this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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That can be expanded to any "the hero nobly denies doing something 'unethical' to get what they want/decides to sacrifice their own desires for the sake of someone else, only for reality itself to turn around and reward them with exactly what they wanted/were going to sacrifice as a special good boy treat for doing the right thing" situation, I think.
A lot of YA fiction seems to take that route. Then the kids who read it grow up and turn into adults who cry about the unfairness of Marie Antoinette getting owned.
One of the reasons i liked Enders Game as a weird outsider kid was that Ender, the weird outsider kid, just straight up killed his bullies and then they never bullied him again and I thought that was a very sensible way to handle matters compared to the saccharine bullshit in the other kids books i was reading.
One of the things i like about wuxia is that they seldom bother with that nonsense. Wuxia morality is more of an eye for an eye.
I think one of the common sayings from that genre is "pay those who do right by you back tenfold, pay those who wrong you back a thousandfold"
Man that almost sounds like philosophy from the trenches; break bread with the real ones, get it back in blood from the opps
There's literally people who interpreted the "shower scene" as him just beating the kid up and them being kicked out of battle school.
I think the most recent movie adaptation takes this route (though it might still be vague enough to be interpreted as the adult trying to keep Ender from knowing he murdered a kid.)