Leaderboard

Personally, I like the deus ex as a tool. But as with any tool, it has to be used consciously and carefully to avoid that eye roll, 1 second left moment DP mentioned. Sometimes it’s fun to straddle the line between miraculous and realistic. Sometimes miraculous can be made believable, and sometimes shit that’s unbelievable can be gripping and suspenseful. It’s just when it’s used in excess or, you know, cliche-y, or very clearly just stuck in because the writer didn’t have any better ideas, then it feels too silly/lazy to enjoy. Sometimes it feels like a wasted opportunity for growth because the authors afraid to hurt their characters. Moral of the story: Tools are fun if you use them right. (I feel like that’s a wink wink moment… Do Deus Ex Machinas vibrate?)

The Divine Hand Chapter 1 Well thanks tcr for leaving a comment and praising my magnificence and my majestic art, I appreciate it. Oh and since clovey was betaing this one, any mistake is her fault! I wash my hands!

Disabled it and installed “ChatBox”. So far, so good with that one.

(spoiler alert) I remember the countdown scene in the GalaxyQuest, “It always stops at one.” A nick-in-time can be nuanced too, especially when both parties are responding to the other’s presence. (ie, villain accelerates the schedule of his attack because he sees the heroic forces moving in, and the heroic forces punch on the gas.) Is it a deus ex or not? And sometimes, one can get so involved in writing the story that it’s easy to miss the fact that a deus ex is forming, due to desire that the story resolves itself favourably for the main characters. In my potter fanfics, once I became aware that I was doing it, I cut back, and either: 1) let some situations turn out negative (which happens), or 2) rewrite to avoid the particular situation, perhaps with a different scene that turns out similar w/o the deus ex. And now that I’m writing originals that I want a good deal of realism too, I generally avoid them.

The deus ex is certainly prone to abuse, but I can see its use in situations where you’re focusing on a character’s reflection, helplessness, etc, or in a comedy that’s not taking itself seriously. (Or, in a superhero story where it’s pretty much a given.) I generally avoid deus-ex’s, especially “just-in-the-nick-of-time” as the countdown reaches “one second remaining” types. My distaste grew while working on my potter fanfic ages ago because it kinda destroys realism in the odds. Sure, occasionally there’s a white knight that shows up, but not very often. Most very often, the victim perishes. And, developing a reputation to not write deus ex helps with the suspense to the reader, because they won’t know if character in distress will live or die - DP

Since cloning of humans is still not a done thing, you have leeway to play a bit. You could invent a way to use electrical stimulation of muscle groups to assist in the proper development of the adult clone. Since you’ve already said the clone will possess full awareness from the original, they will have the experience of walking in their brain already, and should have the proper neural pathways established. So, it becomes a question of readying the muscles. Perhaps there’d be some initial unsteadiness, but the memories are there, and if the muscles are not atrophied, and have been kept limber and healthy, it should pass as quickly as a couple of days.