bodhrancomedy:

I’m bored with “smart guy characterisation being he wins effortlessly at chess”. Chess should have more potential for characterisation.

“I think you’re losing there.”

“Nah, he’s playing right into my hands.”

“… you have one rook, a bishop, and seven pawns. He’s lost one knight. What are you gonna do? Charge and turn ‘em all into queens?”

“Let him whittle down the king’s defences, republicanize the pawns, overthrow the monarchy, negotiate peace with this packet of smoky bacon crisps, and begin a glorious age of democratic rule by will of the common people.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Kinda did for Russia.”

ok I love this

we were just talking the other night in chat about how “good at chess” is treated like this almost lazy shorthand trope for “cerebral and intellectual” (sometimes with a side of “good strategist”). if you’ve got a smart nerd, he plays chess. chess is the Smart Nerd Game. that’s like a pillar of the archetype

need more stuff like that one sci-fi series where less than half of the group of smart nerds even knew the rules of chess, and they only played chess because one of the leading smart nerds (who was a linguistics nerd, not a chess or gaming nerd at all) had made up a conlang that was spoken through moves on a chessboard, which was the only way they could Plot The Revolution without being caught by the dystopian surveillance, and if the surveillance saw them all playing chess the Overlords would just go “oh there’s the nerds playing their weird useless nerd game, they look like maybe they’ve made up some extra weird nerdy house rules for it, what a waste of time”