But... this is the whole premise behind the Matrix. That everything
about
the Matrix is fake. In XStylus' fic, Trinity is trying to get Akane to
realize her family is anything but that. You see a similar scene in
"The
Matrix", when Morpheus is showing Neo the truth about the Matrix, after
he's been freed from it.
One interesting thing that I noted was that we never knew Neo's family in
the movie, and since they were left out of the equation, the subject of
letting go of family never was addressed. I thought this was too damn
convenient for Neo, and I wasn't going to let Ranma and Akane off the hook
as easily. Just keep reading... you'll like what you read.
Neo [in the movie] emphatically tells Morpheus that what he's saying
is impossible, continually denying it, and finally demands to be taken
out
of the construct. With Neo, it's the whole world. With Akane, it's her
family.
I didn't quite think of it that way... but, indeed that's a good way of
looking at it. With Ranma and Akane, they're used to REALLY strange things
happening, and the possibility of it all being fake is, strangely enough,
one of the LESSER oddities they've come up against, so I'd like to think
that they wouldn't have -too- much trouble letting go. Letting go of their
family, on the other hand, is a different story...
That's where I think the importance comes in. We don't know Neo's
family in The Matrix. He, more or less, lives in a tiny little room filled
with things that looks exactly like my dorm room. His family is never a
point of contention, and, from what I can tell, (As I just popped the DVD
in) he doesn't really have anyone who could be considered friends.
But love is still felt by the people in the Matrix. Just because they
don't have their full human bodies and are simply thought embodiments in a
realistic three-dimentional construct doesn't mean that their brains don't
work I could accept being told that the world isn't real (personally, I
think we're just the dream of a omnipotent three eyed barterfish) but I'd
have a much harder time being convinced that whatever I felt for a person
was false, that hate or love or any emotion did not exist. Morpheus pretty
much tells Neo that his life wasn't real, not his thoughts or his feelings,
and if the Matrix created all that for the people living in it, then all of
humanity would truly be batteries. The Matrix still runs off of people's
brains.
So...is XStylus right in his feelings on how Ranma and Akane would act
at being yanked out of the Matrix? I think so. I think they'd be unhappier
to be told that their family was false than to be told the world was false.
Akane felt love for the other Matrix constructs in her family, Ranma felt
love for the Panda and Nodoka, and they both love each other.
----------------------------------
Jerry / Patch Monkey
maddhatter@earthling.net jlevine@wam.umd.edu
http://maddhatter.cjb.net
"You can find true love in the Konan Empire,
but no fast food." - Miaka's Lesson