Game of Dues Ex Machina

[Bright Brother]

Jamie arriving just in time to save Brienne from the bear pit

 

[TeamWhiteWalkerz]

Maybe people do know the definition of DEM, but are choosing to ignore it and instead use this opportunity to complain about things they don't like.

[Alaynsa Starne]

I'm replying to this whole post, I'll just start with italic part.

Indeed, all of these were established, but that doesn't not make it an ass-pull. Consider the following story: we follow a guy who is deep in financial problem. Maybe he'll even lose his home or maybe nasty loan-sharks already threatened him a couple of times. The point is, he needs lots of money and there's no way to get it. Towards the end, just before the inevitable sad conclusion, he wins on lottery (and the book showed him paying the lottery ticket beforehand) and suddenly everything turns out fine. The end.

Despite everything being foreshadowed (financial troubles, potential bad consequences, playing the lottery), does this sound like a good story to you? To me, it doesn't. Relying on a such a tiny chance to solve a major problem seems like a ass-pull. Ditto  with Jon and Bran.

North is truly vast and huge, with thousands of square leagues of wildnerness. And while you may argue than Bran's party may seek shelters (hence tower), Jon's party doesn't. And yet: 1)not only do they cross paths (already a miniscule possibility by itself); 2) they meet in a place where Bran could guide Summer while being hidden himself; 3) they meet at the exact same time as Jon was having a moral dilemma. If wildlings have caught an old men 5 km earlier or later - Bran would see no reason to intervene by the time of their meeting. That's not winning a lottery, that's winning a lottery 2-3 times in a row. For Jon to have his life saved by being repeated lottery winner - is an ass-pull to me.

 

A small digression, but it also bothers me on a character's level as well. Finally, we get to see Jon being faced with a truly hard moral dilemma. He has an incredibly hard choice to make: will he personally slay an innocent old men to uphold masquerade and later have a chance to prevent massacre at Castle Black; or will he refrain from doing so, possibly outing himself and likely watching old men (and himself) being killed anyways. There's not easy choice here, and I as a reader was very invested in Jon's arc and what choice will he make. Each choice has grave consequences - either he is a murderer (who prevented a bigger disaster, but murderer nonetheless), or he is an ineffective dead man (who remain moral till the end). Well, Jon made his choice, noble hero as he is, but instead of facing the consequences, he got saved by circumstances he had absolutely no way of knowing or expecting they'd even exist in the first place. In itself, this is already a huge problem with this scene (but unrelated to the issue we discussed above).

But that's the thing, though: with your example you are only narrating one side of the story. The financial save comes from nowhere because we don't see the other-sided circumstances that led to him getting the lottery ticket. Furthermore, a lottery ticket is entirely based on chance. It's an inanimate object that can only appear at the right time because the plot demands it. The man doesn't have a compelling moral decision to make, he doesn't have questions of honor or duty, he doesn't have any character beyond being enslaved to his own debt and being rescued by something that took no philosophical or ethical insight and no labor on his part. With Bran and Jon we have free agents who do, yes, meet on chance, but as a consequence of their choices. With your financially beleaguered man, you have a desperate individual pulling a hail Mary and being saved against all odds with no one else's decisions being complicit with his salvation. With the meeting between Bran and Jon, we have two-sided rising action, a climax, and a resolution that leads to more interesting things. And I think that's what you're missing -- this was a climax, a logical conclusion of the choices that Bran, Jojen and Meera, Jon, Ygritte, Mance, and Qhorin all made. Stories are built on improbabilities. You have to accept that at some point there will be a chance meeting on the road. When we know that these characters are all travelling on the same road, how shocked can we truly be when they nearly come into contact? 

 

And your opinion about Jon's decision not having the weight that maybe it should has lots of value. I fully respect it. I even understand it, even though I don't quite agree with it because I see it more as a set-up for his assassination when he doesn't have Bran or Stannis to get him out of trouble. But I think that your bias about this event -- which, again, is completely understandable -- might be you turning it into something that it isn't. I think most of us expected for Bran and Jon to meet once we discovered that Bran was headed north. Everyone expected Jon's relationship to break with the wildlings. That they happened at the same time is just the natural end of a character arc so that these two could get on with more pressing matters. To do it another way would to be to resolve these two issues separately, dragging out the story and creating more pacing problems than the series already has for the sake of "realism" in a fantasy novel. 

[Make Shadowbabies Not War]

Whilst admittedly no expert in writing or tropes, I'm pretty sure that most of the things people have used her aren't DEM, and are established plot points well before being used to save people's lives. Take Dany in Salvers Bay. Had she bought the Unsullied for all of her dragons, and a fourth, totally unmentioned, swooped in, that would be DEM. However, her dragons had been established in book one. Their abilities had been established in book two and they are then used in Astapor along with those of the unsullied, Were the masters stupid? Yes. Does that make it DEM? In my opinion. no.

The only account of DEM that I can think of was Coldhands coming out of nowhere (with no previous mention to my knowledge) to save Sam and Gilly at a time where they would otherwise perish.

[Maxxine]

Whilst admittedly no expert in writing or tropes, I'm pretty sure that most of the things people have used her aren't DEM, and are established plot points well before being used to save people's lives. Take Dany in Salvers Bay. Had she bought the Unsullied for all of her dragons, and a fourth, totally unmentioned, swooped in, that would be DEM. However, her dragons had been established in book one. Their abilities had been established in book two and they are then used in Astapor along with those of the unsullied, Were the masters stupid? Yes. Does that make it DEM? In my opinion. no.

The only account of DEM that I can think of was Coldhands coming out of nowhere (with no previous mention to my knowledge) to save Sam and Gilly at a time where they would otherwise perish.

I completely agree with this. I think there's a huge difference between writing a plot in a way so something/someone can be there to save your life and DEM, where something/someone appears out of thin air to save your life. Also making someone stupid is not DEM. Half the people in this series make stupid decisions that benefit another. Big difference between convenience & DEM.  This is why I don't think Bran saving Jon is DEM. GRRM wrote the plot so they would be in the same place at the same time. It would be different if Ghost randomly appeared when the last time we saw him was on the other side of Wall.

I think Coldhands is a good example of DEM. Also the first shadowbaby that killed Renly came out of left field. But at least these examples have been adequately explained later on (I'm assuming who Coldhands is and where he came from & why). Arguably Summer saving Catelyn & Bran from the catspaw is an example of DEM because it's not really explained how it happened. I know that the kids have some special connection to the direwolves so Summer may have known Bran was in danger. But how did Summer get into the tower at this exact moment when he couldn't make his way up there before at any point before. It may have possible that all of the guards left to put out the library fire, but they also left all of the doors open so Summer could just walk on through and save the day. I guess the Drogon saving Dany in Mereen yields the same argument, but at least it was already established that dragons are attracted to noise, Drogon was free and flying around anyway, so to me it wasn't as DEM as Summer.

[grinny]

The boar that killed Robert. If it weren't for that we would have a very different story. And don't tell me normal alcohol would be enough to explain, that man was a drunken that was his normal way of doing things. And BR would be an DEM too, if he skinchanged the boar.

[Ser Greggor the Baked]

I'm replying to this whole post, I'll just start with italic part.

Indeed, all of these were established, but that doesn't not make it an ass-pull. Consider the following story: we follow a guy who is deep in financial problem. Maybe he'll even lose his home or maybe nasty loan-sharks already threatened him a couple of times. The point is, he needs lots of money and there's no way to get it. Towards the end, just before the inevitable sad conclusion, he wins on lottery (and the book showed him paying the lottery ticket beforehand) and suddenly everything turns out fine. The end.

Despite everything being foreshadowed (financial troubles, potential bad consequences, playing the lottery), does this sound like a good story to you? To me, it doesn't. Relying on a such a tiny chance to solve a major problem seems like a ass-pull. Ditto  with Jon and Bran.

North is truly vast and huge, with thousands of square leagues of wildnerness. And while you may argue than Bran's party may seek shelters (hence tower), Jon's party doesn't. And yet: 1)not only do they cross paths (already a miniscule possibility by itself); 2) they meet in a place where Bran could guide Summer while being hidden himself; 3) they meet at the exact same time as Jon was having a moral dilemma. If wildlings have caught an old men 5 km earlier or later - Bran would see no reason to intervene by the time of their meeting. That's not winning a lottery, that's winning a lottery 2-3 times in a row. For Jon to have his life saved by being repeated lottery winner - is an ass-pull to me.

That is not really an analogous story. If a guy who is deep in a financial problem has an estranged brother that is wealthy. You are told both stories, about how the rich brother is lonely or something and the other brother needs money. Their stories lead to each other seeing each other in a coffee shop and all is fixed. 

A good story? No, but you can suspend your disbelief enough to believe a chance meeting. The Queenscrown tower sits right on the kingsroad (or whatever it is called north of Winterfell). It makes sense that two groups, not wanting to be seen would go there to rest rather then the town just north of it. 

[Nevets]

The boar killing Robert at just the right time.  (after Ned discovers the incest but before he can tell Robert.  Also before his kids leave town.)

Yoren meeting Arya in her father's office, enabling his later rescue of her.

The wights' arrival saving Jon from punishment for assaulting Alliser Thorne.

Summer's arrival saving Jon from killing (or not killing) the Old Man.

Stannis's arrival saving Jon from having to kill Mance Rayder (I sense a pattern here)

Tyrion's ship destroyed by a storm, landing him in a slave pen near Meereen

.

While justifiable on the basis of being the result of characters' actions, the timing in all these cases is extremely fortuitous, thus leading to, at least, the suspicion of Deus ex Machina.  In all cases, however, suspension of disbelief is relatively easy.

[kimim]

DEM: The fucking dragons. They appear out of nowhere for a character who is not usually fire proof but who turns fire proof long enough for the dragons to spawn. She manages this by running into a Magi powerful enough to resurrect corpses; the Magi happens to be a healer in a village literally in the middle of nowhere, just waiting to be looted by Dany and Drogo. Yay. 

Cat and Tyrion end up at the same inn (odds???)  which happens to be full of people loyal to Cat's family and willing to help her kidnap a Lannister (ODDS????).

The shadowbaby who kills Renly (in effect winning the war for Tywin).

Coldhands!

Convenient near-meeting of Bran and Co with Jon and wildlings, the rescue by Summer.

Convenient meeting of Bran and Co with Sam and Gilly, which makes it possible for Bran to reach BR.

Stannis appearing at exactly the right second to rescue the crows.

Tycho Nestoris's convenient appearance which makes it possible for Jon to feed his wildlings.

 

 

 

 

[HexMachina]

DEM: The fucking dragons. They appear out of nowhere for a character who is not usually fire proof but who turns fire proof long enough for the dragons to spawn. She manages this by running into a Magi powerful enough to resurrect corpses.

Cat and Tyrion end up at the same inn (odds???)  which happens to be full of people loyal to Cat's family and willing to help her kidnap a Lannister (ODDS????).

The shadowbaby who kills Renly (in effect winning the war for Tywin).

Coldhands!

Convenient near-meeting of Bran and Co with Jon and wildlings, the rescue by Summer.

Convenient meeting of Bran and Co with Sam and Gilly, which makes it possible for Bran to reach BR.

Stannis appearing at exactly the right second to rescue the crows.

Tycho Nestoris's convenient appearance which makes it possible for Jon to feed his wildlings.

 

 

 

 

The dragons don't appear out of nowhere. Not sure how you can read a Game of Thrones and think the eggs won't hatch. And it's not like it's just "abracadabra they hatched!" There is a price, a heavy one. We can quibble over the extent of that price, but point is, they weren't a DEM - there was clear build up to that moment.

Catelyn and Tyrion meeting at the inn isn't DEM either. Plot convenience sure. DEM no.

[kimim]

The dragons don't appear out of nowhere. Not sure how you can read a Game of Thrones and think the eggs won't hatch. And it's not like it's just "abracadabra they hatched!" There is a price, a heavy one. We can quibble over the extent of that price, but point is, they weren't a DEM - there was clear build up to that moment.

Catelyn and Tyrion meeting at the inn isn't DEM either. Plot convenience sure. DEM no.

You're right that dragon eggs are mentioned, but their hatching, and her poof, she's fireproof (for now)  plus the mage who appears in lambland are...idk. Look, it's contrived, and that's what DEM is. It's a type of plot contrivance taken to an extreme.

ita Cat and Tyrion's meeting isn't DEM. It is plot contrivance. Stannis appearing at the last split second to save the Night Watch is DEM, as is Tycho Nestoris, appearing just in time to save Jon and his wildling plot.

[Ferocious Veldt Roarer]

Actually, the hatching of the dragons seems the exact opposite of a Deus ex machina. In a DEM, something, or someone, brand new to the plot is introduced to solve an insolvable problem. Conversely, GRRM plastered signs reading "look! look here! dragon eggs, important stuff!" over every Dany chapter of the first book, and after the dragons did hatch, it took them two more books to be a solution to anything.

And even if you see it as improbable, that's still not what DEM is about. It's not about just contrived stuff, period, but about contrived stuff suddenly appearing, not signaled, out of thin air to overcome a specific plot obstacle.

[Dofs]

IICR, the chapter with Summer saving Jon is just after Bran's chapter noticing Jon's company. That means that Bran saving him was set up just a chapter before, was not unexpected and sudden and thus it's not a DEM.

One of the closest example to DEM is, imo, Tywin saving KL out of nowhere at the last minute.