How Much Canon? Lindsey Novak and Those Weird Pairings (mainly Lindsey Novak/Rodney McKay)

[kuwdora.livejournal.com]

I found thepouncer's discussion about deviations from canon interesting, and the replies insightful as to people's preferences on the matter. The following essay/recs have been percolating in my mind for a few months, but I haven't felt the time right to table my thoughts. Until now! I don't usually fic rec, nor meta but this is my attempt to do so in an articulate and thoughtful manner. Forgive me if it isn't.

How Much Canon? Lindsey Novak and Those Weird Pairings (mainly Lindsey Novak/Rodney McKay)
fic recs include drabbles by isiscolo, wabbitseason, trinityofone, aella_irene and a vignette by kellifer_fic

How much canon do you need to find a story as delightful, entertaining and hot as any John/Rodney or John/Elizabeth or *insert main het/slash pairing of choice here* stories out there?

One of the many reasons I love Atlantis is because of all the secondary characters in the show. More characters mean more pairing possibilities! There are those who are stringent OTPers, but even they probably have several growing-to-be-OTPs that don’t conflict with their Main OTP.

Last December, I started oddball_sga because I enjoyed reading those lesser seen pairings, and wanted to have a place that people could convene and share their Lorne/Weir, Ronon/Kate or Beckett/Grodin stories (among, omfg, so many more. Someone’s even written Kavanagh/Simpson, but for the life of me I can’t even remember who Simpson is and I don’t know if that makes me a bad fan.)

I started a drabble challenge and the first pairing the challenge featured was Novak/McKay. You can read the +10 drabbles here. The drabbles range from the cracktastic to the sweet and even plausible scenarios (in my mind) that would bring those two together or even become friends. I’ll highlight some of the drabbles I favored and give a brief explanation as to why.

isiscolo’s drabble
wabbitseason’s drabble



Rodney’s ideal woman is Samantha Carter, but I’m pretty sure that he’d have to blow up a sun before she’d sleep with him (all in all, not impossible!)—so the next best thing? Lindsey Novak. She’s not an idiot, by any means and smart enough for Rodney to not feel like he was lowering his standards by sleeping with her.

"I like intelligent men. You like intelligent women…

“And I'll be leaving on the Daedalus before we can drive each other crazy."

"Okay, Novak, I'm convinced."

I think the dialogue in this is so precise, it hits home for me. I really like how Novak knows what she wants and I can see Rodney unable to turn down such an offer when its sex with no strings attached. Personally, I’d love to see “fuck buddies” of this sort evolve from something like this, but that’s wishful thinking, unless I haven’t been looking hard enough.

This drabble made me laugh, smile and nod my head in agreement with Lindsey. You go, girl!





Probably the best characterization of a secondary character I’ve seen in a long time. AND Rodney’s voice pinged as Rodney in my mind, too.

But McKay also thoughtfully emailed hiccup remedies and medical research.

No one else bothered.

I’m not sure if I can see Rodney doing such a thing unless it were to benefit himself, so he wouldn’t have to hear her hiccups any longer when he was working aboard the Daedalus, but either way, but if you read liviapenn’s comment, I’m almost inclined to agree with her. But whatever reason Rodney would do that, it makes the drabble work.



Other Novak/McKay drabbles I enjoyed from the challenge:
*trinityofone’s obligatory drunk sex drabble
*aella_irene’s drabble that includes the oh-so-endearing holiday angle


The next pairing in my scope is Lorne/Novak. We have no reason to believe that they’ve met each other since we haven’t seen it on screen, but Novak is an engineer of sorts aboard the Daedalus and Lorne appeared at the beginning of season 2, when the Daedalus arrived. It’s not impossible to say they ran into each other during the 3 month trip.

kellifer_fic has written one of my favorite Lorne/Novak stories, called Moved to Distraction



First of all, I’ll admit I’m not sure whether or not this takes place while on the Daedalus or in Atlantis but that doesn’t matter to me because short, character-driven stories tickle my fancy.

Kellifer really captured the awkwardness of Novak that we first gleamed from her in SG-1’s “Prometheus Unbound” and continued through season 2 of Atlantis, really pigeon-holed her embarrassment and self-esteem.

Moreover, being the Lorne-whore I am, I’ve seen any number of Lornes that take me out of the story right away, but Kellifer doesn’t do what upsets me: she doesn’t pick either Marcus or Nick or whatever fanon names they have for Lorne. She already scored points with me right there. Here we find the the cool, lighthearted 2IC we’ve seen in the show and that rocks my socks off.

Moved to Distraction is probably my favorite strange pairing fic at the moment. It’s short, sweet, funny and open to possibilities. It’s a pairing I would not have normally looked for myself to read or even write had it not been written by Kellifer (whom I read religiously).

“How many ways do you know how to kill someone?”

“Enough,” Lorne replied non-commitally.

“Okay good, because if I don’t actually die of embarrassment and can’t find a handy hole in the ground to fall into, I may need your services.”



In the end how much canon do you need to support a pairing? Lorne/Parrish seems to have a fairly strong following and I was so confused that I had to look Parrish up in order to put a face to a name – they’re together in one episode for like, what, 3 minutes? Not enough canon for me, but for many it is. Another pairing that seems to have exploded in the corner of weird pairings is Lorne/Novak. In fact, lorne_novak’s community title is: Lack of Canon Does Not Impede the Creative Process.

Do you think that’s true? Does it take away from the enjoyment of a story if they’ve never formally met on screen? By using secondary characters but still staying within the realms of what we’ve seen in canon is very tough in my mind and the author who can accomplish so much with so little earns my appreciation and respect.