Playing With / Chores Without Powers

Basic Trope: Someone with magical abilities, superpowers, etc. does menial labor without using said powers, usually as a punishment.

• Played Straight: Bob can turn his fingers into knives. His mentor Alice makes him peel and chop a mountain of potatoes with an ordinary peeler and kitchen knife.
• Exaggerated: No one has ever used their powers to do their chores. When Bob brings up the possibility, everyone is shocked and appalled at the idea.
• Downplayed: Alice makes Bob peel the potatoes with a peeler, but lets him use his knife-fingers to chop them.
• Justified:
  • Alice is trying to teach Bob not to rely too much on his powers in case he loses them.
  • Bob had already learned how to use a peeler by the time he gained the ability to turn his fingers into knives. If it ain't broken…
• Subverted: Alice tells Bob to do his chores without the use of his powers, and he agrees, but later it turns out he secretly did use them in a non-obvious way.
• Inverted:
  • Alice forbids Bob from using a potato peeler to chop and peel the potatoes. He must use his knife fingers.
  • The chores are something impossible to do without Bob using his knife fingers.
• Parodied:
  • Alice forces Bob to waste hours trying to chop a single potato with the dullest knife imaginable, even when it's Christmas Eve and relatives are coming for dinner in 3 hours.
  • Students graduating from Tropewarts School of Magic are shown to be severely lacking in skill because they spend so much time doing chores without magic in the name of "discipline" that they have little time to actually practice their magic.
• Averted:
  • Everyone uses their powers to do their chores. Doing them in a mundane way never happens at all.
  • Mundane Utility
• Defied: Bob refuses to waste time peeling and chopping potatoes for hours by hand when he could do it almost instantly with his knife-fingers.
• Zigzagged: Sometimes Alice makes Bob chop potatoes by hand, other times she lets him use his knife-fingers to chop them when she's in a good mood.
• Deconstructed:
  • Alice forbids Bob to use his powers for anything except superhero work. Because he doesn't practice with them often enough, he has no idea how to use them when he's thrust onto the battlefield, and the villain gets away.
  • Bob is so tired from all his chores that when a villain strikes the city, he's in no state to fight them.
• Reconstructed:
  • Alice and Bob work out a healthy balance between Bob getting a good amount of practice with his powers and not forgetting how to get by without them.