Discussion [Big List] Smart Protagonists

novel?
here Zhuge Liang, Sima Yi, Cao Cao what? there novel called Romance of The Three Kingdoms~
put that aside it pretty calm

 

Being adept at the application of Common Sense.

Normal people have normal levels of Common Sense; intelligent people have higher level of Common Sense — they have cultivated the Dao till immortality.

XD

This is a bullshit rule — I can testify to it as I'm a writer.

I'll add to my reading list.

You don't have to be super smart to create believeable super smart characters.

You can cheat:

1. Spend hours brainstorming over thoughts your MC would have in minutes.
2. Think and rethink any solution to a problem you come up with, until your sure it is the best possible with available information.
3. Ask others what better solutions they can think off.

I created a definition of smart — please stick to it.

"Everyone is smart in their own way" is also a position I highly disagree with.

I'll add him.

This is bullshit — both your implications of what "adept at applying common sense is" and your conception of what a human is.

I'll add him.

No it doesn't — necessarily.

Change your vote lol — I don't recognise the idiot prince as Gil Mephius.

I'll add them.

I'll add him — after I know his name.

 

Yeah, I thought you would write that. Let me tell you that "common" doesn't mean what is right or better, just what everyone else do. But I'm not surprised you don't know that, since, after your reply, I'm sure, you don't even know why we're called Homo Sapiens Sapiens.

 

I never implied common means right or better. That's an argument to popularity and I always criticise those.

Sapiens is from the Latin word for wise.

Adept applications of common sense is different from just applying common sense. Maybe the problem is the "common" in "common sense"? I've implied that they're degrees to common sense mastery though.

Nevertheless, I'm not really keen on continuing this conversation.

 

Why are you using a poll instead of a tag for them on NU?

 

I don't get?

But if it's what I think it is, then it's because several "smart protagonists" on NU don't meet my definition of smart.

 

I can't change my vote because you didn't add that function to the poll. Also just because you won't admit to something doesn't change reality. Gil Mephius is dead and Orba is the smart protagonist. Most importantly, if I had changed it, it would have been to Izayoi......... also I think you should probably add Izaya Orihara from Durarara, much though I dislike him, he is a very cunning and manipulative smart guy. And if anyone wants to try to state that he's not the mc, I counter with the fact that Durarara has no single mc as it is read through multiple perspectives including Izaya's.

 

is Durara a novel?

I'll edit the poll now.

 

I don't think Chu Yang from TTNH is smart. The novel is not written with smart characters in mind, even though some characters are stated to be geniuses - they don't really do anything particularly smart.

Off of the top of my head, the main "smart" thing Chu Yang did in the beginning of the novel was to root out all the enemy spies in a kingdom by finding people who are "too good to be true". If that's the criterion then he should have had way more false positives, and it's never explained in depth how he did it. He had zero false positives, never made a mistake, and it's never explained how he was able to filter out the true positives from the false positives etc. None of the other things he did could be classified as "smart".

Dantalian on the other hand is a smooth talker and I can understand him being called smart because of his ability to manipulate people. None of the characters in TTNH have this ability and dialogue is written very badly there. It's a fun novel but not cerebral in the same way as Dungeon Defense.

RTTK was a horrendous distortion of history. Events that never would have happened are written in as facts, like Guan Yu killing Cao Cao's 6 generals (who never even existed).

Almost nothing in RTTK makes any sense historically and none of the characters would have acted in the way described because it would have been just too stupid.

 

I'll remove it then—I haven't read it anyways.

 

Yes! It was a novel before it was an anime, it's wrote by the same guy who wrote Baccano.