Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2021: Week 43
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. Moonbeam's "Fanfiction Terminology" page gives the following definition for slow burn:
Slow Burn -- refers to stories featuring characters who gradually and naturally fall in love or lust before beginning a romantic or sexual relationship. As the emphasis is on the slow evolution of the relationship rather than a quick conflagration into sudden resolution, such stories may contain a lot of UST and pining until the smoldering passion eventually catches fire.
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.