melissa Etheridge song that had both men questioning each other's commitment to one another and ending with the implication that perhaps their reconciliation may have come too late. "I remember at the time there was little support for stories - or vids -- that focused on the real challenges facing any couple - let alone a closeted gay couple serving on the police force. This surprised me because many of the earliest Starsky & Hutch fan stories had offered a more complex and "meaty" characterization of the Starsky & Hutch relationship. But by the time I found the fandom, sweetness and light and loving kindness was what was on the menu. I think that's why I made "Don't You Need" and "Testify" and why I wrote my short story "Snapshots." I wanted to broaden the characters - and the reader/viewer's - horizons."

Vidding: Additional Reading

• list of SH vidding journals/communities
• Early Starsky & Hutch Vids - VCR Era
• Master List of Starsky & Hutch Vids from the 2000s (updated through 2010)

Lending Libraries

The S&H Lending Library, started around 1990 by Linda L Cabrillo, was a collection of out-of-print zines assembled by Linda and many other SH fans to make these zines available to those who had never had an opportunity to see them. Their intention was to ensure that this classic fiction would not be lost to the fandom. The library was run by different SH fans over the years. The library hosted both gen and slash fan fiction. Zines were always presented uncut, uncensored, and unedited. As fans migrated to the Internet, many zine stories (slash and gen) became available online at the S & H Archive and the S&H Lending Library went on hiatus in 2007. In 2010, a few fans stepped in to informally fill the gap by offering to loan and/or copy out of print fanzines on an individual one-to-one basis. Discussions on whether - and how - to resume the S&H Lending Library have been ongoing.

Conventions

SHarecon con zine for 2000

Media West 2010 - Starsky & Hutch Forever, cannellfan

Starting in 1979, Zebracon was for years the main Starsky & Hutch fan run convention. As more and more fans migrated to other fandoms, Zebracon branched out into other 'partnership' cop/spy/science fiction shows, but Starsky & Hutch remained an important focus.

• Dobey Con - UK in the 1980s
• The Paul Muni Special‎ - held once in the US in 1985 (celebrating the 10th anniversary of the show)
• Reunion Con, also known as the "Starsky & Hutch Fifteen Anniversary convention" - held once in 1990 (celebrating the 15th anniversary of the show)
• Zedcon - a UK convention held 1997-2001
• Bay City Bash - a UK gathering of gen and slash fans in 2002
• VegaSH Con - 2010, held in the US
• SHarecon - gen and slash - US convention that started officially in 2000 and is still ongoing
• Cabrillo Con - gen - US event that started 2005 and is still ongoing
• ZebraCon -- gen and slash -- early cons were all SH, later cons were SH and Pros
• Southern Con-Federacy -- S&H con held in Troy, Alabama, 1980-1983.

Numerous small informal gatherings have taken place worldwide over the years, including Starsky & Hutch London Fanday, TomatOZ (Australia 1982) and Ten Years On (UK 1985).

Awards

• Torino Awards
• Paula Wilshe Awards
• SlaSHies
• Encore Awards

Archives:

• Bay City Library (gen)
• Dave & Ken's Diner Automated Slash Archive
• David Soul Appreciation Team mailing list
• Me and Thee Archive (gen, slash)
• Starsky & Hutch, ^{Archived version} by Kassidy Rae (features a slash archive)
• Starsky and Hutch Archive, Flamingo's first archive (gen, slash)
• Starsky and Hutch Archive, Flamingo's second archive (gen, slash)
• SH Fanfiction Card Catalog (not an archive but an index, now offline and not archived)
• The Starsky and Hutch Fiction Den (Striped Tomato's gen archive)
• Starsky & Hutch Slash Fiction (indexed by author)
• Tagging Bay City (not an archive but a list of tagged S&H fic)
• Zebra Three B.L.T., archive for Brit, TibbieB, and Linda B.
• List of S&H fansites on GeoCities (includes small fic archives)
• Starsky NHutch: Discussion list for the TV show Starsky and Hutch - a restricted Yahoo! Group

Mailing Lists and Communities

• Loveofmeandthee - gen and slash mailing list (2000–present)
• Hutchfans - gen only mailing list
• Paul Michael Glaser Appreciation Team (2004- 2019)
• The Pits (mailing list) - gen and slash mailing list (1999–present)
• SHGFanFic - gen only mailing list
• VenicePlace - first slash only mailing list) (1996–present)
• Zebra3 - first gen only mailing list, Flamingo was the owner
• Meandtheelegacy (2004-2019)
• starsky_hutch, a LiveJournal site, founded January 1, 2004 by Kimberly FDR
• Starsky and Hutch Friends (gen only, 2005-present)
• Starsky & Hutch Fanfiction (mailing list) - public Yahoo! group (2004 - 2019)
• Starsky & Hutch (mailing list) - Yahoo! group for German-speaking fans (2003 - 2019)
• Starsky Hutch Mailing List - public Yahoo! group (1999 - 2019)
• Starsky-N-Hutch-Fic - Yahoo! Group for discussing Starsky & Hutch Fan Fiction (1999 - 2019)
• Starsky and Hutch Christian Friends - restricted Yahoo! Group (2007 - 2019)
• Starsky and Hutch Playmates - Yahoo! Group (2002-2012)
• Starsky n Hutch: A place to visit - Public Yahoo! Group (1998 - 2019)
• StarskynHutchfans - Public Yahoo! Group (2003 - 2019)
• Starskynhutchclubhouse - restricted Yahoo! Group (1999 - 2019)
• Starsky & Hutch Fangroup - Public Yahoo! Group (2003 - 2019)
• Starsky & Hutch -- BloodPromises - restricted Yahoo! Group (2004 - 2019)
• StoriesofStarskyandHutch - restricted Yahoo! Group (2002- 2019)
• Topanga - for the David Soul Appreciation Group (mid 1990's - ?)
• Zebra 3 Come In - a public Yahoo! group (2001 - 2019)

Episode Reviews by Fans

• For twenty-three humorous episode reviews written by Rebelcat and Elizabeth Helena, see Episode Reviews, ^{Archived version}.

• For reflections/reviews of every episode, with many notes on the filming, atmosphere, environment, social issues, and analysis of both the leads and one-shot characters, as well as 29 "Character Studies" and auxiliary posts about various facets of the show and its internal universe, see The Ollie Report.

• See Episode Reviews by Aloysius, ^{Archived version}

Meta

• Category:Starsky & Hutch Meta
• Characterization questions (2002)
• God in Fiction: Starsky and Hutch: The Show That Makes Me Look at God Anew, ^{Archived version} (2017)
• About – Hutch's Greenhouse, ^{Archived version} (November 15, 2020)
• Let the Boys Kiss: The Creation of Queer Ships - Starsky & Hutch - Let The Boys Kiss (podcast), ^{Archived version} (2021)

Resources

• ao3feed-starsky-hutch[1], a ao3feed tumblr-blog
• Green Stamps: The Starsky & Hutch Page, a very early resource page
• A Starsky and Hutch Canon Compendium (exceptionally detailed lists of all manner of trivia)
• Bay City U.K. - Starsky & Hutch in the British Isles, ^{Archived version} - UK fans, also hosts of the 2002 Bay City Bash in the UK
• Blue's Starsky & Hutch Resources (timeline, episode guide, facts etc)
• Black Bean Soup's Episode List/summaries (with a focus on partnership and h/c moments, canon details, and priceless scenes)(WayBack Machine link)
• Episode transcripts (incomplete, in-progress project last updated 12/2008)
• Starsky and Hutch Fan Videos – For the Enjoyment of The Boys, ^{Archived version} (A web site devoted to Starsky & Hutch, Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul, with video captures, clips, fanvids, links and more)
• SH LJ Community
• The Starsky & Hutch Roundup (a biweekly S&H fandom net newsletter on Livejournal) (inactive)
• SH Screengrabs (offline)
• Starsky & Hutch Song Vids, ^{Archived version}

See also

• Timeline of Starsky & Hutch Fandom
• Star Trek and Starsky & Hutch