Apr. 25th, 2015
In the early days of Starsky & Hutch fandom (1980s), there were strong objections to the existence of slash fan fiction. One of the early slash fanzinesCode 7 was published under threat of copies being mailed to TPTB in the hopes of driving slash fans and fan fiction underground.
In response, another zine editor published her slash stories anyway with blue ink on a red background.
Fanlore explains: “In the end, the slash stories were printed in blue ink on a reddish background. The zine came with a sheet of red plastic the reader was to put over the page to make it legible. The editor 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.” These machinations were all an attempt to keep the zine, one of the first slash fanworks, from being dispersed and read by those (including some fans who’d threatened to send it to the studio and otherTPTB) who were not supporters and would do the genre harm “
You can read more about her zine Pushing the Odds here and the tensions between Starsky & Hutch fans over slash fan fiction here.