Zets19 does this really interesting artful dodge
where Baku admits that code is not wonderful
and that there are issues with it, but he says
that he makes the moral stance when Nox asks
him, why are you still fighting for code or why
are you still serving code, I think is what he
says. And Baku says, I'm still trying to figure
out which parts of code are evil and which parts
of code are good, but... I know this. The people
who are hurting people and causing them nightmares,
giving them nightmares, whatever, are bad. And
I will fight them is the implication. He does
it as he's getting his belt on. And what I really
like about that is, one, it's great in its clarity,
in its moral clarity. If you don't know what
to do, if you're confused about what's right
and what's wrong, all you can do is... Unfortunately,
I'm going to be quoting Frozen 2. Do the next
best thing. When you're in an imperfect world,
in an imperfect system, and you're in an imperfect
actor, that's all you can do is do the next best
thing. What is the next thing you can do? What's
the best thing you can do? What's the best thing
you can figure? The best doesn't mean it's good.
It means it's the least bad thing, right? So
I really appreciate that moral clarity and that
idea of... Figuring out how to do this and how
to figure out or figuring out how to be part
of this imperfect world. And I don't want to
belabor that. So I will stop now and I will shift
to something that's really interesting is that
there's this wonderful emotional moment, which
I hope to talk about in a short where Baku looks
like it almost looks like he's stopping Nem from
killing herself. She's got this knife and she's
going to go after the nightmare as part of the
death game. But I think that. And she's kind
of thinking, if I die in the dream from trying
to fight this nightmare, maybe I'll die in the
real world, and then I won't be the source of
nightmares anymore. Because Nem hears that she
might be the one who is the source of the nightmares,
and that it could all be coming from her subconscious,
which doesn't make her culpable, but it does
make her a part of the problem. She hates to
think that she's a part of the problem. She hates
to think that she's hurting people. And that's
part of her big, deep, wonderful conversation
that she has with Baku. And it ends with him
telling her, but you make people happy. You make
people happy. You give them hope. You give them
what they need to keep going, being part of everybody's
dreams. Because we know this from the beginning
of the series, from episode one, that everybody
has dreams with them in them. And this is why.
We don't know if she wanders through everybody's
dreams or if she only wanders through the dreams
of people who have nightmares. But she went missing
four years ago. And I would assume that's when
she kind of ascended into the dreamscape or her
subconscious connected to everybody else's. And
like I said, I assume that's what the timeline
is. But I don't know for sure. And I'm assuming
we'll get... clarity on that at some point but
we may never get the the full truth so we'll
just have to see how that plays out but regardless
i think it's interesting i think it's an interesting
concept interesting conflict it's interesting
that she feels like she's at fault and you know
therefore she should end it somehow uh however
she can and i think it's really interesting that
she was willing to heroically sacrifice herself.
However you want to read that, however you want
to take that in order to end this. And I love
that Baku stopped her because from a utilitarian
point, he could say, well, this is the best way
to help the most people the most quickly. Let's
do this. And, uh, here darling, I'll, I'll take
you over there and help you. Um, or just, you
know, save the trip. Don't fight the nightmare.
Just come at me. Uh, but that's not what he does
because he's a good guy. And It's interesting
because you could say in a way both him choosing
to fight and destroy the nightmare and him stopping
them from going and facing the nightmare herself
are ways that he's a part of the problem now
too. Ways that he's perpetuating the system that
code is using or is part of, involved with, whatever.
We have next to no information about the inner
workings of code and we don't even have an official
statement that they're against the nightmares.
Code agents infiltrate people's dreams to stop
nightmares to what end? I don't know. I don't
know. Anyway, I don't want to belabor it. I'll
have short, subtle supplement this and add to
it after I've thought about it some more, but
that's my quick thoughts on it, my quick reaction,
which is that Z19 is great because it has the
moral clarity to have Baku make the statement
of... I don't really know what I'm doing, but
I'm trying to do my best. And I'm going to stand
up and fight against people like you or whatever
these dark forces that I know are bad because
they're bad. And I'm trying to do good here.
And I want to do better, but I can't yet. So
in the meantime, this is what I'm doing. This
is my path. I'm locked on this. I think it's
a beautiful idea, beautiful concept. It's a beautiful
thing for us to do when we live in this broken
world, trying to figure out what exactly we can
do to help. face the insurmountable darkness,
the seemingly insurmountable darkness. It will
be surmounted. It's doable. We're going to get
through this, folks. Anyway, that's it for now.
This is MJ with Writer Tears and Henshin Inspection
signing out. Check out the link for more, the
pinned comment, rather, for more. I'll have all
my Zets stuff in there and other things, maybe
links to shorts as well, because I think I'm
going to have some hot shorts to follow up on
this one.