Sacrificed Basic Skill For Awesome Training / Literature

• In Anne Mason's YA novels about linguist Kira Warden, throughout Kira's childhood, her parents were constantly taking her on their missions to other planets. This helped make her an outstanding linguist and cultural interpreter but meant that she missed out on a lot of the general education that her agemates received.
• In the Alex Verus novels, it's revealed that Alex himself suffers from this. When he loses his powers briefly in Cursed it's revealed that he has serious trouble making logical connections and can barely walk straight without magical guidance.
• Artemis Fowl is the world's smartest human; he has several patents, designed an opera house, became a musical genius and expert in combat tactics, and wrote several medical books, all by the age of 13 or so. However, he cannot cook (he tries, and pretty much fails, to make a sandwich), is too physically weak to hold or shoot anything heavier than a fairy handgun, and even when he has Butler start teaching him martial arts, he has no skill with it. He can't even remember having climbed a ladder in his life.
  • He also has extreme difficulty communicating with people without making them hate him, although that has less to do with this trope than his colossal arrogance and condescending attitude towards anyone he doesn't respect, and the list of people he does respect can be counted on one hand. His only friend (Butler) is literally paid to be around him. And once puberty hit, he was quickly distracted by every girl he found pretty and struggled to keep his mind straight.
  • On the other hand, his split personality Orion is more skilled in these areas.
  • Butler, on the other hand, can cook (to make sure no one poisons Artemis, presumably) and is ludicrously skilled in combat, but has very little ability to do anything creative, or things outside his training/orders. As a min-maxed pair, Butler and Artemis work pretty well; they only have problems when they get split up, so, naturally, they get separated pretty often.
  • Foaly is in the same boat, although as a centaur, he is able to trample people...
    • Small people. Centaurs are on the same scale as the rest of the fairy folk, meaning Foaly probably equals ponyman.
• In the Boojumverse story "The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward", when Cynthia becomes the doctor of the Jarmulowicz Astronomica, she forms this opinion of her predecessor. The previous doctor was a genius in pioneering cutting-edge research, but not so good on the fundamentals; while pushing the boundaries of knowledge, she overlooked that most of the crew were suffering from basic malnutrition.
• In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, the Beta Team were allowed out of the underground base every week. this has left a number of gaps in their knowledge — that stages have trap doors is one plot-relevant one.
• Cradle Series: Yerin was adopted by the Sword Sage when she was a child, becoming his disciple — despite Sages historically never taking disciples. He raised her to follow his Path in the sacred arts, turning her into one of the most powerful sacred artists of her advancement level, and giving her a solid foundation to continue after he's gone. He didn't bother teaching her anything else, from reading to politics to geography. At the start of the story, she doesn't even know the name of the country she's in.
• Kirth Gersen of The Demon Princes series, much like Sosuke Sagara, has been focused primarily on combat since childhood; his social skills aren't completely missing, but he's pretty inept.
  • He had a different love-interest to one degree or another in each of the five books. Not exactly a shabby performance, plus he was aware of, and occasionally prone to undue introspection about, the abnormal life he chose to lead.
• Discworld:
  • Captain Carrot in was raised by dwarfs, so while he's quite apt at taking out threats, he doesn't get sarcasm or innuendo. Then again, neither do dwarfs (this is a cultural thing because dwarves live in relatively dangerous locations, so making sure everyone believes you when you say a cave-in is about to occur is a survival trait).
    • This is not to say he's incapable of guile or deception; he just does it in his own way. In one scene in Men at Arms, he tells the head of the Fools' Guild that he has "special orders" he must follow if he is asked to leave (namely, that he must accept such a request), and insinuates that the consequences would be very bad for someone if he was forced to carry them out.
    • He also admits quite honestly that he would feel "very ashamed" if forced to carry out his orders. This ability is something he developed after prolonged exposure to city life; when he first left the mountain, he was absolutely straightforward. Dwarves have also developed the ability to be quite sneaky at times and have a highly complex culture. Maybe it's just that Carrot was raised by uncomplicated country folk, and was also rather young when he first arrived in Ankh-Morpork.
  • Rincewind as well: he's a Fragile Speedster, smart, but with few practical skills. This is largely because wizards aren't supposed to have any practical skills; they leave those to the witches.
    • Rincewind is an odd example of this trope as applied to wizards: having practically no capacity for magic whatsoever, he's had to become much more physically capable than your average wizard simply to survive in a world that seems to be actively trying to kill him. As a result, at the end of The Light Fantastic, he managed to defeat one of the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions — which was strong enough to petrify several senior wizards — by punching it into submission. He also solved the problem of the unstoppable Sourcerer, a fountainhead of magic, with a brick in a sock. He's not tough at all — just compared to most wizards, and has more importantly developed a talent for thinking in straight lines.
  • The Last Continent hangs a lampshade on the fact that society itself has done this when Ponder Stibbons' internal monologue defines a savage as someone who only knows useless and backwards things like how to tell an edible mushroom from a poisonous one, instead of important, civilized things like the square root of 27 (five and a bit)... while he's stranded on a deserted island with the rest of the wizards, who are equally civilized.
• The children in Ender's Game, most notably the titular character, are separated from their families at a young age and placed in an orbiting military boarding school. The most promising, such as Ender and Bean, are intentionally isolated even from this small community by the teachers. The result are genius commanders who have little connection with their culture of origin and have no idea how to navigate typical social situations outside of a military command structure. Being geniuses, those who are motivated to do so can learn to fake it pretty easily, and most seem to adapt okay after a few years on the outside.
  • Hilariously alluded to in the sequel Shadow of the Giant at a gathering of Ender's old jeesh of military super-geniuses.
  "It was an analogy," said Rackham. "If you hadn't spent your entire childhood playing war games, you'd actually know something. You're all so uneducated."
  • It's established in the book that beyond commanding his Jeesh and working within a military context, Ender (and his brother Peter) are capable of understanding human emotions.... And use that knowledge to manipulate people for their own ends. Early in the book Ender intentionally engages in Troubling Unchildlike Behavior to make sure some bullies leave him alone. His brother Peter, meanwhile, is an outright sociopath who uses his genius to go unnoticed as such by his parents.
• Not so much a basic skill as cultural knowledge, but wizards in Harry Potter are very ignorant of the world outside their community. For example, Hogwarts has to offer classes in basic Muggle technology and culture. Despite Hogsmeade being the only all-wizard community in Britain, most wizards are so self ostracized they can't function outside their Masquerade without drawing attention to themselves. Even Arthur Weasley, who was director of the Ministry office dealing with Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, needed Harry's help to correctly pay a cashier with British pounds.
  • Also, in the first book, one of the obstacles defending the Philosopher's Stone is a logic riddle because, as Hermione puts it, "A lot of the greatest wizards don't have an ounce of logic in them, they'd be stuck here forever."
  • Interestingly, as Harry and Hermione were raised by Muggles, they can be ignorant of wizard culture. For example, in the final book, they haven't heard of the tales of Beedle the Bard, which are fairy tales set in the wizarding world and which would be very familiar to magical youths, who to contrast wouldn't have heard of Cinderella and other Muggle mythology.
  • Though given the increasingly small number of Pureblood wizards and the rising number of Muggleborn or half-Muggle children, it's mostly older wizards who are clueless. Many students and younger wizards are perfectly capable of passing for Muggle when they need to.
  • We also only have a fairly small sample set when it comes to wizards in the wider world, and both the primary examples do have some sort of excuse: Hagrid's job probably keeps him in and around Hogwarts and the neighbouring village, so he wouldn't get a lot of practice. Arthur comes off as more than a little absent-minded (it's been speculated, with some good evidence, that he might be on the autistic spectrum) and his job heavily stresses the misuse part of Misuse of Muggle Artifacts, so he probably doesn't see a lot of mundane items in the first place.
  • It's also a common criticism of the books that no mention is made of typical school curriculum taught at Hogwarts. Somewhat justified; History and Chemistry seem to be focused exclusively on the History of Magic and Potions, which would be the more important versions of the subject to a wizard, Physics has basically gone out the window, and Biology is split between Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures. However, that also means that any Hogwarts student's Math, (Muggle) History, and Writing/English skills are pretty much capped off at the sixth grade. It's a wonder that any of them can do the complex conversions required for wizarding economics (though that might be covered by Arithmancy — and in any case, goblins run the wizarding economy), or the quite lengthy essays that are demanded of them by the Third year on.
• Doc Savage, Omniglot, Genius Bruiser Omnidisciplinary Scientist, and Badass Normal Charles Atlas Superpower Proto-Superhero never learned, or figured out, how to cook. Far more important, he spent approximately zero time with girls during his childhood and adolescence. As Philip José Farmer notes in his bio of the great man, Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life:
  The great minds that nurtured him forgot that when Doc went out into the world, he would find that half of it was female. And a man who doesn't know women is half a man. Or half a superman.
• Harry Dresden in The Dresden Files occasionally faces enemies who have done this, and are ultimately undone when they lose access to their super cool abilities and have no fundamentals to fall back on.
• Inverted in Fate/strange Fake with Enkidu. In his original clay doll form, he was monstrously powerful (only fitting, considered he was a divine Noble Phantasm originally meant to curb-stomp Gilgamesh), but had no other skills otherwise. After spending some time with the divine harlot Shamhat, he assumed her form, losing most of his power but giving him the potential to become more than a weapon.
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series: The Second Foundation abandoned attempts at developing any new advances in mechanical technology or the physical sciences, or even preserving most of the existing ones, instead focusing exclusively on developing psychohistory. As a result, they have Psychic Powers and can predict the future with mathematics, but they can't defend themselves against physical attack — which is why they have to stay hidden. And which is why, every hundred years or so, they must scramble to mind-wipe yet another person who threatens to develop an anti-psychic field, which, in-universe, is slightly less complicated than a button-and-a-dial remote control.
• In Le Morte D Arthur, Lancelot says at one point that he's bad at climbing trees. The Once and Future King, a modern update, expands this to a general lack of all skills that children normally learn through play since he spent most of his childhood concentrating on his combat skills to the exclusion of all else.
• Harrow of The Locked Tomb series can summon armies of skeletons like nobody's business, but she has No Social Skills, is phenomenally bad at taking care of herself, and has the physique of a wet noodle.
• Vince of Super Powereds, thanks to his homeless childhood and strange upbringing. Survival skills? Good enough. Fighting? got that in spades. Social skills? minimal. operating basic appliances? Not a clue. There's also Chad, arguably the best fighter in the class, whose every thought is focused on training to be the very best he can be. Even his mother is concerned that he has no actual friends but a number of sparring partners. He actually uses his "total control" power to prevent himself from sensing any emotions towards others until later, when he becomes curious. Vince's friends note that he and Chad are the same in the No Social Skills respect, as well as their general obtuseness to Double Entendres (Chad tells Vince that a girl has invited him to a club only to avoid inviting someone who would grope her all night long, and both accept it at face value; the others wonder how it's possible to be this dense for not one but two people).
• In the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, it's said that Holmes has next to no practical knowledge that isn't related to detective work. He professes surprise when Watson tells him that Earth revolves around the sun (and states his intention to forget about it as best he can, so as not to fill up his mind with irrelevant information — comparing it to a 'brain attic', and information with furniture). This part of his character was quickly dropped by the author, as by A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock has quite a great deal of political knowledge (in contradiction to Watson's claim in Scarlet that Holmes' has a "feeble" grasp of politics), Holmes often peppers his speech with literature references, and, in any case, Holmes' ultimate career as a bee-keeper would suggest he's picked up the practical gardening knowledge that Watson claims he lacks. Then again, it's possible that this is the result of offstage Character Development.