Fortunately, in today's day and age, I can always just Wikipedia anything I don't understand. Quoth the article:
In modern terms the Deus ex machina has also come to describe a person or thing that suddenly arrives and solves a seemingly insoluble difficulty. While in storytelling this might seem unfulfilling, in real life this type of figure might be welcome and heroic.
You don't say.
So if a couple of years ago I said, "Man, I wish I knew what 'Deus ex machina' meant, but am nowhere near anyone literate," and then Wikipedia became popular, I guess that would have been a Deus ex machina. And now my world is a little richer.
Current Music: XTC - Go 2
Current seemingly insoluble difficulty: Gosh, I sure am hungry right now.
Current really seemingly insoluble difficulty: World hunger
9 comments:
Deus ex machina just means 'machine of god'
your high school english teachers stink.
It actually means "God comes from the machine."
You stink.
Oh snap!
Dude, swear to God, 2 days ago I was reading something, came across the term, thought to myself "why can't i ever remember was deux ex machina means?", and looked it up in wikipedia.
Yeah.
your world is plenty rich
Wikipedia would not qualify as a Deus ex Machina because there's not much godly about it. The important part of a DeM is that it is unlikely to the point of absurdity (like the steel chains that just happen to be located above the bad guy with the gun in Twins). A DeM for you would have been if E! just happened to have a piece on DeMs while you were wanting to know what a DeM was.
Hm... while yours is unmistakeably godlier, Wikipedia still seems pretty godly to me. I think my likelihood-of-divine-intervention threshold is much lower than yours.
I think what he means is that a typical Deus ex Machina seemingly descends out of the blue, whereas Wikipedia evolved slowly and methodically.
Right, but by the time I heard of it, it already contained all the world's information.
Post a Comment