"We stand on the shoulders of horny giants. The massive success of Heated Rivalry is the culmination of decades of fandom: stans, zines, and, yes, fan fiction. One of the most popular forms of fanfic is slash - romances between characters of the same genre. And the most overwhelming majority of slash is M/M (male/male) romance, which tends to be written by women."
"Fic from previous fandoms - specifically for the Lord of the Rings books - often focused on a writer-insert character joining the fun and kissing all the boys. Star Trek fic innovated by focusing on the already pretty substantial homoerotic subtext in the show. Kirk and Spock are each other's t'hy'la, a Vulcan word meaning friend/brother/lover. The term "slash" comes from the punctuation mark between the names Kirk and Spock."
Slash fanfiction features romances between characters of the same gender and is overwhelmingly dominated by M/M pairings often written by women. In Asia the genre is called boys' love (BL), and readers and creators who embrace it are known as fujoshi, a reclaimed term meaning rotten girl. Star Trek fandom pioneered many conventions of modern fan culture and catalyzed M/M slash by foregrounding the show's homoerotic subtext between Kirk and Spock. The label slash derives from the punctuation between character names, and Kirk/Spock narratives established tropes like sexual urgency linked to Vulcan pon farr.
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