"The Killing Frost" is completed

[sholio]

It's done!

Title: The Killing Frost
Words: ~102,000
Characters: Everybody, and I do mean everybody. McKay, Sheppard and (surprise!) Caldwell get the biggest roles.
Rating: Gen; T for language and violence
Season/spoilers/warnings: Late Season 2 or Season 3; takes place sometime after "The Long Goodbye". Spoilers for Season 2 and one very, very mild one for "McKay & Mrs Miller" in a flashback to Rodney's childhood. (Edited in after-the-fact, because I wrote the scene before the episode aired.)
Summary: When a scientific mission goes wrong, the Daedalus crashes on an ice planet along with most of Atlantis's scientists and a ruthless saboteur. Can rescue come before injuries and the elements take their toll?

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3060760/1/

Comments

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much! :)

I admit that I find Caldwell's POV enjoyable to write, because the way that he's portrayed on the show is sort of ambiguous ... he definitely goes out of his way to help them at times, even when he doesn't have to (like in Trinity), but he's not part of the main "group" and has his own set of loyalties. Fanfic generally draws him as a one-dimensional baddie when he's so much more than that. So I'm glad that you liked the way I wrote him here!

I'm also fascinated by the outsiders' POV on Rodney, because he's such an abrasive guy that it's interesting to think of how he must look to people who haven't gotten to know him well enough to have seen his soft marshmallow center yet...

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Caldwell is not one dimensional at all. And he is caught between a rock & a hard place at time. Aka the Air Force & the realities of Pegasus.... So he always has tough decisions to make.

As for Rodney? There was a fic on Wraithbait that had a line in it that described Rodney perfectly. Ti went something like "A core of steel, surrounded by bitter marshmellow..." He is a softy, but to get to his sweet spot, you need to work at it. And he is still not the nicest guy around. If all you go by is his nouth, not his actions.

Ladyholder

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Ha! Bitter marshmallow -- that's a great way to describe him.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Don't forget his core of steel. Without it, he would be like Kavanaugh... A backstabbing asshole, only out for his own good. He was never really that. Not even when he was with the SGC. He was just arrogant & uninformed. Once he got the right information, he was cool... Kinda.

Ladyholder

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Actually, that *is* one of the neat things about the way Rodney's character has been developed -- as negative a character as he was in "48 Hours", nothing about the way he was characterized in that episode has ever been contradicted. Even if his development wasn't originally intended to go in this direction, they've managed to make him sympathetic while still keeping the same traits that he had in his first appearance. It's just that back then, that was all we saw of him. But it's interesting to notice what negative traits he *doesn't* have in "48 Hours". He's not a toadie, a bootlicker or a backstabber. He's just incredibly arrogant and obviously thinks of people in the same way that he thinks about abstract concepts on paper. Modern Rodney has had his viewpoint expanded quite a bit, but you can still see the same person in him.

[ladyholder.livejournal.com]

Yeah. You can. And he does slip up occasionally, so he is not pefect. I am guessing that for him, the "real world" takes a distant second to the world in his head. And the world in his head is the math & physics he loves so well. That, and who needs manners when dealing with a math problem?

Ladyholder

P.S. I really have to wonder what his parents were like. Because Jeannie is also on the abrupt side of normal....