Can Deus Ex Machina be a YMMV?

I ask this because of a recent mild edit war that took place on a ymmv page.

Basic context was, the end of a particular story met many of the criteria for a Deus Ex Machina. IE, main character suddenly gained great and unforeshadowed power at the end of the story, powers suddenly working in previously impossible ways due to influence of minor character, etc.

Others disagreed, so I figured that it would fit best as a YMMV entry, but they said that Deus Ex Machina wasn't a YMMV trope, but in the https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Administrivia/WhatGoesWhereOnTheWiki it says that almost anything can by a YMMV trope, but it's best to be cautious.

Deus Ex Machina is largely dependent on relative judgements of what qualifies as sudden/unexpected. IE, if a character is showing whistling to summon crickets, and at the climax whistles to summon loads of crickets or really big crickets, that's foreshadowing. If they whistle and somehow summon a Kaiju, that's Deus ex Machina.

So my basic question is, can Deus Ex Machina be a YMMV trope?

Edited by xlblplk on Sep 13th 2021 at 11:56:31 AM

No, one should not use a YMMV page for a non-YMMV trope.

While some narrative tropes may be applicable to a ymmv subject matter (such as Be Careful What You Wish For), they are not to be used as the header trope on the ymmv page.

One rule is that Tropes Are Not Arguable. A trope either happens or it doesn't. In the case of Deus ex Machina, the trope lists multiple qualifiers on what it has to be (a hopeless situation, a solution to a problem, outside the control of the characters). Based on your example given that sounds more like 11th-Hour Superpower.

Moving to Trope Talk. No, an objective trope cannot be YMMV. If there is a discussion over whether an example qualifies for Deus ex Machina, it should be worked out first and then added (or not).

@Emerald Source - 11th Hour Superpower certainly is its own trope, but the extent to which something is foreshadowed very much determines whether or not it's a Deus Ex Machina. There are multiple examples of Deus Ex Machina(the Bleach examples stand out) that are basically just poorly-foreshadowed 11th Hour Superpowers.

@Fighteer I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make very much sense. One of the primary requirements of the Deus Ex Machina trope is fundamentally subjective. Being 'sudden or unexpected' is a subjective determination. For example, if there's a character who can summon metal weapons, only at the end, there's an enemy that's immune to metal weapons, only for that character to summon a weapon made of MAGICAL metal, which then works. Was that foreshadowed? Or is that a deus ex machina? That's a perfect case for a YMMV trope, imo.

EDIT: As a further example, the second or third item on the Deus Ex Machina page is as follows:

"At the end of Dave Duncan's tetralogy A Handful of Men, the heroes are in a totally hopeless situation. Thanks to his army of sorcerers with loyalty spells on them, the Big Bad has become the most powerful sorcerer ever. He's even become more powerful than the main character was at the end of the previous series - and said main character was a demigod (one Power Level higher than a sorcerer) who only avoided a Superpower Meltdown because his Love Interest managed to depower him before he burst into flames and died from it. Having been on the run from the Big Bad throughout the whole series, the heroes have finally been captured and are about to be killed. They end up being saved when two of the heroes achieve the Power Level above "sorcerer" without having a Superpower Meltdown by becoming a complete god instead of a demigod, and proceed to free everyone from the Big Bad's Mind Control sorcery. Several of the main characters knew how to do this, but, normally, becoming a full-fledged god means that you Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence and simply stop caring about what happens to mere mortals, so it's never mentioned as a way to stop the Big Bad until it happens."

Now, that's clearly an example of something that was somewhat foreshadowed beforehand. However, there is disagreement on whether it was SUFFICIENTLY foreshadowed. Another example:

"In The Blue Sword by Robin Mc Kinley, the main character, Hari, is vastly outnumbered by the enemy army but she sends her ragtag group of friends out to fight them anyway. Then, most of them die, and she gets super upset. She climbs to the top of a convenient cliff that wasn't there a minute ago, and uses her amazing magic powers that she didn't know she had to bring an entire mountain range down on the enemy army. Wouldn't it have been nice if she'd done that to begin with? Now, it was shown that Hari had some magic she was being trained in low-level magic!"

Again, a case of limited, but subjectively insufficient foreshadowing.

Another, from the Anime section, Bleach-specific:

"Ulquiorra reveals that he has a second, more powerful transformation and deals Ichigo a fatal wound. Suddenly, Ichigo's hollow takes over, and turns into a super form that tears Ulquiorra apart. While the hollow had been shown to transform as Ichigo gained power, nothing suggested that it could bring him back from the brink of death."

The story in question DID show that the hollow could staunch and heal wounds, and the character HAD gotten stronger, but to some viewers, it was not sufficient foreshadowing. To others, it was.

I could go on. The point is, Deus Ex Machina is a fundamentally subjective judgement, and therefore really should be a YMMV trope.

Edited by xlblplk on Sep 14th 2021 at 8:03:12 AM

That's not how YMMV works. YMMV is about fan behavior and reactions, like Memetic Mutation. It is not about a subpoint someone can debate over, because Tropes Are Flexible and may be exaggerated, downplayed, subverted, invoked or Played for Laughs.

Deus ex Machina is one of the most well documented narrative tropes, going back to ancient Greece. There is the possibility of a bad example, but the trope is not subjective in any way.

[edit]
Hmm, thinking about it, "value judgement" is a little more specific than merely "arguable". Thus perhaps the sort of debatability that xlblplk is describing doesn't fall under it.

Should such debatability be considered "YMMV"? That's another question—and one outside the scope of this thread, perhaps.

So, I retract my previous argument, but leave the original post below for transparency.
[/edit]

While "audience reaction" is one form of YMMV entry, it's not the only one. As per the YMMV page, another is:

That seems to be the sort of thing that xlblplk is referring to.

Now, as to whether Deus Ex Machina might fit that description, that discussion I won't weigh in on right now, I intend—I just wanted to address the question of what does and does not fall under "YMMV".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Sep 15th 2021 at 12:31:26 PM

If we did make Deus ex Machina a YMMV trope, how would it be different from Ass Pull?

Pragmatically speaking, there wouldn't be much of a difference. But pragmatically speaking, many of the existing Deus Ex Machina listings would better fit on the Ass Pull page or Eleventh-Hour Superpower already.

Perhaps Deus Ex Machina should be further clarified to remove debate? Clearly ruling out cases of Ass Pull and defining Deus Ex Machina as, perhaps, only clear intentional uses?

Because right now we're seeing a LOT of overlap with Eleventh-Hour Superpower/Ass Pull.

Think about it like this. Deus ex Machina is the act itself. Ass Pull is the reaction to the act- what people think about it.

I'm honestly not sure that establishes a difference. Deus Ex Machina inherently relies on the audience reaction to determine itself.

Really, the only difference between Ass Pull and Deus Ex Machina in the current definition is that one is a YMMV entry, and the other is not. The only real criteria for something to exist on the Deus Ex Machina page is that nobody's criticized it yet, thereby making it YMMV and moving it to the Ass Pull page instead.

Why not just get rid of Ass Pull, make Deus Ex Machina a YMMV article, and merge the two?

Well, for one thing, Deus ex Machina is a way more specific concept than Ass Pull is and is a legit literary term. If anything, I could see it become a definition only page.

Mmm, true. Perhaps the problem is that the literary term has become so dissociated with the pop-culture version. Or maybe that there have been so many different variants of the same thing, they've expanded into half a dozen different variants(Ass Pull, 11th Hour Superpower, Near-Villain Victory(subvariant Eucatastrophe)).

One way or another, Deus Ex Machina has become quite cluttered with all sorts of entries that are only questionable at best. Either it needs to be cleaned up, or it needs to be changed to a YMMV article, because right now it's full of YMMV entries despite not being YMMV, and that's the worst of both worlds.

Well, feel free to run a Wick Check and if the check supports your thesis, you can take it to TRS at some point.

I gotta say, if it came down to keeping Deus ex Machina (literally an ancient literary term) or Ass Pull (the audience going "i didn't like this plot twist" :( ), there is not a chance in hell I am voting for Ass Pull.

I'm also confused at the premise of this argument and where it's gone. As Emerald said above, Examples Are Not Arguable and the trope has criteria lined up on this page. When others disagree with you, the solution is not automatically "no, the trope is wrong", it's to work with them to find consensus and if your respective arguments hold up.

If I wanted to list Alice as a Dumb Blonde but she's not dumb, just blonde, then she's not an example. Similarly, if I wanted to write a plot twist as a DEM, but the plot twist was foreshadowed all along, then it's not an example of DEM. YMMV is not the place for "but did it apply tho?", it's about the responses by the audience.

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 24th 2021 at 11:46:53 AM