A partial schematic approach to deus ex machina

[mashugenah]

I suppose I should tack on a brief personal bit at the front:

I am alive.
I am having fun.
I am learning many interesting things.

Any other "news" will have to wait until I have cleared my current thinking regime.

Warning: indiscriminate spoilerage of a random assortment of stuff.

Comments

[grandexperiment]

The end of the ND trilogy is the example I most often used to explain a deus ex machina. While I liked the series the ending was shaky at best.

[repton_infinity]

I once read _Tear of the Gods_, by Raymond E. Feist.

Basic plot summary:

1. Ship carrying the Tear of the Gods sinks.
   
2. Bad-ass dude named Bear finds the Tear, and becomes super strong and literally unkillable.
   
3. Bear kills tavern girl.
   
4. Tavern girl's boyfriend says "I swear by wossname the god of vengence that I will be revenged!".
   
5. Lots of stuff happens, over about 400 pages.
   
6. The heroes track down Bear, but completely fail to kill him (because of aforementioned unkillability) and start getting chopped up.
   
7. The god of vengence takes over tavern girl's boyfriend's body and kills Bear.
   
8. The end.
   

[adrexia]

*shrugs* It's only deus ex machina if there are gods involved... and sometimes a giant crane. Gods may be replaced by those who think they are gods if the subject is comedy.

Otherwise it's just a lame plot device an author uses when they are sick of writing the story, or just not very good at it. I'm not sure that can rightly be called deus ex machina. It can be called lame though. Lame.

[adrexia]

I guess you could make it a simile and say it's _like_ the use of deus ex machina.

[eloieli]

I read the Nights Dawn trilogy and loved it, until the end. As I was reading the last book I got closer and closer to the end and thought how can he conclude this. It was looking more and more like humanity as we know it was doomed. I was okay with that as an ending