Basic Trope: Ordinary character with supernatural ancestors.
- Straight: Alice's parents, Bob and Carol, are sorcerers. Magic is hereditary in the setting but Alice just happened to have no power.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice's parents are Physical Gods. Alice has no powers whatsoever.
- Alice has no powers. Alice's parents, her Massive Numbered Siblings, cousins, and everyone in her family going thirty generations back does. As an adult, she marries Dave, who has magic like everyone in his immediate and extended family, and they have two magical children, Dana and Charlie. And those of her siblings who have kids of their own also do so with magic-users, and all their children have magic as well.
- Downplayed:
- Alice does have powers, but they're extremely weak when compared to her parents' magical prowess and Stronger with Age (and Education) is only part of the story.
- Alice has one parent who can do magic and one who can't, and she can't either.
- Justified: The magic gene is dominant and Alice cannot do magic because she inherited the recessive non-magic gene from both her parents.
- Inverted: Bob and Carol are Muggles but Alice was born with magical powers.
- Subverted: Alice does have powers; they've just taken a while to manifest.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice was using a magical talisman to fake magical abilities; she doesn't have them on her own.
- All her powers come from Applied Phlebotinum and the magical abilities just happen temporarily.
- Parodied: Carol and Bob hope Alice shows signs of powers and watch her intently throughout her childhood. They stop, disappointed, mere weeks before Alice gets her first period and, coincidentally, her magical powers.
- Zig-Zagged:
- The talisman is a Magic Feather.
- Having magic and not alternate strictly by generation on both sides of Alice's family.
- Alice has magic intermittently, whether she's using her talisman or Applied Phlebotinum or not.
- Averted: Alice has magical powers all right.
- Enforced: Alice is the Audience Surrogate.
- Lampshaded: "I Just Want to Be Special." "Alice, everybody here is special." "You've got me. ... All right, then, I Just Want to Be Normal."
- Invoked: Carol ingests a Power Nullifier while she's pregnant with Alice.
- Exploited: Alice infiltrates an organisation known for Fantastic Racism towards sorcerers. Since she doesn't have powers, she won't be bothered.
- Defied: Alice might not have magic, but she pushes the envelope of power all the same or she becomes the combat fighter among the group of mages.
- Discussed: "This is my daughter, Alice. She doesn't have powers, but she gets by every day."
- Conversed: "How does Alice deal with magical problems?"
- Implied: Alice is the only one of her Massive Numbered Siblings who doesn't go to magic school.
- Played for Drama: Because Alice lives in The Magocracy, she's relegated to second-class status.
- Played for Laughs: Alice wants powers and tries to show to other people that she has them, but she just looks goofy as she tries to emulate Carol with none of the technique, let alone power.
- Played for Horror: Alice's Abusive Parents and siblings cast Black Magic on her For the Evulz.
- Plotted a Good Waste: Alice's lack of magic is foreshadowing that Bob and Carol adopted her, which she had no prior reason to believe.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice relies on her parents and siblings to solve problems that can't be solved in a mundane way. So, whenever such a problem presents itself to her, odds are she's alone at the time and very stuck for some time.
- Alice develops a deep resentment of the supernatural as a result of getting screwed out of what she believes was her destiny, and decides to destroy it as a result.
- Alice faces intense discrimination from mages due to her lack of powers.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice develops extreme patience, the skills of an Action Survivor, and/or undergoes Training from Hell to become a Badass Normal who can solve those magical problems without magic. If she gets good enough, she may even come up with a better solution.
- Alice learns to tolerate, if not love, the supernatural when it does something good or beautiful that benefits her.
- Alice figures out how to advocate for the rights of herself and other non-magical people, and her arguments win the day (eventually).
- Untwisted: Carol and Bob believe that Alice might just be late in developing her magic because she was a late bloomer in everything else ... but it turns out that she simply has no magic.
Back to Muggle Born of Mages.
