Rag Times

(via Bryan Lee O’Malley, creator of the Scott Pilgrim books):

Q. According to Barney Stinson in the show How I Met Your Mother, in every relationship there is a reacher and a settler. The reacher is the person in the relationship who is dating someone outside of their range. The settler is the person who is dating below their range; in other words, they could do better. In all of Scott’s relationships (Knives, Envy, Ramona) who do you think is the settler and who is the reacher?

A. first of all, this is a horrifying question. Taking relationship cues from a ‘womanizer’ stereotype character on a tv sitcom is a bad idea for your life. This ‘theory’ is reductionist and shallow. It’s a false dichotomy based on arbitrary rankings of real live people. Yes, you can boil anything down to two types of whatever, but that doesn’t mean it’s the ONLY WAY the world works. The world and the people in it are infinitely complex.