The second quote doesn't have a source. Too bad, because it's awesome. If I had to guess - 30 Rock. They're ridiculously lamp-shady in that way. Info, Anyone?

Grammar wise, is Deus Ex Machina masculine? Often characters are referred to as being a walking Deus Ex Machina, which is fine if they're male, but Lina Inverse gets the title in relation to the Lord of Nightmares fragment, would that make her a walking Dea Ex Machina (Machinae? bah my Latin is too many years behind me now) or what?

I am trying to decide if the tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan are a Deus Ex Machina. They don't really change the outcome, but it's said that they manipulated the structure of the universe in ways that influenced human behavior which lead all of the characters towards their part in the end of the story. It doesn't really strike me as an Asspull or another type of weak cop-out, but rather an added layer of something to think about. Any suggestions?

There's an (apparently) incorrect pronunciation guide in the article regarding how Deus Ex Machina is actually pronounced. If my knowledge of words of Latin origin is as good as I remember it being, wouldn't the actual pronunciation be be something closer to "Dey-us eks MA-kee-nah," not "Doos eks MAH-kin-nuh"

This only bothers me because I don't like misinformation. So before I make any edits (which may result in an edit war), can we at least come to a consensus about how we want new visitors on the site, who don't yet have an idea how to pronounce the phrase, to pronounce it?

Whoever edited my usage of DEM in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, has got the plot completely mixed up with the first TF movie. The All Spark is destroyed at the end of the first one when Sam pushes it into Megatron's chest. A shard of it appears in the 2nd movie, but it's The Matrix of Leadership that provide the dual role of Macguffin/Deus ex Machina in the sequel.

I've redited the section again, but I'm not sure if it looks messy now?

H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds?

"Note that the Romans and Greeks used type 1 and 2. This was mainly due to tradition; unlike today, audiences in ancient times were openly violently hostile to excessive innovation to the point that they would break out in riots if a writer tried to go too far. Some moderns assume, wrongly, that True Art Sticks It To The Man and always has, and crow that ancient writers were cowed by "royalty" not to be controversial."

This is kind of incorrect. While the Deus ex Machina was used by the Greeks and Romans, it wasn't about holding with tradition, but about introducing the idea that a certain problem (like the conflict between Justice and Vengeance in the Oresteia) was in its current state beyond the scale of human intervention and that this idea or problem had to be dealt with by society.

If Ass Pull is a YMMV trope, then why isn't this one?

A subtype of ass-pull? Seriously? Shouldn't it be the other way around? This is one of the very original, uh, theater tropes — right up there with sexing your own mom.

The only difference I see is that ass-pulls seem to be used to resolve minor issues while Deus ex Machinas are used for major plot points. Therefore, this should be labeled as the "parent" trope.

I want to remove the "Toy Story 3" example because it was foreshadowed. Twice, in fact. Can I do that?