Possession Implies Mastery: Difference between revisions

* Played totally straight with the character Adept from ''[[Strikeforce Morituri]]'', whose superpower was the ability to analyze and understand anything she touched. Since their primary opponents were a race of alien [[Planet Looters]] with scavenged technology, this was ''very'' useful.

* Averted for most of the [[Blue Beetle]] legacy. The first one, Dan Garett, got powers from it by saying a magic word (ultimately revealed to be misusing it, and the magic likely damaged its true function). Then Ted Kord came into possession of the scarab but never got it to work, instead borrowing its motif for his costume and gadgets. It was only the third owner, Jaime Reyes, who had it work as intended - but he still hasn't mastered it; the scarab activated because ''it'' chose to, and he still argues with it over what to do at times.

** This being the Ultimate Universe, things aren't quite that simple though. {{spoiler|His initial warning is true, he ''doesn't'' have super strength; this was later proved to be a side effect of a [[Super Serum]] called [[Shout-Out|Banshee]] that amplifies mutant powers. Without it, Colossus would have just been a metal man, too heavy (it's implied) to even breathe for any extended period of time. In true comic book form, they [[Retcon|retconned]] this by saying this was why he was working for the Russian mob in the first place, they paid (or were a meants of payment for) the drug. By the end of that arc, however, it seems that the super strength is now a permanent side effect, effectively keeping [[Status Quo Is God]].}}

*** Which brings up the [[Fridge Logic]] of {{spoiler|how Colossus still had his strength after weeks of captivity. But then, that will happen with a story about a drug made out of Wolverine.}}

 

== Film ==

* The heroes of the film ''[[Spaced Invaders]]'' are the most incompetent members of their race.

* In the ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' film, {{spoiler|Obadiah Stane}} pilots powered armor (that wasn't even made by him) for the first time and is immediately able to go toe to toe with Iron Man, who spent several ([[Amusing Injuries|hilarious]]) weeks practicing with his suit. Justified as {{spoiler|[[Foil|Stane]]}} planed to sell his [[Mini-Mecha]] [[Evil Knockoff]] on the black market, so he just crammed it with computer assistance -- and after Stark yanks out a few wires, he not only [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|can't hit a human-sized target at six meters]] with [[More Dakka|automatic weapons]] and [[Stuff Blowing Up|missiles]], but has to ''open the cockpit to see.''

** It's actually a partial aversion. When he's swinging his sword in the forest, it's a [[Training Montage]]. It's vaguely implied that he practices for a long time. At the beginning of the scene he holds the sword wrong and swings it awkwardly. By the end of the scene he's holding it correctly and swinging it much more skillfully.

* Averted in ''[[District 9]]'' when Wikus gets into a suit of power armor and is shown stumbling around awkwardly. His good aim with alien handguns is shown via the sophisticated HUD to be a function of the suit being highly automated and taking high-level orders via a semi-biological link. In fact, its implied that if he actually knew how to use the thing, he would have been able to tear through the mercenaries like tissue paper; the ''auto-pilot'' curbstomps an entire gang in about ten seconds.

* Subverted in ''[[Stephen King|The Tommyknockers]]''. The titular entities have no clue HOW their stuff works, but somehow managed to figure out how to make it.

* Inverted in ''[[Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows]]'', where it becomes a key plot point that merely wielding a certain wand is not enough to be its "true" master. However, there is no requisite knowledge the wielder might lack, just the requisite action of "defeating" the old master.

* Averted in ''[[The Bartimaeus Trilogy]]'', where Nathaniel gains possession of an extremely powerful magical artifact and tries to use it against his enemy. Bartimaeus notes that there's no chance of him being able to master it on his first try, but stops when he succeeds in generating a massive surge of magical energy. Then he loses control and the backlash knocks him unconscious.

** In the final book demons possessing people run into this problem, having very little idea how to actually work their new bodies. At one point the immensely powerful demon Nouda is seen being helped to his feet by a lesser demon who's had a body longer, after he fell over and started twitching.

* This is the primary ability of Berserker from [[Fate/Zero]]. Anything that is remotely a weapon he corrupts it in his mana, turning it into a magic weapon of devastating power.

* [[Dilbert|Scott Adams]] discusses this in relation to [[UFOs]] in his book, ''The Dilbert Future''. He points out that "just because you see a person driving a car, that doesn't mean that they invented the automobile," so we can't assume that an alien piloting an advanced spaceship is a genius. He goes on to speculate that the aliens that [[Alien Abduction|abduct people]] are actually [[The Greys]]' equivalent of rednecks, and that [[Anal Probing]] is their equivalent of cow tipping.

* Amusingly averted with Bertie in ''[[Jeeves and Wooster (novel)|Jeeves and Wooster]]'':

* The Imperium of Man in ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' are pretty much the same. More than a fair proportion of their military equipment relies on technology long since lost. Tech-Priests pray to the machines to convince them to fix themselves, while doing rituals they believe appease the machine spirit rather than realizing they're the ones fixing it.

** The Orks would seem like a straight play of the trope, as the "Mechboyz" know tech on a genetic level, including captured enemy hardware. Looking deeper, all Ork tech runs on the psychic gestalt generated by Ork belief in the fact that the tech will work, to the point where a human opening up an Ork gun may find simply a load of junk parts in a shoddy casing.

* In ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'', due to the ever-changing meta-game, don't expect to win a large tournament with a netdeck. By the time you master it, really good players will have analyzed the famous "winning deck", found how to beat it, and played the cards that stop it on its track. If you made the same analysis, you may have modified your deck accordingly in order to reduce its vulnerability to those decks. If you just netdecked in hope of a cheap win and thought your opponents will behave exactly as your friends at the local FNM... You're facing troubles.

** This is rather misleading though, as very often well-known decks do win tournaments, and the fact that an exact composition does or doesn't win doesn't even necessarily mean it was the correct build of the deck - having a slightly off deck can be more than compensated for by being a better player.

* In ''[[Homeworld]] 2'', a Marine Frigate is able to dock with an enemy ship and deploy commandos to take it over from the inside. After a successful hijacking however, the commandos are apparently able to fight with their new ship just as effectively as the previous crew without first having to familiarize themselves with how to operate it.

* While previously this trope was averted in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' with everyone's weapon skill starting out at one, in patch 4.0.1 weapons skills and training were done away with - now your character automatically fits this trope, so long as they can equip the weapon. This was because weapon skill added nothing whatsoever to the game, and simply resulted in higher level people who acquired a new type of weapon having to spend a lot of time hacking away pathetically at equally pathetic creatures while grinding their weapon skill up through 400-odd skill points before they could fight real enemies again (death knights, starting at level 55 and initially untrained in several of their common weapons, were particularly troubled by this).

* Particularly egregious in [[Nazi Zombies]], where everyone instantly knows how to use the new Wonder Weapon introduced in each map to electrocute zombies, shrink them, turn them back into humans, suck them into a miniature black hole, etc. Especially in the Call Of The Dead map, where the player characters are ''actors''.

* In ''[[Master of Orion]] 2'' any ships captured by boarding can be used as one's own, but scrapping them gives a chance to learn any unknown technologies they use.

 

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