If I have a favourite trope in storytelling, it is what we occasionally refer to as He Who Fights Monsters. This, of course, is based on the quote by Nietzsche:

“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.“

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

People turning into the one thing they hate… People losing the one thing they tried to protect… People fumbling the one thing they yearned… While I would not call that pleasurable at all, I think that line of narrative is especially moving.

It is real, after all, isn’t it? That’s how life goes, sometimes.

Big victories in life are actually quite rare. And at that, they are especially fleeting.

Grand plans tend to fail.

Entropy alone stands undefeated.

Still, we keep moving forward…