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funnywormz · 2 years ago

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share about lister and rimmer? 👉👈

ALRIGHT HERE I GO >:-) putting this under a readmore bc it kinda ended up being an abridged version of the history of the red dwarf universe as well as lister and rimmer lol so it's long as fuck <3 . this is mostly gonna be based on the tv series, not the books, but i am gonna use some details from the books to fill in some gaps

OK SO. the red dwarf timeline begins in the 23rd century. in this version of the future, humanity has colonised the entire solar system and beyond, and there are colonies of humans living on most planets and moons in the solar system with solid surfaces. earth still has a human population, but ecologically/geologically/etc it's been reduced to a wasteland, so humans have to look elsewhere for resources. in the 23rd century, the "space corps" is a huge mega-corporation/quasi-military force that runs most of the spaceships traveling between planets. the space corps also makes most of its money from mining minerals etc from planetary bodies in/around the solar system. the "red dwarf" is a huge mining ship owned by a subset of the space corps called the "jupiter mining corporation" or JMC, and is designed to house hundreds of crew, and is miles long. most of the series takes place on the red dwarf itself which is why this is relevant lol

lister (full name dave lister) grows up back on earth, which he loves, despite it being a wasteland. he never knows his real parents; he's abandoned underneath a pool table in a pub as a baby, and gets raised by the young couple who find him there. they live in poverty and lister's adopted dad dies when lister is 6 years old, and lister gets into shoplifting and stealing in general when he's a young kid. but his family is still pretty loving and lister grows out of the stealing and ends up taking on odd jobs here and there, and he's pretty happy despite everything.

on lister's 25th birthday, he gets plastered as fuck with a group of his friends and somehow ends up on a spaceship which drops him off at a colony on mimas, one of saturn's moons. lister wakes up there with no money and no way of getting home. eventually he runs into a space corps recruiter, who mentions that the mining ship "red dwarf" is making a trip around the solar system and will eventually return to earth. lister signs up to the space corps under the impression that the ship will be returning to earth immediately, but once he's on board he finds out that the trip is gonna take at least 5 years, and now he's stuck working as a technician on the ship for the entire time. that's how lister ends up on the red dwarf.

rimmer (full name arnold judas rimmer), on the other hand, is born and grows up in a colony on io (one of jupiter's moons), in an upper class family. rimmer's father is obsessed with rimmer and his three brothers becoming officers in the space corps, and they're all subjected to very high standards from an early age. rimmer is the youngest, and is pretty brutally bullied by his big brothers. he's also not particularly academically or physically talented compared to them, he does enjoy cartography and art, but his parents are pretty deeply disappointed in him for not living up to his brothers and they're very cold and frankly abusive towards him.

rimmer is desperate to please them, so although he isn't skilled enough to join the space corps as an officer/pilot like his brothers, he decides to join at the technician level (the lowest possible rank) and work his way up by passing his astronavigation exams to become an officer. however he ends up failing every single exam he takes, and ends up spending years on the red dwarf as a shift manager in charge of the guys who maintain the ship's vending machines lol.

rimmer and lister first meet when lister is assigned to be rimmer's roommate on the ship. they DO NOT get along. all lister wants to do is fuck around and get drunk and have fun, and he's pretty grubby and kinda lazy (actually he's just depressed basically lol but yknow). rimmer is career-driven, up-tight, and generally an obnoxious asshole with no friends who insists on being pedantic about EVERYTHING. they spend most of their time bickering. it's made worse by the fact that rimmer is technically one rank higher than lister and is his shift manager and uses this as an excuse to try and boss him around constantly despite lister barely giving a fuck lmao. they have to work together most of the time bc they're coworkers and there is a little hint of friendship there but it's. pretty small.

things continue like this for a while. however, it all changes when lister, while on planet leave on miranda (one of uranus's moons) ends up finding a little pregnant stray cat who he calls "frankenstein". he smuggles her back onto the ship with him, despite it being illegal to take unquarantined animals onto the ship. for a while he keeps her a secret, but eventually the captain finds out about her and calls lister to his office. he tells lister to give up the location of the cat so she can be euthanised, but lister refuses. as punishment for refusing to give up the cat, the captain sentences lister to be imprisoned in stasis (a kind of suspended animation) for the rest of the trip back to earth.

after lister is put in stasis, rimmer is given the assignment to repair one of the ship's drive plates by himself. this is far outside of his area of expertise, and not something he can do by himself, so he really should have delegated the task to someone else. but instead, because he's so desperate to be perfect and impress his superiors, he tries to complete the repair by himself.

this goes horribly wrong. the incorrectly repaired drive plate ends up leading to a radiation leak from the reactors powering the ship, which immediately spreads throughout the ship and kills everyone, including rimmer himself. lister, however, survives, because he's in stasis so the radiation doesn't reach him. his cat also survives, as she went down into the ship's hold to give birth to her kittens, and the hold was sealed by the ship's computer before the radiation could reach it.

the jupiter mining corporation, believing the entire crew to be dead, leaves the red dwarf to drift off into space as retrieving it would be more trouble than it's worth to them. and so, the ship drifts aimlessly, through the solar system and into deep space.

3 million years later, the radiation on the ship has returned to a safe level. the ship's computer "holly" (who has gone mildly insane after spending 3 million years alone) revives lister from stasis.

they also bring back rimmer as a hologram. holograms are popular in the 23rd century, and are like perfect digital copies of a dead person and their personality. holly could have brought back any of the red dwarf crew members as company for lister, but she decides to bring back rimmer because lister has the most shared conversations with him out of anyone else on the ship (despite them supposedly hating each other).

as well as lister and rimmer, there's also the cat (a humanoid creature that evolved from the descendants of lister's pet cat frankenstein over the past 3 million years), and kryten (a service android they salvage from the wreck of another ship), but im gonna focus on rimmer and lister here for now lol.

at first, after rimmer is brought back as a hologram, things between him and lister are probably even more tense and aggressive than they were when he was alive. after all, rimmer has all of the same neuroses and Issues as he did as a human, but now he's fucking Dead and a digital ghost of himself and the entire human race has gone extinct in the 3 million years since he died. and he copes with this by being Even More Obnoxious.

however as time passes, they get to know each other more and eventually come to be best friends and care abt each other deeply despite also somehow still hating each other lol. lister is pretty smart and very brave and kind despite his tendency to be lazy. and rimmer, underneath all the bitchy rude asshole behaviour, is really just a clingy sad little guy who wants to be loved. as the series goes on they do form a kind of mutual respect for each other. and they care abt each other.

the series spans like 30 years (both in irl time and time in the series), so you get to see the characters go from being dudes in their 20s to dudes in their 50s. they both mature and grow up somewhat, especially lister. and they're still roommates after all this time, and rimmer lets lister sleep in his bunk when he's too drunk to climb up to his top one lol.

the Gay Tension with these two is really. something else man. rimmer (as well as being heavily autistic coded imo) is commonly read by the fandom as a Deeply Confused and self hating gay man. as a younger man/hologram he's pretty defensive of his masculinity and makes a big show out of being a Heterosexual Man despite it clearly being an act he puts on. as he gets older he seems to make peace with it more though and is content with doing more "feminine" things and no longer rlly performs attraction to women.

lister is like the Ultimate Bisexual Transman Guy to me without either of those things being actually canon lol. there's a lot of unintentional transmasc coding with him. he's also shown to be pretty affectionate with his male friends when they're still alive (telling one of them he loves him and kissing him on the lips at one point lol). and with rimmer he's like. blatantly attracted to and flirting with an alternative universe version of rimmer they meet at one point. he puts his hand on rimmer's upper thigh not once but TWICE to comfort him. when rimmer leaves the red dwarf crew for a while he misses him desperately and literally has a dream about telling rimmer he loves him and making out with him. i could go on.

the latest red dwarf episode/movie thing has a really sweet scene where rimmer is considering turning himself off for good bc he feels worthless and is doubting his personhood due to being a hologram, and lister gives him this whole sappy adorable romantic speech abt how he's like the sun and rimmer is like the moon and basically implying that they need each other to exist and they complete each other and it's enough to snap rimmer out of it. they're also so sweet with each other in general in that episode and lister is So Proud of rimmer at different points for being himself and being brave. it's so sweet it makes me melt just thinking abt it AUGH.

in general they're basically canonically soulmates. that one meme that's like "they would find each other in every universe" but for rimmer and lister it's not even ironic they're literally a pair in every single alternative universe we've seen in the show so far. and at this point they've known each other for so long and lived together for so long that the old married couple energy is Very Very Real. idk i could keep typing this post forever bc there really is So Much there to talk abt. but ik this is already way too much information and you're probably not even gonna read it lol so i will stop myself here.

the tldr is that red dwarf is one of those series that's technically a comedy but underneath the humour it's deeply sad and tragic and kinda depressing. but rimmer and lister and their love for each other and their friends are what holds it all together. the universe is cold and uncaring but they Love each other. throws up. ok im done

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^ oh also everyone should watch this amv btw

#red dwarf #wouugh. sorry anon that's so fuckig much text #i read this ask and was instantly just like. Autism Mode Activate

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