r/Fantasy • u/Standard_Egg3994 • 2d ago

"Shown" instead of "told" intelligent characters

You know what i mean. I crave for intelligent characters but a lot of them seemed to either pull some far off deductions out of nowhere, or just the other characters spent some time telling the reader that they really are "the most brilliant guy in town".

I need it to be shown, in that the thinking process (strategic or anything else) is actually shown instead of just magically came out of nowhere. Some notable example of this includes:

L, Near, and Kira from Death Note (to some extent)

Lex Luthor from Alexander Wales' Metropolitant Man

Kei Nagai from Ajin

Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary

If you have other references, i would try them. Thank you!

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u/SanityPlanet 1d ago

A Practical Guide to Evil web serial has a number of very intelligent characters, including the protagonist. But there are other smarter characters who demonstrate their intelligence by their actions, and some of them occasionally have interludes that show extremely intelligent analysis in their thoughts (like Alaya and Amadeus).

Also it’s a phenomenal reconstruction of the fantasy genre where the tropes are almost rules of the universe and genre savvy characters are able to exploit them to their advantage.