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When you sense a deus ex machina ruining your immersion in a story, just think of it as observation selection effect: “if it went the other way, and hanging Ha

When you sense a deus ex machina ruining your immersion in a story, just think of it as observation selection effect: “if it went the other way, and hanging Harry was not rescued by a friend in a flying car, there would be nothing to write about in the first place”.

cwillu 2y ago
Then I'm mentally making notches for every “the story would have ended there”. The story runs off its rails and needs the hand of god to set it back onto the track, and that diminishes the enjoyment of the world-building.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Maybe that's why I never liked Batman. He always just happened to have the exact very specialized tool on his belt to escape whatever contrived setup the Joker trapped him.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Batman was a parody of cop shows, and his utility belt was part of the joke. Get Smart did similar things to lampoon spy movies. The Munsters had a running gag where Herman would look into a mirror and it would shatter. I'd still laugh every time.
- anileated 2y ago
  Invert the logic. The universe is in state X with narrator in it to tell the story because a super unlikely chain of events occurred. Call it anthropic principle. Or, think how in many-words interpretation there is a universe for any arbitrarily unlikely development. The writer picked one that floats her boat.
  - gravescale 2y ago
    I think it becomes intrusive into the storytelling when it becomes a constant chain of "and then yet another, even crazier thing happened to this one character". Especially when the character started as an everyman. It's a problem many book series have - one character keeps being the centre of the universe and surviving insurmountable odds repeatedly to the point of incredulity and usually the ante keeps ratcheting up as well so your original ordinary-human character ends up with some kind of godlike powers. To me, Harry Potter is actually fairly good in this regard, as the character development is at least not utterly unlike 11-18 year olds at school during the re-outbreak of a traumatic civil war, and from the start, there's a clear, in-universe reason why the main character is always the one near the action in the depicted timeframe. Star Wars did this quite well originally ("why is this rando farmhand at the centre, oh, cool, that's why"). The prequels did a little worse ("here's how the farmhand's father got to the centre, ok well maybe it's awfully convenient the ship broke down right there and a simple blood test reveals The One, but ok") and the recent films rather worse ("these people are at the centre...how? Why? Genetic predestination?"). Notably, the less you explain the Force, the easier it is to keep the story believable and consistent. Again, Harry Potter's vagueness over the specifics of magic helps it. Something that seems to be getting more common, though it's not new, as series lengthen in real-world time is to do a Star Trek: TNG and start an in-universe subseries where you can have things happen to someone else entirely for a change, but as part of the overall universe's story. It can be tricky if the universe is very predicated on one person, like Harry Potter is. Star Wars has not done well at this, but have tried. I think they keep trying to bootstrap interest from existing fans by character reuse, but the better series like Andor pick a whole new story to tell. Iain M. Banks was especially good at this and didn't even really have a main narrative, as he'd hop all over the Culture in time and space so you could have the cool stuff happen that he wanted to show the reader, but didn't need to keep powering-up one person (or ship) endlessly. But space opera has the advantage that you can just go and be somewhere and somewhen else very easily. It's a bit harder if you need the subseries to be nearby without constantly dragging the other main characters in, especially when they're further along their upgrade path as you need to explain why they don't just pick up the phone, pop round and stomp the "mortal threat" flat and it's another kind of deus ex machina. Doubly so if the threat is very obvious and world-ending, because surely they'd turn up to that!
kelnos 2y ago
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. If the writer paints themselves into a corner where they need a deus ex machina in order to continue the story, then they've done a poor job of it, and need to back up and reconsider where the story was going. The argument isn't "Harry needed to be rescued in an unbelievably fantastical manner because otherwise he would have died and the story would have ended", the argument is "the story shouldn't have taken Harry to a crisis where he couldn't have gotten out of it in an in-universe-believable way". (FWIW, I don't really object to this particular part in the story; I think a flying car is pretty consistent with the Harry Potter universe. And the poster upthread must have misremembered the scene; his friends merely came to "rescue" him from being locked in his room. He wasn't hanging out a window and wouldn't have died.)
- anileated 2y ago
  Well, that’s the idea, to look at it the other way, like the anthropic principle does. Whether you consider that “wrong” is up to you, I think it is highly subjective.

cwillu 2y ago

Then I'm mentally making notches for every “the story would have ended there”. The story runs off its rails and needs the hand of god to set it back onto the track, and that diminishes the enjoyment of the world-building.

dylan604 2y ago
Maybe that's why I never liked Batman. He always just happened to have the exact very specialized tool on his belt to escape whatever contrived setup the Joker trapped him.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  Batman was a parody of cop shows, and his utility belt was part of the joke. Get Smart did similar things to lampoon spy movies. The Munsters had a running gag where Herman would look into a mirror and it would shatter. I'd still laugh every time.
anileated 2y ago
Invert the logic. The universe is in state X with narrator in it to tell the story because a super unlikely chain of events occurred. Call it anthropic principle. Or, think how in many-words interpretation there is a universe for any arbitrarily unlikely development. The writer picked one that floats her boat.
- gravescale 2y ago
  I think it becomes intrusive into the storytelling when it becomes a constant chain of "and then yet another, even crazier thing happened to this one character". Especially when the character started as an everyman. It's a problem many book series have - one character keeps being the centre of the universe and surviving insurmountable odds repeatedly to the point of incredulity and usually the ante keeps ratcheting up as well so your original ordinary-human character ends up with some kind of godlike powers. To me, Harry Potter is actually fairly good in this regard, as the character development is at least not utterly unlike 11-18 year olds at school during the re-outbreak of a traumatic civil war, and from the start, there's a clear, in-universe reason why the main character is always the one near the action in the depicted timeframe. Star Wars did this quite well originally ("why is this rando farmhand at the centre, oh, cool, that's why"). The prequels did a little worse ("here's how the farmhand's father got to the centre, ok well maybe it's awfully convenient the ship broke down right there and a simple blood test reveals The One, but ok") and the recent films rather worse ("these people are at the centre...how? Why? Genetic predestination?"). Notably, the less you explain the Force, the easier it is to keep the story believable and consistent. Again, Harry Potter's vagueness over the specifics of magic helps it. Something that seems to be getting more common, though it's not new, as series lengthen in real-world time is to do a Star Trek: TNG and start an in-universe subseries where you can have things happen to someone else entirely for a change, but as part of the overall universe's story. It can be tricky if the universe is very predicated on one person, like Harry Potter is. Star Wars has not done well at this, but have tried. I think they keep trying to bootstrap interest from existing fans by character reuse, but the better series like Andor pick a whole new story to tell. Iain M. Banks was especially good at this and didn't even really have a main narrative, as he'd hop all over the Culture in time and space so you could have the cool stuff happen that he wanted to show the reader, but didn't need to keep powering-up one person (or ship) endlessly. But space opera has the advantage that you can just go and be somewhere and somewhen else very easily. It's a bit harder if you need the subseries to be nearby without constantly dragging the other main characters in, especially when they're further along their upgrade path as you need to explain why they don't just pick up the phone, pop round and stomp the "mortal threat" flat and it's another kind of deus ex machina. Doubly so if the threat is very obvious and world-ending, because surely they'd turn up to that!

kelnos 2y ago

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. If the writer paints themselves into a corner where they need a deus ex machina in order to continue the story, then they've done a poor job of it, and need to back up and reconsider where the story was going. The argument isn't "Harry needed to be rescued in an unbelievably fantastical manner because otherwise he would have died and the story would have ended", the argument is "the story shouldn't have taken Harry to a crisis where he couldn't have gotten out of it in an in-universe-believable way". (FWIW, I don't really object to this particular part in the story; I think a flying car is pretty consistent with the Harry Potter universe. And the poster upthread must have misremembered the scene; his friends merely came to "rescue" him from being locked in his room. He wasn't hanging out a window and wouldn't have died.)

anileated 2y ago
Well, that’s the idea, to look at it the other way, like the anthropic principle does. Whether you consider that “wrong” is up to you, I think it is highly subjective.