a starsky & hutch riddle for you, fandom

[laurajv]

I'm listening to the TWiB live feed from Ferguson and I'm so tired right now. So I'm going to think about S/H for a bit.

Here's a thing. In "Death in a Different Place", Starsky's mentor is revealed to be a closeted gay man, and Starsky deals with this WAY worse than Hutch. Partly, I mean, Starsky has just lost someone he cared a lot for and was close to and looked up to; he'd be emotionally reeling no matter what -- but even with that taken into account, he seems noticeably more...offput by homosexuality than Hutch is, to my eye.

So why in so much S/H is Starsky the one who is more open and accepting of his desires?

Comments

[mecurtin]

Because Hutch is The Taller Man.

That's it. It's part of The Taller Man package.

[laurajv]

Damn you, Taller Man Package!

[tazlet]

Because Hutch is a chill blond repressed midwestern WASP of Scandinavian descent. (We all know about those people from Wisconsin).

[killabeez]

I've definitely read stories that go the other way around. "Death in a Different Place" was my favorite episode, so I sought out stories that specifically tied into that one—maybe that's why?

Trying to remember the dynamics in Murder on San Carmelitas.

[liviapenn]

Well, it was one of the later episodes (early Season 3) so maybe people's characterizations were fixed by that point and then they didn't bother to go back and change them?

(I always thought of Hutch as someone who had always wanted to rebel *against* his "freeze your feelings" WASPiness by moving to California and becoming the kind of guy who played the guitar at parties and wore a little star & moon necklace and so on, but then didn't actually unfreeze very much on the inside...)

[laurajv]

That would make sense for contemporary slash, but stuff written by anyone who got into the fandom later is watching from, like, DVDs, and they're surely skipping to that one. I'm guessing for them it's heavily fanon or culturally influenced. I mean, it'd have to be, because it's not coming from the canon.

Hutch is an interesting character. He's more experimental in general than Starsky (remember that like, weird sexy vegetarian diet phase?), but he doesn't seem to stick with his experiments long.