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#argegegehehhhhh finally another rant post
ceo-of-kimona · 3 months
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So- I wanna take a second to just talk about Kim for a bit. She’s pretty nifty right? A top notch blorpo.
Probably her most famous feature is her consistent aesthetic which I can only describe as “fuck you I hate you die die die”
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But of course- like many of the other Scott Pilgrim characters, this “cool” aspect to her is an extremely thin facade to so many issues.
Now while it would be extremely fun to talk about those issues in detail, I want to keep focus on this “misanthropic punk girl” front that she puts up and how it relates to who she is inside. This sarcastic, snappy mask is probably what’s responsible for her being one of the more “cool” characters in the comics, as at first it is extremely convincing.
By seething at everyone and everything around her (especially Scott, our POV character) she’s able to keep her friends, and by extension the audience away from the truth of who she really is. That being: a scared lonely girl who can barely get over anyone or anything in her life and is constantly getting herself stuck in ruts. She isolates by pushing away those who even come barely within her orbit.
But, what I am here to posit is the question of what lies beneath that? More specifically, what is Kim Pine like when her angry walls are broken down and the broken girl inside is healed? Who is Kim Pine beyond the misanthropic mask and the trauma? Who is she when she’s just okay?
My answer to this is simple: a huge fucking dork.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Kim’s entire personality we see is a mask; that would be ridiculous. While I do think a lot of her aggression towards other people is just her way of isolating without needing to be accountable for it, she is still Kim. She has a sharp tongue and sarcastic remarks ready on command. Her wit is unrivaled. She can destroy anyone’s self esteem in seconds with just a few remarks. But when she’s open and close with someone (perhaps a certain Ramona flowers) she’s completely disarmed and thus barely has any “cool factor” left. Come on, she’s literally in a band named after a Mario enemy. Of course she’s at least a little bit nerdy.
This is a big thing: Kim’s mask provided most of the “cool factor” that she had. This is a running theme within the comic; many of the “cool” parts of these characters range from thin facades to unhealthy coping mechanisms. Scott dates a high schooler and generally puts on a cool guy rockstar facade to hide his feelings of inadequacy and loneliness, Ramona has a facade of being a cool girl who’s always running away so she’s always “new in town” when really she’s slowly being sealed within her own mind by her own self hatred, Knives dates Scott in order to deal with her dissatisfaction for her normal everyday life and adopts the ninja persona in order to compensate for her obsession with Scott, Wallace sleeps with a bunch of guys to fight his ongoing crush on Scott, and Kim puts on a “I don’t even like other people so it’s fine that they run away from me” facade in order to make her abandonment issues and loneliness look cool.
I’d like to propose that when she needs to leave this prickliness to be with someone she loves, she doesn’t really have much “cool” left underneath. She rambles, she nerds out, she awkwardly stumbles over her words when having a conversation more in depth than snarky remarks and disappointed sighs. In short, she’s just a dweeb like the rest of the cast. And we know that Ramona loves dweebs.
All of this healing and pure emotional honesty: it’s something Kim has never had to preform in her entire life. Ramona is quite possibly the only person in Toronto to ever see the real Kim Pine: the nerdy, affectionate, caring, and sweet girl that she truly is. She’s the only one that was able to not see her as this girl-rage monster and look into her soul, and within her soul she only saw beauty. Most people who’ve loved her have only been with her whilest seeing the angry facade thus their love was doomed to be surface level. The closest anyone has ever gotten to breaking through was Scott, and he was too dumb and way too much of a high schooler to even get close to letting the light in.
But Ramona not only saw her ferocity and loved it for what it was, but also was able to see deeper into her and that only made her love Kim even more.
And perhaps, Kim had done the same for Ramona.
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