My understanding of the Deus ex machina is from old greek cinema, where a mechanism of pulleys would actually raise an actor in the role of the God up onto the stage where he would fix all wrongs and curse the bad guys, basically show a sense of justice and goodwill prevailing throughout the universe. When used it stories, it usually indicates weak plotting, or a failure of characterization. Part of the journey of a character, a way to show that they grow, is when they must overcome odds against them, but due to their own efforts. When the magic gizmo or whatever saves them, the reader feels cheated, and rightly so.
My question, however, is does the villian (antagonist) need similar explanation for all his villianry? Must the antagonist be someone of exceptional character that we see how he puts the protagonist at risk?
I admit, I enjoy stories where the villians are more than just some dark evil force, where they also are characters. But by needing to throw obstacles at the protagonist, I sometimes feel that without a justification for the evil/contrary factor, it is just a cheap way of making suspense. ie, the character must cross a gorge, and the only way across is an old rickety rope bridge, and its raining so there are flass floods, and the river has starving crocodiles and pirahnas and sharks and electric eels in it, and an army is pursuing him, and he slips and breaks his ankle, etc...
I think it gets down to the role of a protagonist and the role of the antagonist. The antagonist exists to be a force or obstacle the protagonist must overcome to reaching the goal.
A better rickety bridge or a villain with character and his/her own plot line can make for a much better reading experience, but they are all part of the set of obstacles the protagonist must fight through.
So a diablo ex machina? sounds like the spider machine in Will Smith's Wild Wild West.
[This message has been edited by Owasm (edited October 13, 2009).]
Diabolical characters can be a villain, a nemesis, an enemy, sometimes an antagonist but not always a diabolical antagonist. All of Harry Potter's allies at one time or another antagonize him in favorable ways, sometimes unfavorable ways. Voldemort is a nemesis, and the chief villain and enemy, but also a diabolical antagonist. He doesn't come in out of the blue though, not late in the storyline anyway. He comes in out of the blue in the backstory to incite the dramatic action that overarches the entire story. His backstory emerges gradually throughout the larger story. The diabolical complications he poses to Harry build as his import builds until he's fully realized as a diabolical nemesis, one that has the power to annihilate Harry, but Harry's emerging ability to engage him and triumph has also built throughout the story.
I can't think of a published story that has a diablos ex machina off the top of my head. I've read a few unpublished stories with a diablos ex machina, but it's probably the rarest of all failings compared to other story failings. Seems difficult to do that badly. However, it's in the exceptions and extremes of existence that I find great inspirations. Like water ice floats on its liquid state, unlike most other compounds in their solid states, a physical property of water that fosters life and jeopardizes life (the dual identities of antagonism's forces of change as I know it).
I suppose a diablos ex machina is the inverse of Chekov's gun. A handgun suddenly appears on the mantelpiece ready to a nemesis' or villain's hand at the moment of triumph to crush the protagonist's seemingly completed triumph. Wouldn't that be kind of a cheap "cliff-hanger" device? That's how I've seen diablos ex machina done badly.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 13, 2009).]
quote:
Translating the Latin phrase to English, devil from the machine. Isn't there a story about that? Seems an infinite number of stories about diabolical machines.
haha ok onto something more real
quote:
Like water ice floats on its liquid state, unlike most other compounds in their solid states, a physical property of water that fosters life and jeopardizes life
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited October 13, 2009).]
If the villain doesn't have a plausible motive and/or isn't interestingly portrayed, then the hero won't seem as heroic. That old "everyone is the hero of their own story" maxim is important - what is the villain's story, that they are the hero of? How many people have you ever met who openly claim they are "evil"? Doesn't happen (even Aleister Crowley - largely misquoted on the subject anyway - was simply using the term as a counter to normal social mores). Everyone justifies their own actions somehow. Finding out how is what makes villains compulsive. I didn't like the BG reimagining (I'm not a MilSF fan), but at least they moved both Baltar and the Cylons away from being one-dimensional cartoon villains and gave them plenty of focus.
quote:
How does it in any way jeopardize life?
Ever hear of the Titanic?
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited October 13, 2009).]
quote:
How does it in any way jeopardize life?
Water expands when frozen. That's why ice floats on water. When living cells freeze they're damaged by the expansion. When thawed, the cells are dead. Gangrene sets in. Creatures that are able to survive extreme cold have an antifreeze in their circulatory fluids. Most of those antifreeze compounds are sugar based, glycols actually. Like in antifreeze for automobile cooling systems. However, glycols are mostly toxic for humans.
Sugars, glucose specifically, aren't inherently toxic to humans. But that's what diabetes mellitus is all about, an inability to effectively metabolize glucose. High blood glucose levels kills cells, every cell type is affected. Paradox alert. High sugar is toxic for diabetics, yet we need glucose to live. Or do now anyway. We've evolved away from protein-based metabolisms.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 13, 2009).]
[edited for extrinsic's apparently needed benefit]
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited October 13, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 13, 2009).]
(In other words, what does ice have to do with the topic?)
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited October 13, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 13, 2009).]
I think both are troublesome, but perhaps dei ex machinis (yeah yeah sorry, Latin nerd ) more so. Part of it is that we expect, and want, the protag to undergo conflict and struggle. However, just like the well crafted antag will have a motive and reason for being, so, too, I think, do all the elements of the protag's struggle have context and a role. In other words, they should be there for more than simply providing an obstacle to overcome. Or they provide some kind of insight for the protag, or help facilitate the emotional journey. Also, most obstacles should have some sort of causality, or force him to make some sort of choice. And I think all of it has to build energy for the climax.
Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code serves as an example, I think, largely because of how each chapter is structured--small gain followed by some new obstacle and a cliff hanger ending.
What comes to mind actually is "collect the coupons plotting", where the obstacles are just, well, obstacles the hero must get over to move the plot along.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited October 13, 2009).]
Anyways, maybe I could bring up the whole reason this is pressing on my mind nowadays as an illustration. I want my good guys to be in a hurry to get somewhere, thinking they are avoiding a major catastrophe. When they arrive, it would be really bad for them if the enemy's army was waiting to capture them. But the necessity of their fleeing early means they really would get there before the army. So if the army just somehow showed up, and I attributed it to the antagonists cunning (without really delving into how he pulled it off...) it is my diablos ex machina: sudden appearance of complications without 'justification.'
That being said, I am trying to work out the plot details so that there really is a reason the army would be them there, and I hate having no justification or motive for actions in my story. But, since I didn't have one YET, it made me wonder about the whole scenario and if it is as much of a taboo as using the deus ex machina.
I wouldn't classify the Titanic iceberg as a diablos ex machina, because part of the danger in sea travel is icebergs up north. In other words, it is an expected complication, the same as mutiny, seasickness, krakken attacks... Now, if the route was through the Caribbean and an iceberg showed up...
[This message has been edited by Teraen (edited October 13, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Teraen (edited October 13, 2009).]
Historical battles where an enemy-antagonist beats a friendlies-protagonist to the battlefield might offer insight on how to avoid it being a sudden out of the blue, late in the day antagonism. Like a failure of intelligence to know the enemy's movements, or an intelligence coup by the enemy that discovers the friendlies' movements. Frustration with not knowing where the enemy is, an erroneous assumption, a suspiscously missing comrade in arms, etc.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 13, 2009).]
quote:
Or it could be an example of you trying to hijack the topic, Zero.
When anyone creates the "infallible" object, whether that be a ship or anything else manmade, he or she is asking for trouble. The story couldn't have been fictionalized any better than what actually happened. I'm not saying I liked that this happened, but it represents the ultimate in humanity's sense of loftiness. It was possibly more effective as an illustration of this than the Tower of Babel was.
By the way, the iceberg was there all along. The story was the ship's steady approach toward disaster. I believe that there is actually a story archetype called "The Iceberg Story".
[This message has been edited by philocinemas (edited October 14, 2009).]
But, ah,
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DiabolusExMachina
There are also plenty of stories where the "villian" is developed as a character, as in Hannibal Lector.
Sometimes the antagonist isn't terribly evil and isn't really a villian in the traditional sense (ala the sheriff in Rambo). Again, there are examples where these characters are developed, or largely offstage.
So it can go either way, depending on the author's vision I suppose.
I did not suggest we "need to know the villain's relationship with his mother" (and interpret the remark as dismissive and faintly insulting, though it may well not have been intended that way). I am sure that my suggestions are not applicable in every case, but a common flaw I see, particularly in post-Tolkeinian fantasy, is the complete lack of any real characterisation/motivation for the bad guys other than "uh, well, they are evil". One of the few things I didn't like abut Buffy was the depiction of vampires as evil because they'd lost their "soul"; for me, that was never adequately explored. Sure, they needed to feed on blood to survive, so it's going to be hard to seriously treat them as fluffy teen idols a la Twilight and its ilk, but there's a big difference between "needing to drink blood" and "being perfectly happy to kill and eat anyone and everyone" and the "soulless" rationale always struck me as a shorthand copout for their (necessary to the story) villainny. The same with demons, etc - and it is something I've become aware of in some of my own stories, and I've decided I want a reason why my faux-Chinese-world demons are "evil" that is more cogent then "well, they just are, because they're demons".
[This message has been edited by tchernabyelo (edited October 14, 2009).]
Oh, sorry, I was not responding directly to you at all, did not mean to sound dismissive or disparaging. I was responding to the question from the original post, which I took to be whether it was required to develop an antagonist character so that their presence is not a klunker like a deus ex machina.
Honestly, the thread seemed to veer off track very quickly so I didn't read much besides the original post. My comments about Sauron were just me being randomly irreverant, not directed at anything anyone said here, but apologies if that offended.
You bring up a good point concerning the role of what readers bring in terms of innate or cultural attitudes/beliefs and how they contribute to the success of certain stories, with the Exorcist being a good example. I guess our innate fear of death drives a lot of stories in that regard, as do moral systems.
In this post modern neoexistentialist mindset world, questioning absolutes, questioning authority, questioning meaning, that sort of symbolism doesn't play as well anymore, not with our need to be told at times, shown at times, or decide for ourselves by readily questioning trustworthiness.
Even in villains and heros, we know from the perennial bombardment of the news media that good guys aren't purely pure, nor bad guys purely corrupted in the real world. Demons anymore gotta show they're evil and their otherwise good-intentions-gone-wrong motivations in order to be fully realized. Perhaps only in fiction can the proverbial moral paradox of the ends don't justify the means versus any means to an end be rationalized and explored for understanding.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited October 14, 2009).]