Wax On, Wax Off/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A shifty mentor trains their students through menial chores.

  • Straight: Alice is undergoing training from Men-Tor. His training consists of making her wash his car and having her run to the grocery store.
  • Exaggerated: Men-Tor's training consists of making Alice do his taxes.
  • Justified: Alice isn't quite ready to undergo Training from Hell yet, and she needs to build up her strength. This is the perfect way to train her.
  • Inverted: Training from Hell
    • Alternatively: Men-Tor's training involves seemingly dangerous, explosive and life-threatening tasks that are actually rigged to be safe and easy.
  • Subverted: Alice, halfway through her run to the grocery store, realizes that Men-Tor isn't trying to build her up - he's just using her to run his errands.
    • Alternatively: After Alice gets back from the grocery store, she asks how that's supposed to train her. Men-Tor tells her that it's payment, and wonders why she thought it was training.
  • Double Subverted: When Alice confronts Men-Tor with this knowledge, he tells her that the realization was the training.
  • Parodied: Men-Tor makes up incredibly flimsy excuses as to why the errands will help Alice. "How will doing your taxes help me?" "Once you do my taxes, you can...uh...defeat the evil Lord 1066!"
  • Deconstructed: Alice fails to see the value in the training, and subsequently quits. Since she was The Chosen One, there's nothing stopping Emperor Evulz from taking over the world.
  • Reconstructed: Alice, though questioning the value of the training, keeps with it and becomes stronger than ever.
  • Zig Zagged: Some errands are specifically meant to build up Alice, but others are just things Men-Tor doesn't want to do himself.
  • Averted: Alice undergoes regular martial arts training.
  • Enforced: "We'd really like to show some hardcore training, but the censors have been on our asses about violence! Let's do this instead..."
  • Lampshaded: "Let me guess, washing your car will somehow make me stronger, right?"
  • Invoked: "You are not ready for my true training. This will get you prepared for it."
  • Defied: Alice straight-up refuses to do Men-Tor's errands until he explains his training.
  • Discussed: "That whole car-washing thing is crazy, but it works!"
  • Conversed: "She hates it now, but I bet in 5 episodes, she'll be super strong!"

As part of your training, you must return to Wax On, Wax Off - then get me a soda.

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