Basic Trope: A character deeply desires to become something, but has no talent for it.
- Played Straight: Alice is passionate about flying and really wants to be a pilot, but has no talent for it and cannot fly no matter how hard she tries.
- Exaggerated: Alice has dreamt for every waking hour of being a pilot since she was born, but every plane she flies in the simulator catches fire before they even leave the ground, let alone real aircraft which they are wary of letting her get near to.
- Downplayed: Alice really wants to be a pilot, and she can fly a plane safely, but not at the level being a commercial or military pilot requires.
- Justified:
- Alice has extremely poor eyesight, and this Dream-Crushing Handicap means she cannot have the medical clearance to fly.
- Alice suffers from a serious case of ADHD that makes it very difficult for her to safely operate a plane.
- Alice is simply incompetent in general, and piloting is just one of the many things she sucks at.
- Inverted: Alice is the Ace Pilot, and cannot be bothered about flying.
- Subverted: Alice starts out as the last of her class in flight school, but becomes competent by the end of the course.
- Double Subverted: ...Except she never progresses from flying light aircraft, never managing to handle anything more advanced.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: Alice's performance varies wildly; sometimes she'll be an astounding prodigious ace, and sometimes she'll fail to even start the plane.
- Averted: Alice is a competent pilot, and is on her way to a professional career of flying.
- Enforced: The story is an allegory about giving up your Tragic Dream.
- Lampshaded: "I know you're really passionate about flying, but maybe it's just not your thing."
- Exploited: ???
- Invoked: ???
- Defied:
- Knowing she's horrible at flying, Alice never pursues it in the first place.
- Implied: Alice is a passionate pilot-in-training who is noted to be in her eighth year of training for her basic private pilot licensenote .
- Discussed: "To see a passionate person go nowhere with their passions because they don't have the talent for it. It's really sad."
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is passionate about flying, and tries very hard to become a competent pilot, but hardly goes anywhere despite her efforts and the help she gets. Realizing that she likely will never become one, Alice sinks into a long depression.
- She keeps training to become a pilot despite her lack of ability to pilot and the risks of her flying, and eventually gets into a serious accident.
- Having failed to become a pilot after trying so hard for so long, Alice becomes a bitter resenter and Green-Eyed Monster towards her more successful friends, and her relationships with them sours.
- Alice in her desperation tries dangerous transhumanist Applied Phlebotinum in the hope that she can pursue her dream.
- The audience is sick of never seeing Alice achieve anything, Too Bleak, Stopped Caring ensues and the show is cancelled.
- After having proven her incompetence one time too many, she is barred from furthering her training as a pilot, and is forced to move on.
- Reconstructed: Alice comes to terms with her lack of talent, and while she still hopes and trains hard to become a pilot someday, she acknowledges and is accepting of the fact that she may never become one.
- Played for Laughs: Everyone screams and runs for their lives when Alice steps onto the airfield.
- Played For Drama: Alice runs herself ragged trying to pass flight training, but the stress and repeated failures take their toll on a psyche that cannot admit to the possibility that she can't do this.
