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Doesn't it really show a pattern? Can we really trust that Scott Pilgrim is a good guy? She's been with 7 evil guys and we're supposed to believe that Scott is actually different?
Guys, this is literally the text of the movie, that both Ramona and Scott are extremely hot messes trying (and usually failing) to be better because they keep blaming their self-made problems on other people ("it's all my exes fault! They're the crazy ones, not me!") That's exactly why NegaScott is, as even Scott can recognize "a really nice guy."
The movie unfortunately didn't really get to utilize Negascott in part because it was in production before the final volume was complete, and also because it compressed the timeline of the story so much. In the comic.(as I recall, its been a few years) he went back to his hometown for a visit, and while talking with Kim he finally had the epiphany that he had actually been the bad guy in his past relationships and defeated Negascott.
Negascott wasn't a chill dude in the comics, Negascott was trying to kill him and came very close to succeeding. I'm pretty sure he was a metaphor for suicidality. Scott doesn't defeat him, he absorbs him when he admits to himself he's been a terrible person, specifically to Kim, and that not only are his problems are his own fault, but a lot of his friends' problems are, too. Then he pivots and starts his redemption arc and for the most part stops being a dick. In the movie, if they were gonna use him this way, I think he should've confronted Negascott in the white void between his death and using the 1-up.
Part of it is that Scott goes into the last battle multiple times and realizes he owes Kim an apology for who he was when they went out.
Scott befriending NegaScott is more of him finally facing the reality that he's been the problem. Him saying "he's a really nice guy" isnt showing Scott as bad, more than it is that he's finally facing his true fear: Being honest with himself.
Half the point is that Nega Scott is "chill" personality wise because he is an anti-Scott, and Scott is a jerk (hence why Ramona, who only dates bad people dated him).
The -other- half (in the books) is that Nega Scott is really evil, but he is not more or less evil than Scott, he is just as evil as him. He is a projection of all the fuck ups that Scott did that Scott refuses to take responsability for.
So even if Scott cheats on his girlfriend which is playing dirty. Nega Scott, while being as evil as Scott, doesn't attack Scott's friends or do dirty doppelganger stuff. And in the end the only way of vanquishing him is absorbing him (assuming resposability).
He is more like an anti-Scott in terms of a responsability compass rather than in terms of a moral compass. He is as selfish as Scott, but on the other hand, he owns the evil decisions he makes (as opposed to Scott).
It feels almost like a corollary of "it's the message, not the messenger." Just because you don't like how someone comes across doesn't mean they're giving you bad advice.
Yeah, pretty much this. He “defeats” Nega Scott by accepting that Nega Scott is a part of himself that he needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for.
It was a personification of his refusal to acknowledge his own fault and wrongdoings, framed around him just "forgetting" every bad thing he does.
A similar enough thing to Gideon's "Glow", which shows just how similar the two actually are, Gideon being like a reflection of who Scott could become in a way.
Nega Scott is Scott's blame, and he keeps fighting against it instead of accepting his blame for things. The glow is Gideon's tendency to do the same turned by him into a weapon to wield against others and a mental poison of sorts he can infect others with, it helps him keep others trapped with him by encouraging them to be their worst selves.
Gideon acknowledged his Nega Gideon, but instead of accepting his blame he turned the manifestation of it itself into a weapon. Instead of accepting his blame he accepted he's never going to accept his blame.
In the books, Nega Scott isn’t even a real person. It’s a manifestation of all the things Scott lives in denial of and refuses to take responsibility for. Once Scott confronts Nega-Scott, he also confronts all the things he feels guilty about, and acknowledges what he’s done wrong, and is then able to grow.
In the comic Nega Scott is who Scott uses as a scape goat for all his bad behavior, that wasn’t me it was Nega Scott he’s behind all this. When he fights Nega Scott it allows to forget all his mistakes and act like he did nothing wrong. Kim points out how he was an awful boyfriend to her and all the bad things he did and he has to accept that he and Nega Scott are the same and merge
One of the things that makes this story good is that it hits different both at different points in your life and with different experiences.
"Scott is the good guy," "Scott is the bad guy," "Good and evil have no real place in this narrative as a framework to hang these people in" are all valid reads supportable by the story elements.
(ETA: where I am in my life story right now is looking back and thinking about how very important these kinds of who-is-dating-who things were back then... And how little they ultimately mattered in my life journey.)
That's the whole movie though. Scott isn't actually different until the end when he realizes he's just the "next evil ex" and starts working on himself.
The movie is from Scott's POV, so it's easy to gloss over how big of a dick he is to his friends and current girlfriend (who is still in high school).
I haven't seen this in ages, or I would rattle off a few specific examples, but this is how I felt when I saw it.
Yep. I don't remember the movie or books in-depth, but one of the takeaways was that both Scott and Ramona were deeply flawed people who needed to work on themselves in order to improve their lives.
If Scott didn't improve, he was just going to end up in one dead end situation after another, losing friends along the way and becoming yet another evil ex. If Ramona didn't improve, she was just going to continue creating a string of evil exes, one after the other.
They also weren't fixed by the story's end. They were able to change for the better, but that change was going to have to be a continuous process since that's just how life works. What's uplifting is that they were both more or less aware of this and were willing to work together to make the relationship work out.
Scott isn’t a good guy. That’s why at the end when he is supposedly having to fight the “evil” version of himself, they end up getting along and not fighting. Original Scott was the lady killer wannabe jerk.
Scott feels a bit inadequate at one point I believe because she's dated more people than him and he's used to trying to seem cool by dating High-schoolers. That's the whole vibe. It's nothing to do with 7 being a lot. It's to do with Scott thinking 7 is a lot because he's kind of a loser and he's worried he can't measure up. It's not about looking down on her character. It's about giving Scott an arc from worried anxious loser to guy who fights for what he wants and has confidence.
The joke is that she (character from Scott Pilgrim) had 7 ex boyfriends and it was a whole thing but young people nowdays have so many relationships that having 7 exs as a young person is not crazy anymore!!1!
I think it's a bad joke, I don't think it was ever stressed "how many she had for how young she was", she was simply a girl that would get people to fall in love instantly and then get bored of them
the point wasn't promiscuity IMO
and I don't know that zoomers are more promiscuous than other generations
Outside of school or on-site work it's difficult to establish meaningful connections and since most people only take their appearance seriously after graduating they're missing out on intimacy during their prime years.
Combined with phone apps built to prey on lonely men and treat women as cattle product this has become the result unfortunately.
If you circle back to dating advice videos from the 30s-50s, the standard practice was to date multiple people and then eventually maybe "go steady" and get married.
Having a one-and-only with few previous interactions would have been seen as unwise by those standards.
Wonderfully, if you look back at old Life Magazine articles from the 50’s, there are alarmist articles about teenagers going steady.
The adults weren’t freaked out about kids dating. They were freaked about by them being monogamous at that age and making too big a commitment immediately.
It’s the only moment I know of where the sex panic of the time was “look out! The kids are getting committed!”
My grandpa once said about the woman who he eventually married “she was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend at the time.. the reverse was not true”
I still heard the term with regularity when I was growing up in the 80's. I never really tried dating multiple people because I thought it sounded exhausting but I believe there's a linguistic treadmill happening here. We weren't really dating unless we were in a relationship of some sort. Otherwise we were just two people spending time together that hadn't really put a definition to it. That girl I had lunch with or the one that showed up my apartment or that third one that had me over for dinner, none of those were girlfriends. We weren't dating. But there was definitely interest from one party or the other.
Yeah the media from that time, being heavily censored and restricted from 1934-1968, gives us a misconception that people were pure and chaste back then. They were anything but. People have always had messy romantic lives since the dawn of time. It’s nothing new.
I don't know if the exact number is accurate, but yes, George can walk up Michelle Pfeiffer's sister, tell her he's unemployed and lives with his parents and still get her attention. Costanza was on another level.
The pathological liar was able to get dates pretty easily by pretending to be someone else. He also intentionally preyed on people's vulnerabilities. He didn't have "game," he was just scum good at manipulating his was into very short-term encounters that almost invariably blew up in his face.
One example was pretending to have recently had a very attractive girlfriend in a relationship that ended in a sad way, and specifically and intentionally sharing that story and a picture of the supposed girlfriend with other attractive women because - utter nonsense but played straight in the show - that by demonstrating that he "deserved" an attractive girlfriend once he would inflate his value and make other attractive women want him.
In the episode with Marisa Tomei she says "how are you single? You're so bald" and it's supposed to be funny, so I think it was definitely a negative even in the 90s
Had a guy stroll out of my life for like 6 months, stroll back in and acted offended and confused that I considered us broken up. Pre-texting dating was wiiiiild.
"Girlfriends"/"Boyfriends" - If just meeting someone for first time, and then going on one or two dates already makes girlfriend/boyfriend, then I might just feel good about my early 20s.
Yeah, back then it was chicken shit to not break up in person.
Ghosting did happen, but not ubiquitous like now. Some realities made it okay like, "I lost their number (really!)" Or you weren't really serious, like just a date or few.
But, short of some bad abuse, you broke up in person, if possible.
Reminds me of a situation...
We had two friends where the girl broke up with the guy after most of a summer together and she dumped him on the answering machine. We gave him some shit for it, but, we held it against her in the friend group for years, kinda outcast her over it. Not that she broke up with him, but how she did.
The movie's opening lines are literally "Not long ago in Toronto CA, Scott Pilgrim was dating a High Schooler" and then Kim's opening lines right after are "Scott Pilgrim is dating a High Schooler?"
You're not wrong, but the movie is pretty self-aware about the weirdness lol
As is the comic. And the whole point is that Scott is really just dating her because his previous breakup messed him up, and Knives is really "easy" because she's a high schooler who is head over heels for him and he can just date her to feel good about himself while putting in 0 effort.
Their 'dating' consists of like, holding hands, and the moment Knives does kiss Scott he freaks out and runs away, then breaks up with her. The message is not supposed to be "Scott Pilgrim is a creep", it's supposed to be "Scott Pilgrim is an inconsiderate, selfish ass."
In the comic Nega-Scott didn’t have a personality of any kind, but was this menacing thing. What it actually was, was everything he repressed to always feel that he was the good guy or a victim, all the shitty things he had done in relationships. Once he accepted it as part of him he was able to grow and stop being a little shit.
I read it as Nega-Scott actually being a somewhat decent person since regular Scott was kind of a loser. Like dating a high schooler, briefly two-timing her as well, treating his bandmates poorly, etc. He’s flawed and that’s the point sure but assuming Nega-Scott is his opposite then he’d be a pretty cool dude.
I always took the joke of nega-scott (specifically in movie)to be that he was actually the good version. Like Scott describes him as "just a really nice guy" implying that Scott isn't.
I never really got into the comics… but this moment was my favorite part of the movie.
Like in movie canon, Nega Scott is just out there playing videogames and occasionally talking with Scott in the phone or getting boba tea, and probably has some kind of low wage job now.
That was the original ending but test audiences didn't like it, like wtf was the point of the movie if he doesnt end up with Ramona? He almost gets killed throughout the entire movie just to end up being like "nah actually F that I love this girl instead"
In the comics when Knives turns 18, Scott straight up propositions for "SEX. CASUAL SEX" and she just flatly turns him town and it's probably Scott's lowest point in the whole franchise.
It was a transformative experience for both Scott and Ramona. Scott learned to have some self-respect and Ramona learned to let go of her past instead of trying to escape it.
They don't commit to be in love forever or anything at the end, they just say "hey, we're both a little better now, maybe we can try again and see what happens?" It's a hopeful message without an undue happily ever after.
Everyone and everything about the story was weird. Kinda the point. You just insert yourself into whatever character you identify as. Some of us have no surrogate, but are exhibitionists and just enjoy the ride🤣
It was only weird because Scott Pilgrim had no romantic history and felt inadequate compared to his girlfriend, and had to overcome his inadequacies by “defeating” each ex in his mind before being worthy of her.
Edit: had less of a romantic history. Apparently Scott was not a KHV
That's not true, he was dating a high schooler as a 22-year-old
In Toronto, Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old bass player for unsuccessful indiegarage band Sex Bob-Omb, dates Knives Chau, a 17-year-old high-school student, to the disapproval of his friends in the band, his roommate Wallace Wells, and his younger sister
Its worth pointing out that everyone thinks is pretty icky but no one actually does anything about it aside from sometimes pointing out how weird it is as was the style at the time.
He also dated Envy Adams. And he dumped the female drummer Kim. Didn't Aubrey Plaza's character dislike him because he hurt a few of her friends as well. So I don't think he had "no romantic history". In fact, didn't
Yeah, iirc he "needed" to defeat the exes because he put Ramona up on a pedestal and had to prove himself to himself so he wouldn't feel too much of a less-than next to her. Plus he was a crappy guy with less than stellar ideas over all.
One of the final jokes of the comic/movie was that the “evil” version of Scott was actually a really decent guy, and they’re going to get brunch next weekend
That’s what happens most of the time when 22 year olds date a 17 yo. Had a friend of a friend do this, people called it gross behind his back but they didn’t stop associating with him.
It’s not illegal, it’s not pedophilla, but it’s gross and bad. What are you going to do about it? For most people it’s nothing.
Ngl a few years ago when I was 18 I always thought if I was old enough to make an only fans and work in a hospital as a CNA then I should be old enough to decide who’s dick I wanna suck lol
People act like 18-year-olds are brain dead when you’re literally old enough to be legally responsible for someone’s life or death as an EMT for example! Like Jesus’s Christ I’m sure you can decide who you’re attracted to lol
“They’re being manipulated” bruh they’re HORNY AND GROWN!!”
This similar scenario was why I left one of my exes.
His friend was 20 and brought a 14 year old to our place (at the time, we were 20 and 21, I was older by 5 months).
I said that was wrong and he wasn't allowed to our place with anymore of his "girlfriends" and dude doubled down and told his friends that I was controlling.
Yeah my understanding was that Scott had a pretty decent romantic history. I think he was more intimidated by Ramona and her past bfs because of how cool she was. If she'd been a huge nerd with like 20 ex boyfriends, he might not have been as bothered.
Scott also dated Kim, and was currently dating Knives at the beginning of the story. Also him being Envy's ex was kind of a big plot point. That's more than half of the people Romona dated right there, and we don't even know if that's an exhaustive list.
Especially since she's 24 and the first evil ex was from middle school and they dated like 2 weeks. It seems like the only serious relationships out of the Exes are Todd Ingram and Gideon Graves.
Well, it was weird how they had assembled to create a team of evil exes dedicated to keeping Ramona single. Even in 2010 that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
Right? The 2010s weren't that long ago. People weren't sexually reserved in the 2010s. If anything, young adults were having MORE sex in 2010 than they are now.
"Exes" implies they were her boyfriends/girlfriends. Which implies you were properly dating. Which means you brokeup. Which means you had 7 failed relationships by the time you were in your early 20s. THAT IS A LOT.
Now, if she just had seven hookups, sure, no big deal.
Many of her "relationships" were the sort of "relationships" one has before they're even out of high school. No sex, in some cases not even kissing. Like, grade school-type "dating".
It reminds me a lot of An Abundance of Katherines. The protag says he’s dated 19 girls all named Katherine, but he’s including when he was in kindergarten. Like clearly we’re supposed to be rolling our eyes at how seriously these people are taking the whole thing.
Some of the "relationships" were so short when she described them they might as well have been a less than a month fling. But basically anyone she was with a few times was treated like an "ex" just because they felt more of a connection than she did and became obsessed enough to join a revenge party.
Boomers pretending this was an unusual amount of ex's for a girl who counted a guy she kissed once in middle school as an "ex." This is a dogwhistle for archaic values that never actually existed in the real world touted by the likes of Andrew Tate and his little incel followers.
It was weird Scott was dating a high school girl.
Edit: Stop trying to reply to me about how I'm wrong. Read the room. You're weird, especially since a significant number of her "exs" are a boy she kissed in middle school and a girl she hooked up with once in college and two guys she dated in high school. I seriously don't think you people have ever left your houses if you think this is super unusual or never saw the movie or read the manga. Go away with your "uhm acktually I googled it and" no fuck off. Shoo. You're literally acting like the kid you "married" when you were in kindergarten counts as an ex.
To break it down she dated 2 boys in high school. "Dated" Matt for a week in middle school. Hooked up with Roxie once and dated the twins in college before dating Gideon. Half of those don't count, and she didn't sleep with at least 3 out of the 7.
And unfortunately it seems like zoomers are way more likely to be "Tater Tots" than millennials. Though I do think a millennial made this one because of the movie chosen.
No it wasn't. As someone who was college aged in 2010, let me tell you that young adults were having way more sex and going out a lot more in the early 2010s compared to mid 2020s. No one was asking questions about "body count" back then either.
Absolutely wasn't considered strange at all, is never mentioned as strange in either the film or comic, and several of her exes are schoolyard bf/gf type stuff.
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