Trope Talk: The Smart Guy

I think my favorite example of a smart guy main character in a fantasy world is Tavi from Codex Alera. In that book series all humans have access to magic except for him. That makes the world a dangerous place for him, so he survives by thinking his way out of problems. He notices things others would take for granted and finds ways to utilize them to achieve his goals. This results in many foes underestimating him, but it gets really neat as the series goes on when he starts fighting enemies who know how dangerous he is and prepare accordingly. This forces him to constantly up his game and become smarter. It also feeds into his character arc as he starts off hating the fact that he doesn’t have any magic and feeling like a freak for it, but as time goes on he builds his own self-worth and finds people who love him for who he is.

Can you have a Five-man-band with 8 characters?

I would argue that when it comes to trait coding, the Smart Guy being bullied/undervalued by other characters is far less likely to be a sensitive topic the author fumbled over and they wrote it that way precisely because that's how they generally get treated irl. If the story portrays that as the "correct" way to treat people different to you, it's possibly supposed to make you feel mad, and wasn't just accidental or insensitive on the author's part.

Anyone else keep thinking about Caleb of the Mighty Nein from Critical Roll?

A thing that I absolutely loathe about smart guys is that when they're a**holes, specially because when I was a teenager I thought that was cool and I tried so hard to be one of those, I even learned chess to a high level without even liking the game just to show my smartness...
Of course people still regards me as "smart", but I think I fit more as a DnD Cleric, a bit more wise, still a nerd, but I feel like my strenght is that I care and want to care about people.

the smart guy is as intelligent as the writer which is kinda funny

I like when there's multiple smart guys: the Spock, the McCoy, the Scotty, each there for a different speciality, and it's fun seeing several smart guys bouncing ideas off eachother.

I think it the writers of Artemis fowl that explains that is way of writing smart is what they take weeks to come with take minutes to the genius

smart guy and big guy work together to form one functioning human

I remember talking to my daughter about the early boy-band marketing of the Beatles: "Ooh, was one of them the Bad Boy?" "That's the interesting thing: John Lennon was the Bad Boy and the Smart One."

Star Trek does interesting ensemble stories in that most of the team is characters who would be the Smart Guy in some other kind of team, so you have more specialized Smart Guys (the master engineer, the doctor, the science officer, the captain who is often an Odysseus-like master of guile) and there's usually at least one whose Smart Guy qualities are played as outright inhuman (The Spock), which gets us back into that subject of autistic-coded Others and the pitfalls of that...

the thing with Sokka is that he’s the non bending avatar. he started in the water tribe grown up with their tribal adjacent fighting style, then they learn the earth kingdoms fighting style with the fan girlies, after that they learn the strategies of the air nomads, and finally they learn the sword fighting of the fire kingdom. mastering all four non elements

Hats off to my favorite "smart guy" troupe, the riddler

Please do a review of Larry Niven's Pak Protector. From the Ring world universe. Love your stuff, so does my daughter. 👍🏼

I've been writing a story where the protagonist IS the smart guy. He has a very nerdy hobby (collecting antique medical devices and books) and when this is found out, he's promptly apprenticed to the town doctor and given the nickname "Doc".

When someone in town gets shot in the arm and tries to tough it out with hideously predictable results, Doc proves himself a bona fide badass by not throwing up once while treating his patient, and remaining calm and collected while his patient proves to be a colossal jerk (imagine the toughest, meanest guy in town reduced to being bedridden, and imagine just how sunny his disposition would be.)

Red should have just replaced her smart guy drawing with Erin Ruunaser

The problem with writing smart people is that the author has to be smart to solve the problems they are putting the character through… and nobody likes to admit they aren’t smart. I’ve seen some stories where the character is supposed to be smart, but I can find at least two different solutions to their dilemmas while they are trying to punch their way out of a paper bag. That is frankly irritating.

Sokka is such a great character.

I think Laios is a great encyclopedia type!!

Wait, are you telling me Laios is both big and smart guy??

One thing I love about Leverage is that the whole team is the Smart Guy in their own field.

What do you mean chess is easy?

I love Sokka because he represents, among other things, how what makes you a professional isn't how special you are, but how you approach things.

What is a show where the lancer is the heart of the five man band?

I'd argue that, in Order of the Stick, the smart guy isn't high-intelligence mage Vaarsuvius but mundane fighter Roy Greenhilt. He certainly fits the tactician role, and exposition is divvied up between party members (Haley delivers a lot of it, and even Elan when things get meta). He even has an MBA, and skill ranks in Knowledge (Architecture).

I have a smart guy character in my story, his name is Dakota. His whole deal is he is well-versed in the magic system of the setting (one that all the main characters can use), but he has noticeably less energy to put into spells, and often uses a medicinal brew that refills that energy in a fight. He’s the only one to do this, though, as the medicine is highly addictive and outlawed in most areas of the world. It also caused him to pick up spearfighting as a backup for when he runs out of magic.

His whole story arc is that he was sent as a spy for a rival empire, but over the course of the story, he comes to realize he was basically sent on a suicide mission, and he defects to the side of the rest of the main characters. He’s my second favorite of the main cast, my favorite not even really fitting into the five man band.

I love that Sokka is 50% of the footage for this episode. He’s such a wonderful example

I really like Sokka as a smart guy character. Because his origin is being a sexist self aggrandized teenage warrior man who is really, really dumb, and yet even in the final episodes, he's the same person with much more wisdom.

I like the 'jerk smart guy' trope where the smart guy in question is only a jerk bc he's used to being the smartest person in the room & have everyone be in awe of him.
Really funny when they finally meet someone just as smart or who dosnt care

To be clear, in the Han/Chewie duo, Chewie is the smart guy.

I like the variant where they are a brilliant scientist who can invent basically anything but lack any common sense

Another combination of five man band roles is heart who’s also a lancer, though it only really shows up when the leader is morally questionable

I think one of the more interesting ideas in recent stories is what happens when the smart guy dies. I thought bad batch did it well with now the clones are always going in essentially flying blind with no intel whatsoever, and it essentially dooms them

V in order of the Stick is an interesting example. The author really leaned in on int v.s wis for a wizard. They consistently do get to a relevant conclusion very quickly, and rarely even make good plans. They also are really fuck things up on scales the ostensibly 'dumb' characters can't fathom... In ways that were entirely predictable.

not a single mention of Velma and the scooby gang... tsk tsk, im disappointed

ummmmm, I think im the smart guy…

Something that I thoroughly enjoy doing regarding The Smart Guy is focusing on a specific area of expertise. As mentioned in this video, there are many ways to express how intelligent a character can be: knowledge on history, knowledge on computer science and engineering, knowledge on the magic system, knowledge on biology and anatomy, knowledge on medicine and chemistry, knowledge on culture, high levels of intuition and deduction, high levels of observation… The Smart Guy does not have to be good at all of them. In fact, specifically giving The Smart One a few of these—explicitly not all of them—will make The Smart Guy valuable without overshadowing the rest of the team, thus easing the stress on that "fine line between uselessness and overpoweredness" that was also mentioned in this video. PLUS, it allows different members of the team to act as "The Smart Guy" based on where the plot is at any given moment.

The Big Guy could so that they're a combat genius when the Leader and the Lancer can't really get a hit in on the New Seemingly Unbeatable Foe, but The Big Guy is the one to find the way to reach the weak spots. The Lancer can show a level of cultural awareness that the rest of the team was never exposed to simply due to that brooding experience from their backstory. The Heart could show such a level of emotional intelligence and understanding that they figure out what the BBEG is going after due to their reaction to something the Leader or Lancer had said in the last fight—something that would have easily been missed by the characters who were more focused on just winning the fight.

PLUS, the differing expressions of being The Smart Guy could very well lead to the cast expanding and including multiple Smart Guys who still feel unique in what they can bring to the table—a tactician, a computer engineer, and a lorekeeper can all take turns being The Smart Guy based on what the scene needs, but they each allow each other room to shine. This is something that every role in the Five Man Band can do, but I feel that The Smart Guy is capable of utilizing this to an even greater extent than any other Five Man Band role. Plus, this allows for the antagonistic Smart Guy to have blind spots that the heroic Smart Guy can exploit and vice versa.

The Smart Guy is such a cool role for a character, and I love when it is explored to its fullest extent.

Both of the elder Pine twins are smart guys. Booksmart and street smart who gained some booksmart

Trying to write a smart guy/big guy combo character lol. The smart guy part is more intrinsic to his personality, but more in an academic way than the street smart leader character. The big guy part is ironic, since he is from the death world/warrior planet, and at 7 ft something tall even for their standards, but comes from a family of giants, making him the runt to several 8 plus foot tall older brothers. Besides the inferiority complex he has to deal with, I think I can balance him for the story, since the main threat is neither physical nor intellectual, but an insidious ideological domination from the charismatic cult leader they face. I think it will work, but its very complicated to write lol.

You know, like the smart guy is Callum and Rayla is the hard girl in The dragon prince! 😀

Reed from criminal minds is my favorite smart guy, granted the the whole team is smart but they rely on him so much and appreciate his quirks, its very nice to see.

I have a 5 man DnD party.
A powerhouse (paladin)
The heart (Druid)
And an Artificer and TWO WIZARDS
there are THREE SMART GUYS and they’re all somehow easily distinct from one another

I just realized I made a 5 man band on accident, but the leader is like, an evil wizard, and theyre all zombies

With the five man band i'd say calling the "main guy" the leader is not at all accurate. Take ATLA for example. Yes Aang is the protagonist, but when there's a crisis and they need a plan they turn to Sokka. And this is an example where the protagonist is still somewhat a leader. I hate it when the protagonist is made leader just because they are supposed to be the character we project onto the most and therefore want to see good things come to. Especially when they are a lone wolf figure who is explicitly untactical. The leader should be who can best sort priorities in a crisis. Not whoever is the strongest or best. Hero is a title specifically outside the parameters of the five-man band. I wish we had more stories that show the protagonist specifically giving up leadership of the team not because taking power is un-noble or whatever, but because they are self aware enough to recognize leadership should go to the person who can actually lead.

If the magic system is, like, superpowers, then the smart guy is probably not magical. If the magic system is, like, physics, then the smart guy is SUPER magical.