This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
(moved from The Magic Hat Discussion)
Darksasami: This entry slams Buffy pretty hard over information obtained through the internet and research, and does so rather unfairly. Contrary to the entry, the books and the computer quite often came up with wrong information or nothing at all. In other cases, you would see the results of the research presented snappily after the search starts, but only due to the omission of hours of painstaking research, which would be dull television indeed.
I'm not saying that Buffy didn't pull the occasional Magic Hat; I'm just saying that 1) it wasn't every time, 2) Buffy wasn't as bad as all that or as bad as other shows, and 3) there's actually nothing wrong or unbelievable about finding specific information by doing research, especially if you're in a library of books you've built up for years and have read most of, or if you have Google, and it should be more reserved for on-the-spot Magical Database searches through a Viewer-Friendly Interface.
- I don't undersand the critiquing of Giles myself. He's part of an orginization that has spend millenia getting the details of the demon world just right. He's SUPPOSED to know about demons. So when Buffy spots something weird roaming the streets of Sunnydale, it's his gosh-darned job to tell her how to kill it.
Gus: I don't think BTVS took all that bad a shelacking in the entry. I am, however, having some trouble putting Deus ex Machina together as a subset of the notion. A MagicHat is a prop for exposition, if I'm reading it right. A Deus ex Machina is an unexpected plot resolution by outside an agency.
I suppose if you pulled a vorpal rabbit out a magic hat and it ate the bad guy, you could have both.
(random passer-by) H. G. Welles said, "If anything is possible, nothing is interesting." I view the Magic Hat as a subset of deus ex machina for this reason. It's awfully difficult to write plausible stories about a hero who faces a challenge if he has available to him what amounts to the Power of Authorial Fiat. Whether it is in the form of a prop that has Magical Powers to Do Anything or the intervention of Supernatural Powers that can Do Anything is a minor detail.
Looney Toons: I agree with the random passer-by, and have adjusted the entry to fit, not to mention formatting it to match current style. I've also removed the following example entry, as it really doesn't apply to either the old or new description.
- Literal magic hats appear in Frosty The Snowman, Todays Special, the Harry Potter books, and the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of the classic Disney film Fantasia.
Janitor: I think something has been left on the table, here. In Harry Potter, a (literally) magic hat is used as source of difficult decisions — who goes in what House. Rowling also use a similar device, the Goblet of Fire, to choose who will compete in the Tri-Wizard competition. The point: There is a class of plot devices that are used not to resolve the story ala deus ex machina, but to force a particular course of action.
Cassius335: To be fair, the Sorting Hat does take requests; It's fairly heavily implied that if Harry hadn't specfically requested otherwise, the Sorting Hat would have put him in Slytherin.
Branfish: I'm a little confused as to what a "Magic Hat" is supposed to mean. I am assuming that the trope's name comes from the magical trick of pulling things out of a hat, but almost every example given is an example of a "Book of Shadows" or a "Magical Database", neither of which is the same. I would suggest moving most of the examples to the "Book of Shadows" article, and repopulating this article with things like Doctor Who's bottomless pockets, which seems much more appropriate to the article's title.
Seven Seals: The implication is that plots and plot resolutions are pulled out of the Magic Hat, not physical objects. The one big problem with the entry is that the overlap with Book Of Shadows is considerable. Indeed, some examples are duplicated. The problem with Book Of Shadows is that it emphasizes "book" (hence "convenient way of looking up any information you like", rather than "anything that will magically advance the plot"). Essentially, though, they're the same thing. Book Of Shadows claims that Magic Hat is "the large scale version", but I don't see it.
