It was that of every great narrative, there-in the dichotomies of human experience; good and evil, light and dark, adversity and triumph.
Stories where they threaded; protagonists on the precipice, the victorious who rise from the ashes of their seeming defeat, the underdog, the powerful and arrogant, brothers in arms.
All of whom were smacked by those moments of utter futility, where even the brief marriage of hand on hand could mean the difference between pride and its death, where to grasp the tensile rope for support is to turn the battle on its flank.
This is where gods are made and leveled.
There was the bitterness of being close enough to take Victory by her shoulder, only to have no witness of referee to your triumph. But as it is in the Great Plot that guides this through, Good will always prevail.
It is with every tale that there are those who are loved beyond fallibility and those who incite the fevered choirs of “You Suck! You Suck!” when they dare to displace heroes.
And as it is with all the stories of our times, there will always be the ebullient adulation of one or a mass who will erupt in the greatness of the moment when the right man holds up the leather and gold, for all to witness, “I am a champion!”