Deus ex Machina vs. Strong As They Need To Be

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm just suggesting, in my roundabout way, that the fewer opportunities readers have for seeing the strings being pulled, the better (if only because some of us can't always rely on our writing to do the trick ).

And you are quite right.

Although giving readers what they want to see (and that could, these days, just as likely be pain and suffering for the characters as a happy outcome) and they may be inclined to swallow anything. Particularly if you have already convinced them that you are a genius. Once you fail to deliver what they want and expect, then you have to put forth a greater effort to make the circumstances sound credible.

Convincing them we are geniuses is the trick. If only we had an infallible formula for that!

 

[Darth Angelus]

James, I can definitely see what you mean about that a too regulated and predictable magic system effectively ceases to be a magic system and instead becomes a sort of secondary reality physics. That would be the inevitable result of demystifying it beyond a certain point, after all. Maybe that is why some franchises call their magic systems by other names, such as The Force in Star Wars, or The One Power in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Personally, I don't mind such systems if they are well written, as I find they can be interesting in their own way, but you are right that they generally lack a certain magical quality.

The flip side of this coin is the one which Ursa major is pointing out (I think). If the results of casting a spell are a bit "random", they are basically dancing at the whims of the writer, and the reader knows this. It can become all too easy for the writer to determine the success or failure of a spell by what is convenient for the plot, because no justification whatsoever for either outcome is ever required in any specific case. If the reader gets the impression that this is how the writing was done, suspension of disbelief is seriously jeopardized and much excitement may be lost. I think that the only way the writer might get away with this is to make the "random" results of a cast spell sometimes go against plot convenience (although it may be hard to actually show that is the case), just to prevent the sense of randomness from turning into a feeling that the writer is just making things easy for him- or herself. I can't say have tried that approach, so I have no idea whether it might actually work.
Failing that, I think the only way to use a magic system on a large scale in a piece of fiction and without letting it become a deus ex machina of its own is to sufficiently regulate the system in order to minimize the room to play around with it at your own whims later on. This will demystify things, but I think the alternative is far, far worse.

So, I basically agree a bit with both of you.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[James Coote]

Luck and magic are two different things. Luck is when the 1% chance happens and you're left thinking "hmph, that ought not to have happened", even though you know it's perfectly possible, just incredibly unlikely. Luck forces you to rethink your previous assumptions. That actually it was more likely to happen than everyone previously thought.

However, if the probabilities still come up as 1%, you're left with that lingering doubt that you shouldn't be there, and that just maybe in the branching parallel universes, yours is unique. That's both exciting and scary as it implies you have a single, unique chance to do something different this time, to switch the railway points and put the destiny train on a new path

Magic is not luck, not probabilities and random chance. It's the impossible happening, it's the one time breaking of the rules. That's why, when wielded by a character, it has to be non-deterministic. Otherwise it ends up not as breaking the rules, but rather as one set of rules for one person and another set of rules for everyone else

It seems every time the MC is in a tight corner, they dig down and find that extra 10% to kill the baddies, so when it happens again, it's no surprise to the reader. The reader has seen the original magic system / alternative physics, seen its rules broken, and then seen them broken in the same way in repeat circumstances. Subconsciously, they re-write the rules, and it's exciting because they have made a scientific discovery through hypothesis and observation.

Yes, science in a fantasy story! And in fact, the reader is constantly doing this reassessment for the characters. Yes that action fits with what I expected that character to do. Yes that dialogue sounds like something that character might say.

The problem is the characters in the story don't make the same reassessments. They are still all like ohmygosh I wasn't expecting that. That's how the wise old man can seem wise without the author actually being wise themselves. As the wise man sees what the reader sees, but the other characters don't see.

But it's a false economy as ultimately, most of the cast come off as morons with their heads in the clouds. The characters should question the author's God machines, not in a 4th wall kind of way, but in that they are self-conscious beings that say "hang on, this isn't normal", which then gives the author a great platform to do some foreshadowing



There are plenty of rational ways to get a character out of a jam without using either magic or luck. Perhaps they are on the verge of giving up when they find their adversary was also pushing themselves to the limits and are actually struggling even more than the protagonist, just not showing it.

If you are really conservative about allowing magic to happen to your characters, when it does come, it is unexpected, and your audience will get that "whoa..." feeling, that spooky sensation of having cheated destiny.

Especially so if you have magic happen say 2/3rds the way through, but you don't have it happen in the dramatic finale. Your characters will feel they managed to do this great feat by way of raw determination and sheer tenacity. However, when they look back retrospectively, they'll will have the uncomfortable sense that they'd have never got to that point had the rules of the game not been broken by this mysterious "magic" earlier on

It's interesting to note that luck can do the same job in the above scenario, which is probably why the two are so often confused

 

[Darth Angelus]

Yes, indeed luck and magic are different. You have described the differences in detail, and I have nothing further to add.
Luck (or really, randomness) exist in real life (in a sense, but I do not wish to open the can of worms that is the philosophical discussion about the nature of randomness for the time being), whereas magic does not (as far as scientific minds can believe, anyway).

When I wrote that magic had "random" results, it was just the lack of determinism that they share that I was getting at.

However, as unexciting as it may look at fiction that way, the writer ultimately has total control over their story. This means that whether it is luck or magic in-story, the results of both are ultimately come from decisions at the writer's sole discretion, and the reader knows this. If there is a 1% chance lucky event that occurs in-story, it will not really (when viewed from an out of story perspective) be a true 1% probability event, but rather something that somehow fit the writer's needs for the story. Similarly, if the one time magical event occurs, it will be for the same reason.
Luck and magic (and indeed, fate) can be grouped together as things whose outcome never need to be justified in any way by the writer. Having many story elements that require no justification is dangerous, I would say, because it threatens the reader's attachment to the story. Generally, a natural, logical flow of events according to the cause and effect principle feels the most real, and having too many effects that are unbound to any in-story cause (that is more than a mere placeholder for an writer's whims) disrupts this flow.
It is not that think they are the same in-story, because they are not, but because their outcomes are determined the same way, from an out of story perspective. I am not sure I would say that they are neccessarily confused, but since they can do the same job, as you say, they still become sort of equivalent in this one respect.

Granted, if the reader is immersed in the fictional world, they will regard luck and magic as different things, as you describe, and forget that it is the work of the writer. However, I think pushing it by using unexplained events too much can break this very immersion.

 

[Kylara]

As an aside...I think it was Pratchett who mentioned somewhere in one of his books something about luck...on the Discworld, a million-to-one chance succeeds nine times out of ten. In order to invoke this rule one must say "it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!". And this has some rather amusing consequences :wink:

 

[Jeffbert]

I sometimes find these thing annoying, but more ofter funny. I suppose that the James Bond films establish our expectations for JB using the weapons or other devices that Q gives him earlier in the film, but then, that eliminates much of the surprise. If a guy is in a fist fight, and suddenly pulls a switch bade from his pocket, it does not matter so much that we did not previously know it was in there, because the possibility that he has one is not so remote.

I watch ADULT SWIM, & one of the programs is BLEACH; it frequently has one guy who has apparently been defeated by an opponent, & is lying there, seemingly on the verge of death, rise, laugh at the opponent who has just finished boasting of his power, & reveal that he has a secret or ultimate technique, that made him invulnerable to the other guy's attack. This goes back & forth, with various combatants on each side seemingly defeat their opponents, boast, then be surprised when the supposedly vanquished ones get up & renew their attacks. If it were not so funny, I suppose I would have given up watching this show long ago.

 

[Jeffbert]

I thought I would be able the edit my last post, but if so, I do not see the button! I had to switch browsers because Opera was just sitting there, hogging >500MB of ram, so that may account for the lack of the edit button.

Anyway, In a shootout scene, one guy's semiautomatic pistol jams, & as he is trying to clear the bad round, the enemy leaps out from behind the trash can (or whatever he was hiding behind) & captures the poor guy. Now we ask: which one is the protagonist, & does it make the sudden weapon failure Deus ex Machina or not?

Clearly, if the good guy's weapon fails, we find that believable & interesting, but if the villain's gun fails, it makes things too convenient! Deus ex Machina in its most obvious form, especailly if the odds had been against the protagonist. If this occurs after a long drawn out battle, & it favors the hero, do we sigh in frustaration or in relief?

In magic, it was earlier said that the wizards all used moderation, lest they destroy the whole place. Somewhat like the nuclear arms race, nobody dared use a nuke, for fear of starting an all-out nuclear exchange. But in magic, is there a leap from the conventional spells to the doomsday spells, or is there a continuoum? If a continuoum, it seems that the wizards would each be too tempted to use just a little bit stronger magic than the other guy, & this would eventually result in the doomsday spell being used.

 

[assasin]

bit of a necro here

I'll post anyway.

every magic system should have a clear cut set of rules. If an author wants magic to be mysterious he/she doesn't have to tell the reader that; but an author still needs to have a very clear idea on the limitation.

On another topic, It'd be a fairly interesting experiment for an author to role a dice whenever something random comes and plan the rest of the story based on the dice roles.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Someone once described Deus Ex Machina as the god of plot devices, which I always liked. However in terms of which is worse as tropes go, I'd say neither. It's how they're written.

Sometimes a deus ex machina can be really good. The end of Buffy springs to mind where the witch breaks fairly much every rule in the series, making all the potential slayers actual slayers so they could close the hellmouth. This was good because it was brilliantly unexpected and cool. At the same time strong as they need to be can be cool too, where you believe the hero always had that last little bit left for that final spurt, or else had a tiny secret knowledge, a little bit of a plan always waiting.

Of course it can be really bad as in all those terrible dragonball cartoons where everyone seems to keep screaming for no apparent reason as they simply attain new powers. (And by the way - if they're martial artists why don't they ever hit one another?)

It comes down to the writing.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Tyler Danann]

Both is my answer, albeit a balanced approach of either. In my books the good guys have high-technology to overcome or at least match lesser and more diabolical foes.

No godlike entity as such to save the day as they have to assume the mantle of gods fighting other dark gods etc. With more vulnerable mortals to fight at their side it kind of brings together the DEM and purely physical strength.

 

[Jonathan C]

I think I need to say- the difference between the two tropes is that "strong as they need to be" is more than just the ability of a character to overcome an opponent or obstacle they have no business overcoming; its also when they struggle against opponents or obstacles they should be able to smack down easily; for example, Superman struggling to defeat Lex Luthor, a more or less normal human being, long after its been demonstrated that he can drag a planet through space or travel thrice the speed of light.

And that is the difference between them.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Welcome to the forum, Jonathan!

I think I agree with you for the most part. Strong as they need to be goes both ways, increasing or decreasing the powers and abilities of characters for plot demands.
However, my point was that the tropes overlap. I think new powers as the plot demands can be seen as a subtrope of either. They are essentially the same story coherence flaw, and logically equivalent, unless I am missing something.
In short, I find it peculiar that Strong as they need to be get tends to get so much understanding from the audience (the attitude us that you are a pedantic geek if you point out incoherent power levels, according to some people), when deus ex machina is considered so bad. Just because you suddenly introduce the new element of power hidden into an already existing character, instead of in the form of outside help, it doesn't make it one squat better, in my opinion.

 

[Jonathan C]

Strong as they need to be is usually in long-running and action-orientated series where the audience doesn't really expect a particularly strong continuity. They might prefer it, but when they hold it against the work it will probably be on the grounds of said work just following the pattern of the stuff that came before it.

Deus Ex Machina, on the other hand, transcends genre and pops up across all fiction, and applies to a much wider range of scenarios than just super-strong individuals an what they are doing. In other words, it is a lot more common and more likely to be critiqued as a result, especially by literary critics and others, and can be applied to genres where, rightly or wrongy, the standards are higher.

Plus, Strong as they need to be ceases to be a Deus Ex Machina (I wouldn't say they overlap in the cases you have in mind- its more like SatNtB is a sub-trope of DExM) if it happens enough times, as the fact that there is precedence for it- and usually, by that point, some kind of explanation and set-up no matter how lame-, means that by definition it is not a Deus Ex Machina. A true DExM is, by definition, devoid of set-up or precedent, and comes completely out of nowhere- if it doesnt, then it usually becomes a Chekov's Gun or something similar. Which is another reason why it annoys some people, because a Chekov's Gun is very, very easy to set up, so Deus Ex Machina is most likely to appear in works that don't have a lot of planning (hence why it shows up so much in Stephen King- he never plans; he just writes with the flow).

Of course, whether or not a work has a lot of planning or not isn't too important in determining if the work is good (plenty of bad works exist where interesting plots and good characters are sacrificed for the sake of The Plan), but if a Deus Ex Machina shows up in a work that has a lot of mystery and tension, it can feel very cheap. How bad a DExM is, or how bad SatNtB is, really depends on the work and how much slack the audience / reader is willing to give it.

 

[Darth Angelus]

Jonathan, yes , I guess you are right in that Strong as they need to be is usually in long action-oriented series. Really, it is only applicable in genres where combat plays a prominent rule, and particularly ones that are based on defining levels of strength and skill. Deus ex machina would really be more universal.

However, I am not sure I agree that Strong as they need to be is a subtrope of deus ex machina, because there are cases where it would not be. Deus ex machina is supposedly only solutions, to begin with, so it could just as well be a form of diabolos ex machina. I guess that deus and diabolos ex machina follow the same basic pattern, though, so this may just be a nit pick. Also, even when it is not working for evil (which it is not, most of the time, I think), Strong as they need to be does not have to be dealing with an unsolvable problem. It can just be rule of cool taken a bit far, if not outright taking over.

I am also not sure I'd accept that repeated usage of Strong as they need to be would eliminate deus ex machina. After all, a work can use deus ex machina could also be used repeatedly in a work of fiction. If that standard you mention of requiring there to be no precedent for something to be deus ex machina, wouldn't that make repeated deus ex machina not be deus ex machina, either. That would be paradoxical, if not outright contradictory.
Strong as they need to be is about a character displaying a level of power previously unhinted at, so in the specific case, it is not established. That makes it a sort of deus ex machina, in cases where it is used to solve an unsolvable situation, in my book. Just because the trope has a precedent in the work's writing style, it doesn't change the fact that the specifics of the character's skill and power is not pulled out of thin air. The trope still follows a sort of deus ex machina pattern.

Anyway, I think that Strong as they need to be is frequently a really lame trope, often just as bad and sometimes even worse than deus ex machina.

 

[Jonathan C]

However, I am not sure I agree that Strong as they need to be is a subtrope of deus ex machina, because there are cases where it would not be. Deus ex machina is supposedly only solutions, to begin with, so it could just as well be a form of diabolos ex machina. I guess that deus and diabolos ex machina follow the same basic pattern, though, so this may just be a nit pick. Also, even when it is not working for evil (which it is not, most of the time, I think), Strong as they need to be does not have to be dealing with an unsolvable problem. It can just be rule of cool taken a bit far, if not outright taking over.

Well, I meant insofar as they two tropes overlap, it is usually when SatNtB acts as a subtrope, not that it is inherently one.

Probably a poor choice of words on my part.

I am also not sure I'd accept that repeated usage of Strong as they need to be would eliminate deus ex machina. After all, a work can use deus ex machina could also be used repeatedly in a work of fiction. If that standard you mention of requiring there to be no precedent for something to be deus ex machina, wouldn't that make repeated deus ex machina not be deus ex machina, either. That would be paradoxical, if not outright contradictory.
Strong as they need to be is about a character displaying a level of power previously unhinted at, so in the specific case, it is not established. That makes it a sort of deus ex machina, in cases where it is used to solve an unsolvable situation, in my book. Just because the trope has a precedent in the work's writing style, it doesn't change the fact that the specifics of the character's skill and power is not pulled out of thin air. The trope still follows a sort of deus ex machina pattern.

Not quite. Its more about how their power level fluctuates over time- often, there is indeed some kind of justification, if a contrived one, since again it usually applies to long-running series. At first they might be pulled out of thin air, but the longer the story goes on, the more likely some sort of reason will be given (eg. a common one is that the characters in question have mental blocks of some kind).

So, its more a question of the context deciding whether it is pure De us Ex Machina or not, or just a (sometimes annoying) borderline example.

Anyway, I think that Strong as they need to be is frequently a really lame trope, often just as bad and sometimes even worse than deus ex machina.

It depends on how it is used. Usually it is pretty lame, but it gives characters a chance to have their feet in two different worlds and be challenged in both of them. It also usually brings some kind of character development with it, if there is a good enough reason. Its not all bad.

 

[Darth Angelus]

The way I read the trope, it is pretty much when there is no justification for the fluctuation in strength or skill. It is not about intense training. It is not about the power of friendship or love. The article is pretty clear on that. It is just about power on plot demand.
The way I interpret the trope, it is about sudden fluctuations in power, by orders of magnitude, in a very unnatural way. This trope is certainly not invoked when a character is getting gradually better at a skill over time, as part of their character development, at least not if it follows anything that remotely resembles a learning curve.
Also, an absurdly contrived justification might as well be no justification, because there aren't many cases where you can't come up with one.