Discussion Main / PossessionImpliesMastery

Is this trope omnipresent enough for us to add notable aversions? We already have its aversion as a trope—How Do I Shot Web?.

This is apparently not an example: the uplifted races are not described as having mastered technology merely by possessing it. The thrust of this example appears to be orthogonal to the trope.

• The alien races in the universe of David Brin's Uplift novels use nothing but technology handed down by the older races which raised them to sentience; furthermore the conservative/reactionary cultural bias of this entire eons-old multispecies civilization treats innovation as anathema and tantamount to blasphemy, as it implies that what was good enough for your creators is not good enough for you.
  • On the other hand, this is justified by the fact that they all have access to the Library, and it is also implied that the Library might actually contain everything that it's possible to know, at least without maturing as a species.

This is not a good example: we need to show what the specific technology is and describe how possession leads to mastery. We need to drop the Complaining About Stuff We Don't Like, too.

• An early A constantly recurring complaint about World Of Warcraft's "The Burning Crusade" expansion was is the draenei race, derisively termed 'space goats' for supposedly adding an intrusive sci-fi theme. Technically, however, their technology was provided by vaguely demigodlike beings and they traveled through a dimension; they were never a space-faring race, explaining their low-tech compromises in Azeroth.