fic author’s fears # 36858275: having someone complain that you made a smart character stupid in your fic but that was your earnest attempt at making them smart 😭
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It’s hard to write a smart character when their level of intelligence is incredibly high. I know that because I have an extremely intelligent character
I always worry a professional will read something I write about a character with their profession and scoff at it. Like pls do not look too critically at her all I had was Wikipedia, a cup of coffee and a dream 😭
I write about women getting revenge by killing their male abusers in unusual ways. I'm asked if I've ever used these ways in person. I guess they don't understand the definition of abuser. 🤷🏻♀️
This exact reason is why I don't include superintelligent characters in anything I write. Just people who *think* they're superintelligent. I know I'm not superintelligent, so any attempt to write that is doomed to failure.
This reminds me of Farscape, which was a great story, except that they couldn't seem to decide whether Crichton was a scientific and engineering genius or an idiotic dudebro.
The worst was when the show had him doing stupid things, which turned out brilliantly, because of course he is a genius.
I've frequently thought that the show really should have been about two different characters -- the dudebro pilot, and their scientific genius companion.
Bifurcating the character that way would have made it a lot easier to write the character(s) consistently.
No cause that lowkey happened to me 😭. I tried to revamp a character and gave them lore. I was so excited and then a rando commented that they think I was doing the opposite and that crushed my 14yr old heart. I never finished the fic and it haunts me till this day. I’m now 21+ 😫😭
Oh god, this! Alternatively
‘you attempted to create a hard-bitten street-smart character but someone tells you they sound like a Valley Girl’ (if that sounds mightily specific, it’s because I’m still cringing).
The amount of times I've written off making characters good at things or spent HOURS pouring over material to try and get a rudimentary understanding of something so I can make a character good at it is way higher than it should be
Lapse in judgement is honestly not that bad imho especially during a stressful situation for the character, I feel what actually makes an author look a little dumb is when they portray smart people like they are mages and their knowledge on certain events comes from thin air
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The worst was when the show had him doing stupid things, which turned out brilliantly, because of course he is a genius.
Bifurcating the character that way would have made it a lot easier to write the character(s) consistently.
People saying you made a character ND-coded when in truth that's just you being neurodivergent
(But yeah Tony is tiny in the MCU lol)
‘you attempted to create a hard-bitten street-smart character but someone tells you they sound like a Valley Girl’ (if that sounds mightily specific, it’s because I’m still cringing).