My absurdly long take on Rimlaine that is years overdue (1/10)
A few forewords to begin with:
So…who would have guessed such a niche ship as BSD Rimlaine would have prompted me to write an entire essay speaking about it and everything surrounding it? To an extent, not even myself, but upon dwelling in this fandom for long enough and trying my hand at explaining my personal thoughts on it here and there, I seemed to have realized very shortly that none of this would manage to fit into one single textpost I could write and publish the very same day, and thus we are here now. I’m hoping I managed to cover everything from top to bottom, given context for those in the BSD fandom who may not be too familiar with the ship itself and given my own perspective about this pairing, but before I start, I naturally have to give out a few disclaimers.
Firstly, this has, by no means, been written to tell anyone or even dictate what to think of this pairing, I would like for this to be established very clearly. I am not claiming all of this as the absolute, indisputable truth, as at the end of the day, a fair amount of it is nothing but my own opinion and nearly every single topic in this world has a lot of nuance to it, that of course including this one, where I will most likely not manage to cover every single existing point out there even if I try. However, certain other parts of this essay were indeed written with the intention of bringing some things to light, even if your own thoughts are ultimately up to you to decide, and this doesn’t mean I don’t believe in my own view nor do I have any reason to change it.
Continuing on from that, it is only right of me to give out a fair warning. If you hadn’t known me prior or it wasn’t immediately apparent from the nature of this work, I will not be taking kindly to the ship at hand whatsoever, nor will I express any support for it. Aside from me having my own criticisms surrounding it, it is also somewhat of my personal discomfort, and while I have chosen the route of attempting to take the least forceful path I could find with my wording to not turn this into a mindless or overly serious hate rant without proper context, this does not mean I will be giving it any credit or appreciation. If this is something that you do not wish to read for any reason you may have, I advise you to stop right here, and I thank you for your presence nonetheless.
Furthermore, I also wish to clarify that I absolutely did not write this with the intention to call Rimlaine shippers harmful, “toxic” or anything of this kind. None of this is targeted at any individual whatsoever, it is only my own point of view as from what I have seen, many things surrounding this pairing are not quite brought up enough, if at all, even though they should be. Whilst I will certainly call the ship itself unhealthy at least a few times, it is not meant to attack anyone who finds enjoyment in it. There could be a myriad of reasons for that, some of which I will go into further down the line, and I do not believe anyone, or at least the vast majority of people, mean any harm engaging in it. My sole intention is to perhaps bring a little more awareness to some issues I do not see mentioned practically anywhere, not to ruin people’s enjoyment of fictional media just for the sake of it.
Lastly, some people might fully disagree with this notion, but I don’t believe I have much right to explicitly label this ship itself as “toxic”, and thus I will not be doing so anywhere in this minor dissection of mine. It is not only because that word has been misused and joked about so much in the past to the point it began sounding ironic or like a complete exaggeration, but also because of my personal reservations on this note. Regardless of whether I think of this ship as such or not, as someone who has seen several people label entirely harmless pairings, characters or content with that word instead of elaborating on what they find unsettling or wrong about the given media and subsequently not being taken seriously for it, I would not like to accidentally mislead someone into thinking I will only be throwing around heavy baseless accusations without reason. Even so, if you choose to read any further and come out of this finding it to be exactly that, I will absolutely not be trying to convince you otherwise, as with full disclosure, I do believe it to be so, which also serves as my final warning to folks who may still be here purely to upset themselves.
Now, with all that said, the links to all parts are below.
GENERAL CONTENT WARNING: Aside from Fifteen/Stormbringer spoilers, there will be some discussions of topics such as abuse, suicide and BSD-typical descriptions of violence. I will do my best to specify these in their respective sections, but please be warned before going into this as I could miss some.
[Part 1] — Is there a “perfect” ship?
[Part 2] — What exactly is Rimlaine?
[Part 3, 3.1, 3.2] — Fifteen, The fight and Chuuya’s memories, Paul’s appearance
[Part 3.3] — Fifteen’s response
[Part 4] — The real-world relationship
[Part 5.1, 5.2, 5.3] — Arthur’s memoir, Chuuya’s flashback, the epilogue
[Part 5.4] — Stormbringer’s aftermath
stormborns
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
blakekathryn
dailybridgerton
kaledo-art
tangentwithtanner
