I am incredibly sentimental. So much in fact that I relate with other's experiences, especially through media. Whether it be from books, television series, movies, music and even video games, I take along lessons learned and I really feel for the characters if they are well developed and experience emotion. That being said, I have an incredibly long list of media that I really, really like and think that we can take something from. Some are lessons of deep impact, a realization of our subconsience that penetrates our very soul, while others are less... serious?
An old tale that has been told too many times tells of two wolves in each one us, one that is good and the other is evil. The fight ceaselessly, and the one who wins is the one whom we feed. That being said, and that being true I believe, means that everything we do has either a good or a bad motive. Even simple, small choices like what color of shirt we are wearing ultimately has a good or evil side to it. It is not always a fair fight, for better or worse.We may be choosing between to evils or many goods. It is also true then, that the deeper we look into our selves and our emotions the more extreme to one side or the other they will be. It is with great carefulness then that I explore some of those deep feelings, because of their large polarity.
Abstract... something I feel I have always connected to but never have understood. It is dangerous, as the abstract can be twisted by evil forces to have us believe that we are less than we are: Children of a King. It is important that as Princes and Princesses we are able to look at ourselves and our incredible minds and bodies to analyze and enjoy, but we cannot forget that they are tools on loan from our Father in Heaven, and that they are not in fact ours yet.So then, while we explore some of the emotions and functions of humanity it is with great care and respect towards the Almighty Creator that I do not go too deep into them, and that I very cautiously explore emotions. It is not a bad thing to do that, we have been given these bodies for a reason, but it is just that we do not and can not understand everything about them, and the darkness will try to fill in the gaps with lies.
That being said, the first on my list will be a more worldly tale. It is about a jobless Canadian twenty three year old who falls in love with a girl. Yup, it's Scott Pilgrim. I am talking about the comic books, not the movie. I liked the movie, but there is so much time that they rush through, leaving a ton of important character development behind, creating only shell of the original story. Warning, if you have not read it yet, this does contain some spoilers and uses parts of the story.
One could argue the entire story is completely symbolic about love and getting to truly love someone. The first, and arguably most obvious symbol is Ramona's seven evil exes. They represent the luggage of past relationships and the battles that both need to do to make sure they stay in the past. Each person we have a relationship of any importance or intimacy with stays with us, and becomes something we must deal with for the rest of our lives (even with the Atonement we still have to deal with it, it just becomes something mortal and temporal). Scott's ex was a little different, however, being more internal rather than external actually does just the opposite, and arguably he totally distorted the relationship, remembering something that never was. This is better represented through Nega Scott much later.
This is where things get really abstract. The way that Ramona's exes are represented are by physical, fightable people, representations of them themselves. This means she is over them except for the inevitable side effects of breaking an intimate relationship. She is willing to move on, and therefore her problems become tangible 'objects,' something that she can conquer with the right help. She needs Scott's help of course, love takes two. Scott's ex is a very different situation however, she is not represented as a conquerable person, but instead is a part of his head. She exists of course, but the ex that haunts Scott is entirely in his mind, something much harder to conquer. The reason for this is a complex mix of decisions of both Scott and Envy (his ex) made that distorted and destroyed the relationship. They created a different Scott and Envy than the real ones, and therefore they fell in love with their imagination instead of one another. When reality crashed the physical (but not loved) Scott and Envy parted, but their imaginative creations of one another stuck, and they never really got over them. Nega Scott represents the truth, but Scott was so bent on being the one who was wronged instead of a mutual rift that it took years literally for him to finally accept the truth. He hurt as much as he was hurt, and while they originaly may have loved one another it warped into an idolship instead of a relationship. The fight between both Ramona and Scott and their exes is really a testament to their different characteristics but even more so of HOW they dealt with something going wrong. Ramona left, forgot it, and moved on, completely washing her hands of the situation by leaving it. Scott, on the other hand never left it, and instead wallowed in his mess creating a fantasy where he is always the innocent victim. Neither are correct but the fact that they conquered both together (in an epic and stylized odyssey that many take to be the real story instead of a mere representation of a rather common relationship) really makes the ending with them going away in the portal an even more touching and incredible story. They won't live happily ever after simply because they wont have problems, they will live happily ever after because they have learned to trust and love one another and to be able to work with one another on their issues. That kind of complete trust takes time, and that is probably the biggest reason the movie does not and cannot get it like the comic book series, but I like it anyway.
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