Talk:Me and Thee and Three

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[Music: "I wanna to publish zines. And rage against machines].

Monica: We recently went to the University of Iowa archives. They have a great fandom collection with tons of Starsky and Hutch fanzines and letterzines and a published novels and all sorts of great fandom artifacts. Artifacts, that makes us sound ancient... You know fandom objects

Jen: You see ancient 1970.

Monica: Um, and uh, we wanted to talk a little bit about what we looked at. Ah, we've been there twice previously. This was our third. Oh

Rachel: No. You've two have been there three times now. I've only been twice,

Monica: OK, so we just wanted to talk about what we read and saw there. And did you want to go first, Rachel?

Rachel: All right. Well the very first time I went there was just so much to look at. This is the amazing thing about the Iowa archives is there's just box after box after box of materials. So I just did a broad, broad, broad survey of like not only Starsky and Hutch, but as professionals do south. I looked at some Lois and Clark Xen, which I got really excited about this time. The second time we went I really wanted to just sit down and read a couple stories. Um, so when I first looked at was strange justice, which is an anthology and it was the most gorgeous gorgeous zine I've seen. It had, um, like gold foil on the front of it. It was absolutely beautiful. And I read the first story in that which was Death Angeles. Unfortunately, I don't have the, um, author's name written down. I apologize. We'll have that in show notes. Um, and that was, that was a really fun story to read. I really want to read more on the collection because I do find the lack of SFF stories in Starsky and Hutch a bit lacking and I do enjoy that a lot. So I like seeing those tapes and I thought this was um, a real organic incorporation of the supernatural into the Starsky and Hutch universe, which we have as, as this, the opening note in Strange Justice noted is established because the psychic

Monica: there is some supernatural canon happenings in Starsky and Hutch, which is a little odd because you could easily have told the story of the psychic without making it clear if the psychic was actually psychic. But no, it's clear. He's actually psychic.

Jen: They're very explicit about that. So I read the first story in that. Um, I've looked at a couple other zines. One that I was really interested in reading was the water is wide and that one, they actually don't have it listed as the water is wide because they don't have a cover page. It is a copy edition. And so it just starts with the first, with the title of the first story in the collection. So I was really pleased when I saw that it was the whole zine and not just that first story. I also looked at a couple fan comics that had stylized draw overs of different scenes from The Fix and I actually really enjoyed that because it gave a. It was actually from partners, but it gave us a little insight into what Hutch was thinking while Starsky reminded Hutch of the events of The Fix.

Monica: I remember looking at those and those were interesting and I liked that they were so different from anything I've seen in a internet fandom.

Speaker 3: Jenn, did you want to go next? So I've spent most of my time looking at some letterzines and in particular one called a Hanky Panky. And I found that really fascinating from a historical fandom perspective because it appears to have been a zine shared among Starsky and Hutch slash friends in particular who were tired of not being able to have conversations about the nuances of Starsky and Hutch slash because they spent all of their time in the more mainstream zines fighting for the opportunity to even consider them as a romantic couple. Um, and so when you're starting from behind like that, you don't get into the nuances. So they created this separate zine and they were sharing a lot of topics... basically sharing their head canon. And although that wasn't a phrase used at that time about what Starsky and Hutch would be like, um, in a relationship how other characters around them would react whether or not they would, they, they put it as participating in the gay scene.

Jen: And no one replying really seemed to know what was being asked on that front. But it was fascinating in itself, especially to see how people in the early 1980s when the zine was being circulated, were conceiving of gay culture and, uh, the gay community. And particularly the gay male community when they were mostly women responding. Um, and so I found that really interesting. Um, there was a lot of good conversation about, uh, their head canon involving their families about how Dobie and Huggy would respond. Everyone's response on that factor was basically identical and it was that Huggy probably already knows they're together before they even get together. Also, Huggie's probably bisexual himself and Dobie loves them and wants to support them. But it was a little worried because of the complications of gay cops in the force, like every single person had the same reply.

Rachel: I love that everyone was united in correct opinions.

Jen: It's true. It's so rare in fandom. Um, it was also just a great historical artifact. There were a lot of clippings in the zine from gay magazines and newspapers, some of them just funny jokes, but others, there was an entire like guide to the Hanky Code at one point ....just pasted in there. And that's why the zine was called the Hanky Panky. All of the covers were some fan art making jokes about the Hanky Code with Starsky and Hutch. And I feel like fandom today doesn't really talk about the Hanky Code because it's not relevant. um...in 2017, but it's useful for any historical fandom if you're talking about historical, um, queer communities, particularly in the seventies and early eighties. It's nice to be able to see what people at the time were saying, even if they weren't necessarily part of these communities and you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Monica: I did like... I flipped through the first issue of the Hanky Panky and, um, they had a list of recommended reading with queer content. And I was just really chuffed that Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin was recommended on that list. I love that book. Rachel:It's also interesting to note that in the more general zines, how you say that slash fandom was justifying its existence. I noted that fandom hasn't really changed. Like, yes, we, we accept slash's existence now without uh, for the most part, without question. But there are still. Fans are still justifying certain things that. Well, I don't know what I'm saying here.

Monica:I do. I've read so many of these arguments that yeah, no one's going to say broadly, people shouldn't write slash, but there's still lots of arguments about when it's OK to write slash, who it's ....like who's OK writing slash, is that what you were saying?

Rachel: what types of things like, um, just in shipping in general, who you can ship, how you can ship, what types of stories you can write. The purity brigade on Tumblr is very strict about what you can. write. And so there's been a lot of fighting in fandom trying to combat that harmful attitudes. It's just interesting to see these that while the subject of these fights change, these are still going on.

Jen: There's always boundary drawing. There's always fights. And I know I got into fandom in an era and in a fandom where the fights about whether or not you were allowed to write slash in the first place were still happening. I was in Newsies fandom and that was split very, very clearly between people who wanted to ship the male characters and the people who just wanted to write stories with original female characters, romancing the male characters. And there are a lot of fights between those two factions and that was the mid 2000s, so it wasn't that long ago and you still see a lot of fights today over whether or not RPF should exist. And Real Person Fiction was something that was happening even then. And I think Monica can tell us more about that.

Monica: That was a beautiful segue. Uh, yeah. I started out at the archives by looking up the Purple Pages and some people on Facebook had mentioned that they were very curious about the Purple Pages because it's very difficult to find copies these days. And it was RPF, which is real person fiction written about the Starsky and Hutch actors, David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser. And it was being written while the show was still on and then shortly afterwards. So these are stories from the late seventies and early eighties. And, uh, that makes it one of the earliest western RPF fandoms by modern standards. Um, and so I, I read the entire collection and the one I was reading..... this, this wasn't a zine, it was just stories collected in, handed around from fan to fan. They didn't put out as a traditional zine because this was so under cover. You had to know someone who knew that you'd be cool with this topic and then they would mail it to you. And my understanding was that there was a letterzine where some copies of the Purple Pages has got sent out with a letter zine and that caused a huge fandom ruckus. Um, so I read these and they were, it was very interesting to see what was being written when the show was still so fresh. And uh, I admit, like I, I typically don't read RPF. I totally believe people have the right to write it. Like I don't have a problem with that existing, but I really like the divide of fictional characters. And I understand that when you write RPS, you are writing fictionalized versions of the characters. I understand there is that divide there, but I really like characters that exist in their own fictional universe where you know, what you're dealing with. It's, it just feels simpler and cleaner to me that.... real human beings are so messy and you know what I think I know kind of back away from that topic actually.

Monica: Um, but these, these stories, uh, I went in kind of thinking that it would mostly be sexy hi-jinks on the side to stuff like that, but they actually included family members. Um, and there was a lot of angst, a lot of like downer stories and uh, I, I was glad to have read them just to know what kind of things were being written, but it wasn't really my big. Um, and then I also read some really angsty hurt/comfort ...a zine called Snuff that Jen had read on a previous one and she was like, oh my God, terrible things are happening to Hutch. And so I read that and indeed, terrible things happen to Hutch. Yeah.

Jen: They involve priests.

Monica: All the content warnings, all the content warnings.

Rachel: That's a more recent one, because that's from the early 2000s, wasn't it?

Monica: I honestly don't remember. It very well. Could been.

Jen: Um, there's just so much material in these archives that it's hard to even keep track. I mean, we've been there, Monica. I've been there three times now and we have still barely scratched the surface and we're just looking at Starsky and Hutch. So if there's any way that you can get to the archives at the University of Iowa and you have any interest in fandom history, I highly recommend it because there's a wealth of material there And they're very friendly. They're, they're, uh, the staff are very nice.

Monica: I recommend bringing chocolate to the staff so, you know, offer a sacrifice to the librarians, then they won't be harsh with you. They carry heavy boxes. It's true. They're very strong.