swingandswirl

Hello hello!

Whether you're an old LJ buddy who came over to Dreamwidth too, here via

snowflake_challenge or a friending challenge

snowflake_challenge

addme,

twitter_refugees or found me any other way, welcome! Pull up a comfy chair and grab yourself a cookie.

My name on the Internet is Tamanna, but most people call me Tam or Tammy. I'm in my late thirties but still think of myself as mid-twenties, cis femme (pronouns: she/her), unapologetically brown, fat, queer, and liberal, and an unrepentant geek. I'm back on DW after years on ~~the hellsite~~ Tumblr, and in 2026 I'm committed to being more active here. I'm also a bit of a Cranky Fandom Old, having been here since the late 90s, so please, no Purity Discourse (tm) and associated Nonsense.

You can also find me on Ao3, where I am slowly transferring all my fic, or Discord (same username).

Things I like:

Books / TV shows / movies that aren't solely by/about cis white dudes, planning / bullet journaling, exploring new places, fashion, history, cooking, queer issues, disability / access issues, romance novels, podcasts, and comics.

Fandoms:

- Harry Potter (although for my sanity it's an unfinished four-book series that never got any movies, and I mostly live in AUs). I deal with JKR's RL nonsense by stuffing my fic with POC and queer people and decolonising the crap out of her racist bullshit. Fair warning, I did my master's thesis on HP, so I will ramble at you at first opportunity :D

- LotR and the Hobbit (even if I live in denial that BoFA ever happened)

- Check Please! (even if certain sections of fandom can be quite trying...)

- Numb3rs (whyyy is it not still on, I need more math geniuses and Fedcakes)

- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

- Sherlock Holmes in any incarnation BUT the modern BBC one

- Star Trek (mostly XI and Beyond, I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Into Whiteness)

- DC Comics (specifically Superman/Batman, the Justice League + Supergirl, despite DC's best efforts to turn me off)

- The AU in which Marvel released no movies after Winter Soldier except for Black Panther and Captain Marvel, the team lives in the Tower, is fussed over by JARVIS, and are mostly functional adults, and the canonical deaths never happened. Stony and Stucky are fine with me, but bashing Tony or Steve will get your ass banned right quick.

- Hockey RPS, mostly SidGeno, because goddamn are there some talented writers in this fandom. It also helps that Sid's media face is so strong he has all the personality of an egg, which means I feel less bad reading fic about him.

- Enola Holmes, because it's just delightful.

- L.A. Hall's The Comfortable Courtesan, which is a goddamn delight and you need to read it ASAP.

Trigger Warning / Cut policy:

I try my best to warn for things, and put stuff under a cut, but a) I'm human and b) my boundaries are not your boundaries, so let me know if you need anything tagged / filtered / cut!

Transformative Works Policy:

Please feel free to podfic, remix, make recursive fanfic of, translate, or make fanart/icons/fanmixes for my fic. All I ask is that a) you credit me and b) you add a link to the original work (in part so I can squee, lol.)

Please note that I do NOT give permission for any of my works to be used for the basis of for-profit endeavours, or to be reposted on other sites. I also do not give permission for them to be used in any kind of AI-generated work, whether text or art.

I first started writing Numb3rs fanfiction in early 2008. Since then, that one drabble has morphed into several het, slash and gen universes, and over 30,000 words of drabbles and full-length fic. This is my (hopefully somewhat coherent) attempt to keep it all organized. If you want to see my numb3rs100 drabbles by prompt, please check out my N100 Tables.

Note: Universes with asterixes (*) next to the names are either partly or mostly made up of drabbles.

( Slash Fiction )

( Het Fiction )

( Het/Slash Fiction )

( Gen Fiction )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: S.O.B.- Tim McGraw

I was only writing in these fandoms about a year before Numb3rs ate my brain; there isn't much, but I'm happy with it.

( Harry Potter )

( Superman/Batman )

Copying my rant here for when the hellsite eventually goes down.

So. I ran across a post on this here hellsite that claimed that Amita’s character is apparently ‘weak’ and ‘has no character development’. I’m not going to link that post, but I am going to talk about how that person is so wrong it is physically painful.

Now. Are there legitimate criticisms of the way Amita’s character is depicted? Absolutely. Can a lot of those issues be explained/contexualized by the fact that Numb3rs ran from 2005-2010, and culture has changed A WHOLE DAMN LOT in the intervening years? Also yes.

However. One thing. Amita Ramanujan is not is weak. Nor does her character have zero development, especially when you consider that N3 went off the air over fifteen years ago.

I’m going to deal with the two (imho) valid criticisms - the student/teacher thing and the Desi rep thing - first, then move on to the accusations of a lack of character development.

So the thing all y’all newbies have to understand. Numb3rs is a (relatively) old show. It started in 2005, when Les Moonves was still in charge at CBS, before #MeToo, before DADT was repealed, before Obama was elected to the White House, before we got even anywhere near the amount of representation we have today.

That is the environment in which Numb3rs decided to make Charlie’s student, the only other actress in the main cast, a Brown woman. Now, at the time, I don’t think they’d settled on whose love interest she was supposed to be, Don’s or Charlie’s.

But after s1? The Powers That Be at CBS wanted Charlie made more butch, more obviously straight, given the small but vocal contingent of Eppescest shippers. N3 didn’t have the money for another actress, and Diane Farr had already claimed Megan for Larry. Excellent decision on her part, but it left the show with a quandary: either pair Charlie up with his student, or fire Navi Rawat and write in a new love interest character.

They chose to keep Navi Rawat. They chose to keep the Brown woman, and make the geeky Brown girl the main character’s love interest. That didn’t happen back then.

Looking back from a 2026 lens, yeah, problematic as fuck. But Numb3rs, for all its fundamental kindness, for all its efforts to be as un-copaganda-like as it could, was still a network show in the late 2000s.

And in that context? A geeky brown girl love interest was revolutionary.

Now let’s move on to the second valid criticism: the Desi rep, and the fact that it’s complete and utter crap. Which is what happens when you hire a very Westernized Pakistani-German actress who was very divorced from her culture growing up to play a second generation Tamil Brahmin character who grew up in a city with one of the largest Little Indias in America, and nobody can be bothered to do any research, because all Indians speak Hindi and love naan and butter chicken, right?

How do I know the rep was bad? I’m literally from the same sub-community as Amita, with second-gen immigrant friends and cousins all over the US. If anyone wants, I’ll write up a detailed explanation of all the ways the show gets Tamil Brahmin American rep wrong. In the meantime, here are some fics with an actually accurate Amita.

That said. The worst of the bad rep happened in s4, which was also the season of the writer’s strike. A hugely important and unfortunately necessary thing, but it did mean that the shows that season had less than stellar writing sometimes. Which does go some way to explain how goatfucking stupid the Desi rep was in s4.

Those major and valid criticisms aside, Numb3rs got a LOT right about Amita, including making her a strong, well-rounded (for the time) character with depth. Under the cut, for spoiler reasons.

( Read more... )

I’m not sure where the original poster got the idea that Amita is weak or doesn’t have character development. Just because you don’t like a character, babe, doesn’t mean they’re badly written.

Hello, wonderful FFFX creator!

First off, thank you so much for agreeing to create something for me! I hope you have fun doing so. :)

Second, I know that different people like different levels of detail in their creator letter, and that for some people, TOO much detail can feel stifling. So I’ve divided this post into two parts - a short roundup of things you absolutely NEED to know, and then, under cuts, a crapton of babbling and prompts.

The more detailed notes aren’t meant to be demanding or scare you away; it's just that, given the expected wordcount, I thought you might like more than a list of likes/dnws. If they inspire you, great! If not, feel free to ignore - I would much rather a fic about X that YOU are excited by rather than you seeing Y in my letter and struggling through it because you think it’ll make me happy (as long as my DNWs are respected, of course). Please also note that the fandoms are in alphabetical order, and that length isn't really indicative of how much I want a particular one; some canons just lend themselves more easily to prompts :) If you want even more ideas, please feel free to look at my dear author letters tag.

Treats are welcome and squeezed and hugged and called George :)

So, on to the absolute basics!

General DNWs:

AI generated content | dystopias | universes darker than canon | darkfic | stories where characters react to the books/movies/TV shows they are featured in | stories that have the same plotlines/characterizations/deaths as canon despite being AU, especially genderbends | female-to-male genderbends unless specifically requested | kidfic (fic with child characters as well as de-aging) with the exception of Daisy from the Kingsman movies | change of setting AUs unless requested (chars making different choices in the canonical setting is fine) | bigotry (homophobia/racism/sexism) or issue fic | character/ship bashing | unhappy/open/bittersweet endings | unrequited feelings between main ship or one of them still being into someone else/"settling" with other half of main ship | fake relationship or marriage of convenience stories without pining/(eventually resolved) UST/romantic feelings between the characters | someone under 18 with someone over 21, or more than a 20-year age gap if they're both adults | love triangles (perceived is fine- like a thinks b is into c) | first or second person POVs | Reader inserts | omegaverse | mpreg | stalking/stalker stories | explicit violence/torture or body horror (dealing with the aftermath is fine) | cheating/adultery | Bad/awkward sex | sexual assault/rape or domestic abuse/violence between requested pairings (recovery from assault by someone else is fine) | bodily waste, vomit, watersports, scat, graphic descriptions of injury | major power differences (eg: student/teacher or boss/secretary, unless in roleplay) | villain AUs/good guys are the bad guys (or vice versa) | Hero/villain pairings - eg: Order Members/Death Eaters in Harry Potter (Draco or Narcissa is fine), Avengers/Hydra members in MCU | Mentions of COVID or a fictionalized version of same | betrayal by canonical friends/family (exception for a specific Numb3rs plotline) | Brexit having happened | Trump as President (please either use a Democrat or a fictional Republican)

General Likes:

Smut Likes:

Now, on to the canon-specific info! My apologies for not doing individual cuts for each fandom – DW does something really weird when I try.

( Read more... )

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to reach out to me via the mods if you have any questions.

RL continues to conspire against me, but I am determined to finish this challenge, damn it. So here is #9!

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring an image of a wrapped giftbox with a snowflake on the gift tag. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

For this challenge, I'm going to talk about my favourite tropes in fic.

1. Genderswap, specifically M > F in specific canons/contexts.

Genderswap is one of my favourite tropes, especially in canons where it would make a massive difference. I just love seeing what the story would be if it were Rose Potter rather than Harry, Clara Kent rather than Clark, or Stephanie Rogers rather than Steve, not least because I just find women more interesting. And I'm always here for M/F romances that aren't your standard Heterosexual Nonsense, lol. As a bonus, girls are women just aren't allowed to be the same kind of stupid that boys and men are, which usually makes for a much better story.

2. Fix-it fics

Sometimes canon is stupid, so you reject it and insert your own. I love all kinds of fix-its, whether they're canon divergence or time travel. It helps that I grew up in HP fandom and later fell into MCU, both of which canons started well and then spectacularly shat the bed, lolsob. I also enjoy fics that give characters a smoother path to happiness - this is my favourite kind of Pride and Prejudice variant. What can I say, I just want my blorbos to be happy and live easy lives!

(Important note: I do not enjoy the kind of self-proclaimed 'fix-it' endemic to the Harry Potter fandom where it's clear that the author does not understand that Harry Potter started out as a silly kids' series that got so big JKR couldn't cope. No, you're not super smart for going 'ohoho the WW is a dystopia populated by sheep'; you just don't understand how genre conventions work. And that HP shifted mid-series in the most goatfucking stupid way possible.)

3. Competence porn

Keep your hot messes, y'all, I'm enough of one already, I don't want to read about or watch them for entertainment, thanks. One of my favourite parts of fiction is watching smart, skilled people do their jobs well - I blame all the romance novels with bad-ass heroines I read as a child. Also all the HP AUs and fix-its that consumed my adolescence, and falling headfirst into Superbat, because you don't get more competent than those two. There's just something so invigorating as well as reassuring about the quiet confidence that skill brings with it. I don't have to worry - my blorbos have it.

4. Confessions

Look, I'm a romance girlie, okay? Confessions are the best part! Especially if they come after pining, or when the characters have no idea their feelings are reciprocated. Bonus points if the confession happens in a situation of great peril, or is prompted by one or both of the characters nearly dying.

5. Pining

Look, instalove is all well and good, but sometimes you need the happy ending to be EARNED. Especially if it's two clueless idiots who have no bloody clue and insist the other just sees them as a friend. (Never mind their lives are basically 'Friends Don't' by Maddie and Tay.) Look, Superbat is one of my OTPs for a REASON and that reason is that pining is DELICIOUS.

6. Fake dating

The only way to make pining better? Put the blorbos in situations where they have to pretend to be a couple For Reasons. Marriage of convenience, undercover, keeping family/friends/whoever off one's back... so many ways to have them go 'but they would never like me like that' while situation after situation happens that proves the opposite, lol.

7. Better than canon/the real world

Look, I read for escapism. Plain and simple. I don't want tooth-rotting fluffy curtain-fic, but at the same time... if it's darker than canon? NOPE. Get the behind me, Satan. I don't want a HP universe that is a sexist hellscape where Muggleborns are little better than animals, or a dystopia run by sheep that needs to be saved by the oh-so-advanced Muggles. I don't want Bruce and Clark, or Steve and Tony, at each others' throats. I don't want Darcy and Elizabeth to have to go through hell before they can have their happy ending.

8. Geeky girl with non-intellectual-but-smart-jock who loves her brain

Look, I've been a Hermione/Viktor fan since I was fourteen. If that doesn't explain my love for this trope, I don't know what does. Hilariously, I was reminded of how much I love it by Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Because there's honestly nothing sexier than a guy who is secure enough in his masculinity to revel in his woman's success. Also? Just because someone isn't an intellectual, or is into sports, doesn't mean they aren't smart and capable and great partners. Much more so than Intellectual Art Boys, in many cases.

9. Being picked over a supposedly 'better' romantic option

This is tied to my love of the previous trope. There is nothing that makes me swoon like someone telling their partner, 'No. I choose YOU, because you are a be choice for me and fuck what society/anyone else thinks.' Because at the end of the day, that's what true love is to me, more than fate or soulmates or whatever - choosing to be with someone.

If anyone has recs with these tropes, I would love to hear them! My reading fandoms are HP (no Snape though please), Numb3rs, Superbat, Stony, Star Trek AOS, LOTR/The Hobbit, The Goblin Emperor, Hawaii 5-0, and Pride and Prejudice.

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and thought through my creative process before. This should be fun.

My solo-written fic, as opposed to my cowrites (/waves to

rhi ,

ilyena_sylph ,

t_vo0810 and others/) is one of two kinds, usually: either it's written for an exchange fic, or a bunny ups and grabs me.

When I sign up for exchanges, I try and craft my sign-up to get specific recipients, although I try and make sure that I can write for all potential recipicients. (I've only hit 'oh God no DEFAULT' levels of DNW a couple of times, which considering my Cursed Exchange Luck, I'm pretty proud of.) Once I get my assignment, I sit with the prompt that calls to me the most, and see what kind of story I can create that fits both the wordcount requirement and what the recip wants. Depending on how much plot there is, I throw myself on rhi's mercy for help, lol.

Once I've figured out what the story is, then I write it. Very rarely, I finish my first draft before deadline; usually I'm butting right up to it. (Being several hours ahead is a wonderful thing, sometimes. It feels like a sneaky little extension, lol.) I use the period between submission deadline and reveals to edit and polish my fic, although (thankfully) I write very clean drafts so there's rarely all that much editing, SPAG aside, to do. Sometimes my brain is a hunk of mouldy cheese and poor

rhi has to talk me down and remind me that I am a good writer and my fic will look better once I have had a snack and a nap.

When it comes to non-exchange fic, it usually starts with a bunny nibbling on me. Once the nibbling becomes too hard to ignore, I sit down and write - sometimes just scenes, sometimes snippets, sometimes whole-ass fic. Then I let the for-publishing stuff sit for a few days before going back over it, then getting it beta'd.

Regardless of whether it's exchange fic or for my own satisfaction, there's one step of the process I find utterly loathsome: titles. There's a reason most of my fics have either lyrics or quotes for titles - titling is the worst, even harder than summaries. I am in awe of people who find it easy. But works need titles, alas, and so far I've somehow managed, lol.

And that's my creative process! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have.

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

So I had to take a break from posting because my eyes decided to act up (After a Deeply Stupid Eye Injury back in college, my left eye likes to throw the occasional tantrum to remind me it's got its eye on me, boyo) but I'm back with challenge #7.

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

Okay! Three things, huh? I'm going to go with one physical thing, one skill, and one emotional thing.

1. I try really hard to be kind.

Especially in the world we live in, where it's so easy to fall into snark, or into the trap of valuing nonexistent moral purity over imperfect action towards a better present and future, this is one of the things I like best about myself. So while I have certain bedrock principles I won't deviate from, I try very hard to give people grace, both IRL and in fandom. At the end of it, you've gotta be kind.

2. I am a good writer.

There's a Discord I'm in with a writing vent channel, and it always discomfits me a little to hear people tear their own writing down. Now, am I a literary great? Ha, nope. But I am a skilled writer, enough so that I enjoy rereading my own work, lol. Perhaps once Snowflake is over I'll create a self-rec list?

3. I like how my face looks.

So I grew up in a deeply colourist society, although I've been lucky in that my immediate family has never held with that or given me crap for it. What I didn't like about my face was that I don't have the kind of open-mouthed smile that is considered classically beautiful. (My teeth are fine, just small.) Add to that some baby fat that stubbornly stuck around, and nope. It took the pandemic, and seeing my face on Zoom for hours on end to realize that hey, just because I don't photograph well, it doesn't mean there aren't nice things about my face - how my eyes crinkle when I smile, how animated my expressions get when I'm excited about something, how well bright red lipstick contrasts with my dark skin. So yeah. It took a while, but I can safely say that I love my face.

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

( That got long, lol... )

And that's my top ten fandoms! What are yours?

Snowflake Challenge: A warmly light quaint street of shops at night with heavy snow falling.

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your wishlist if you feel comfortable doing so.

Here are my (fannish) wishes for this year!

1. For fandom to be a source of joy for everyone, not just me. May your fannish experiences be what you want, or need, them to be, and may they bring only good things into your life.

2. Recs for a certain kind of HP fic. Back in the day, before HBP released, there was a specific kind of fic that was almost standard - Harry gets training from competent adults, the DA plays a big part, the Houses come together, there's all kinds of fun magic and worldbuilding. I'd love recs for fics like this, with the following DNWs: Snape being portrayed in a positive light or having a large role, Weasley, Hermione, or Fleur bashing, pureblood supremacist apologia, Muggles rules wix drool nonsense, the WW being terribly sexist/backwards.

3. Relatedly, I'd love some Viktor/Hermione fic, either recs or written. No Weasley or Harry bashing, please, and I'd love fics where Viktor is smart. (Because he is, in canon! He speaks at least three languages and does some pretty advanced Transfiguration!)

4. I have fallen in love with the Electra McDonnell cozy thriller series by Ashley Weaver, and I would LOVE Electra/Ramsey fics. Just no kidfic, please!

5. This is an utter longshot, but hey, asking for the N3 extras got me a link, so. Does anyone have the complete prompt list, or even a partial one, for the numb3rs100 community? I do not relish the thought of scrolling through the entire community so I can note down the prompts manually.

6. This wishlist is mostly fic, I swear. If any Austen fans are around, I'd love some Jane Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam fic. Just no Bingley bashing, please.

7. Finally, and this is another longshot - if there are any fontmakers out there, I'd love an (English) font that is visually influnced by the Tamil script. All the India-influenced fonts I've seen use the Devanagiri script, because of course all Indians speak Hindi /rolls eyes/. One of my favourite fictional characters ever is Tamilian, and I'd love to have a font that reflects her heritage, and mine.

In previous years, I would fall off the posting wagon for a week, then two weeks, then months and more. I'm determined not to do that this time, so have an update on what I've been up to before I slowly catch up on

snowflake_challenge over the course of the next week!

- The weekend of the 17th/18th was my city's major literary fest. I only went to three panels (one with a Supreme Court judge, one with a historian who is the grandson of two major Independence-era politicians, one with the author of a legal handbook for women) since the others weren't really my jam, but I enjoyed all three.

- I got bookses! Defying the Odds (about Dalit entrepreneurs), Reclaiming Bharat (about the unexpected rebuke India delivered to Modi in the 2024 election), The Lion of Naushera (about a little-known Muslim hero of the 1947 war with Pakistan), One Way To Love (a contemporary romance about a young Indian Muslim couple), Engineering A Nation (about M. Visvesvaraya, a pioneering colonial-era engineer and administrator), and Swadeshi Steam (about one man's effort to create an Indian-owned shipping company and break the British monopoly on maritime trade).

- The fest was also on Sunday, but I did not go (I regret this, in retrospect) because I needed to prepare for a trip.

- What was this trip for, you ask? To attend the wedding of my dad's cousin's son. I have never met this dude, or his bride, in my life. But because I'm Indian (and because Stepmum had the sense to stay home with the dogs so Dad had a free plus one), and also because that branch of the family is LOADED, I was invited. (Seriously, y'all, this wedding was nuts. Three days at a five-star resort, accomodations all paid for; we just had to get our butts there.)

- This was a fancy enough wedding each event (welcome dinner, haldi ceremony, sangeet, muhurtam (actual ceremony), and reception came with dress codes. With specific colours. Luckily, I could use clothes I aready owned for the sangeet, muhurtam, and reception, and I found a cheap burgundy flapper dress for the welcome dinner and a yellow kurta for the haldi, the latter of which I got many compliments on ^_^

- The wedding was as fun as an event I have zero personal stake in could be. The bride's family is North Indian, so while the ceremony itself was as traditionally Tamil Brahmin as could be, there was also a baraat and a sangeet, which were fun to look at from the sidelines. The ceremony itself I can only presume was lovely, since the same thing happened as most Tamil weddings I've been to - we couldn't actually see jack on account of all the photographers/videographers/idiots with phones. I wish they'd done what a buddy did and had TV screens up so we could actually SEE S and S getting married. The reception was a lot of fun, too - some great speeches, and the MCs were hilarious.

- Getting to see family was lovely, even if Favourite Cousin S and her husband couldn't make it. I did get to spend time with dad's-sister Aunt S and dad's-cousin Aunt S, and no-longer-tiny Cousin S, which was great, and get to reassure various members of Dad's family of my continued good health. I also got to talk to various family members about the diaspora experience, which provided fodder for Amita fic, so that was nice, lol.

- The food, sadly, was kind of disappointing, because who has a destination wedding in Goa and serves practically no Goan food? My family, apparently. (Okay, in fairness, Tamil Brahmins are strict vegetarians so I don't know if they could have been convinced that anything Goan, which is famous for its fish and pork, was vegetarian even if it was.) That said, the food they did serve was excellent, as befits a Taj hotel. The best part was aloo paratha for breakfast, especially since they had a different Goan curry each morning to eat it with. No Goan food at lunch or dinner, alas.

- The actual wedding feast was catered by the ne plus ultra of traditional wedding caterers that the family bussed in all the way from Chennai. (They would have flown them in, but aviation is a shitshow right now and cooking implements are HEAVY.) No naan and butter chicken here - we were served a traditional Iyengar elai saapadu, on a plantain leaf. Yes, I stuffed my face.

- A big difference between Indian, or at least Tamil, weddings, and Western ones? There are also gifts FROM the host family to the guests. Being a family member means I got a sari (a gorgeous green silk one I have to find an excuse to wear). All guests also got something called a 'bakshanam' - basically, a hamper of sweets and savouries to take home with them - as well as a couple more standard favours. Given that my poor carryon suitcase was already full, this presented an interesting packing dilemma, lol. Thankfully I'd taken a collapsible duffel with, so it was all manageable.

- I left on Tuesday, came home late Friday, and spent the weekend being a giant lump. Love my family, but that was entirely too many people and too much time walking on grass in high heels, lol.

Aaaand that was my week. Hopefully all y'all's was less nuts.

RL and my

fffx fic contrive to eat all my spoons, and next week does not portend to be any better, but here, have this utter delight of an ad:

Watch on YouTube

RL got a little nuts, but I'm determined not to let this fall by the wayside, so have a belated Day 4 post.

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

The instructions for this one confused me, and I don't really do social media, so instead, I thought it would be fun to link some of my favourite fic/art exchanges!

Despite my sometimes Cursed Exchange Luck, I really do love taking part in exchanges. They've gotten me some of my favourite fics ever, and pushed me to write things I never would have otherwise. Here's a list of all the exchanges I'm taking part in this year:

fffx

The Five Figure Fanwork Exchange! You get five months to write either 2 5k or 1 10k fic, or equivalent art. (Has the five month period ever stopped me from leaving it until the last minute? Nope. But we live dangerously 'round these parts.)

ficinabox

Possibly my favourite exchange ever. You commit to writing 10k, or doing an equivalent creative activity... but it can be split up into a mind-boggling variety of mediums, from AITA posts to CYOA games to literal knitted things. One year I'm going to lose my mind enough, recipient willing, to write 10k entirely in drabbles.

highadrenalineexchange

The converse of FFFX - you get two weeks to write 10k. I was somehow insane enough to do Pride and Prejudice fic my first go-around with HAX, and the two-week deadline was the only reason I managed to get out of my own head enough to do it, lol.

worldbuilding_exchange

I utterly adore worldbuilding, so it's no surprise that an exchange based on it is my catnip. If the exchange somehow allowed me to nominate JUST the first four Harry Potter books, I'd be in heaven, lol.

rule_63

Genderbends are another of my very favourite things, and the main fandoms I'm in - HP, Avengers, Superbat, Numb3rs, and Star Trek - have amazing potential when it comes to male-to-female genderbends. Plus, honestly, girls are just more interesting, lol.

idproquo

I am a firm believer in, and defender of, idfic. I also live in the AU where Marvel made no movies after the Avengers and Harry Potter is an unfinished four-book series with no movies, lol.

This year, I also want to take part in

seasonsofdrabbles ,

everywoman , if it's running, and

halfamoon . We'll see how things go.

So one of my friends has been bugging me to read Casey McQuiston's Red, White, and Royal Blue for years.

I resisted, partly because it felt a little too close to RPF for me to feel comfortable (I know posh British men have like five acceptable names but still) and partly because... well, I'm not a fan of the British monarchy, even a fictional version, for very obvious child-of-colonialism reasons.

And then this morning my buddy complained, once again, about the idiot sheltered Tamil Brahmin boy in the RWRB discord's latest terrible take, which was that India does not have racism. (As someone who remembers seeing a front-page ad in the newspaper of record offering a free whitening cream with purchase of soap that had the tagline 'We're sending some compliments your way', AHAHAHAHA.)

So I made a half-joking comment about that I should finally read RWRB so I could join the discord and back her up next time the idiot idioted. And lo and behold, I had a free afternoon and an available copy of the book, so... why the hell not?

And y'all, I feel like such a damn idiot. Because this book, once I let go of my grudge about the names? Was actually really good. The writing is top-notch, the characters are complex while still being fun, and the story balances escapism and realism really well, especially when it comes to the depiction of the monarchy. It's even making me want to see the movie, which is not a thing I say often.

So yeah. Five out of five stars to Casey McQuiston's Red White and Royal Blue, and a reminder to not judge books by their covers, lol.

Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

Wow. Where do I even start with fandom?

Fandom changed the course of my life, for the better.

Fandom was how I, a sheltered teen growing up in a conservative country, encountered gay couples for the first time, when shipper drama had me fleeing to the slash side of HP fandom.

senmut and

ilyena_sylph introduced me to poly couples with Happy’Verse, and I’m still friends with both of them to this day. The very kind encouragement of the folks in the World’s Finest Superbat comm gave me the courage to publish my own fic, first Harry Potter and then Superbat. And then Numb3rs fandom (and specifically numb3rs100 and its weekly prompts) taught me how to write. And then my beloved co-writers taught me how to write things longer than drabbles.

I’ve lost a lot of those old fannish friends, whether they moved on from a fandom or I did, or when platforms shut down. But I’ve been lucky to keep some incredibly dear ones, and make excellent new friends, too. /waves to

rhi and

draconis, among others/

Speaking of new friends, I want to talk about one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced, fandom-wise.

Numb3rs will always be the fandom of my heart. But it was never a particularly big show, and by 2022, the fandom was pretty much dead. And then someone (Hi Byrne!) wrote, and posted, an incredible story. Which inspired me to rewatch the series, and start writing again. And pull others in, too. And while Numb3rs will never be as active as it was, it’s still really cool to see the part I played in resurrecting it a little bit.

Another really awesome thing about fandom? Exchanges, and how much they’ve gotten me to push my limits. If it weren’t for exchange prompts, I would never have written To The Sticking Place, about Percy Weasley (and NOT a story I could have written in my 20s or without years of reading fic and meta). I definitely wouldn’t have been brave enough to think I could replicate Jane Austen’s style well enough to attempt thy love like a mark is stamp’d (I am a Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam shipper to the end. Sorry, Bingles.) Or, even after shipper nonsense annoyed the fuck out of me, take on the challenge of writing The Goblin Emperor fic. Or write 10k of smut for an upcoming challenge, despite being ace.

Fandom also had me reading things I never would have encountered otherwise. Not just slash, although that's part of it. Thanks to fandom, I discovered drabbles, my beloved random fact fics, fic in the form of in-universe documents or meta, and a whole host of other things. I found writers who put the pros to shame, fics that made me gasp at the brilliance of their creators. I can safely say that reading fic has been an education, as much in what I should strive for as what not to do.

Fandom also helped me reclaim my identity. When Numb3rs first aired from 2005-2010, I explained away some of the egregious errors in the show’s depiction of Amita (who was a Tamil American character played by a very westernized half-German actress) by making her half-Rajasthani. (It still didn’t fix everything, but it was better than nothing). When I returned to writing Numb3rs in 2022, I made a decision. Amita would be 100% Tamil Brahmin, and that would be enough.

Never mind that Hollywood thinks all Indians speak Hindi, love Bollywood, and subsist on naan and butter chicken. Never mind neither the showrunners nor the actress bothered to give Amita a defined backstory until s4, and even then, they chose the most goatfucking stupid way of going about it possible. I would write Amita as she should have been written, like the second-generation Tamil American daughter of immigrant parents with a connection to the old country the show said she was while failing utterly to depict it accurately.

That conviction led to me writing saaptiya and 25 Random Facts About Amita Ramanujan, two fics I’m incredibly proud of, with the support and encouragement of non-Desi friends. And in doing so, I healed a wound that I never realized had been hurting me for nearly two decades.

So yeah. Thank you, fandom. For everything.

Ganked from

muccamukk.

01. Grab the nearest book.

02. Turn to page 126

03. The 6th full sentence is your life in 2026.

So the closest book to me was Indian Christmas: Essays | Memories | Hymns, about how the nearly 30 million Christians in India celebrate the festival.

Sentence #6 on page 126 is from the chapter 'Did Your First Christmas Cake Come Out Of An Ammunition Box, Too?' by Estherine Kine.

Mrs Tanquist baked her cakes in a big mud oven, but her students ingeniously used ammunition boxes after the men discovered they were airtight and preserved head very well.

So for context, cooking on gas ranges rather than wood- or kerosene-fired stoves only came to India in 1965, and even then, it was limited to larger urban areas. Electric ovens came even later - my mother, born in 1961, has stories of my grandma baking cakes in a 'sand oven' - a large pot filled with sand that was heated over a flame, functioning as a sort of bain-marie. Even now, gas is standard in any home that can afford it rather than wood or kerosene. Electric stoves are not common, or are used as a sort of secondary cooking device, since power cuts are pretty common even in big cities.

The ammunition boxes mentioned were left by British troops when they quit the subcontinent in 1947. Mrs Tanquist, the wife of a missionary, taught the author's mother and her friends how to bake Christmas cakes, among other things.

Given the state of the world around us, let's hope this sentence heralds a transition to peace after years of conflict. We can hope, right?

(For my own sanity, I am choosing not to delve into RL politics on DW. Let's keep it that way in the comments, please.)

Here are my answers to this week's Friday Five!

1. Do you mostly drink tap, filtered, or bottled water?

At home, filtered, always. When out and about, I try to have a reusable water bottle with me, or ask for filtered water at restaurants, but sometimes I am forced to buy bottled water.

2. Is it safe/recommended to drink tap water where you live? If not, why?

Nope! I live in a developing country and while the water where I live is decent quality, it's still not potable. Most people use some kind of water filtration/purification system, or buy purified water from commercial vendors.

3. What does the tap water taste/smell like where you live?

Neutral, with a slight hint of chlorine from the purification process if it's from the municipal supply. I'm lucky to live somewhere with excellent groundwater.

4. Do you collect rainwater? If so, what do you use it for?

Rainwater harvesting is done by the municipality here and is standard. (I live somewhere prone to droughts.) It's used to replenish the water table.

5. Do you/have you ever had restrictions on water use where you live? What did you have to change about your lifestyle?

I have been lucky enough to never have had restrictions on water use, because my building has a borewell, so we were almost never dependent on municipal water supplies. There was a period of time where we supplemented the water from the borewell buy buying water commercially, but the thing with living in a drought city is that you're naturally careful about water use - to this day, I only take Navy-style showers, and have a deep and abiding hatred for golf courses. (Seriously, they should not exist in climes drier than Scotland. Why the fuck are there so many in Arizona?!) Seeing California ideas of 'restricted' water usage after growing up with people lining up to fill pots when the water tanker came was a trip, let me tell you.

Challenge #1

The Icebreaker Challenge: Introduce yourself. Tell us why you're doing the challenge, and what you hope to gain from it.

Hi! I'm Tammy. I'm in my late 30s, Desi, and have been in fandom since 2000.

I'm back on DW after a little over a year of a mostly unintentional break. I want to get back into the journaling habit, and be mindful and present when I post vs just doomscrolling. I'd also like to make some new friends!

Things I love:

Reading. Another of my goals this year is to read the books I already own. I mostly read romance, SFF, and light/cozy non-fiction. I've honestly tried litfic, but it bores me to pieces. I avoid the crap out of horror, dystopia, and anything too dark.

Podcasts. My favorites are the ones that teach you things, like Gastropod, Dressed, and Stuff You Should Know. I also adore Writing Excuses, which honestly is practically an MFA in podcast form.

Food. I am a competent cook at best, but I love thinking and talking about food and culture. Also, I am aggressively pedantic about that not all Indians eat naan and curry, damn it. Also that coconut anything does not belong in butter chicken.

Music: I am mostly a pop, pop-rock, and feminist country girlie, but I'm looking to expand my horizons. I also unapologetically love Taylor Swift.

My fandoms:

Numb3rs: The fandom of my heart. I just love how KIND this show is, and how well it's aged, a few episodes aside. Also? So much shipper potential, lol. (Even if I do bear a grudge about the portrayal of Amita that's as old as the show at this point. In my defence, we're from the same subcommunity and the writers... did not do their research.)

Harry Potter: More specifically, the first four books and parts of the fifth. No shade to those of you who loved the direction the series went in in Six and Seven, but it was epically not for me. Also, JKR and her bigoted bullshit can take a long damn walk off a short damn pier, but damned if I'll let her take away this thing I've loved since I was nine. I refuse to support her monetarily; that's my line in the sand. I'm honestly mostly here for AUs and fix-it fic, lol.

The Avengers: Specifically, the pocket universe post the 2012 movie where they're all in the Tower and also functional adults who are slowly learning to become a family. Not here either for SHYDRA or the whole 'my dad can beat up your dad' bullshit of the later movies. I'm a Stony girl at heart, but I'm willing to read a well-written Stucky.

The Goblin Emperor/ The Cemeteries of Amalo: Maia and Csethiro are adorable, as are Thara and his circle. I especially love the canonical pairing, which I won't spoil here, lol.

Superbat: Look, these two have been special since their first appearance together. I've loved them since I was a teenager, and their dynamic of best friends and partners, two men who are so different yet are so close.

Other more minor fandoms: Pride and Prejudice (love me some Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam), Check, Please!, all Sherlock variations, LotR and the Hobbit, the Electra McDonnell spy thriller series, and L.A. Hall's The Comfortable Courtesan.

So. Uh. I didn't ACTUALLY intend to basically disappear from DW for over a year. But, well, Certain RL Things happened in November of 2024 and I needed a break from ALL social media that had anything even remotely US politics related on it, and then once I surfaced from that, I'd feel bad about how long I'd been away and somehow wind up not posting. /o\

But! It is a new year, and the lovely ilyena_sylph was generous enough to gift me some paid time, so here I am making an attempt to get back in the saddle. I realized that I need SOME kind of fannish social media that's not Discord, and Reddit was just not good for my brain, so good old DW it is.

I realized that one of the reasons I wasn't using DW as much as I meant to was that I was all up in my head about that I needed to have Something To Say to make a post, and I... often don't, lol. So this time, I'm allowing myself to use DW for long posts, yes, but also like I would the site formerly known as Twitter - for short, silly things, individual links, and just... interacting with people.

I don't really want to do a 2025 recap, I'd rather start with a clean slate, but! I am very proud to say I published over 38k of fic last year, and some of it wasn't even for exchanges! It would have been over 40k, but I only wrote 7k for ficinabox rather than the required 10k.

This year, I'd like to focus on things other than mindless doomscrolling - I want to get into new fandoms, since honestly, as much as I love the little corners of HP and Marvel I've staked out for myself and my co-writers (/waves to Rhi and Yena/) the broader fandoms do not spark joy and I want something new. Recommendations welcome, although no horror, dystopia, or C-dramas, please.

I also want to write more solo fic - while I love exchanges for pushing me out of my comfort zone (I would never have written P+P or The Goblin Emperor fic without recips who wanted them) - this year I would like to focus on writing more for me, since Gods know nobody else is writing Colby/Amita, lol. And very few people are writing Jane/Colonel Fitzwilliam.

But that's enough about me! What have y'all been up to? I've missed my friends! Tell me all the things!

Hello, wonderful FFFX creator!

First off, thank you so much for agreeing to create something for me! I hope you have fun doing so. :)

Treats are welcome and squeezed and hugged and called George :)

So, on to the absolute basics!

General DNWs:

General Likes:

Smut Likes:

Now, on to the canon-specific info! My apologies for not doing individual cuts for each fandom – DW does something really weird when I try.

( Details! )

Prompts:

Superbat was one of my first OTPs, and I still adore them. I grew up with the comics as well as the Timm/Dini animated series (BTAS, STAS, JL/JLU) so incorporating things from cartoon canon or vice versa is fine by me, although I'm not a fan of the movies. My favourite characterization of Bruce leans more towards the toon version, but I don’t mind Brucie being a loveable himbo so long as the second-hand embarrassment isn’t too bad. I definitely want Gotham absolutely loving their dumbass well-intentioned playboy son who pours so much money into their beloved city, even if it is in sometimes very (outwardly) dumb ways.

I love these two so much. I love that they're two such different men who come to trust, respect, and admire each other. I love their bone-deep friendship and their certainty that together they can do anything.

For genderbends, feel free to make Clark female but please keep Bruce his cis dude self.

Prompts:

- a fic set in this AU. Lifelong besties FTW!

- Casefic, ideally with Clark's investigative talents used too. I really hate the characterization of him as dumb or naïve just because he’s a small town farmboy.

- Confessions when they think they're about to die but oops they survive

- Hurt/comfort, with the other fussing over the hurt one

- shameless smut

- Fake dating while pining for each other. Bonus if all their superhero friends sigh at their obliviousness.

- Bruce is pleasantly surprised by the dirty mind behind Clark's farmboy facade

- Kryptonian culture, especially anything to do with courting rituals

- Fic where Gotham and Metropolis have distinct personalities, and bonus if the people of Gotham have to defend Brucie or Batman somehow until Clark can get there

- Allies to friends to lovers

- Battle couple; completely in sync, kicking ass and taking names

- Outsider POV: what does their relationship look like to the public? A gossip columnist who doesn’t know the secret would be fun for this, I think, or two random civilians arguing about ships in some online forum (you know Bruce Wayne/Batman is popular in Gotham)

Canon-specific DNWs:

Bruce or Clark being bad fathers | a focus on the Batkids (background is fine, but please keep the story about Bruce and Clark) | Clark portrayed as a naive virgin ingenue | Red Hood (please set the story before Jason's death or have him come back as Jason) | Oracle going back to being Batgirl/no longer needing her wheelchair | Lois, Diana, or Selina bashing | Clark and Lex being childhood friends | evil/colonizer Jor-el and Lara

Harry Potter

Tags: Harry Potter/Viktor Krum (HP - JKR), Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum (HP - JKR), Harry Potter/Bill Weasley (HP - JKR), Oth: Worldbuilding

Ah, HP. Even with all of JKR’s Nonsense, the first four books are still gold to me. I love the magic and whimsy of them, love the boarding school setting and all the fun ways it can be played with. HP is where my id comes to play.

Solo Harry Potter (this wasn't in my sign-up on account of user error, but I will be a VERY happy Tam if you write me any of these!):

- Harry finding out about an inheritance that's been kept from him, especially if it involves a title/estate. This can include secret wills, blood tests to determine inheritance, wizarding politics... any kind of inheritance-related shenanigans, basically.

- Shopping sprees and finding out that magical London is more than just the Alley, and magical Britain is more than just what the books tell us (come on, Hogwarts is not a breeding population! Regardless of what Remus says in DH.)

- Harry realising that the magical world is more complex than he first thought, and that there are things about pureblood culture that are not tied to blood supremacist bullshit and are worth keeping. Bonus points for purebloods working to make their culture more inclusive and less bigoted.

- Dumbledore being a manipulative bastard who's happy to sacrifice Harry for the Greater Good (this can include spelling Harry and/or other people to keep things DD doesn't want them knowing to come to light)

- EWE where Harry gets the fuck out of England after the final battle and explores what it's like to not be the Boy Who Lived

- Rule 63 Harry: What would the Girl-Who-Lived's life have been like? Especially since canon tells us the wizarding world is in many ways LESS sexist than our own?

- Harry making friends not Hermione and Ron. (Let him remain friends with them, though!) Bonus points if he and Neville bond, or he makes friends with people from Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw.

- Harry doing something other than being a wizard cop, ditto Ron.

- Harry discovering magic we don't see in canon - ritual magic, non-Latinate magic, stereotypically 'feminine' magic like fibrecraft

- Some kind of Peggy Sue time travel fix-it fic where Harry takes shameless advantage of his foreknowledge

Worldbuilding:

One of the things I love most about HP, at least the first four books, is the potential for worldbuilding. There’s so much scope for fun and whimsy and I would love a fic that leans into that.

- I’ve mentioned it in my DNWs, but the ‘robes’ in the movies that have since infected book!fic drive me absolutely crazy. In the books, wix wear floor-length robes that bear some similarity to nightgowns. I think a fic that shows Harry (male or female) adjusting to magical fashion would be very interesting. (You can find what the books say about the robes here and a sketch from JKR here.)

- Speaking of! The WW separated before Beau Brummell and the pervasive homophobia of the Victorian era made men’s fashion hideously boring. Given that, the WW probably isn’t afraid of colour or embellishment on their men – what does that look like? Especially since Apparition, Floo, and Portkeys exist and so influences from Africa and Asia should be easier to obtain. (Also colonialism, but I am of the firm belief that magic is as much of an equalizer there as canon says it is for gender, so. Please don’t focus on that very much if at all)

- Magic used in fun ways - robes with moving designs, magic-powered automatons, color-changing hair dyes, whatever. Go wild!

- I am a sucker for a good Diagon Alley scene, as mentioned above. A genderbent Harry would be even more fun, just because I don’t think the original cared about fashion, lol.

- For queerness in the wizarding world, I would love a vibrant queer scene that is much more progressive than the Muggle world, given that magic exists. Please make your magical world trans inclusive, because fuck JKR’s nonsense.

- One of my great sorrows with the last two books is that we never got more of the DA. I’d love fic that has Harry (or others) actually fighting! Bonus for unconventional uses of magic - can’t you see Molly Weasley being absolutely deadly with household spells, or the Quidditch teams figuring out how to use their brooms in combat?

- Re: communication in the WW. Presumably most parents of muggleborns and halfbloods love their kids and want to stay in touch, and owls are… noticeable. How is communication between them managed? Is there some kind of mail forwarding service? Did some enterprising halfblood see a need and set up a business facilitating communications between the two worlds?

- For food in the WW, it always bothered me that although we got some really fun sweets/junk food, all the meals were depressingly British Muggle. Given that the WW separated in 1692, when food was actually quite different than it is now, not to mention that magic probably makes travel to Europe and North Africa much easier, I’d love to see a different magical cuisine. (Maybe all the food mentioned is Muggle because that’s all Harry recognizes?) I’d also love to see uniquely magical crops, dishes made from transfigured foods, and how Hogwarts deals with students with different dietary needs.

Harry/Bill:

I have no idea how I fell in love with Harry/Bill, but it's absolutely one of my favorite HP ships. I love the idea that after some time away from the WW post the final battle, Harry finds himself a sexy cursebreaker.

Prompts: (feel free to genderbend Harry, but please keep Bill cis male)

- post-war, EWE: Bill runs into Harry a few years after the war and realises his little brother's best friend has grown up very well indeed. Bonus if Harry's spent the past few years travelling the world and/or their meeting is outside of England.

- post-war, EWE: Harry and Bill fall in love while restoring Number Twelve together. Bonus points if you include magical worldbuilding lore.

- post-war, EWE: Harry and Bill bond over scars, visible and invisible.

- shameless smut would also be great. Harry deserves to be thoroughly railed, lol.

- for any BDSM fic, I would love Dom!Bill taking care of sub!Harry. The poor boy could use it.

Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum

Man, I have loved this pairing for over twenty-five years now. Geek girl and jock boy is SUCH a classic, and add to that that he saw her as a girl when nobody else did… yeah, Tam!bait. My characterization of Viktor is very heavily drawn from the works of Miss Yetigoosecreature, which you can find here.

Prompts:

- Tell me more about their romance at Hogwarts! How did he ask her out? What did they do for dates? Were there any funny misunderstandings thanks to the various language/culture differences? (While I don’t mind some awkwardness, I have a bad second-hand embarrassment squick, so I ask that you keep the general awkwardness level low.)

- Hermione decides she needs a break from Britain after the final battle and visits Viktor in Bulgaria. (The kiss with Ron never happens or they break up amicably.)

- Give me a fic with the Taylor and Travis dynamic: Hyper-succesful woman has had string of relationships with intellectual art bro types who want her to make herself smaller for them; finds love with actually smart sportsball type who loves and supports her being her awesome self.

- Viktor travels with Hermione to Australia to retrieve her parents.

- Hermione and Viktor unexpectedly run into each other years after the final battle. They're both single and the sparks are as hot as they ever were. (Please no fic where either of them are parents.)

- Fake dating for whatever reason. Bring on the pining!

- Hermione and Viktor have to work on a project together and decide to give their relationship another shot.

Harry Potter/Viktor Krum:

I've always thought that it was such a missed opportunity for Harry and Viktor not to better friends in GoF. Well, good thing we have fic, lol.

Prompts:

- Viktor is intrigued by the person crazy enough to fly against a dragon and makes it his mission to get to know Harry better.

- Harry rescues Viktor from the Viktorias and a friendship (and more) forms.

- In an AU where Winky got Hermione's wand and Harry knows more spells than Expelliarmus, he gets separated from his friends... and winds up helping Viktor rescue Muggles from Death Eaters. Hey, there are odder meet-cutes.

- Harry is travelling after the war and runs into Viktor. Sparks fly.

Canon-specific DNWs:

Snape as good guy or major character | Magic in North America/only 11 schools worldwide/FB movies/Pottermore as canon (please feel free to worldbuild more diversely) | AUs with the same deaths as canon | Accents written out phonetically for Fleur or Viktor | Wizard Cop Harry or Ron | the magical world being less progressive gender- and race-wise than the Muggle world; relatedly, Hermione or other Muggleborns 'civilising' the benighted backwards magicals (a historical fight for rights is fine) | gender specific magic that is not trans inclusive | movie canon (specifically Ron's characterization, Mudblood being carved into Hermione's arm, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang as single-sex schools, pureblood wix wearing Muggle clothes/robes being basically bathrobes over Muggle clothes) being privileged over the books

Numb3rs

Tags: Colby Granger/Ian Edgerton, Colby Granger/Charlie Eppes

Ah, Numb3rs, the show of my heart. My favourite thing about this show is that nobody was an asshole. (Well, except Ian, occasionally, but we forgive him.) I love that the agents get to be smart, too, that everyone is kind, and they're all clearly family.

Colby is my fave character. Really, I'm easy for anything Colby-related, especially fics that show us the layers he has. I would also love h/c, either from a canonical event like in Primacy or new shenanigans.

- Rule 63! I feel like a female Colby would see a legacy of five generations of duty and honour very differently. And a female math genius would be such fun (and probably have sharper edges than her canonical counterpart. Bonus: she and Amita would be amazing friends). (If you're doing Ian/Colby for this, please only genderbend Colby - f/f as a main pairing does not work with my brain, alas.)

- Speaking of that five generations legacy. I would love to see fic where Colby grapples with the toll it took on him, especially if he's thinking about fatherhood. (He doesn't have to decide on children; I would ADORE more childfree rep.) Colby/Ian and Colby/Charlie would both work for this.

- Casefic! Especially with Ian involved. I love a good old-fashioned casefic. Bonus if one of the requested pair is in danger and has to be rescued.

Ian/Colby:

I adore Ian/Colby. They have such a fun dynamic, even the show sees the chemistry. Prompts:

- I would love Ian standing up for his man. Give me all the fic where Ian delivers a set-down to people who think Colby isn't good enough.

- For genderbends, I think a female Colby dealing with the bastard son of Clint Eastwood and Yoda would be delightful. She wouldn't give him the time of day.

- Relatedly, Colby only plays the dumb jock - write me fic where Ian is charmed, and turned on, by his brain rather than that admittedly delectable ass.

- Ian/Colby: I would love to see the effect of a certain event in S3 on Ian’s opinion of Colby. (Please do not have Ian not believe him; I would love a fic where Ian is emphatically on Colby's side.) I would also love to see Ian helping Colby deal with how that must have fucked him up both mentally and physically.

- If you're a younger fan, it's hard to understand just what a big deal DADT being repealed was. I would love a fic that dealt with its impact on Colby and Ian, or the repeal being an impetus for one to come out to the other.

- For smut, give me all the sub!Colby, please. He just looks like he would be so much fun to play with.

Charlie/Colby:

The geek and the jock! Especially when the heart-eyes are practically canon, lol. Prompts:

- I’d love fic set during/post Rampage and Colby helping Charlie deal with the trauma of the ep.

- Fic that explores why Charlie believed Colby over the math would be awesome. Ditto post-freighter fic.

- Teaching someone to shoot is practically an LEO fic cliche at this point. I’d also love a fic that explores the aftermath of Charlie having to kill someone.

- For genderbends, I’d love a female Charlee Eppes falling for a surprisingly smart Army jock who drinks his respect women juice.

Canon-specific DNWs:

Charmita even as a background pairing | 6.08 Ultimatum as canon | Fic focused on Colby and David's friendship (I adore them but I'm in a mood for shipfic)

Pride and Prejudice:

Tags: Jane Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam/Fitzwilliam Darcy

While I love Elizabeth and Darcy, in fic I prefer exploring other pairs.

Jane Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam

Jane and Bingley are well and good, but I've always had a soft spot for Jane and the good Colonel.

I would love a fic where they meet and fall in love - maybe an AU where Jane has enough money that she can marry the Colonel? (Bingley leaves Jane a well-left widow, perhaps, or the Bennet parents actually step up?) Or he decides that straightened circumstances are worth it for such a wife. Either way, I would love it if Colonel F falls in love with Jane for something other than her beauty. Extra bonus points if it's her brains.

Fitzwilliam Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet/Colonel Fitzwilliam

- I would love a fic where Elizabeth and Darcy bring the Colonel into their relationship - maybe he's recovering at Pemberly after being injured in the war? Bonus points for there being a pre-existing more-than-cousinly affection between Darcy and the Colonel. Please no love triangles.

- Context for this prompt: There is plenty of mention of male homosexuality in ancient Greek texts, some of which Darcy and the Colonel would undoubtedly have come across at school. And Elizabeth's father did teach her both Latin and Greek. After perusing certain sections of her husband's personal library, Elizabeth has questions for him and the Colonel. Darcy, for his part, can only laugh and say this is what comes from having a clever wife. Bonus points for someone saying, roughly, "If they did not want men having sex with each other, they should not have taught us Greek." (In a more period-appropriate way, of course.)

Canon-specific DNWs:

Thank you for reading! Please feel free to reach out to me via the mods if you have any questions.

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swingandswirl

Tammy's Page at the AO3

March 2026

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Tammy's Numb3rs Masterlist

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Tumblr Crosspost: In Defence Of Amita Ramanujan

HAX 2026

Snowflake Challenge #9: Favourite Tropes

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Snowflake Challenge #7: Three Things You Like About Yourself

Snowflake Challenge #6: Top 10

Snowflake Challenge #5: (Fannish) Wishlist

I'm back! (Also, Indian weddings are insane.)

Proof of life post

Snowflake Challenge Day 4

Never underestimate the power of spite, y'all.

Fandom Snowflake Day 3

New Years Book Meme

2026 Friday Five #1

Snowflake Challenge 2026 Day 1

/waves shyly/ I'm back.

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