Keeper of Porn
- Luann: Luann, usually portrayed as aimless and goalless, wanders into her boyfriend's drama class, offhandedly makes suggestions on how to stage a large-scale musical — that the class had been performing for over a decade — and the teacher praises her for her brilliance. At this point her middle name should be Mary Sue.
Besides the unnecessary Mary Sue accusation, the comic in question had the teacher (a Cloud Cuckoo Lander type) praise Luann for her outside the box thinking. This had less to do with Luann's "brilliance" and more with the teacher's quirks.
My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn.
Is Basir really an example? After the reveal, I don't remember him doing anything that another augment couldn't do. He's also spent his entire life learning how to hide his abilities. Once he was exposed, using them in a war made a certain amount of sense.
Hide / Show Replies
After the reveal, he was able to instantly calculate any statistic asked of him no matter how unlikely it was for him to actually have had the training and background knowledge in the subject the statistics and calculations would pertain to. As anyone who works in statistics can point out, that's impossible without an understanding of the subject the statistic is embedded in. For example, for Bashir to be able to instantly calculate how long it would take a broken Jem'Hadar warship to return to Federation space isn't a simple matter of number-crunching, it would require knowledge of physics, astro-navigation, what speed he was going to base his calculation on, understanding their exact location in three-dimensional space as well as the exact point to which they want to return (for him to have a distance to focus on for his calculation), and so on.
Not only would this make him an instant expert in multiple scientific/engineering disciplines but it would also require him to have a more advanced understanding of how Dominion engineering works than the Federation actually had (even for the ship they were in) at that point in the storyline. In an attempt to make him look super-intelligent, the writers tried to have him calculating odds in his head faster than even computers could do. However, they didn't seem to understand that no-one, no matter how intelligent, cannot compute numbers without understanding the scientific and engineering principles that lie behind the subject to produce the data that can then be calculated. The reason Bashir didn't seem much different to the other augments is because the writing staff was making exactly the same mistake with all the augments. They were given whatever knowledge was needed for the plot to produce the required statistic. That's Instant Expert.
Edited by Wyldchyld If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
In the live action tv it should be cited that old '80 show, The Greatest American Hero, as an aversion. The protagonist lose the manual to his alien-gifted super suit, and pass most of the series trying to learn how to use it.
Nac
Just wondering... What's the difference between this and Possesion Implies Mastery?
Just call me Nac.
No Dragon Power
What if I astblish that it's one of the powers of the main churturs? Will that make it none mary sueish?
With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill. Hide / Show Replies
Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: InstantExpert = PossesionImpliesmastery?
, started by NerdAtComputer on Mar 18th 2011 at 11:23:37 PM
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman