 Stop me if this sounds familiar. You see a fantasy novel you've never read before that catches your eye. You open it up, and the beginning is a paragraph or two in italics. It's written in a strange purple prose that doesn't match the rest of the book, and it mentions in vague terms someone who will appear and do great impressive things. Most likely they will save the world from a dark lord or another evil force. It might give a few details about the chosen one. It may mention an unusual scar or birthmark that they have on their body. Maybe it will bring up something strange that happened at the time of their birth, such as a comet streaking across the sky, or a storm destroying a palace. Just enough detail that the chosen one's age and the region of their birth are easy to discern. That way, anyone looking for them will have clues to work off of. Then the story begins, and some of the details start to match up. This boring teenager that you're forced to follow for several chapters seems to fit nicely into several of the slots that the prophecy laid out for the chosen one. Then someone realizes that this boring teenager is the chosen one. If they tell them about it, they deny it, saying it couldn't possibly be them. Until, sooner or later, a large event occurs which forces them to begin their hero's journey. Some of the vague promises in the prophecy start to parallel events of the story. Anything from escaping a wildfire, to crossing an uncrossable ocean, to finding a super special sword, to accidentally creating an army. Eventually, everyone believes they're the chosen one, and from then on, they all just do what Destiny tells them to. You've just read a prophecy! A lot of fantasy stories use them. Mostly epic fantasy, but it's not uncommon to see them pop up in dark fantasy, low fantasy, and even urban fantasy. Even a few sci-fi stories use them, but it's rarer there. Usually, it's just someone traveling back in time to tell people what happens, which is basically the same thing when you think about it. I broke no arguments here. Because there are so many fantasy franchises with prophecies being prominently featured, it's common for many writers to throw one in without thinking about it. This video will be a long way of me saying, prophecies are bad and you should not use them, ever. I know that's a strong stance to take, one many of you are already upset with me for. Some of you love prophecies, and maybe you're even writing a book or something that includes one. Before you type up 100 paragraphs in the comments ending with, kill yourself, ask yourself a few questions. What is the point of this prophecy? Why is it here? What does it do for the story? If you removed it, would it change anything at all? If any of those are difficult to answer, if you even have to think about it for more than a few seconds, get rid of it. Far too often, as in over 95% of the time, there's no reason for the prophecy to exist. All it does is give us a reason to believe the protagonist is special without them doing anything. The stereotypical epic fantasy set up is that the villain comes along early in the story to try and kill the protagonist, but he survives and escapes. Then he goes through the hero's journey until he's strong enough to defeat the Dark Lord, either by killing him or sealing him away for a thousand years. The problem with this set up is that the Dark Lord set off all of the events of the story by engaging with the prophecy. Had he left the hero's village unburned down, the hero would have left him unkilled. Could this sort of thing be used as an ironic statement about how the Dark Lord caused his own downfall, similar to the Greek myth of Perseus? Maybe. I've never seen it used that way, though. Other than in the myth of Perseus, obviously. It always seems to be played totally straight. Everyone believes in the prophecy and engages with it, yet the villains still try to defeat the chosen one, even knowing that their efforts are doomed. Could this be used to show the horror and futility of a universe where free will doesn't exist? Maybe, but I've never seen it used that way. So much of the time, a prophecy is just a reason for the inciting incident to happen. And if that's the case, why use a prophecy at all? In this hypothetical scenario, you could cut it out altogether. Have the Dark Lord attack the protagonist's village for some other reason, then he survives and swears revenge so the adventure can begin. This is exactly how Lightbringer opens up, and it works great there. The set up is an old cliche, and by removing the prophecy aspect, it becomes fresh. Whatever my other problems with that series, the first two books are fantastic. The story would follow his journey as he finds some way to stop the Dark Lord's reign of terror, and everything he did along the way would be his accomplishment, not something he was given by some higher power. From a character perspective, it makes him seem like more of a self-made person, rather than a tool used by the author to make things happen. He'd be someone who possesses bravery and strength and uses that to save innocence because it's the right thing to do. He'd be more of a, oh, what's the word? It's right on the tip of my tongue, ah, right, he'd be more of a hero. From a storytelling perspective, it would be less predictable since we wouldn't hear about all the hero's major companions and accomplishments ahead of time. And don't even get me started on how this can stunt characterization. Making someone a chosen one is like raising a child in immense wealth while constantly telling them they're gifted. They're going to develop some entitlement, is what I'm saying. They're more likely to act like the whole world revolves around them and everyone else only exists to help them on their journey to greatness than to feel any sense of duty to protect the innocent. The hero doesn't have to convince anyone to follow him by demonstrating any sort of competence in leadership or by having a plan to defeat the evil. He only has to convince them that he fits into the criteria set out by the prophecy and they have no choice but to follow their predefined role, whether that be with or against the chosen one. How boring is that? They never have to learn or grow and they don't even need to have any interesting skills or talents from the beginning. A hero who is a hero not because of their achievements, but because the story says they're a hero is boring and backwards. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. A poorly utilized prophecy is worse than a well utilized prophecy, obviously. Yet even when a prophecy is well utilized, it's almost always a bad idea because it does nothing except make the story steam artificial. Why does anyone do anything in this story or this universe for that matter? Is there a god that determines all actions everyone will take from the inception of the world until eternity? Is there a river of fate that has no consciousness but does the same thing? Does everyone lack free will or just the chosen ones? In that case, everyone around the chosen one would have little or no free will either. In order for the hero to have a dark lord to defeat, then destiny would need to be shaped in such a way that the dark lord would rise in the first place. He would need to do all his evil deeds, he would need to gain power, magic or otherwise, and his followers would also need to be forced into their position. Everyone from his mightiest lieutenant to the lowliest grunt in his army would have no choice but to be a part of the dark lord's campaign, even if they felt it was all their choice. And then everyone around them would also have their actions constrained to make sure that things stay on the defined path. Imagine a shopkeeper looks up at the wrong moment and catches a boy trying to steal, then beats him so badly he cripples his leg, making him bitter and eventually pushing him into the dark lord's army instead of doing something productive. The shopkeeper's actions would have to lead him to the exact moment where he could do this, and everyone he ever interacted with would have to have their own actions controlled to make sure he wound up there. Now multiply that by a few thousand to realize how big this is. It would cover the entire world. The butterfly effect works in reverse too. You can't just have one person whose destiny is predetermined, either free will exists or it doesn't, and when you remember that we are all just apes clinging to a speck of dust floating through an infinite void cursed with just enough intelligence to comprehend the meaninglessness of our own existence, the thought of having control over our own lives seems awfully comforting. The philosophical implications of this sort of thing are not the point of the video, though I do find them depressing personally. They're just very explicit and make things feel like they're moving in the direction they do because the author demands it, not because the world and characters naturally move in that direction. For years I've seen writing advice that says characters should drive the events of the plot and not yet pushed around. Nobody wants to watch a doormat fight with a plank of wood while they search for macguffins. A prophecy, by definition, is flying in the face of this advice. Wheel of Time got around this problem by making it clear that the same events were happening over and over, but they were different every time. There would always be a chosen one to fight evil and save the world, but he'd be a different person with a different life each time. Free will still existed, it just had its limits, and if anyone ever went past those limits, reality would bend around them to force things back on track. Cirque de Freak did something similar, it just didn't feature as heavily in the story. The writer will just throw one in and the audience will never see it in its entirety, or none of it makes sense to the audience. My favorite example of this is from The Fifth Sorceress. From the start, everyone points to the protagonist, Tristan, and tells him he's the chosen one. He has the purest blood ever, the strongest magic ever, and he even managed to stumble upon a magical cave with super special water. So he's clearly the chosen one, as described by the several thousand page long prophecy. That's not a joke, this series is wild. What is Tristan destined to do? I've read the whole trilogy and I'm unsure. Is he meant to save the world, unite all of humanity under his rule, bring God to earth? The whole point of having a chosen one is that they are chosen to do something, by destiny, or by God, or whatever else. Tristan is just chosen to be the chosen one. I love this sort of thing because it just strips away all pretense that usually surrounds this subject. A prophecy is so often just a disguised plot device that gives reason for the conflict to begin, and for people to think the protagonist is cool, and when there's no point to the prophecy, other than telling us how awesome the protagonist is, it's so honest I have to be impressed. It's like your boss telling you on the first day at your new job that you're just a set of hands he needs to do labor for him, and that as soon as you become more trouble than you're worth, he'll cut you loose. No smoke up your ass about how you're all a family, or how many great opportunities are opening up for you. Just cold, naked truth about how you're there primarily for the benefit of somebody else. And the fifth sorceress is only there to let the author project himself onto Tristan. It doesn't matter why or how he's cool, just that everyone thinks he's cool. It's beautiful to watch someone strip away all pretense and be their authentic selves in public like this. Please just watch the nearly three hours of videos I've already made about that series, it's batshit and I need more people to see me complain. The point is that prophecies can be dumb in multiple ways. The only examples of prophecies that work well are not the ones where the prophecy is vague, rather the ones that engage in misdirection. They weren't wrong, but they came true in ways you didn't expect them to. Greek myths were great at this sort of thing. I already mentioned Perseus's grandfather obsessively avoiding him for years only to be killed by accidents at the Olympics. More well-known modern examples come from something inspired by Greek myth, the Percy Jackson series. In the first book, Perseus told that on his quest he will be betrayed by the one who calls him a friend. Percy spends most of the book wondering if Annabeth or Grover will be the one to betray him and neither of them do. By the end he starts to think that the prophecy was wrong, then he's betrayed by Luke at the very end. It's one of the best twists I've ever read, it's perfect and it only works as well as it does because there's a prophecy. Would Percy Jackson have been better if we had no idea any of this was coming and Luke just betrayed him at the end? Well hell no. Because of the betrayal line, we're wondering the whole time when something bad is going to happen, not if, when. And because it comes from a minor character at the last minute it takes us completely off guard. The subject of the prophecy was someone other than what we anticipated. Alfred Hitchcock had a famous quote where he talked about the difference between suspense and surprise. He uses an example of two people talking at a table when a bomb goes off. If the audience doesn't know about the bomb then everything up until that point is just a regular scene. But if the audience knows about it then the whole scene they're dreading the moment it goes off. Instead of 15 seconds of surprise they have 15 minutes of suspense. The best way to handle storytelling is to combine the two elements in a way where they don't detract from each other. Percy Jackson does that remarkably well in all five books. Most prophecies do neither, they're just an outline. There's one giant franchise I've purposely avoided mentioning until now, Dune. That series is all about Paul Atreides who was destined to be the Kwisatz Haderach. The specifics of what this means are complex, basically he was supposed to become someone with the ability to see through time and space and then take over as the ruler of all humanity to make sure it would prosper. That's an oversimplification I know so don't rage at me, Dune fans. From early in the story Paul is thought to be the Kwisatz Haderach since he fits the criteria laid out by the prophecy. Specifically he's able to take command of the Fremen people and their support is what allows him to take over the universe and commit a shitload of genocides. This series is wild man. Here's the thing though, the prophecy is completely artificial. A religious order called the Bene Gesserit created the myth and spread it across the galaxy while also running a eugenics program to create the person the prophecy was about. It was not a genuine vision of what would or could happen, it was a tool to control the masses, one that took thousands of years to finally work and eventually got out of their control. You can see the difference here. This prophecy is not nearly as shocking as some others, it doesn't come true in an unexpected way nor does it really add a sense of dread or tension. The prophecy is artificial and we know that from early on so its manipulative nature is clear to the audience while being unknown to most of the characters. The whole thing is about the corrupting power of organized religion as well as the danger of blindly following charismatic leaders. Without going into heavy spoilers the universe regrets Paul coming to power because he becomes a brutal tyrant and his son does too. And he's a worm who can see the future, it makes sense I promise. Paul would never have reached that point if the Bene Gesserit hadn't laid the groundwork for his rise and if the people in the universe, particularly the Fremen, hadn't been so willing to do his bidding. You could simplify it a little to being a warning about the dangers of combining religion with politics but that's a deeper discussion we don't have time for. The point is that the prophecy is there for thematic reasons and not plot reasons. In this case the whole point is to play around with the idea of a prophecy and how it could change the world even if it wasn't true. It's not that monumental or surprising in how it affects the plot, it's all about the themes of the story and how fascinating they are. Dune has stuck around in the public consciousness for decades, partially because these themes are timeless and fascinating. If the prophecy had been genuine and Paul never realized what an awful tyrant he was then this would just be a series about worms and people with blue eyes. Sometimes it's okay to let plot take a bat seat when other things are more important. Old sci-fi writers understood this in a way modern writers usually don't and modern fantasy writers are obsessed with subverting and playing with old tropes but most of them seem to have discarded prophecies altogether rather than trying something different with them. I started this video with an assertion that many aspiring writers are working on a project where a prophecy features prominently and telling them to remove it. Some of them may still be defensive and thinking that theirs is obviously different so I have to ask again what is the point of this prophecy? Are you doing something unique with it like Dune? Are you using it as misdirection to ram a plot to his home like Percy Jackson? Is it going to be revealed to be fake all along? Or will it just serve as motivation for the bad guys to attack the hero's village thus serving as an inciting incident? If you can't come up with a good reason for it, get rid of it. That's advice that can be applied to a lot of places really. Overall, just stop with the prophecies. Just stop. For the love of every god. Super special thanks to everyone who has watched this far. You've seen the entire thing, except for the credits of course. These names here are my Patreon patron people. The ten dollar and up patrons are Oppo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Brother Santotes, Buffy Valentine, Carolina Clay, Dan Anceliovic, Dark King, Dio, Echo, Flax, Great Rebo, Johnny St. Clair, Carcat Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Lord Tiebreaker, Microphone, Peep the Toad, Robi Reviews, Sad Martigan, Silia the Vixen, Stone Stairs, Tesla Shark, Vaivictus, and Wesley. And of course, all the other names you see here. These people, they're all great. 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