Basic Trope: Something fantastical whose specialness has been damaged.
- Straight: Alice, an angel, loses her wings.
- Exaggerated: Bob, once a mighty Eldritch Abomination has been reduced to just his human-like brain.
- Downplayed: Alice's wings have been clipped, leaving her unable to fly properly.
- Justified: Bob needs to be suitably punished for his crime, thus deprived of his grandness.
- Inverted: Alice, a former angel, has become an even greater and grander entity as a Seraph
. - Subverted: Bob the demon has always lacked horns, thus not caring.
- Double Subverted: ...Because they were cut off in his infancy, something he doesn't know about.
- Parodied: Alice regularly sheds feathers and goes through episodes of melodrama as a result.
- Zig Zagged: Alice loses her wings, but she learns not only to live without them, but to become a great person who isn't defined by her fantastic aspects. And then they grow back.
- Averted: The fantastic never lives as crippled, they either die or live as intended.
- Enforced: "We need to show the kiddies who you are is important, thus let's show them Alice losing her wings."
- Lampshaded: "Why do people always target the fantastic in someone? General mutilation is good enough."
- Invoked: Emperor Evulz deliberately attacks the fantastic in someone to establish his sheer cruelty.
- Exploited: Emperor Evulz is able to amass an army by promising to fix the broken fantastics.
- Defied: Damaging the uniqueness of someone is treated as the sin above all sins, thus extremely brutal repercussions for those who do.
- Discussed: "Wings mean a great deal to our kind. To damage them is to take away a large part of who we are... Sometimes I wonder if I can even be called an angel any more."
- Conversed: "It sure is depressing to see fantastic beings lose what makes them special."
- Implied: Alice never wears backless clothing and a sense of wonder comes off of her, though what exactly she is nobody knows.
- Deconstructed:
- Because a fantastical's being's fantasticness is always targeted, these species gradually become lesser overall. Thus the ultimate fate of the fantastic is extinction or becoming something radically different, the end result being the end of all marvelous things.
- Just like a real-world disabled person, Alice hates being viewed as "broken" and pitied for it. She may even have been born without wings, or have lost them at a young age, meaning she's accustomed to her condition and views herself as a whole person, with or without fantastic aspects. Plus there's the implication that angels generally think themselves superior to mundane people.
- Reconstructed:
- Though the fantastic in the fantastical tends to be targeted, it is controlled to maximize the despair. Thus the fantastical species continue to live, so that damaging their fantasticness has meaning.
- Alice knows she still has as much value as anyone else, fantastic or not. She just really enjoyed flying prior to losing her wings, feels she's lost a major part of her identity, and has every right to grieve.
- Played For Laughs: Bob the regenerator expresses sorrow whenever he loses a part, even though it quickly gets replaced completely identical.
- Played For Drama: Bob, once a mighty member of the Fair Folk, is driven to insane rage upon losing access to magic completely. Thus the once grand being reduced to incoherent screams and pathetic frailing, whatever respect he once held by his people is lost. Now alone in the world, dramatically weakened, Bob never again knows happiness.
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