Yes, but why?

My mind was wandering this afternoon (*always* a dangerous thing) and I sent off an email to a friend asking why slash fiction is called that. What does the slash mean? I grasp the concept of how the slash differentiates it from other fan fiction, but why the word slash? I didn't get a response in a reasonable amount of time (10 minutes), so I went searching myself.

Found a very helpful answer here:
"The colorful term, "slash," refers to the convention of employing a
stroke or "slash" to signify a same-sex relationship between two
characters (Kirk/Spock or K/S) and specifies a genre of fan stories
positing homoerotic affairs between series protagonists".

I also found Characters We Don't Want to See Slashed on the same site. Some of the examples are *very* funny and provide a disgusted, if amused, shudder.