I Just Want to Be Normal: Difference between revisions

** In her first appearance in the ''[[Discworld]]'' novels, Susan Sto Helit refused to believe she was Death's granddaughter. In later appearances she still attempts to maintain a "normal" life, and insists on being sensible and using logic, often denying her own abilities. Ironically, because she lives on the Discworld, what she thinks of as the "normal world" is actually just as illogical and fantastic as the underlying world of her grandfather.

*** By ''[[Discworld/Thief of Time|Thief of Time]]'', she seems to have accepted her powers, even if she's still irritated at being occasionally tapped by her grandfather for help. As a teacher she uses them to make her students' lessons more... interesting, such as taking them to view ancient battles firsthand. She also, at the end of {{spoiler|''Thief of Time'', takes them to see Nanny Ogg}}, which, as she says to herself, is the equivalent of ''two'' lessons.

** There's also Rincewind, an unremarkable wizard whose main ambition in life is to be bored. He's constantly being dragged into dangerous quests to save the world, and he hates every second of it. He's even quite aware of it, but still insists that he wants to go home. When people try to say that he must enjoy it, he retorts that he rather ''likes'' being bored, as it generally means no one's trying to harm him. In one book (''[[Discworld/Sourcery|Sourcery]]'', perhaps){{verify}} he meets a man who complains about how there's no excitement in his life, and Rincewind greatly envies that man.

* Two of [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]]'s books, ''[[The Hobbit]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' use and subvert this trope. In ''The Hobbit'', Bilbo gets swept up into an adventure that hobbits usually despise in favor of a quiet life; at the end, he [[Home, Sweet Home|returns to that quiet life and enjoys it]], but later on in ''LOTR'' Bilbo expresses interest in [[In Harm's Way|going on an adventure again]]. Frodo has a talk with Gandalf expressing this trope, and is almost ready to go back to living a normal hobbit life after reaching Rivendell (which is only the beginning of his journey).