Immune to Fate: Difference between revisions

 

Basically, every so often, a story will introduce a character who has the power to [[Screw Destiny]] as a special ability. Everyone else in their universe may be bound by fate, but all the prophecies you can conjure up don't mean squat if this person gets involved.

{{examples}}

* Ginji in ''[[GetBackers]]'' might be this. One thing for sure, not even Makube X could predict what he would do.

* The Spiral Power in ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' is, as Viral puts it, the "[[Hot-Blooded|burning blood]] that [[Screw Destiny|cuts through Fate]]".

* An unusual variation of this exists in [[Ann Cassandra]]: Banjou is fated to die on his 20th birthday. Because there was a prediction of him dying on that specific day, he can't die before that day. This means that he can do all sorts of [[Leeroy Jenkins]]-style stunts without worrying about dying, as fate warps itself around him to keep him alive. Knowing this, Banjou uses his reality-warping presence to protect the lives of people fated to die, often by using himself as a human shield against whatever is about to kill that person. Given that Ann Cassandra is about teenagers who can see the future and want to stop terrible things from happening, this power is actually quite relevant most of the time. (The reason this isn't a straight example is because while he is immune to death, he is NOT immune to getting hurt, and he spends almost half of the entire series either in the hospital or with bandages on his body.)

 

* Both [[Marvel Universe|Thanos of Titan and his good counterpart Adam Warlock]] have been remarked on as being outside the purview of Order and Chaos, and thus in some sense outside of fate.

** In Warlock's case this may be because he changed history {{spoiler|by killing himself, thus preventing himself from becoming an evil god. He got better, though.}}

* In ''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'', Professor Zoom boasts to Barry Allen as being able to do this as he's a living [[Temporal Paradox]]. Batman/{{spoiler|Thomas Wayne}}, promptly shoves a sword through his chest.

 

* In [[DC Nation]], this is broadly hinted to be something of a superpower for the otherwise [[Badass Normal]] Roy Harper. He's flipped off [[Cosmic Horror]]s and [[Jerkass Gods]] alike. In-universe, he is completely unreadable to Dr. Fate. At one point, Dark Angel is howling for his head, saying he should have died in [[Crisis on Infinite Earths]]. He shrugs it off.

{{quote|'''Arsenal:''' ''"All you're telling me is that I've pissed in your Cheerios more than once, and I did it beside Donna. Lemme tell you, those are two things that make me a very happy little camper...And hey, extra bonus for me at the end of it? I pissed you off when I didn't even mean to! Little ol' me. [[Badass Normal|A guy. A dude. A very attractive but semi-normal human fleshbag.]] Man, I'm good."''}}

* In the ''[[Veronica Mars]]'' meets ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' fanfic [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3417335/1/Martian_Manhunter Martian Manhunter,] Veronica is told (by Drusilla, of all people) that she has no fate or destiny that anyone can discern. Dru even explicitly makes the comparison to Sparhawk.

 

* Sir Sparhawk, Champion of the [[Church Militant|Pandion Knights]] in [[David Eddings|David Eddings's]] ''[[The Elenium]]'' and ''[[The Tamuli]]'' series. The gods know him as 'Anakha', literally "without destiny", and most of them were in favor of simply not letting him get '''born'''. Because he has no fate, even the gods can't predict what he'll do from one moment to the next, making him able to actually fight them... in the end, the only reason they even allowed him to exist, is that sometimes, it's handy to have a godslayer around... providing they're careful where they point him.

** {{spoiler|At the end of the second trilogy, it's revealed that he has this power - and more - due to being created by Bhelliom, the universe-transcending entity that created the world. Due to unwariness on its own part, it became trapped in the form of a gemstone, and 'created' Anakha to have the power to free it. Because he was created by something older than the gods themselves, they hold no power over him...}}

* In the later ''[[Dune]]'' books by [[Frank Herbert]], the God Emperor Leto II spends three and a half thousand years breeding humans to make a gene as widespread as possible that prevents prescient people from seeing what people with the gene are going to do.

* The entire Kender race (most notably, Tasselhoff Burrfoot) in the ''[[Dragonlance]]'' series, because they were created by mistake (as opposed to, say, Elves and Men).

** Specifically, Elves, Humans, and Ogres were created by the gods at the beginning to embody light, balance, and darkness, respectively. Kender, and related races such as dwarves and gnomes, were created by the Graygem, an [[Artifact of Doom]] containing the essence of pure Chaos. Needless to say, all three have the potential to massively screw up the timeline, with kender being the most likely to because they're naturally adventuresome and impulsive.

* There is a Jewish legend about a sage meeting Death and asking him about when he's going to die. Death's answer? "Sorry, but sages as righteous as you get delays all the time".

* Part of the job description of [[The Magids]] is being disentangled from fate... to a certain extent. While they are separated from ''human'' workings, Them Up There are free to meddle in their affairs.

* Firekeeper, titular heroine of the ''[[Firekeeper]]'' series, is a human woman who has been [[Raised by Wolves]]. This causes her to have a chaotic nature such that skilled Seers, such as the Wise Jaguar, Truth, cannot accurately predict events she is directly involved in.

* ''Ilium'' and ''Olympos'' by Dan Simmons features as one of its main characters Achilles in an alternate timeline of the Trojan War. In it, {{spoiler|Paris dies before he can kill Achilles, as the prophecy dictates. For the rest of the story, Achilles becomes immortal and indestructible, as his fate became impossible to bring about.}}

* In Terry Pratchett's ''[[The Dark Side of the Sun]]'', the Jokers are completely invisible to probability math, which can otherwise predict the future with near certainty.

* In Terry Goodkind books, Richard typically says [[Screw Destiny]], or rather claims he knows best despite wizards having studied them for ''years'' telling him otherwise. And somehow, he's always right, possibly because he's the hero.

 

* [[Time Travel]] on ''[[Lost]]'' follows, for the most part, the [[You Already Changed the Past]] model. The exception is Desmond, thanks to how the Island's electro-magnetism messed up his head. When he sees a vision of Charlie dying, he's able to prevent it, but has to keep on saving Charlie's life as destiny keeps finding new ways to off him. And when Daniel Faraday tells Desmond something in the past, present day Desmond shoots up in bed, suddenly remembering a conversation that, until just then, hadn't actually happened.

* The Doctor from ''[[Doctor Who]]'', [[Depending on the Writer]].

* In ''[[The Cape (2010 TV series)|The Cape]]'' Dice is unable to see Vince in her predictions.

 

* In ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'', mages with high levels of the Fate Arcanum become "Unfettered"; they are automatically able to detect and resist any attempt to magically alter their destiny, such as curses, attempts to bind their fate, mind control, or tampering with their soul. (On the other side of the coin, mages of the Mastigos path are terrified of mages with Fate, because Fate implies free will isn't all it's cracked up to be.)

** Mages reaching the apex of the Sphinx Legacy take this about a thousand steps further - they can "walk between" the patterns of the world, isolating themselves from it. They are literally ''immune'' to any magical attempt to alter, define or predict their destiny. Any attempt to use [[Sympathetic Magic]] on them automatically fails unless the caster knows their [[True Name]]. They even become extremely hard to pay attention to. However, by the same token, they disable one of their Legacy's other abilities, and are rendered practically unable to alter the destinies of anyone else, either.

* ''[[Exalted]]'' has ''legions'' of these. The Underworld, the Wyld, Malfeas, and Autochthon are all outside Fate. (Autochthonians are the only ones who would feel at all guilty about disrupting Fate by walking in Creation - one charm submodule lets them become part of Fate just to avoid screwing things up. Everyone else considers it a job perk.)

 

* In the ''[[Legacy of Kain]]'' series, Raziel is essentially this trope. {{spoiler|The only way to escape fate is to cause a paradox and take action right at the paradox, but Raziel is a spirit carrying his own spirit from a different time on his arm, so he's a paradox on legs, and everything he does alters history or, to put it another way, he's the only character who has real free will.}} However, being immune to the power of destiny does ''not'' make him immune to being manipulated in more conventional ways, and he spends a huge amount of the series as an [[Unwitting Pawn]] to various factions.

* A book of background fluff in ''[[Baldur's Gate]]'' references a ''[[Forgotten Realms]]'' folk tale; when something is born the Goddess of bad luck calls a coin toss by the Goddess of good luck and the victor decides the newborn's fate, but sometimes the coin [[Heads-Tails-Edge|lands on edge...]]

** Both a Hermit in Baldur's Gate and a fortune teller in Baldur's Gate II tell the main character that their coin landed on the edge. The fortune teller also gives them a refund.

* The Nameless One in ''[[Planescape: Torment]]''. A fortune teller flat-out tells him as much, before giving him a full refund.

* In ''[[The Legend of Spyro]]'', the Purple Dragon is specifically said to be able to guide the fate of the era he/she is born into. Whenever someone predicts a destiny he doesn't like, Spyro tends to [[Screw Destiny]]. The Chronicler tells him that Cynder will turn evil again when Malefor is revived? He pulls a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment and saves her while killing that particular game's [[Big Bad]] (though [[Word of God]] states that the Chronicler was aware Spyro may not go along with the future he fortold and taught him what he'd need anyway, it still counts). Malefor tells him the fate of the Purple Dragon is to destroy the world? {{spoiler|He and Cynder kick Malefor's tail and Spyro restores the world.}}

* A fortune teller in ''[[Seiken Densetsu 3]]'' is shocked when he tries to tell the main character's future, and all he can see is a faerie. The Faerie then appears and says that, when she inhabits a human, his or her future becomes impossible to determine.

* The Nephalem (those who have awakened humanity's original power as angel/demon hybrids) in ''[[Diablo III]]'' are not mentioned in the Scroll of Fate and thus are the only ones capable of averting anything that is written in it.

 

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' Oasis is said to be one of small number of beings who aren't part of the Web of Fate and has the potential to severely screw up destiny, possibly leading to [[The End of the World as We Know It]].

* In ''[[Digger]]'', wombats are rarely, if ever, mentioned in any prophecy even when things they ''cause'' are (such as the hole Digger uses to reach the surface at the story's beginning). This is actually Justified, as one of Digger's ancestors demanded making his children and descendants Immune to Fate his price {{spoiler|for helping in the binding of a mad god.}} The ''only'' ones who seem able to give wombat-specific prophecies are slugs.

* Parson from ''[[Erfworld]]'', by virtue of being able to subvert and outright ''break'' some of the rules that define Erfworld. Some residents of Erfworld hope that he will be able to break the "game" and bring true peace. Others are terrified of him for the same reason.

 

* In ''[[Thalia's Musings]]'', the Fates wonder if Thalia and thus the rest of the Muses are this. The Fates don't like this idea.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Time Travel Tropes]]

[[Category:Fate and Prophecy Tropes]]