Red Dwarf Headcanons

Hi! Hello! Make yourself at home, if you even want to do that sort of thing.

This is blog primarily for people requesting/submitting headcanons, putting my own headcanons, and talking about headcanons. Genuinely any characters and whatnot. I probably will take longer on the One Episode characters and with characters like Mcgruder i will be Making It All Up.

With my own headcanons I tend to try to be moderately accurate (with some wiggle room). I might probably maybe have a bias towards Lister though, I will admit that. If you request full The Boys From The Dwarf (shakes hands), Holly (usually Hattie's) and Kochanski will most likely be included. (Maybe Ace for fun because I like him lol)

My List of Headcanons if you're curious (i don't super stick with these lol. The only headcanons that I'm strict about is Cat being aro and Kryten being ace. and I'm very flexible with gender headcanons but i'll probably bring up Lister being transmasc and Rimmer being transfemme the most)

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Boundaries !!

I am willing to do x Reader requests but they might be lame because I try to stay somewhat true to the characters.

I like any ship!! I'm feel most well versed: Lister/Rimmer, Kochanski/Mcgruder (made stuff up), Kochanski/Lister, Ace/Wildfire, Cat/Rimmer, and some others

NSFW requests are also fine

I'm comfortable with most things to be honest. I've very seriously tried to figure out which of the crew would know where/what the clit is and also went through every scifi series I know and what the main four thought about it. Literally throw anything at me.

If I don't feel like I know enough about something I might not answer

NOTHING POLITICAL OR RELATED DISCOURSE IN OR OUT OF FANDOM this is just supposed to be fun

Just to be aware: I will delete any ask I don't feel comfortable answering. DON'T WORRY ABOUT MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE, if you don't know it's not your problem. I will try to update this frequently if I do find something I'm uncomfortable with. Right now, It's close to nothing.

Only one mod currently! (and idk how I'd get more)

Lister: Didn't cry thaaattt much before the accident but would be more open about it at times. Post-accident if Lister didn't try to distract himself or numb his emotions he'd be very quick to cry. Will cry in front of people but doesn't really like to. He can be a bit of an ugly crier if he gets to sobbing territory. snot and tears. Its really hard for him to stop crying when he starts. it sounds so wet oh my gosh, he's like choking on tears. just yeah. BIG crier, especially directly post-accident.

Rimmer: Will do anything to hide himself away before crying. Even then he tries to cry quietly. then he cleans himself up, checks if he's red in the eyes and goes on his way. He's gotten a little more comfortable crying in front of Lister post-accident. but he doesn't much, mostly because he's "the one keeping lister sane". he never cries in front of Cat or Kryten. both just the lack of emotional intelligence compared to Lister and he overall has the fear of being made fun of (mostly Cat who he's never seen cry ever)

Cat: Hasn't cried since he was a kid. Not in a toxic masculinity sort of way, in the psychopath immune to stress way. The worst he gets is whimpering and wailing when he's hurt. He does cry right around when he had the kids, with his hormones all out of wack. it feels weird and he doesn't like it. hides away the entire time after the kids. kind of like in the early days where he'd hide if he's sick or injured, same logic as a real cat. predators can't get me while im sick if i hide where they can't find me (i think as he becomes more a house cat he actually gets annoying when he's sick. immediately throwing himself on the closest bed and wailing about it, not on topic lmao). but anyways, Cat doesn't cry. When others cry he's confused and upset by it and wants them to stop and probably will avoid them.

Kryten: Can't cry in the traditional sense, and he wasn't programmed with it initially. But he 100% can wail, we've seen it. he definitely makes a lot of sounds and he can get shakey and whatnot but obviously no tears. dry as fuck crying. i'd like to think he tried cry when he was human a bit. idk if he cares for how wet it is but i think he'd like the catharsis

TWIRLS HAIR ! I'm so glad you asked because ive been obsessing over chen and selby (and a little bit petersen) im not sure what ive already mentioned because its been a hot second but im just throwing everything on here that i can think of

Selby

In his mid 20s, just a bit older than Lister

He has one younger brother but doesn't talk to his parents much

He works in medbay as a nurse

He's Black and is from Yorkshire

This is in his little ref image but he has a tooth gap :) and he's also the tallest of the group

Both him and Chen have been working there quite a bit longer than Lister and Petersen because of that are attached by the hip

Like they would be devastated if they were apart for too long

It concerns a lot of Selby's boyfriends

On that point Selby is gay and cis

The first and only person he's out to for awhile is Lister. Gay and Trans solidarity (Lister hasn't accepted he's bi at this point)

Idk if a newsletter would be a thing for JMC but at some point for some sort of pride month thing they bring up the queer people on the ship. And Lister and Selby are on it and Selby tracks down Lister right after his work shift to show him it and absolutely crack up about it

When Selby finally tells Chen he acts so aghast and offended, seeming almost in a homophobic way until Chen hits him with the "And you never even hit on me !?!" and Selby shoved him and laughed and told him to smeg off

Selby was the first person in the friend group to have more than just a five minute heated argument (cough, Chen cough cough) with Rimmer and that's because of Rimmer's frequent exam anxiety massacre that ends up with him up in medbay

Rimmer being absolutely out of it every time he's in medbay and Selby being mildly nice to him (while also making fun of him) makes Rimmer have a mild crush on him every time he's in that state

To quote my friend Sugar: "He would keel over for any mild nice gesture."

Also to quote him because this was funny to me:

When Rimmer is back to his normalcy (however normal that can be) he goes back to really not liking him (or any of Lister's friends)

anyways Selby loves soft rock and some very specific punk music that Lister's shared with him. He doesn't listen to music often but when he does it's this.

Have I mentioned how absolutely attached to the hip he is with Chen? Because he is.

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Chen

The Token Cishet of the group. He is genuinely completely straight and he's had his best mates to test that on and yeah no he only likes women and being a guy

I feel like that's important to note while he has the absolute bromance of the century with Selby

Once again attached to the hip, concerning to Selby's boyfriends. Unfounded tbh because they genuinely don't have romantic feelings. They're just ride or die

He's somewhere in his 30s, just a bit older than Rimmer

He's also smidge taller than Lister

He is Taiwanese and has two older sisters

He is a chef in the kitchens and he hasn't gotten a single complaint in years

Because he has been blasting heavy metal the entire time he's in the kitchen and can't hear a single fucking thing

Petersen and him swap metal songs quite often. And also he likes both heavy metal and cunty sort of pop music

People who aren't friends with him thinks he has absolutely no sense of humor but thats just because they see him working most the time

His friends know better

The first time he meets Lister he's rooting around the kitchen for extra food (it's hard to get anything more than what's given at lunch and at the vending machines and it stresses Lister out not having stuff stored away in his bunk) and Chen comes back after his shift because forgot something and they just make eye contact for a hot second and Chen's just like "I hide an bag of the extra pudding cups in the back of the cabinet," then they became bonded for life (as long as they're on this ship together)

Despite what it seems, Chen is often the one to drag Selby up to do karaoke

I have this scene in my head inspired by "Im a bitch my name is Robert" but directed at Rimmer (tbh this got me pulled into my Dispatch AU but thats a thing for another time) and in which Lister has to stop Rimmer from killing Chen

Rimmer and Chen know basically nothing about each other and have a hate/hate relationship

Chen often will bring Selby food it he didn't have time for lunch on his shift, usually uses that time to shit talk and gossip for quick minute

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Petersen

Don't have much for him because he already has quite a lot in canon compared to the other two

But me and Sugar were entertained by the idea of that night where Lister gets crazy drunk and gets a tattoo with Petersen's name is also where they both came out as transmasc (Lister a trans man, Petersen as extremely extremely butch)

Despite Petersen mostly liking women and Lister not treating his attraction to men/mascs seriously they have in fact locked lips the most (largely when drunk or Lister is way too excited)

Petersen doesn't have as close of friendship with Selby as Lister or Chen do but he does consider him a good drinking buddy

Petersen and Lister are best friends in only this sort of environment

Lister also is the smartest person Petersen knows and Petersen is the most unsuspecting conniving person he knows (not smart persay, just weirdly really good at getting out of trouble)

Chen and Petersen work together in the kitchen and share music and fuck around a lot

Also just to throw some of my own into it for fun:

They are actually well respected amongst the crew, partly because they have a VERY strong union, partly because they are very cute and actually quite skilled (helpful handymen little critters <3)

Lister loves them immediately upon meeting one. He knows most of them by name. They skive together and play poker on breaks. Regularly pull pranks on Rimmer pre-accident.

They stand Rimmer about as much as anyone else onboard, but he's kinda-sorta even lower than them rank-wise despite being human, so they count it as a trade-off (they don't have to deal with the most useless repairs).

Rimmer abhors the notion they are above him and is very happy they technically have to listen to him after the accident. The scutters generally just grew in pity for him over the years of working alongside and are doing their best to be thoughtful and do the good thing humouring the asshole ghost man.

If they ever told him about union privileges for people w/out high-end education, he'd be down with them sooo fast. An absolute nightmare for Hollister. Negotiating would be bloody. Rimmer and the scutters as brothers in arms of bureaucratic violence.

Every time we don't see them for big chunks of time in the show it's because they're busy doing their own side thing. They have lots of hobbies, with clubs and everything. They even hold club fairs. There's like a great social life for all the tech on the ship, they're constantly discussing this or that thing. They have fandoms lol

GAWH honestly i'm not sure how i can follow this up these are SO good but i'll try my best

Honestly on the point of fandoms, the canonical do sort of with their fascination with I believe it's John Wayne. They LOVE cowboy movies and the like. They don't experience attraction by any means but their fixation on that one actor is the closest they collectively have to a crush. But they can all be pretty consistently found in the theaters watching whatever cowboy movie they found tucked away. (the fan club mail they got in is a compilation of a lot different movies along with other fan stuff). The little area above the theater where they put the movies in and turn them on is only accessible via a set of stairs so it took a good couple of years before they could figure out how to get up them and at this point there's no part of the ship that don't have access to.

Generally they are of the same mind about stuff, they are individuals and have their own names and sort of personalities but they very rarely differ in opinions or have any arguments. they're all connected to the same terminal and are interconnected that way. allowing them to silently communicate with each other. which was originally for the point of efficiency (they can be in completely different parts of the ship and still ping each other back and forth) but they mostly use it for gossip and snickering back and forth about something and most importantly complaining.

I think pre-accident they didn't dilly dally as much. They'd probably play the odd card game here and there but they kept to their jobs pretty well. but when the accident happened they kind of stopped almost all together. Holly gave them jobs every once in awhile to keep everything operational but if Holly didn't know about an issue (no more reports put in by the crew) it just didn't get worked on, so it gave way to a LOT of free time. and that's where they started a lot of their fucking around. they honestly got pissed when Lister was released and Rimmer got turned on because now they can't be doing whatever they want anymore (to an extent). and oooh they hated when Kryten came onto the crew but I'll get into that later. Eventually they did start getting along with Lister because he actually respected them and never asked them to do anything. Eventually they do get into the kick of things and start doing their jobs around the ship and, along with their bustling social life, that's kind of the reason we don't see them for large gaps.

About a week before Lister got out of stasis Holly called most of the online skutters to work and it was very hectic making sure important shit was actually turned on, and hell, that OXYGEN recyc was actually working so that Lister wouldn't die immediately from leaving. (the only oxygen still on was in the storage decks where the cats were). Even when Lister just got out, despite how quiet it was for him, there was a lot of hustle and bustle.

The skutters WERE able to see and interact with the cat people when they were on board but they tried to avoid them. Because a lot of the kids loved to hunt them. Mostly young kids because they were fairly easy to catch. The adults thought it was incredibly dumb to be hunting these though because it was a waste of time with them looking kind of ugly and having no meat on them. The Cat when he was a kid did actually catch one when he was younger and kept some the wire braided together as a bracelet.

All the skutter's have an "accent". In machine talk. Only other machines pick up on, and if a human can read machine talk they don't really pick up on an accent. They don't have like an accent in like any human sort of way, but if they did I believe in my heart it would be thick Brooklyn/Irish accents.

On the point of talking THEY NEVER TALK TO KRYTEN. they like to pretend they're not advanced enough to talk at all to other machine and only Talkie Toaster and Holly know that's a lie. but neither tell Kryten. the skutter's really don't like Kryten. He always talks down to them and is telling them to do this and that (somehow more insufferable than Rimmer about it. they pity Rimmer along with not really liking him. but Kryten acts way more uppity when telling them what to do and acts like his a better machine than them. and this is what they SHOULD be doing, to be a GOOD machine. annoyed that they're putting morality into doing their work). often they're snickering and gossiping between each other about Kryten behind his back. as in the book, they will often find it funny how Kryten believes in Silcon Heaven when they never had a belief chip installed. when Kryten brings it up they do the machine equivalent of rolling their eyes. their dynamic is of a group of blue collar workers and their micromanaging supervisor.

There's a lot of skutters. like. a lot. around the thousands. Tons of them aren't actually up in operation and turned on, a lot of them are in storage and the like. Usually there's around 200, 100 up and running around the ship. But crushing a batch of them (like in Better Than Life book) is still debilitating to the work flow as it's an entire operation to just turn new ones on and set them up. Getting them out of boxes, turning them all on, connecting them to the terminal and downloading everything takes a couple of hours. This isn't that interesting of a headcanon but it is to ME!!