What Would Female Rimmer Be Like?

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

No, not Arlene, much though I enjoy her as a character. Someone posted a prompt in the Kink Meme about what Rimmer would be like if he'd been born female in the RD universe (but presumably with the same family background): http://starbuggers.livejournal.com/317.html?thread=78909#t78909

My instinctive reaction is that's a really difficult prompt because I find it really hard to imagine. So many of Rimmer's personality traits come from his family's expectations of what he's supposed to be and achieve as a "red-blooded heterosexual male" (heavy sarcasm). Would female!Rimmer even have joined the Space Corps or would she have been pressurised into marrying a "nice boy from a good family" and producing the next generation? Would she take refuge in meaningless affairs like her mother?

I'm working on the assumption that Io, as seen in "The Beginning", is basically the universe's 1950s throwback. Rimmer's classmate Wendy wears a similar outfit to his mother in "Dimension Jump" despite the difference in age. However, the fact that Rimmer's class is mixed does indicate that it perhaps wouldn't be impossible for female!Rimmer to divorce her parents like Arnold and strike out on her own. It would certainly make for a very different dynamic with Lister.

Whilst I've never read a female!Rimmer fic apart from those involving Arlene, I have read a few with female!Lister (not Deb), which I find much easier to imagine. I suppose it's because he exhibits quite a few qualities often stereotyped as female, for example his open sobbing at romantic films. (Although I'm female and have never done that.) :p

If you made it through my ramblings, have this link to Diminua's fic with a female Lister. The difference it makes to her dynamic with Rimmer is remarkable. Link to part 1; each chapter has a link to the next: http://diminua.livejournal.com/31604.html

Comments

[saylee.livejournal.com]

I posted that prompt, and now I'm feeling silly for doing so, because your assessment makes sense. I wanted it precisely because I've seen a few female-Lister AUs but never a female-Rimmer AU, unless we're talking Arlene. What I was imagining was a Rimmer who had somehow ended up in the same place, but whose beliefs about men and women and sex were different because of different experiences, and whose dynamic with Lister was consequently different, but didn't know how to achieve that myself, and I think you point out precisely why.

I wonder how you would get that Rimmer into the same situation our Rimmer is in - as hologram companion to the last human alive. Would she still have divorced her family at fourteen? If so, then she might have joined the Space Corps to have something to live on, but would she care about her career in the same way if she hadn't been pressured to be an officer? Or would Mr Rimmer have pushes a daughter the same way, if only because his military dreams meant more to him than gender roles (or if he'd pressured her towards the Space Corps, while her mother pressured her to be the same type of woman she was)? Would it make a difference if all Rimmer's brothers were sisters?

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

No need for embarrassment; I understand what you're getting at and you've given me a lot of food for thought. I have all kinds of scenarios buzzing around my brain, but at the moment they're refusing to coalesce into fic.

So, imagine a female!Rimmer who looks like Arlene, but hasn't been brought up to regard her own gender as superior. It raises many questions - does the JMC assign bunkmates of different genders together? You would think so that far in the future, but would Arlene worry about sharing quarters with male Lister? Would she keep that fact from her parents?

Would female!Rimmer have been pushed to join the Space Corps, but only as a means of meeting a male officer and making a "good" marriage, if she was the only girl?

Alternatively, what if, after three girls, Rimmer's mother made a last ditch attempt for a son with the gardener (possibly with her husband's tacit approval). When a fourth daughter arrives, they take out their bitterness on her, causing her to divorce them at 14 and try to show them that being female doesn't mean she can't be an officer.

Please remember, all these theories are working on the "Io is 1950s Britain" scenario which was very heavily implied (arguably shown, given the costumes) in "The Beginning". I imagine that male Lister would still be our Dave, completely bewildered at his bunkmate's behaviour. But possibly softer in his attitude because we have seen he has a side to him which you can call "chivalrous" or mildly sexist depending on how generous you're feeling.

Why yes, I have thought too much about this. ;)