Loners Are Freaks: Difference between revisions

In fiction, introversion usually includes a raft of other problems: [[Lack of Empathy|apathy]], [[It's All About Me|arrogance, selfishness,]] mental instability, inhumanity, or plain old evil. Loners will be shown as insulting others by implying, through their refusal to socialize, that others are not worthy of their presence. [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|Right]]? This perception stems from the belief that being a loner is not a natural thing. There is something "wrong" with them.

Even more unfortunately, there is ''some'' [[Truth in Television|historic basis]] for this; humans are social animals. Cooperation along with the invention of language is how we survived and those who were alone often weren't able to reproduce or hand over their innovations to the next guy. Through most of human history collective action was the only practical means of survival; being extremely selfish, hiding all the time, or being shunned/banned/exiled/cast out was very often a precursor to slow death by starvation, predation, etc. Thus a person condemned to [[Dying Alone]] was almost certainly alone because of a problem he'd had in another group and so to be avoided.

Of course, this trope could just be the inversion of the idea that nobody could like a freak, so those freaks are loners. But this doesn't logically translate to ''all'' loners are freaks, but [[You Fail Logic Forever|a lot of fiction doesn't follow logic]].

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* Averted in ''[[Asterix]] and the Roman Agent'': while everyone else is bickering thanks to the titular spy's influence, the bard Cacofonix isn't, since he, besides being aphonic at the time, usually keeps to himself and thus keeps away from the agent's jealousy- and paranoia-inducing influence.

* [[Depending on the Writer]], [[Batman]].

** This trope is one of the reasons many heroes are uncomfortable with him, being unaware that [[Papa Wolf|Batman]] has [[Badass Family|the biggest extended family of the DCU]].

* [[Solomon Kane]] is the poster child for this trope, spending almost every story tramping around [[Darkest Africa]] all alone except for the [[Witch Doctor]] N'Longa, who he sees very infrequently, and various other characters whose main function, generally speaking, is to die violently.

* [[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant|Thomas Covenant]] - [[Stephen R Donaldson]]'s entry for least likeable main character. Something of a [[Jerkass]] hero.

** Not exactly. {{spoiler|The Dark Tower is the nexus of all existence. Saving it at the price of a thousand lives would be a bargain.}}

*** But remember, Roland's goal is not to save the Dark Tower, but to reach it. He goes out of his way to save it because if it falls he could never reach it. {{spoiler|If given the hypothetical choice of saving but never being able to get there, or reaching and climbing to the top at the cost of its destruction along with all of reality, he'd choose the second option.}}

*** JK Rowling says on Pottermore that Albus Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall were quite close, bonding over similarities in their childhoods. Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore were also reported to be relatively close before everything went wrong.

** Luna Lovegood [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshades]] it when she says she has no friends because everyone thinks she's [[Cloudcuckoolander|weird]].

* ''[[Ender's Game]]'' [[Double Subversion|doubly subverts]] the heck out of this. Pretty much everyone intentionally isolates Ender to make him a more efficient commander. Which also makes him an asocial freak that he never really gets over. But useful!

** ''[[Enders Shadow]]'' goes back on this a bit, playing up the fact that Ender relied on his army while Bean was the real antisocial genius. Or, to be more accurate, Ender could project all the leadership qualities and bind their loyalty to him but was completely alone himself, except for Bean, who had no idea how to really connect to other people. This is something of a plot point and stated outright: Ender takes down his bogeyman by himself whereas Bean has learned how to form a [[True Companions|team]] that may or may not actually like him, but accept him.

That's where people get it wrong. Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which human beings constantly remind one another that they are ... well ... human beings. He was also spiraling inwards, as tends to happen in cases like this. }}

* Another ''Discworld'' example, played with ''[[Discworld/A Hat Full of Sky|A Hat Full of Sky]]''. Witches tend to dislike other witches nosing in on their business, and it's repeatedly made clear that witches are not necessarily people people ("among the people, but not of the people"), but it's still important for them to visit each other occasionally to make sure they haven't gone bonkers.

* [[Sherlock Holmes]], arguably embodies the loner trope, with the exception of Dr. John Watson.

* [[Frankenstein's Monster]]. Obviously.

* An interesting inversion of the trope can be found in the British spy series ''[[The Prisoner]]'', which features an unrepentant, mildly misanthropic loner as its protagonist. Instead of being seen as a liability, the character's "loner-ness" and drive towards individualism is the ''only'' thing keeping him sane. It's also the only weapon he has against the shady government officials who want to brainwash him and turn him into an obedient and conformist government servant.

** It's played straight in one episode, however, in which Number Six manages to make contact with other subversives within the prison; however, because they're all confident-but-intensely-secretive and insular types, they all think each of them is a double agent and end up scuttling their own escape. If they'd just trusted each other, they'd have gotten away.

** It's notable that this is the only time we see Doctor Cox with friends over - an episode later in the show sets up the same premise, but closes on Cox alone in his apartment with a six-pack...

* Averted in ''[[Veronica Mars]]'', where the titular heroine is basically a loner in the first season. Later seasons acknowledge the trope's effect, however, as Veronica sporadically feels guilty about the fact that she really operates better alone.

** Played with in the episode "Frescorts" where Ned insists that just because these people are lonely it doesn't mean that they're freaks. Emerson thinks it does.

*** In the same episode, a visible inversion occurs: {{spoiler|1=Buddy killed Joe because he (Joe) decided to quit to be with his girlfriend, which Buddy saw as abandonment. [[Ho Yay]] + [[Clingy Jealous Girl|Clingy Jealous Boy]] = Uh oh.}} Also, in the end, Randy tells Ned that Joe had taught him that there's nothing wrong with being by yourself.

** Soran is not the best example, considering it was the loss of his family and desire to get back to them that made him go la-la.

** Khan wasn't really a loner; more so just the burden of being a [[Magnificent Bastard]] caused him to always be just slightly above everyone else. He had his wife on Ceti Alpha V for a while, and throughout the movie, he's seen conversing with Joachim as a good friend, {{spoiler|even promising to avenge his death.}}

** Given an interesting twist in "Solitary Man" where the killer essentially went crazy from loneliness, and that's what turned him murderous.

* Simon Bellamy from ''[[Misfits]]'' has no friends, and he's portrayed as mentally unstable, obsessive, nerdy, and a bit of a pervert. To be fair, he does actually ''want'' friends and genuinely tries to reach out to people, it's just that [[Dark and Troubled Past|years of bullying and isolation]] have left him painfully shy and socially inept. Plus he's actually shown to be far more kind, sensitive and empathic than most of the show's more extroverted characters, and his [[Sanity Slippage]] is mostly due to the [[The Woobie|traumatic things that happen to him]] and the fact that no one really offers him emotional support (or even acknowledges his existence most of the time).

* As a result of [[Genre Savvy|his father's training]], [[Dexter|Dexter Morgan]] is aware of this, and goes out of his way to cultivate a "reserved but sociable" persona to keep from being thought of as an emotionally withdrawn loner. It works on everyone but [[Only Sane Man|Sgt. Doakes]].

* A case of "Loners become freaks" in ''[[Life]]'', where Charlie is clearly a well adjusted guy with a job and a wife and friends until he spends an ungodly amount of time (unspecified, but measured in years) in solitary confinement. When they let him out again, [[Cloudcuckoolander|he's kind of crazy.]]

* From [[Bionicle]]:

{{quote|'''Kopaka''': [[I Work Alone]].

== Video Games ==

** ...fight a [[One-Man Army|one-man war]] against [[The Legions of Hell|Hell's armies]], eventually killing the big bad daddy of all demons, whose death throes destroy ''Hell itself''. (''[[Doom]]'')

** ...single-handedly face the seemingly inexhaustible resources of a [[Mega Corp|globe-spanning corporate hegemony]], with only a rag-tag group of ill-equipped, ungrateful [[La Résistance|Rebels]] backing you up on occasion. (''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'')

== Webcomics ==

** [http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/119657 Kyle], [http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/119669 Alice], and [http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/119663 Chu] were loners in school. That is why they joined some crazy cult and shoot up a school.

* [http://ozyandmillie.org/1999/12/02/ozy-and-millie-262/ This strip] of ''[[Ozy and Millie]]'' pretty much sums up this trope.

*** Some psychiatrists don't even think schizoid personality disorder ''is'' a disorder, since those affected may not actually suffer in any way. One calls the disorder "the medicalization of non-conformity".

** Also note that antisocial personality disorder has nothing to do with socialization. A psychopath can have a rather active social life when he's not shoplifting or torturing people.

* The 19th century poet Emily Dickinson, who gradually withdrew from human society and lived alone for the rest of her life, communicating with the outside world primarily through letters. There is no definite answer as to ''why'' she decided to become a recluse. Some of her poems appear to imply that everyone else thought her to be pretty weird for choosing to live alone in a house instead of getting married and pumping out babies like all the proper, decent girls were doing. (Going into seclusion was one of the very few alternatives to marriage and childbearing in Dickinson's era. Women who did so - and it was only really possible for women who had money of their own - were often considered little better than freaks of nature.)

* "He was quiet; kept to himself a lot" tends to pop up a lot when news outlets interview relatives and colleagues of murderers and other psychologically driven criminals, no matter how social they actually were.

** Ed Gein was actually a severely disturbed individual who almost perfectly fits this trope, while he was not entirely cut off from the outside world he spent the majority of his spare time alone at home crafting furnishings out of human body parts. JW Gacy and Ted Bundy on the other hand are complete aversions of this trope.

* We'd ''like'' to think that [[Columbine|Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris]] were a pair of whacked-out loners who were part of a pseudo-gang called "The Trench-Coat Mafia" and maybe, just maybe, if someone reached out to them (somebody else of course), the tragedy at Columbine High could've been averted. It's so much easier to write off the mass murderers as lone freaks with no sense of community when the reality is that psychopathy can manifest in just about anybody... turns out that the pair were pretty much accepted and liked amongst their peers. In spite of this Harris was a stone-cold sociopath - he wasn't a loner and actually considered quite charismatic. Klebold however suffered from depression and Harris was one of his only friends. Harris was the one who was largely behind the killing, with Klebold mostly just following him. As it turns out, psychopathy and sociopathy generally mean said people are actually very very social, if only to avoid appearing 'different' and to better blend in. Thus they learn how to project the illusion of emotion and how to use emotion to manipulate people even if they never feel these emotions themselves.

* [[Cats Are Mean]] is a product of this, because domestic cats are by nature loners, especially in contrast to pack-minded dogs.

** This is also why loners and cats often get along so well, and both tend to prefer each others company to that of obnoxious sociophiles.