You Can't Fight Fate: Difference between revisions

** {{spoiler|Adam decides that it doesn't matter what is Written, [[Screw Destiny|because you can always cross it out]]}}.

** It reaches the point that two main characters realize they can pick any part of the book of prophecy at random and be assured that it'll be one relevant to their situation.

* Norman Spinrad's short story "The Weed of Time". The victim - er, narrator - remembered the entirety of his 110-year life from the moment of his birth. An expedition to another planet brought back the weed which caused the precognition effect and it had been released accidentally and grew wild. The experience drives him insane, because he cannot change any of the events he experiences.

* Kurt Vonnegut's ''[[Slaughterhouse 5]]'' takes this to the extreme, with the protagonist hallucinating himself a theory about the non-existence of free will, involving [[Mental Time Travel]] and aliens. He does this in to make sense of what he saw during [[World War II]].

* ''[[Quantum Leap]]'' played with this. In each episode, Sam's goal was to fight a particular piece of fate, and he invariably won. However, when he and Al occasionally tried to change other things in their own personal interest, they were unable to do so. For example, in ''MIA'', {{spoiler|Al lied to Sam about what his goal was, and had him try to stop Al's own wife Beth from remarrying while he was a prisoner of war. Whatever Sam did to keep Beth away from her future second husband, they kept bumping into each other in unlikely places. Sam was actually there to stop a cop getting shot.}} In ''The Leap Home, Part 1'', {{spoiler|Sam could not convince his father to take up a healthier lifestyle and live longer, or stop his brother from going to Vietnam and getting killed, because his only goal for the episode was to ''win a basketball game''.}} It seems the Unknown Force only unlocked little bits of fate at a time. {{spoiler|Sam did save both his brother's life and Al's marriage in later episodes, though.}}

 

* The ancient Greeks loved these types of stories:

** [[Classical Mythology|Gaia and Ouranos]] prophesied that Kronos would be overthrown by one of his sons, so he ate each son as it was born. His wife kept their last son, Zeus, hidden, so that Zeus could eventually fulfill the prophesy (as told in ''[[Theogony]]'' by [[Hesiod]]).

* Duke Rowan Darkwood in ''[[Planescape]]'' gets screwed over by this ''in spades'', {{spoiler|becoming destined to be the person who instigates (as the ancient wizard rumored to have crafted a spell that can destroy the Lady of Pain), starts (as Rowan Darkwood), and ''ends'' (as Gifad, who coaxes the party to help him cast the Sigil Spell) the Faction War all in one go. And all this time, the Lady of Pain had controlled ''everything''...}}

* ''[[Exalted]]'' has samsara, the concept that if you look upon Fate for absolute knowledge, then you must go with the results without any chance of deviating. That's why the Five Maidens are loath to look on samsara for knowledge. It's also why everyone wants to keep the [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|Yozi]] Sacheverell asleep; whether he looks upon the present or the future with utter clarity depends on whether he's asleep or awake, and as long as he's asleep, free will is an option.

 

== [[Theatre]] ==