collaborative project - Atlantis
In honor of the last few episodes of Atlantis airing, I propose a collaborative project:
I think we should write the people in Atlantis that Wright and Co. didn’t meet.
Here's my two.
Smitty
Gareth Smythe
Everyone sees something different when they look at Smitty. The scientists see a forklift on legs, the children of Athos see a vertical playground with built in safety net, his grandmother sees her husband, in his shiny uniform and ramrod stance. At 6’6”, he towered over Weir, then over Carter. But his grandmother was five foot even and 45 kilo after a solid dinner and so he’s known from birth that woman give orders and size doesn’t give you command authority. Command gives you command authority, the ability to send good men to die for a cause that you may or may not believe in. He’s good with his stockroom.
The new troops see his size and think he’s the man to beat, the big guy, the one they can make their rep on. So he always goes to the first non-standard training practice, usually scheduled a week after influx, and watches wee Teyla bring overgrown farm-boys turned jarheads to their knees over and over and he smiles. Although he arm wrestles Ronon and doesn’t always lose.
He has a family at home and a cousin who died in the Falklands and another who’s serving in Iraq as part of the coalition forces, so he’s placid about military service and never really considered anything else. He’s always been the guy who wades into the bar fight and walks out with a wad of jacket in each hand, holding each combatant above the floor like a mother cat does a kitten. He’s conditioned by family training that you rise when a lady sits. He wept, unashamedly, when Diana was killed and also when the Queen Mum died, but he’s not particularly fond of Maggie Thatcher. He has elegant beautiful handwriting and is sensitive about it. One of very few things that will piss him off is being told that a note from him looks like it was written by a girl.
He’s straight but tolerant:
“Got outed by a reply-all email, hunh?”
“Yeah. Sucks. Oh stop laughing, you know what I mean. … We cool?”
“You planning to make a pass at me?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then we’re good.”
The gene therapy took, but he’s an uneasy flyer, so he’s the one they call to unstick toilets and argue with closets because Sheppard’s at McKay’s beck and call and the botanists get pissy if anyone uses Lorne but them. Each division has a lightswitch guy; he is Life Sciences.
It’s common knowledge that he has a crush on Teyla, but that’s not true. He watches her with a small and secret smile because she looks like his sister. He’s actually got the hots for Cadman something fierce. He will never initiate anything.
Gilley
Edward “Eddie” Gilley
I was thinking of some skinny guy in the mess, looks older than he is. He'll never be a hero, no one knows his name, but he’s easy in his skin and competent and willing to take KP and volunteered for the gene therapy with no pressure because he figured Atlantis was better than Norman, Oklahoma and it’s not like he had anything to go back to since Susie died. He watches the teams go out and sometimes not come back. He doesn’t have any real yen to go out and explore, though he listens to the stories in the mess hall and laughs as loud as any of the others. The only thing he misses are Dorals. And they were going to kill him anyway, just like they did Susie. So he’s happy to fall for Atlantis, instead. Everybody calls him Eddie unless he’s getting yelled at by an officer, spooning lentil mash on trays, ignoring McKay’s kvetching.
He trades treats to the marines for heavy lifting. Eddie’s skinny, after all. In all actuality, he’s got people that’s he’s supposed to call in to do it, but it gives him a chance to feed the beasts.
Three months into their first year, he requested a formal meeting with Weir, calendar and everything, asks Carson to attend and he wears his full uniform for the first time since they got here, twists his cover in his hands as he stands in front of her desk and says, “Look, you need to devote some resources to bringing in more protein sources. Tava beans or no, I’m not making my nutrition guidelines and that’s fudging upward from the guess-timates we’ve been having to do. My protein to carb ratio is way off and I can only spike so much milk powder into tava mush. I know that we’ve got other issues, and I’m not arguing that the mess is more important than breathing, but it’s not much less important either and you both know that. Supplements only go so far, and y’all told me not to break into the MREs for anything but off-world teams.” He draws his first breath and Weir’s nodding and he says more quietly, “Oh and bytheway, there’s a man-sized mouse stealing MRE’s. He particularly likes the beef ones. I’m not going to make a fuss about it, but if he’s not finishing them off, I’ll take the peanut butter packs off his hands. No need for it to go to waste if he’s not eating them.”
He’s got a filebox of the DoD-published recipes, but he doesn’t use them. They are pretty much good for nothing but quantity estimates anyway and around here, nothing goes to waste.
---:::---
Yes, both these guys are in the fic I just posted. Smitty is in Mail Call, too. I was going to do five people we didn’t get to meet, but I think I’d rather see yours than theirs anyway.
I’d rather like to see someone do the XX chromosome away team properly. Heck, I’d like to see something like that for the SG:U characters that Mallozzi and company seem to want to shove at us. /bitter
Please join in. Feel free to link and encourage others to play along either in comments or on their own journals, though I'd love to see the results if someone plays elsewhere.
So, who’s in your Atlantis?
I think we should write the people in Atlantis that Wright and Co. didn’t meet.
Here's my two.
Smitty
Gareth Smythe
Everyone sees something different when they look at Smitty. The scientists see a forklift on legs, the children of Athos see a vertical playground with built in safety net, his grandmother sees her husband, in his shiny uniform and ramrod stance. At 6’6”, he towered over Weir, then over Carter. But his grandmother was five foot even and 45 kilo after a solid dinner and so he’s known from birth that woman give orders and size doesn’t give you command authority. Command gives you command authority, the ability to send good men to die for a cause that you may or may not believe in. He’s good with his stockroom.
The new troops see his size and think he’s the man to beat, the big guy, the one they can make their rep on. So he always goes to the first non-standard training practice, usually scheduled a week after influx, and watches wee Teyla bring overgrown farm-boys turned jarheads to their knees over and over and he smiles. Although he arm wrestles Ronon and doesn’t always lose.
He has a family at home and a cousin who died in the Falklands and another who’s serving in Iraq as part of the coalition forces, so he’s placid about military service and never really considered anything else. He’s always been the guy who wades into the bar fight and walks out with a wad of jacket in each hand, holding each combatant above the floor like a mother cat does a kitten. He’s conditioned by family training that you rise when a lady sits. He wept, unashamedly, when Diana was killed and also when the Queen Mum died, but he’s not particularly fond of Maggie Thatcher. He has elegant beautiful handwriting and is sensitive about it. One of very few things that will piss him off is being told that a note from him looks like it was written by a girl.
He’s straight but tolerant:
“Got outed by a reply-all email, hunh?”
“Yeah. Sucks. Oh stop laughing, you know what I mean. … We cool?”
“You planning to make a pass at me?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then we’re good.”
The gene therapy took, but he’s an uneasy flyer, so he’s the one they call to unstick toilets and argue with closets because Sheppard’s at McKay’s beck and call and the botanists get pissy if anyone uses Lorne but them. Each division has a lightswitch guy; he is Life Sciences.
It’s common knowledge that he has a crush on Teyla, but that’s not true. He watches her with a small and secret smile because she looks like his sister. He’s actually got the hots for Cadman something fierce. He will never initiate anything.
Gilley
Edward “Eddie” Gilley
I was thinking of some skinny guy in the mess, looks older than he is. He'll never be a hero, no one knows his name, but he’s easy in his skin and competent and willing to take KP and volunteered for the gene therapy with no pressure because he figured Atlantis was better than Norman, Oklahoma and it’s not like he had anything to go back to since Susie died. He watches the teams go out and sometimes not come back. He doesn’t have any real yen to go out and explore, though he listens to the stories in the mess hall and laughs as loud as any of the others. The only thing he misses are Dorals. And they were going to kill him anyway, just like they did Susie. So he’s happy to fall for Atlantis, instead. Everybody calls him Eddie unless he’s getting yelled at by an officer, spooning lentil mash on trays, ignoring McKay’s kvetching.
He trades treats to the marines for heavy lifting. Eddie’s skinny, after all. In all actuality, he’s got people that’s he’s supposed to call in to do it, but it gives him a chance to feed the beasts.
Three months into their first year, he requested a formal meeting with Weir, calendar and everything, asks Carson to attend and he wears his full uniform for the first time since they got here, twists his cover in his hands as he stands in front of her desk and says, “Look, you need to devote some resources to bringing in more protein sources. Tava beans or no, I’m not making my nutrition guidelines and that’s fudging upward from the guess-timates we’ve been having to do. My protein to carb ratio is way off and I can only spike so much milk powder into tava mush. I know that we’ve got other issues, and I’m not arguing that the mess is more important than breathing, but it’s not much less important either and you both know that. Supplements only go so far, and y’all told me not to break into the MREs for anything but off-world teams.” He draws his first breath and Weir’s nodding and he says more quietly, “Oh and bytheway, there’s a man-sized mouse stealing MRE’s. He particularly likes the beef ones. I’m not going to make a fuss about it, but if he’s not finishing them off, I’ll take the peanut butter packs off his hands. No need for it to go to waste if he’s not eating them.”
He’s got a filebox of the DoD-published recipes, but he doesn’t use them. They are pretty much good for nothing but quantity estimates anyway and around here, nothing goes to waste.
---:::---
Yes, both these guys are in the fic I just posted. Smitty is in Mail Call, too. I was going to do five people we didn’t get to meet, but I think I’d rather see yours than theirs anyway.
I’d rather like to see someone do the XX chromosome away team properly. Heck, I’d like to see something like that for the SG:U characters that Mallozzi and company seem to want to shove at us. /bitter
Please join in. Feel free to link and encourage others to play along either in comments or on their own journals, though I'd love to see the results if someone plays elsewhere.
So, who’s in your Atlantis?