All Of The Other Reindeer / Literature

Characters who are treated poorly by the majority in Literature.

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• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian: Many, many people at the reservation turn on Arnold for leaving for Reardan and deride him as a traitor, to the point that the students at his old high school chant "Ar-nold sucks!" and turn their backs on him when he shows up with his new basketball team to play against theirs.
• In The Alice Network, Eve mentions being bullied because of her stutter when she was a child, and adds that the teachers never intervened.
• The Anderssons: Rebecka is bullied in her new school in Småland. It is mostly because she's a City Mouse from Stockholm, and her parents never were married (which was more acceptable in the cities, but a big blight on your social reputation in smaller communities). However, the other kids also tease her for things like her red hair and freckles, for having to wear her grandmother's shoes, and anything else that they can come up with. And the worst thing is that her teacher is so mean too, that she won't do anything to stop it.
• Andre Norton:
  • In Catseye, Troy's refugee status causes embarrassment all around.
  • In Ice Crown, the heroine is not taken seriously by her family.
  • In Star Man's Son, a young mutant tries to get himself accepted as a Star Man despite the flagrant proof of his mutation, his hair.
  • In The Zero Stone, Jern is isolated aboard the Free Trader ship because the crew all stick together.
• Angel Child, Dragon Child: On Ut’s first day of school in the United States, she hardly gets one step past the school gate before all the children start laughing at her and her sisters for wearing áo dài (long Vietnamese tunics) which look like pajamas. Then, in class, they laugh at her some more when she says "Chao buoi sang" (good morning).
• Animorphs: Tobias was bullied and shunned in school, and was taken care of by an aunt and uncle that didn't want anything to do with him, before becoming a hawk nothlit.
• Thessa in A Bad Place to Be a Hero is considerably younger than her older sisters, who nicknamed her "Runt" and would habitually gang up to make fun of her.
• In the Apprentice Adept, Neysa was an outcast from the local unicorn herd due to her small size (she's just above pony-size) and horse-normal coloration (Unicorns in this universe are an Amazing Technicolor Population). Her association with the Blue Adept, Stile, eventually elevated her status to the point where her presence was a status symbol.
• Susan Shwartz's "Beggarman": The main character, a kid named Jommy, who was born and lived on a space station but had dreams of making the damaged Earth properly inhabitable again, was mocked and tormented by the other "Spaceborn" for wanting to live on a "dirtball." While hiding from them he encountered a visiting Earthman named George Isherwood Stewart who said that they were "both named for loners" and asked him to help with an experiment concerning the characteristics of plants grown in low G and Earth G. After several of the other children vandalized the labs and he had a meltdown that threatened to ruin his chances of attending an off-station school called McAuliffe, Stewart, who'd been revealed as Earth's Minister of Education, offered him on-planet schooling.
• A Boy Named Queen: The titular character is immediately made the subject of mockery by his peers (except Evelyn) when he announces it at school.
• Brave New World focuses on two characters who feel this way: Bernard Marx feels like an outcast in society for being shorter than the Alpha average height (believed to have been caused by alcohol accidentally getting into his people jar) and for his cynical views on society, particularly his prudishness in a Free-Love Future. Later John the Savage is introduced, who gets this twice over: first he was rejected by the Savage society he was raised in because he was white and the Son of a Whore in their eyes, then when he joins 'civilized' society he's become the peculiar outsider with queer notions to be gawked at. An odd case in Helmholtz though, by all accounts he should be a good citizen but he wants to be an outsider. Helmholtz and Bernard are eventually exiled when they rebel against society, but John, whom the powers that be won't let him leave because they want to see what else he does, tries to run away and live in self imposed exile, but after he's found and succumbed to an orgy with the gawkers, betraying all his principles, kills himself.
• Bridge to Terabithia: Leslie is the "weird" New Transfer Student who moved from the city. The other kids don't like her because she stands out like a sore thumb. How she is weird differs between incarnations:
  • In the original book and its 1980s made-for-TV film. Leslie is a tomboy who lives in a 1970s/1980s rural town where it's still seen as odd for girls to wear pants, nevermind looking like a boy. Leslie's Hippie Parents are also very well-off compared to most of the other parents. Leslie was raised secular, which clashes with the heavily Christian town she lives in. Aside from Jess, Leslie's classmates ignore her.
  • By the 2000s film, tomboyishness had lost much of its weirdness. Leslie is still an oddball atheist rich kid, but her fashion sense and personality changed. She's less sarcastic and more plucky, which weirds out the other kids, and her girly fashion sense sticks out amongst her country-raised classmates.
• The Butcher Boy: The Brady family are seen as this for how dysfunctional they are.
• Chrysanthemum: On Chrysanthemum's first day of school, everyone laughs at her name because of how long it is.
• Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series features four main characters who are each initially rejected by others for being: the lone survivor of a shipwreck and thus the ultimate of bad luck; a thrice convicted thief marked with X tattoos on his hands; a girl who is overweight and possessing immense but unrecognized weather magic; and a noble who moves a lot, disregards conventional noble classism, is obsessed with thread and weaving, and is also an orphan and sole survivor of a plague.
• Nahri of The Daevabad Trilogy gets this on all sides. As a child, she was ejected from every orphanage in Cairo because her ability to sense disease terrified people and she didn't have anything like a home until she met a Jewish doctor named Yaqub (and by then she was too jaded to see him as a permanent home). In Daevabad, her human looks mean she has to go through a lengthy cosmetic routine every day to not be rejected by the djinn, and her heritage means she's on thin ice all the time. She identifies more with the part-human shafit, who live an outcast existence like the one she knew, but even they dislike her because she's the scion of a dynasty that brutalized them for centuries.
• In Dora Wilk Series, Bogna used to be shunned by her fellow students because she had no problem being alone with the dead. It stopped, quite obviously, when she started studying pathology rather than medicine.
• Dreamspeaker: When Peter Baxter first comes to the Institution, the boys make it clear that they don't like him. In one scene, they blame him for something he didn't do, calling him "Crazy Pete". Of course, the adults in charge don't believe the boys for a minute.
• Earth's Children:
  • Jondalar states that after he beat up Madroman for exposing his secret, forbidden love for Zolena in his early teens, he was publicly shamed and often shunned by others in the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, with parents even taking their children away from him. Things got better after he went to live with the Lanzadonii for a few years, but Jondalar has never forgotten the acute shame and despair he felt as a social pariah, and he never wants to experience it again.
  • Rydag of the Lion Camp of the Mamutoi is often ostracized by others because he's of 'mixed spirits' (part Cro-Magnon, part Neanderthal); due to a heart condition he also can't keep up with the other children and so often gets ignored or left out. He can't talk much either because of his hybrid status and so cannot interact easily with others. He is treated kindly by his adopted family, though, and eventually with Ayla's help, he learns how to communicate non-verbally and is accepted by the whole Lion Camp. He's still shunned and treated badly by other Mamutoi camps at the Summer Meeting, although the Lion Camp publicly stand up for him.
• "Fairest of All": The autistic, nonbinary otter Brogan never suffered the same abuse as humans like them, but they are regarded as a terrible, unlikable otter.
• Fallocaust:
  • Ellis is the only female chimera, so she's something an outsider in the family, and the only one who doesn't have sex with the others. However, she's also the only chimera Silas has a truly paternal relationship with, and she's shown to be relatively well-adjusted.
  • Reaver and Sanguine both experienced this growing up, due to being chimeras raised around humans, with all the murder and bloodlust that implies.
• Fish in a Tree: Ally is an outcast at her school because of her dyslexia. Thankfully, she becomes friends with Keisha and Albert.
• A Frozen Heart: In this tie-in novel to Frozen, Prince Hans feels "out of place" in his abusive family, as except for his mother and Lars (the only one of his 12 older brothers who didn't ill-treat him), his father and older brothers frequently belittle him for being a pushover.
• Harry Potter:
  • Snape was unpopular at school, and the victim of many — including Harry's own father.
  • Myrtle often describes herself as the victim of bullying, such as when someone threw a book at her (implied to have been Ginny trying to get rid of a diary, and not even being aware that Myrtle was there).
  • Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Due to the Ministry of Magic lying about Harry's actions, most of the Wizarding World believes that Harry is crazy and dangerous, and that the return of Lord Voldemort in the previous book is a lie, just because his scar hurts and he's a Parselmouth. At the end of the book, however, Harry is vindicated after the Ministry of Magic arrive just in time to witness Voldemort themselves.
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Dudley, who's been bullying Harry most of the series, stops doing it after Harry saves his life from the Dementors, and at the end thanks him for it, and believes in what he says about Voldemort. Until then, the Dursleys enforce this attitude towards Harry, telling everyone that he was a freak and deranged. The first book mentions that Harry has no friends at school because no kid wants to antagonize Dudley.
• Trash from Hidden Talents is ostracised and mocked by everyone, even Martin's friendship group. This is justified though, since his weird habit of throwing things without warning tends to unsettle people. Martin's group did try to befriend him once, but it didn't work out. It turns out that Trash is telekinetic but has no control over his powers, meaning that objects in his presence randomly throw themselves around the place. Once Martin's group understands this, they finally accept Trash and help him learn to control his telekinesis.
• In The Hobbit, Bombur gets this from the others in Mirkwood, after Thorin starts it off by ripping the poor guy a new one for rambling about his coma dreams. When Bombur wails that his legs (which the narrator has already told us are weak and wobbly from being comatose for six days) won’t carry him and he needs to stop and sleep, the others reply with: “No you don’t! Let your legs take their share, we have carried you far enough!” (It’s implied that this exchange and variations of it took place over the course of an entire day) Later, when Bilbo describes having similar dreams as Bombur, they say that Bilbo’s “gone like Bombur.”
• Ariel Piper from Hover Car Racer is the first female racer to be accepted into the International Race School, which was male-only until recently, and she's ostracized by most of the boys. Principal LeClerq even persuades some of the students to sabotage her equipment so she'll lose races and drop out.
• How to Train Your Dragon: In Hiccup: The Viking Who Was Seasick, the children's picture book that started off the series, Rudolph is referenced when this is virtually called out by name:
  Vikings were enormous roaring burglars with bristling moustaches who sailed all over the world and took whatever they wanted. Hiccup was tiny and thoughtful and polite. The other Viking children wouldn't let him join in their rough Viking games.
• Stephen King's Carrie: The teenaged main character is tormented at school and at home from her Moral Guardian zealot mother. The stress leads her to burn down the building at prom and later her own house with both her and her mother still in it.
• The Legend of Drizzt: Drizzt Do'urden was ostracized for not being Always Chaotic Evil like his fellow Drow. This forms his Back Story and why he heads to the surface.
• In Legend of the Animal Healer, Ben is shunned for being an Elective Mute, and Martine for having Healing Hands that work on animals.
• Yuuta of Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! got this treatment when his Chuunibyou gone too far in middle school, making him a Cloudcuckoolander. After moving to high school, he treats this as Old Shame.
• Miles Taylor and the Golden Cape: Miles is the new kid at Chapman Middle School, and because of that, is avoided by everyone. He ultimately does make friends in Henry and Josie.
• Mockingbird: Caitlin Smith is called a freak and ostracized by her peers because of her strange behaviors. They think she's an insensitive and selfish brat (though it's really due to her Autism, which makes it hard for her to show emotions, as she doesn't quite understand the concept of empathy and often says the wrong thing, which leads to kids yelling at her and calling her out on it, not quite getting that she's causing problems). She does find a friend later on.
• Isaac Asimov's The Mule: Magnifico tells Bayta about his terrible childhood, where people would avoid him out of fear/contempt, they'd treat him like a freak, and being the Mule's clown doesn't improve matters because he's physically and mentally abused there as well.
• Murder for the Modern Girl: Peter Buchanan was bullied and discriminated against by others throughout his childhood due to his shapeshifting abilities. After the death of his father who loved and protected him, Peter runs away, taking on the identity of Guy Rosewood. The torment he received from people is one of the reasons he prefers hiding his abilities and minding his business.
• My Heart and Other Black Holes: Aysel is isolated by everyone at school because of what her dad did.
• Frequently seen as part of the cast's Dark and Troubled Past in My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!.
  • Pretty little Sophia is bullied for her albinism until Katarina (accidentally) saves her.
  • Years later, Katarina steps in again, though on purpose this time, and rescues the commoner Maria from being harassed by some obnoxious nobles. In this case, other characters actually think those bullies were being incredibly stupid since in no more than two years Maria will have higher status than them due to her outstanding magical talents.
  • In Katarina's previous life, her best friend Acchan is being seen as a weirdo due to her inability to make friends.
• The Mysterious Benedict Society: Reynie is bullied at his orphanage for not acting like a "normal" child. He's a Child Prodigy who prefers studying and reading over watching television, and is mocked for casually using words like "enjoyable". Reynie thus has no friends besides his tutor, Miss Perumal, until he meets Kate, Constance, and Sticky.
• Nerdycorn: The other unicorns regularly mock Fern for her preferences for science over traditional unicorn things like rainbow jumping and waterfall diving. They also make fun of her appearance and refuse to invite her to dances. When she decides to stop fixing things for them, they come to regret their actions.
• Rama II: Richard was alone as a kid, though it doesn't seem anyone teased him, he retreated into Shakespeare from his father. As an adult he's pretty affable (e.g. with his crewmates), except for when he's in a relationship and has to be an emotional father. He took his girlfriends' adultery pretty hard because she was the only other thing (at the time) that he valued. When he nearly killed her and thankfully was stopped, then wanted to kill himself, he decided instead he valued science to stay alive (and swore off further violence, which is part of why he got kidnapped by aliens...).
• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: This Trope Namer is a children's story (later song). The title character is mocked by his fellow reindeer for his luminous red nose, until Santa turns up asking Rudolph's help as a navigation light for his sleigh. All of the other reindeer quickly change their tune when Santa chooses him because they realize his nose is a gift as well as an oddity, and unanimously declare Rudolph will go down in history.
• El Higgins from The Scholomance is a well-justified example, as she has an inborn affinity for The Dark Arts so strong that even mundanes register it as something inexplicably off-putting about her. Wizards who fully grasp the amount of Bad Juju she has at her fingertips are prone to regard her as an existential threat, unwanted competition, or both.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: The first book alone has the main characters moving in with their Illegal Guardian Count Olaf who falsely promises to "raise these orphans as if they were actually wanted." Thus, the Baudelaires are forced to become servants for Count Olaf, who gives them a great number of difficult chores. They are also called names/ridiculed by Olaf and his troupe, and various other characters throughout each book.
• Robin Wasserman's Skinned: Lia is treated this way because she is a mech, or a person who died and had their brain uploaded into an android.
• Small Persons with Wings: Durindana, one of the Parvi Pennati, is treated like this because her mind rejects the Magica Artificia, the main form of magic used by the Parvi. Once she conjured up a skirt to wear at a ball, but her skirt disappeared in the middle of a dance, leaving her in her drawers. The other Parvi call her Inepta. However, once the Parvi give up the Magica Artificia for good, Durindana learns the Magica Vera faster than any of the others. She uses her abilities to help the others make clothes and houses.
• Something Else: The story revolves around a Cartoon Creature being continuously rejected by the animal townsfolk for being "Something Else". However, he eventually meets another strange creature (Something) and they soon become friends.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, the populace of Westeros treats Tyrion Lannister as evil incarnate mostly because he's an ugly dwarf. Granted, his rampant drinking and whoring, his Deadspan Snarking, and his more ruthless actions don't help his case either. This trope also seems to be Stannis Baratheon's fate, both as a child and when he tries to take the Iron Throne. Justified, in that he is the middle child stuck between two extremely charismatic brothers, and his own Brutal Honesty and humorless demeanor aren't exactly endearing.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Ex Machina: The Vulcans in that novel demonstrate this trope in how they respond to Spock's newfound philosophy of balanced emotion. Despite his admirable personal and professional traits, other Vulcans on the Enterprise crew reject him entirely for failing to follow their cultural customs exactly. At least one requests a transfer rather than live with his presence.
  • In the Starfleet Corps of Engineers stories, Nasats treat P8 Blue and other "Quiets" like this. P8 Blue was regularly dismissed by her fellows and viewed as freakish or deformed. In fact, her differently-wired brain is a trait that lets her play a vital role in establishing relations with another race living on the Nasat homeworld. Naturally, P8 saves the day.
• Star Wars Expanded Universe: Dorsk 81, an alien from a planet where they reproduce by cloning. Despite being supposedly genetically identical to his older clones, he has access to Force powers. Guess how the other clones treat him?
• In Ruth Frances Long's The Treachery of Beautiful Things, when Jack tells her no one will believe her about the Land of Faerie, Jenny goes Laughing Mad for a while. She knows that: she told people (truthfully) that the woods had swallowed her brother Tom, and they talk about her behind her back and laugh.
• The Tribe: Spencer has no friends and is constantly bullied by Riley Callahan and his posse. It's only when he meets the Tribe that he gets some friends.
• Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling: The titular character is ostracized and mistreated by the other ducks, including his siblings, because he looks different from the other ducklings and is perceived as ugly. No-one treats him with any respect save for his mother and a few select others he meets on his journey, like the children of the woman who took him in for the winter. He eventually grows up to be a swan and is admired and envied for his beauty. The author was once asked to write an autobiography on himself and he replied that he already did as he was bullied in school.
• Vanas Heritage: Most of the students of the warrior and ranger classes on Nordgard dislike Nirvy, some see an easy target for ridicule in her, others are afraid to be victimized by Nemdes and her gang if they don’t join in, too.
• Varjak Paw: The titular Varjak is a Mesopotamian Blue cat; however, he is ostracized amongst his family for having brown eyes instead of the characteristic green eyes of the breed. It turns out, though, that the first Mesopotamian Blue had brown eyes.
• The Vazula Chronicles: In A Kingdom Submerged, the mermaid Merletta becomes a trainee record holder at the Center of Culture, but she's looked down on for being an orphan from Tilssted. Of the five other trainees, Emil and Sage are reasonably friendly, but Oliver views her with disdain and Ileana and Jacobi actively bully her before escalating into outright murder attempts. Even the teachers insult and patronize her.
• Warformed Stormweaver:
  • Half the students at Galens (and a small but noticeable number of the instructors) hate Rey for "dragging everyone else down" (which doesn't even make sense, since no one actually has to help him) and constantly tell him he doesn't belong. When he starts catching up, they still yell at him for not belonging, but at this point it's clearly out of fear.
  • Near the end, it's pointed out that the school has been divided in half: The ones who hated Rey from the start (and thus have to keep hating him to cover their fear) and the ones who were nice from the start (or at least not assholes). Several people jump the line and start hating him when he starts surpassing them, but not many. Logan Grant is one of the few who jumps the other way, finally admitting that Rey does have what it takes.
• Warhammer 40,000: Graham McNeill's Horus Heresy novel False Gods, Magnus the Red thinks on how he retreated to Prospero to research sorcery away from prying eyes and wishes he could show the glories of the warp to his persecutors. On the other hand, he also thinks that the warp makes such antiquated notions as good and evil fall away, so the question of how unjustly he is treated remains.
• Warrior Cats: Fireheart's nephew Cloudkit was bullied and ostracized even by adults because he was a kittypet. Even though he was only a moon old when he came to ThunderClan and doesn't even remember his birth mother, Cloudkit was looked down upon by many of his Clan. He was also looked down upon for being white-furred. Completely white-furred cats are rare in ThunderClan (most are 'forest colours' like red, black, and brown).
• In The Wave (1981), as the eponymous student movement sweeps the school, the few kids who don't join up find themselves victims of harassment, insults and physical assaults from their peers.
• The Wheel of Time: Three major characters continue mistreating Mat Cauthon after he breaks into the most secure fortress in the world to try to rescue them, which prompts two other female characters to force the first three to apologize.
• In Why We Took the Car, Maik is harassed and looked down upon by his classmates. It's implied that Tschick isn't treated much better.
• A Wild Last Boss Appeared!: Ruphas' memories show she was discriminated by the other Flügels for being born with black wings. Hence why when she took over the world she treated all other races as equal under her rule. This is also the reason why Ruphas decides to not give Virgo a golden apple to powerlevel her; while it would help her to quickly become stronger, it would also make it very likely that Virgo's descendants would be born with mixed-color wings, or even black ones like Ruphas' own.
• Wise Child: Though the Solitary Sorceress Juniper cares for the villagers and always aids them when they consult her in times of emergency, they by and large distrust her and deride her as a Wicked Witch. This comes to a head at the end, when the village priest Fillan succeeds in turning them against her by blaming her for the winter famine and puts her on trial.
• Aeduen from The Witchlands has been ostracized by others since he was young because of his powers, which are stereotypically associated with demons. By the time the readers meet him, this has been going on for long enough that he decided he's just fine where he is and doesn't want to be part of the society.
• Wonder Woman: Warbringer: While she isn't considered an outcast, the book continues the popular adaptational modification of having Diana feel ostracized by how different she is from the other Amazons, especially because of how she was born.

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