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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 From the Revelation|from the knowledge]], their [[You Cannot Change the Future|inability to affect the future]], and the sheer monotony of it all, and thus turn into [[The Fatalist|fatalistic]] [[Nietzsche Wannabe|Nietzsche Wannabes]] who have [[Nothing Left to Do But Die]]; If the future [[Temporal Mutability|is at all malleable]], they will become obsessed with unpredictability, living a life of [[Screw Destiny|screwing destiny]] to its most extreme and setting greatly chaotic events in motion just so that the outcome can become unpredictable even to them. Even sane oracles will quickly don [[Jade-Colored Glasses]] in self defense.
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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* 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]].
* Sarda of ''[[8-Bit Theater
* Aradia Megido from ''[[Homestuck]]'' has this in spades, thanks to her communion with the dead and later time powers. She is convinced they are all doomed and nothing they do can change this. She at one point considers killing Karkat just to create a divergent timeline that won't save them either. (Karkat is not amused.)
* Played with in ''[[Girl Genius]]'', from Othar's Twitter account. A girl from Paris volunteered for an experiment, but was basically stuck in mental time travel. For everyone outside, it was maybe an hour, but for her and the others inside the experiment, it was a thousand years. During that time, the girl predicted every event that would happen if she tried a heist, and was correct, until [[Spanner in the Works|Othar got massively drunk.]]
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