Archived Discussion Main / LonersAreFreaks

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from Loners Are Evil Discussion

Ununnilium: I dunno; some of this seems to be looking for An Aesop where there isn't one. I don't think Kanako is supposed to be a loner; it's just that she doesn't like the Hinata tenants because she wants sole claim on Keitaro. Similarly, I've never seen a show where The Messiah kept bothering someone who truly wanted to be alone.

I think the thing most of the examples are going for isn't that loners are evil; it's that there's no such thing as a "real" loner, and that anyone who's alone isn't that way because they want to be, it's because they're messed-up somehow. Perhaps the trope should be changed to something like No Real Loners?

Later: ...any opinions on this? >>;

Still later: ...<< >>

Even later than that: I'm seriously considering moving it over there, if no one speaks up.

Lale: Everyone seems satisfied. I vote against a name change. I think it works fine this way.

Ununnilium: But it seems to be saying that these series espouse An Aesop when that Aesop isn't actually there.

Lale: Loners Are Evil is not An Aesop in these shows; it's an automatic assumption on the part of the writers, which leaks into the characters. Hey, I should that...

Ununnilium: I disagree that that basic assumption is there, though, and I don't think the examples show it. For instance:

When Lucy Camden tells her mother about a girl in Habitat For Humanity who's a loner, Annie actually says she believes nobody really enjoys being "alone," and that there always must be some problem behind it. Sure enough, the withdrawn girl had been molested by her mother's ex-boyfriend.

This doesn't say she's evil because she's a loner, it says she's a loner because something happened to her. None of these have "being a loner" as the cause of their problems; rather, it's the effect. This is why I think No Real Loners is the trope here. Nobody's a person who's perfectly happy being alone; they're forced into pushing everyone else away because of some trauma in their past.

Lale: In that example, Annie took the fact that she was a loner as a sign that something was abnormal. If someone's a loner on tv, you can take it as a sign they're a villain or mental.

Hmmm...

Ununnilium: Hmmmmmmmm. How about Loners Are Broken?

Lale: I don't understand.
But I would like to say this. Not all trope titles are literal. How many Green Skinned Space Babes are actually from space and have green skin? How many heroes who are Dating Catwoman are actually dating Catwoman? The Chaste Hero isn't chaste in the virtuous sense, just clueless. Do all trope titles have to be literal?

Ununnilium: By "broken" I mean messed-up somehow; they have problems. You have to have problems to be a loner. As for the title... it's just that "evil" is a very strong word. Y'know?

Lale: I typed something else, but it sounded condescending. Now I just want to know how you and I keep getting into these one-on-one debates.

Tanto: Passion. Any dunce can get through life without offending people. It takes dedication to take controversial positions and defend them.

...I can't believe how pretentious that sounded.

Ununnilium: Heh heh heh. But it's true. We both have strong opinions and we're both really stubborn, so when our opinions conflict, neither of us is willing to give up without a fight.

Later: So, ideas on name change?

Gattsuru : Perhaps something along the lines of I'm so Ronery, a la Team America (where Kim Jong Il's batshit insanity it attributed to loner status)? Almost all victims of this trope tend to match the DSM-IV-TR definition for Asperger's Syndrome, so we might even want to try to pull something out of that. It's hard to come up with a decent phrase for it, though. American culture still sees some loners as the James Bonds, Albert Einsteins, Davy Crockett, and Nikola Teslas, rather than the emphasis on the Kazinskies and Nikola Teslas — yeah, the man was a little cracked.

It seems more common in Japanese shows or kids cartoons, where nearly every Dark Magical Girl matches this trope, as does Sosuke Sagara from Fullmetal Panic! and most plain villains facing any team of heroes.

Lale: Yes, it is extremely common in anime. Don't bring in Asperger's Syndrome-at least in the title- out of respect for people who have it. Don't have any idea what "Ronery" means... is that a misspelling of "ornery"?

Gattsuru: "Ronery" would be the Asian L->R transliteration stereotype, with the correct wording being "I'm so Lonely". Wiki has an article on the joke here : [1] . The joke itself is probably on youtube by now.

Lale: Oh, sorry, never heard of it. In that case, well, "loners" and "lonely" don't go together, so that would be inaccurate, unless we're going for irony, but I wuldn't.

Fast Eddie: I have to do an Editor thing on this (as opposed to an "editor" thing):

Having friends is often what separates the hero from the villain. A direct side-effect of universes well grounded in The Power Of Friendship is that loners never get a break, from either other characters or the writers. There's always something wrong with a loner. Whether in a live-action, cartoon, or anime series, expect that 9 times out of 10 loners are also written and perceived in-universe as either: arrogant jerks, mentally unstable, enchanted, not really human, or just plain unacceptably weird... if they're lucky enough not to be the villain. Loners are weird, loners are suspicious, Loners Are Evil, but above all, Loners Are Evil because they're loners.

This...

A direct side-effect of universes well grounded in The Power Of Friendship is that loners never get a break, from either other characters or the writers.

... Is, frankly, crap. "Having friends is often what separates the hero from the villain." Is a super-strong thesis statement followed by a really soft, equivocating ...

A direct side-effect of universes well grounded in The Power Of Friendship is that loners never get a break, from either other characters or the writers.

This just gives us a bad name. You know? Like we have no writing skills, what could we know?

What the Hell is this?:

Whether in a live-action, cartoon, or anime series, expect that 9 times out of 10 loners are also written and perceived in-universe as either: arrogant jerks, mentally unstable, enchanted, not really human, or just plain unacceptably weird... if they're lucky enough not to be the villain.

It walks around the topic for a month. (Lale, "Ronery" is a thing on "lonely", pronounced with "R's" for "L's".)

Ununnilium: There. How's that edit? And yanked the King of Fighters example because it had nothing to do with the trope.

I still want to move it to Loners Are Broken, personally. >>

Laaaaaaaater: Dangit, no one but Lale and I have weighed in on the name thing. I just don't think "evil" is accurate, here.

Lale: Didn't I just read something about no name changes over a week old?

Ununnilium: Shhhhhh. Anyway, I originally brought it up when it was less than a week old.

Lale: Maybe we're the only two loners on this site...

Scrounge: I say we leave it. In a lot of cases, the title's pretty accurate, and in others, even if it isn't being a loner still puts someone on top of the slippery slope. Why nobody on telivision is just a loner because they're shy and afraid of people (which is at the very least the reason I don't go out on Friday nights) baffles me, but trying to be alone is generally portrayed as "wrong".

Morgan Wick: Lonesomeness Is A Disease?

Scrounge: Can we just drop it? The current title works fine.

Ununnilium: I really think "And if you don't have friends, there's something wrong with you." is more dramatic and to-the-point than this version, which is unnecessarily crossed with a trope ref. Also, it's not a inevitable side-effect, IMHO; rather, it's a side-effect of bad writers taking that and assuming that, since P implies Q, Q implies P.

("Introversion" is definitely better than what I had there, though.)

Also, I'm pulling this out:

• For most of the Love Hina Again mini-series, Kanako has no interest in befriending anyone in the Hinata Apartments, avoiding them, when not intentionally antagonizing them (except for Keitaro). Kanako generally comes across as an arrogant jerk, who is mentally unstable, enchanted, not really human, or just plain unacceptably weird.

...because it seems a bit backwards; she isn't actually a loner, she just doesn't like the people in the Hinata apartments because she feels they're "competitors" for Keitaro. Also, she does intentionally antagonize them. (This is based off reading the manga, mind you; if she's been flanderized in the anime, that's different.)

Ununnilium: The quote doesn't really seem to fit. `.`

Tanto: Yeah, it's kind of...bad.

How about the Devil's Dictionary definition of "alone"?

Alone, adj. In bad company.

Lale: Connected, but not close enough. We need something that says "alone but not lonely."

Tanto: "For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement."

"Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."

"Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential. All come into this world alone; all leave it alone."

Lale: I vote for the last one, only up til "essential," though. the other two should go somewhere with Evangelion.

Phartman: I dunno, I kind of like the "pralines & dick" one somebody snuck in there.

<Ahem> But, uh, yeah; it does work better under Ineffectual Loner. Thank you, Lale.

Lale: Look at what he says — "A quiet and reserved person who never spoke up, never said anything, kept it all inside no matter how much others beat on and picked on that person" is "Something guaranteed to spawn the most evil, freakish beast mankind had ever seen." That could be the page quote.

A widely accepted personality test called the Five Factor Model rates an individual on five sliding scales, one of which is labeled "extraversion." However, instead of teaching that any score is acceptable, the test actually treats higher scores as being better than others. Essentially, introversion is equated with some deficiency in personality (especially considering the other "low" scores translate to being disagreeable, closeminded, lazy, or neurotic). Sadly,

• The Five Factor Model is a model, not a test.
• Neuroses are correlated with high N.
• Western society tends to reward O+C+E+A+N-, but extremes are considered "deficient" (deviant, disrespectful, boring, incapable of dealing with unexpected circumstances, needy, codependent, emotionless).
• In terms of mental health only extreme scores (at either end) or sharp changes are considered problematic.

• Averted in the Baldur's Gate series, where not only do you have a 6-person party, each member of which has their own personalities, but you can have romances and complex relationships with them.

I don't see what "the characters have development and relationships" has to do with this trope.

• It's been said that Dickinson fell in love with a married man, a love that was not returned.

I've also heard that she was a lesbian, that she had an undiagnosed psychological problem, that she was just your ordinary brand of socially maladjusted...we really have no idea why she was a loner. In any case I don't think it adds too much more to the example.