I find that I rather like "pre-relationship" as an available classification. But I'm not yet clear on the nuances of its use. Is it an orientation-agnostic evolution from "pre-slash," needing no canonical validation, or does it presume a canonical relationship on the other side of the fanfiction?

I'm interested in your experience that UST "doesn't have to" "admit emotional entanglement"! I've never encountered it not doing so, but of course my few dearest fandoms, where I do most of my reading, are peculiar in many ways; in them, the emotional stakes around any new attraction and/or relationship are very highly charged by conspicuous mortality.

(I understand the unhappiness with the slash|femslash labeling issue. Similarly, and more pertinently in daily life, I feel, I detest friend|girlfriend, as privileging male friendship as the norm and degrading female friendship to needing the excuse of a special label (as well as contributing to confusion about whether the speaker means a platonic friend who is a woman or the woman the speaker is dating). Most of all, I detest the emergence of "fpreg" as a story tag, as if even "pregnancy" can't assumed to be a female experience by default!)