Quote:
Originally Posted by GDB
If he only experiences losses in the beginning, then gets divine handouts, what was even the point of having him experience loss to begin with?
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We could go on and on debating specifics of SAO, but that's best left for the SAO sub-forum. It's only going to get further into spoiler territory from here, and it's probably already arguably too much.
But I will say one thing about this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by GDB
Deus ex machina kill stories
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There's a whole separate debate about what qualifies as deus ex machina when "god" is literally a named character in the story, but in the end the strong dislike of all semblance of this plot device is, too, an opinion. Divine intervention in situations of hopelessness is a recurring theme in human literature, because it reflects the historical struggle of humanity vs. fate/"God" -- which was, indeed, a major theme in this story and arc. This device was traditionally not liked by critics particularly when the "god" had never been an element of the narrative before.
People throw around these terms like they're obvious and the inherent problems with them are understood and agreed by all, but in practice they're very fluid and are used to describe all sorts of things that people don't like about stories and want to consider "Bad Writing". It's never really as obvious as some people who use the terms like to think.