Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 14:33:39 -0800 (PST)

From: Blue Starsky

Subject: Re: [VP] Re: fandoms, artists, and writers

As a writer who is very new to fanfic/slash and is just beginning to write my very first S/H stories, I find this thread to be so interesting. Thanks to everyone for sharing your views! It's the veteran writers who write generic stories. I've heard prolific authors (okay, one author) brag about how they can rewrite the same story and just change the names and still have it accepted.

Wow. That's so sad. The love of and interest in S &amp; H is what drives me to write S/H. What fun is it to write or to read if you're not regularly reminded that it's Starsky & Hutch you're reading about?? There's so much to go on with those characters, and they are so open for interpretation. I can "logically" send them in a few different directions, as long as I keep true to the characters. I can't imagine writing or reading anything where the characters and stories are that generic. Don't know if I put that very well.

There's a very good reason why veteran writers write vanilla. (Yes, I'm lecturing. The editors will print it and the author gets a free zine -- ie, a reward -- for not trying very hard. The readers will love it because at least it has their favorite characters' names it in and it's better than no stories at all (which I guess -- ? -- is a problem with so many small fandoms -- not enough stories?) The author is then all the more motivated to keep writing the easy quick-and-dirty story and the cycle stays intact.

This reminds me of these books you could buy years ago, don't know if they're still available. You send in your $4.95 and someone takes this dull little storybook and places your child's name in there on each page and puts your kid's photo here and there and now it's an heirloom! ;-)

I'd get bored very quickly if all S & H did in fanfic was walk down the street and ask one another to pass the salt. These characters (any chrs if they were written and portrayed well at all) are just a mass of habits, quirks, preferences, fears, hang-ups, etc. No one else really walks like Starsky, no one else that I can think of has those long legs that Hutch does - okay in reality, sure people do, but if you bring in little bits like those, you're adding to the "realism" of the story. Anyway, I'd venture to say that no other fanfic/tv characters (even Spelling Goldberg creations) can be identical to S & H, Paul and David wouldn't have allowed that. Thank heavens.

It's especially frustrating with new authors who might be tremendously talented, but their first time they only get a few pages together and call their little scenario a "story" even though it's lacking a beginning, middle, and end. But the scenario is extremely well-written, and the editor wants very much to establish a positive relationship with the author. So, she prints the little vignette as is, hoping she'll get something better fleshed out in the future. I, as a reader, also find those well-written vignettes extremely frustrating, especially when a zine is full of them. (Note: I don't mean to imply that vignettes can't be excellent and complete within themselves.

Of course, they can. But most vignettes I see in fanzines are outlines of something pretending to be a short story; or one scene from what should be a short story with many scenes.)

As a new writer of S/H (I've written short stories and poetry for many years, and have been published) I find I'm most comfortable right now focusing on the PWPs. Very soon, they're going to blossom into full-fledged stories, but I'm only presenting them as little pieces on their own, not trying to claim they're "stories" in the traditional sense. I need, as a writer who is so new to this, to work into what feels right to me as far as writing S/H goes, and the best way for me to do that has been to write the PWPs first. It doesn't take many of them before I find myself wanting to write more meaty piece -- the first-time story, etc.

I just hope that when and if you read any of my vignettes, they won't strike you as things pretending to be anything they're not. I try to present them as tight little capsules of writing. Anything more you could say to expand on how you'd define the difference between a good little PWP or vignette and "an outline of something pretending to be a short story" would be helpful to me, so I can avoid it. (Unfortunately, I'm not financially able to acquire and read many of the terrific zines that are out there. Maybe if I did read more I'd know just what you meant, so I apologize.)

Didn't mean to go on and on!

Thanks!

Blue

Subject: [VP] Did you find slash or slash find you?

Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 20:39:10 -0700 (PDT)

From: Blue Starsky

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Just curious. When I read my first S/H story a little over a year ago, one of Flamingo's, I had an overwhelming feeling (apart from any other feelings it may have stirred up) of "Oh wow! I'd thought we -- I and my high school friends years ago -- were the only ones who ever talked like this, thought about this, fantasized about this." I don't remember ever hearing the 'prime time homo' stuff, only comments about the show's being too violent. I can't express how happy I was

to find S/H fandom, VP, and all its lovely tentacles. I'm not the only one! [I never heard the term 'slash' before about a year ago, and now I have several stories in the works, a big bowl full of undulating primordial outlines. Wee Starskies and tiny Hutchies occupying themselves as they will until I can get to their stories.] In case it's worth mentioning, I cannot and never have seen this slashiness in any other pair on tv, in films, whatever.

So I thought it must have been this way for everyone, but in talking to a couple S/H friends, I realize that's not the case. Not everyone who watched the show saw them as potential lovers. Not everyone imagined that for them to become sexual partners would be the most natural thing on earth, let alone fantasized about them that way. I'm wondering about others' experiences. Did more of us see and feel and dream it right away, back in the 70s, or whenever you first saw the show, or did people come to it some other way.

We had a thread a while back about whether you could really see it, if you could see the slashy scenes. I always could, especially now. I can see scenes from the show flowing into it very easily. And I recently had a dream where it was so clear -- I think Hutch's spirit was trying to show me that he would never be kneeling doing that, but that he'd prefer to crouch. So, of course the next day, when the boss lady wasn't looking, I rewrote it as I'd seen it. Now both he and Starsky seem to be happier in my story.

Blue