I’m with you, I hate prophecies too. For me it’s a sign of lazy or unskilled writing, and I will put a book down if a prophecy pops up unless it’s
A) done in a very refreshing, different way.
B) is used as humour to poke fun at prophecies
C) the writer is really talented; their writing is so refreshing and excellent that they convince me they’re skilled enough to make even the prophecy trope interesting
D) appears late in a book or series that I’m already engrossed in.
I didn’t put Harry Potter book 5 down because I’d already enjoyed book 1 - 4 and figured I should give the author a chance. But that’s about the only time I didn’t. (Spoiler: the prophecy storyline didn’t work for me even there, I read the books out of loyalty but found much less enjoyment in the last books.)
For me, a prophecy is a surefire way to reduce the plot into something linear and boring. It ensures that there will be nothing interesting and different in the story, just that the MC and chums are now following a pre-ordained hero’s journey where nothing I haven’t read a hundred times before will happen. There are so many more interesting ways to make the hero set off on a journey.
Adding to that, the “chosen one” can’t follow the prophecy 100%. There will always be twists and turns, but the end result is the same. The (C) clause is where the writer can get creative.
Yup, if you do it differently I’ll probably give it a chance. But many writers don’t. They just give characters different names and hair colours and faithfully follow the prophecy book road, and I find that boring.
(Weirdly enough, there are tropes that I can’t get enough of and will read even though they’re unoriginal - like the medieval noble or prince/princess thing, I gobble that up if it’s written at least half-well. But I’m much more critical with prophecies. I guess I’m a hypocrite, lol.)
TBH what I hate about Chosen Ones isn’t the prophesy, it’s universal undeserved adoration. “Oooooh you’re so fine, Chosen One! You’re so great! The biggest! The best! Better than the rest!”
As for prophecy as a storytelling device, I don’t exactly hate it, I just think it’s one of the lazier ones, not far above “A wizard did it”. I love a deconstructed prophecy though – i.e. when following the prophecy letter by letter is exactly the thing that dooms the world. Delightful.
Yeah, I can absolutely get behind a prophecy that dooms the world! That’s interesting.
I’m kind of lame and enjoy unmitigated praise though, haha. In IF books anyway. Praise me more! (It has to be done well though, some IF’s manage to make me feel truly flattered and hot and empowered, while others just come off as insincere boot-licking.)
It’s a modified trolley problem. “There are five people tied to a train track, and you can pull a lever that will save them but pulling that lever has a 50/50 chance to kill you.”
The first book is mostly interesting as a milestone in condensing Tolkien into tropes and profit. Sword of Shannara showed this could be massively lucrative. The second and third were substantially more original, though it can be hard to see that now, when so many other novels have been written using their tropes.
Even if the writer did that, you could choose to disbelieve them too. Unreliable narrator to the moon!
I think you’re resting too much on the author-character distinction here. Things said by a character are frequently intended to be believed by the reader; it’s often easy to see authorial intent at work unless your hatred of a given trope has you squinting to miss it.
For my money, Harry Potter holds together much more plausibly if we treat Dumbledore as an uber-Machiavellian villain and manipulator, but I don’t actually think that the author meant to leave that reading open. Ditto for the reading you want to take of prophecy tropes.
What @comradelenin is arguing for isn’t the trolley problem. If it were the trolley problem, it could, in fact, be fixed by going to drink mojitos on a Hawai’ian beach. What he’s arguing for is that everyone who isn’t volunteering to go fight Russia on the ground is guilty of the death of every Ukrainian, because “going to fight the enemy on the ground at the risk of your life” is how he thinks the Chosen One needs to behave to not be guilty of people dying.
But this is the only logical result of actually believing in the prophecy. If the Chosen One is the only one that can save the world, then the adoration isn’t undeserved, because they’re the only ones who can, well, save the world. It’s just that they’re not in that position because they’re smart, or skilled, or brave or whatever the fuck, they’re in that position because some specific old geezer said some very specific words instead of “and at their moment of triumph, the Dark Sovereign slipped on a banana peel, hit his head on the table corner and died”, which would save a lot of people a lot of trouble.
No, what I mean is, the writer tells you that in the book jacket or whatever.
I VERY CLEARLY read different types of books than you. Like, I love logic puzzles so one of my favourite types of reading is crime novels, in which at least ONE character is lying their ass off (obviously), and often plenty of others are for reasons completely unrelated to the crime in question.
If the prophecy in Harry Potter would’ve been something that applied to Hermione instead of referring to “the boy who lived” or whatever, the whole thing would have been wrapped up by the third book, at the latest.
Unless you are incredibly good at it, a more accurate statement is that I’ll be able to break it in ways you didn’t see coming*. Or you do the whole “even though this sentence can be read in fifteen different ways, only one counts for the prophecy and you need to guess which without any clues” thing, which is just lame.
The thing is I REALLLLLLLY like words. I think words are fun. And because of that I’ve developed an ability for “technical, and malicious if I feel like it, compliance” of them, which is ANOTHER reason I’m no longer allowed to play Bards.
*and I STILL can’t make the Geas/Quest spell not fucking suck ass
I mean, I ve written both a chosen one story (it was a terrible story but I had so. much. fun. with everyone misinterpreting the actual prophecy) and a language-based magic system (I’m a Finn, everything is language-based magic).
My roomie can geas, suggestion, quest real well. She is also able to break power gamer, no roleplay types and by the book beasties. Very clever girl. They became less assholes after shes done with them.
No but if you’re right next to a bunch of civilians and you have a gun, and an enemy soldier is approaching to kill them, and you run, then yes, that’s your fault.
That suggests a preferred solution to the trolley problem which (I’m going to guess) is not @comradelenin’s. [Edit: I was still writing this when he resoundingly confirmed my guess]
He recognizes that the risk to the purported Chosen One could make buggering off to Hawai’i “understandable in a given situation” (depending on how much risk we’re talking about, presumably) but thinks at the end of the day “it is still, in fact, their fault.”
That’s the trolley problem element. You walked away from lives you could have saved – or, alternatively, you rejected the attempt to make you morally responsible when you’re not the sadist tying people to the tracks.
Bruce Chatwin and Truman Capote don’t tell you they’re writing novels, even on the dust jacket. Why would you trust what a writer tells you there more than what they put elsewhere in the book? I hadn’t taken you for such a trusting reader.
Or maaaybe we read the same kinds, but I don’t import the level of suspicion from one genre I read into another. “Which one of these hobbits is f–ing lying to me?”
this one more.
Like, I love logic puzzles so one of my favourite types of reading is crime novels, in which at least ONE character is lying their ass off (obviously), and often plenty of others are for reasons completely unrelated to the crime in question.
