#WritersCoffeeClub Oct 25 - Does 'destiny' have a role in modern fiction?
Not unless you can figure out a whole new way to subvert it (or are working in a genre whose readers have Expectations): it's a cliché in high fantasy and plays into reactionary religious and monarchical tropes.
(Subverting it egregiously is on my to-do list, but my to-do list is longer than my current life expectancy.)
#WritersCoffeeClub Footnote: "Destiny" tends to show up more in fantasy than SF. On my to-do list is a hard-SF Chosen One narrative—our protag knows from an early age they're not like the other kids in the hive. Only as they near adulthood do they learn that they're a member of a rival eusocial hominin subspecies, and they've been created to infiltrate a neighbouring hive and kill and replace the queen ...
Like, "Hellstrom's Hive" meets this whackiness in ants: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09425-w
FWIW Sam the alien in the webcomic Freefall claims that his original society is somewhat like that.
