Deus-Ex Machina in Hero of Ages? *Spoilers*

[Obsessiforge]

I think Dark Enigma has faded into the shadows...

[DarkEnigma]

No I haven't faded away.  I just recognize an impasse when I see it, and perhaps it was a misjudgment on my part to seek opinions critical of the writing on the author's own website...  I still believe that Vin's survival instinct would be stronger than any qualms she might have over hurting someone, particularly if that someone was one of her captors.   

As far as other options are concerned: how about moving a couple of cans under the ladder and using a Duralumin fueled jump to shove aside the rock?  She used this ability on more than one occasion to toss dozens of men and horses and even Koloss like chaff on the wind.  Surely that would have been enough to move a stone which had been placed on top of the shaft by normal men unaided by allomancy.  Or what about using emotional allomancy on the guards waiting on the other side of the stone to get them to move it for her?  She could have pleaded, or threatened, or tricked them (with the nobleman's help, willing or otherwise), along with a duralumin enhanced Riot or Soothe.  I'm not saying these things were guaranteed to work, what I am saying is that trying anything other than potentially rendering herself vulnerable to her enemies would have been truer to her established character.

For those of you who have read David Eddings' Belgariad sequel The Malloreon, Vin's inexplicable choice here reminds me of the scene in that story where the Emperor of Mallorea decides to meekly join Belgarion's group despite being fiercely independent and arrogant prior to (another time I had to force myself to finish a series).  Vin's cynical, hyper-cautious nature was one of the things that I enjoyed about her character.  To have her character subverted in order to achieve a plot wicket is, I believe, a form of Deus Ex Machina.

And finally, there is a subtle but very important difference between being impulsive and being intuitive.  You all are right:  Kelsier was impulsive, dangerously so.  But Vin was intuitive.  She had an odd ability to take in the details of a situation, assess it, and react accordingly, all without her conscious mind coming into play, and usually make the right decision.  Her intuition should have been screaming at her not to take her chances with the wine: to find another solution.

[Obsessiforge]

whelp, I guess you're entitled to that opinion. I'm not sure how much more can be said on the subject. In either case, I'm not sure Vin's actions constituted a Deus Ex Machina.

[Link von Kelsier Harvey XXIV]

If Vin escaped because the Lord Ruler suddenly showed up with new powers to help Vin fight her way out, that would be Deus Ex Machina.

[Obsessiforge]

If Sazed burst in through the ceiling and dispatched everyone with his hulk-like powers, then said he'd feru-speeded his way across the entire continent because of a feeling he'd had that she might be in trouble. THAT would be a Deus-Ex Machina.

[Fireborn]

Yeah, Deus ex Machina is the wrong term.  Out of character is what you're thinking.

Also, and this really bugs me.

No I haven't faded away.  I just recognize an impasse when I see it, (I still believe that Vin's survival instinct would be stronger than any qualms she might have over hurting someone... particularly if that someone was one of her captors) and perhaps, also, it was a misjudgment on my part to seek out critical assessment this on the author's own website...

Wow, seriously?  I understand not agreeing with someone's opinion, but that's just low.  Inclined to think the author is doing it right?  Yes.  Automatically blocking out everything that criticizes the work?  NO.

You're new, and I get that you wouldn't be familiar with what goes on here, but we are a level-headed, carefully analytical bunch that doesn't blindly follow Brandon no matter what he says.  And I would greatly appreciate it if you didn't make assumptions like that after being here for less than a week.

I think that it was entirely in character for Vin to drink the wine.  She took a gamble, and it is a credit to the development of her character that she prioritized getting work back to her friends in a timely fashion over her own immediate safety in order to do so.

[Obsessiforge]

Yeah, Deus ex Machina is the wrong term.  Out of character is what you're thinking.

Also, and this really bugs me.

No I haven't faded away.  I just recognize an impasse when I see it, (I still believe that Vin's survival instinct would be stronger than any qualms she might have over hurting someone... particularly if that someone was one of her captors) and perhaps, also, it was a misjudgment on my part to seek out critical assessment this on the author's own website...

Wow, seriously?  I understand not agreeing with someone's opinion, but that's just low.  Inclined to think the author is doing it right?  Yes.  Automatically blocking out everything that criticizes the work?  NO.

You're new, and I get that you wouldn't be familiar with what goes on here, but we are a level-headed, carefully analytical bunch that doesn't blindly follow Brandon no matter what he says.  And I would greatly appreciate it if you didn't make assumptions like that after being here for less than a week.

I think that it was entirely in character for Vin to drink the wine.  She took a gamble, and it is a credit to the development of her character that she prioritized getting work back to her friends in a timely fashion over her own immediate safety in order to do so.

Yeah! what HE said!

[Comatose]

I hadn't thought of using the cans... hmmm, it could work.  Was there any metal in the rock though??
As for soothing and rioting, she would have been doing it blindly.  She had no way of knowing how many guards were out there and what they were feeling.  The best she could have done is send out her soothings and riotings and hope the hit the right people and worked.  Maybe you're right and she should have at least tried it.  And all soothing and rioting with duralumin would have been to make the guards jump
If I remember correctly, weren't some of her metals getting low at this point?  Experimenting with duralumin might have been tricky.
Should what she did have been her first try at getting out of her situation, maybe not.  I'll give you that.  Perhaps jumping to that decision right away was out of character.  But choosing to take a risk and hope it pays off instead of torturing someone, i don't think that is out of character at all.

[Obsessiforge]

I think the other big issue here is one of hindsight. Hindsight is 20/20. VIn was acting in the moment. So any course of action we deem "better" or "more productive" at this point is with information that she didn't have. We're neglecting the fact that she thought her plan would work. She thought she could beat the poison.

[Wolfstar]

Yeah, Deus ex Machina is the wrong term.  Out of character is what you're thinking.

Also, and this really bugs me.

No I haven't faded away.  I just recognize an impasse when I see it, (I still believe that Vin's survival instinct would be stronger than any qualms she might have over hurting someone... particularly if that someone was one of her captors) and perhaps, also, it was a misjudgment on my part to seek out critical assessment this on the author's own website...

Wow, seriously?  I understand not agreeing with someone's opinion, but that's just low.  Inclined to think the author is doing it right?  Yes.  Automatically blocking out everything that criticizes the work?  NO.

Aye, I enjoy Brandon's writing to an extreme, and I respect his craft more than anything, yet I have criticism of his work.  A decent list, even.  This matter, however, isn't one of them.  Do I think that this was Vin's first choice?  Of course not.  And you can even see in the scene (which I just reread last night as part of my rereading of the trilogy now that all the annotations are done) she was very certain at first that she was not going to drink the wine, from either cup.

Honestly, I think Telden was the key more than anything.  If he hadn't reminded Vin of an earlier Elend, I don't think she would have gone for it.  He charmed her, and his honestly struck her, so she went with it.

[Morderkaine]

As far as other options are concerned: how about moving a couple of cans under the ladder and using a Duralumin fueled jump to shove aside the rock?  She used this ability on more than one occasion to toss dozens of men and horses and even Koloss like chaff on the wind.  Surely that would have been enough to move a stone which had been placed on top of the shaft by normal men unaided by allomancy.

Wouldn't work, she'd have to Duralumin push of the cans and then Duralumin flare Pewter at the exact moment she hit the trap door. There's just no way that kind of timing could be achieved without: a) Electrum, b) Atium, or c) Feruchemy (specifically steel) and, even if she managed to time it just right, she'd have been left to deal with an unknown number of guards without any Steel or Pewter.

[DarkEnigma]

You misunderstand: I meant she pushes the cans up under the stone while standing underneath it, then using a duralumin fueled shove to tip the stone over using the cans as anchors.  The stone couldn't have weighed more than a dozen mounted soldiers (keep in mind it was put in place by ordinary men.  There were no allomancers in Yomen's kingdom other than Yomen himself), which she already displayed the facility to toss about like yesterday's garbage. 

Secondly, you don't have to be able to see people in order to affect them with emotional allomancy.  Perhaps she pleads with the guards through the stone and makes then feel extraordinarily guilty about their actions.  Or perhaps she threatens that, once released, she will track them and their families down to kill them while augmenting their fear.  Or perhaps she tortures Telden for the password.  Or perhaps she just pretends to drink the wine.  This is a woman who was intuitive enough to find a way to kill an atium-burning mistborn when she had no atium of her own, intuitive enough to find and exploit the Lord Rulers weakness and defeat him, yet she is confounded by a bottle of poisoned wine and a stone?

But once again whether any particular tactic would be successful or not is irrelevant.  Our Monday-Morning Quarterbacking of her options is irrelevant.  The "amount of information she had in the moment" is irrelevant.   Hell, even wether she had a legitimate chance of escaping the guards once out of the storage hold is irrelevant.

My whole argument is that her choice was so out of character that it constitutes Deus Ex Machina.  Am I really the only one who sees how far from Vin's character this action was?  Vin has spent a lifetime conquering horrible situations: wether it's surviving the streets or defeating the Lord ruler, or dealing with Imperial politics.  Her experiences left her sharp-witted, cynical, self-reliant, and above all else, tenacious and indomitable when it comes to survival.  That is what I respected most about her, and that is the crux of the issue.  Would the Vin we came to know ever entertain knocking herself out?  Or would she be so terrified of being helpless that she would try anything else to solve her situation?

You all claim to be objective and I will take you at your word, but not one of you has ceded that Vin's actions were the least bit suspicious.  While you are quick to dismiss my argument's particulars, not one of you addressed its core intent.  Can someone please explain to me how willingly ingesting poison jibes with everything we know of Vin??

[Peter Ahlstrom]

DarkEnigma, you seem to be ignoring what people have said about Vin believing she could defeat the drug with her duralumin, which is also the reason given in the book.

Also, like people said, that's not the definition of Deus ex machina.

[DarkEnigma]

If you reread the passage you will find that Vin was very skeptical that the Pewter trick would work, and in fact was not surprised when it did not work.  Given her assessment of the pewter trick's chance of success, is it not suspicious that she did not investigate alternatives?

According to Dictionary.com Deus ex Machina is "An unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot."  My contention is that Vin's choice was an improbable event, counter to her established character, used to get her into direct conversation with Yomen without her metals.  Perhaps there is a better literary term to describe this disconnect, but if so I am ignorant of it.

Let me further say that I am not criticizing where Sanderson wanted to go with the plot.  I'm no writer, and if he wanted her to have to deal with Yomen from a position of weakness, I'm sure he had good reason.  I just wish he had thought of another way to get her there: a way which left her essential character unmolested.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

The key part is that it's supposed to resolve a plot issue. This only gets Vin out of the frying pan into the fire.

I don't know if the can thing would have worked. In fact, I suspect pushing directly up against the stone would not have budged it at all. I suspect it slides in from the side through mechanical means. (But I haven't read it recently.) Also emotional allomancy wouldn't have done it because it's too vague--she could have made them afraid or angry for a few seconds, and then what?

People in this thread have already sufficiently explained why they found her actions to be in character. In all my readings of all reviews and discussion threads since the book came out, no one has ever raised this objection. I don't say it's not a potential issue, but I'd say it's less of one than you think.