Professor incognito apologizes

1. One of the biggest symbols in this story is the idea of  “secret identity”. In this story, it is a real secret identity (one of a super villain trying to be a normal guy) but what it symbolizes is something everyone can relate to. It’s having two very separate personalities, the one you are when you’re alone, and the one you are when you’re with a loved one. What this story hints at is in order to have a healthy relationship you must let your significant other see both sides of you.  Another thing this story symbolizes is how tiny arguments and disagreements can add up and make relationships fail. These are exaggerated for this story “Okay, elephant-in-the-room time. I, for one, choose to welcome our new Martian

friends and overlords, and this is a personal choice I hope you'll be able to respect.”

Because the tone of the story is humorous, it takes a normal “political” controversy between a couple and blows it up to be about Martians, even though this is symbolic for a very real relationship problem.

2.  The biggest connection I made with this story was actually a connection with the hinted feelings that the fiancé was having. I’ve met people who are very personal and don’t like to talk about themselves. They are “closed books” so to speak. You have to try very hard to get to know them, and feel like no matter how many of your questions they answer or don’t answer, something is missing in your relationship or personal connection. Dating a person like this can be difficult and leads to miscommunications.

 It was also very easy to connect with all the feelings described in this story regarding relationships in general. Personally, I can’t say I’ve ever discovered that I was dating my secret arch nemesis, but the aspects of relationships are all totally there and very real. Especially when you have a busy life full of projects that you need to work on and a significant other is trying to introduce you to a friend of theirs you don’t like. It’s all very real. 

3.  If I were going to make this story, I would really think of an exact situation that the characters have been in. In the story it seems to jump around a lot and he seems to have multiple different plans for his girlfriend at the end. IS he going to make it up to her? Put her on an asteroid? Make her mine salt? Dress her in alien clothing? All of the above? It also seems like there’s no EXACT sequence of events that occur between the characters it just jumps around from different incidences, and not much of it really correlates. I’d love to see more of his relationship with his “mortal enemy” hinted at in the beginning. I really love this piece as a short story but if I were going to change it’s medium I’d probably make it an animated film or video game. I could see it working really well as a film with each story part going back into another flashback taken from the woman’s perspective of him and her memories of the stories he’s telling. I can almost see it shot by shot. It would be really really cool. Reminds me of Megamind a little bit.  I love the idea that they were both dating each others secret identities and in the end even though he’s found out who she is he still wants to make it work. How fun.