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Know-It-Alls are Lazy Writing
The Know-It-All is a trope in fiction where the Smart Guy of the team becomes a walking encyclopedia. There’s nothing wrong with a character being intelligent, but this character is almost too knowledgeable. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a soft magic wizard with no limits to their magic. If there’s nothing they can’t fix, then the story loses tension because they can pull any information needed out of thin air, regardless of whether it makes sense for them to know this information or not. Pidge from Voltron Legendary Defender is probably one of the most egregious versions of this trope by the sheer volume of her fields of study. Among her list of know-it-all topics, she can reprogram alien tech she’s never seen before and yet she has to study how to speak Altean, bypass alien technology without having to study it first, she knows how to code programs, speaks fluent binary, can recognize mechanical messages inside organic spores, knows extremely advanced mathemathics and science on par with college level advanced coursework, and she’s 14. Granted yes, Pidge lives in the future. The Voltron Earth is ahead of us technologically. And yes, prodigies and geniuses exist. Except here’s the difference. Most prodigies and geniuses have an area of expertise. One particular field they excel at. If Pidge was just good at physics and like astronomy, that wouldn’t be such an issue. If she was just a hacker, that wouldn’t be such an issue. The issue is that if it’s an intellectual endeavor, Pidge will pull the information out of her butt. Occasionally, they do manage to circumvent this by having Allura and/or Curan be the exposit faucet, but it’s usually Pidge. Now, Voltron is not abysmal. In the later seasons, when introduced to Lotor’s nanny, it’s not Pidge who immediately seeks information, it’s Hunk. And it’s not Pidge who pulls a solution out of her butt. It’s Hunk. Using the information about Galra culture that he took the initiative to learn. And I think this is where Hunk gets under utilized. Hunk is the engineer. He’s a mechanic. If they’d altered it so that Hunk was the hacker tech guy, Hunk would have a more defined role in the group. As the mechanic who does the physical techy stuff, while pidge does physics, makes calculations, and understands the science behind outer space anomolies. But because Pidge does all the hacking, Hunk is just kind of there. Curan needs to fix the warp drive but does the MECHANIC go to help repair it? No, they send the math nerd. Because Pidge hogs all of the intelligence for herself, no one else can really show their own areas of intelligence. Keith’s an ace pilot, he knows the terminology for flight maneuvers. Yet does he ever instruct his teammates to use these maneuvers, or execute attack formations? Of course not because the only kind of intelligence in Voltron is the hard sciences. Nobody uses any other kind of intelligence. And when they do veer into other topics like Altean Alchemy, the specifics of this intellectual field of study are conspicuously absent to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
Velma from the Scooby-Doo franchise is the other egregious example. Scooby-Doo is a series where three friends and a dog fool around while Velma literally solves the entire mystery by herself. More recently, the franchise has tried to flesh out the gang and give them more defined roles. Sure, Fred’s the leader, Shaggy and Scooby are the heart of the team, and Velma solves the mysteries, but what is Daphne’s role? Some have argued that because she’s rich, she bank rolls the gang’s mystery solving. Sometimes she provides the Mystery Machine, other times it’s Shaggy’s van. Daphne has become more of an athlete since Grey Griffin took over her voice role, knowing martial arts, being a surfer, and playing volleyball. Mystery Incorporated expanded on Daphne’s rich upbringing by having her know some things about high culture, such as fashion, art, and cuisine. But even this knowledge was rather shallow, and nothing really seems to stick. Heck, in Be Cool Scooby-Doo, they reduced Daphne to a cloudcoocoolander comic relief character. They can’t seem to figure out what to do with her. Shaggy and Scooby know a bit about food but that’s about it. And Fred knows about traps. Meanwhile Velma is an expert on History, Math, Science, Biology, Linguistics, Coding, Hacking, Robotics, Chemistry, Forensics, and that’s just what I can remember. I mean, in Mystery Incorporated, she pulls the ability to read Mayan or Aztec or Incan (I can’t remember anymore) out of her butt because she took a course on it and boy isn’t that convenient? Frankly, if given a chance to create a series for the franchise, I’d make it so that each member of the gang had an area of expertise so that they can all work together to solve the mysteries as a collective. Have Fred want to be a detective, so he’s studied forensics and criminal psychology to profile suspects. Have Daphne with her theater kid background know about make-up, costumes, and special effects to figure out how they’re pulling off their disguises. Have Shaggy be a loner weirdo conspiracy theorist with a knack for hacking and coding, thus why he’s a coward when confronted with a physical threat, yet remains on a mystery solving team out of a thirst for the truth. Lastly, leave Velma with her nerdy pursuits. Chemistry, engineering, math. This way, Velma’s not robbed of her role as the “team nerd” but it stops feeling like Velma’s the only one pulling her weight on the team. By giving everyone something to do, you make each member feel important to the job, and that the mysteries can’t be solved without each of them contributing. This is the crux of the know-it-all. If one person knows it all, what does the rest of their team know?
Tony Stark + PTSD