Informed Ability: Difference between revisions

Though the motivations for allowing this are similar to the motivations for allowing [[Informed Attribute|Informed Attributes]]s in general, there is much less of an excuse for it. Believably getting it across that, say, someone is compassionate is ''difficult stuff''; it's the mark of a good author to pull that kind of thing off. Skills and abilities are a much simpler deal: Is someone a master locksmith? Have them pick a lock now and then. Are they combat experts? Have them take the fight to their opponents whenever they can and gain the upper hand.

See also [[Faux Action Girl]], where "competent fighter" becomes an [['''Informed Ability]]'''. A [[Necessary Weasel]] in [[Video Games]], where often you'll be playing someone supposedly very competent, but how well they actually perform is up to you, and often they'll go through tutorials teaching them the basics of their supposed area of expertise for the player's sake. Compare [[Character Shilling]] or, in particularly bad examples, [[Creator's Pet]].

* Punie from ''[[Dai Mahou Touge]]'' is supposed to have nigh-infallible submission techniques to bring down her opponents, but everybody who knows a bit about martial arts should see that it's a bit silly. Most opponents don't even defend against her approaches--andapproaches—and when they fall down they don't even ''try'' to get up anymore, making it all too easy for Punie to perform a lock on them.

* In ''[[Hitohira]]'', Nono is supposed to be able to beat up all of the karate club on her own, even though later she is shown to have her hands full fighting only ''one'' person, namely {{spoiler|her female fellow club member Risaki}}--which—which even results in a tie.

* Character sketches describes Literature Girl from ''[[Daily Lives of High School Boys]]'' as an otherwise sociable, popular girl in Sanada West High... When not [[Wrong Genre Savvy|trying to]] [[Longing for Fictionland|re-enact]] her [[Romance Novel]]'s [[Meet Cute]] by lounging next to Hidenori--whichHidenori—which is nearly the only case when she appears.

** Furthermore, the majority of Cain's appearances in Bat-Comics are as a ''retired'' assassin, so he generally shows up in the story for reasons other than being hired to do a hit on-panel -- usuallypanel—usually because he's the biological father of Batgirl III (Cassandra Cain) and part of her ongoing family drama. So the reason he never 'succeeds' is because he's not actually trying to. Even the Vesper Fairchild job was specifically him coming out of retirement for one last job.

** The most prominent examples are the Omega Level mutants; originally, it simply referred to the [[Superpower Lottery|highest class of observed mutant powers]] such as [[Physical God|Physical Gods]]s and [[Reality Warper|Reality Warpers]]s such as Jean Grey and [[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Franklin Richards]] but now refers to any number of mutants with specific skill sets ([[An Ice Person|Iceman]], [[Healing Hands|Elixir]]) who are confirmed to have the genetic potential to transcend either [[External Consistency|the laws of physics]] with their powers ([[Up to Eleven|way more than most mutants]]) or [[Internal Consistency|some ill-defined "limitations" on mutant stamina and power usage]] which themselves are only in effect [[Depending on the Writer]]. While Elixir, Vulcan, Legion, and X-Man have at least shown a little of their magnificent powers, many confirmed Omegas are too self-conscious or inexperienced with their powers and have not come close to achieving the level of power or skill to surpass the feats of other non-Omega mutants, while other "proven" Omegas have gotten their asses kicked by non-Omegas to demonstrate [[An Aesop]] about how skill trumps [[Unskilled but Strong|raw power]]. The only thing the writers can agree on is that "Omega" means "unlimited" in some manner.

** Carlie is possibly an odd combination of [[Informed Ability]] and [[Composite Character]]. Those things that are supposed to make her great? [[Nerds Are Sexy]], [[Beautiful All Along]], falling for "Peter, not Spider-Man" and having a [[Dark and Troubled Past]] involving her dad? ''Deb Whitman, Gwen Stacy, and Mary-Jane Watson would like to have a word with you.'' Writers think we're going to like her becuase she's an odd mash-up of former love intrests' good qualities, except all those qualities ''are told not shown'' due to said short publishing time she's had (All those others? At least a decade of publishing each, movie appearances for two of them, and at least one animated series).

** Also, its not really an ''informed'' ability if they actually show it on-panel often enough to establish its not a fluke, and Wolverine regularly gets the occasional issue -- orissue—or at least he used to in the 80s and 90s -- devoted90s—devoted to showing that he is indeed a legitimate ninja master and classically trained martial artist. He just usually doesn't bother using it because with his superpowers cyborg implants, unless he's facing some specific martial arts challenge that can shut down his normal berserker rush its much easier to just rush in and cut his opponent in half.

* In [[Naruto Veangance Revelaitons]], Ronan is supposedly a great musician, but thee songs that we hear him sing are ''terrible.'' ("AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH MY DICK IS LIKE A BIG FAT ROCKET AND UR PUSSYS LIKE A HOLE AND I FUCK U HARD AND IV GOT A HUGE POLE"). {{spoiler|His son Ekaj}} supposedly inherited Ronan and Naruto's abilities, but never uses either, and the only proof of him being powerful is his having won all his fights (which are against [[Mook|Mooks]]s alongside Ronan, but he's better off than most of the canon characters here, who suffered [[Badass Decay]], and the original villains).

* ''[[Not Another Teen Movie]]'' parodies this in that Janey is supposed to be a great artist but is clearly only capable of drawing the same stick figures over and over. It also parodies [[Hollywood Homely]], which is a sub-trope of [[Informed Ability]].

** General Grievous is said to be a fearsome combatant that has personally killed dozens of Jedi, and such an effective and brutal tactician that he replaces Count Dooku as the greatest threat to the Republic during the Clone Wars, yet in the prequel film, he spends most of his screen time running away and getting his butt kicked. This is somewhat explained in ''[[Star Wars: Clone Wars]]''. Both seasons demonstrate Grievous as a serious threat, even when confronted by multiple Jedi at once. At the end of the second season, however, his chest gets force-crushed, explaining his hunchbacked, hacking wimpiness in the film. His strategic brilliance remains undemonstrated, though most strategy in Star Wars seems to look like [[Zerg Rush|Zerg Rushes]]es anyway.

* ''Save the Last Dance'' would have us believe that the character played by [[Julia Stiles]] is an amazing dancer, who is auditioning for a prestigious dance school. Unfortunately, Stiles has very minimal ballet training, and it shows. Stiles was not at all believable as a high level dancer who had any realistic shot at her goal. It's particularly apparent when she's in a dance class scene, where she should be at least as good as if not better than the other dancers-- whendancers—when in fact, she is visibly struggling to even keep up. (For those not in the loop about ballet, the clearest example of this is her extension, meaning hip flexibility and how high she can raise her leg. The angle of her leg is noticeably lower than those around her, even to the untrained eye.) Obviously, given the type of story this is, the character is successful in her audition... which is entirely unbelievable, given how severely Stiles's limited ballet experience shows in every scene where she does her own dancing.

* Played with in ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]'', to the point of several characters lampshading it. Jack Sparrow is touted to be the best pirate ever, yet he is mutinied after being captain for a year, in the first movie is captured twice and saved twice (first by Will, then Elizabeth), gets knocked out from behind twice, and his [[Plan]] almost fails. In the second movie another one fails after Norrington discovers his [[Bait and Switch]] and pulls a switch of his own, setting into place the events of the third movie, where everything finally seems to go his way. The characters themselves can't seem to figure out if he's a bumbling quirk or an unlucky [[Magnificent Bastard]] whose [[Plan|plansplan]]s/[[Indy Ploy|Indy Ploys]]s keep getting [[Spanner in the Works|spanned]]. (One character at least calls him the worst pirate he's ever heard of.)

* It's hard to imagine that [[Fred Astaire]]'s dancing could be an [[Informed Ability]]. But in ''[[Shall We Dance]],'' Astaire's character is supposed to be a successful ''ballet'' dancer. A convincing ballet dancer, Astaire is not.

* The ''[[Inheritance Cycle]]'' somehow manages to combine [[Instant Expert]] with [[Informed Ability]]. We are told at various points that Eragon is the Greatest Swordsman Ever. Except that he's not. At all. One particularly dreadful example is when <s>Yoda</s> Oromis tells him he has already mastered the art just pages after he handed Eragon's ass to him in a spar. It's funny when you think if it in terms like this exchange from ''[[Discworld]]'':

**** Unless Voldemort believed that Dumbledore had never bothered to speak to Professor Slughorn -- whoSlughorn—who he originally got the knowledge of Horcrux creation from in the first place -- atplace—at any time in the past fifty years<ref>Which would be an entirely absurd assumption given that Slughorn was a co-worker of Dumbledore's for decades.</ref> he had no reason for assuming that his opponents were ignorant of the existence of horcruxes. Sure, that knowledge wasn't in ''general'' circulation, but Voldemort's problem ain't what the general public might know, its what Dumbledore might know.

* Marguerite, in ''[[The Scarlet Pimpernel (novel)|The Scarlet Pimpernel]]''. We are told at length how "brilliant" she is, and she is repeatedly referred to as "the cleverest woman in Europe" by her peers. In practice, however, while she doesn't seem excessively dumb, her intelligence rarely seems more than average. She is consistently taken in by the Pimpernel's ploys, and the audience is almost certain to guess his identity before she does, even though she {{spoiler|lives with him}}. This is probably partly a product of the portrayal of women at the time (even though the author was also female) and more importantly a [[Plot Induced Stupidity|product of the suspense narrative]] -- since—since a lot of the drama would be lost if the narrator guessed things instantly. Regardless of the reasons, though, we are told in the descriptive passages that Marguerite has intellectual skills that she doesn't really demonstrate in the narrative.

* Nearly every major character in Dostoevsky's ''Demons'' is [[Mary Sue|obsessed, to one degree or another,]] with Nikolai Stavrogin. Each one has had some sort of profoundly moving experience with him--allhim—all of which took place, not only before the events of the novel, but even outside the country--andcountry—and he exerts a lasting, though in most cases unintended and unpredictable, influence over each of them. Yet almost nothing we see him do justifies why they hold him in such regard.

** Noted by George Eliot in "[[Silly Novels by Lady Novelists]]," where she says, "In her recorded conversations [the typical [[Mary Sue]]] is [[Patrick Stewart Speech|amazingly eloquent]], and [[Take Our Word for It|in her unrecorded conversations, amazingly witty]]" -- the—the implication being that the writers of these books can do [[Author Filibuster|Author Filibusters]]s but not jokes.

* ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'': Professor Moriarty is a huge example of this. Sherlock tells Watson (i.e. Doyle tells us) that Moriarty is the greatest criminal mastermind of all time, but we never get to see any masterminding. Furthermore, Holmes tells us about his cat and mouse game with the good Professor, but never shows or even explains either side of it, leaving us having to take his word for the brilliance on both sides. Add to that the fact that the vast majority of Holmes' mysteries were of a nature that no outside source could possibly care, be aware of, or benefit from, it makes Holmes' claims that Moriarty was behind nearly all the crimes he'd ever investigated look odd. He is a pretty paper thin archnemesis.<br /><br />(In many ''adaptations'' Professor Moriarty has a stronger role -- he is a classic [[Breakout Villain]].)

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s "[[Queen of the Black Coast]]", we are told that Belit and [[Conan the Barbarian]] form a [[Brains and Brawn]] -- but—but all the brain we see from Belit is deciding to go somewhere, and Conan does most of the thinking that is done.

* All the ADA's who came after Alex Cabot on [[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]] had to endure a bit of time in the [[Replacement Scrappy]] box because of how popular she was with fans, but Kim Greylek's contribution to the show was pretty much nothing but [[Informed Ability]], to the point that she ''introduced herself'' as "The Crusader" and although we never saw it, she was also a highly aggressive and competent lawyer from big important D.C. and taking cases in little ol' Manhattan to further her political aspirations (that we're told she has). Fans of the show didn't tolerate her very well, and she didn't even last a whole season.

** [[The Simpsons|Bart Simpson]] was created specifically because Matt Groening remembered how disappointed he was with [[Dennis the Menace US]], and wanted to create one whose trouble making wasn't an [[Informed Ability]].

* Often happens when the commentators have to shill a [[Creator's Pet]], and moreso when they're simply trying get a new act "over". Jobbers and journeymen are made to seem like extremely talented athletes all the time -- atime—a good example of a [[Justified Trope]] in this instance. It's pretty much the announcers' ''job'' to do this.

* Happens often in tabletop [[RPG|RPGs]]s, where a character might have a lot of points in charisma, intelligence, or wisdom, but will still be played like a boorish nincompoop because of player incompetence.

* In ''[[Monster Rancher]] Battle Card: Episode 2'', you're allowed to lose as many times as you want because you're always wagering a "Critical" card, which Cue has a massive stack of. Every NPC seems quite interested in getting this card for themselves, going so far as betting fifteen other cards or one Monster Card (...and more skill cards) against it. Critical, however, isn't that good a card-- itcard—it takes two GUTS to use, and adds two points to another attack (which can still be dodged or blocked). A lot of attacks have better GUTS-to-damage ratios, so it's often better to replace Critical with... just about any other card.

* A lot of ''[[Pokémon]]'' have an [[Informed Ability]] in their Pokédex entry, which we never actually see, especially not after catching them. While many Ghost-type Pokémon are able to steal souls, some Psychic-types are hyper-intelligent and empathic and able to rip apart time and space. Also, some legendaries are stated to be able to travel through time, wipe people's memories, permanently paralyze, them or even kill them by merely looking in their eyes. In the end, all that's really impressive about them are their stats in battle... if you train them properly.

* In ''[[Pokémon Black and White]]'' your two rivals are the ditzy Bianca who admits she isn't very good and the analytical Cheren who is focused on nothing but becoming the champion. In your fights with them however, while Bianca isn't a particularlly hard fight, she is still harder than Cheren who has an abyssmal set up for his team .<ref>His two Pokémon that differ from hers are both physical based glass cannons. Knowing this he decides that both should use sets that depend on them surviving an attack o and the second should run a set with no physical moves. While he tries to give one a set up so he will always critical, he doesn't actually complete it and deletes the move needed to pull it off by the time he has put the other pieces toggether</ref>.

* In ''[[Blaz Blue]]'', Iron Tager is supposedly around 550 &nbsp;kg, as ''Teach me, Ms. Litchi!'' tells us, but you wouldn't know that from the way pretty much everyone else lighter than him can still [[Punched Across the Room|toss him around]]. Admittedly, it would be unbalanced to make him immovable to others' attacks.

* For those unfamiliar with the books, a number of [[NPC|NPCs]]s from ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'' can be seen like this. One of the most jarring examples is Samwise Gamgee: The Guardian class (a tank class who is described as protectors of those in need) is partly based on him and how protective he was of Frodo in the books, and higher-level players are sent to Sam as part of their training. Imagine the surprise when learning that the "guardian of unmatched skill" is a nervous hobbit who says things like "We are in quite a pickle, aren't we, Samwise old boy?" It's even more noticeable if you're playing as a hobbit yourself, who by then should have a good number of heroic deeds behind them.

** ''The Burning Crusade'' introduces us to Garrosh, who at the time was sooo [[Wangst|wangstywangst]]y about his father's legacy and the deteriorating health of the Greatmother, he never lifted a finger to help with the numerous issues plaguing his clan the Mag'har. You, the player character, end up covering his ass so much that upon the climax of the storyline, he was even willing to ''turn over leadership of the entire Mag'har clan to you so he can go die in a corner because he realized how much of a loser he was in comparison to you''.

** The 7th Legion, basically Stormwind's ultimate, elite soldiers. When fighting them, Undercity basically says that they're in serious trouble, that every major battle the Alliance has ever fought has had the 7th Legion behind the scenes secretly winning it for them, they even wiped out two Forsaken camps full of elites. When you fight them, the majority of them are level 13 and 14 non-elites, and their "terrifying" leader, Pietro Zaren is a level 15 non-elite who is only slightly harder to kill than the rest of them. While the 7th Legion was in Northrend, and ''were'' tough there, none of their stronger soldiers are present in Gilneas at all. They're also [[Too Dumb to Live]], as they wiped out two entire Forsaken outposts, except for the leader of one of them. Considering the type of work they were doing, leaving a witness who could tell what happened basically negates your work--aswork—as the witness tells the player what happened and sends the player to wipe them ''all'' out.

* In ''[[Homestuck]]'', the Kids share a skill with their Guardian, but not as well: John is always bested in prank wars by Dad, Rose falls short of Mom's insane passive-aggression, and Dave is just not as cool, fast, or ironic as Bro. They still [[Informed Ability|try to build up these abilities]] as part of their core personalities.

* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'', Susan's magical powers, which are seen exactly once and then aren't visible for many arcs. Then Susan explains that Nanase's powers are of a different order than hers ("Awakened" vs. "Dreaming") without going into detail--untildetail—until ''much'' later, when Susan explained her magical abilities [[Subverted Trope|with a big]] [[Flash Back]]. {{spoiler|And she is properly "Awakened."}}

* In ''[[Tales of MU]]'', Amaranth seems to border on having [[Informed Flaw|Informed Flaws]]s. [[Word of God]] is that if the author had wanted to write a [[Mary Sue]], it would have been Amaranth without the flaws. The problem is that while Amaranth's perspective on some matters is clearly skewed, her actual effect on the storyline is always extremely positive.

** That sounds less like an [[Informed Ability]] and more like Jumping Wildly To Conclusions. Wouldn't be the first time it's happened in the series.