Archived Discussion Main / DeusAngstMachina

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Blackking:Deleted the killing joke entry, it did not qualify.

Bob: I cut the following from Neon Genesis Evangelion because it doesn't contribute anything to the example and seem to be Conversation In The Main Page.

• The show is a Humongous Mecha series, though, so such implausibility is nothing compared to the basic concept anyway.
  • Except, you know, there's the implausibility it takes to accept the genre, and the implausibility of plotting within the genre.

And the following from Code Geass because Willing Suspension of Disbelief refers to elements in the actual story, not elements from the real world.

• Even more damaging to the Willing Suspension of Disbelief is how this even occurred at the point where the production company was wondering whether there would be a second season or not. Everything up to this point had been set up for the series to end just in case.

Uknown Troper: Re-delegated Code Geass example to Diabolus ex Machina. It was a single bridge-dropping that sat in motion a Downer Ending more than a prolonged source of wangst.

Twin Bird: Removed:

• They did perform tests and did follow protocol, they just didn't test for Rabies because, "it would've been a waste of time" in any other situation.

Because whoever wrote it clearly knows absolutely nothing about organ transfer protocol.

Bob: Cutting because it's Diabolus ex Machina not Deus Angst Machina.

• Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann: Nia dies because of her Anti-Spiral heritage and the destruction of the Anti-Spiral homeworld, seconds after she and Simon get married. All this despite her being Lord Genome's biological daughter (as confirmed by Word of God) and thus entirely human, not digital like other Anti-Spirals, a Half-Human Hybrid at best.
  • Objection!: Simon was not in any way angst about the deal, both parties knew it was comming and they had made peace with it happening. It was the only way to end the madeness.

I'm about to do a large edit, cleaning up the page based on the following reasoning: The main description says "However, the circumstances seem entirely too contrived. This is a step beyond the coincidences that most stories tend towards to build up drama, as the character seems to have provoked some sadistic god who is now dedicated to making his life as miserable (and angst-filled) as possible." which seems to have the specific implication that it is only contrived circumstances that seem almost as if someone was deliberately out to get them. This seems to exclude circumstances where there actually IS someone out to get them, and the circumstances aren't contrived, they're the results of someone trying to mess someone's life up.

I'm sure there's somewhere the bits I'm going to remove belong, so I'll stick them all here, so anyone can move them to where they'd fit.

• All the main characters od Weiss Kreuz - the four had all terrible pasts and presents, and there's yet to have one episode where one doesn't wangst about his dead/comatose/gone parents/siblings/backstabbing friends/girlfriends - or their fate to be cold killers.

[This might have Deus Angst Machina in it, but this doesn't describe any]

• Justified in Trading Places, in which two tycoons contrive to ruin Winthorpe's life as much as possible to see if he has the genes to bounce back. He loses his money, mansion, fiancée and friends after he is accused of swiping money from a club member's jacket and distributing PCP.

[Justified, or not the same trope? I fall on the side of the second answer, as that is clearly not contrived by the author, but enacted by the characters]

• Pretty much the entire point of Curse Of The Golden Flower. The odd part is the patriarch of the family engineered much of it. The only things that did not go according to plan were Jai's rebellion (but as he had so many guards in the palace, it's apparent he expected one of his other sons to rebel) and the death of favored son Wan, killed by his younger brother after the mindfuck reveal, which was also a DAM BSOD moment for Wan's girlfriend and sister and her mother as well. It seems likely (or at least this is my theory) that he was expecting the youngest son to rebel as a result of finding out the affair between his wife and Wan, as well as his own aloof and absent form of parenting. He seemed genuinely surprised at Wan's death, possibly expecting the anger would be directed entirely at him. His poisoning of his wife was most likely in retribution for the affair, internal court politics, and to close the book on a few of his secrets. (likewise his attempt to murder his former wife). It's a bit vague on all points however, being similar to a Chinese opera.

[This seems borderline, but again, it was apparently organised the the patriarch of the family, who is one of the characters.]

• Pretty much the entire point of the Book of Job, so this is Older Than Feudalism.
  • Of course, that one was somewhat justified by having SATAN HIMSELF do it.
  • The "Satan" here being the angel in God's court charged with testing the faith of mortals. So Yeah, God Is Evil and is responsible for the Deus Angst Machina. That's a Family-Unfriendly Aesop if I've ever seen one.
    • Objection! Just because Satan was in heaven at that particular moment, doesn't mean he was part of God's court. If God hadn't allowed Job to suffer, it would've seemed like God was bribing Job into serving Him by making him wealthy.
    • In fanon, Satan started out as an angel who quite literally fell from grace, so this isn't too surprising.
    • Furthermore, the lesson of the book was supposed to be to not treat God and religion as something formulaic, like Job and his friends had been doing - that they need to understand, not just blindly follow.
    • Correct. The end of the book reveals that the entire thing was a big test to make Job see that questioning God and his actions IS okay, because he was only human. It didn't help that his wife and friends either wanted him to think it was his fault somehow, or straight out be blasphemous. God yelled at him for being stubborn at the end of it, but for being so faithful, gave him TWICE what he started with. Actually, surprisingly, the one that got off the easiest was the youngest of them, because, ironically, he was the wisest out of the four.

[Conversation. Also, not applicable because in this Satan actually was contriving bad things to happen to the guy]

- Nevare, the protagonist of her "Soldier Son" trilogy, is the epitome of Deus Angst Machina, as forest magic is on a quest to screw over his life and everyone he cares about, until he starts obeying it.

[Removed from the description of Robin Hobb's books. This is actually the epitome of what I'm removing here. The bad things are the result of a conscious plan to make his life as bad as possible, thus not Deus Angst Machina, but just the result of someone with a vendetta]

• At the beginning of the recent Battlestar Galactica series, Lee Adama angsts over just about everything, from his father ignoring him, to his fly-by destruction of a civilian freighter that possibly had survivors still aboard, to his relationship with Kara Thrace, an act that (as we see in the episode "Unfinished Business" and the New Caprica arc) may have driven him to become fat and lonely. Then again, she did marry another man after she slept with him the night before. Viewers even discovered that Lee had a pregnant fiancee that was left on Caprica during the attacks, and had never been mentioned until the latter half of the second season.
  • Starbuck isn't much better off either. From finding out a close friend was a Cylon, having no ovaries, marrying a Cylon, then being accused as one and almost shot by Roslin she has every reason to freak out.
  • In the miniseries, after Roslin announces the list of colonies that were nuked (including Picon), she speaks to Billy, asking him if he is alright. "Yeah. I... um... My parents moved to Picon two months ago." *pause* "To be closer to my sisters. And their families. And their grandkids. Um."

[yeah, I don't know if you can call angsting about hard calls in a time of war and losing family in the destruction of humanity 'contrived angst'. A more focussed summary of the bad stuff that happens to any one character might well qualify though.]

• As well as in Buffy, Joss Whedon has an unfortunate tendency to rely on this trope — and the related angsty tropes feeding into it — in pretty much all of the shows he's written and created up until this point. Even when it's a bad, bad idea.

[conversational]

• Wesley Wyndam-Pryce had always been a bit of a Chew Toy and later (when he became a more likable character) The Woobie, but despite Wesley's transformation from the wimpy arrogant British ponce he used to be on Buffy The Vampire Slayer to a Cool Loser, and finally to a spellcasting gun-toting stoic Badass Bookworm, life became progressively worse for him in Seasons 3-5 of Angel: The Series, until he was so depressed that he had lost his belief in hope and basically committed suicide by proxy in the series finale. For starters, he had an emotionally cold, abusive father and few if any friends. He lost his job with the Watchers Council, came to L.A. where he was abducted, tortured and nearly killed by Faith, the psychotic ex-Slayer that Wesley used to be the Watcher of. He fell in love with the physicist and Hot Librarian Winifred Burkle, only to have her choose Gunn; later, when Winifred and Wesley finally got together, Fred was poisoned, died and became the host body for the ancient hell demoness Illyria, with the implication that this process destroyed Fred's soul. In Season 5, Wesley had his memories tampered with by Angel, his friend, along with everyone else. During the third season, Wesley abducted Angel's infant son with the best of intentions to keep him safe, after Wesley had stumbled upon a prophecy about Angel that stated "the father will kill the son" and Angel had refused to listen. For his efforts, his throat was cut by the henchwoman of a vampire hunter who abducted Angel's son and took the infant through a portal to a hell dimension; all of Wesley's friends thought of him as a traitor, and Angel himself tried to smother Wesley with a pillow in the hospital bed. Oh, and Wesley had to shoot someone he thought was his long-estranged father (finding out afterwards that the father had been a robot copy didn't make it easier).

[Out of order, and a bit confused. Wesley only really had one really bad thing happen to him, as he puts it "My throat was cut and my friends abandoned me", which was the catalyst for his transformation. Losing a girl to another guy is just something that happens. Shooting his robot father was a hard decision rendered happy by the discovery that he was just a robot.]

• Even the ever-happy gentle Lorne was broken and sad by the series finale, mostly because his friends went on a suicide mission and Angel ordered Lorne to kill Lindsey.
  • Lorne might have known that was going to happen, too because he'd seen Lindsey sing. I'm not sure I'd call him always gentle, though.

[That's one bad thing that happened to him, and one bad thing that happened to his friends.]

• The world has also apparently decided that Foreteen cannot last, and to make this statement a reality, has decided to put them through every misery possible. To be fair, Foreman brought much of it down on himself, but really...

[Really? Foreman lied about one thing. House did his usual thing. Doesn't seem that unusual to me]

• Averted by Marona in Phantom Brave. Her past is a landmine of DAM (dead parents, ostracized due to suspicion of her powers), but she's a CrystalDragonJesus and therefore never angsts about it. In fact it embeds her even further in her perpetually blissful happiness. In the end she pretty much affects every antagonist with it and they go off together to kill the mindless-beast-of-a-dark-god Sulfer. Sprout fulfills the trope more capably, but Marona unintentionally talks him into a heroic sacrifice which allows him to do away with his anger and hatred before passing on.

[Doesn't seem to qualify. Even as averted]

• In the furry webcomic Concession, a kid has all of his family die in one evening which combines suicide, slipping in the bath-tub, the house burning down and a car accident.
  • It is has been theorized confirmed that Joel (who may or may not be The Grim Reaper) arranged for the death of the kid's family members so he could trick his friend Artie into sleeping with the kid.

[In that case, it doesn't qualify]

• Charby The Vampirate's first girlfriend was the victim of a very unlikely sequence of bad events that left her covered in blood, triggering his Superpowered Evil Side which killed her in the ensuing rampage. He doesn't seem to angst very much about it, though.

[Again it doesn't qualify. There is a string of deliberately contrived coincidences, but they lead to the rampage, little angst, and the coincidences didn't make any angst in themselves, they just lead to his rampage, which could have caused angst. But doesn't seem to have]

Ok. Hope that makes sense. Feel free to revert or dispute any of these, I may have got carried away :D