— BASICS Name: Tanya Kowalsky Age / D.O.B.: 44 / 17 April, 1979 Gender, Pronouns & Sexuality: Femme, She/Her & Queer Hometown: Maywood, New Jersey Affiliation: Non-Corrupt Law Enforcement Job position: Homicide Detective Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice from CUNY Relationship status: Single Children: None Positive traits: Persistent, Audacious, Witty, Clever, Adaptable Negative traits: Cynical, Acerbic, Cantankerous, Insubordinate, Rash
— BIOGRAPHY tw; missing persons, homicide, alcoholism
Story Time.
The first time Tanya Kowalsky knew somebody was lying to her was the day her mom left and never came home. Something in her voice. In the way her eyes were moving. The first time she knew she wanted to put liars in their place was in High School, when Susie Holland, the homecoming queen, turned up dead in the woods and tall grass behind her High School’s Football Field. It was pretty personal - her boyfriend was the prime suspect - driven out of town society despite how distraught he appeared over it all. He was a wreck, but Susie’s secret girlfriend was just as bad for seeing the aftermath roll out from a place of fearful silence.
Tanya knew because she was the secret girlfriend.
She was fifteen that summer. She buried a lot of that pain in the High School burnout life, but when they fingered the librarian to be the one whodunnit during Senior Year and the town went on like they hadn’t ruined two kids lives with suspicion and alienation? That’s when she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She left Maywood the second she could though - too much bad energy.
Big City life took her - loud enough to drown out certain things and big enough to get lost in in the important ways, she rekindled her faith in humanity by finding new family in new community. Old hats playing chess in the parks, the kids on the stoop. She nestled in and spread enough roots during Police Academy to decide it was at least part of hers to defend.
She was working the beat the day the towers fell, an alarm bell wakeup call that set a lot of her priorities on their heads as she processed the grief and collective trauma the whole city shared that day. She’d make precinct detective a couple years later, a promotion that closed one chapter of her life and started another in short order.
She spent the rest of her twenties looking into the small stuff until she earned her place on Homicide. It was here the bulk of her faith in humanity died - the mystique and adventure of solving murders quickly lost with the meat and blood of reality seeping in on all sides. Years wore on and her smooth edges started roughing out before alcohol became a legal recourse and socially acceptable (if only just) medication for the sort of visions that haunted the peripheries of her mind.
There are days where she wants to apply for a division transfer to something less grisly. Criminal Enterprise, Gang Squad, something where she could for a better city and can hold fast a touch of sanity into an avenue of society that has become nearly as vile as the people it claims to want to stop. But she’s too soft to abandon her post. There are too many Susie Hollands and too many assumed endings for her to ever feel good moving away though, and so she keeps it up, trying to hold onto the thin shreds of optimism that nearly two decades of seeing mankind at its worst has left her with.
— WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS
Professional Colleagues One does not spend long sticking their nose into the gritty cracks and crevices frequented by the violent and baleful members of society without cultivating a cadre of comrades in the fight against injustice. Tanya might be prickly, but she knows the value of backup, and even with her general loner mentality she’s not stupid enough to think she can do everything herself. Media A detective with a tendency to shirk command and good optics to get the job done is free real estate to any journalist looking for something to sensationalize. Tanya's not any more reserved around these types, but she's surely just as (if not more) beligerent.
Little Fish Tanya isn’t a dirty cop, but she does know how to prioritize. It’s all about big fish and little fish. She does keep a watchful eye on the little fish though.
Single Female Looking For LoveRomance burns hot and fast with Kowalsky, and she is almost as quick to fall for a girl as she is to push her away out of a desire to protect them from her sometimes self-destructive ways.
Nemesis Everyone’s got a hero but every hero has an enemy, and every Sherlock secretly dreads finding their Moriarty.

















