1. Introduction
[1.1] As communication has moved increasingly online, technology affords users easier access to multimodal expression. Digital communication incorporates nonalphabetic elements, requiring participants to possess the visual literacy to read multimodal texts and an understanding of the rhetorical capabilities of images and animated GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format). The use of GIFs has been popularized by Tumblr, a hybrid microblogging and social networking platform notable for its reliance on visual communication and its culture of content sharing and curation (Eppink 2014).
[1.2] Here I theorize some of GIFs' rhetorical uses on Tumblr, arguing that as imagetexts (Mitchell 1994; Thomas 2013), GIFs fill a wide range of rhetorical functions. Drawing on Peter Khost's (forthcoming) theory of literary affordance, I want to consider how fans on Tumblr make creative and rhetorical affordances of Supernatural (2005–) for purposes initially unintended and unanticipated by the creators of the show—although the prominence of GIF use suggests that showrunners, directors, writers, and actors are now likely aware of the ways people appropriate existing material as a mode of communication (and might even playfully cater to it). Through GIFs, users visually express themselves, embodying emotion, illustrating text, creating inside jokes, crafting arguments, and developing ethos and community. These affordances take advantage of ability to share content throughout Tumblr and rely on an understanding of visual connotation (Barthes 1977). As fans play rhetorically with the intertextuality (Kristeva [1969] 1980; Thomas 2013) and decontextualization of the source material, GIFs convey layered and varied meaning to a range of interpretative communities (Fish 1980).
2. Saving GIFs, reblogging things: The rhetorical play of Tumblr's Supernatural fandom
[2.1] Tumblr, a microblogging platform launched in 2007 by David Karp, was designed to support visual, rather than text-based, communication (DeSouza 2013, 9). While some users post long, text-heavy entries, the platform design encourages short text-based or multimodal messages (Hillman, Procyk, and Neustaedter 2014b, 286). As a result, much of the communication on Tumblr is done through visuals, especially appropriated images from popular media used to convey emotions and ideas (Hillman, Procyk, and Neustaedter 2014b, 287; DeSouza 2013, 9; Cho 2015, 44; Bourlai and Herring 2014, 4). Although text makes an appearance in the form of comments, captions, and tags, and directs the reader's understanding by contextualizing or recontextualizing images, it is generally secondary to visual rhetoric (Brown 2012, 7). This focus on non-text-based forms of communication distinguishes Tumblr from some of the more text-based social media platforms. While Twitter and Facebook provide the ability to communicate through images, most users continue to favor text-based discourse, which may be supplemented, but is not dominated, by visual rhetoric (Petersen 2014, 90). On Tumblr, however, images tend to eclipse text, offering a layered and deeply intertextual means of communication.
[2.2] Tumblr's platform also allows for the easy sharing and spreading of visual communication and fannish culture (Perez 2013, 146). In fact, the content on Tumblr consists largely of shared, or reblogged, material. Less than 10 percent of posts are original (Xu et al. 2014, 21), which also differentiates it from other social media platforms (Simpson 2015, 3). Presented with content that loads as a scroll, rather than by page, Tumblr's "infinite scrolling" makes it easy for users to quickly reblog a large number of posts (Stein 2016; DeSouza 2013, 10). Reblogging changes users' attitude toward content and, as Lisa Ehlin (2014) notes, on Tumblr "the digital image has become social, liquid and open," inviting reinterpreting, reuse, and recontextualization (3; Cho 2015, 45). This culture of sharing, reblogging, and recontextualizing destabilizes the meaning of images, as they are used in ways that creators of the source text and the original GIF may not have intended, anticipated, or imagined (Highfield and Leaver 2016, 8). This ability to reuse and recontextualize opens up the rhetorical possibilities of GIFs as they are distanced from their source material and take on divergent meanings.
[2.3] Reblogging on Tumblr also allows for the curation of images and GIFs (Ehlin 2014, 13; Cho 2015, 46) which leads to the development of fan identities and communities (Perez 2013, 149). Citing Felix Salmon, Ehlin (2014) notes that while "it would be easy to wave this aside by arguing that reblogging is uncreative and passive," Tumblr's reblogging feature allows users to "express themselves" even though they are not posting original content (14). Fans who reblog images, GIFs, or quotes from films, television shows, and novels use curation to assert their identities as fans (Simpson 2015, 18; Misailidou 2017, 2). Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr blogs are largely anonymous, using pseudonymic rather than real-life names, and the construction of identity in this space is deliberate and performative (DeSouza 2013, 8). Tumblr allows fans to build their identities through "the visual content with which they populate their blog" (DeSouza 2013, 27). The images, reblogged and original, that appear on one's Tumblr are curated to craft one's identity within the larger Tumblr community. On Tumblr, users do not officially join groups, like they would on Facebook and other social networking platforms (Hillman, Procyk, and Neustaedter 2014a, 778). Instead, membership to fandoms depends on the creation of a fannish identity through the material that fans actively post and curate. Reblogging also builds a sense of community and connection through the Tumblr ethos of shared content (Simpson 2015, 8; DeMeo 2016, 54).
[2.4] Although still images play an important role in the visual language of Tumblr, I want to focus on the use of animated GIFs: compressed files of short animation clips. While the technology for GIFs has been available since 1987, Tumblr is largely responsible for mainstreaming their use (Eppink 2014). Within the visual communication system of Tumblr, GIFs play an "integral role" (Hillman, Procyk, and Neustaedter 2014a, 779). In their study of GIF use on Tumblr, Bakhshi et al. (2016) found that users preferred animated GIFs to still images, videos, and text (575), because they silently and effectively expressed ideas and emotions while demanding little time commitment or bandwidth from the audience (579, 582). Tumblr's platform design appeals to fans because it allows them to easily post, share, and spread GIFs that relate to their fandom, thereby allowing engagement with and analysis of the source material while developing their identity as fans, establishing a fan community, and promoting the show within the larger space of Tumblr. In fact, Hillman, Procyk, and Neustaedter (2014a) suggest that Tumblr's GIF-friendliness might account for its popularity among fandoms (779).
[2.5] Fans' uses of GIFs on Tumblr are discursively flexible and complex, and can range from emotional expression to transformative storytelling, close reading and analysis, and argumentation—categories that overlap at times and create layered and complex forms of communication that help to craft users' identities and fan communities on Tumblr (Grădinaru 2016, 84). Users will post reaction GIFs to convey their response to another user's post, often in a way that highlights emotion (Newman 2016; Huber 2015; Brown 2012; Tolins and Samermit 2016). In addition to reaction GIFs, Tumblr's platform also allows for the creation of GIF sets—GIFs that have been grouped together to craft an argument or tell a story (Stein 2016; Perez 2013). Louisa Stein (2016) makes the argument that these GIF sets are rhetorically similar to fan vids, because they "select particular moments from the source text, some highly recognizable, some not, and recontextualize them among one another, in so doing revealing or establishing new visual and thematic patterns." GIF sets, then, like fan vids, present interpretations of and arguments about the source text through the selection and recontextualization of images. Reaction GIFs, I will argue, can be used for similar rhetorical purposes, crafting arguments about the source text through the interplay between the initial and reblogged posts.
[2.6] In order to consider GIFs' rhetorical complexity, I want to look at GIF use among members of Supernatural fandom, one of the most active on Tumblr. For twelve seasons, Supernatural has followed the apocalyptic adventures of brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they travel the country hunting demons, vampires, shapeshifters, and other supernatural dangers: "saving people, killing things, the family business." The show's long run, fantasy/supernatural themes, witty and pop-culture-laden dialogue, and, at times, absurdist or metatextual sense of humor has resulted in a wide array of visual material. A fan movement formed around the assertion that Supernatural fandom "has a GIF for everything," and some fans on Tumblr began co-opting other users' completely un-Supernatural-related posts by reblogging them with GIFs from the television show and its extratextual materials (cast interviews, convention appearances, and production outtakes).
[2.7] Tumblr's reblog function was imperative for members of Supernatural fandom to prove that they "Have a GIF for Everything." When a Tumblr user reblogs a post, he or she has the option to add a comment, tag, or image. Some fans of the show would reblog otherwise non-Supernatural-related posts, adding Supernatural GIFs and tags, which indicated to other fans that the post had been taken over and encouraged its spread throughout the community, thereby promoting their fandom and the show. By 2014, the practice had become so prevalent that several Tumblr pages dedicated to documenting this phenomenon cropped up. Here I examine four of them: we-have-a-gif-for-everything, wehaveagifforthat, spn-takeover, and snphasagifforeverything.
[2.8] While this practice caused some annoyance among other members of the Tumblr community, who bemoaned the frequent intrusions, many took it as a challenge to see if they could stymie the fans of Supernatural, tasking them to come up with GIFs for increasingly specific, improbable, and absurd rhetorical situations (note 1). Supernatural fans' responses to these requests exhibit a kind of rhetorical play. Paul Booth (2015) describes the play done by fans as "media play," which he defines as "instances in which individuals create meaning from activities that articulate a connection between their own creativity and mainstream media, all while working within the bounds of the media text" (15). In their creation of GIFs, Supernatural fans are bound by the visual material made available to them through the show (which, although extensive, is still finite) to come up with GIFs for infinite rhetorical situations, the crafting and application of which requires creative use of that material (Grădinaru 2016, 85; Petersen 2014, 94).
[2.9] This play also occurs across fandoms. One exchange curated by spnhasagifforeverything in 2014 demonstrates a playful GIF competition between members of the Supernatural and BBC's Sherlock (2010–) fandoms (figure 1). Fyoras-holy-butthole responded to the question "What would blended cucumber taste like," replying "isn't that an actor?" Heroes-do-exist then posted a GIF of Benedict Cumberbatch (the actor who plays Sherlock Holmes on Sherlock) with the caption "Well, I taste very good." Avengehomerlock marveled "we are now the supernatural fandom," suggesting that the Sherlock fandom, like the Supernatural, also has a GIF for everything and can co-opt posts unrelated to the BBC drama. However, yall-motherfuckas-need-misha asserted Supernatural's GIF dominance, teasing, "You'll need a few more episodes to reach Supernatural Fandom level of relevant gifs" (a particularly pointed barb against a fandom that waits years for Sherlock's three-episode seasons), and posting a GIF of Dean with the caption "I taste even better," the text reflecting the good-natured one-upmanship of the exchange. Killingmeisso2yearsago responded with a GIF of Sherlock shrugging and smiling ruefully with the caption "Worth a shot." And applesmokedgouda has the last word in the conversation, posting a GIF of Dean saying "Strike One Sherlock," noting the Sherlockian's defeat. In this conversation, GIFs are used as a way to exchange banter between fandoms. The tone is playful; not surprising, given that SuperWhoLock (note 2) is one of the largest multifandom communities on Tumblr and it is possible that participants are fans of both shows. In this exchange, fans are playing rhetorically within the context of their conversation as well the bounds of their respective texts.
Figure 1. A four-GIF exchange between members of the Supernatural and Sherlock fan communities.
[2.10] While fans are adept at this kind of rhetorical play within the constraints of texts that do not encourage it, Supernatural's own penchant for play supports fans' engagement. The series often stretches the bounds of its mythos, using its paranormal and fantastical themes to engage in the kind of playful "imaginative freedom" described by Booth (2015, 16). The show plays within the confines of genre and serialized television, often challenging and upending the viewer's conception of both. Because of the show's wide-ranging dialogue and visuals and catalog of, at the time of writing, 264 episodes (over 11,000 minutes of content), the fandom very often rises to the challenge and has produced relevant GIFs about everything from "penultimate" to "pineapples" to "that face you make when you find weird shit at stores, and then offer it to your friend" (figure 2).
Figure 2. Reaction GIF of Sam Winchester holding up an odd object and making "that face you make when you find weird shit at stores, and then offer it to your friend."
[2.11] These GIFs demonstrate not only the incredibly wide range of Supernatural GIFs, but also the diverse ways in which the fandom uses them. Katherine Brown (2012) argues that while the affect illustrated by reaction GIFs is often more important to Tumblr users than its source, fans "often chose certain GIFs for their collection and use based on…their affinity for the subject matter" (9). This preference for affect over affiliation might be one of the reasons why it is important for Supernatural fandom to have so many GIFs. By having a GIF for everything, the Supernatural fan community on Tumblr has curated what Line Nybro Petersen describes as a "collective arsenal of knowledge, language and imagery that can be integrated into conversations, thus enforcing a sense of emotional connection" (2014, 97). Through the use of this "arsenal," Tumblr users develop an ethos and identity as fans and, in some cases, indicate their encyclopedic knowledge of the show, suggesting that they know just where to look to find the most rhetorically effective material. GIF use, then, allows fans respond to rhetorical situations and craft their ethos within their fandom and the larger Tumblr community. By having a GIF for everything, and every rhetorical occasion, Supernatural fans, and fans who belong to multifandom communities like SuperWhoLock, do not have to sacrifice their affinity for the show in order to convey a desired emotion or idea. They can present an authentic emotional and rhetorically effective reaction, while simultaneously asserting their identity as fans and their membership to the fan community and spreading the visual content of Supernatural on Tumblr as a way of promoting the show and their fandom.
3. Rhetor response and literary affordance
[3.1] When members of Tumblr's Supernatural fan community tout their ability to come up with a GIF for any situation, they are actually bragging about the vast number of ways they can use the text of the show for rhetorical purposes. The theory of literary affordance, developed by Khost (forthcoming), can help us to better understand the relationship between fans and their rhetorical appropriation of source materials.
[3.2] While scholarly work has been done on the technological affordances of Tumblr as a digital environment (Petersen 2014; DeSouza 2013), here I focus on fans' interactions with and affordance of their source text, which the technological affordance of Tumblr facilitates. Drawing on the work of ecological psychologist James J. Gibson (1979) and cognitive scientist and philosopher Anthony Chemero (2003), Khost (forthcoming) adapts (note 3) the discussion about how animals interact with and use their environment to theorize how readers interact with and use texts. He is interested in "what literature could do for [the reader] and what [the reader] could do with it" (ii, emphasis in original) and defines literary affordances as "applications of features of literary texts to unrelated rhetorical situations" (2). Just as animals perceive affordances based on their environment and needs (Gibson 1979, 138–39), readers of literary and cultural texts perceive affordances based on their rhetorical situation and purpose. For example, an author might use the zombies in The Walking Dead to discuss her struggle with alcoholism (Linney 2011), clips from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to critique the gender politics of Twilight (McIntosh 2009), or Greek tragedy to discuss a stage of psychosexual development (Freud [1899] 2010). Literary affordance theory explores the ways in which we use literary texts to explain a concept, persuade an audience, or support an argument.
[3.3] What the Supernatural fan community has been doing on Tumblr can be understood as an example of literary (note 4) affordance. On Tumblr, fans playfully use visual material from the show to express themselves in different rhetorical situations through reaction GIFs. Brown (2012) observes that "reaction GIFs are kept and curated by multiple types of users, awaiting that perfect moment to unveil them and be lauded for their perfect placement and emotive quality for a particular situation" (7) (note 5). Brown's assertion suggests that fans collect GIFs, anticipating their potential usefulness and waiting for their affordance to emerge in response to the kairos of a particular rhetorical situation. The curation of GIFs, then, functions as an anticipatory affordance (note 6): although the precise affordance of the GIF has not yet been perceived, because the rhetorical context has not occurred (and possibly may not), fans recognize that the GIF has a future communicative use, even if the exact use, the "perfect placement," remains unclear until the affordance emerges through an actual rhetorical situation. For Tumblr's Supernatural fandom, the ultimate "perfect placement" of GIFs requires fans to perceive their rhetorical possibilities—in other words, detecting a thematic or humorous link between Supernatural GIFs and un-Supernatural-related posts—and to use the visual features of Supernatural, in ways that may not initially intended by the creators of the text, as a form of digital communication, identity creation, fandom promotion, or rhetorical play.
[3.4] Implicit in the boast that Supernatural has a GIF for everything is the idea that the playful dialogue, plot, and mise-en-scène of the show affords visual material or dialogue that might be used in even the most improbable of rhetorical circumstances; the challenge for fans is how to use that material. In fact, the Tumblr page We-have-a-gif-for-everything took requests for these kinds of GIFs, making or appropriating GIFs for a variety of very specific and often ridiculous situations, like "a guy lowering but then quickly raising his hand," "armadillo," and "when you drop food down your boobs but then you can't find it." We-have-a-gif-for-everything's "Disclaimers" provides some insight into how they determine which GIF to use for each request. They caution the Tumblr community, "Remember, the claim is a gif for everything. Not a gif of everything. You may not always get what you expect" (my emphasis). The prepositions highlighted in this caveat provides insight into how the administrators of this page view this challenge. They are not simply illustrating different words and situations (although sometimes they do) but are providing a GIF that can be used in or as a response to a specific rhetorical situation. The responses to requests, then, become rhetorical play in their own right as fans on Tumblr attempt to find material from the show to use in specific and unlikely rhetorical contexts.
[3.5] To perceive these affordances, actual or anticipatory, readers must engage in an active, creative, and playful reading of the text. Khost (forthcoming) characterizes literary affordance as a "productive (i.e., not passive) reading activity" (24). He connects this active and creative engagement to Henry Jenkins's (1992) (by way of Michel de Certeau's) discussion of readers as "textual poachers" and notes that "fannish readers bring the texts they are devoted to deeply into their own lives in a great variety of ways that can stray far afield from the meaning or intentions of the source texts" (Khost, forthcoming, 58) (note 7). Fans' resistance to "official interpretative practices" allows them to view and read texts in creative, playful, and productive ways that may not have been initially intended or anticipated by the creators of the source content, although they remained bound by the text's parameters (Jenkins 1992, 26). Fans' creative use and their encyclopedic knowledge of the source material allows them to perceive literary affordances for the GIFable moments in Supernatural and to use those moments in their rhetorical play on Tumblr as they build their identities as fans and spread their fan community through the use of Supernatural GIFs.
4. Reaction GIFs
[4.1] While literary affordance through GIFs has a variety of rhetorical functions, one of the most common uses on Tumblr (and other social media platforms) is as a reaction to another text, image, or hypothetical situation. In these cases, GIFs function as a "tool" of "personal expression," allowing users to convey their thoughts, emotions, and responses through the visual language of GIFs (Huber 2015), which are "distillations of pure affect" (Newman 2016, 2). Fans isolate gestures and facial expressions from source texts and appropriate their visual cues as a part of their own embodied communication, often to emotive or humorous effect (Brown 2012, 52). Because Tumblr's design encourages visual engagement, reaction GIFs have become a popular mode of digital rhetoric on the platform.
[4.2] As "embodied action" (Tolins and Samermit 2016, 76), Tumblr users generally employ reaction GIFs to relate an emotional response, whether excitement, affection, grief, joy, or anger. In these cases, GIFs visually enact and communicate users' affective reactions by embodying them through gesture or expression. Although it may not have been the intention of the creators of Supernatural to provide material for Tumblr communication, fans recognize the expressive "features" (Khost, forthcoming, 13) of the source text; they perceive the way in which actors' gestures and facial expressions might be used rhetorically to convey and prompt emotional responses. For example, in 2014, Spnhasagifforeverything archived an exchange in which carryonmy_assbut posted a GIF of Dean Winchester (portrayed by Jensen Ackles), his jaw slowly dropping, in response to a YouTube video of singer, actor, and impressionist Christina Bianco performing Frozen's "Let It Go," imitating a variety of singers, including Alanis Morissette, Celine Dion, Julie Andrews, and Barbra Streisand (figure 3). The animation communicates the poster's awe at Bianco's remarkable impressions and her ability to seamlessly transition from one to another. Carryonmy_assbut's affordance of the image of Dean rhetorically presents an affective reaction to the video by using the embodied expression of the television character, while also asserting an affinity for the show, thereby crafting an identity as a fan.
Figure 3. Use of a reaction GIF in response to a YouTube video.
[4.3] In addition to reacting to text, GIFs can also supplement it, "visually enacting actions described in the text" (Tolins and Samermit 2016, 78). For example, the user amoying posted "if you're my friend and i catch you texting while driving im throwing your phone out the window" (figure 4). i-think-i-am-adorable reblogged annoying's threat with a GIF of Sam (portrayed by Jared Padalecki) looking down at his phone, which Dean takes and throws out the window, thereby enacting the original poster's promise to do the same. Amoying's initial post created a rhetorical situation that allowed the affordance of the image to emerge, as i-think-i-am-adorable rhetorically used the GIF to illustrate the content of the post.
Figure 4. Use of a Supernatural GIF of Sam throwing a phone out the window to illustrate a Tumblr post.
[4.4] The affordance of illustrative GIFs on Tumblr can also take on a narrative function, visually enacting verbal narratives (Booth 2015; Perez 2013). In one example, thelitanyofdee posted a screenshot of a Facebook status update by "Kevin." In this update, Kevin tells a lengthy story about how one day, when he was buying dog food, a woman asked him if he had a dog. He told her no and that he, in fact, was on a dog food diet. He then went on to inform her that one side effect is that he now had the compulsion to smell dogs' behinds and he recounted a time that he was hit by a car, because he had stepped off a curb to sniff a poodle (figure 5). Two-winchesters-and-castiel reblogged the post, adding a GIF of Dean, from 9.05 "Dog Dean Afternoon" (in which Dean mind melds with a dog and takes on several canine traits), looking amorously at a poodle with the text "Yeah, we have a gif for that." The GIF illustrates the Facebook poster's claim that he was enticed by a poodle, elaborating on the original post by adding erotic undertones to the interaction. Supernaturalapocalypse reblogged the post again in order to conclude the narrative, writing "But wait, we have another gif to complete the story" and posting a GIF of Dean getting hit by a car during 3.11 "Mystery Spot." Supernaturalapocalypse's comment suggests awareness of the GIFs' rhetorical purpose: through their communal affordance of GIFs for two different episodes set six years apart, the Supernatural fans illustrate the story in the original post, casting Dean as the protagonist and using images from Supernatural to visually convey and rhetorically construct the narrative. The joint effort involved in this visual story demonstrates how Tumblr's reblog function can help to develop a sense of fan community as material is spread and elaborated upon and fans collaborate in their rhetorical play.
Figure 5. Use of two Supernatural reaction GIFs to illustrate the story told in a Facebook post.
5. "Are you sure this is about a hunt, and not about something else?": Connotations and ambiguity
[5.1] The use of reaction GIFs requires an understanding of the connotation of facial expressions and gestures. Roland Barthes (1977) asserts that images contain "two messages," the content they represent and the "connoted" meaning, the visual codes that are perceived and interpreted by viewers (17). He explains that these codes are culturally specific and subjective; not every audience will read into an image the same connoted meaning. Depending on their cultural identity, personal experiences, and perception of the image's connotations, Tumblr users can view the same image and have different interpretations of what the gesture or facial expression emotes. The subjective connotations of images mean that the same GIF can be afforded in various rhetorical situations and for various rhetorical purposes. A post by deansmuffin at we-have-a-gif-for-everything, for example, contains an image of Dean looking down to the right, while gesturing with his left hand (figure 6). Deansmuffin asserts that "You Can Literally Use this GIF for Anything," and offers some suggestions, including "what do you wanna do with your life?" "hey can you help me with—" and "if sam bought 5 oranges and cas ate all of them, how many oranges are left?" In each case, the gesture conveys a different meaning, ranging from dismissal to acquiescence to confusion. Deansmuffin's post engages with the rhetorical playfulness of the image—the fact that Dean's gesture and expression can connote multiple meanings depending on the audience and the textual accompaniment. This flexibility suggests the variety of affordances that might be perceived in response to a single image.
Figure 6. The same reaction GIF repeated three times with different captions to illustrate the mutable meanings of GIFs.
[5.2] As Deansmuffin's post demonstrates, text can help to clarify a GIF's ambiguous connotations by contextualizing it and thereby directing the reader's interpretation. Barthes (1977) explains that "the text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others…it remote-controls him toward a meaning chosen in advance" (27). Text, then, influences one's reading of the image's visual language, directing one's interpretation of the image and understanding of its connotations. As Elli E. Bourlai and Susan C. Herring (2014) explain, on Tumblr, "Images and text work together to create meaning…The text often provides context for the images" (1). The text contextualizes or recontextualizes the image, clarifying its intended rhetorical purpose, and the image, likewise, affects our reading of the text, repositioning it in relation to visual material and offering alternative interpretations. Although it is a largely visual site, text plays an important role in the multimodal rhetoric of Tumblr (Brown 2012, 7).
[5.3] In some cases, textual direction is necessary for GIFs to achieve the rhetorical purpose of their affordance—the images themselves too ambiguous to be effective on their own. Three GIFs at spnhasagifforeverything appear in response to screenshot of a Yahoo ask complaining about women's preference for men's smooth chests: "i dont think they have any idea how much waxing hurts, its a real torture" (figure 7). The first is a reaction GIF of David Tennant laughing, conveying the user's emotional response to the irony and hypocrisy of the complaint. gropingyourmuse also reblogged it with a picture of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, rolling her eyes in an expression of angry disgust, the image expressing disapproval and annoyance. (Katniss's own experience with painful plucking and waxing in The Hunger Games makes this affordance especially intertextually appropriate.) The third GIF, posted by naamahdarling, is of Dean holding a baby. His expression is ambiguous; it could be annoyance, disgust, or anger, but the closed captioning on the GIF informs viewers that Dean "imitates crying sarcastically." The textual direction clarifies the rhetorical purpose of the GIF: naamahdarling is making an affordance of the image of Dean mocking a baby to deride the male poster's myopic complaint, suggesting scorn, little sympathy, and that he is being a baby. Text and image work together to render the affordance rhetorically effective.
![A screenshot of a Yahoo ask titled 'Why do girls don't like chest hair these days?' reads 'why do girls prefer guys with smooth waxed chest I don't think they have any idea how much waxing hurts , it's a real torture.' Beneath the ask is the text 'THE IRONY' and '*DIES LAUGHING.*' Below that is a GIF of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen. She is heavily made up for one of her media appearances and is rolling her eyes. That GIF is followed by a second one in which Ackles as Dean holds a baby out in front of him and slowly open and closes his mouth. The caption to the GIF reads '[imitates crying sarcastically].'](https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/download/1165/version/1395/1769/13433/figure-7.jpg)
Figure 7. Two GIFs in reaction to a Yahoo ask.
[5.4] Adding to GIFs' connotative mutability is the fact the affordance of images from Supernatural decontextualizes them from their source. Visual affordances, like GIFs, are a part of the quotative, appropriative, and sharing culture of Tumblr, which means that they are somewhat divorced from their original context and develop independent meaning (Newman 2014, 128). Instead of being tethered to the source material, users "recontextualiz[e] the images for the purpose of the current interaction" (Tolins and Samermit 2016, 84) and fans' "use extends to entirely new contexts" (Highfield and Leaver 2016, 7). In the GIF of Dean throwing Sam's phone out of the window discussed above, for example, the gesture might be the same, but in the episode, the context is different. In 2.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be," the episode that provides the visual material for this affordance, Dean's throwing Sam's phone out the window is not an as act of annoyance or concern for Sam's safety but self-preservation. However, i-think-i-am-adorable's affordance of the GIF is still rhetorically effective; the decontextualized image illustrates the post, is recontextualized by its use, and allows for new interpretations of the GIF to develop and affordances to emerge as it spreads through Tumblr's reblogging culture.
[5.5] This use of GIFs is in keeping with Julia Kristeva's theory of intertextuality. Kristeva ([1969] 1980) argues that "any text is the absorption and transformation of another" (66). Through this intertextual modification and transformation, Tumblr users appropriate and share images, taking ownership of the material (Tolins and Samermit 2016, 88), creating their own meaning, and becoming Jenkins's (1992) "textual poachers." For example, the GIF of Dean "crying sarcastically" co-opts imagery from a show that has been criticized by fans and even some of the actors for misogyny (see Lane 2015; Pless 2013; Exorcising Emily 2015) to make a playful affordance in service of a feminist argument. It rhetorically divorces the image of Dean not only from the context of the episode but also from the show's perceived sexism, to put it to a feminist purpose.
[5.6] In fact, as GIFs are shared and spread throughout Tumblr, users might also poach and make affordances of others' GIFs, so that meanings deviate not only from the source material but also from the original GIF use (Highfield and Leaver 2016, 7; Huber 2015). As the GIF spreads, shared among Tumblr blogs, users who are not familiar with the original context of the GIF, and who might have never seen the episode or the show that the image was taken from, appropriate the image's visual language and further decontextualize it from its source (Thomas 2013, ¶ 3.3). Jackson Tolins and Patrawat Samermet (2016) argue that "GIFs may be considered successful when the original creator or source has been forgotten in lieu of its widespread distribution…Most of the source meaning is lost as GIFs and memes find novel contextualizations across different mediums" (88). The ability of Tumblr users to share and reblog GIFs creates an environment where members are encouraged to make use of GIFs in a variety of rhetorical circumstances and for different purposes.
[5.7] This continuous recontextualization of GIFs introduces instability and multiplicity into their meaning (Hagman 2012), and the wide distribution and uses of GIFs invites new, potential affordances. Khost (forthcoming) argues that readers perceive affordances "relative to the situations in which they think, feel, or communicate, and those situations and corresponding points of view are never the same for any two people, even those who are involved in the same transaction" (17). Because of the differing perspectives, knowledge, and situations of users, they will be able to perceive affordances that the original poster might not have been able to; in some cases, decontextualization from the source material can open a GIF up to new potential affordances. This mutability is in keeping with Tumblr's culture of "setting content free" and dismantling the "hierarchical 'author-reader' model" (Ehlin 2014, 6). The meanings of these images are open to multiple interpretations as they are shared through Tumblr's networked systems of communication and used in different ways by members of different communities.
6. "I don't understand that reference": Deeper levels of meaning
[6.1] The quotive, connotative, mutable, and sharable nature of GIFs on Tumblr means that one does not have to be familiar with the source material to make affordances of it. As Tim Highfield and Tama Leaver (2016) note, it is not necessary to know a reaction GIF's source to understand the emotions it conveys, to reblog it, or to make an affordance of it (7). However, the intertextuality between the GIF and its source allow alternative rhetorical possibilities. Having knowledge of the source material and the GIFs original context can open up "additional levels of meaning or significance" (7) because GIFs are never fully removed from their original context. As Brown (2012) argues, although GIFs might be "fragmented from their original context," they are "still indexical to the original source" (8). GIFs are decontextualized in their spread and use on Tumblr, but their visual coding continues to gesture back to their source. As a result, according to Petersen (2014), "conversations on Tumblr are often laden with multiple layers of meaning. Fans' talks have a textual layer, but also inter- and meta-textual layers" (93). Although fans might use GIFs to convey an emotional reaction, the image references back to its source material, imbuing it with meaning that is perceived by other members of the fandom. In fact, Bourlai and Herring (2014) posit that this intertextuality might be one reason why Tumblr users depend on appropriated visuals for communication (4). Not only does using a Supernatural GIF convey that one is a Supernatural fan, or that one belongs to SuperWhoLock or other multifandom communities, but recognizing a GIF's referent marks one as belonging to a larger community of fans who also get it.
[6.2] Thus, while nonfans can interpret and make literary affordances of fandom specific GIFs, they lack the context to understand some of the connotations, meanings, and affordances that are perceived by fans. In this way, Louisa Stein and Kristina Busse (2009) argue, fandoms function as what Stanley Fish (1980) has termed an interpretive community (197). Fans' context for the visual utterances of GIFs is different from that of nonfans, and so they are likely to differ in their interpretation of connotations and perception of literary affordances. Because fans can count on other fans to possess that knowledge, they use GIFs to make inside jokes and craft complex interpretive arguments. This rhetorical play on the part of fans is a way of marking themselves as a part of the fandom, while excluding others who are not. This exclusive understanding of context allows fans to develop inside jokes and arguments that the larger Tumblr community might not perceive or comprehend, thereby creating an exclusionary sense of identity and community: only other fans get the playfulness or meaning of the GIF use.
[6.3] For example Spnhasagifforeverything archived a 2014 post by pennsylvania, complaining about "commercials that play twice in a row," which mitemiteiii reblogged with an advertisement for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, reading "Déjà vu never tasted so good" (figure 8). Dontgigglesherlock shared a story about a time a commercial played seven consecutive times, observing "I thought I was stuck in some kind of loop that would never end." Journeyintohiddlestiel also reblogged the post with a GIF of Sam's eyes opening as he shoots up in bed. Without understanding the context of this scene, the imagery of this GIF does not seem relevant to the previous posts. But Supernatural fan's get the affordance and the joke: The animation is being appropriated from 3.11 "Mystery Spot," in which Sam and Dean are caught in a Groundhog Day–type time loop, reliving the same day repeatedly. Thus, the GIF is relevant to the previous posts; the episode directly mentions déjà vu, and Sam is stuck in precisely the kind of time loop dontgigglesherlock feared. Journeyintohiddlestiel's affordance of the GIF playfully crafts an analogy, elaborating on and illustrating the concepts referenced in the post's other reblogs, but only someone familiar with the image and episode would understand the rhetorical purpose and relevance of this literary affordance. Thus, the GIF rhetorically functions to not only craft a joke, but to establish Journeyintohiddlestiel's ethos as fan and to create a sense of community among Tumblr Supernatural viewers who get the reference.
Figure 8. Reaction GIF of Sam waking up in Supernatural 3.11 "Mystery Spot," in response to posts about déjà vu.
[6.4] GIFs can also be used to make arguments within the fandom, and as with humor, the effectiveness of such arguments depends on contextual awareness of the show. In response to goatsarelife's post of a sign reading "Everyone is a little pie-curious," 7-mins-in-heaven-with-dean (whose user name has since switched to enduredean) reblogged with an image from spnhasagifforeverything of Dean winking at the camera (figure 9). Nonfans could read this post as a response to the sexuality suggested by the sign's phrasing, but knowledge of Tumblr's Supernatural fandom reveals the rhetorical complexity of this GIF. First, Dean's love of pie became a humorous motif in the show, and the wink could be read as an acknowledgement of this reoccurring joke. However, within some subsections of the fan community on Tumblr, pie has become a metaphor for Dean's subtextual bisexuality. In 2013, oh-so-pleasant posted a meta (a long text-based analysis of a text posted to Tumblr) in the form of a hypothetical dialogue, in which Dean uses the metaphor of pie and cake to explain his sexual attraction to Castiel, an angel and one of Dean's friends and allies. Other fans on Tumblr have appropriated this exchange and "Cake & Pie as Metaphors for Dean's Bisexuality" has emerged as a tag on Archive of Our Own, a popular fan fiction website. The fan discourse that has developed around Dean's love of pie, then, repositions the rhetorical effect of Dean's wink. This GIF is not only playing off of Dean's canonical love of pie, but it also makes an argument for his noncanonical, but subtextual, attraction to Castiel, which is implied through the pun in the sign—"pie-curious" being a play on "bi-curious," a phrase used to indicate the same-sex desire of a person who identifies as heterosexual. This affordance, then, has three levels of rhetorical meaning, the accessibility of which depend on one's familiarity of the show: (1) a reaction GIF to the sexual suggestiveness of the sign, a reading open to all users, (2) an inside joke for fans and viewers of the show based on Dean's love of pie, and (3) an argument about Dean's bisexuality specifically aimed at fans who are aware of the pie-bisexuality metaphor within the Tumblr fandom.
Figure 9. GIF of Dean Winchester winking in response to a "pie-curious" sign.
[6.5] The audience specificity of these affordances also indicates one of the rhetorical uses of source texts: to "establish or deepen relationships" and create a sense of community (Khost, forthcoming, 28). Recognizing the rhetorical significance of the 3.11 "Mystery Spot" GIF in relation to its accompanying post or the relationship between Dean and the pie-curious sign marks membership to the fan and ship communities. Shipping (the intense desire for certain characters to enter into or maintain a romantic or sexual relationship) tends to "clearly delineate interpretive communities" within fandoms (Stein and Busse 2009, 197), and is one of the primary forms that textual analysis and argumentation on Tumblr. Supernatural fandom's use of reaction GIFs also creates arguments in support of the show's two primary ships: Wincest (Dean/Sam) and Destiel (Dean/Castiel). The literary affordance of images is one of the ways in which fans on Tumblr promote and reaffirm their interpretative communities and their ships, using GIF sets to craft visual arguments about characters' interactions and emotions (Petersen 2014; Stein 2016) and "establishing and maintaining specific fan discourses" around their preferred romantic pairing (Petersen 2014, 94). For example, as stated above, the rhetorical use of an image of winking Dean as a response to the pie-curious sign affirms discourses of the Destiel ship and the pie-bisexuality conceptual metaphor. That GIF offers a playful rhetorical wink to Tumblr fans who ship Destiel and are members of that community.
[6.6] In another example, in 2014, Supernatural Destiel fans posted on we-have-a-gif-for-everything and commented on the stock image used to illustrate an article about marriage equality featured on The Wire's website (figure 10). The image features two men, one wearing a light brown trench coat and the other in a dark blue suit, holding hands. The way in the shot is cropped, the viewer cannot see the men's faces. The image recalls Castiel's customary trench coat and the dark blue and black suits that Dean frequently wears when impersonating an FBI agent, which prompted propinquitous to question, "who picked this stock photo." Deancasotp reblogged with a GIF of the two characters standing side-by-side, wearing similar clothing with the caption "This is awkward." This scene is cropped so that you cannot see the men's hands, thereby suggesting that they are clasped as we see in the stock photo. The rhetorical use of the GIF, in playful conversation with the photo, suggests that Dean and Castiel's subtextual relationship, closeted by the show's refusal to canonize it, has been outed by the photo. The clasped hands connote a homosexual relationship, which is then transferred to the literary affordance of the GIF of Dean and Castiel, making a visual argument about the homoerotic subtext of their interactions. While nonfans of the show will likely recognize that the use of the GIF in this situation queers the relationship between Dean and Castiel, they lack the context for the argument to be as rhetorically compelling as it might be for fans of the show, especially Destiel shippers, who already support that interpretation of the characters' relationship.
Figure 10. Reaction GIF of Dean and Castiel posted in response to a stock photo of two men holding hands.
7. "Endings are hard": Conclusions
[7.1] Khost's (forthcoming) theory of literary affordances provides a helpful path for approaching the ways in which members of the Supernatural fan community make use of the text they love. Fans, because of the affection for the object of their fandom, develop a relationship with texts that invites us to ask "what literature could do for them" and their appropriative and productive engagement with the texts prompts analysis of not only "what [they] could do with it" but also how they are doing so (ii, emphasis in original). GIF culture on Tumblr demonstrates one of the ways in which fans make affordances of texts for rhetorical purposes. The ability to de- and recontextualize GIFs also promotes the emergence of different affordances; as GIFs are reblogged throughout Tumblr, they are removed from their source, and additional possibilities for literary affordances are perceived by Tumblr users.
[7.2] While these GIFs can be used by the Tumblr community at large, their affordance is of special significance to fans of Supernatural, SuperWhoLock, or other multifandom communities. The eclectic visuals and dialogue of Supernatural allow for varied affordances to emerge for fans to use as GIFs in different rhetorical situations. Use of these GIFs in non-Supernatural-related posts allows fans to make rhetorical arguments about the show by using its visual media in a variety of rhetorical situations. Recognizing the original post as a rhetorical situation, fans use the interaction between the original post and their affordance of the text to engage in rhetorical play. However, more than that, use and understanding of many of these GIFs is also a way of establishing a sense of identity and community on Tumblr, a marker of membership to the Supernatural fandom. By making specific affordance of the text, some of which depends on interpretation of the source material, fans are asserting identity as a Supernatural fan and marking their belonging to its Tumblr fan community. This GIF use also functions as a kind of promotion for the show and the fandom, spreading Supernatural's humorous and playful visuals, and their witty deployment, throughout Tumblr.
8. Acknowledgment
[8.1] Thanks to Peter Khost for his help with this article.