Wittier Than Thou - a look at identifying with characters too clever to be believed
Several more of the people on my F-List have come around to sense and read some of Megan Whalen Turner's work, so I've been skipping around making verbal parries about Tricksters, and love of rascals, and all sorts of things. Golden days, really!
rhinemouse made some excellent, excellent points over at her post about characters Smarter Than Everyone Else
including:
"It's partly because, when a character is portrayed as Smarter Than Everybody Else In The Room, I empathize with Everybody Else and not Mr. Smarter."
She goes on to make a much more profound point, about what mostly else makes her not *like* (even if she is interested) in these characters, but sadly, I am not going to address any sort of moral ambiguity and my rationale for enjoying it. [Yet. yet?]
It made me realize that this is exactly the same reason I love them.
:cue great clashing, crashing sound:
Why, yes, I do identify with being the Smartest One in the Room.
No, not really.
In fact, I've spend most of my life tagging along with my brother, or having him tagging along with me, and feeling inferior. He's not so much smarter as more adept at expressing his knowledge, of acquiring actual facts and trivia that I only remember as broad-strokes, pieces that become part of a weave of understanding in abstract terms.
What I identify with is having only intelligence as a weapon, of prizing it as my best possession. Being quick on the uptake, sensitive to nuance. What I long for, that they have, is being quick on the draw, shameless about using it to their advantage.
Robert Downey, Jr. makes both of the above characters more identifiable to me because he talks like several of my relatives, with the same brittle gloss of wit and obvious core of insecurity. People who take this to an extroverted place, instead of, like me, creating the characters to say the outrageous things I think would be funny to say.
A lot of these characters also have physical expertise, a martial art or something similar. I think a common trait, though, is that it's one honed with grace and effort, discipline, not a brute capability. Smaller, or lankier, or less traditionally athletic than is ideal, is probably how they view themselves.
Spiderman, for example. He gets powered up, sure, but he still uses his wit to compensate for his view of himself, and if he and Superman collided in mid-air, Superman's not the one going down like a ton of bricks. (More like tumbling like a rag-doll. To be kind of cruel.)
This is what separates them from a Gary Stu, really.
There's an illusion of effortless to them, but I can see through it--because even if I have no outward resemblance, my internal landscape is very similar.
Okay, this still sounds like an epically egotistical statement. And unlike these guys, I can't just pull it off, so I guess I'll just have to apologize...
Nah.
Curious, though. Characters you've found quite lovable when they struck other people sour?
Am I completely alone in being all, "Ahahah, sheeple, TAKE THAT FOR BEING THE MAJORITY and sneering at our verbal subtlety!"
[I also really identify with the characters like Magus and the Minister of War who are more reserved, can keep up, but are left to clean up messes from these sparklingly brilliant characters. I crush on them all the harder for it.]
rhinemouse made some excellent, excellent points over at her post about characters Smarter Than Everyone Else
including:
"It's partly because, when a character is portrayed as Smarter Than Everybody Else In The Room, I empathize with Everybody Else and not Mr. Smarter."
She goes on to make a much more profound point, about what mostly else makes her not *like* (even if she is interested) in these characters, but sadly, I am not going to address any sort of moral ambiguity and my rationale for enjoying it. [Yet. yet?]
It made me realize that this is exactly the same reason I love them.
:cue great clashing, crashing sound:
Why, yes, I do identify with being the Smartest One in the Room.
No, not really.
In fact, I've spend most of my life tagging along with my brother, or having him tagging along with me, and feeling inferior. He's not so much smarter as more adept at expressing his knowledge, of acquiring actual facts and trivia that I only remember as broad-strokes, pieces that become part of a weave of understanding in abstract terms.
What I identify with is having only intelligence as a weapon, of prizing it as my best possession. Being quick on the uptake, sensitive to nuance. What I long for, that they have, is being quick on the draw, shameless about using it to their advantage.
Robert Downey, Jr. makes both of the above characters more identifiable to me because he talks like several of my relatives, with the same brittle gloss of wit and obvious core of insecurity. People who take this to an extroverted place, instead of, like me, creating the characters to say the outrageous things I think would be funny to say.
A lot of these characters also have physical expertise, a martial art or something similar. I think a common trait, though, is that it's one honed with grace and effort, discipline, not a brute capability. Smaller, or lankier, or less traditionally athletic than is ideal, is probably how they view themselves.
Spiderman, for example. He gets powered up, sure, but he still uses his wit to compensate for his view of himself, and if he and Superman collided in mid-air, Superman's not the one going down like a ton of bricks. (More like tumbling like a rag-doll. To be kind of cruel.)
This is what separates them from a Gary Stu, really.
There's an illusion of effortless to them, but I can see through it--because even if I have no outward resemblance, my internal landscape is very similar.
Okay, this still sounds like an epically egotistical statement. And unlike these guys, I can't just pull it off, so I guess I'll just have to apologize...
Nah.
Curious, though. Characters you've found quite lovable when they struck other people sour?
Am I completely alone in being all, "Ahahah, sheeple, TAKE THAT FOR BEING THE MAJORITY and sneering at our verbal subtlety!"
[I also really identify with the characters like Magus and the Minister of War who are more reserved, can keep up, but are left to clean up messes from these sparklingly brilliant characters. I crush on them all the harder for it.]