Citations:slow burn

Noun: "(fiction, fandom slang) a romantic story (especially a work of fan fiction) in which the central relationship develops slowly"

 * 2011, Anne Helen Petersen, "That Teenage Feeling: Twilight, fantasy, and feminist readers", Feminist Media Studies, Volume 12, Issue 1, page 62:
 * Several readers were wary of what they and other critics have termed the “abstinence porn” that permeates the series. For these readers, what began as the “slow burn” within the mise-en-scène of desire eventually revealed itself to be the ideological structuring of an author with an obvious agenda:
 * 2018, Francesca DiPiazza, Fandom: Fic Writers, Vidders, Gamers, Artists, and Cosplayers, page 30:
 * Another familiar trope, the slow burn, teases the reader as characters secretly pine for one another . . . for a long time.
 * 2019, "Robinwritesallthethings", "porn with plot", Lemon, page 62:
 * Slow burns are torture. Why wait? I want my characters getting down and dirty ASAP, and there's nothing wrong with that.
 * 2019, "Author-Mimi-Francis", "10 tropes for romantic writing", Lemon, page 22:
 * Friends to lovers, fake dating, slow burn, and bed sharing are only a few of the tropes you can use in your flufftastic writing.
 * 2021, Ella Hitchcock, "Why is that a tag?!: User-generated tag structure in online fan fiction archives", thesis submitted to the University of Alberta, page 18:
 * The most basic of these is findability; users label their work with tags like Coffee Shop AU or Slow Burn, categorizing their work with labels that can be used by other users to find their work.
 * 2021, Aditi Dubey, "Considering Fanfic", Rabbit Hole (Australian National University), Issue One, page 33:
 * On some nights, I want a good long, juicy 70k word slowburn, mutual pining, angst (with a happy ending, of course, I'm not a monster).
 * 2021, Trinity Sloan, "Fan Fiction: Popular, yet misunderstood", Three Penny Press (Bellaire High School, Bellaire, TX), Volume 63, Issue 1, November 2021, page 29:
 * Slow burns are fics where romantic relationships develop gradually over the course of many chapters.

Adjective: "(fiction, fandom slang, of a romantic relationship) developing slowly over the course of the story"

 * 2016, Alexander Garner, "The Erotics of Fanfiction: Queering Fans, Works, and Communities in Modern Internet Fandom", thesis submitted to Bowling Green State University, page 53:
 * A subset of these responses cited asexuality as the reason for seeking out slow burn romance fics that are not explicit—or of which explicit sex is not the primary component—rather than genres of fanfiction that center on sex acts, such as PWP.
 * 2018, Jessica Spotswood, The Last Summer of the Garrett Girls, unnumbered page:
 * Clarke and Lexa's slow-burn romance—and the fan fiction that Vi devoured about it —led to her joining Tumblr and starting to write her own fanfic.
 * 2018, Lindsay Mixer, "'And Then They Boned': An Analysis Of Fanfiction And Its Influence On Sexual Development", thesis submitted Humboldt State University, page 48:
 * Since most respondents who prefer slow-burn fics are on the asexual spectrum, this is not surprising, as they are less likely to desire sexual experiences with others in general.
 * 2019, Victoria Fidler, "Finding the Path Through the Ethics of Fanfiction: An analysis of the ethical ramifications of fan-written fiction works", thesis submitted to Florida State University, page 36:
 * Slow burn fanfiction is a romantic work in which the intended couple dance around each other until the end, culminating in a romantic scene of declaration involving anything from a chaste kiss to graphic love-making.
 * 2019, Fiona Hartley-Kroeger, The Weight of the Stars review, Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books, Volume 72, Number 6, February 2019, page 245:
 * Their slow-burn romance (after the rocky start to their friendship) is sweetly, devastatingly understated.
 * 2019, Emily E. Roach, "Supernatural Wincest And Dean Winchester's Bisexual Panic", in Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans Through Homoerotic Possibilities (ed. Joseph Brennan), page 80:
 * This sense of possibility has intensified as the opportunities for jokes have become fewer and the conventions, tropes, and narrative arc of slow-burn romance have been employed.
 * 2019, Erin Kenny, "'Ship Wars: and the OTP: Narrating Desire, Literate Agency, and Emerging Sexualities in Fanfiction of The 100, Child and Youth Agency in Science Fiction: Travel, Technology, Time (eds. Ingrid E. Castro & Jessica Clark), page 193:
 * Perhaps as passionate as the fans of Clexa, and empowered by decades of heteronormative storytelling, young viewers also write and share fanfiction around the much-longed for “slow-burn” ship dubbed “Bellarke” by shippers.
 * 2019, J. Lynn Else, A Song for the Stars review, Historical Novel Review, Issue 88, May 2019, page 26:
 * Recommended for fans of daring female leads, sumptuous settings, and slow-burn romances.
 * 2020, Shania O'Brien, "The horny POV: Evolution of modern fanfiction", Honi Soit (University of Sydney), Week 5, Semester 5 (2020), page 18:
 * Slow burn fics, for instance, can go as far as having seventy thousand words before the character pairing even interacts.
 * 2021, Deirdre Price, "'Their eyes met at the same instant': The Queer Gothic and Triumphant Romance of The Price of Salt", paper submitted to Hollins University, page 1:
 * The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith is a seminal 20th century lesbian text famous for its suspenseful tone, slow burn romance, and narrow escape from the entrappings of the literary modes of mid-century lesbian pulp fiction.
 * 2021, Down Comes the Night review, Kirkus Reviews, 15 January 2021, page 130:
 * Things get off to a slow start, but patient readers who love slow-burn romances will find much to enjoy.
 * 2022, Cindy Zhang, "Give These Romantic Tropes A Second Chance", 34th Street Magazine, 15 February 2022, page 21:
 * The trope patiently waits for the characters to realize their compatibility, resulting in poignant, slow-burn stories.
 * 2022, Chloe Liese, quoted in Jennifer J. Nelson, "An Analysis of Self-published Novels by Autistic Autistic Authors as a Form of Advocacy", Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture, Volume 3, Issue 2, Spring 2022, page 18:
 * Liese’s 2020 novel Always Only You is the first book in the Bergman Brothers series and an example of the “steamy, slow-burn romance” between a nerdy, late-blooming hockey star, Ren, and his tough cookie coworker, Frankie, who keeps both her soft side and her autism diagnosis to herself.
 * 2022, Shelby Abayie, "Fanfiction: The Good, The Bad, And The Thirty", 34th Street Magazine, 22 February 2022, page 20:
 * Overall, it's a fluffy, slow-burn love story that's sure to satisfy the desires of any fan.

general fiction usages

 * 2018, Yvonne Griggs, Adaptable TV: Rewriting the Text, page 163:
 * the latter leads viewers on the more traditional kind of slow-burn 'who-dunnit' trail, placing its audience in the role of what Mittell terms 'sleuths at work' engaged in a kind of online 'forensic fandom' in pursuit of answers to the conundrum posed by such narratives (52).