Don't use dog latin New Crowner 11/20/2011: Ave Machina

The trope name is in dog latin, presumably as a Snow Clone of Deus ex Machina (which is a common term, whereas this clearly isn't). Note that "ave" is not a term of worship in actual Latin. Thankfully, it has a good redirect in normal English, i.e. Machine Cult, which is the commonly accepted term for this phenomenon.

Swap with redirect please.

It has 138 wicks, so it's not very strong. The inbound count is irrelevant since that also includes the redirects.

Concurring with OP. Machine Cult is clearer and doesn't rely on faux-Latin...

It might have been intended to be a play on "Ave Maria" — but no, that's still too strained.

Argh, you're probably right, and what's worse, it was probably devised by someone who thought "machina" was pronounced muh-SHEE-nah, with the emphasis on the second syllable (like Maria), rather than MAHK-ih-nah, with the second syllable unstressed.

edit (and now I've got "A-a-a-a-vay Ma-SHEEE-EE-nah!" stuck in my head. Double argh!) :)

edited 28th Aug '11 6:35:22 PM by Xtifr

Silly English. This is what you get for loaning loanwords you can't pronounce.

The true pronunciation is, of course, Maχina, where χ is the sound you make when you choke on a very dry bagel.

Still, I suppose "Machina" could just be a mashup of "machine" being made to fit the phrase. The main drawback of the current name is that it can't be used in a sentence for much of anything.

edited 28th Aug '11 7:33:09 PM by TripleElation

I very much prefer Machine Cult.

I say redirects are free. Is there much misuse?

There's some ambiguity to the current definition, I think. It suggests that it might be sort of like Machine Cult, but also that it could be just something that a particular character does, which doesn't exactly seem like a cult to me. I don't think it involves outright worship; more like an excess of attraction. Figurative, rather than (or as well as) literal idolization.

I'm not sure I can really judge misuse without a clearer idea of what the trope really is. I looked at a couple of examples, and I thought they were misuse till I looked at the trope itself a little more closely — now I'm not sure.

edit: I will say that there seems to be a bit of shoehorning in some cases, but until we get the definition pinned down a little better, I'm not exactly sure.

I almost get the feeling that the trope was created purely for the sake of having the name, and that the definition was deliberately left ambiguous.

edited 29th Aug '11 12:17:25 PM by Xtifr

Well, there's also Machine Worship as a redirect. Is that more accurate? Also:

Ave Machina found in: 138 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 284 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

Just because no one posted it. Enough so we need to think hard on whether a rename is necessary, but not so much that we need to really pull our hair out.

I don't know if that's more accurate. As I say, the description seems somewhat ambiguous, but I think it's a little broader than that.

I'm no Latin expert, but "Ave" is a Roman salutation that is generally translated as "Hail!"

While it's not exactly a term of worship in the strictest sense, I believe that its use in Ave Machina is meant to parallel the construction "Ave, Caesar!", and the Roman emperors were often revered as gods.

EDIT: As mentioned above, "Ave Maria" is also a good example of the same sort of thing. While it's not specifically a liturgical word, "Ave" often implies a great deal of reverence for the person being saluted.

edited 29th Aug '11 4:49:02 PM by Specialist290

I don't see anything wrong with the Latin in the title; it's not dog Latin, it's correct. It's just that the title makes it seem as if the trope is a part of the Deus ex Machina family, which it isn't.

No, "ave" is a common greating. If you meet a friend while walking down the street, you would say "ave" to him.

That there are multiple meanings to "Hail" in English and/or Latin does not prevent them from being equally valid.

I much prefer to keep Ave Machina.

The name is not indicative. It's shoehorning a pun on a song title.

I certainly agree that this could be improved, but I don't know why it's considered so bad. I've always just understood this as "Hail Machine" - not perfect, but not incoherent. And I find it pretty hard to believe that it was really meant as a "pun" on "Ave Maria", mainly because that pun is almost too bad to imagine. Are we sure it wasn't just meant as another play off the Ind ex Machina (where it doesn't really belong anyway)?

I think you underestimate the appeal of really strained puns to certain minds, but that's beside the point.

I still want the trope clarified before I am willing to make any sort of decision about the name or anything. But I'm perfectly willing to believe the name is fine if it's not causing misuse, once we decide what qualifies as misuse. "Ave" is common enough. (As long as people aren't confusing it with the biological category aves.)

General support.

Hmm. Seems people have two slightly different definitions that come to mind. Many of the people in this thread think it means worship of machines. However, people for whom they see the title and think of "Ave Caesar" think it means rule of machines.

If the former is intended, a rename is probably needed, but the description could stand to be retooled as well, since neither of the people in this thread who thought of "Ave Caesar" seem to have been dissuaded from the resulting impression.

I personally prefer it to stay in Latin, it adds flavor and religiousness to the trope.

We do need a clearer title, though. Grammatical or not, Latin is problematic there.

If we don't swap with a redirect, we could always do a direct translation: Hail The Machine. Or Hail The Machines, since the trope seems to be about worshipping tech more generally, not just one machine.

The translated version looses the religious connotations and makes it sound like you're praising our robot overlords.

Hmm. In that case, definitely one of the redirects.

If we're going to rename this, then I'd be more in favor of Machine Cult or Machine Worship. I prefer the Latin title, but it won't break my heart to see it renamed.

edited 15th Sep '11 7:42:00 PM by Willbyr