Quote Originally Posted by Xihirli View Post
I'm gonna disagree. "Destiny" cannot work in a story. Sometimes it doesn't detract that much, but when played straight destiny as a concept can only make a story worse. "You can't fight fate" is a really stupid moral to put into any story because what kind of moral is that? That's not applicable to real life because if we do have fate, we don't have a way to see the future. A world with fate that you can't determine ahead of time is indistinguishable from a world with no fate at all.

Now if fate is an antagonistic force I don't mind that so much, or if there's a subversion where what people assume is fate turns out to be wrong. But if you're going to use destiny to say "the heroes are going to win" then why are you even bothering to use it.
I think it's fiber if we're going for something akin to psychohistory but less accurate. Do destiny for larger groups is fine, individual characters I'm mostly agreeing with you. Although when that Destiny is the work of various other characters manipulating the situation, more 'Arthur is destined to become king because Merlin has rigged it', I think it works better.

I also don't see an issue with stories where a character makes small changes within a framework. It can also be useful if said confrontation isn't the point of the story, and instead just an enabling device.

Moving more towards Star Wars, destiny seems to be something the Force decides, and it's really uncertain how much it 'knows'. Let's be honest, Anakin kind of messed up the Bring Balance To The Force thing for twenty-odd years. Might have been nice to have a backup chosen one or two is all I'm saying. I mean, it's a big galaxy and you basically decide who gets to be a space wizard, can't be that hard to pump out two hundred and hide them amongst the population.