Awesome New Female Character Week: Ramona Flowers

[sandoz_iscariot]

My pick for Awesome New Female Character Week is Ramona Flowers, the mysterious Amazon.ca delivery girl from Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim series. Ramona travels through the subspace dimension to deliver packages and is never seen without her subspace suitcase (storage capacity: unknown). Both are put to good use when Ramona's Fourth Evil Ex, Roxie Richter, shows up and wants to cut Ramona's boyfriend's head off. A fight ensues! On rollerskates.

7 pages from the fourth volume, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together.

Comments

[kagome654]

I'm pretty sure Ramona indirectly addressed her role in creating 'The League of Evil Exes' a few times. It never went as far a series of apologies (which it probably should have for Matthew, Lucas, Roxie, Ken and Kyle), but she clearly wasn't proud of her behavior back then. Considering Scott's own less than stellar dating history I sort of figured the point was that both of them had screwed up pasts, and they had to accept that about themselves and each other before building a true relationship together.

Also, did she actually cheat with Roxie? I thought they were just kind of hanging out...

That said, I sort of agree. In a comic populated by generally unlikable people (Even fan favourite characters like Wallace and Kim can act rather unpleasant at times. In retrospect only Stephen Stills and, to a lesser extent, Knives, seemed like pleasant people. I suppose that's just the nature of the comic) Ramona never quite demonstrated any qualities that screamed 'a girl worth fighting for.'* That seemed to be a theme though, since Scott didn't really seem to deserve the attention he received either.

*Of course all women (and men) deserve to free from harassment from past romantic partners, even if it means epic battles, but you know what I mean...

[bliumchik]

That was the impression I got as well - I figured what he "saw" in Ramona was the same thing he saw in all those childhood "fights" that he remembered differently until he defeated Nega-Scott. the whole story could be summed up as "two people learn that they are kind of dicks and start to take responsibility for their actions as symbolised by starting a new, less douchey relationship"

[kagome654]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[meatwhichdreams]

That's an excellent way of putting it, and something I hadn't been able to put together myself until I read through my whole lovely stack of Scott Pilgrims one after the other. I think one of O'Malley's messages is that "every body is a douchebag at some point in their lives - yup, even you, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky-Scott-Pilgrim - and especially towards the people they date. Don't hate yourself for being a douche, and don't ignore the fact you've hurt people whether you meant to or not. Accept your Nega, and stop being a douche."

I ultimately loved the character of Ramona because she wasn't the perfect Girlfriend shining down on everyone from on high. She had to go through the same grueling personal trials Scott did. I don't think Scott deserves Knives, but I think both Scott and Ramona ended up earning their second chance with each other.

In conclusion: people are complicated! Stories that acknowledge that are awesome!