Crossing Fandoms

SuperWhoLock and the Contemporary Fan Audience

Paul Booth

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137574541
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137574558
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the fan-created combination of Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Supernatural as a uniquely digital fan experience, and as a metaphor for ongoing scholarship into contemporary fandom. 

What do you get when you cross the cult shows Doctor Who, Supernatural, and Sherlock? In this book, Paul Booth explores the fan-created crossover universe known as SuperWhoLock—a universe where Sherlock Holmes and Dean Winchester work together to fight monsters like the Daleks and the Weeping Angels; a world where John Watson is friends with Amy Pond; a space where the unique brands of fandom interact. Booth argues that SuperWhoLock represents more than just those three shows—it is a way of doing fandom. Through interviews with fans and analysis of fan texts, Crossing Fandoms: SuperWhoLock and the Contemporary Fan Audience also demonstrates how fan studies in the digital age can evolve to take into account changingfan activities and texts.

© The Author(s) 2016

Paul BoothCrossing Fandoms10.1057/978-1-137-57455-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: SuperWhoLock Fandom: Fandoms Crossed

Paul Booth¹

(1)

DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Abstract

This introduction to Crossing Fandoms describes SuperWhoLock—a fan-created amalgam of the television series Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock—as a symbol of contemporary digital fandom. Fans have created SuperWhoLock from the characters and narratives of the three cult texts. The consequences of today’s mainstreaming of fandom means that fan work is more popular than ever. Yet, even as these three shows’ universes create unique canon ideas, they still must stay tethered to the original text(s) in specific and meaningful ways. Thus, SuperWhoLock is not just a fan text; it is also a particular practice from which we are able to discern fan work in the digital age.

Keywords

SuperWhoLock FandomFan-brandTransmediaFan work

End Abstract

In a 2014 article, Laura Byrne-Cristiano makes a startling pronouncement:

Fans of Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock have been talking about SuperWhoLock for years. Now thanks to an unprecedented deal, the idea will become reality. According to a joint press release issued by the CW and the BBC , “Having heard for years from the fans of our respective shows that they see the possibility of the crossover of our universes, we have decided to make this a reality.[”] ¹

This announcement must have come as a shock to stalwart fans of the three shows Bryne-Cristiano mentioned, many of whom may never have heard of SuperWhoLock (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

SuperWhoLock, by cakeartist77 (http://​cakeartist7.​deviantart.​com/​art/​Superwholock-364094678)

According to the article, the idea first formed in the mind of fan favorite actor Mark Sheppard , who appears in both Doctor Who and Supernatural. Fans waited with baited breath for news of the premiere until they looked at the article’s date (01 April) and realized that they had been had. SuperWhoLock would continue to remain a dream.

Of the scores of comments on the article, many readers seem to have been taken in, and some were actually quite angry that the article was not true. Reviewing some of the comments critically reveals some of the passions of SuperWhoLock fandom. Commenter Bad Wolf writes, “so this JUST now popped up on my facebook news feed, and i actually sent it to a few fellow SuperWhoLockians, then i read the comments about it being a joke, and i had to re-message them all correcting my blunder. it was awful, we were all so excited.:/.” Casey McKim notes, in all caps, that “YOU PEOPLE ARE THE WORST I WAS SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS I COULDN’T EVEN HANDLE IT AND THEN I REALIZED IT WAS A JOKE AND IT WAS THE MOST DISAPPOINTING MOMENT EVER WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME WHY.” And while Griffin thought that the whole article was a joke, writing that SuperWhoLock is “one of the stupidest ideas [she has] ever heard,” Byrne-Cristiano comments back: “Believe it or not, it’s a gigantic thing on Tumblr[;] that’s where we got the idea from.”

Indeed, SuperWhoLock is a thing, whether or not Griffin or others think it is ridiculous. ² SuperWhoLock is a fan-created amalgam of the television series Supernatural (WB 2005–2006, CW 2006–present), Doctor Who (BBC 1963–1989, Fox/BBC 1996, BBC-Wales 2005–present), and Sherlock (BBC 2010–present), and, as I argue in this book, represents a symbolic coming together of fandom in the digital age. Each of these shows has characteristics that develop from its historical moment. Harvey notes of Doctor Who and Sherlock that “as well as existing in relationship to each other, both programs exist in relation to the wider mediascape, in which their histories are necessarily implicated.” ³ Doctor Who has an over 50-year-old history in a UK context; Supernatural is an American television series with a passionate fandom; Sherlock is the most recent show but is based on a series of mystery stories written over a 100 years ago with a centuries-old fan base. Steward writes of Sherlock that it is an “invention and product of television and its history rather than simply contemporary media.” ⁴ Stein and Busse ’s description of Sherlock as a “transmedia web of paratexts and intertexts that bring Sherlock and his world into continued being,” seems a perfect phrase to describe SuperWhoLock as well. ⁵ I want to augment these points by showing how SuperWhoLock should be understood as an invention and product of digital media and fandom, rather than just a product of these three traditional television media texts.

This is a book, therefore, about this fan-created text; but it is also a book about the way different fan audiences come together—online and in person—in this era of mainstreamed fandom. In some ways, SuperWhoLock recalls Matt Hills ’s term “trans-fandom ,” wherein multiple fan audiences interact with today’s cult media products (and with each other) in ways that span texts and boundaries, “moving across different fandoms… moving across these different forms of fan knowledge.” ⁶ SuperWhoLock utilizes cult icons, symbols, themes, and meanings from Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock in various ways, within different fan cultures, and toward different effects (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2

The author’s homemade Funko Pop SuperWhoLock collection (Photo by the author)

Canonical information from these different series constructs a completely new narrative. Usually (although given the fluidity of the content, “usually” is often anything but), the brothers Sam and Dean Winchester from Supernatural are on a hunt, and are put in contact with Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from Sherlock to help as experts. If the enemy is too immense, the Doctor from Doctor Who might pop in to offer help (or silliness). Often love triangles (or quadrangles) form between the characters. Often hearts or arms are broken. Often stories end in humor, or pain, or triumph, or tragedy.

In this book, I analyze the phenomenon of SuperWhoLock , arguing its relevance to digital fandom as a metaphor for the fluid and multifaceted presentation of fandom in an era of fannish mainstreaming. Indeed, although traditional media forms are becoming digital in content and form, they continue to be dominated by voices of mainstream ideology—the “fanboy auteur ” that Suzanne Scott describes as controlling much television and film content (e.g., Russell T Davies, J.J. Abrams, Ron Moore) is precisely that: male (and white and cis-gendered). ⁷ Contemporary online digital media, however—media like web series ⁸ —are increasingly becoming shaped by more feminine and diverse voices—voices that, as I describe, are instrumental in the construction of SuperWhoLock.

SuperWhoLock is a completely fabricated text; but for followers of this fictionalized but accepted crossover, it is a specific manifestation of the popularity and mainstreaming of fandom today. ⁹ Scholars have been discussing for over two decades how fandom has become a more visible and more popular identity, although there is often a pejorative or negative association with the term and concept from many circles. ¹⁰ Yet, even within fannish circles, fandom of different texts is hierarchized: as Hills notes of Twilight, many fans of other fan texts look down upon or stereotype fans of the vampire romances. ¹¹ Elsewhere, I have argued that fans of created texts like SuperWhoLock or Inspector Spacetime (a TV-show-within-a-TV-show on Community) “create the text they are fans of” by “linking the texts … with the practices learned from other fan communities.” ¹² For fans of “created texts” like these, fans become media creators in their own right through pastiche, recombination, and replication of content. It is not entirely re-reading cult texts, nor it is quite re-reading fandom itself. ¹³ Rather, the creation of SuperWhoLock becomes a type of transgenic text in which new fan practices subtly change readings of fannish texts. ¹⁴

SuperWhoLock is a fluid nexus of multiple fandoms, texts, and meanings. Busse and Hellekson have referred to fan fiction as “works in progress ” that foreground the constant proces...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction: SuperWhoLock Fandom: Fandoms Crossed
• 2. Supernatural Fandom: The Fandom Business
• 3. Doctor Who Fandom: Bigger on the Inside
• 4. Sherlock Fandom: The Fandom Is Afoot
• 5. Conclusion: SuperWhoLock Fandom: Cross Fandoms
• Backmatter