How Do I Shot Web - Television Tropes & Idioms

->"Up, Up and Away Web!"

Spiderman

You got a New Super Power or two? Great! Can you use them? While the standard hero seems to instinctively know his or her way around every possible ability he or she can obtain throughout the story, some people have to flail and struggle, with everybody laughing at them.

Also applies when a character attempts to mimic or steal the abilities of a hero (like stealing their Empathic Weapon) and ultimately fails.

When he is successful, the newly acquired power is too unpredictable or costly in his opinion to use in the long run, since he may lack the time or experience to perfect it. It's doubly humiliating if he's defeated by the hero anyway. This is sometimes An Aesop that a hero's strength is his character, not his powers.

One would expect this to be a natural co-trope for a Puberty Superpower, which makes it strange that until recently this was rarely the case - most teen heroes seemed to know how their powers worked instinctively.

Nonetheless some are too stubborn to give them up, and may become a kind of Evil Counterpart.

The name comes from the game Natural Selection, which has an alien race with the ability to shoot webbing as a weapon; the quote-turned-meme "how do i shot web" became synonymous with a clueless newbie who didn't know how to use their abilities.

Examples: Live Action

Peter Petrelli in Heroes, both in season one (where he learned how to control his empathic powers from Claude) and in season two (where he got amnesia and forgot which powers he had and how to use them). This seems to be one of the recurring problems which always almost brings about an apocalypse of some sort. There is also serial killer Sylar, who can use powers better than the person he stole from due to his supernatural ability to analyse how things work, including brains.
This is the entire premise of the show The Greatest American Hero.
Happens frequently to the witches in Charmed.
Used in Smallville a number of times as Clark's emerging powers make themselves known, most notably with his heat vision and x-ray vision.

Anime and Manga

One opponent in Flame Of Recca's Tournament Arc managed to temporarily steal Recca's ability to summon his flame dragons. Setsuna, already a saucy and rather disobedient dragon, promptly asks why the hell he should listen to some new guy and fried him in annoyance.
In Dragonball Z, Quirky Mini Boss Squad leader Captain Ginyu trades bodies with Goku. This is fairly ingenious, because he crippled his old body before trading. However, he couldn't get full power out of Goku's body, because he doesn't know his powerup technique, the Kaio-ken. Unfortunately for him, Vegeta then shows up and beats the snot out of him.
An example of a hero (but not The Hero) struggling to use her powers is Midorikawa Retasu/Mew Lettuce of Tokyo Mew Mew. She had immense raw power in her first appearance, but became incredibly weak after this, and she often seemed to completely forget that she had control over water and could breathe while submerged in it, panicking while anywhere near the ocean. Remember, boys and girls, Good Is Dumb.
When Pist from Final Fantasy: Unlimited steals Kaze's Magun, the device that allows him to summon powerful being using special bullets, he tries to use it himself (including a bizarre subversion of the normal firing sequence) but the resulting summon turns on him.
In Code Geass Lelouch knows the basic principle behind the Geass but not all of the specific rules (for example, when he first gains the Geass power, he does not instinctively know that he cannot use the Geass more than once on the same person until he makes the mistake of trying to use it on Kallen twice). Rather than acting completely stupid about it, he uses logical, scientific methods to deduce all of the available powers and restrictions of his new ability- such as commanding a girl to make a mark on a wall every day to see how long a Geass will last.
Similarly, Death Note has a sequence involving Yagami Light learning the basics and limitations of the Death Note before he embarks on his great scheme of moral cleansing.
In GateKeepers, Ukiya Shun is blessed by the Gate of Wind. It took him several episodes just to even know how to properly summon the power again (which he did in the first episode by accident), and an episode testing a new technique (which he later perfects).
The Rosario To Vampire manga has Tsukune kidnapped by a shapeshifter, who copies his form and goes out to fight Tsukune's Unwanted Harem. Unfortunately, the fellow runs into quite a few How Do I Shot Web moments as he tries (in vain) to kill them, not realizing that he's far, far weaker than they are in human form. When he wises up and copies Moka's Superpowered Evil Side, he's beaten for good when the power of the rosary manages to weaken him.
Sort of happens to the protagonist of Pretear, Himeno Awayuki -- more of "How Do I Shot Wind". It is implied that she should know instinctively how her powers work, but the first time she is forced to fight a monster, she panics and can't figure out what to do. However, this wasn't enough to make her give up, and she actually demands to receive some training in order to learn to use her powers properly.
Skuld gets this in Ah My Goddess when she tries to develop her water powers. It doesn't work out, and she puts herself in danger by trying to accelerate things, this danger being caused by her proclivity for Tim Taylor Technology.
At one point, Padudu of Magical Play (aka Magical Witchland) saves two other characters from death via suddenly being able to fly. When asked by Pippin why she hadn't done that in the pilot, when she fell on Pippin and cost her a tournament, Padudu says: "Oh, that time, I forgot I could fly!"
In FullMetal Alchemist, Ed learns of his ability to transmute without a circle by clapping his hands in frustration then grabbing a basin of water, heating it through alchemy to boiling temperature.

Western Animation

In Lilo And Stitch The Series, Experiment 625 is recruited by villains because he possesses nearly all the abilities Stitch does. Unfortunately, he also has a lazy, casual apathy that makes him useless. He is, however, very good at making sandwiches.
Princess from The Powerpuff Girls acquires powers like the heroines' several times over the course of the series, by various means. She fails to beat them every time, but never learns a lesson about it.
The X-Men Evolution animated series used this a lot in the first season introduction stories, most notably for for Kitty Pryde and Rogue, but it virtually disappeared after that.
- Back when she was a super-villain, Emma Frost made the mistake of stealing Storm's body, and discovered too late that while starting a storm was easy enough to do without even trying, stopping one was hard, as it had its own momentum. Similarly, Storm barely avoided being driven mad by her telepathy once she escaped her psi-shielded cell and almost fried the brain of the girl she tried to rescue.
In the second season finale of WITCH, Cedric falls victim to this trope after devouring the BigBads of seasons one and two, consequently gaining their powers, as well as gaining the powers of all five heroines. Despite having by far the most raw power of any villain in the series, he is unable to utilize his new skills to anywhere near their full potential. This, combined with new transformations for all five heroines, led to Cedric's defeat in a little more than five minutes. Anticlimactic, yes, but it did preserve the show's flawless record of subverting the Sorting Algorithm Of Evil.
A recurring problem for Ben in Ben 10, especially prevalent when he gains a new alien form and has no idea what it does. The first time he turned into Cannonbolt, not only could he not figure out how rolling up into an armored ball was useful in combat, but he kept losing his balance and falling over backwards when he tried to stand.
In Project Geeker, the eponymous character Geeker has almost limitless power as a genetically engineered cyborg. However, Becky stole Geeker before he could receive the programming which would allow him to control those powers (and allow the antagonist to control him). Thus, Geeker generally discovers his powers by accident, and has difficulty controlling them.
Danny in Danny Phantom constantly gets new ghost powers with some conjunctions to Puberty Superpower every so often and as per usual, half of them are often hard to control. Duplication is a frequent issue for him and his Ghostly Wail started off as a Dangerous Forbidden Technique, among others. He eventually got most of it mastered by end.

Comics

The Super-Skrull is a recurring Fantastic Four villain who can use all the super-powers of that team, plus has a native alien ability to shapeshift. Nevertheless, he is always defeated, usually by the Four's ability to work as a team.
- He only loses to the FF, whose powers he copies. Face someone else and he uses the FF powers better than the FF. How many times has Reed Richards used his stretch power to make razor thin wire? Admittedly it depends on the writer I guess.
  - That's because the Super-Skrull is either a villain or an Anti Hero, depending on the story. Either way, he's willing to use his powers in ways the Fantastic Four wouldn't, as he's not bound by "Thou Shalt Not Kill".
- Xavin, another skrull with similar abilities can barley use more than one power at a time.
- In the current "Secret Invasion" storyline, it is revealed that the Skrulls now have the idea to copy any superhuman's powers, appearance, and memory perfectly.
In JLA: Year One, everyone's powers are stolen by a villain, but the villain only relies on Green Lantern's ring, allowing Aquaman to whoop his ass.
Subverted in the current origin story of the Hal Jordan Green Lantern, Emerald Dawn. In this story, Jordan stumbles about with his newly bestowed power ring, barely defeats a powerful villain and realizes that he is out of his depth with the weapon. To solve that problem, Jordan asks the ring if there is another member of the Green Lantern Corps he can talk to for help. The ring whisks him away to meet Tomar-Re, who recommends that Jordan come to GLC headquarters on the planet Oa for the optional training program. Jordan, naturally, takes that advice.
- This appears to have been retconned somewhat in the new Secret Origin of Hal Jordan. Hal gets the ring and uses it to fly and make a few constructs without much difficulty, but is not aware of the full functional capacity of the ring. He is then forcibly brought to OA for mandatory training.
Was actually a major theme of the original 1960s X-Men, and still appears at times.
The trope is very logically subverted in X-Factor when the team tracks down a mutant whose Puberty Superpower is the ability to transmute any matter into any thing else such as a simple element like gold. A supervillain is after him too and eventually the boy is forced to fight back by changing him into gold. Unfortunately, while he would be glad to change him back since he is safely subdued, the fact of the matter is that he has imagine the totality of the matter he is changing something into, and he realizes that organic matter is so extremely complex on a molecular level that he wouldn't know where to begin to do the change properly. So, he declines the heroes' offer to be trained by them since they cannot provide the advanced education in biology and chemistry needed to cure the beings he has affected and vows to go to university instead.
- That last bit actually doesn't make that much sense, because one of X-Factor's members, Hank "The Beast" Mc Coy, is the most brilliant biochemist in the Marvel Universe!

Literature

Covenant in the Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant spends a remarkable number of pages not having a real hang of his own Wild Magic. Most of it is pure instinct, even without his knowledge early on. It's not until the second trilogy that we see him directing it toward definite purposes, complete with a training regimen... he uses his wild magic to shave, precisely to teach himself control over it.
Say what you will about the length of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, but it does allow the magic-wielding characters a realistic period of time to get a grasp on controlling and developing their powers. Notably, none of the characters become instant experts, but have a learning curve of three or four books before they gain consistent control. Nyneave takes a full seven books to overcome her block.
- Learning to use saidin without a teacher is so difficult that Rand finally has to trap a Forsaken to keep from getting himself killed. Later, Nynaeve and Elayne hold another one hostage in order to learn lost techniques that have stayed lost for a good three millennia.
Vladimir Taltos has no freaking clue what he's doing with his new Empathic Weapon, Godslayer and has gotten himself in a lot of trouble with such screw-ups as accidentally destroying a sorceress's soul in the process of blocking something nasty she threw at him.

Film

Happens literally in the first Spider-man movie.
"Go web go! ... Fly! ... Up, up, and away! ...''"

Tabletop Games

The Roleplaying game Scion has the character channeling their divine power through Birthrights-- gifts from their god-parents. If someone were to steal a Birthright, they could use all the real owners powers that it channels-- But the chance of failure, and the penalties, are significant though, meaning most players who try this end up dying to this trope.
It takes La Resistance around a year to figure out how to pilot an ANIMa without killing themselves in Bliss Stage. It's still very unintuitive even with proper Anchoring.

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