Greater subsequent tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality and increased frustration with the portrayal of gay relationships in mainstream media fed a growing desire in authors to explore the subjects on their own terms, using established media characters.
Later, authors such as Joanna Russ studied and reviewed the phenomenon in essays and gave the genre some academic respectability. The first K/S stories were not immediately accepted by all Star Trek fans. Many early slash stories were based on a pairing of two close friends, a 'hero dyad', or 'One True Pairing', such as Kirk/Spock or Starsky/Hutch conversely, a classic pairing between foils was that of Blake/ Avon from Blake's 7. Slash later spread to other fan groups, first Starsky and Hutch, Blake's 7, and The Professionals, then many others, eventually creating a fandom based on the concept of slash. For a time, both slash and K/S (for 'Kirk/Spock') were used interchangeably. The name arises from the use of the slash symbol (/) in mentions in the late '70s of K/S (meaning stories where Kirk and Spock had a romantic relationship), as compared to the ampersand (&) conventionally used for K&S or Kirk and Spock friendship fiction. It is commonly believed that slash fan fiction originated during the late 1970s, within the Star Trek: The Original Series fan fiction fandom, starting with ' Kirk/Spock' stories generally authored by female fans of the series.
