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SuperWhoLock

You might remember it as GIF fic, Supernatural Doctor Who Sherlock crossover

This spread through many posts rather than one canonical upload.

2012·The social era·nostalgic

A crossover invented by fans, joining the television series Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock into one story none of the three ever told.

At a glanceThe facts

Remembered as
GIF fic
Spread in
2012
Format
Phenomenon
Era
The social era
Where it started
Tumblr
Made by
Fans; the three programmes have no connection of their own
Origin
No single original
Available
Not held by ViralWorld

What this wasThe story

Supernatural, Doctor Who and Sherlock share almost no canonical connection. Their fans built one anyway: art, fiction, cosplay, and a form largely native to Tumblr called the GIF fic — a short narrative told in sequenced animated GIFs, with dialogue in the captions, assembled from three different shows' footage.

It is the defining artefact of Tumblr at its height, and the clearest example of a fandom producing a text that has no author and no source. The GIF fic in particular is a genuinely novel narrative form invented by an audience rather than an industry, and it exists because Tumblr's interface made sequenced images the natural unit of a post.

SuperWhoLock dominated Tumblr into the mid-2010s and then declined abruptly, which is itself instructive about how fast a platform's centre of gravity moves. Media scholars have since studied it as a case of fans combining fandoms rather than texts, and the fandom's largely young, female and LGBTQ composition is central to most serious accounts of it.

What it createdWhat came out of it

LegacyWhat it left behind

Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later

Where it came fromWhat we know

This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. No copy is held here — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is what this page can tell you.

Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.

Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.

More from 2012You were there

More from the social eraMore of the archive

ConnectedFollow it further

SourcesWhat was read

  1. Wikipedia — SuperWhoLock

Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things

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