Rimmer And Yvonne McGruder

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

There's a thread on TOS about the morality of Rimmer sleeping with McGruder while she was suffering from concussion.  Personally I've always assumed that if she'd been discharged from the medibay then she was sufficiently "with it" to know what she was doing.  I also accepted the "Last Human" retcon which explains a lot more about what went on that night.  (Spoilers in the thread just in case anyone hasn't read it.)

But reading some of the points brought up in this thread makes me uncomfortable.  Wondering how others interpret it.

http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/forum/messages.cfm?threadid=B9128677-1999-AFED-B439706F293BF2EA

Sorry to bring up such an unsavoury topic, but it's something that clearly had a big impact on Rimmer and is referenced quite a lot in the series.

Comments

[erinptah]

The determining factor in "is this rape?" is whether there was meaningful consent from both parties, regardless of what kind of power dynamics were going on. If you have sex with someone who's too out-of-it to know what they're doing, that's definitely taking advantage of them.

That said, I appreciate your point about how she'd been discharged, and the Last Human information does fit with what we got on TV -- a couple of offhand remarks from two characters long after the fact, both of whom have reason to exaggerate and warp the details. It's not unrealistic to take all of that and think "McGruder knew what she was doing, Rimmer's fudging the facts to make himself look more ~manly~, and Lister's assuming the worst because that lets him make fun of Rimmer."

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

By "about power" I was trying to point out that rape isn't about sex, not that power dynamics implies anything about consent. Should have made that clear!

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

I've found the relevant section in "Last Human" and it does cast a much nicer light on proceedings, as Seb P points out.

It's unfortunate that a lot more people have seen the show than read the books, because Doug came up with a pretty good reinterpretation. It's almost like fanfic, but canon.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned above, the book canon version was pretty much how I imagined it originally, except I imagined Yvonne as much more callous. :p