I was never happy with that bit in the first place -- the characters just up and ran away from me, and no amount of yelling would convince them to do something different after I'd (reluctantly) written what they wanted. It was interesting, but it was just too much, you know? It was clutter, and while I do want to bring back the dragon/princess image at some point, that wasn't the way to do it.
Besides, I loathe prophecy and "true" foreseeing with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns.* Unless it's Andre Norton, because she does it properly. She makes it chancy, difficult, and hard to make work in any predictable fashion. She also says, explicitly, that any foreseeing is only ONE of MANY possible paths, and even the very act of looking can change the future, because now that you've seen it you may very well make different choices. She also gets the atmosphere right.
JKR gets the unpredictable and difficult parts right, but she follows a more deterministic interpretation, where the foreseen future will come to pass, no matter what. I hate that. There are not words for how much I hate that conception of time and the negation of both chance and free will.
I jumbled Apple's 'prediction' as much as possible, but really, cutting that plot thread entirely and doing a bit of splice work around the edges works much better.
*Exceptions are made for light fantasy. I make a lot of exceptions for things where I don't have to take the concepts seriously because I don't take the story or the world seriously... though if you want me to take the characters seriously, you'd better start thinking everything through to its logical conclusion and all the implications thereof. You can still be funny, of course, but 'funny' and 'light' are not really the same thing.
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Besides, I loathe prophecy and "true" foreseeing with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns.* Unless it's Andre Norton, because she does it properly. She makes it chancy, difficult, and hard to make work in any predictable fashion. She also says, explicitly, that any foreseeing is only ONE of MANY possible paths, and even the very act of looking can change the future, because now that you've seen it you may very well make different choices. She also gets the atmosphere right.
JKR gets the unpredictable and difficult parts right, but she follows a more deterministic interpretation, where the foreseen future will come to pass, no matter what. I hate that. There are not words for how much I hate that conception of time and the negation of both chance and free will.
I jumbled Apple's 'prediction' as much as possible, but really, cutting that plot thread entirely and doing a bit of splice work around the edges works much better.
*Exceptions are made for light fantasy. I make a lot of exceptions for things where I don't have to take the concepts seriously because I don't take the story or the world seriously... though if you want me to take the characters seriously, you'd better start thinking everything through to its logical conclusion and all the implications thereof. You can still be funny, of course, but 'funny' and 'light' are not really the same thing.