Or they could bring them down by finding an error in their tax forms and siccing the wrath of the realm’s legal system on them. Who’s to say?
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If it can tell you the future, then the future is fixed (otherwise, it couldn’t tell you); if the future is fixed, then it can’t be altered; if it can’t be altered, then training the chosen one is irrelevant, because they’ll bring the big evil down regardless. You might as well move to a tropical climate and enjoy mojitos on the beach. And you can bring the chosen one along, because it doesn’t matter where they are, they’ll still bring down the evil. The alternative is that prophecies don’t work.
Elliot Ness has entered the chat Tell me more about this…
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Yes and? That’s basically just living in a universe where causality is a thing, if anything a prophecy is the actual change since it can affect temporal decision making. The Future is just ‘what will happen’, any future is ‘fixed’.
Those two don’t follow each other at all. There’s no logical connection there.
No? The alternative is that training is part of the process to bring down the evil, the fact that the future is fixed or not has no bearings on the content of said future or what lead there, if anything it would just mean training would happen regardless.
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I miiiight have been projecting one of my characters (a supervillain whose most frightening threat is, despite him being fully capable of bringing forth the end of the world as they know it (again), is “I’ll sue you!” and who, incidentally, would mostly belong in the magic system discussion).
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If training would happen regardless, you don’t have to care about training the chosen one, in the same way that I don’t have to care about finding a way to make the Sun rise every morning. It just happens. For all you know, NOT training the chosen one is what leads to them bringing down the evil.
Maybe the training happens. Maybe it doesn’t. Either way, you don’t have to care about preparing the chosen one to bring down the evil, because they will anyway.
Training could still matter if you want the chosen one to survive the experience, since the prophecy said nothing about that.
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Meh, chosen ones are assholes anyway.
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Sure but it’s not about caring, it’s about the fact that prophecy or not, if someone get it in their head to train the chosen one or actually does care, trying to not do it or say it’s pointless is dumb because for all you know, it’s part of the process.
A prophecy just describe the future, it won’t just magically make you win, it just tell you you did win so whatever you’re trying will probably work, it doesn’t just suddenly make inaction effective.
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Maybe NOT saying it is dumb, because for all you know, saying it is part of the process as well.
What if what I’m trying IS inaction? Does the prophecy short-circuit?
Like, if there’s a prophecy that you’ll bring about a galactic empire and you just bugger off to Tahiti to enjoy mai-tais on the beach, does the prophecy just fail?
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Baldur’s Gate did it right. You don’t start as a farmer but a warrior…and the prophecy is coming. Be it you believe it or not.
No, but you do get the ‘You are Dead’ Screen…
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That just mean inaction was always effective or that you’ll fail at inaction in a way that make you win. The point being the prophecy isn’t The Fates, it’s just fast forwarding the movie.
Depend on the setting. In Greek Myth? A Prophecy is literally the Fates giving you a preview and they don’t do reshoots so whatever you do just play into the prophecy even if it’s the dumbest way possible (coughOedipuscough)
In others, a prophecy is just seeing the future, in which case all bets are off. And yet others, a prophecy is just telling you stuff from the future where you didn’t hear a prophecy so it’s basically tailor made for you to change what the prophecy says since it’s the point of the prophecy.
It come to pass because that’s just how the future work and that’s what you saw, not because the prophecy is doing anything or has any power though. Also prophecies tend to come with instructions and steps so you’re stuck doing those too anyway.
That’s a version of how it works but there’s many versions of a same system.
Also it’s always hard to differentiate what’s fate and what’s just basic causality and many prophecy stories love to mix the two together (again, Oedipus)
This forum always had a weird definition of a ‘Chosen One’ IMO.
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They don’t have to be though. I wrote a chosen one story once, and I think all the chosen ones in it were pretty nice (well, except two, but they were just not-nice to each other, and that was because their relationship was pretty difficult).
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So, again, we come back to the part where if there’s a prophecy, you can just do whatever because it’ll come to pass anyway. Just go enjoy those mai-tais.
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Actually, I always understood that a Prophecy usually means that it is X character’s destiny aka Fate. Their paths are forced upon them by Unknown forces (Unless specified in said game or story), and they cannot deny it or walk away from it.
I’m the only one who likes Chosen one’s Stories.?
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No, I like them too, if the story itself is interesting. (Although now I want to make a chosen one IF where you can try avoid destroying the evil galactic empire and all your attempts to do so manage to destroy it regardless, in more or less bizarre ways.)
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I find chosen’s ones stories more close to reality than those ‘realistic’ ones, oddly enough.
Same lol all this talk about chosen one is making me itch to start my own. 
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You go to enjoy mai-tais in Tahiti. Your overconsumption of mai-tais causes a lime shortage, and resulting price increase makes someone other than the Evil Emperor* the richest man around, therefore preventing him from funding powerful weapons technology, resulting in their defeat in a critical battle. Well done, chosen one! 
*who unwisely invested in pineapples instead
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Something I always wondered about those stories is that aren’t the Fates or whatever equivalent the actual ‘heroes’ or main characters in those cases? Since they do all the work anyway and whoever is the unfortunate vic-I mean chosen one, is basically just their mascot?
At least in cases of ‘Prophecy is just a sneak peak of the future’, it’s still the hero’s decision that make everything work while here, it’s the Fates who’ll just twist everything anyway to get the result they want.
I was thinking more about driving the empire bankrupt in that case, but your solution works too.
Also to consider is what the prophecy actually said, and what is the interpretation (“if you cross that river, a great empire falls”)
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Oh yeah, nothing make a prophecy more complicated than when you have a prophet or seer. They make a sport out of complicating the situation.
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