Starsky/Hutch

The main emotional focus of Starsky & Hutch 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. 
Starsky/Hutch never got as big as K/S, but it was a major fandom with an extensive zine, then online culture. 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 many fans saw as homoerotic subtext was addressed by the show's producer Merv Griffin (who was gay, although he kept this part of his life very private). Griffin had said something to David Soul (the actor that played Hutch) about Starsky & Hutch being a cop show; Soul replied, it's not a cop show, "it's a love story about two men who happen to be cops." Similarly, in a TV Guide interview, August 13, 1977: "'Starsky & Hutch' is listed as a 'crime drama'," says David, "but in my opinion the show is a love story between two men." 
In a blooper tape made during the show's run, the narrator suggests that some Hollywood industry types referred to the characters as "French kissing prime-time homos“. Word on the Street, 1999, documentary transcript 
==First, Really the Only Slash in the Fandom==
Starsky/Hutch is pretty much the only slash portrayed in Starsky & Hutch fanworks. There is the occasional Starsky/OMC or Hutch/OMC, and a handful of fics that slash either character with Huggy Bear, but they are far and few between.
==The Political Climate==
The early 1980s in the United States were rife with political and social turmoil. Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, and what many fans referred to as the new McCarthyism was a reality.See Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman's book Holy Terror (Delta, 1984) for a contemporary history of the Religious Right takeover and the "culture wars": Sarah Posner's Unholy (Random, 2020) documents the alliance between the Republican Party, the Trump Admin and the Religious Right. LucasFilm had hopped into the fray with Open Letter to Star Wars Zine Publishers by Maureen Garrett in the summer/fall of 1981, an event that had to have had a cooling effect on sex, explicit and otherwise, in fannish works. This is the climate from which the first issue of Code 7 sprang.
One prominent zine ed comments on "sensitive material" in her editorial of a how-to zine published in March 1982: 
==The Black Notebook==
In 1985, a fan wrote about the fiction climate of the time: 
==S/H Fanfiction History==
Forever Autumn was the first S/H zine published. It was issued in the UK. Next, a single slash story was published in the second issue of Ten-Thirteen. It is commonly understood that the first full S/H zine published in the U.S. was Code 7 in 1981, and then Trace Elements in 1982.
This timeline is contradicted in a review of Trace Elements: 
These contradictions regarding which was the first zine "published" may be due to the fact that the editors of Code 7 issued an announcement that the Code 7 had been canceled in S and H #22 (June 1981) while secretly publishing the zine sans identifying information and distributing it to a select group of people.
A fan in early 1982 gives a wink to fellow fen regarding "Code 7": "I haven't seen that much S/H to date -- just one excellent zine (that doesn't exist, of course)." from Hanky Panky #1 (January or February 1982)
Because Code 7 #1 was an underground publication (see Code 7 vs. Trace Elements), some fans consider Trace Elements as the first "published" US S/H zine.
Klangley56 wrote:
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.
In 1982, a fan comments 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: 
April Valentine describes the difficulties facing early Starsky & Hutch slash fans: 
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 gen only mailing lists that exclude any discussion of slash. See: SHGFanFic and Hutchfans.
From Flamingo: 
In 1984, a fan wrote of the transitions and growing pains the four major slash fandoms of the time were experiencing: 
lamardeuse wrote: 
==Some Early Slash Zines==
* Trace Elements
* Forever Autumn
* Code 7
* Gunther's Revenge
* Purple Pages (underground RPS)
==Some Early Slash Authors==
* Alexis Rogers,
* Terri Beckett 
* Chris Powers
* Dargelos
* Pamela Rose
* Rosemary C.
* Peruvian Gypsy
* Elizabeth Lowry
==Some Later Slash Authors==
* Dawnwind
* Flamingo
* Morgan Logan
* Sebastiyn
* Susan James
* Valentin
==Example Fanfiction==
:See also :Category:Starsky & Hutch Fanfiction"
*Type Dirty to Me by Sebastiyn
==Links & Resources==
*Ken Hutchinson/David Starsky tag at Archive of Our Own
*“It’s A Love Story Betweeen Two Men Who Happen To Be Cops”—David Soul by KimberlyFDR, a Starsky/Hutch ship manifesto (2004)
==Notes and References==
===Notes===
===References===
Category:Slash Pairings
Category:Starsky & Hutch