a longtime lurker

But I think FMA does also does an excellent job choosing when to not let Ed come out on top. We just had the Nina episode and now Ed is in the middle of processing his first "catastrophic failure to save someone" type of failure since attempting to bring his mom back. He's dealing with a low that's absolutely hampering his abilities and the tonal shift hits for me in the way that 1) he doesn't notice Scar's initial attack against him (Al has to pull him away) and 2) Ed absolutely freezes up just thinking "This is bad."

This is, perhaps, baby's first "someone is coming at you with the full, concentrated, explicit intention of killing you" and Ed is so genuinely out of his depth with it. He really does try. He gets immediately bested. He's staring at a situation where Al is directly in harm's way. And Ed just lies down to die like a dog...

And it's that thing where you mentally place yourself as the second, auxiliary party to someone else that you consider to be "In Charge" of whatever space or occupation or responsibility you are assigned to

And when you are IN that mindset, it *feels* like you're being responsible. It *feels* like you're being respectful, and helpful, and contributing to the load.

But what you don't SEE- because it *feels* like deference- is that the other person who you're seeing as The Authority you report to- by being assigned that role, has also been assigned the invisible load of BEING YOUR MANAGER.

This is by FAR most commonly seen in husband-and-wife relationships, where the man says, "just tell me what I can do to HELP- you don't have to do it all by yourself, but it's like you won't even tell me when you NEED help. You just do everything and then get mad at me for not doing it first. I can help clean. I can help with the kids. I can help"

But I also see it- and am guilty myself of doing it- at work, at school, in public- that mental, "this is THEIR space, and i will be respectful and helpful to THEM"- without realizing that subservience in this manner isn't actually a good thing. That it actually shifts the burden of responsibility to the other person. That aspect was totally invisible to me.

I didn't understand that when I was told, "if you see something that needs to be done, just DO it", or, "take the initiative", what they ACTUALLY meant was, "I am not above you", or "you have equal say in what kind of environment you want to live or work in", or "I do not want full control over what happens here, I do not want to order you around, I do not want to be in charge, what I WANT is to co-command WITH you"

Being in The Assigned Authority position NOW, that is all so much clearer.

I am the senior member of my team at work, and now, every time I train a newbie, every time I finish catching them up to speed and giving them a list of everything that needs to be done, my next big hurdle seems to always be, "now take pride in the space when I'm not around". "Now don't assume I'll tell you when something is due or what orders to plan things in".

Now, having been on both sides of the struggle, I can appreciate the sticking points here

TO THE PERSON "IN CHARGE": The person deferring to you doesn't understand the invisible labor you're doing. They genuinely believe you know more, you WANT more, you see things they don't, and that they are being respectful and good by staying out of your way and waiting on your orders. THAT is the bit that's not clicking.

TO THE PERSON "WANTING TO HELP": "Help" implies that you are providing assistance to a problem that belongs to somebody else. Stop thinking like that. Understand that the problem belongs to BOTH of you equally, and consider what kind of shared space you BOTH want. What is your SHARED GOAL? Not THEIR goal, but a goal that belongs to you too. Own your space.

This is not a Commander-Lieutenant problem. This is a Partnership problem.

"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"

or

"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"

and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)

they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)

they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)

they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)

they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)

they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)

they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)

they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)

they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)

the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)

you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:

natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)

being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)

random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)

you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up

and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.

I finally finished my watercolor portrait series

So here they all are

canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana

a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.

an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.

fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.

And you need to start over, wipe their memories and give them a true chance. Because they deserve that, right? A good world! That's what it's all about, isn't it? I mean, imagine if there was no second draft! Imagine if you'd run a death empire for 10,000 years, knowing how awful it is, for purely strategic reasons, and then failed to reach the finish line. Imagine leaving the universe in that state. Imagine if you had to accept that all the suffering and cruelty you've deployed wasn't temporary.

Thankfully, that's not going to happen. Because all of this was done for them, so they can start anew. They can do it without you! “I saved the world once—but not for me.” You never deserved it anyway. You'll never be free from knowing what happened—a lot of it you made happen, or you couldn't help making happen, it doesn't matter—and how much blood is in your hands—but they don't have to know! You've been gifted an heir, and you've gifted her a Māori name. She doesn't understand yet, but in time… They can have a beautiful second chance. It's what you wish you'd had. And you've suffered for so long to give this to everybody. The next Resurrection, it will finally be perfect. They don't have to remember—these shitty lives, what you put them through and what you let them do, and what they chose to do and had to live with. Forgiveness not so hard, nor anger long; / our graves will be less deep, our lies less true. You'll fix everything. You loved them so much, you love them despite what they've become under you, you'll never deserve them, you'll love them “until the end of time, until there is nothing left” of you “but the remnant atoms of the God and man who loved” them. They loved you and followed you and you got them killed. And they have caused so much pain in your name, afterwards, but it was necessary—you'll bear that burden “until the universe contracts in on itself and wipes clean what they did, and makes blank such an indelible stain”.

Which it will. You're doing this for them. You'll pay back your debt. It's what's best for everyone. It's what they deserve, what you always owed them. You have to deliver. You were chosen to change, and you fucked it up, and you're wrong, and don't you know it—but what they don't know, and they're lucky they don't know it, is that it won't have mattered, you'll make it not matter—they might be horrified if they knew, sure, but they don't know, that's your burden again—these lives they've lead are your mistake. They wouldn't understand because they can't remember… and they can't remember because they wouldn't understand… When you take it away, they'll get something better. I mean, you couldn't live with yourself if this was all for real.

Thankfully, it won't be. You have to make sure it was all worth it. It will have been worth it. Right?

But it's certainly also him not wanting to get attached to this run because he's long since decided to reset it once he's done. It's also intentionally leaning into things he hates and letting things get worse so that he'll feel all the more compelled to go through with his reset in the end, and him being unable to imagine any future for himself except one where "everyone we loved has gone or fled." It's also that he's been suicidal since before the apocalypse and wishes the nun had just killed him instead of herself, but he has a job to finish first.

And even with all of that from both sides, it's interesting how much Māori culture does still exist in the Houses, some in a straightfoward way, some in a warped and bastardized way. Cover art can be shaky as evidence, so you can argue whether or not Ninth facepaint does have some patterns that resemble moko, but there's that as one of the first things anyone picking up the series will ever see. There's the way traditional Māori burial practices involved burying the body or placing it in a sacred hidden place (such as the Tomb) for a time and then later exhuming it to clean the bones, sometimes paint them, and put them on display for another round of mourning, and then we look at the painted bones lining every inch of the Mithraem. There's the green and silver fern leaves spread over the path when everyone arrives at Canaan. There are several moments where characters press foreheads together for comfort, including Jeannemary and Isaac breathing in unison for one of them, and I have to wonder if that's evolved from the hongi. And certainly debatable, but I've started to wonder if John's crown isn't a Roman laurel at all, but pare kawakawa, a Māori mourning wreath. (Bonus if it has the traditional heart-shaped leaves in the horrors of love series.)

And then there's the more past-focused and meta stuff. John having been taught about Te Punga long before the Southern Cross and still liking that better (but still saying Southern Cross first as an adult). John being framed as a dangerous nut even when all he'd done was offer people free healing, before he'd ever committed a real crime, when the New Zealand government has a history of suppressing and targeting Māori healers. Even "I saved the world once, but not for me" and the way that echoes Frodo in LotR when the movies had such an impact on tourism and Māori actors were only allowed to play orcs. There's the way John making Alecto's body is a mix of God making Adam and Eve but also Tāne making Hineahuone from the soil. There's the constant emphasis on John looking ordinary, plain, normal, ordinary and the fact that the word "māori" when not a proper noun means exactly that; it's the mundane as distinct from the spiritual, tangata māori means "normal person" or "human being" (and bonus wai māori means freshwater as distinct from saltwater).