Linking movies in VSE but not graphically altering them? There are many instances where I'd like to pre-process a movie into another file and reference it later, or bring in an existing movie and process that into the final. 

In this case, I have a longer movie, and I simply want to process the scenes in their own context and then link them all together after. 

So how do I link to movies and NOT have them processed again (I understand any image processing to be destructive in nature). 

Perhaps this is my confusion and no destruction happens -- but can someone set me straight on this?
The VSE is non-destructivee for any movie file you link into it. Just make sure that rendering outputs to a unique file name (otherwise it could overwrite an existing file and still be destructive to that particular file).