>>826533
That scene was amazing, yeah, and part of it was just calling back to Shirou's nature. Also reposting that post since it got deleted.
>>826255
If I recall correctly, yes, so I'm skeptical of >>826252 's read.
>>826288
>The ideal always leads to compromise.
No, it always leads to struggle. Compromise is sometimes forced, but it's not a constant. You fight, and you give it your all for the goal you want. Maybe you get it. Maybe you have to sacrifice. Acting like it's always this way is understandable from Kiritsugu, who became so lost in his actions and experiences that he almost only ever saw sacrificial solutions. It's cynical pretentiousness from everyone else.
>>826297
This is what I mean by Nasu cheating the context. You know what the heroic option here should be from Shirou's perspective? Fighting Zouken. He's putting Sakura up to it. He's torturing her every night. He made her into the shadow, and he's damn well going to continue hurting people no matter what happens to Sakura. Killing Sakura injures him, but it's not the heroic way.
In that sense, protecting Sakura is benign. He's trying to protect everyone around him from harmful people, and Sakura is absolutely among them. As far as I can see it, the dilemma HF wants is only the one it thinks it has; really it has a villain and a puppet victim. Sakura's own flaws don't change this, not until she kills Shinji and begins openly embracing her hatred. This is what's frustrating about her arc and Shirou's.
There's even a faint moment of self awareness in one church scene, before Shirou's made with the choice. But it's just Rin laughing at the idea for one panel, like Nasu scrounging to pull the wool over your eyes.
>>826309
Especially since we later see a quick fix. If Archer had known to use Rule Breaker on Sakura earlier, boom. Everyone's saved.
>>826318
>Shirou wants to be a hero, but he's never confronted with that scenario. In Fate route, or in UBW, things are very much clean cut.
This is what I mean when I say HF fans shit on the other two unjustly, misunderstanding them both as if doing so elevates their own route more. Because to say things are clean or easy for Shirou is farcical.
No, he's not challenged the same way, but he is in other angles that are important to his character. In my opinion those ways are more interesting.
In Fate, he's dead weight for much of the route, made to face the reality again and again he's not a hero. He can't be who he wants to be, certainly not alone. A broken mess who never got over his own trauma. Kotomine makes him admit this and offers the grail as a solution to fix him. Shirou says no. Who he is and what he wants to do isn't a mistake. It's one of the VN's best scenes, and it was well earned.
UBW has a similar pattern; Shirou is more powerful, but Archer spells out his grim future, the utilitarian extreme he'll jump to and how he will regret ever even trying, and tells him to give up. He chooses to embrace the good in one of the VN's best scenes by far.
Those are both really good challenges, ones that make Shirou grow into a stronger person in different ways. HF tries this too, as you said, with the intent of exploring one possible path Shirou could take, one that'd lead him to a simpler life. But, frustratingly, you can only say he is sacrificing something about himself if you argue that in HF (and only HF) they are the same as Kiritsugu's. Otherwise, he is merely making the best of a really bad situation, and I don't see how the narrative can argue he's giving up on his dream. You're right, Mind of Steel is out of character for Shirou; I'd go further and insist that seeing the dilemma as Nasu frames it, "Give up Sakura or give up everything I want", is a non-sequitur, based on the events and the character he has established.