Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character can do something awesome, but in order to learn that, had to give up the ability to do something mundane.

  • Straight: Bob is the world's most proficient martial artist, but in order to train himself, he had to forgo the ability to read.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is the world's best martial artist, a world-class chef, and a skilled mage all in one, but he can't read, write, or even interact with other people at all.
  • Downplayed: Bob is a skilled martial artist, and his socialization suffered a bit, but not fatally.
  • Justified: All that time to train in martial arts had to come from somewhere. Bob viewed the ability to read as unnecessary.
  • Inverted: Bob is a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
    • Bob is an awesome speed-reader, but has no useful skills.
  • Subverted: While Bob's a skilled martial artist, his teachers made sure he was learning to read as well.
  • Double Subverted: But he can only read a small amount.
  • Parodied: In order to learn how to do anything, people have to forget something they already know. At least one person dies because they forget how to breathe.
  • Zig Zagged: In order to understand advanced hyperspatial mathematics, you have to give up the ability to understand basic arithmetic. You can derive basic arithmetic from hypermath but then you lose the ability to tell time. You can manually relearn how to tell time but then you forget how to move your eyes and have to turn your head to look around.
  • Averted: Bob's well-rounded.
  • Enforced: Bob's exceptional skill makes him seem unlikeable so the author decides that he can't read, so he doesn't seem like a can-do-everything Mary Sue.
  • Lampshaded: The brochure for a martial arts dojo lists alongside each class what basic subject you'll have to forgo all knowledge of to join the class.
  • Invoked: Wanting a skilled martial artist they can easily control, Bob's teachers make sure that he doesn't learn how to read.
  • Exploited: Bob's mother notices that her son can't read at all, so she signs him up for martial arts classes early on, knowing the extra mental capacity will lead to him getting exceptionally good at karate.
  • Defied: Bob makes sure to learn to read behind his teachers' backs.
  • Discussed: "Sure, it's great that I can tell you about every single French monarch back through the Merovingians, but sometimes I wish I spent that time learning to ride a bike."
  • Conversed: "You ever noticed how these really skilled people are clueless at some normal thing?"

Back to Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training. Sorry - in order to be able to write trope pages, I gave up the ability to write witty captions.

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