History Main / FaintingSeer

* Subverted in DavidEddings's ''Literature/TheBelgariad''. When Garion's party gets caught in a magical face-off where taunts are exchanged in the form of each side's seer getting visions of the demon they need to summon, Silk's opponent blatantly rips off Silk's vision by applying BiggerIsBetter to it and then dramatically faints to cap it off. When it is evident that a giant demon is about to materialize right on top of him, the seer then wakes up without prompting to scramble out of the way.

* Subverted in DavidEddings's ''TheBelgariad''. When Garion's party gets caught in a magical face-off where taunts are exchanged in the form of each side's seer getting visions of the demon they need to summon, Silk's opponent blatantly rips off Silk's vision by applying BiggerIsBetter to it and then dramatically faints to cap it off. When it is evident that a giant demon is about to materialize right on top of him, the seer then wakes up without prompting to scramble out of the way.

* Aphrodite from ''Literature/TheHouseOfNight''. She becomes a CassandraTruth when she falls from Neferet's good graces.

* Mrs. Yamilah from the ''{{Tintin}}'' book ''[[Recap/TintinTheSevenCrystalBalls The Seven Crystal Balls]]'' scream and faints after announcing that a spectator's husband just fell ill from a curse.

* {{Final Fantasy XIII-2}}: [[spoiler:Serah and Yuel]] both have visions (albeit involuntarily) when the [[spoiler:timeline is altered (ie when paradoxes are created or destroyed)]]. At first, they experience mild headaches during their visions, but each time it [[PowerDegeneration gets a little bit worse]] (until they get to the point where they faint each time), [[spoiler:and they [[MySkullRunnethOver eventually die]].]]

* In the ''Literature/AgeOfFire'' Series, Wistala plays this part in order to infiltrate the Dwarvish empire. She's actually very successful on acount of being a rare dragon seer and one of her wild predictions coming true rather publicly.

* This occurs in "The Message," the fourth book in the ''Literature/AniMorphs'' series. Both Cassie and Tobias receive psychic messages from a distance; when they do, they pass out simultaneously. It turns out that these messages are the thought-speak of Ax, who's trapped in the Andalite's crashed Dome Ship.

* Subverted in ''Comicbook/FromHell'', where Queen Victoria's royal psychic Robert Lees claims he was a PhonyPsychic all along and he faked the seizures as part of his performance.

* Cordelia gets this in ''Series/{{Angel}}''.
** Well, she's really more of a "Crippling Migraine Seer."

*** Another example, in "Hell Bound," a medium suffers a PsychicNosebleed while being murdered by a dark spirit, mid-seance.

* Built in the game mechanics of ''{{Earthdawn}}'', sort of : whenever a mage (or windling) uses his astral sight in a place where an horror dwells, he takes damage. This troper's DM always described it as tears of blood, bleeding ears, migraine, up to a direct faint if the character is too low-level or already hurt.

* While Haruka of ''Manga/{{Kotoura-san}}'' is a {{telepath|y}}, this is usually not a problem for her... until episode 8's stinger, when she collapsed after having a vision of a violent crime. This happens again at the end of episode 10.

* Aphrodite from ''Literature/TheHouseOfNight''. She becomes a CassandraTruth when she falls from Neferet's good graces.

* Mrs. Yamilah from the ''{{Tintin}}'' book "[[Recap/TintinTheSevenCrystalBalls TheSevenCrystalBalls]]" scream and faints after announcing that a spectator's husband just fell ill from a curse.

->''"Aiii, destruction for us all! Pain and fire and the fall of towers. Magic of the strangest sort loosed upon the land! A plague, a pox, the bane of all wizards!"''\\
--'''Rick Cook''', ''[[WizBiz Wizard's Bane]]''

* Subverted in ''FromHell'', where Queen Victoria's royal psychic Robert Lees claims he was a PhonyPsychic all along and he faked the seizures as part of his performance.

* Variation in ''VideoGame/MassEffect''. During the prologue, Shepard meets a man who is having a freak-out related to his predictions (which happen to foreshadow major future plot points). He doesn't faint, but Renegade Shepard can punch him into unconsciousness.

** Played straight with Liara however in the first game, when she offers to meld with Shepard to help you sort out the visions. The process leaves her decidedly woozy each time and she'll ask you if she can go crash in sickbay for a while afterwards. Somewhat justified, as she's not a particularly experienced melder and she can barely handle the intensity of the vision, commenting that it was most likely Shepard's sheer force of will that prevented it from [[MySkullRunnethOver destroying their mind]].

* ''BaldursGate'', being set in the fairly magic-saturated ForgottenRealms, has plenty of [=NPCs=] who comment on sensing a great destiny is in store for the PC. However, anyone you meet who claims to be an ''actual'' Seer or Fortune-Teller will have a massive freakout on being asked to see your future. Then there's ''"The [[Literature/GoodOmens Nice and Ominous]] Prophecies of Alaundo the Wise, [[strike: Witch]] Seer"'', which give the distinct impression their original rendition wasn't ''quite'' as calm as their current recitations in Candlekeep.

* Variation in ''VideoGame/MassEffect1''. During the prologue, Shepard meets a man who is having a freak-out related to his predictions (which happen to foreshadow major future plot points). He doesn't faint, but Renegade Shepard can punch him into unconsciousness.
** Played straight with Shepard and the Prothean beacons. Encountering the first beacon knocks you silly, and also leaves you prone to horrible nightmares about the end of all organic life. Later in the game, you can ask Liara to dig through your mind and help you sort out the visions; the process leaves her decidedly woozy, and she'll ask you if she can go crash in sickbay for a while afterwards.
* ''BaldursGate'', being set in the fairly magic-saturated ForgottenRealms, has plenty of [=NPCs=] who comment on sensing a great destiny is in store for the PC. However, anyone you meet who claims to be an ''actual'' Seer or Fortune-Teller will have a massive freakout on being asked to see your future. Then there's ''"The Nice and Ominous Prophecies of Alaundo the Wise, [[strike: Witch]] Seer"'', which give the distinct impression their original rendition wasn't ''quite'' as calm as their current recitations in Candlekeep.

!!Examples:

!Examples:

* Variation in ''MassEffect''. During the prologue, Shepard meets a man who is having a freak-out related to his predictions (which happen to foreshadow major future plot points). He doesn't faint, but Renegade Shepard can punch him into unconsciousness.
** Played straight with Shepard and the Prothean beacons. Encountering the first beacon knocks you silly, and also leaves you prone to horrible nightmares about the end of all organic life. Later in the game, you can ask Liara to dig through your mind and help you sort out the visions; the process leaves her decidedly woozy, and she'll ask you if she can go crash in Sickbay for a while afterwards.

!!Examples:

[[folder: Anime and Manga]]

* The SilverSurfer suffered a brief bout of paralyzing psychic horror upon encountering [[{{Kaiju}} Terminus]] for the first time, since Terminus destroys planets much the way Galactus does, but has none of the "keeping the cosmic balance" justifications for it that Galactus does. Terminus destroys planets for ''money.'' This scene was rather [[{{Narm}} Narmy,]] since even as bad as Terminus is, the Surfer gets into fights with far worse opponents on a pretty regular basis.

* Mrs. Yamilah from the ''{{Tintin}}'' book "Recap/TintinTheSevenCrystalBalls".

** Or is she? We never really got to see the full extent of her powers because they DroppedABridgeOnHim

* Another example, where the interruption is due to enemy action - in the ''DresdenFiles'' urban fantasy/detective stories, a prophecy has been given that if Harry the protagonist gets involved in the pursuit of a group of powerful demons, he will die. Harry discovers that the leader of the villains blocked the second part of the prophecy - that if Harry didn't get involved, the whole ''city'' would die. [[spoiler:And, in the end, prophecy in this series isn't completely inevitable -- an ally with terminal cancer takes Harry's place at the last minute, in an HeroicSacrifice.]]