holographic heaven

i dunno if this is just a personal interpretation thing or if it’s something a lot of fans think about, but it makes me sad that red dwarf is such an old series because i genuinely think that to at least some level they really wanted to make lister bi, because if that was their intention, had the show been made today i really think they would’ve been a lot more explicit about it. since the shows first series aired literally three months before section 28 (a law introduced by margaret thatcher throughout britain (except northern ireland), that meant that nobody could “intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality"), which lasted until 2003 in england, they couldn’t have shown anything in the telly at all. and even if series thirteens still happening, they wouldn’t be able to do anything like that even now due to worries about losing an older, statistically more conservative age group who made up the original fan base on which they built their whole show. they seemed to hint so much at it throughout the show even when they couldn’t be explicit, since the show first aired, ambiguous things that could suggest it, but never confirm: lister continuing to sleep with rimmer on an empty ship over five miles long despite their struggles in getting along, rimmer walking in on lister and kryten on the floor (with the polymorph) and immediately assuming intercourse, lister asking where he’d get two babies and he and the cat immediately looking at rimmer, rimmer sarcastically asking ace and lister when their engagement is, lister kissing peterson and chen at different points in the series, lister being the only one to hug rimmer goodbye when he becomes ace, literally just blue, and the whole conversation with kochanski about her lister being gay (which he immediately denies of himself, though not only does he never say he’s straight (as would be all too easy), but he never looks at her when he’s going “i’m not gay, i’m not” - he instead looks away, at the floor, as though it’s not her he’s talking to). even in the first book, in the opening chapters even, he has to walk inside an android brothel while looking for somebody: the owner offers him the company of a female android, to which he says he’s not interested - she immediately offers a male, to which he simply responds with a no, without a hint of irritation or offence. and there’s probably so much more that hasn’t occurred to me!! i know i went on a bit but i think about it a lot - the series is set in the future, right? the future to a person in eighties england would’ve looked very different to how someone in twenties england would see it, especially since societal attitudes were so different: not everyone in the eighties could’ve predicted that lgbt identities would have become such a mainstream and generally accepted part of a lot of western society even less than forty years later, for example. like i dunno. much to think about i suppose

I think the closest they’ve ever come to making it canon - without it being a joke or easily waved away - is in the novel Last Human. There’s a single brief throwaway line in the psychiatric evaluation of Lister’s other self, stating that he had found it impossible to form long-term relationships with either sex. Of course, this could apply to friendships, but it isn’t stated as such, and is immediately followed up by observing that he did not believe in love and doubted that it existed, suggesting the context is romantic/sexual. Obviously this is problematic in terms of queer coding villains - Lister’s other self is a psychopath - but still relevant. After all, our Lister also appears to have struggled with long-term relationships and not wanting to get ‘tied down’...

This was the first episode I saw of Red Dwarf and I think it’s pretty evident why I was a Rimmer fangirl from the word go.

Oh look, I’m reblogging this scene again. :p

Aw.  His little face in the second to last gif when he realises that Lister doesn’t get it.

So I was reading “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers” and when Lister sees this 8 ft tall big breasted scantily clad women in better than life his immediate response is to kind of sigh and be like “I’ve got to talk to Cat about his sexual politics” and may I just say what a fucking icon. Lister BEEN drinking his daily respect women juice.