Deus ex machina 3C

「時間旅行」、「蟲洞」、「平行宇宙」、「奇蹟」等情節，都是「天外救星」。它們的出現往往代表，該故事有著，不可修補的漏洞。

故事凡是時間錯亂，就宣稱是「時間旅行」。

故事凡是地點有誤，就宣稱是「瞬間轉移」。

故事凡是自相矛盾，就宣稱是「平行宇宙」。

故事凡是有違常理，就宣稱有「奇蹟」。

— Me@2014-07-11 04:59:55 PM

2014.07.13 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

天外救星 3

Time travels, wormholes, parallel universes, miracles are all deus ex machina.

When a story’s author uses those deus ex machina, it means that the story broken, in the sense that the story has plot holes that the author cannot fix. 

With time travel, the story’s time logic is given up. With wormholes, the story’s space logic is given up. With parallel universes, the story’s internal consistency is given up. With miracles, the story’s scientific consistency is given up.

— Me@2014-07-12 01:15:25 PM

2014.07.13 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

天外救星

Deus ex machina is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object. Depending on how it is done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has “painted himself into a corner” and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or as a comedic device.
  
Origin of the expression

The Latin phrase deus ex machina, from deus, meaning “a god”, ex, meaning “from”, and machina, meaning “a device, a scaffolding, an artifice”, is a calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanḗs theós), meaning “god from the machine”. Such a device was referred to by Horace in his Ars Poetica (lines 191–2), where he instructs poets that they should never resort to a “god from the machine” to resolve their plots “unless a difficulty worthy a god’s unraveling should happen”. He was referring to the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a machine is used to bring actors playing gods onto the stage. The machine could be either a crane (mechane) used to lower actors from above or a riser that brought actors up through a trapdoor.

Ancient usage

Aristotle criticized the device in his Poetics, where he argued that the resolution of a plot must arise internally, following from previous action of the play …

In modern literature

A deus ex machina is generally deemed undesirable in writing and often implies a lack of creativity on the part of the author. The reasons for this are that it does not pay due regard to the story’s internal logic (although it is sometimes deliberately used to do this) and is often so unlikely that it challenges suspension of disbelief, allowing the author to conclude the story with an unlikely, though perhaps more palatable, ending. Following Aristotle, Renaissance critics continued to view the deus ex machina as an inept plot device, …

— Wikipedia on Deus ex machina

2014.07.11 Friday ACHK

「天外救星」是意料外的、突然的、牽強的解圍角色、手段或事件，在虛構作品內，突然引入來為緊張情節或場面解圍。近似詞有「天降神兵」和「如有神助」等。

Deus ex machina

拉丁語片語Deus ex machina（英譯：God from the machine）翻譯自希臘語，意思是「機關跑出的神」，中文一般翻譯為「舞台機關送神」、「機械降神」、「機器神」、「解圍之神」等。

在古希臘戲劇，當劇情陷入膠着，困境難以解決時，突然出現擁有強大力量的神，將難題解決，令故事得以收拾。方法是利用起重機，或起升機的機關，將扮演神的演員，下降至舞台上。這種表演手法是人為的，製造出意料之外的劇情大逆轉。

現代批評

這種手法通常被評論家認為是，不高明的說書技巧，因為它破壞了故事的內在邏輯，縱使有時候會為了這個理由，而故意採用。繼亞里士多德之後，文藝復興時期評論家將其視為，一種迂拙的情節計策…

— 改編自維基百科

2014.07.10 Thursday ACHK

Time travel is like a story character taking over the control of the storyline from the story writer.

— Me@2012-10-12 12:39:21 AM

2013.11.09 Saturday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK