Shadow Unit

[osprey_archer]

I've been meaning to write a post about the awesomeness of Shadow Unit for a while, and as my Yuletide present is a Shadow Unit story I figure this as a good a time as any.

Shadow Unit is, in a nutshell, Criminal Minds except the serial killers have magic; but that doesn't begin to capture how intense and exciting and awesome and brutal it is.



Yes, Shadow Unit is more brutal than Criminal Minds. Not in the sense that it's gory, although one episode (the stories are called episodes; the conceit is that Shadow Unit is a real TV show) is extremely gory, but because the authors don't pull punches.

Did I mention the authors writing this? Elizabeth Bear, who wrote Carnival, Emma Bull who wrote War for the Oaks, Sarah Monette who wrote Melusine and sequels, and Will Shetterly who wrote...something. (Sorry, Mr. Shetterly.) Holly Black is writing an episode next year. Professional and well-respected authors, writing for free (well, there is a donation button), because they love the story they're telling.

Did I mention before that this is one of the most awesome things I've found this year?

Anyway, back to the "not pulling punches." The characters' back stories are to varying degrees angst-ridden, with damage that echoes through their thoughts and actions, and no magical epiphany healing for anyone.

And they get more damaged as the season goes on. Sometimes badly so. And some of the gammas (shorthand for "serial killer with freaky magical abilities") are tragic, and some of their victims are too.

(I feel I should add, in case that's making anyone twitchy, that none of our beloved team members have died yet. Probably because the authors want the readers to really love the characters before they get offed. And there is joy and happiness and human connection, too, especially in the extras.)

Did I mention the extras before? Not only are there eight episodes, seven novella and one novel length, but there are little extra slice of life stories too.

There's also a fan community, although it seems to have quieted down some during the hiatus (I don't actually know when hiatus ends - I think January/February, but that could be wishful thinking). The old threads are well worth reading, though, because Shadow Unit fans are freakishly smart. The theories about what causes and creates and motivates gammas are fascinating.

I was oversimplifying when I said gammas were magic, you see. A big part of the show is figuring out what makes gammas tick, and with that what makes humans tick, and how do human relations work, and what's the effect of stress and trauma and life on all this? All wrapped up in fascinating, pulse-pounding stories with multilayered characters who have multilayered interactions.

Eight of them. And they all have complicated relationships with each other, and none of them are sleeping together, which is a big selling point for me if for no one else. (Some of them have significant others outside the unit, though.)

It takes a couple of episodes to get all the characters sorted out. Don't worry about it; just keep reading. There's a list of characters (with descriptions) if you get too confused, but it really is better to just keep going, because sometime around episode two or three it will all click and then you will be ensnared by the awesomeness that is Shadow Unit.

Surprisingly, there's not much fanfic yet. Probably because writing fanfic about a source material where the authors are so extraordinarily online means that they could potentially read it (I expect there are copyright reasons why they wouldn't/shouldn't, but authors are not quite superhuman and might give in to morbid curiosity) and the fic would be nowhere near as good as the original and that would be so embarrassing.

Or maybe that's just why I'm not writing any Shadow Unit fic.

Also, the season finale is quite possibly one of the most brilliant things I've ever read. It's just INTENSE.



I hope I've convinced someone to give Shadow Unit a try; it really is very, very awesome.

Comments

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I just read episode one, and I find myself with a need to read episode two RIGHT NOW.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

YES.

Mission accomplished!

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

Remind me never to mock your recs again? It has an awful lot of description in the first scene, but I spent my entire work shift yesterday needing to know what happened at the end of the first episode. I'm still standing on a few reservations, but I'm definitely enticed.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have a few reservations too, honestly, but even if the post wasn't already so freaking long a rec post wasn't the place to air them.

Especially given that my reservations are mostly character things that are spoilers. Well, and the fact that Hafidha and Chaz were clearly designed to be adored.

I'd be curious to hear what your reservations are - I haven't found anyone to really discuss Shadow Unit with.

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading episode 3, so I'm by no means claiming that I have the full grasp of the series yet, but I'll start by saying that it's definitely a show that I would watch more as a passionate guilty pleasure (Torchwood!) than for the great, overwhelming pointiness of it.

It's not really a proper reservation, but the writing style of each Act I bugs me. I understand that it's a series, and I understand that each new episode should be accessible to new readers/viewers, but it's reminiscent of the series I read in junior high where every character was reintroduced anew at the beginning of each book. I guess what I'm saying here is that the introduction of each story feels vaguely juvenile, and it completely doesn't fit with the storytelling for the rest of the episode.

My primary reservation is actually an echo of the reason you don't write SU fic: the source material is so freakin' good that it's difficult to expand without copying, and even more difficult to do so without jeopardizing quality. The authors themselves cite CM as an inspiration, but the blurb comes off more as an Alternate Reality telling, complete with slightly modified characters. I've been working to convince myself that the difference between stock characters and fictional people is the amount of effort and talent put into creating their backgrounds, and these guys are starting to take on their own personalities, but...Hafihda is Garcia with dreadlocks, Reyes is a slightly older Hotchner (in fact, Reyes+Faulkner=Hotchner), Brady actually is Morgan, and Chaz is Reid on so many levels. The only reason Duke isn't played by Mandy Patinkin in my head is that he was immediately overruled by the image of my English Lit prof--only to be solidified when the man quoted Eliot.

I wonder if the comment box can take this much opinion?

That said, I'm going to go read Episode 4.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think most of these things get addressed as the series goes on - the beginnings spend less time re-introducing everyone, and most of the characters do develop their own non-CM personalities (yes, even Chaz) - but you're right, a little more work filing off the serial numbers at the beginning would not have gone amiss.

Especially given that Hafidha never really stops being Garcia with dreadlocks. And perhaps less compassion than Garcia has, which isn't really a selling point.

I should add that I don't much like Hafidha, which probably clouds my judgment; it's entirely possible that she has a character arc that I just didn't notice.

Also, out of curiosity: what is a "pointy" show?

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I'm in episode five now, and, yeah, the introductions are leaving me significantly less likely to smack someone, so they have that going for them.

I don't mind Hafidha so much, she just has the disadvantage of being memorable only for being a direct copy of a truly awesome character. I did get a little excited when she manifested a few episodes ago, but it seems like that storyline kind of got dropped for the time being. The moment where everything fell into place though? That was good.

I guess "pointy" might not have been the best word, but I'm not sure there's a good one. Take TW Season One: it's not very good, but I love it anyway; the plots are weak, the characters are inconsistent, and it's primarily a guilty pleasure. Then take a show--we're going to use CM because it's the secondary theme of my commentary--which has consistently solid writing, genuine character development, and a hardcore procedural weekly story. So a "pointy" show would be an award winning novel as opposed to the book I picked up because I wanted a story to amuse me for a little while.

Also? More than any of my other complaints, the 28 year old Gulf vet ripped me out of the story. The current occupation is referred to as the Second Gulf War, but more commonly as the Iraqi War; the Gulf War proper ended in 1991. That just seemed...careless.

But I guess the big point here is that alpha, beta, gamma setup is really, really interesting. The potential for delving further into that is where the interest in the series really lies, isn't it?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think one of the big draws is the fact that they're fighting something amorphous and undefined, which provides endless fodder for theorizing. The current theories all seem to be vaguely scientifical-sounding (I mean, as much as they can be, given the circumstances), but I'm holding out for something like demonic possession, just because that would really kick the hell out of the characters' (and readers') world views.

Also - 28-year-old Gulf veteran? That is sloppy, especially given that the current war is only very rarely called the Second Gulf War (and why should it, given that the war scarcely involves the Gulf? It would be like calling the Vietnam War the South China Sea War.)

[from work]

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

SU ate my brain. I actually just spent my floor scrubbing time debating the authors' use of language with myself.

Re: [from work]

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Victory!

Re: [from work]

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

And, as a conclusion, the season finale kicked my ass.

Re: [from work]

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

*evil laugh* Yes! Yes! I knew it!

Do you think Chaz is going to go evil now?

Re: [from work]

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to form a coherent argument, but I'm exhausted (11 hour--busy--work day on an hour's sleep on not conducive to my coherence), so I'm going to have to say for now, "Please, no."

But I'm rolling real thoughts around in my head.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I've read 'em all now. Whew. I think I'm going to have to read the the finale again, because I stayed up late reading fast, because I had to know what happened. The last day scared the living daylights out of me; I was just in pieces for the characters by that point.

I think I will echo Worth and say I want to be Esther Falkner when I grow up.

Above and beyond the stories and character and writing, the concept works so well and is so very clever. I like the little snippets of extras, and the profiles and pictures (really very like a DVD box set). And the way have the characters have their own LJ's *shakes head* I first thought it was a very, very smart scheme for engaging the reader; you can interact with these characters, they are given tangible lives outside the Shadow Unit pieces. (Maybe this is one reason why there is so little fanfiction - not just the writers, but the actual character themselves could read it...)
But the thought also occurred that writing a character's diary would be a very good exercise in character development for the writer; so the LJ's have two functions.

(By the way, Chaz's has very good recipes in it. I made cookies.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Who doesn't want to be Falkner when they grow up?

I had to read the finale twice, too, because the first time I was practically skimming to make sure Chaz didn't die. Afterward I realized that making him live with his possible gamma-ness and possibly go bad was far crueler so of course the writers wouldn't kill him, but that didn't occur to me while I was reading.

If he does go bad, I wonder which character will have to shoot him. It would totally re-traumatize Brady, but I think it would be even worse if it was Worth; there'd be a lot more people collaterally damaged (psychologically speaking) if Worth had to shoot him.

Of course this could all be a cunning misdirect, and the character who goes bad will be someone totally unexpected like Sol (which would break my heart because he is Full of Awesome). And Chaz wil have to use his superpowers to bring down the real bad guy.

What do you think of Reyes? I know a lot of people think he should have done something for little!Chaz, but I think there really wasn't much he could do (of course, whether he would have done anything if he could have is an open question).

People will occasionally link Chaz's recipes without realizing he's a fictional character, which is amusing and alarming at the same time. Imagine reading the season finale with the boundary between fictional character and fellow LJ user partially collapsed. and a day between installments besides.

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

I like Brady a lot, and he would shoot Chaz if he had to, but I wonder if it might damage him beyond repair - if Worth did it, she would know there was no choice and I think she could (eventually) deal with it.

I think Chaz will just manage to deal with his powers, but I have a horrible feeling they will eat him alive, mean he won't let anyone trust him. They'll break him, right enough, only in a different way.

Reyes, I can deal with - there is certainly a cold, intellectual edge in the way he deals with gammas and his team, but I think that's his way of dealing with the world, and he feels he does things as well and as appropriately as he can. Falker provides the human touch, the balance there (as in "Endgames")

Imagine reading the season finale with the boundary between fictional character and fellow LJ user partially collapsed. and a day between installments besides.

Guh. It was bad enough when I knew he was a fictional character.