Fawnlock

English

Alternative forms

• fawnlock, faunlock

Etymology

Blend of fawn +‎ Sherlock.

Noun

Fawnlock (uncountable)

1. (Sherlock fandom slang) A subgenre of Sherlock fan fiction and fanart portraying Sherlock Holmes as an anthropomorphic deer-like creature.
   • 2014, Lynne Stephens, "The Game Is Never Over: A 221B Con Review", Canadian Holmes: The Journal of the Bootmakers of Toronto, Volume 36, Number 4, Summer 2014, page 4:

     Certainly it would be hard to guess why individuals dressed as humanoid woodland animals would be at a Holmes convention if you weren’t familiar with Fawnlock stories and art, in an Alternate Universe where Sherlock is a deer-like creature with antlers and fur.

   • 2015, "adagio", quoted in Kee Lundqvist, "Stories of Significance: The Process and Practices of Sense-Making in the Sherlock Fan Community", thesis submitted to Uppsala University, page 76:

     One of my oldest informants, adagio, confirms this in an e-mail interview and admits to sometimes feeling as if fandom is deviating too far from the story told on the show: "I don‘t really see the point when the names is all that‘s left. I don‘t get things like fawnlock or tunalock at all, but I guess it‘s amusing. [...] Sometimes I think the internet has made it too easy to publish stories."

   • 2017, Kristina Busse, Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities‎^[1], page 112:

     Sometimes the thematically focused groups are a clear subset of shippers, such as teenlock, femlock, vamplock, or fawnlock (respectively describing John Watson/Sherlock Holmes as teens, women, vampires, or young deer).

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Fawnlock.