Macos Big Sur Not Downloading
Literature
In Beware of Chicken, when Liu Xianghua decides to take command of the Misty Lake Sect as the new sectmaster, she must face the trial of defeating three Misty Lake elders to prove her worthiness. She instead decides to defeat all of them, and to leave absolutely no doubt as to her strength, does so without the aid of her Steam Furnace, which normally allows her to punch well above her "weight class". She succeeds, naturally. In the Dresdenverse anyone who bears the Winter Knight's mantle must restrain themselves this way or risk falling victim to The Corruption. (We've seen at least one Knight who gave into temptation to use it at full power, and the results were not pretty.) It takes a lot of Heroic Willpower to even resist the mantle's conscious urges, and even then, the Knight gradually grows accustomed to the strength and speed it gives him, forgetting the limitations of normal people and becoming increasingly cruel. The protagonist is clearly established as a Determinator, and even he acknowledges that he won't be able to stave its urges off eventually. In Cold Days he submits to the mantle's energy to win an especially difficult fight, and his ensuing actions are both unnervingly sadistic and very powerful. Later books establish that the Winter Mantle is specifically intended to be resisted by the Winter Knight: a Knight that doesn't do so is too weak to be a Knight. Notably, while the temptation to give in to the Mantle is always present, it's never overwhelming, and Harry consistently shows that he can easily resist it and even claw himself back from the bring without too much trouble...unless he's horribly provoked. Though far from weak, Albus Dumbledore from Harry Potter outright admits to limiting the power he could reach, in the first chapter of the first book:note It turns out this is not limited to magical power, but political power as well (he turns down being Minister for Magic five times in his life), and why he does it is revealed in the final book.Dumbledore: "You flatter me. Voldemort had powers that I will never have."McGonagall: "Only because you're too... well... noble to use them." A fair number of the titular Heralds of Valdemar have psychic or magic abilities which could ruin another person (and if the other person deserves it, they will), but in most situations they hold themselves back and look for other solutions. The Companions are the invaluable gatekeepers in this system, since they Choose new Heralds, favoring those who aren't inclined to misuse their powers. In the Last Herald-Mage Trilogy, Gala's Chosen catastrophically uses his talents and training for evil and she repudiates him; after that, it seems like Companions monitor their Chosen's thoughts and actions with less of a concern for privacy and are more willing to intervene before it gets to that point. At the start of The Hollows Rachel is doing this, by doing only white earth magic spells. White spells are less powerful than black spells, and the line is clearer with earth magic than ley line magic. However, circumstances keep forcing her to use black magic and demon curses. Subverted later in Black Magic Sanction where it is shown white magic can be as strong as black magic but requires greater skill to do so. Rachel isn't much for studying though and thus chooses to use black and demon magic as a shortcut when she needs power. This is beginning to have some rather negative long term implications. In The Immortals, the concept of Equivalent Exchange and magic that has costs beyond exhausting and potentially killing the caster is introduced (the previous quartet hadn't mentioned such a thing). Daine flatly and rather petulantly refuses to believe it and thinks Numair is making up excuses for why he won't solve a given problem with his powerful magic, complaining repeatedly that she doesn't think anything horrible will happen. She also has this reaction to the Graveyard Hag, a Greater God, telling her that even a goddess can't simply do what she wants but has to act in small ways or through mortal vessels, who must be chosen with care so they won't break. Because he hates so much that he has it, the only time in the Knight and Rogue Series that Michael uses magic is when he's in a life or death situation and activates it without thinking. In Max Frei's Labyrinths of Echo Sir Kofa Yokh is introduced as Master Listener, whose job is to mingle in all sorts of public places to gather and process information. Being a jovial somewhat rotund Master of Disguise by means of Humanshifting obviously helps with that. But before Kofa Yokh became the Master Listener, he was the general of the city police during the War of the Orders and is likely the most powerful Plain Magic user in Echo. In Nettle & Bone, Agnes has phenomenal curse powers, but she deliberately doesn't use them because being a good person is much more important to her. The Scholomance: The protagonist El has an Apocalypse Maiden-tier affinity for Black Magic and destructive spells of all kinds, whether she wants it or not. As such, she can't sacrifice so much as an ant for power and strictly limits her magic for fear of killing her entire school in a bout of Power Incontinence and/or irrevocably corrupting her soul. She's a bit jealous of people whose affinities have more useful everyday applications than "All shall love me and despair." At the end of Michael Crichton's Sphere the surviving characters (some of them, anyway) will themselves into simply forgetting their Physical God status, thus losing it, on the off chance they go mad with power. In The Wandering Inn, people become more powerful by gaining Levels and earning Skills. Ryoka rebels against the system by intentionally not gaining any Classes, Levels, or Skills...despite their obvious advantages. Doing this is so counter-intuitive that most characters are shocked when they find out. In Warbreaker Vasher suppresses his Returned Breath so that he can pass as normal. He can, of course, unleash it whenever he wants. He's pretty badass even without it, though. In The Zombie Knight, Harper holds back on using a powerful transformation until it is the only way to win. Justified because the state makes him unable to control himself beyond "try not to kill my friends unless I can't find anyone else", and there was a decent chance that it could have killed his reaper.