Book Recommendation: Shadow Unit
After reblogging that important PSA about Spencer Reid, I went back and looked through my book recs tag and realized I’d never told you all about Shadow Unit.
Shadow Unit is (was) a long-running collaborative writing project by a group of friends who all happen to be SFF writers. It’s essentially Criminal Minds fan fiction, but with paranormal elements. They took all the best parts of Criminal Minds (ie, the characters and their found family relationships with each other), turned them into OCs, fleshed out their character development over time, and introduced the idea of a mysterious virus-like thing (that may or may not be sentient) that gives some people superpowers during moments of extreme stress. Unfortunately, the virus also seems to encourage most of these people to use their new powers for evil, giving rise to the magical serial killers our team is trying to stop. The stories are all available online, but I love how well the ebooks turned out (they make it easier to properly notice all the between-the-episodes details the authors worked in, like in-character blog posts and other smaller vignettes), so I recommend going that route.
What does this have to do with Spencer Reid? I will never, ever see Reid’s Shadow Unit analogue, Chaz, as anyone other than Matthew Gray Gubler, I can’t help it. So now, whenever I think about Reid and want to revisit him (but without the pain of a love interest storyline that ends tragically and then gets dropped after a single episode of recovery time), I want to reread Shadow Unit.
Bonus: Canon queer characters! We get a lesbian, a gay guy, and a polyamorous pan lady. Plus, you know, a fairly diverse cast in other ways as well.
Warning: This series is addictive! When I started them, I could not get enough of this family of characters, leading to many a late night of “just one more story.” The series has ended now, though, so at least once you start, you’ll know you won’t have to wait for more to come out.
Slightly more serious warning: The fandom while the series was ongoing coined the abbreviation of ECR for Emotionally Complex Reaction, since it was so often needed when talking about the updates. So just, like, be aware.
