I need ppl to understand how Curze’s visions and foresight works because many ppl talk about it in a way which isn’t how it works
1. First of all, Curze doesn’t foresee literally everything. He’s not omniscient or clairvoyant. He doesn’t know the outcome of every action he or others will take. He doesn’t live in non-linear time where he can just “gaze forward” and see what will happen next. His visions are random of random events, usually (probably for the sake of the plot) big, consequential, so to say “energetically charged” events.
Curze doesn’t know what you’ll have for breakfast because he foresaw it. He doesn’t foresee stuff like this.
These visions can come months, weeks or even years before it’s meant to happen or literally 5 minutes before.
The whole point of his foresight is that it’s chaotic and disorganized. He doesn’t just calmly “know everything” all the time, he gets random information about the future beamed into his brain at random times that may occur years from now or this afternoon.
2. His visions don’t just “appear” in his head. He goes thru a whole physical process when receiving visions: seizures, fits, fainting, amnesia, at minimum his eyes roll back. He’s basically out of it while receiving a vision. It’s not like, “oh I just foresaw who will win this fight” while the fight is happening.
Curze can’t just “quietly” get a vision. He especially isn’t quietly getting visions about everything all the time so that he can know how everything ever is going to end.
3. He can’t get visions or see the future on cue. He can’t look into the future by choice and see the outcomes of chosen events. His visions are involuntary and fully out of his control, he cant choose anything about how, when and what he sees.
4. The most annoying misconception of all: NO, HE DOESN’T JUST SEE THE WORST FUTURE!!! The Warhammer universe is just grimdark and the future sucks. He sees negative horrible things because the plot of the story is negative and horrible, not because he has the “negative vision ability”. He foresees horrible shit because horrible shit will happen!!!! AAAAAAH!!! If anything, his visions are more precise then Sanguinius’s, so hence why he can afford less optimism and interpretation around what he sees then Sang.
CURZE’S FORESIGHT ABILITY ISN’T BROKEN OR FLAWED! There isn’t a “bug” in it that makes the visions show him only the most horrible possible outcome just to torment him or whatever. What he’s seeing is the actual future as it will come to pass - which is horrible. But my point being.
His whole character story is being burdened by the knowledge of the horrible events that will inevitably come to pass which ends up driving him insane and turns him into a misanthropic nihilistic accelerationist doomer. That’s the whole point. It’s a character tragedy
5. His visions ARE accurate. Sorry guys. I know Sanguinius said otherwise etc etc, but from what we see in the plot, he was wrong. This is one of those things where ppl take a character’s opinion and interpret it as canonical truth. I can’t remember an instance where Curze’s visions were wrong. I don’t like this idea that’s spread around that everything Curze saw was optional and he just “chose” to believe it. This is all based on one thing Sangy told him, which might as well be his opinion.
6) The idea that he sees “multiple different futures” isn’t true either. There’s one instance in canon where he sees two separate paths at once but the other times he has just foreseen shit and it happens exactly as foreseen. The “multiple different paths” just seems to be, in my honest opinion, just cope from Sanguinius and the Emperor to maintain some sense of autonomy in the face of fate. The Emperor doesn’t trust his own visions about the events of the Heresy “because the future isn’t finite” and it leads him to where it leads him. Sanguinius doesn’t trust his own vision of his death and yet he dies exactly as foreseen.
Now, arguing about how right Curze is about the future being inevitable in the 40k Universe is a whole different essay which I’m not dedicated enough to get into right now, but this idea that people who have foresight see multiple possible paths every time is nonsensical because, as another person on here pointed out, would make the concept of foresight pointless.
Now, there hasn’t been anyone shown to actively try to go against foreseen fate to try and change it purposefully so idk if that would work (given that Sanguinius and big E just sit by, let events pass and wait for the future to “surprise them” instead of actively trying to avoid what they’ve foreseen). So, that’s an open ended question that can be explored.
Ppl usually use the “but but multiple futures” thing to dismiss Curze’s anxiety and depression about seeing horrible future events and the weight that comes with the knowledge of inevitability. It’s a cheap gotcha to just have someone tell him “but multiple possible futures bro, just stop being negative”. It’s just, in my opinion, the worst way to deal with this narrative situation
Ps: I know there are canonic inaccuracies and uses of his foresight by the book authors that make no sense and don’t follow a strict patters, so there isn’t a “strict canonical rules of how Curze’s visions work” and for the authors it seems to work the way they need it to work for the plot. BUT there ARE some general things that we should keep in mind when writing and talking about the visions to maintain some sense of coherence
Btw: if I happen to be wrong about anything and there’s canon proof, pls feel free to correct me, I’m not a lore master, this is just my understanding.
In fact, I invite anyone who has additional lore / canon info about how his powers work, how metaphorical vs literal his visions are, what exactly he does with the cards, if he divines using the cards or just interprets visions he already saw - i invite you to infodump
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