Fic: New Years - L/Koch, R/L (imp)

[kahvi]

Title: New Years
Pairing: Lister/Kochanski, Rimmer/Lister (implied)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Despite my wishes to the contrary, I don't own Red Dwarf. I don't make money from this either.
Spoilers: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.
Notes: Set between Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life. That'd be the books, in case you were

Comments

[musicisavictim]

So glad I read the book a couple weeks ago, before I read this. It made the whole thing realistically creepy.

[kahvi]

It's a creepy concept, but so well-written in the book, I think. I wanted to explore some of that. Thanks for reading and feeding back!

[notalwaysweak]

*twitch* I love book!RDfic as much as the next person, but this is eerie. Not because of Kris turning into Rimmer ('cause that's totally realistic, not creepy), but just the vibe of it all. BTL creeped me out anyway, though.

Good point on him not knowing what he was shagging, though!

[kahvi]

Yeah, it's a profoundly nightmareish concept really, isn't it? Very Twilight Zone-y. Always creeped me out when I read it too. You know that scene in Infinity when two year old Bexley (or is it Jim) takes the car out to get milk? I mean, it's funny, but it scared the crap out of me. It's the concept that Lister (and Rimmer, and Cat, but that's less and even less surprising) is able to accept these horrible absurdities because he wants to believe they are real. That icky self-deception was what inspired this. I kept thinking "but why did he go back?"

Thanks for reading and feeding back!

[notalwaysweak]

I think that considering the alternative -- living out his life almost alone in space, certainly without Kochanski (or so he would have thought at that stage), with Rimmer driving him insane and the Cat providing no support whatsoever -- Lister probably would have been quite happy to stay in BTL until he died. Absurdities aside, he would have been desperate to live some semblance of a normal life, and while babies driving cars and changing each other's nappies, not to mention Kochanski's calm acceptance of that sort of thing as fact, would have been fairly niggly-wrong, I think he could push past them for the sake of not accepting his life on the Dwarf and/or Starbug as reality.

[kahvi]

For a while, maybe. And while I would reluctantly agree that he might stay there until he died, that's mainly because I don't think he would have lasted all that long. In a way, that would have meant giving up, and Lister doesn't give up easily. Doing so... that might quite easily have killed him, in the end. I will agree that he seems fine at the beginning of BTL the book, but he's very good at self delusion, which is probably part of the reason why the game has such a good grip on him. It's worse, in a way, than Rimmer's self-delusion; Lister's reasoning in my story here is flawed. Rimmer's fantasies are so absurd that even he realizes they can't be right in the end. Besides which, he ruins things for himself. Lister doesn't.

But I digress. The way I see Lister, hiding away from reality in an AR game is very counter to his nature. He would fight it, because he would feel it was fundamentally wrong. Consider that by the end of Infinity, his main concern once he realizes it's a game is to get out. Nothing can tempt him any more (

[willdew]

Eerie. I love the subtext so much. It is dark and disturbing and hot all at once. Bonus points for novel references! :D

[kahvi]

I do love the novels. Thanks for the feedback!