The Unusual Suspects - Introduction to An Unusuals Fic
My daughter and I began watching The Unusuals on Netflix this summer because of our shared love for Jeremy Renner. We generally don't go for police shows, but this one roped us in from the start with its quirky characters and dark humor. We watched all nine episodes in a stretch, marathoning all Friday night, and then our Roomie managed to find the tenth and final episode Saturday afternoon.
But when we reached the last scenes of the tenth episode, we were devastated. "That can't be it," we cried. "How can a show this good get cancelled?" Our frequent lamented phrase over the next few days was, "There're only ten!?" (Ironically similar to the summer before, when we watched Doctor Who and David Tennant's 10th Doctor departed for Matt Smith's 11th and we repeatedly wept, "There's only Ten!")
Weeks passed thus. We re-watched the half-season of Unusuals episodes, falling even further in love with the characters, only to be once again cruelly deprived of any closure at its end.
At the beginning of July, I asked my daughter what she would like for her birthday. She listlessly responded with her usual: drawing pencils, a new wig cap for her Wendy cosplay, maybe a Cthulhu plushie. Then a day later, she hit me with a request: Write an Unusuals story that would leave our beloved characters in a better place than where they are.
As with all such requests, it started out small. A one-shot, I thought. 20,000 words at most. I'd write a buddy-cop piece with Walsh and Shraeger trying to outwit a master thief before he can pull off a major heist. But this story very quickly shifted focus from Walsh and Shraeger to Delahoy and Banks, and the master thief morphed into a criminal mastermind of Gotham-esque proportions. Now a month and nearly 50,000 words later, I'm wrapping up not a one-shot but a five part series that has made my daughter laugh and cry and growl angrily at me from across the breakfast table.
So, I'll be posting the story here, on tumblr, on my website, and on fanfiction.net. It's still a work in progress, on account of school and RL, but it will get there. My next post will contain the actual first part of the story...
But when we reached the last scenes of the tenth episode, we were devastated. "That can't be it," we cried. "How can a show this good get cancelled?" Our frequent lamented phrase over the next few days was, "There're only ten!?" (Ironically similar to the summer before, when we watched Doctor Who and David Tennant's 10th Doctor departed for Matt Smith's 11th and we repeatedly wept, "There's only Ten!")
Weeks passed thus. We re-watched the half-season of Unusuals episodes, falling even further in love with the characters, only to be once again cruelly deprived of any closure at its end.
At the beginning of July, I asked my daughter what she would like for her birthday. She listlessly responded with her usual: drawing pencils, a new wig cap for her Wendy cosplay, maybe a Cthulhu plushie. Then a day later, she hit me with a request: Write an Unusuals story that would leave our beloved characters in a better place than where they are.
As with all such requests, it started out small. A one-shot, I thought. 20,000 words at most. I'd write a buddy-cop piece with Walsh and Shraeger trying to outwit a master thief before he can pull off a major heist. But this story very quickly shifted focus from Walsh and Shraeger to Delahoy and Banks, and the master thief morphed into a criminal mastermind of Gotham-esque proportions. Now a month and nearly 50,000 words later, I'm wrapping up not a one-shot but a five part series that has made my daughter laugh and cry and growl angrily at me from across the breakfast table.
So, I'll be posting the story here, on tumblr, on my website, and on fanfiction.net. It's still a work in progress, on account of school and RL, but it will get there. My next post will contain the actual first part of the story...