Times when a character says "I Just Want to Be Normal" in Fan Works.
Crossover
- The Bridge (Godzilla & My Little Pony): Godzilla Junior's greatest dream is to live the rest of his life in peace. As long as there are evil Kaiju and evil aliens threatening the world, he will continue to fight and lead the Defenders.
- Child of the Storm:
- Harry struggles with a conflict between this and Chronic Hero Syndrome, further complicated by the meddling of Doctor Strange. On the one hand, he'd really, really love to have a normal life (defined as one where he doesn't have grand responsibilities). Sadly, being the Boy Who Lived, son of an Avenger, second in line to the throne of Asgard, and the keystone to Doctor Strange's plan to prepare Earth for the coming of Thanos, all means that that is unlikely to happen. On the other hand, he's an adrenaline junkie — a large part of him enjoys being In Harm's Way, and he just can't turn aside. Eventually, in the sequel, he becomes first a Knight in Sour Armor who's bitterly Resigned to the Call, then more classically heroic again.
- Jean-Paul Beaubier, one of Harry's friends, a mutant speedster — and from the finale of the first book, this world's version of the Flash — who makes it very clear that he prefers not to get involved in fighting (though when he does get involved, he demonstrates just how terrifying an utterly ruthless speedster can be), and in the sequel somewhat wistfully discusses this trope, wishing he was just a normal mutant or even a normal human.
- Jean Grey is, by the sequel, the most powerful psychic that Earth has ever seen (jointly with her Separated at Birth twin, Maddie, and even then, it's hinted that Jean is ever so slightly stronger). However, as Harry points out to Clark (also an example), she's much more comfortable leading a normal teenage life and studying to probably become a doctor someday. Unlike most examples, though, she's perfectly comfortable with her powers.
- Clark Kent, as on Smallville, really just wants to be normal — though as Harry points out, he can't resist helping, on the quiet. Unfortunately, destiny (and Doctor Strange) have other plans.
- Hermione just wants to be a normal witch, with logical magic to study and understand. Unfortunately, though she doesn't know it (until chapter 66 of the sequel), she's the biological daughter of Wanda Maximoff and John Constantine, the granddaughter of Magneto. This leaves her with Chaos Magic based Reality Warper powers that play to the exact opposite of her strengths, and, from chapter 64 of the sequel, an Omega Class spatial manipulation based X-Gene. In the former case, she keeps refusing to truly accept that chaos magic doesn't work like normal magic, and it keeps tripping her up, something that she resents. Accordingly, she takes both the manifestation of her X-Gene and the revelation of her heritage extremely badly.
- A Finely Honed Blade: Taylor does not want to be a cape, and actively despises her powers. Even after Bakuda forces her to accept them, she's not exactly happy about having to ascribe to cape traditions like hiding her face after taking over the ABB and going after Coil, though she relents when Lisa points out the practical value of a helmet.
- In Honoka's Bizarre Adventure, Yoshikage Kira is the director of Tokyo Branch of the multinational Yoshida Conglomerate, considered the most successful man in the city, and is the leader of the plan to expose Stands through the Love Live! event. However, he despises the idea of being so successful and wants to return to his normal quiet life in Morioh before the Yoshida Conglomerate strongarmed him into working for them... or at least what a serial killer with a hand fetish considers his normal.
- My Little Avengers (Marvel Universe & My Little Pony): Big Macintosh spends a good portion of the story regretting ever finding Mjolnir and becoming Thor but eventually comes to terms with it. This contributes to his Heroic BSoD when Loki steals Thor's powers from him, and after he gets them back, it's shown that he's fully embraced his role.
- My Little Titan: A variant after the "Return of Harmony" arc. The Teen Titans don't give up their powers, but they do opt to retire from superhero life and live as normal civilians in Equestria. Raven does this in part because she does want to be normal and be able to feel and act on her emotions without risking her powers going out of control, which she can't do back on Earth.
- In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Supergirl crossover The Vampire of Steel, both Kara and Buffy remember what being a normal, powerless teenager was like; and often they'd like to be normal again.Supergirl: Sorry, I wasn’t trying to put anyone down by comparison. I know what it’s like, believe me. I didn’t always have powers.
Buffy: Neither did I. Sometimes I think I’d like to be back there.
Supergirl: That makes two of us.
- Since it's basically the title from Reluctant Hero, Zuko's stubborn desire to go back on his ship with his uncle doesn't come as a surprise. Alas for him, the Universe needs the Avatar and finds a way to force him on the path to his destiny.
- In the Supergirl story Hellsister Trilogy, Kara is getting tired of the constant battles and life-and-death struggles and expresses her desire to live like a normal woman:Supergirl: But I'm... oh, Sheol, I'm so tired of all this stuff. Fight after fight after fight. We save the universe, we kill Mordru, we kill Satan Girl, we come back, and here somebody throws Darkseid in our face again. Can't there ever be an end to it? [...] Well, it's gonna have to start coming somewhere else before long. I'm tired of this. I wasn't born to be a, a super-heroine. I just wanted to be a normal girl from Argo, and, and get a good job and a good man and settle down...
- New Beginnings (Smallville): Early in the story, young Clark Kent shouts that he would give anything to have no powers while he is arguing with his adoptive father.
- Downplayed for Leslie Willis in Sparks Fly
. She does enjoy the perks of being a celebrity — having enough money to be financially secure, being able to influence thousands of people listening to her radio emission — but she's pretty unhappy about reality intruding on her private time (paparazzi barging in the restaurant in which she took her boyfriend in a date).- Unbeknownst to her, Superman too feels the same, and has started to date her because she was interested in his Secret Identity of Clark Kent rather than his superpowered self — she makes him truly feel a Farm Boy instead of an Human Alien.
- Petra in Drakonophobia never asked to be Dragonborn. All she wants to do is to live her life out in peace earning coin and getting enough to get by. Events at Helgen and the Western Watchtower cause the titular phobia to which Petra runs away to Riften where Brynjolf finds her in her sorry state and convinces her to join the Thieves Guild. She becomes a skilled thief and enjoys that because she gets to be on her own and it keeps her away from anything particularly major. Fate decided otherwise when an encounter with a dragon leads to Brynjolf eventually finding out about it. Everything just spirals downwards after that.
- It happens to Brynjolf as well, as their adventures take them to disturbing revelations like Mercer's betrayal and the reveal that he's Bryn's father, but he's also the descendant of Tiber Septim, and the Grand Dragon Priest Zoklitinhaar and how the latter's spirit is encased in his body. he just wants to do his part as second-in-command.
- Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku! (The DCU & My Hero Academia): Izuku is horrified by his growing array of Combo Platter Powers after he nearly killed Katsuki Bakugou — whom he considered his best friend — when they got into a fight as kids. This piles on top of his angst over being an alien on a planet that hates aliens. Because of this, he swears off his dream of becoming a superhero until the day he meets All Might.
- Abraxas (Hrodvitnon): One of the reasons why Susan Graham turns down San's suggestion that he could save her from dying by absorbing her as a third part of Monster X is because the former feels she isn't suited to the kind of life that San and Vivienne are living.
- My Immortal gives us Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, who likes to remind us that being such a special snowflake isn't really a good thing"Yeah but everyone is in love with me! Like Snape and Loopin took a video of me naked. Hargrid says he's in love with me. Vampire likes me and now even Snaketail is in love with me! I just wanna be with you ok Draco! Why couldn't Satan have made me less beautiful?... I'm good at too many things! WHY CAN'T I JUST BE NORMAL? IT'S A FUCKING CURSE!"
- Intercom: It's subtle, but Riley, for all her wonder and amazement at seeing the mind world, still just wants to live an ordinary life with ordinary problems. She sometimes tries to have it both ways in enjoying the mind world and enjoying "normal" life, but as things start changing within her mind, this view begins to become more extreme, with Riley trying to go to more dangerous lengths to try and get back to where she once was.
- Power Chord: High School Musical: Throughout the story, Luna despises her powers and refuses to accept them. Eventually, she does learn to accept them somewhat more, but not fully.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Striker S
- In White Devil of the Moon, between not having a princess or real leader to rally around and fighting a losing war against the Dark Kingdom, then finding their princess only to find she's Nanoha, queen of the workaholics, the Inner Senshi want this so damn bad. They get it in the end when Nanoha absolves them of their duty to her, though Ami does choose to go study magic in Mid-Childa, her role would be more passive, and the other senshi resume civilian lives in Japan. Also, while Artemis did not specifically want this trope, he was certainly more willing to become a normal housecat than Luna was.
- In Mega Man: Defender of the Human Race, Mega Man struggles with feeling this way throughout the story.
- Midoriya Shikinori feels this way in Origin of a Non-Hero, to the point that he's desperate to have his Quirk removed outright so that his father will stop expecting him to become a Pro Hero just like both of his parents.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- Consequences of Unoriginality points out just what it would mean if every character were to fall in love with a "perfect" character in a world where only they can save the day — in shorter, every other character tries to violate him, while monsters spontaneously come into being to destroy the innocent for the sole purpose of making him show up to fight them. He ends up voluntarily ripping out one-third of his being in order to become normal, but the world remembers what happened because of him.
- Diaries of a Madman: Celestia breaks down at one point and laments that she would have preferred being a simple healer instead of a ruler.
- Least Noticeable And Little Flappy: Though Claire likes herself and her powers, she sometimes wishes she could have a more normal life — impossible for her, given her size, shape and invisibility:She couldn't even go inside and be with other ponies at their festivals. None of the buildings in Dunnich, not even the Town Hall, was big enough for her now-gigantic form. And she couldn't dance at them, not even outdoors — a couple of near-tragedies had made her realize that somepony who could crush a house in an act of clumsiness should neither dance around normal-sized Ponies nor even their structures. Sometimes she would stand at a window and watch a party, but never in town — things were just too crowded there for her ungainly form.
Romance and marriage seemed out of the question for her. By her nature she was able to love anything sentient, of any sex, but there was no suitable creature for her to court. Normal Ponies, even those who knew and liked her, were not attracted to a huge invisible fluffy pony, especially one overendowed with heads and eyes and tongues. - Mendacity: Bon Bon wants nothing more in life that to leave her past among the Fae behind, never have to think about Tír na nÓg again, and live the quiet, happy, boring life of a confectioner.
- In A Gamer In South Blue, Jack decided early on that he really didn't want to be in the center of all of the insanity that the Straw Hats are causing. But he reflects at the end of Chapter 9 that getting sucked into canon may be inevitable.
- This Bites!: Dowplayed with Buggy the Clown. After dealing with the insanity of the Grand Line and being part of the Roger Pirates, he wanted to have a carefree life as a pirate in the East Blue. Unfortunately for Buggy, he not only gets dragged into chaos thanks to Luffy, but has his past as a cabin boy on the Roger Pirates exposed by the marines. This ends pushing him to the Rage Breaking Point that he goes ballistics and takes on Mihawk in a fight... and is evenly matched.
- Having been Blessed with Suck, both Paul and John in With Strings Attached are terrified of going home as is, with all the life-ruining complications their new bodies and magic would entail. When told they have to be returned to normal to go back to Earth, they're delighted. The other two are... not as delighted.
- In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, the situation changes somewhat. First, everyone now knows it's temporary, so John, at least, can view their second trip to C'hou as a vacation rather than a curse. (At least until he realizes what a Crapsaccharine World C'hou has become.) Not so with Paul, who suffered tremendous psychological difficulties when he returned home because he couldn't shake the feeling that he was going to kill his family by touching them. He had just gotten over that when he was sent back. And Ringo, who discovered he was hopelessly addicted to his mindsight after he lost it, must now choose between keeping it, thus staying on C'hou and giving up his new love Barbara Bach and everything else in his life, or returning home and giving up his magic. (George, who is not connected to his magic like the others are, mostly views his ring as an experience; he hardly thinks it's worth giving up his family for. And he's certainly not willing to trade his freedom just for a little magic.)
- Children of Remnant: At the party, Jaune is so desperate to appear normal to the other teens that he ends up ordering them alcohol and getting absolutely wasted.
- In Forged Destiny, Pyrrha Nikos came to Beacon academy to escape the fame and expectations placed on her in Mistral due to her being a Champion.
- Kairi Niko in the Knights of the Old Republic fic Destiny's Pawn is an amnesiac bookworm with skills she can't explain and really didn't want to know where she learned them. She flat-out asked the Masters if they could "shut off" her Force sensitivity, and only agreed to her conscription into the Jedi because there wasn't another option. Given her druthers, she's just quit and become a translator, but seeing as she's the ex-Dark Lord...
- In The End of Ends, this gets subverted and possibly deconstructed depending on how you see it. Terra's decision to lead a normal life drove Beast Boy over the edge and caused him to gain a Superpowered Evil Side simply because the only person who actually liked him dumped him. When the former finds out what her actions of trying to be normal caused, not to mention the whole void thing going on, it made her reconsider her decision.
- New Tamaran:
- The story begins with this being Starfire’s ultimate desire, which is the reason she starts a modeling career. Robin shares her dream, which is why he decides to retire from hero work and proposes to her.
- Once Wonder Girl finds out she’s pregnant, she asks Speedy (who isn't the biological father) to have a normal life with her. He agrees.
- A Child Shall Lead Them (Transformers): Swoop is like this after gaining the Matrix and becoming leader of the Autobots — he feels rejected by both the Autobots and the Dinobots due to his new position, and at one point even throws the Matrix at Grimlock in an effort to reject his position. He ends up coming to terms with his new role as he undergoes Character Development.
