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Waif Prophet

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A character often, but not exclusively, female who is physically or mentally ill or weak, or at least small in stature (e.g., a child), who possesses knowledge or insight she should not have. Her insight is often ascribed directly to a "debilitation". She tries to keep her differences to herself, as a consequence of (or in fear of) Cassandra Truth, but they can not help but manifest at the worst possible time, until the climax, at which time they are exactly what are needed.

See also: Mysterious Waif, Whoopi Epiphany Speech, Oracular Urchin, Mad Oracle. This is a variant of Creepy Child, and sometimes overlaps with the Squishy Wizard.

Contrast Blind Seer, whose archetypal disability seems not to be a hindrance. Compare Cursed with Awesome.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Tiffa Adil from After War Gundam X is shown numerous times predicting the future and uses this ability to drive the plot at one point. However just as often her (often very bleak) predictions are proven wrong by her Hot-Blooded boyfriend Garrod. The poor girl is also quite Blessed with Suck, as her future-reading powers and empathy come from her being among the very few surviving Newtypes... and are the reason why everyone pursues her.
  • AKIRA has Kiyoko, aka No. 26. She's an Esper with the gift of precognition, and both Colonel Shikishima and her fellow Espers rely on her visions, but she is bedridden and constantly hooked up to life support. This is due to being taken by the Tokyo government as a young girl and subjected to horrible experiments supposed to invoke/research psychic powers, presumably for political/military purposes.
  • Mary Magdalene in Chrono Crusade, an orphan girl whose prophetic powers were so strong and overwhelming, she forgot her own childhood and name — Mary is the name given to her by the religious order who took her in.
  • In Endride, Eljuia is the token Non-Action Guy with a decidedly effeminate appearance whose most useful power, premonition, is uncontrollable and comes with a side effect of fainting.
  • Played with in Fatal Fury The Motion Picture. Sulia Gaudeamus is a waifish healer without any fighting abilities and who's got an Psychic Link to the Big Bad, read, she's the twin sister of the guy who's got said Big Bad inside of him, but she's more of The Smart Guy of the group due to her encyclopedic knowledge of the myths behind the whole deal. Therefore, her insight in the plot is not necessarily related to epiphanies.
  • A few of the characters in The Five Star Stories possessing "Para-Diver" powers. Also many of the Fatima Fates, especially Clotho have elements of this, despite the fact that they are at least twice as strong as a normal person.
  • Subverted by Zefie, in .hack//Legend of the Twilight Bracelet. Her "mother" is the Creepy Child/Waif Prophet Aura, who was the MacGuffin for .hack//SIGN. Zefie seems similar at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that she's really sarcastic, mischievous, and outspoken... and occasionally unhesitatingly violent.
  • Tiny, dimwitted Mako in Kill la Kill delivers a frantic speech about friendship and loyalty approximately Once per Episode.
  • Lupin III: Crisis in Tokyo: Maria. A young reporter trying to do an interview with stubbornly obsessed cop Inspector Zenigata. Has tiny flashes into the future she shouldn't be having. Wishes to investigate Michael Suzuki. Naturally, it all ties into the climax.
  • Mashiro Kazahana from My-HiME, who spends almost the whole series confined to a wheelchair, and appears to be no older than Mai's kid brother Takumi. In addition to being the current headmaster of Fuuka Academy, she was the previous HiME Festival's champion and master of Mai's CHILD Kagutsuchi, three hundred years ago.
  • In Nightschool, it's noted that "seers who are still sane are rare." Marina, a pixieish young seer who can't be much older than 13 or so, has to regularly take special medication in order to stay lucid, but her visions get compromised as a side effect. Unfortunately, her employers at the start of the series care more about receiving accurate predictions about the stock market than her mental health. When Marina's teacher finds this out, the employers are rightly curbstomped.
  • In Saint Seiya, Seiya's lost sister Seika grew up into one of these after getting Laser-Guided Amnesia years ago.
  • Genderflipped and subverted by Subaru Sumeragi, during his Tokyo Babylon days. Despite his slight build, Subaru was physically extremely strong, but he gives the impression of weakness sometimes when he over-exerts his spiritual powers. His badassery shows more in X/1999 since he doesn't over-exert himself as much.
  • Eto of Tokyo Ghoul, who is the lost daughter of Kuzen Yoshimura and his human wife, Ukina, as well as one of two regents for the semi-mythical One-Eyed King. Her small body is loaded with more secrets, power and insight than almost anyone else in the series and she's in control of a massive amount of the plot. She also foretells many events and revelations throughout the collection of Tokyo Ghoul works, through her books written with the pen name Sen Takatsuki.
  • Hinoto in the aforementioned X1999. Kakyo and Kotori qualify as well.

    Comic Books 
  • Scarlet Spider v. 2 has Aracely, a fugitive from human trafficking who also occasionally suffers from psychic visions of an apocalypse.

    Fan Works 
  • Aurora from Somnium is a seer, but she's also physically weak. Giselle frequently helps her get around. By the start of the story, her health has become steadily worse to the point where her already-pale skin is turning translucent. Aurora's visions come to her in the form of nightmares, which doesn't help her physical or mental health.
  • The Transformers Titan character Melody is a preteen esper who can (among other things) 'hear' the personalities of living beings like a sort of empathic music. The Hero meets her when she almost gets run over by him, having correctly predicted he would not hit her.

    Films — Animation 
  • Encanto: Bruno is a Rare Male Example who still checks all the boxes. He can see into the future, and is deemed dangerous as a result of this. He has a sickly appearance — short, skinny, gaunt — and a fragile mental state.
  • A subtle instance in Tekkonkinkreet: White is exceedingly immature for his age, and only as physically strong as a small 10-year-old can be expected to be. But at the same time, he occasionally shows a nearly supernatural insight and seems very in-tune to Black and the city around them.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • A never named, diseased girl in Apocalypto yells what turns out to be a prophecy after the main characters.
  • The daughter in Dark Floors does this during her mad ramblings because she's lived all this before — in fact, living in that time loop is what's driven her mad to begin with.
  • Don't Say a Word: The girl suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (played by the late Brittany Murphy), whom Michael Douglas must get through to in order to save his kidnapped daughter, has very strong echoes of this trope.
  • Alia, the younger sister of Paul Atreides in Dune, is a small and frail child born with psychic powers because her mother Jessica drank the Water of Life while pregnant. Particularly in the David Lynch film, she is also a good example of a Creepy Child.
  • Minority Report: The government uses three "precogs" to predict future murders. All three sort of fit the trope, being physically weak from lifelong inactivity, but especially the girl, Agatha, who is also female, somewhat cute, and a more powerful and versatile psychic than the other two.

    Literature 
  • Underplayed in Black Legion — Sargon, Abaddon's seer, is just as old as the others, but has boyish, Bishounen look, making him Waif Prophet when compared to other characters.
  • Mucor in Book of the Long Sun is anorexic and mentally ill, but able to project her mind into other people and so gain information.
  • The Books of Ember: Althea Tower from The Prophet of Yonwood, whose 'vision' makes her extremely ill.
  • Sheeana is referred to as such in Chapterhouse: Dune, a desert waif with the ability to control the worms.
  • In The Chronicles of Magravandias, Ellony receives visions after her marriage to Valraven, which get stronger as her physical and mental health deteriorate.
  • Wazzer Goom, brutalised orphan, then army recruit, in the Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment becomes a channel for the deceased Duchess to still make her presence felt in the world.
  • Alicja from The Girl from the Miracles District, a girl with some sort of mental disorder, has vision concerning her missing mother's fate and location.
  • The students of The Jeremiah School are all children that are called to be prophets at age 11.
  • A similar type of character exists in most of the output of Stephen King, the classic example being the blind girl in The Langoliers.
    • King is particularly fond of mentally challenged or child psychics. In Dreamcatcher, for instance, we meet Douglas, a young mentally challenged boy and avid Scooby-Doo fan.
  • Jenny Wren in Charles Dickens' novel Our Mutual Friend — a tiny, crippled teenager, who has otherworldly visions, and is also an unusually perceptive and insightful observer of the characters around her. These two abilities are interconnected, and both suggested to be either a compensation for or result of her disability. Her insights and her visions help resolve one of the novel's main plots. However, it should be also pointed out that although her abilities and plot function fit the trope perfectly, Jenny's personality is much closer to the Deadpan Snarker.
  • Owen in A Prayer for Owen Meany. He is short, and a damaged voice box forces him to speak with no indoor voice. Downplayed, as the visions of the future he has are minor, but none of them are averted.
  • Irnai from Lady Knight, the last book in the Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce. Incidentally, she foretells the coming of the titular Chosen One, but she can only give fifty-fifty odds for the One succeeding.
  • Billy in Remnants. He has a sort of hyper-aware brain as a result of being awake for all of the five-century, hibernated trip to Mother, a giant, superpowerful spaceship that it is found out he can interface with and control.
    • Point of order: Even before the trip he was odd and (as the book described it) when he slept, his brain didn't shut down. That was the justification for him staying awake while he was a Human Popsicle, actually; it wasn't just a hibernation mishap.
  • Tracy Chipp in Shatterbelt and Aftershock!, a 13-year-old girl who starts experiencing visions of impending disaster.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire:
    • Jojen Reed is 13, and small and frail for his age. When he was young, he nearly died of greywater fever. While he was near death, he was visited in a dream by a three-eyed crow. The crow gave Jojen the gift of greensight, causing him to experience prophetic dreams known as greendreams.
    • At the age of 7, Bran Stark has a crippling fall that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. It comes with some Disability Superpowers. Beginning during the coma that follows the accident, Bran begins having strange visions of a three-eyed crow. Jojen becomes friends with Bran, and becomes his mentor in this. Like so many tropes in this story, it's Deconstructed: Bran becomes an enormously powerful warg and greenseer, all while he's still a prepubescent child. He does things like warg into Hodor without comprehending how wrong that is.
  • Nerissa from The Underland Chronicles. It's suggested that the deaths of her parents broke her, but her visions certainly don't help; she is always described as looking unwell, faints occasionally, and with a handful of exceptions is never believed.
  • Sophia in VALIS by Philip K. Dick. She is also a Brainy Baby and a Messianic Archetype. She is killed by an Exposition Beam fired into her brain.
  • Watership Down: A nonhuman variant of this character is Fiver, the runt of the litter "seer rabbit", whose visions of Man's encroachment drive the plot in the various adaptations. This is especially played up in the animated TV series, where he spent an episode terrified that his visions actually caused the dangers he predicted.
    Fiver: (to a still very much alive enemy rabbit) Believe me, I am very sorry for your death.
  • The Witch of Knightcharm: The rookie witch Brynne is depicted as the weakest and most physically frail member of her clique, and she's also its seer.
  • Hai from Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' Wyvernhail. Her unstable magic allows her to view many possible future outcomes of decisions, but does not always render her the most lucid.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Drusilla, who had been severely damaged by a mob attack that left her physically weak. She regained her strength part-way through the second season and remained somewhat prophetic; but was still completely crazy.
    • In Season 7, Cassie is a high school student who "just knows" that certain things are going to happen, including the time and date of her death. She also has a heart condition that she doesn't know about.
  • River from Firefly is a mind reader, and is quite Ophelia-like in her madness.
  • Game of Thrones: Jojen Reed is a frail young man with the ability to see the future.
  • Manifest: Being the youngest passenger (as well as something of a Littlest Cancer Patient), Cal has shades of this. He's prone to making creepy crayon drawings and running off/getting abducted.
  • Radar O Reilly is this in M*A*S*H, he is able to hear the incoming helicopters before anyone else can. He is able to predict when he is needed (often turning up at a persons side before his name is even called) and also knows a lot about the other characters (albeit via reading their letters through the envelopes through the ceiling lights and listening through walls with a stethoscope). However, he is often made fun of for his height and is often called 'kid' due to his naivety. He is also a Big Eater.
  • The Outpost: Ilyin is a little girl able to see unknown things, and when she does her eyes turn white.
  • Kes in Star Trek: Voyager has a highly developed brain, as a result she can communicate telepathically, see the future or possible alternate futures and even prophesy events that occur after her physical death.
  • Supernatural: Season 4 introduces Anna, a young woman in a mental institute who sees demons everywhere, insists the apocalypse is imminent and illustrates her visions in a sketchbook. Sam and Dean immediately recognize that her visions are correct when they see her drawings.

    Myths & Religion 
  • When King Vortigern of Arthurian lore tried to build a fortress at Dinas Emrys, the walls mysteriously collapsed every night, until a boy "without a father" pointed out to Vortigern that the reason was two dragons were fighting in a cavern beneath the fundaments. The boy went on to prophesy the future history of Britain, which came true. The boy was Ambrosius (Emrys) in the older Historia Brittonum, but from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae onwards, the Waif Prophet is always Merlin.
  • The Bible: One possible interpretation is that Jeremiah the prophet from the Book of Jeremiah was called to be a prophet when he was a child, given visions by God to test him.

    Theater 
  • Leonard Bernstein's Candide had the Infant Casmira, a Creepy Child (actually a "small person" dressed as a child) kept in a cage by an Arab conjurer to foretell the Lisbon earthquake. (This character disappeared from the show permanently when Lillian Hellman's book was replaced.)

    Video Games 
  • The Forecaster of Fallout: New Vegas, a psychic orphan who wears a psychic inhibitor and can be paid to give his prophecies on certain things pertaining to either the upcoming Battle of Hoover Dam, the Mojave itself and even The Courier.
  • Aerith in Final Fantasy VII. Sure, she seems to Hear Voices and talks to people who aren't there. Except, she's the Last of the Ancients and has the power to talk to (and listen to, though it doesn't always make sense to her) the Planet itself. Downplayed otherwise because she does not fit the "ill,"note  "weak,"note  or "small"note  part of the trope description. During the game itself (even beyond her moment of physical death), she was a durable and strong-willed person. The "Waif" part comes from Flanderization.
  • Yeul from Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a Seeress of Paddra, a Mysterious Waif existing in all time periods at once thanks to her reincarnation. Every time she sees a change in the future her lifespan is shortened until she eventually dies at a young age.
  • Fire Emblem has some:
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, you encounter a small child in a village called Ember who prophesies that the entire village will be slaughtered soon. Though everyone else is doomed, the child also tells you he himself will survive if one of your party members offers up his hunting knife. Later, when you've been framed for the destruction of the village, the kid comes in handy at your trial, using both his testimony and his mysterious power of prophecy to make the prosecuting attorney decidedly uncomfortable.
    • A random prophet in Storm of Zehir sees the coming of 4th edition rules. Seriously, the transition was canonically the cause of huge disasters in the Forgotten Realms setting as the magic system shifted.
  • Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has Ember, an elf girl who survived being burned at the stake. Despite being one of the oldest party members (a teenager by elf standards), she still has a very childlike personality as a result of the trauma. She tends to spout surprisingly insightful comments, which she attributes to a crow she calls "grandmother".
  • Klara from Pathologic.
  • Pharos in Persona 3 is a creepy, sickly-looking young boy who visits the Silent Protagonist on various nights with information relating to the near future.
  • The "I'm different" Turret you can rescue in Portal 2 foreshadows just about everything that happens later on, from Cave Johnson's Lemon speech to the old testing areas to GLaDOS being pecked by birds.
  • Prayer of the Faithless: 15-year-old Oracle, Serra Cadmus, and contributes to fights by supporting the party with her mind, a.k.a Combat Clairvoyance, while her body is guarded by someone else. As the character page says:
    Serra has no combat training whatsoever. Instead, when it's time to fight, Serra stays close to Reyson and uses her powers as an Oracle to predict the future
  • The Pope of Arunafeltz in Ragnarok Online fits this trope quite closely.
  • Luleva of Summoner, a young orphan seer. She also shows up in Summoner 2 as an adult, but as she's a gladiator, she no longer fits the trope by that point.
  • Eresh from Suikoden V is a textbook example, complete with superior magical ability yet painfully low defense, face cloaked in shadow, and a staff quite reminiscent of Yuna's. A few of the more enigmatic characters, such as Jeane and Zerase, seem to have past connections with her, hinting that there may be more to this young witch than meets the eye...
  • Fon Master Ion from Tales of the Abyss is a Rare Male Example of this trope (although you wouldn't know this by looking at him.) He is very mature for his age, is one of few who can read the Score on the Seventh Fonstone and while his magic is tremendous, using it is a threat to his health because of his weak constitution.
  • Gamall of Thief II: The Metal Age, 10-year-old interpreter for the Keepers. Subverted as she herself isn't the prophet: the actual prophet is the old crone Caduca, but when Caduca prophesies, she speaks some ancient, faux-Latin language, and Gamall translates for her. Where Gamall learned the language is unknown. In Thief: Deadly Shadows, she is revealed to be Really 700 Years Old (perhaps explaining why she can speak a dead language) and the game's hidden Big Bad.

    Visual Novels 
  • Ilya takes this role in the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay night. Although she's mostly on Shirou's side, she only hints at the many important things she knows (like the true identities of Archer and the shadow-monster), saying he'll figure them out eventually. She's also small... and doomed.
  • Rika Furude from Higurashi: When They Cry appears to be this. In fact, she doesn't have any kind of future-reading powers. She's just already been through the future — and died horribly in it — hundreds and hundreds of times. And while several others have died with her and often just as horibly... she's among two people who actually remember that.. Can you blame her for trying to tell someone?

    Webcomics 
  • Homestuck has them pretty much everywhere, being that the main cast are all thirteen years old or the equivalent and that half of them are girls. Everyone with a dreamself on Prospit can use the clouds of Skaia to see glimpses of the future, as first shown with Jade Harley; virtually everyone has lost this ability with the deaths of their dreamselves, Jade being the first to lose it. The Seer Character Class, whose two seen members are both female, has a more comprehensive prophet ability, being able to see the outcome of any possible course and thus discern the correct future path. Terezi Pyrope, the Seer of Mind, is well-versed in this ability; Rose Lalonde, the Seer of Light, never gave herself the opportunity to learn to use or develop it. Finally, two of the trollsAradia Megido and Sollux Captor (a male example) — have the ability to hear the voices of the dead, who foreshadow the future for them; Sollux loses it upon being blinded.

    Web Original 
  • Worm has Dinah Alcott, a 9-year-old girl who is the third-most powerful precognitive on the planet. She's also addicted to a variety of drugs due to having been kidnapped by a supervillain for use of her powers.

    Real Life 
  • This trope is grounded in the ascetic lifestyle of many spiritual people. Starving oneself for years as a form of religious discipline can result in waif-ness, and possibly in visions/hallucinations.
  • Several mystics and saints of the Catholic Church, like Saint Julian of Norwich, Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich, Saint Gemma Galgani, Blessed Alexandrina Maria da Costa, Saint Margaret Marie Alacoque, Saint Theresa of Avila, the three Fatima children (specially little Jacinta), Saint Bernadette Soubirous (of Lourdes fame), etc.
    • Perhaps the Trope-Namer for this is in Acts 16:16, where Paul, Timothy, and Luke come across "a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination... which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying."
  • The original Oracle(s) of Delphi. Many historians believe her "prophetic trances" were caused by spending all day huffing ethylene-rich gas from a volcanic fissure. Others that she was merely your average crazy person, or that she partook of ceremonial hallucinogenic drugs. Either way...
  • The 70's With Charlie Tuna once featured a spotlight on Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian woman who successfully predicted the start and end of World War II, 9/11 and the beginning of The War on Terror, and even her own death in 1997 at age 85. Among the other things she predicted to come in the future are China becoming the world's biggest superpower by 2018, as well as contact with aliens, a cure for cancer derived from iron, a disease where people age in seconds, a man-made sun to cover the dark side of the earth, human colonies being made underwater, time travel being invented, and eventually The End of the World as We Know It sometime in the 5000's.


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