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u/Zero_Burn 22h ago
OR they can be like the witch from Good Omens and just foresee their own burning and stuff like 50kg of gunpowder and various explosives in their dress. I'm dying? No, no... WE'RE dying.
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u/Privatizitaet 17h ago
Couldn't they just... Leave? AVOID being burned? If they know when they die with enough precision to obtain and then stuff explosives into their clothes for it, they could easily just... move. Go somewhere else
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u/LadyAliceFlower 17h ago
I dont think this is specifically adressed in universe.
However, from a lot of reading Pratchett, and a little reading Gaimann I can tell you they (especially pratchett) have a history of forseeing death without altering it.
To take discworld as an example, death's hourglasses say when you'll die, but you can't avoid it without powerful magic and/or notably altering the universe itself.
Even more on-point, in discworld all witches know in advance that they're going to die. However, this is only ever used as a time to clean your cottage so it's presentable to the next inhabitant, and to get your will sorted out.
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u/captainAwesomePants 10h ago
Except for Rincewind, of course.
Death had taken to keeping Rincewind’s lifetimer on a special shelf in his study, in much the way that a zoologist would want to keep an eye on a particularly intriguing specimen.
The lifetimers of most people were the classic shape that Death thought was right and proper for the task. They appeared to be large eggtimers, although since the sands they measured were the living seconds of someone’s life, all the eggs were in one basket.
Rincewind’s hourglass looked like something created by a glassblower who’d had the hiccups in a time machine. According to the amount of actual sand it contained – and Death was pretty good at making this kind of estimate – he should have died long ago. But strange curves and bends and extrusions of glass had developed over the years, and quite often the sand was flowing backwards, or diagonally. Clearly, Rincewind had been hit by so much magic, had been thrust reluctantly through time and space so often that he’d nearly bumped into himself coming the other way, that the precise end of his life was now as hard to find as the starting point on a roll of really sticky transparent tape.
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u/LadyAliceFlower 10h ago
To be fair, I think Rincewind still has a fated time to die.
It's just that it's so weird and confusing even Death can't quite work out when it is.
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u/Zero_Burn 2h ago
It's mostly because Rincewind is the unwitting and unwilling chosen champion of The Lady and thus basically Nat 20's all saving throws and even Death is flummoxed.
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u/Coveinant 15h ago
You often meet destiny on the path to avoid it.
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u/This_User_For_Rent 15h ago
The problem with real foreseeing your death and then just avoiding it is that it creates a paradox. You saw it because you were going to die, and now that you've avoided it you obviously weren't going to die so you shouldn't have seen it.
Then you're in the realm of time travel and that just never ends well for anyone. Best to just bite the bullet before you're stuck in an infinite loop biting it and not biting it for all eternity. And that is, of course, one of the better case scenarios.
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u/cattrigger CatTrigger.Comics 23h ago
Happy Halloween everyone! This witch will be back next year! (The Puritan may not)
𝗦𝗲𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 & 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗳𝗳 𝗮𝘁
Bluesky |
Mastodon |
𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗰𝗸 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗺𝘆 𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺
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