Like, look, the whole definition of being a good person means being good even if it doesn't actually work out in the end If you need to know whether it will all work out before you do anything good, you're not actually a good person You're a fake good person
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That's the tragic sense of life, that good deeds are punished If you actually want to be sure that people don't come into your house, then you have to lock your door, and put up a fence You don't actually get to have both
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Sometimes, you have to accept that sticking to your principles will harm you, and stick to those principles anyway and accept the harm Or decide the harm is not worth it, and abandon those principles, and be a less principled person but a safer one Either one is tragic
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The one thing in Rowling I can’t throw away is the moment when Harry and Cedric take the cup. It is morally the best thing either of them can do and it ends up having the worst possible outcome of all options. And that is no one’s fault but the bad guy’s. And that *CAN HAPPEN*.
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Well the thing is there, too, it's largely a function of whose story it is right? It doesn't end up "all right" in the end, but it isn't the end either. But it is Cedric's end. It's only not crushing because of whose story it ultimately is.
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I mean, it also means acknowledging that you will inevitably fail at your principles in some measure. There's a quote from one of Bujold's Vorkosigan books that's super relevant here:
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"…the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn."
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