Characters struggling to figure out how their powers work in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- In All Your Base are Belong to Her, Buffy alumni Dawn arrives in the universe inhabited by SG:1, and quickly discovers that being the Key allows her to interface with the Stargate network on a fundamental level. She only learns what that means through a process of trial and error... all while being pursued through the entire Cheyenne Mountain complex by large numbers of armed and irate Airmen.
- In Amazing Fantasy, Izuku struggles to control all of his new spider powers when they start developing one after the other on his first day back at school. He makes a fool of himself when his Wall Crawling powers stick a kendo club flyer to his hand, waving it around while trying to shake it off. In class, he accidentally destroys his desk with his new Super-Strength while dodging one of Bakugou's explosions. He slams almost face-first into a wall after he jumps twenty feet in the air to avoid an oncoming truck. After that his Venom Strike power electrocutes Peter when he mistakes him for a mugger.
- Boldores And Boomsticks: Whisper tries to use Round, but runs into the problem that, since she's been speaking psychically all the time, she has never in her life actually used her vocal cords.
- The Bridge:
- Several of the Kaiju transformed into native Equestrians run into this problem. Rodan needed a little practice to walk in his new Griffon body. Mothra can shapeshift as a Changeling, but it is difficult for her to hide her wings and horn. Mothra was also taught how to teleport by Twilight Sparkle, but it is a bit shakey the first few times she uses it. Xenilla needed to study a textbook to learn how to perform Unicorn magic. Raiga became a Siren, and needed to be told Sirens can levitate and she needed a bit of trial and error to pull it off.
- An example of a power copier with this problem. Congratulations Aria Blaze, you've copied some of Kaizer Ghidorah's powers. Enjoy the Super-Strength, Gravity Master, Healing Factor, and Super-Toughness that you have no clue how to use while an Eldritch Abomination is hunting you for them! She ends up striking an Enemy Mine deal with Monster X to teach her how to use them.
- Monster X mentions he needs to train to use his powers in his human body.
- Godzilla Junior has it the worst. He's a Unicorn like Xenilla, but he has no idea how to use Unicorn magic. Even worse, he has no real interest in learning how to do it unlike his more scholarly brother.
- Gloriosa Daisy gains her canon Green Thumb powers, but she is still getting the hang of it and sometimes involuntarily summons animated vines.
- In Child of the Storm has this appear relatively frequently, given the number of teenagers and the story goes out of its way to show how terrifyingly dangerous such powers — even relatively weak ones — could be in the hands of someone with absolutely no idea how to control them.
- Hermione has a natural gift for Chaos Magic ( inherited from her birth-mother, Wanda Maximoff), much to her chagrin since she much prefers logical magic, and demonstrates a very limited ability to control it. Despite tutelage from Wanda in the sequel and experimentation, her control remains mixed, and the vast potential dangers and reality-warping potential of Chaos Magic are repeatedly underlined. The fact that Hermione persists in treating it like ordinary magic, which is considerably tamer, doesn't help.
- Harry's Psychic Powers and their sheer scale (weaker than, but in the same weight-class as, his second cousin Jean Grey), along with rapid manifestation, force a very steep learning curve — his poor control nearly kills several people before he consents to proper lessons. By the start of the second book, months of expert tutelage and an intuitive knack (plus a lot of creativity) mean that he's got pretty good control of his powers, but even then, he psychically traumatises half the planet when trying to replicate the psychic cry for help he unconsciously let out at the start of the first book, fracturing Blindfold's sanity in the process. Even later on, after he's got more tutelage, he makes it clear that at best he understands about a tenth of what he's capable of.
- Jean herself has good control over her powers, but until the very end of the first book has very little idea of their sheer potential scope, meaning that she's largely winging it in the finale once she taps into her full strength. Later, she gets extensive training and becomes far more effective.
- Bobby Drake, being an eleven year old with no understanding of his powers, which is problematic since they're prone to manifesting when he's scared or hurt and he has a Big Brother Bully, and Loki explicitly warns his father that if he remains untrained, it risks something happening that cannot be undone. Especially since under competent control, his powers generate a mountain consuming storm that even Thor can't disperse. Thankfully, Professor Xavier takes care of that.
- Clark Kent has a rather difficult relationship with his powers to begin with, and doesn't know what many of them are meant to be, meaning that he usually gets caught by surprise when a new one pops up. Like in Smallville, he's distinctly reluctant to fly, and even once he does in the sequel, he's hilariously bad at it. However, thanks to a mixture of Harry's tutelage and his own intelligence, he learns the basics very quickly. Additionally, as Harry also notes, his Tap on the Head tactics at Super-Speed demonstrate an extraordinary degree of control (otherwise there'd be a lot of messy corpses and/or permanent brain damage).
- When Peter Parker finally gets his spider-powers in Unfinished Business, he spends a significant amount of time freaked out and stuck to a ceiling. Him progressively trying to figure out how to unstick himself one limb at a time ends up being a Funny Background Event. Even after this, his mixed control over the sticking powers remains a Running Gag.
- This is a large part of why Carol, having initially been reluctant to give up the Green Lantern Ring of the late Alan Scott after the Battle of London, is very much not pleased to see it back again and all but begging her to use it to clean up some Unfinished Business. As she explains, her only tutelage was a quick run over the basics from Alan's ghost, and at the time she didn't appreciate just how a) powerful, and b) dangerous it was. Several months of up close and personal understanding how dangerous even ordinary magic is have changed that. Now, she understands that it's a mainline tap to the full magical power of the Earth and just what that means: even with the metaphysical safeties on, the host is a fully-fledged Reality Warper, and capable of cracking the planet. With the safeties off, it's even scarier. As a result, she initially refuses to use it which nearly gets her killed - horribly - by Nimue, who has no such compunction and can break it to her will, and even when she does, she keeps it relatively simple and evens the odds by creating an impromptu Green Lantern Corps.
- Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: Jaune initially struggles to control his Psychic Powers gained from his newfound Force-sensitivity. Professor Goodwitch, assuming that Jaune has a Semblance similar to hers, offers to take him up as her apprentice so she can teach him to control his powers.
- Michikyuu Kanae in Kyon: Big Damn Hero never had a chance to learn how to slide properly. In hindsight, it's probably better she didn't work out how it works.
- Light, Darkness and Paradox: After the first time she uses her silver eyes, Ruby is unable to do so again despite her efforts and despite receiving lessons in magic.
- In The Lightning Strike, while Harry Potter is an experienced wizard, due to him both being in a new reality with new rules of magic and lacking his wand as a focus, after he arrives in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Harry spends some time re-learning how to perform various spells.
- Xander in New Guard
spends several chapters (a few days in-story) trying to figure out his powers as Superman. While some like speed and strength are fairly easy to figure out (though he doesn't know his limits), Xander's first "flight" comes after he jumps in surprise when he goes to the bathroom and his urine breaks the urinal he was using. Despite being airborne, he can't figure out how to move in any direction at all, leading to SG1 pulling him along like a balloon. - Alex Harris, the protagonist of Origin Story, luckily avoids all this. She has all of Power Girl's memories, and thus knows instinctively how to use all of Power Girl's powers. She still plays around with them occasionally just because its fun.
- A Shadow of the Titans: The only reason Raven and Jade are able to defeat the Master of Games after he absorbs the powers of the losers in his tournament is that he has only base control over them, something Jade is quick to point out in her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him.
- When, in Shinji And Warhammer 40 K, Shinji develops ungodly powerful psychic abilities to thwart Sahaquiel it not only completely destroys his ability to pilot Principio Eternus but makes him highly dangerous to everyone and everything. He then spends a chapter or (in a story where the chapters are long enough to be entire seperate stories themselves) being taught to limit them to a more manageable level by some monks. As proof that Tropes Are Tools, this arc is often criticized for being a classic Wacky Wayside Tribe.
- Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: Asuka's powers start to manifest during the battle with the Sixth Angel. Hilarity Ensues during the next couple of chapters as Asuka tries to find out her capabilities (for example, she jumped, could not stop, collided with a building and flew through it).
- Nabiki Tendo had only just become a Were Dragon a few weeks before the start of Teen Titans Tokyo and initially had no interest in exploring her new Draconic Humanoid form and its attendant abilities. Thus, when she's forced into battle as a fledgling superhero, she has only basic instinct and her old skill in Indy Ploys to fall back on at first. She even notes she has no idea how to control or even invoke her multi-purpose Breath Weapon.
- Kyoshi Rising; the title character is an Earthbender, but at the beginning of the story she is only a child and has no formal training whatsoever. She tries to teach herself Earthbending based off what others have told her (mainly stomping around and flailing her arms ala The Last Airbender), but can never move more than a few small rocks at a time (unless she gets angry). Once she gets some formal training, she progresses quickly.
- Much like Danny, Sam had trouble controlling her new powers in the first story of the Facing the Future Series. On top of that, her main power can sometimes be used like spiderwebs.
- DC Fan Universe: Clark Kent has to learn to use his natural Kryptonian powers, which leads to accidents such as setting a barn on fire with his heat vision.
- In The Ghost Called Molly McGee, Molly's new ghostly abilities come with a learning curve.
- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality: Harry spends several chapters conducting scientific experiments to figure out how Hogwarts works. In fact, he concocts a big series of experiments to have Hermione perform... And then quickly has to scrap the lot once the first one shows his fundamental assumption was completely wrong.
- Bucky Barnes Gets His Groove Back & Other International Incidents: There's a learning curve to piloting an alien spaceship that only interfaces with Barnes's metal arm. In order to actually move the spaceship, Barnes has to think about the end result he wants, not about just moving it or deploying weapons or whatever, which according to him is way harder than it sounds. Barnes learns about all of the ship's capabilities by accident, and through trial and error... sometimes explosively. And so what if it causes an international incident or two? It's fine...
- Vision in The War Is Far from Over Now struggles for most of the fight against Ultron due to several factors that all boil down to this trope. First, he isn't used to having a physical body and is technically only an hour old. Second, he has a universal singularity (the Mind Stone) embedded in his body. Third, Vision isn't even sure what his powers are, let alone how to use them. At one point, he puts up a temporary mental shield to protect Tony from his trauma at fighting the Chitauri again but isn't sure what he did or how he did it.
- Notably averted in Ultimate Spider-Woman: Change With The Light. When Mary Jane Watson suddenly finds herself developing bizarre superhuman powers, it doesn't take her long to figure out how to use them. She's already an experienced fighter due to being a blackbelt martial artist, which makes it easier for her to determine how to best use them in a fight.
- In Perfection Is Overrated, Bachiko has the power to rewrite people's personalities by stinging them with summoned bees. This proves more complex than it seems because 1) It's entirely possible for the rewrite to be too vague or too specific to fulfill the assigned purpose, 2) Removing one personality trait in order to influence a target's behavior in some way may not work if the target is acting this way because of other personality traits and 3) Unbeknownst to the user, a second sting, in addition to applying its own changes, completely undoes all the changes associated with the first. As a result, Bachiko tends to make overly dramatic and unsubtle changes to personality, such as making Nao extremely polite in an attempt to get her and Natsuki together, which tend to undermine her overall goals.
- In Hail to the King (Qwapdo), a human man wakes up in Equestria in King Sombra's body. First he has to figure out how to move in a unicorn's body. Next, while he has access to all of King Sombra's great power, he has little experience. It is much easier for him to use the more destructive applications than more peaceful ones. Since King Sombra runs on The Power of Hate, he is actually able to control his powers easier when he gives in to anger, hate, and frustration, but at the risk of losing his mind.
- In The MLP Dreamscape, after willing himself into true existence by imagining himself with the body of a pegasus, Baron becomes Rainbow Dash's "student" in order to learn how to fly and take care of his wings. Rainbow's not happy about it at first, but Baron eventually succeeds.
- Oversaturated World: Group Precipitation: "Lost in the Cracks, by FoME": The "Knowing powers exist but not what they are" type:Author's Notes: You may be wondering what powers an ophiotaurus aspect has. So is Corner Case.
- In Pony POV Series, since Princess Cadence is relatively young compared to the other Alicorns, she's still getting the hang of her abilities. She didn't know Alicorns could shape-shift until Queen Chrysalis pointed it out.
- A plot point in the Triptych Continuum is that alicorns have the powers of all three pony tribes, but haven't necessarily studied the mechanics of those abilities and don't come into their new state with automatic knowledge of how to make them work. This means Twilight is incapable of flight, while she appears to have Power Incontinence to a lethal degree.
- A Gamer In South Blue: When Jack maxes out his WIS stat to 100 and chooses the path of self-discovery (instead of world-discovery), his reward is gaining the [Seimei Kikan], or Life Return ability. This comes with some exceptional passive perquisites, but for the active applications...well, he himself explains it at the beginning of Chapter 14:Narration: Do you recall the first time you ever whistled? Think back now. For years of your younger life it was something that others could do, but not yourself. You would purse your lips out, try your hardest, and end up disappointed as you spat out useless unmusical air. Then one day, perhaps rather unceremoniously, you simply did it. Maybe it was by accident. Maybe it was on purpose. But one day you simply figured out the trick. Suddenly you just knew how. There was nothing wrong with you before. You were always physically capable of whistling. All the tools required to pull it off were under your direct control the entire time. But you just. Didn't. Know. How. This is the crux of [Seimei Kikan].
- In With Strings Attached, all the four struggle with their magic when they first get it, especially Paul, and they undergo a continual learning process throughout the book.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
- Cat-Ra: Catra has a much harder time getting the sword to work. It turns out she was never meant to have it.
- In Season 4, Adora is able to copy the powers of anyone she touches, with a very strict learning curve.
- Superman and Man:
- A man gets stuck into Superman's body for one day. He tries to figure out how to use several powers one by one, X-Ray Vision included.How did one use X-ray vision? Did you have to squint, or call out a secret word mentally?
Almost at the thought of it, he began seeing steel girders in frameworks, people in the rooms in front of him at various activities, a maid vacuuming a rug. - And then he attempts to fly.He began to drop like a rock towards the ground 47 stories below.
He began to yell at roughly the same time.
His blue suit started to get away from him but he grabbed it tighter. How the hell did you make flying work?
- A man gets stuck into Superman's body for one day. He tries to figure out how to use several powers one by one, X-Ray Vision included.
- Where We Don't Belong: Mio and Sena run into this as they start training to fight like a "proper" Driver and Blade team. Not only have they lost the ability to instantly master each other's weapons as Ouroboros, forcing Mio to relearn how to use Sena's hammer properly, since Sena lacks the instinctive knowledge of a Blade they don't even know how to use an Affinity Link at first and need pointers.
