Clever Vs. Smart tag

i had to disagree. if roland is not cunning, he would not send hugo as his ambassador, while also sends a 'shadow'.

being a strategist, needs to be cunning. and enticing tilly's witch to see greycastle as better home, means he's being cunning

 

Well, I might not have picked the best example, but it certainly does exist a story where the clever Mc is not a secretive person.

 

I would refer to the "Synonym discussion" here:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cunning

TL;DR it says that in clever/cunning clever "stresses physical or mental quickness, deftness, or great aptitude" while cunning "implies great skill in constructing or creating" (also when compared in the negative sense with, let's say, sly, it "suggests the inventive use of sometimes limited intelligence in overreaching or circumventing", which is the definition of clever).

In smart/clever, no synonym discussion is available in that dictionary, but when checking "intelligent" we can see a discussion between several categories of "smart" (intelligent, clever, alert and quick-witted) and it says that clever "implies native ability or aptness and sometimes suggests a lack of more substantial qualities".

Edit: to make it more comprenhensible, a purely "cunning" person is adept at making things happen while a purely "clever" person has the ability to react quickly, but otherwise they are mostly the same.

 

Because the purpose is to clean up tags, since we have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many, just changing the wording won't really help with that.

At any rate, I voted for Smart, since those 2 seem to be mostly the same.

 

Maybe something like "Crafty Protagonist" and "Knowledgeable Protagonist", then?
Though 'crafty' seems a bit too close to 'cunning' (Maybe if you changed the 'cunning' tag to 'devious'? I don't think English has the perfect words we need... )

I guess if tags came with explicit explanations in the mouse-over box, we could stop arguing over the dictionary definitions... Then again, I recognize that it would be a lot of boring work to write explanations for every tag...

 

mmmmmmm What do you think of this @runsing @Tony

 

Why is there no option for "neither"?

Let me explain why I think so:
A clever or smart mc isn't too important. What I mean is for me he can be clever or stupid, I wouldn't mind, I think the other established genres tell you enough already. Why make things even more complicated? If he is an evil mastermind then just add the tag "antihero".

I know now someone might retort: "But what if the mc is a smart or clever good guy"? Well you can add the tag "hero", which seems to sound stupid too. Anyway I dislike this tag for some reason, but well that's just my feeling. Therefore I refused to vote and I will stay adamant about this decision until you add the option of "neither". Thank you very much!

 

They kinda click a bit differently in my mind, but I can't really seem to find some big difference. Smart does kinda sound more like it describes an intelligent and knowledgeable person, while clever sounds more like a skillful or resourceful type of person, but that's just my opinion.

 

But then you can't describe the Mc quite well, smart/clever is a very important tag because it's one of the basic characteristics of a person. Being an antihero does not necessarily mean you're an evil mastermind.

 

You have a point. May I ask whether your decision stems from reading Release That Witch, since Roland is a smart MC?
When I read something, most of the time the mcs I read about are rather "wise" or just "bold" or "badass" that's why for me it's not so important. I guess it comes from the fact that we like different novels

 

Technically, "crafty" is "cunning". Went to check Oxford dictionary to compare with M-W and they stress the deceitful meaning (as well as mentioning that it's related to the verbs "know" and "can"). Going with the same source, clever would be "quick and skilled" (seems to have originally meant "quick to catch hold", then used as a metaphor), while "smart" is shown as a full synonym of clever, but informal (meaning that, in this case, "clever" would be the proper term).

If you want to choose only one of them, decide which dictionary you want to go by; if Merriam-Webster, then "smart" and "cunning", while if Oxford, "clever" and "cunning" (Oxford has British english and US english dictionaries, which sometimes show different meanings, but in this case the only difference was the order, as British shows "1. tidy, fashionable 2. (inf.) clever 3. quick, brisk" and US "1.(inf.) clever 2. tidy, fashionable 3. quick, brisk").

 

Well if you want a not smart Character I can point to Issei of "Highschool DXD" or the infamous Ichika of "Infinite Stratos"

 

This is not what I meant. But thank you. I watched highschool DXD and enjoyed it for the ecchi. Now I am too old for this though and enjoy more chuunie things like the king's avatar, ah wait it's not exactly chuunie, but a gaming thing, well I guess I like gaming, because I have been playing games forever

 

Then may I ask what should we do to differentiate between Issei and someone like Tatsuya from "Irregular at the Magical Highschool"?

 

Well, even though I really do like RtW, my decision did not stem from it. It's just that I simply prefer to have tags so that readers can differentiate between the types of the MCs. I love me some smart mc but most of the novels I read are OP MCs, haha.

 

There is the possibility of asking fellow nuf users of course. Though this is not the ultimate solution. Maybe yeah such a "smart" or "clever" tag would just be the solution that people needed. And I don't know what's "Irregular at the Magical Highschool", but is the mc of high school dxd really that stupid? I thought he was dense, and a boobs loving pervert. Ah and he wanted to be harem king lol, that too

Haha I see, the last part made me laugh brother, I am the same

 

Whether they are a hero or an antihero, those words don't necessarily mean the MC is smart. Both hero and antihero can be either smart or stupid. Hero and antihero are fine as tags, but they can't replace the meaning of smart, clever, cunning and so on.

 

I start to get the point everybody in this thread is having and I try to think of the right term for such a tag, intelligent, scheming, ah we just want one tag, but which word would be the right one, I can't decide

 

The thing is, schemers are generally intelligent, but being intelligent doesn't necessarily make you a schemer. Or does it? 'Intelligent' isn't bad though. 'Scheming' could be another tag, but I think that 'cunning' is good enough. I don't know, though.

 

Yeah, maybe cunning should be an option in the poll. I would vote for it, because it sounds decent to my ears.