Basic Trope: Someone with little martial skill attempts to use weapons or martial arts techniques and ends up either looking silly or injuring themselves.
- Straight: Alice attempts to use nunchucks. Because she hasn't used them before, she ends up hitting herself in the face.
- Exaggerated: Whenever Alice picks up a weapon, she comically injures herself with it. This includes things that aren't normally thought of as weapons, like butter knives.
- Downplayed: Alice's first go with a Martial Arts Staff isn't good, but she manages not to trip over it.
- Justified: The weapon is something that's incredibly hard to use right on the first try, like a chain, whip, or nunchuck. Alice was just overconfident enough to try swinging one around without knowing what to do with it.
- Inverted: Alice has practiced a lot with nunchucks, and when she finally does show off her skills, her performance is perfect.
- Subverted:
- Alice uses the nunchucks pretty well, for a beginner.
- Alice only looks incompetent. She is actually a master of a martial art that involves faking incompetence and then taking the opponent by surprise when they think she is offguard.
- Double Subverted:
- But by the standards of someone actually competent, she's bad.
- Except that said surprise attack is easily countered.
- Parodied: Alice tries to use a whip and ends up tying herself up, somehow managing to get the whip to knot itself into a bow in the back.
- Zig Zagged: Alice tries to use nunchucks despite being a beginner. To everyone's surprise, she does well, but then she reveals that she's actually been practicing beforehand.
- Averted: Alice decides not to use nunchucks before learning how.
- Enforced: "We need some physical comedy at Alice's expense. Failing at using nunchucks would probably do the trick."
- Lampshaded:
- "Owwww... I really need to start learning how to use the weapons I wave around."
- "Alice, you're going to hurt yourself with that thing! Learn how to use it correctly first!"
- Implied: Alice goes into the woods to practice with nunchucks on her own. She comes back bruised and claims she tripped.
- Invoked: Alice proclaimed that nunchucks couldn't be that hard to use if the resident idiot Bob could use them. Bob offers Alice the chance to try to get her to eat her words.
- Exploited: Alice often makes a point of using weapons she's not good with and making a fool of herself to make enemies underestimate her.
- Defied: "Uh-uh. I'm gonna start with easier weapons to use like a staff or sabre before trying something that complicated."
- Discussed: "If this were a Bruce Lee movie, then he wouldn't have gotten his fame at all."
- Conversed: "Alice really needs to get classes in the use of nunchucks, doesn't she?"
- Implied:Bob: Hey, Carol, can you get the first-aid kit?Carol: (sighs) Alice picked the nunchucks?
- Deconstructed: Alice seriously injures herself after a botched attempt at using nunchucks.
Back to What the Fu Are You Doing?
