Basic Trope: Performing worse at a task that comes naturally because attention is drawn to it.
- Straight: Alice is asked how she draws a perfect circle, then struggles to recreate it.
- Exaggerated: Alice goes from a very talented artist to one who struggles to steady her hand.
- Downplayed: Alice screws up her next few attempts, but kicks back into automatic after a few tries.
- Justified: Alice isn't good at consciously drawing a circle—it's just really good muscle memory.
- Inverted: Alice realizes her drawing is getting sloppy, so she focuses on refining her technique and gets better.
- Subverted: Alice is annoyed that she was asked about her drawing ability, but proceeds to get a perfect circle anyway.
- Double Subverted: ...However the thought lingers and the more she thinks about it, the worse her drawing gets.
- Parodied: Alice, an artistic prodigy, falls into pieces after stopping to think about her technique.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is a novice artist working on drawing circles. While she generally improves, thinking about the process too much or not enough both cause her temporary ruts.
- Averted: Alice's second-nature abilities simply function as such.
- Enforced:
- Alice is entering an art competition and needs a credible reason to underperform.
- Today's episode of Learning With Alice is about Muscle Memory.
- Lampshaded: "Why does my brain always get in the way?"
- Invoked: Alice's rival draws attention to her perfect circle to psych her out in a timed contest.
- Exploited: Alice, realizing she's making no progress on her masterpiece, takes the opportunity to clean her studio.
- Defied:
- Realizing Bob is about to ask Alice about her drawing technique, Charlie drops his books to change the subject.
- Alice replies with either "I leave that to my motor cortex." or "I leave that to Muscle Memory." but either way, she's acknowledging her conscious ignorance on the mechanics without letting it distract her
- Discussed: "Oh yeah, Alice is great! Just don't draw attention to stuff she does automatically, she'll be in a funk for a while until she gets ahold of herself again."
- Conversed: "I still think it's ridiculous that humans are worse at things they think about consciously than do automatically."
- Played For Laughs: Alice gets so bad at drawing circles, she draws a perfect Chrysler Building, only to throw it out for not being "right."
- Played For Drama: Alice, after flubbing one too many circles, is having a breakdown because she "can't do anything right."
Now that I know I have to go back to Centipede's Dilemma, I'm not sure I can do it right!
