Genuis Characters - Tumblr Posts
I made some comments on these that apparently didn't send, but I agree, I think that some more artistic geniuses should be appreciated. I think part of it comes down to as you mentioned, art being subjective. But I also do think there are some great examples in fiction of artistic geniuses.
My go-to character for this is probably Kousei Arima from Your Lie In April. He's a genius pianist who after his mother's death loses the ability to hear the music he plays and struggles to deal with his trauma with piano's and the idea of performing as a whole. It's a beautiful story about grief, loss, personal identity, reinvention, trauma, and depression as this teenaged boy tries to explore himself and learn who he is, what he is, and learn to perform once more, despite his challenges with his music he is still very much regarded as a genius or at the very least gifted kid by multible characters and his genius and skill is a central theme as he explores that along side the grief and healing.
You mentioned you like Hiro Hamada, and while Kousei Arima is a vastly different character (I'd say much more meek and polite than Hiro) Kousei has the similarity of grief and personal identity as well as healing in his character arch, but there's enough differences that they do feel distinctive as characters. I enjoy both characters a lot and heavily relate to them.
Though I will note while Kousei is a pianist and by nature artistic, he does have a little bit more of an analytical nature while analyzing the pieces he plays and listens to, he's still definitely more artistic and poetic (he has multiple inner monologues that feel very poetic and artistic to me). I think Kousei is an interesting take on an artist as he is still artistic and a genius, he also has an analytical attitude towards a lot of things (which I think is really cool! as an artist, poet, and writer as well as someone who's done robotics for multiple years at their school and is going to start school at a specialized STEM school come fall, it's very, very frustrating to me when people separate the arts from STEM and thing creativity and analytic types are mutually exclusive, since in many ways some of the most scientific people I've met are also some of the most artistic.)
I've already yapped a lot, but essentially, try looking at the musical prodigy characters and some other artistic characters, they might be coded as geniuses but not perceived a lot as them (especially in anime and manga! I've seen a decent amount of artist characters that are very much coded with gifted kid/genius energy to them). I think Your Lie In April is a good example of this, I'd recommend the manga heavily (the anime is mostly faithful buttt it does miss out on some of the emotional heart and isn't as clear with Kousei's crush which is a central theme, but the anime is great with how accurate it is to real people playing instruments due to the fact they had real people play the pieces and traced over their fingers to understand how to animate the quick precise movements!)
If you do decide to read/watch Your Lie In April, please be warned the story is VERY heavy, and has themes of abuse, neglect, depression, grief, and self-identity, as well as illness, and ends in a tragedy. The story is a bit frustrating with the romances inside of it, but it's purposeful as the tragedy comes from the interpersonal relationships and the character's minds, if you're not a fan of love triangles it may not be for you, but said love triangles are in service of the story, not against it!
(Also side note: though the left and right brain phrase is good at communicating your thoughts in this, I would like to bring up the fact that the left and right brain concepts have been debunked as pseudoscience/inaccurate to how the brain really works, both sides of the brain are active most of the time unless there is major brain damage, there isn't a dominant side as both work together to get almost every task done.
Sources:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/left-brain-vs-right-brain
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/right-brainleft-brain-right-2017082512222
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321037#studies
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201712/left-brain-right-brain-study-debunks-decades-old-neuromyth )
(BTW, if you do see this, feel free to DM me! I love talking about geniuses/gifted kids in media as I'm someone who grew up being labeled as such and identify with a lot of characters called said labels. And if you do decide to watch/read Your Lie In April, tell me about it! I'd love to hear your thoughts :D)
-Feral/Raine
I wish we had more right-brained kid geniuses in media. All geniuses in media are geniuses in a math or science or just left-brained way, ESPECIALLY the kid geniuses. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the math whizz trope, Hiro Hamada is one of my favorite characters of all time!, I just would like someone to be “The greatest potter” or “the best poet” and like secretly be twelve or something. It would be fun haha! Maybe ppl don’t really do that because art is subjective where maths just aren’t yk? Still, fun concept tho!