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Prescience Is Predictable: Difference between revisions
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It's actually worse if someone is capable of any kind of action. You know everything about the future? That means you already know if you will attempt to avert the future. You already know how this attempt will turn out. You already know what you will think when you make the attempt. In fact, it will be utterly impossible for you to even think of doing something different. You will think what you will think, and you will do what you will do, and you already know what they are. [[And I Must Scream|And you will scream what you will scream]].
And so it goes for some [[Fate and Prophecy Tropes|oracles]] and [[Deus Est Machina|superpowerful intellects]]. They often go [[Mad Oracle|mad]] [[Go Mad
Compare how the [[Living Lie Detector]] is often fascinated by the [[Consummate Liar]]. Contrast [[Scry Versus Scry]] and [[Xanatos Speed Chess]], which have oracles who are anything ''but'' bored.
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* ''[[Baccano!]]'' has a notable example. {{spoiler|Ronnie, the demon with the immortality elixir,}} has this power, noted its drawbacks, and ''turns it off''.
* [[Knight Templar]] slash [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] Enrico Pucci seeks to invoke this in Part 6 of ''[[JoJo's Bizarre Adventure|Jojo's Bizarre Adventure]]''. His belief is that if mankind already knows what their futures hold for them, there will be no more reason for war or suffering, since all the uncertainty will be taken out of life. In order to pull this off, Pucci {{spoiler|''resets all of existence'' by speeding up time to the point of the universe's destruction and recreation. However, he stops just short of a full cycle in order to finish off [[Tagalong Kid|Emporio Alnino]], the only one of the good guys who wasn't [[Killed Off for Real]]. [[Hoist by His Own Petard|This is Pucci's undoing]], as Emporio pulls out an [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]] to finish off Pucci for good.}}
* This is what Eriol claims was Clow Reed's motivation for setting events in motion to pass his powers on to ''[[Cardcaptor Sakura]]''. ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'' and ''[[
* Narumi Kiyotaka from the ''[[Spiral]]'' manga, even more obviously ''bored'' in the prequel Spiral: Alive. It is hinted that the events of the manga happen because he was just too bored, and stated to be the reason he acts like an idiot and does ridiculous things such as dressing up in furry costumes: to spice things up in his boring life. Although his ability to predict ''everything'' is presented more as a form of incredibly high intellect than a supernatural ability to see the future, he is still considered a "god" by everybody else. {{spoiler|Ayumu eventually outwits and defeats him}}, but Kiyotaka is so enigmatic it can be argued he ''knew'' and in fact ''arranged'' this outcome. There's no way to know for sure.
* The interfaces from ''[[Haruhi Suzumiya]]''. The desire to avert this is likely what drove Ryoko into the radical faction of the entity {{spoiler|and later possibly tergiversating from them alltogether}}, and Kyon notes in the novels that Yuki becomes noticeably happier after she loses this ability.
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* Though we never meet him, a central character in one of the ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon|Callahans Crosstime Saloon]]'' stories, 'Fivesight,' has this in spades. He can see the future, but ''only'' the bad things, and he can do ''nothing'' to stop them from happening. Not the gruesome death of his lover's son, not their breakup, and not {{spoiler|his own death at the hands of the dumb kid she'd been planning to cheat on him with...}}
==
* An episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' had a guy come from the future to [[Grandfather Paradox|kill himself before he can invent his Time Travel technology]], and
* In the ''[[Fringe]]'' episode "The Plateau," a man is shown deliberately setting a pen on a mailbox, which serves as the catalyst for a chain of events resulting in catastrophe. It later turns out the man was
▲* An episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'' had a guy come from the future to [[Grandfather Paradox|kill himself before he can invent his Time Travel technology]], and evokes this reason in a [[Motive Rant]].
▲* In the ''[[Fringe]]'' episode "The Plateau," a man is shown deliberately setting a pen on a mailbox, which serves as the catalyst for a chain of events resulting in catastrophe. It later turns out the man was {{spoiler|the subject of an experiment that increased his cognitive abilities, allowing him to instantaneously calculate variables at a geometric rate, and resulting in his being able to both predict the future and also control it via chain reaction. Unfortunately, his mental speed eventually surpasses his ability to communicate with anything other than a supercomputer}}.
== Radio ==
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* Played with in an episode of ''[[Old Harry's Game|Old Harrys Game]]'', where God is feeling depressed because everything is so predictable. He only snaps out of it once the Professor points out that God didn't know he was going to get depressed.
== Tabletop
▲* Tzeentch, the god of [[Xanatos Roulette]] from ''[[Warhammer 40000]].''
** He seems to control his boredom by setting up a dozen plans at once and [[Gambit Pileup|watching them crash into each other and spray shrapnel everywhere]].
** Technically, Tzeentch ''doesn't'' see into the future, any more or less than any of the other partially-precognitive Chaos Gods do. He, however, can calculate virtually every outcome of everything going on, in the entire galaxy. Constantly. He DOES have a Greater Daemon that can see the future... Because he threw it into the "well" that was the literal axis of all of time. It emerged with two heads, [[Knights and Knaves|one that always spoke the truth of the future and one that constantly states the opposite]]. [[Unreliable Narrator|They switch roles unpredictably.]] He has a dozen OTHER demons constantly writing down the unending, insane gibbering, to try and glean what he can of what's to come.
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* Odin was cursed with this in ''[[Scion]]'': every time he uses the power of Prophecy in order to attempt to avert Ragnarok, another piece of the future leading to it will be placed in stone. The curse was designed to stop him from abusing prophecy so much; at this point, the god who put the curse on him is in a total panic, because he didn't think Odin would ''ignore'' it the way he did, and now ''he'' wants to stop Ragnarok as well...
== Video
* Trenia from ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'' is basically the soul of the Sacred Tome that happens to be a [[Cosmic Keystone]] that records the netherword's history... in advance. Sure you can [[Reality Warper|write a wish in the thing and alter reality]], but [[Sorry, Billy, But You Just Don't Have Legs|you've gotta have thumbs for that, y'know]]? So when Zetta takes up her position in the opening, she thoroughly enjoys direct interaction with things, even though she still knows what will happen.
* Fateweavers in ''[[Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning]]'' don't actually weave Fate as their title might suggest. They can only see a person's fate, [[You Can't Fight Fate|which cannot be changed.]] The first Fateweaver you meet, Argath, was originally a famed adventurer and hero who thought becoming a Fateweaver was an honor. Then he read his own Fate and saw his own inescapable death: as the main ingredient of an ettin's stewpot. He started drinking pretty heavily after that.
== Web Comic ==▼
* The [[
* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', this appears to be the main motivation of the shape-shifting Immortal entity dubbed 'Chaos' - she(?) hates predictability and influences events only to make them more chaotic and unpredictable. She helped the good-guys on several occasions, simply because she knew they'd lose otherwise - and she refuses to help the bad-or-not guy escape from his prison, since the only thing she really cares about is NOT knowing when, and if, he'll be able to escape. She only provides occasional hints, to keep him from giving up ('cuz that would be boring...)
** She broke this rule of hers recently, but that was as part of her [[Berserk Button]]. FYI: Don't fuck with her son. It will end...[[The End of the World as We Know It|poorly]].
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