Is there also a prophecy about the prophecy's prophecy? This is all very confusing to me. Why does the prophecy need a prophecy? Anyway, maybe there's a hidden book somewhere that is said to have a prophecy written down, and someone, well, has a prophecy of that book and where it might be?
I'm reading Jeremiah in the Bible right now. He keeps prophesying the fall of the tribes - a lot will be carried off to Babylon, a lot will be slaughtered because they've been worshipping false gods and sacrificing their children to Moloch. The prophesy itself is a call to repentance. The second they would, the tribes would not be slaughtered or carried off to Babylon - but they don't heed the word and Jeremiah is thrown into prison and well ... I'm just about to get to the part where prophesy has become fact. You have to decide what you're prophesy is to be used for. A lot of stories have ignored prophesies in them - kind like the Shining. Learning the place has a history of violence, and that he's already engaged in violence against his own son one wonders what exactly was Jack thinking. I often think that they're used to show how people ignore a kindof outside, supernatural guidance and yet by ignoring it fall into a battle of good versus evil that they're often ill equipped to fight because of that initial disbelief or scoffing.
Easy peasy. So Nathan Drake finds a prophecy, but it is cryptic. But he’s like a super wonky historical archaeology kinda guy so through great intuition, he realizes the prophecy predicts the generation of another prophecy. And he figures out where. The baddies seem to get wind of it, but of course Nathan subtly mislead them with scenes we didn’t really understand at the time. So he gets to the place of the new prophecy, an ancient tomb of a long forgotten Burmese king, and it’s fucking Lara Croft there! And she opens the tomb and the mummy pops out and starts chanting the new prophecy, and cliffhanger time for the sequel.
Kind of like the Wise Powers That Be saying, "Wait! There's more!"? Any reason you need to stretch it out like this? I mean, usually the prophecy is a given, isn't it, and we're waiting to see how it'll be fulfilled.
Another fun thing is misappropriated prophecies, as in Larry Correia's Monster Hunter. No spoilers here, but in this case pride goes a long way towards wreaking disaster.
Bearing in mind how your last thread went, are you actually writing a plot about a prophecy of a prophecy? Or are you just asking random questions to amuse yourself at our members' expense? The latter isn't going to be tolerated
I genuinely am, yes. And I'll note; the very first part of the last threads title was "purely exploratory".
You've given absolutely no clue as to what type of story or what genre this is for. I was tempted to just leave a snarky reply like "username checks out" but that would be rude. My first thought, given we have no explanation from you, was maybe something like the "Two Letters" story of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
I would start by making the prophecies compelling. Broad question, broad answer. If casting another fairly wide net in the future, it might be better to ask, "Does anyone know of any stories that feature nested prophecies? What did you think they did right and wrong?" Though for myself none come to mind at the moment.
I am not a biblical scholar, but the Old Testament made prophecies about the coming of Jesus Christ, who in turn made prophecies in his time 351 Old Testament Prophecies Fulfilled In Jesus Christ Did Jesus Make Predictions That Have Come True? quoted from the second article: Jesus not only fulfilled prophecy in His own life, He Himself predicted events that were to come to pass some time in the future.
As tolerant and true to form as everyone's favorite mod is being, he does have a point. @Scroll Troll, if you have a story you're working on, please give us a little context so people can answer your question in a helpful manner. If you just came up with a conundrum with no intention of using it, don't post it next time. That being said, there is precedent. As @Louanne Learning mentioned, there's the old testament. (John the Baptist might also count.) That's more a bunch of prophesies about a future prophet than a prophesy about a prophesy though. Again, it would help to know what the hell you're talking about, but depending on the story, maybe there's a sort of prophesy scavenger hunt: one prophesy leads someone to a place where they find another prophesy written by another person at another time. It would be hard to pull off and make interesting, but I'm thinking The Da Vinci Code with generations of a family following one cryptic prophesy after another that each lead to the discovery of another prophesy from another prophet years later. It would have to lead someplace interesting though, like the end of the world or something. I don't know. Again, we don't know what you're asking for, but that's my idea.
The two usual tropes for prophecy stories are 1) the chosen one: which covers everything from the bible through to king fu panda or the matrix 2) the maguffin hunt: a band of true believers have to find the thing and having found it they must do the shit with the thing to save the world
it is written in the writing of the one true prophecy called rules that thou shalt not troll and thus thou will give context and meaning in thine posts or on the failing of the harvest moon when the sky turns red as blood a great moose will come, and his antlers will be huge and fluffy, and he will smite the unbelievers and vague posting heretics with the hammer of ban
I shall emerge into the light, Enormously Angular Elk! I'm eyeing this with fantasy goggles. Here's the thing; I don't want to just indicate another prophecy. I want the prediction of the prophecy to produce another layer of substance through the manner of it's prediction. I guess, I want the layer of context provided by the pre-prophet to provide a story to takeaway itself; and I suppose that's the most interesting if the context suggested about the future is, however, immediately relevant in the present. Either the context has it's roots in the now, or perhaps the context given about the future provides the missing half of the information that's lacking about the here-and-now. I appreciate all takes though; I think maybe this is best if you try to make it as layered yet well-woven as you can, to try and justify it's existence to the reader. A prophecy about a prophecy should be a bit weird. I think it should be a little snide, a little deeply exotic, a little blunt and business like... This is the product of a prophet who's been doing this for a long time and clearly had a proper pull on the peace pipe.
I think, running counter to the complexity, you need to have a simple core. I like that about Bruce Johnson's idea. "Two Letters" is an idea you can carry around in your head.
The closest I can think of is the Belgariad series. Though in that case it was two competing prophecies.
That's pretty good. Might be a little too complicated to do sincerely, but you should at least have reason to compare the two prophets in stature.
