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Narrative
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Osaka is not like you.
You know when you're sitting in a chair, and you lean back so you're just on two legs, and then you lean too far and you almost fall over, but just at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.
A character with their head in the clouds. They aren't quite stupid, and they aren't quite insane, but they lapse into non sequitur a lot and are strangely oblivious to things that everyone else takes for granted, such as whether it is okay to turn their suitemate's room into a landfill and board it up. They are still, somehow, able to function day to day.
Sometimes also called "Space Case" or "Space Cadet", or plain old "Strange".
One mark of a Cloudcuckoolander is when, 90% of the time, you think the character is just plain nuts, but 10% of the time, you suspect that the character is in fact the only truly sane person on the show. In other words, a Cloudcuckoolander has massive knowledge and understanding of the workings of the universe... too bad it's not the one they live in. Sometimes it's the one they came from, though. In any event, they can be oddly endearing, if not downright awesome.
When they are given a specific disorder, it is often Attention Deficit... ooh, shiny!, despite the fact that another lesser-known disorder actually fits much better.— Steven Wright
 When their weirdness delves into disturbing territory, they become a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant.
On rare occasion, a Cloudcuckoolander may become Bored With Insanity and become more normal. If this happens, sometimes it sticks, and sometimes a "we want our Cloudcuckoolander back" movement, subsequently getting bored with sanity too, or some other means of inducing insanity will make him or her a Cloudcuckoolander again (since, after all, Status Quo Is God).
Frequently clips entire stacks of Weirdness Coupons from the paper. Certainly, many of them get away with a good deal no one else would be allowed.
This kind of character has a weakness for falling into a Wiki Walk.
The name of the trope comes from the city built on air above the Greek plain in Aristophanes' play The Birds, 414 B.C., whose ruler had quite a large mental disconnect between the dreamy, idealistic Utopia that he imagined his city to be and the brutal totalitarian regime that he had actually imposed on it. He also came up with brilliant ideas like keeping people out of his city — a city you could only reach through flight — by building a really, really tall wall around it. (We'll give you a minute to figure out why that wouldn't have worked so well.)
If you've ever had a thought like this, please feel free to contribute to our intellectual coal mine of Musings. For various variants and overlapping tropes see The Fool, Manic Pixie Dream Girl, The Wonka, The Ophelia and Ax Crazy.
Lastly, when dealing with Cloudcuckoolanders, always remember that sometimes their ramblings aren't just ramblings.
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