Slow Burn (trope)

Slow Burn is a popular trope in both fanfic and canons where the characters of the main pairing start off not in a relationship and focuses on the slow development of a romantic or sexual pairing. It is often paired with UST and pining due to the focus on the slow nature of the relationship. Some people consider the term "slow burn" to be synonymous with slow build, but others think that slow burn is specifically about the romance aspect of a fic where slow build is more about the plot.In terms of AO3 tags, what's the difference between "Slow Build" and "Slow Burn"? Posted 29 Dec 2018. Accessed 21 Feb 2020. Moonbeam's "Fanfiction Terminology" page gives the following definition for slow burn:
which seems to indicate that most people believe slow burn to be indicative of romance or the promise of it. That is to say for some fans a longfic focused on the Zutara relationship is a slow burn, but a longfic focused on Zuko's redemption arc is slow build. Slow build could be considered the literary equivalent of edging, as there are people who believe that a slow burn is more about the length of time a viewer or reader is investing in a relationship rather than the length of time it chronologically takes for a couple to get together. In that sense, the amount of time it takes for characters in an Arranged Marriage to actually fall in love qualifies as a slow burn even though the characters are "together" for the entire fic.
==Variation in Definition==
Like many fannish terms, there isn't one concrete definition for what is and isn't a slow burn. On Tumblr, the-pen-pot made a text post which asked what the meaning of "slow burn" is and offered the following definition:
Others fans responded to the post with a variety of definitions, but many overall agreed with the definition given by the-pen-pot which may be due to the smaller sample size of respondents. On Reddit, r/Fanfiction had a discussion about how slow is too slow for slow burn, and the wider variety of responses seemed to land on the consensus that nothing could truly be too slow, but a reader's individual taste will vary from person to person.
This lack of consensus among fans has led to fans of slow burn fic complaining about the term's misuse. There are two main camps of "slow burn" definitions: ones based on the in-fic chronology of a relationship and ones based on the meta-level investment of a fan in the relationship. The latter type of definition is more common, although the base "amount" of investment required in those definitions ranges from 10k to over 100k, but the former is also in use. The segment of fans that think "slow burn" refers the time invested by a fan into seeing a relationship come to fruition, like when shippers of Mulder/Scully waited many chronological years for their pairing to become canon, often complain about the other camp of fans who think slow burn refers to the chronological time spent trying to get characters into a relationship, such as the millennia it might take Aziraphale/Crowley to get together even in a 6k fic. A popular tumblr post by anhumanslovestories explains:
In another Reddit post to r/FanFiction, Thymesinc asked "What qualifies as a slow burn?" and got several answers.What qualifies as a slow burn? on Reddit. Posted 20 Jun 2019. While some stuck to the hard line of slow burn being about the time and energy invested into a fic, with one commenter mentioning Worm being 1.7 million words,Comment on "What qualifies as a slow burn?", posted 20 Jun 2019. others had more varied answers:
UrbanDictionary has the following definition for "slow burn":
and while UrbanDictionary isn't the be all end all authority, especially on fannish terms, the fact that this is the only fannish definition of slow burn on the site seems to indicate that the time investment of the reader or viewer is key. There's also several interesting variations on the slow burn trope. ao3commentoftheday made a post describing one such variation:
In this scenario, "slow burn" exclusively refers to the romantic aspect of a pairing. This variation is a way of having your cake and eating it too, in a sense, since many readers complain about the length of time it takes characters to kiss or have sex and is more common in romance novels than fic.
==Fan Commentary==
:
==Fanwork Examples==
* The Curse of Saturdays
* don't leave me tongue-tied
* MFA (Most Fuckable Ass)
==Archives & Links==
*Recs tagged Slow Burn at Fancake
==References==
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