The Book Thread

[GloatingSwine]

Sure, there are obviously lots of works with undefined magic without a trace of Deus Ex Machina as well as the opposite (for example, the bending in the Avatarverse is fairly well defined, but that didn't stop the Deus Ex Turtle which I hate with the power of a thousand exploding firebenders...), but I'm still convinced that "magic does whatever" leaves more room for lazy resolution by authors than "magic does X, Y and Z".

Yeah, vaguely defined magic is good for causing problems, it's not so good for fixing them because the reader doesn't get the satisfaction of understanding how and why it worked (or being able to guess at what might happen on the next page).

See: The One Ring. What it really does and how is very vaguely defined, and that's okay because how to break it is very clearly defined and breaking it is how you solve the problem.