[ SECRET POST #4789 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4789 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 54 secrets from Secret Submission Post #686.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. https://i.imgur.com/BDdEE0M.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

IA.

And also, a lot of "genius" characters really... aren't. It's often really hard to show a genius character being a genius believably - in the same way, although maybe not to the same extent, it can be really hard to demonstrate a fictional rapper being a genius rapper, or a fictional comedian being a genius comedian, like in Studio 60, or whatever, because the rapper or comedian is only going to be as good as the person writing them. Very tricky.

[(Anonymous)]

This can work with mystery shows (the genre where you often see this character type) because the writer can control the information available to the audience as well as to the characters. Unfortunately, this tends to fall in a heap if a) the writers don't do it well or b) the show/books/whatever continue on and the writers run out of ideas too fast. And if the writers don't actually know as much as they think (see: House for a prime example) then it just gets ridiculous.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah totally. It's quite funny, for example, I play chess a bit and any time a show uses chess to try to demonstrate how smart a character is, it's just excruciating

[(Anonymous)]

Artemis Fowl is a genius. We know he is a genius because he's a smug fuck who never shuts up about what a genius he is. Also because the narrator said so. Butler was also there.

[tabaqui]

Sadly, most writers seem to think that 'genius' means either smug, annoying, or weirdly scattered and nutty. So, yeah - most 'genius' characters don't come off that way at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I think Mohinder in Heroes was pretty well done - like most IRL genius people, he's very, very book smart, but when it comes to human interactions, he's a hot mess.

Sylar might as well have dropped an anvil on Mohinder's head with "I AM SYLAR" written on it and the idiot is *completely* shocked when he finally, finally works it out.

[(Anonymous)]

Hard agree. At this point if something is touted as 'clever' or 'smart' I internally sigh because I know it won't be all that intelligent at all, and it'll just be a case of the media withholding information from the audience then whipping it out later as some kind of 'look how clever this is!' gotcha.

The sad thing is it works, which is why it keeps happening.

As a note: it's perfectly fine for media to be dumb, if anything I relish media that's kinda stupid but knows it, it's dumb media that pretends to be smart I find tiresome.

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn’t help that fiction is always going super OTT with their “genius” characters. They always have to be the absolute smartest, 200+ IQs, way ahead of everybody, and capable of learning absolutely anything in less than a day.

Like, I straight up admit my hypocrisy here: I shipped Johnlock for years, and Tony Stark is one of my favorite characters. But I’ll be the first to admit that neither Sherlock nor Tony is a remotely realistic depiction of genius.

TBH, I usually find the most realistic depictions of very high intelligence to be characters who are…almost a little bit boring. (Which is NOT me saying they shouldn’t be written. I sometimes like a little bit of mundanity in a character if it makes them feel more real and grounded.)

[(Anonymous)]

See, Tony I like because he is super smart and also in other ways super, super dumb. He reminds me of a guy I went to school with who was incredibly intelligent and became a sought-after surgeon in his 30s...and then died because he liked to buy expensive cars and race them. On regular roads, not a racetrack. So dumb!

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, yeah. I like Tony for a lot of reasons that can largely be summed up by "He's a genius and an idiot and a total hot mess."

But the fact that he's a complex character doesn't really mean his genius, specifically, is well-written, IMO. He's still a savant to an absurd degree about pretty much every hard science out there. Within the context of something as OTT and unsubtle as the MCU, that kind of thing is fun and consistent with the story, so I'm happy to roll with it. But I still wouldn't call Tony's genius a well-written character element.

[(Anonymous)]

To me, there’s intelligent writing, and then there’s intelligent topical content.

Intelligent writing can show up anywhere and kind of look like anything? BoJack Horseman has incredibly intelligent writing, IMO. GLOW has intelligent writing. BSG had intelligent writing and so did Mad Men, etc., etc.

If a bunch of people tout the writing of a particular thing as intelligent, I’m likely to at least look into it a little.

But if I get the impression that what’s being called intelligent is the topical content, I tend to be a lot more skeptical. Because honestly? I really don’t think fiction is very good at providing topical content in a genuinely intelligent way. You get all these forensic shows and medical shows and law shows and people have a tendency to tout them as “intelligent” because they’re about shit you need to get a Masters or a PhD to be qualified to deal with. But fiction needs to be entertaining and engaging, which means factual accuracy must often be sacrificed, and usually any kind of sincere, in-depth look into what these fields are really like and what that means for society doesn’t really happen either.

Or you get the Sherlock types shows, which artificially complicate their plots and conflate “cleverness” with intelligence, which for my money is just- like- can we not?

[(Anonymous)]

I know this is about books/movies/tv and I do agree, but I can't help but think of o e of the most popular fics in a past fandom of mine. A lot of readers called it intelligent, but what it really was was sesquipedalian for no reason at all. The worst thing was, the author often misused the big words they had almost definitely looked up to sound smarter.

[(Anonymous)]

Will you say which fandom?

[(Anonymous)]

Pacific Rim.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, okay. There's a fic in one of my old fandoms (not Pacific Rim) that was hotly debated in exactly this way. A huge number of people worship it, but a significant amount of the ones who don't worship it criticize it for being sesquipedalian (the most ironic word in existence, y/y?).

I'm among the crowd that loves this fic immeasurably. IMO it really is incredibly well written and the characters really do come off as genuinely intelligent. But the criticism of it isn't completely unfair either. The author definitely loves fancy words - in some cases maybe slightly too much - and some of the words she used in this fic were probably a bit of a stretch (though most of the time she used them fairly well IMO).

[catdetective]

haha oh man nayrt but called it, that fic...

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, it requires a lot of planning and research to make genius characters to come off as believable and not just totally smug. Unfortunately most writers don't put in the work and think their word is somehow good enough.

[(Anonymous)]

I have two friends who are legitimate geniuses and I've never seen anybody like them depicted in media. They're also both psychological disasters but it's hard to say precisely how much of that can be attributed to their intelligence and how much to their terrible parents.

Though there's no question that being the smartest person in the room does make them arrogant in a way that isn't earned - being smart isn't the same thing as knowing everything. They have trouble accepting that there are people who know things that they don't know, especially if those people aren't as smart as them.

[meredith44]

I was around a lot of "genius" people in real life, and most of them were boring. Or annoying. Or both. I don't necessarily want to watch or read about them. I did mostly enjoy House and Elementary, though, and there are a couple of other genius characters I'm fine with.

I generally don't want to watch/read fiction touted as intelligent, though. I mostly care about what entertains me. And 90% of the time that is something I shut my brain off while watching or reading. I do intersperse that with non-fiction at times, which I tend to have higher standards for. Although I've not read any in a bit because all of the political stuff I read in a row really depressed me, so I went back to escapist fiction.

Basically, I'm rambling, mostly to say I also tend to avoid fiction described as intelligent, so I can empathize. I also agree that Swiss cheese plots can be annoying. Heck, sometimes just a basic factual error can throw me out of something badly.

[meadowphoenix]

is this about westworld

I like clever writing which knows precisely how to obscure how its geniuses are geniuses, and exactly the human part that makes them interesting (usually not their genius), so i guess i agree OP. leverage is fun for me. it's plots aren't always holeless, but it knows how to construct a human puzzle.