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

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

I do get what's being said there, but I have to say that part of me still wants to scream "BUT WHY WOULDN'T IT BE ARLENE?!" You're very right, I think, in pointing out that without knowing more about Ionian society (no, I've not yet seen The Beginning; was accidentally spoiled here, but happily so; HEADCANON IS NOW REAL), we really can't know how it would affect a female Rimmer's upbringing...

...that said, people are so much more than their gender. I honestly think it's absurd to think that any female Rimmer would be all that different from Arlene, give or take some modifications due to background. Then again, I'm very much a nature rather than nurture person. :p And keep in mind, if Rimmer is gay - we all agree Rimmer is gay yes? :p - or non-straight or non-neurotypical etc. etc., that'd obviously affect him or her too.

[metalkatt.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I think he'd have ended up like his mother. I have a suspicion that she wanted a girl at the end, and went to a different gene bank to try to get one... and then Arn happened.

I'd have liked it if he'd ended up like his (Ver and my headcanon) great-great grandmother, who helped lead the miners' rebellion against the conditions under which they were forced to work. >.> Yes, I did used to play Red Faction; hush. Ver and I had to come up with a geneaology and backstory for some of our people, and... yeah. *returns to lurkdom*

[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?

[nice-girls-play.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I saw the question and my brain coughed up "Jen from The IT Crowd, only more neurotic." I don't think that's too far from the truth -- I think Rimmer still would have born the burden of being the 'disappointing one' that didn't live up to Daddy's expectations. And Mr. Rimmer might have been frustrated even more to see his "last chance" for a young officer material lad bearing his name turn out to be a girl. Older brothers aren't much kinder to younger sisters who have been branded as the family scapegoat than they are to younger brothers. I think whether she had expectations of joining the space corps or finding a nice husband and settling down, I think she still would have rebelled (divorcing her parents, running off to join JMC) and yet longed for approval. Maybe her goals on Red Dwarf would have been altered slightly -- passing astronavigation AND finding a proper husband -- but, honestly, I don't know that they would be.

With Lister, I do think the dynamic would be somewhat different. I think Lister would be more gentle with his ribbon initially before devolving into the relationship we see in The End. I wonder if the other JMC staff would be more cruel in *their* treatment if Rimmer, given how western humor and culture loves to see social climbing women taken down.