Favorite Books and Current Reads

[Kinokokao]

[Black_kero]

Reading Wuthering Heights for my English class.

[zamisk]

[NessySchu]

[fauxsquared]

[scy]

Deus Ex Machina (and Mary Sue-ing, and plenty of other plot devices/mechanics) are basically the hallmark of a young/novice/shitty (depends on your level of anger~) writer. Nothing is more insulting, personally, to a reader than to stoop to them as your solution. Let Mary Sue's remain in fanfiction and self-insert stories; let Deus Ex Machina's be smote by the fucking hand of god, in some bizarre twist of irony.

Not to say a single use of them dooms a work to hopefully be burned at the stake (well, if your single Deus Ex Machina is your finale than I hope someone murders you in your sleep with a blunt object and a coat hanger) as sometimes they can be used to good effect, it's just lazy writing. "I couldn't think of a better resolution."

[spoiler]I hate authors. I hate "shit works out." I hate "LOOK AT THAT I'M AWESOME." I hate a childhood of shitty fiction with "because" plots and reading fanfiction and "I needed an ego boost" stories.

I hate being awake this goddamn early (well, by now it's like 2 hours awake) without a beer, cigarette, or coffee.[/spoiler]

[Kinokokao]

[Kimiko]

Isn't the coat hanger going a bit overboard though?

[scy]

I'm bitter about it.

[Maxine MagicFox]

-_- *sigh*

At one point in my story Maxine is attacking a draon that has her friend in its teeth. The first time I thought of the scene I thought "I'm going to let Maxine accidentally 'create' a dragon riders' harness which will in turn let her realize throughout the rest of the book that she can create stuff". Is this deus ex machina?

Also, don't you guys think that even fucking Harry Potter is such a "Mary Sue" character? :[ ...... oh, his one great flaw is that "he has a saving people thing" .......... and like, what, how did the finale of Harry Potter NOT resonate as a deus ex machina. It was such a bullshit ending. Maybe not in the strictest sense of the word, but I felt cheated. And yet millions still appreciate it. *shrugs* Obviously such elements work for some people.

[Kinokokao]

Just because something "works for people" doesn't make it good writing.

If you want to write poorly and sell a lot of books it's easy; just look at Stephanie Meyer.

[scy]

I've never read Harry Potter.

Edit: And they "work" for Pop Fiction/Pop Literature.

[Kinokokao]

Ugh, Bella is such a Mary Sue of a character.

Harry Potter... eh, I could see that argument. He does have anger and trust issues, and he too readily holds on to the grudges of his father's childhood, but for the most part Rowling simplifies her villains and adjusts the situation to make Harry right. Harry never cares about his schooling, but that's okay because Hermione's there to let him cheat, or it doesn't matter because he can do whatever he wants even without good grades.

Arguably Rowling's offenses are fairly minor. She does make an effort to flaw her characters and have them overcome those flaws through the course of the story; Ron's feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, Hermione's rigidity, Neville's self-confidence, even [hide]the Malfoys get redemption.[/hide] As for the ending... well, epilogue aside, the ending wasn't too terrible.

Not like Sword of Truth [hide]which had just totally uncontrollable and unapologetic deus ex machina, because the author stacked the deck so heavily against the good guys -- as in 8 books of being told they're fucking doomed -- that there was no way out except cheating.[/hide] That's exactly what an author should strive against. Never paint yourself into a corner.

Your plot should not be a Gordian knot.

As for your example, Maxine, I would be wary of making and giving your character godlike powers. It's not very exciting if there's no risk; there's a reason underdogs are popular heroes. The ability to just create whatever you, the author, needs strikes as very much writing a cheat. If she needs a harness, find a way for the plot and the characters to naturally create it, don't just magic your way out of the situation.

[Maxine MagicFox]

But that's the thing. She IS a reborn god. And, no, she doesn't always magick herself out of obstacles - actually it gets her into trouble, such as her creating a broom and demanding that Amar fly across Dragon Canyon to try to find the tower they need - and nearly getting killed.

Or after finding someone that could get them down there in a way that was still nowhere near as safe, they become trapped and she gets the idea "if I make a sphere that is resistant to damage then we can just roll ourselves out" :3 but then the dragons invent a new game out of the situation that at first I called Dragon Volleyball but I'm thinking it was more like soccer or something. Either way, the idea crashed and burned.

Then of course there's the situation where she meets the Elemental of Time, and uses so much of her magic that she makes herself absolutely sick (she DOES have a limit).

^_^ I can't wait for the next scenes that I'm set to do in which she ventures into "Skeleton Forest" and sets a whole group of mummies on fire by accident and has to figure out how to piece everyone back together and make ammends.

The sheer fun of it is, that Maxine is probably the last person on earth you'd really want to give such magical powers to. And even next book when she becomes a little more skilled, I start switching the focus to others. Then of course when she turns 16 she will no longer be eligible to be a main character.

So while I say some scenes have deus ex machina, it's actually HUMOROUS situations when it occurs, minus the one dragon scene that I mentioned, and even that I was going to try to rewrite a little more humor into.

It's kinda why I wonder if Maxine really is a "Mary Sue". She's stubborn, has a quick temper, uses her fist before magic, has a major problem with authority (and rules)... so even though she has all these powers and stuff, I like to think I've managed to balance everything out.

When I created the scene with the dragon it wasn't to create a scene with a dragon it was "so, how do I let Maxine know she can do this with her magic?" ..... but when I read the chapter it's like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this... but... I dunno.

And of course even at the end of the story, despite knowing she can do whatever she wants in her mind, she still needs to figure out how to take out this large behemoth - actually, she fucks that up to. She's not suppose to kill it. Remus specifically tells her DO NOT KILL IT...

-_- maybe I am a bad writer. T-T I can do this... right?

[scy]

Note: For some reason, I feel compelled to say here pardon my language and potential ability to insult people. Shitty ass day.

It really depends on what people define as Mary Sue; originally, it was just a perfect character, typically the self-insert one. Currently, it's more-or-less runs the gamut of "perfect characters" to "THE CHOSEN ONE" to simply "peronification of the author." Or, you know, "that one unlikeable female."

Really, though ... the term has lost a lot of meaning when it was used outside of fanfiction/self-insert stories. Not to say there's not the occasional one, though it's harder to pinpoint them in actual fiction than fanfiction.

[spoiler]Personally, I've always viewed Mary Sue's as needing two important features:

1) IT'S FUCKING FANFICTION/SELF-INSERT STORY.
2) See 1).

Seriously, that's really it. I hate the other types that get associated with Mary Sues (THE CHOSEN ONE or the character who's fucking omnipotent and fuck-awesome at everything for no reason) but that's not really the realm of Mary Sue per se.[/spoiler]

Quite frankly, I wager this wouldn't even really be discussed if the name wasn't Maxine.

As for deus-ex machina ... I hate it. It's laziness. And, to be frank, it's hard for what you're doing to not come off as deus ex machina with the whole "I was God" bit as the background story. I mean, it's fucking deus ex machina (god out of the machine, for those who never learned Latin / stayed awake in High School English). Doing something that you didn't know you could do (or conveniently remembered you could do) is basically the origination of it. Well, barring [s]flying robot[/s] God out of nowhere.

The oddity, then, is that typically deus ex machina is something beyond the character themselves (hence the of/from the machine bit) so when it's a character doing it themselves it's more of an ass pull (...I hate you TV Tropes so much) really. Still, it's one of those "it happens because it has to happen." For most complete deus ex machinas/ass pulls, a mere statement leading to it (i.e., the suggestion to do X as opposed to "hey look X happened AWESOME") is almost enough to fix it. Almost. I still give it in that category, albeit to a lesser extent.

I suppose the problem is it's really borderline from deus ex machina/ass pull and being something awesome (Rule of Cool ... fuck I do read TV Tropes too damn much).

To be blunt, doing what is needed to get out of the situation and then not knowing right after, which basically sounds like a summary of [hide]The Sword of Truth series, actually[/hide], is as literal of a deus ex machina you can get without the hand of god coming down and patting you on the head.

[spoiler]Again, to be fair, they're really borderline on being just fuck-yeah awesome sometimes. Moments of "THERE'S NO CHANCE WE CAN GET OUT" that get overcome all sound terrible on paper but can be played out epicly (TTGL basically ran with this as a plotline).

Anything that isn't literally "I AM GOD AND NOW EVERYTHING IS RIGHT" probably won't make me kill people though. It's just one of those things I go, "really?" to when it happens and continue on. Unless, of course, it's the ultimate resolution then it's really just "how's my dick taste?" to the readers.[/spoiler]