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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27913
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27913
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You're missing item 4, or 3a:

"Here's another Good Thing which will allow us to win!"

In your swordfighting example:

1. I can put in the same kind of work they do and _become_ as good as they are!

On the news:

1. There may never be a 100% objective news outlet, but I can study and compare, and do my research, until I can find a handful of reasonably reliable news sources, and remember what their blind spots are.

Just because the original Good Thing isn't as pure as the driven snow doesn't mean it's now 100% a Bad Thing, or that _all_ Good Things are now corrupted. And sometimes you can still win with the 99 <sup>44</sup>/<sub>100</sub> percent pure thing.

Your "downer ending" is the Fall from Innocence. This is a classic story arc. If you don't want a sad ending, then your Hero has to _learn_ from the Fall and turn the Experience into Wisdom.

In _Lord of the Rings_, the Witch-King of Angmar is imagined to be undefeatable because Glorfindel once prophesied that "he could be killed by no man." So everyone is very depressed because it seems this Nazgûl can't be beaten. Except that "man" was very literal. It didn't mean _person._ It didn't mean _anyone from the race of humans._ So the two beings which took him down were Pippin, a hobbit (not a human), and Éowyn, a woman. There's your "downer" being overturned.

Original score: 4