besides i’m awfully self-conscious about being up there alone so…
help?
Hurrah!
And remember, AO3 isn’t just for fic! If you’ve created art/graphics, vids, or any other kind of fanwork for 221B Baker Towers, they’re all welcome on AO3.
(Note, though, that images and other multimedia content must be hosted elsewhere - imgur, Youtube, etc. - and embedded, a bit like Tumblr.)
Hey there! I went ahead and got the okay to make a 221B Baker Towers tag on AO3 to make archiving easier. Now, when you go to post a new work at AO3, “221B Baker Towers” will pop up under the Fandom field; it’s also hierarchically under the “Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms” tag, so works in 221B Baker Towers will filter there too. AO3 welcomes vids, art, fic, podfic—any media form, really, so feel free to archive whatever you want under the tag :) I’ve even had friends archive chatfic on AO3.
Awww yiss. In accordance with this most excellent news, and in case anyone is unfamiliar with AO3, I have updated the ‘About’ page with a link to a simple tutorial on how to post fics/other fanworks in the 221B Baker Towers fandom. If you post anything, be sure to let the tag know!
Like a spider in the centre of its web.
Reichenbach: habitational name from from Old High German rihhi, ‘rich’, ‘powerful’ + bah, ‘stream’.
#’That is not danger.’ #said he. #’It is inevitable destruction. #You stand in the way not merely of an individual #but of a mighty organisation #the full extent of which you with all your cleverness have been unable to realise. #You must stand clear Mr. Holmes #or be trodden underfoot.’
Some say you’re trouble, boy
Just because you like to destroy
All the things that bring the idiots joy
Well, what’s wrong with a little destruction?
I fell in love with the 221b Baker Towers ‘verse, and I started following the blog, reblogging all the stuff, tracking the tag… So because that’s the point my life has reached, I figured that I could maybe do some bad graphic of mind-tardis’ perfect fancast for Moriarty. Seriously, you guys are brilliant.
I was thinking about John in relation to 221 B Baker Towers and I do think his origin story has potential to be very interesting.
What if he’s an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan?
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i’m going to go ahead and just leave this here because my brain just spewed out words and i can’t find an AO3 tag.
[…]
[snipped for length - follow link to read fic!]
(borrowing liberally from the life of August Wilson)
Sherlock is brilliant, utterly brilliant, questioning everyone despite himself, despite the punishments his teachers give out for being a “smart-mouth,” for not “knowing his place,” and “how dare that…boy try to tell me he knows more than I do.”
His teachers doubt and mock him all the time: “you can’t really be that smart,” “this isn’t your own work,” “no one who looks like you and sounds like you could be this intelligent.”
So he finally quits school at 15, fed up with trying to learn in a broken, oppressive system. He spends his days at the library from open to close, where no one will bother him, reading voraciously, educating himself on the facts of the world. And he spends his nights filtering from one place to another on his home road—the barbershop, the fish fry place, the pub, the church, the back alleys and front stoops—learning the ways of the world.
…and who she’d be in the 22b baker towers ‘verse.
i’ve seen a few suggestions, mostly keeping with the sherlock change of having her do some sort of sex work - high class escorting, mostly. which could be a really good way to look at the intersectionality of race and sexuality and class and gender and sex work. but, honestly, i (selfishly) would really rather go back to the irene adler from the acd stories and work from there: specifically, i’d love to take her being an opera singer and move that up to this verse.
so, here’s my suggestion:
how about her being an aspiring mc? young, tough, street-wise, really fucking smart and talented, and with a chip on her shoulder. she knows that she’s better than this life that she’s stuck in, and she’s got a lot of attitude ‘problems’ to go with that knowledge.
i’m thinking she’d probably have one white parent and one black? several siblings. poor, obviously, council estate-housed, but music in the house - hip hop, reggae, ska. she grew up a tomboy, always making sure that she was as tough as the boys. getting in trouble all over the place along the way - kicked outta school, harrassed by authority, etc - and getting a worse and worse attitude because of it. predictably, she fucking hates her birth name. (“the woman” as stagename? just as a giant ‘fuck you’ to the overwhelming male-domination of hip hop?) i like the idea, too, of her knowing how to use her female-ness to her advantage. of playing to stereotypes so that she’s perpetually underestimated.
as for why she and holmes cross paths, like i said: she knows she’s better than this. maybe something bad happens to her family, and she’s trying to take care of them, too. maybe she’s wholly, deliciously, self-motivated. either way, she fucking wants out of the world of council estates and asbos and no future. she’s gonna be big, she’s gonna bust the hip hop scene wide open, she’s gonna be recognized as more than just some chav, and secure, and in the meantime she’s gonna do anything she needs to to get there. so she gets into some less-than-legal shit, and she and holmes come into contact through one of his cases. she outsmarts him, and he can’t help but be impressed.
Hey, Baker Towers kids, I’m putting Veena Malik forward for Irene Adler. Doesn’t she look perfect?
For those who don’t know, Malik is a Pakistani actress and comedian. She’s a Muslim woman, and while her work isn’t widely known in the Western world, she has done the rounds on Tumblr a few times for this video of her telling off a cleric who made some nasty accusations against her.
Oh, btw, if you’re anything like me, searching for pictures of her may give you the Insane Rage. For SOME STRANGE REASON photographers like to whitewash her until she’s nearly unrecognisable.
Irene as the owner/operator of an afterhours pub. Some dark, cramped place with lots of rich lighting. Hearer and purveyor of secrets of all types. Holmes goes to her for information when he needs it, she finds out the secrets he keeps—a perfect dance back and forth.
