You Can't Fight Fate: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

* In ''[[Half Prince]]'' a different kind of fate takes place when it comes to NPCs in Second Life. The game is programmed for things to happen, which is explored in a rather sad tale when Prince meets two NPCs on the Eastern Continent. Prince has to complete a quest by taking Kenshin the demon lord to see his game-programmed lover, but they find her grave. Even though the game was programmed for this to happen, because Kenshin developed a conscience it made it a very sad experience for him, because to kenshin it was as if she really did exist and she'd waited for him until the end of her days.

* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (anime)|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'', this is embodied in the sympathetic [[Dark Magical Girl]] who is actually named "[[Meaningful Name|Fate]]". She feels that she has no choice in her life and in her actions, and thus no hope. Ironically, this is her power at first, as her ruthlessness (as there are no other options to her) gives her the edge. The Heroine [[Contemplate Our Navels|contemplates a few times]] on how she, on the other hand, ''chose'' to be a [[Magical Girl]], because it's something she wants to be. (Rather rare; most [[Magical Girl]]s are that way [[Because Destiny Says So]].) Thus, Fate and Nanoha's battle in the first season is symbolic of Fate vs. Free Will.

* {{spoiler|Homura}} in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]'' goes ''crazy'' with this trope, trying to avert it all over the place. It does not help that it [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|keeps]] [[It Got Worse|getting worse]] every time this is attempted, since [[Manipulative Bastard|somebody]] [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|decided]] to give the wrong person the correct powers for this [[Gambit Roulette|insane job]]. [[Mind Screw|And then the anime]] [[Screw Destiny|decides to pull a fast one]]!

 

* Present throughout ''[[Booster Gold]]'', but particularly in the issue where he tries to keep Barbara Gordon ([[Batgirl]]) [[The Killing Joke|from getting shot by]] [[The Joker]]. He tries and fails to stop the event from happening multiple times before accepting that there are some things he isn't capable of changing because of solidified time (i.e. changing the past purposely, already extremely dangerous in "normal" cases, becomes impossible because certain events are literally too important to change, such as preventing Barbra Gordon from being crippled, thus preventing her from becoming Oracle, or saving [[Blue Beetle]], preventing the Max Lord / Checkmate conspiracy from being revealed).

* In ''[[Universal War One]]'', when the group of heroes are trapped in the past, one of them realise that all the attempts to avoid the death of one of their comrades is, in fact, leading to his death.

* ''[[The Metabarons]]'' are fated to never be happy and lead a tragic existence: son slaying father to succeed as Metabaron, wives dieing, mutilation and general unhappiness.

* Subverted in the crossover [[Spawn]]/[[Wild CATS]], where future versions of Grifter and Zealoth (the former being the original's future self, but the latter being a new Zealoth) are sent into the past to slay Spawn, and as such prevent a future where Spawn became a ruthless dictator known as the Ipsissim. When they fail to kill him, the present Wildcats and Spawn agree to join them in the future to defeat the Ipsissim, but it turns out this was part of a predestination paradox, as the Ispissim uses the opportunity to give Spawn the medals that corrupted him and caused him to turn evil to begin with. Once back in the present, the influence starts, and Spawn starts [[Evil Gloating]]... until the future Wildcats realize their mistake and make a last attempt to modify a minor action in the past. This cause Spawn to recognize future Zealoth as an adult version of his beloved wife's daughter Cyan, come back to his senses, and hand over the medals to her, preventing his transformation into the Ipsissim and erasing this alternate future.

 

* In the ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' fanfic ''A Rose and A Thorn 4'', Project: Mirage goes back in time to try and stop Ashura from causing the fall of the ARK. It turns out that ''because'' she did this while knowing what was going to happen, she made Sonic blue, and gave birth to {{spoiler|Knuckles}}. The experiment she mated with caused the rampage of the Artificial Chaos because she told him it was going to happen. She still couldn't save Maria even though she knew about it and was right there. But then, she had just been shot...

** But she did manage to kill Ashura so that A Rose And A Thorn 3 didn't happen, breaking a time loop that may have been going around for centuries, and because it ''didn't'' happen, A Rose And A Thorn 5 happened instead. So there was a point to it after all.

* The [[Mega Crossover]] [[Fanfic]][[Web Comic|comic]] ''[[Roommates 2007]]'' uses a highly meta version of this and [[Because Destiny Says So]]. The characters are aware of their fictionality, the stories they are from AND the [[Theory of Narrative Causality]] so the destiny that says so and/or the fate they can't fight. More directly: [[Labyrinth|Jareth]] desperatelly tries to be a hero but [[Running Gag|always fails]] and even got [[Super-Powered Evil Side|villainous]] [[Paranoia Fuel|backlash]] because of it. [[Zombieland|Tallahassee]] tried to escape his [[Canon]] to bring back his son...[[Tear Jerker|and failed]].

* ''[[How Can It This Be]]'' had Raphael explained, despite wanting to bring the women their lives back, their wounds they suffered were too grave. He was kind enough to explain why.

 

* Towards the end of ''[[The Matrix]] Reloaded'', Neo finally reaches the "source" of the Matrix and meets the Architect, the computer program who designed the Matrix. He informs Neo that Zion will ultimately be destroyed and that it cannot be saved. At the end of their conversation, he also mentions that Neo's "destiny", like that of his five predecessors, was to enter the source and restart the program, allowing 23 humans to be selected to rebuild Zion. Thus, the "prophecy" will be fulfilled that after a century of warfare between humans and machines, the fight will finally come to an end. However, Neo would only be restarting the war, not ending it. Finally, the Architect mentions that Trinity will inevitably die in order to save Neo. The Architect tells him that there is nothing he can do to stop that from happening.

** Of course, in ''Revolutions'', Neo tells the Oracle about the Architect's warnings, and she {{spoiler|responds that the Architect is full of crap and can't predict the future worth a damn. Guess what? Zion is not destroyed, and the war comes to a permanent end.}}

* In ''[[Kung Fu Panda 2]]'', the antagonist peacock Shen ordered the massacre of the entire panda population in China because of the prophecy that he will be brought down by a warrior in "Black and white". In the end, his efforts to change his fate became the very beginning of his downfall (Shen's parents banished him out for it) and sets up the chain of events that will fulfill this prophecy.

 

** And it's pretty much the premise of [[Left Behind]] and all Christian-related end-times fictional stories.

* The plot of [[Philip K. Dick]]'s novel ''The World Jones Made'' is driven by the titular Floyd Jones, who has the power to see one year into the future. Unfortunately, after he sees the future, he loses the ability to change the decisions he makes in that future - possibly because he's actually sending his memories ''back'' through time to his younger self.

** {{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]].

* In ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'', Iluvatar (God) acts mostly through fate: Gandalf tells Frodo that "there are other forces at work in the world...one could say Bilbo was ''meant'' to find the Ring, in which case you were also ''meant'' to have it." Being a demi-god, he has seen a vision of the history of the universe before it was made, and therefore is able to predict that [[It Was His Sled|Gollum]] would destroy the Ring.

** The basic plot point of the story of Túrin Turambar, thanks to Morgoth's curse on Húrin's family.

** Also the point of the Doom of Mandos, which states that the Feanorians will never complete their oath.

* Jane Yolen's ''[[Great Alta Saga]]''. Jenna, destined to be [[The Messiah]] for her people, eventually accepts that she is "the Anna for this Turning".

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[Literature/The Slithering|The Slithering]] hadow", Thalis urges this on [[Conan the Barbarian]] about the [[Living Shadow]] Thog.

* [[Discussed Trope]] in ''[[Septimus Heap]]'', where Septimus questions Marcellus Pye's intentions on creating a potion that gives eternal life ''along'' with eternal youth, since Marcellus has already taken the potion for eternal life already and Septimus saw him a withered old man 500 years later in Septimus's own time.

 

* Partially subverted and partially played straight in ''[[Angel]]'': a dark and seemingly inevitable prophecy forming one of the major plots of Season Three was {{spoiler|ultimately revealed to be an elaborate [[Gambit Roulette]] on the part of time-traveling [[Big Bad]] Sajjhan, who wanted Connor killed off before he could fulfill the true prophecy: causing the death of Sajjhan. Ultimately, however, the true prophecy comes to pass...[[Prophecy Twist|as does]] [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|the fake one]].}}.

* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', "[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Recap/S7/E04 Help|Help]]": A teenager has had premonitions about her own untimely death. Buffy saves her from homicidal maniacs, a demon, and a [[Death Trap]], but she has a heart condition and dies anyway.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "Synchrony" presents the case of a strange old man warning an MIT student and professor that the student is going to die at a specific time - because of this warning the professor, attempting to save the student, ends up accidentally pushing him into the path of an oncoming bus and thus the warning is a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]]. The old man is {{spoiler|actually the professor from the future, who has traveled back in time}} attempting to [[Set Right What Once Went Wrong|Set Right What Will Go Wrong]] and prevent an impending scientific breakthrough {{spoiler|that would be made by the professor in collaboration with his girlfriend, also a scientist, and the student, and which would be a catalyst for a catastrophic technological development.}} Mulder cites an old theory of Scully's about how the future can't be altered, and so the old man's efforts are probably doomed. {{spoiler|Although the professor manages to kill both his present and future selves and erase all of his files, as the episode ends, the girlfriend is continuing the research on her own with backups of the erased data.}}

* In ''[[The Unusuals]]'' episode "42" Detective Banks has to keep saving a woman who foresees several bus robberies and tries to die during one (and tries again, and again, because Banks keeps saving her) because she believes she's fated to do so. He finally convinces her that you make your own fate, only for her to die in a bus crash at like 11:50pm.

* ''[[Dark Oracle]]'': Attempts at preventing the comic's predictions from coming true inevitably result in a [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy]].

* ''[[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]]).

* [[Older Than Dirt]]: In the ancient [[Egyptian Mythology|Egyptian]] story Princes Ahura: The Magic Book, the prince and his family cannot escape the punishment the gods decree for their sacrelige of stealing the holy Book of Thoth. They try, but it catches up no matter what they do. In the end the prince, his sister/wife, and their son die.

 

* In ''[[GURPS]]: Thaumatology'' there are items that force a Destiny on the owner, causing them to fulfill it whether they want to or not. The Destiny doesn't run out either, an item that makes one person King of England will also make the next person who picks it up into the King of England.

* 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.

 

* Subverted in Calderon's ''Life is a Dream'', where Segismund is prophecied to kill his father, King Basil of Poland, and become an [[Evil Overlord]]. Because of this, Basil locks Segismund away in a tower in the mountains, which [[Self-Fulfilling Prophecy|angers him]]. For a while, the play ''really, really'' looks like it's going to end with Segismund killing Basil. [[Screw Destiny|It doesn't.]] Although he does actually kill his mother, but [[Death by Childbirth|that was an accident.]]

* A [[Tear Jerker]] example is the theme of ''[[Our Town]]''.

** Prior to that Makuta actually [[Exploited Trope|exploited this to his advantage]]: He had put Mata Nui to sleep, but a group of Toa heroes were destined to wake him up again. Rather than try to stop the heroes at all costs, he arranged things so that reviving Mata Nui could give him even more power.

 

* In ''[[Radiant Historia]]'' all the things that happened were just a {{spoiler|[[Xanatos Gambit]] from the twins to, not only save the world, but also to make Heiss accept his fate of being the sacrifice}}

* In ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]'', Kratos finds you can not only fight Fate, you can ''kill'' them too.

* In ''[[Diablo III]]'' the Scroll of Fate dictates the fate of everything in existence. The only ones who can fight fate are the Nephalem (the player characters) since the Scroll of Fate doesn't mention them. Their fate is literally unwritten. {{spoiler|This is good news for Heaven, since the Angels are otherwise destined to fall to the Prime Evil.}}

 

* In ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Gae Bolg works on this principle. It's a weapon that reverses causality: instead of the attack puncturing the heart, the heart is punctured and THEN the attack lands.

** Still doesn't [[Born Lucky|keep]] [[Action Girl|Saber]] [[Super Reflexes|from]] [[Beyond the Impossible|avoiding]] death, using her canonical luckiness and extreme skill to ensure it only grazes her heart. Fate is thus unavoidable, but you can escape the worst of it.

** Though in the canonical ending, {{spoiler|Battler is one of the only two survivors of the incident on the island, and the whole series is basically his dying dream. He does come out of his coma once he figures everything out, only to die shortly after. So the whole scenario is flipped around: No matter what happens, everyone but Battler and Eva are going to die on the island since that's simply how it happened.}} [[Mind Screw|Or Is It?]]

 

* [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/010203 Zoe] [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20050814 being] [http://sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20090804 burned] in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]''.

* Happens all the time in ''[[Hitmen for Destiny]]'' for example [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/thorsby/destiny/series.php?view=archive&chapter=39639 here]. Characters who have prophecies predicting their death tend to die right on time ({{spoiler|though sometimes they die earlier than predicted, destiny being fallible and even damageable}}).

* In ''[[Spinnerette]]'', this rule is what gives [[Benjamin Franklin]] [https://www.spinnyverse.com/comic/01-28-2011 superpowers.]

 

* Done for laughs in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'', when Church repeatedly goes back in time, to try to keep "a lot of really weird and totally inexplicable stuff" from happening. [[Groundhog Day Loop|It doesn't work.]] Mostly, either his plan fails, or he actually ''causes'' the event he was trying to prevent, ''including his own death.'' He also seems to selectively forget his mistakes, since he still blames Caboose for the tank incident, [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot|even though Caboose wasn't really at fault at all.]]

* In [[The End (web video)|The End]], whenever Brendon meets someone new he receives a vision of the end of that relationship and he cannot change what he sees. His only choices are to accept fate or not to pursue that relationship at all.

 

* In ''[[South Park]]'', Craig Tucker is this during the episode "Pandemic 2: The Startling".

* In the ''[[Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (animation)|Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers]]'' episode "Seer No Evil", a gypsy moth named Cassandra gives a series of unlikely predictions to everyone except Zipper, but they all end in different ways than expected. Monterey Jack gets a pink fur coat (he gets covered in cotton candy), Gadget would have a run-in with a tall, dark stranger (specifically, the [[Villain of the Week]]'s monkey), Dale would fly without wings (a magnet picks him up after he gets his foot stuck in a thimble), and Chip would end up running into an elephant and get crushed by a trunk, implying that he would die. However, it was an automated elephant at the entrance of the fun house, and the trunk in question {{spoiler|had all of the stolen loot as well as Dale, Monty, and Gadget trapped inside, and they used force to knock it down and pry it open.}} Luckily, Chip didn't die, because {{spoiler|there was a hole in the floor.}}

** By the end of the Avalon arc, Goliath has learned his lesson enough that, faced with a dystopian future vision of things that will happen to his friends and allies and asked by Elisa to give her the Phoenix Gate in order to fix things, he refuses, stating that time and fate are immutable and cannot be changed. As it turns out the whole experience was staged by Puck as a gambit to obtain the Phoenix Gate for himself, so Goliath is presented as making the right choice.

*** Essentially, Gargoyles manages to avoid the [[Timey-Wimey Ball]] by sticking with one rule of time paradox.

** And yet, it should be noted that when Hades had Hercules trade away his strength for 24 hours, he also broke his spirit, so he almost succeeded in removing him from the game as a fighter. And THEN he had the bright idea of sending the Cyclops to eliminate Hercules for good, thus prompting Meg to go get Phil, thus leading to Hercules's victory, thus leading to Meg getting hurt, Hercules gets his strength back, and the Titans are thrown for a loop. (So close, and then you had to kill him right then!)

* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'': After some [[Time Travel]], Mojo Jojo chucks a young Utonium into the town volcano. However, the PPGs have travelled as well, and not only do they save Utonium, it turns out that this incident is what got him into science...[[Stable Time Loop|and eventually led to the PPGs' creation.]]

* In ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', one episode has Twilight Sparkle meeting her future self, who has messed up hair, a torn-up catsuit, an eyepatch, and a scar. Because Present Twilight talks so much, Future Twilight can't deliver a warning about the future, so Present Twilight panics and tries to prevent a potential disaster, not only causing the changes her future self wound up with, but it turns out there was no disaster in the first place. The warning was [[An Aesop|to not worry about what the future brings.]]

 

* The universe will die. Not now, not tomorrow or in a million years but it will die and there is nothing we can do about it.

** [[Screw Destiny|Yet]].

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Narrative Devices]]

[[Category:Tragedy]]

[[Category:Older Than Dirt]]

[[Category:Fate and Prophecy Tropes]]

[[Category:Depressing Tropes]]