Characters with No Social Skills in Literature.
- Ako in And You Thought There Is Never a Girl Online? is very shy in real life with most people, even to those who are nice to her. She also doesn’t understand why Hideki and Akane don’t want her talking about their MMORPG in class. Her net game is one of the only places where she is comfortable. Improving this was one of the reasons her guild started the Net Game Club.
- Parn Barre of Annals of the Western Shore's Gifts'' by Ursula K. Le Guin. Her gift is Animal Talk, and she's much more interested in that than socializing with people or being affectionate towards her daughter Gry, although she's good for quiet company.
- Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series: Reverend Tom Hauptmann from the short story "The Time Traveler". Hauptmann had spent more than a decade in a Central American prison; the decade in question was the 1960s, and upon his rescue/release, he was completely unprepared for the complete and bewildering sea-change the United States had undergone in that time.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: Cassian is a war general, not a courtier. His "ability" to compliment women is something his friends rib him over.
- Chris in The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime. The author has said that the book is not about Asperger's Syndrome and Chris' condition is not stated (although it's known that he attends a special school), but the blurb of the book commonly refers to high-functioning autism or Asperger's Syndrome. Chris doesn't have any friends and he can't understand facial expressions.
- In The Dark Tower series, Roland spent a very long timenote alone in the desert, obsessing over the tower and chasing the Man in Black. This causes him to forget how to deal with people. Lampshaded in an incident where he is being charming and funny while talking to some elderly villagers, and Susannah wonders if this is what he was like "before the desert turned him strange".
- Pascal from Daybreak on Hyperion. Due to a combination of growing up with very few companions of his own age and Intelligence Equals Isolation, he's aware of the formal manners required of his noble rank but has trouble grasping the little social graces that make interaction with his peers go smoother. Correcting this issue is an ongoing project for his familiar Kaede.
- Detective Lane Mysteries: Colin Weaver, aka Dr. Fibre, is a brilliant forensic scientist with the face of a male model and no idea how to interact with other human beings.
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- Manny. He's so terrified of kids his age that his only friends are imaginary ones. Heck! When other kids come over to play, he takes everything away because he doesn't want to share. Subverted in Hard Luck, where he manages to make at least one friend in preschool, but they don't even talk to each other and just watch TV together.
- Fregley doesn't seem to understand that flashing his chest hair to others or chasing Greg with one of his boogers is inappropriate behavior.
- Discworld:
- Stanley from Going Postal is very, very good at doing things by the book, but doesn't think along normal social lines at all. He was raised by peas.
- Mr. Nutt from Unseen Academicals. He once, when asked by his friends if he was ill, said that he wasn't and had indeed had a normal bowel movement that morning. Prior to the age of seven, he wasn't raised by anyone at all, and after that spent most of his time reading, so you can probably understand why he's got problems understanding what constitutes Too Much Information. He also has a tendency to speak in formal paragraphs when he's not terrified someone's going to object to his very existence, and has a tendency to get Sidetracked by the Analogy ("There appears to be so much I might inadvertently pull!").
- Death (The Grim Reaper) is notable, particularly in the later novels, for his fascination with and (often hilarious) attempts to imitate humans.
- Jeremy Clockson in Thief of Time is very similar to Stanley, except that instead of Post Office Regulataions and pins, his defining obsession is building very accurate clocks, and he doesn't really know how to relate to anyone who doesn't grasp this, including other clockmakers. At one point, the narrative notes that he considers Mr Soak the milkman to be a friend, because they exchanges brief sentences once every few weeks.
- Susan Sto Helit, at least in her first appearance, has very few friends because she has no patience and doesn't hesitate to explain to others why they're wrong about things. In later books, she's still got aspects of this but, much to her own surprise, has turned out to be very good with kids.
- Granny Weatherwax is an interesting example; she's the mistress of "headology", which means she probably has a better understanding of human beings than anyone else on the Disc. But that doesn't mean she can relate to them. In fact, quite the reverse; she knows how silly and easily led the people around her are, and they know she feels that way.
- Ignatius in Don't Call Me Ishmael! is blunt, more interested in sciences than people and often rattles off random facts that have nothing to do with the conversation the others are having. His mother makes him join the debate team so he will develop social skills, but he doesn't get much better over the course of the series.
- Shizuo Heiwajima from Durarara!! grew up with very little in the way of positive social contact due to his anger and impulse control issues. As a result, he does not have much in the way of social graces.
- Oskar in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Sometimes when they played "Reconnaissance Expedition," his father would deliberately set up missions in which Oskar was forced to talk to people, because his father wanted him to get better at it.
- Finding Snowflakes deconstructs this trope. The main character, a teenager so socially awkward he barely holds a conversation, far from being seen as adorable because of this is avoided at all costs, and he is also to blame. He has problems filtering his thoughts and thus ends up with many cases of Brutal Honesty, some funny, some downright destructive. He doesn't seem to empathize as well with others for the same reason, despite him being kind. And there is also no "magical" cure for him getting social skills: gaining this is something he has to work, and with great effort, over the course of the book.
- In the Firekeeper Saga novels, the eponymous character was Raised by Wolves, talking intelligent ones. She never manages to fully master elementary grammar, writing, or table manners, but elsewhere she's far from naïve.
- Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic! has been in the military since birth. Someone once described Sousuke as that character in a Tabletop RPG who traded in all those "worthless" character points in social skills and instead put them into combat abilities. He is a nice guy, he just has no concept at all of what's expected of someone in a high school environment. Naturally, the writers put him in a high school environment, often. This turned out to be so popular that an entire season with this as the main premise was produced: Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu.
- The appropriately-named Hunter in the Gone series. After accidentally killing a friend with his mutant powers, he is brutally hit in the head by Zil, leaving him partially brain-damaged. Because of this, he slurs his words a lot and doesn't understand some things. He is trained by the nearby coyotes (who are mutant, and can speak somewhat) on how to hunt, so he's the primary food bringer for Perdido Beach along with Quinn and his fishermen.
- Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. She's brutally honest, dropping some uncomfortable truths, and is either completely uninterested or completely clueless about social interactions. She also in the fifth book abruptly comes up to Harry and says she believes him "without so much as a preliminary hello".
- Alistair in Heart of Steel has spent the last ten years on a remote island up to his eyebrows in mad science and plans for world conquest, with no company that he didn't build himself. Needless to say, his attempts to woo Julia, the first woman he's seen in that time are...spectacular failures.
- The Hunger Games: Something that Haymitch frequently mocks Katniss over is her lack of people skills.
- If I Fall, If I Die: Once Diane's agoraphobia got so severe that she couldn't leave the house, her social skills quickly atrophied, causing other people to become one of her phobias. She has her son Will answer the door when the deliverymen arrive.
- In Kit Whitfield's In Great Waters Henry/Whistle is Raised By Deepmen. His lack of adjustment once on land isn't helped by the fact that he's also a Half-Human Hybrid.
- The Johnny Maxwell Trilogy has Kirsty, who isn't good at making friends and considers this to be a character flaw ... in everyone else. Extremely intelligent, she has a tendency to explain to people how stupid they are until they wander off. (Johnny doesn't wander off because he knows how stupid he is.)
- Julian's uncle Constantius is this despite being Emperor of Rome. He is very shy and very dull and can only interact with others as an emperor.
- In Katanagatari: Shichika grew up in a island with his exiled father and his big sister, and was already a young adult when he met another human being for the first time. Because of this, at the beginning of the series, he is unaware of most social norms and can barely tell two people apart even if they look absolutely nothing like each other.
- Kindling Ashes: Giselle's only companion for over a decade was the dragon soul living inside her head so she has trouble relating to people living outside it. Sara had a time and a half teaching her how to say "thank you".
- Dondi Snayheever from Tim Powers' Last Call is socially incompetent. He was walled up inside a giant Skinner box by his father for virtually his entire childhood, surrounded by over-sized paintings of playing cards and books about poker. His father was trying to condition his child to be the ultimate poker player, but lack of human contact left Dondi unable to judge other players' intentions.
- Lone Huntress: A One-Man Army spending virtually all her personal time aboard her ship, battling a Dark and Troubled Past, and suffering from Muscle Angst and paranoia has difficulties with socialization? Say it isn't so.
- In MARZENA we have Dr. Lauren Hackenhoek who mostly listen but don't say a whole lot, unless you want her to explain to you how neuroscience and neurosurgery works, there's no problem there.
- Adelia in Mistress of the Art of Death is blunt to the point of rudeness, often abrasive, and honest even when it would be much, much safer to lie.
- The narrator of Karen Hesse's The Music of Dolphins was the only survivor of an airplane crash in the Caribbean as a very young child, and was taken in by a pod of dolphins. She's reasonably healthy when she's found by (aside from minor considerations, such as having barnacles all over her) and, unlike other Wild Children in the center that's taking care of her, she can connect with people and understand language, because dolphins are that awesome. However, the betrayals and confused feelings from the scientists studying her turn her away from them, and eventually she is allowed to return to the sea and her dolphin family.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: The reason for Atsuko "Acchan" Sasaki's Friendless Background, but mostly an Informed Flaw. She had difficulties interacting with people, which made her isolated at school. And given that this made her very lonely, the trope was Deconstructed.I don’t know how to speak to my classmates... or how to try to be friends with them. I don’t understand things like that.
- August from Of Fear and Faith. His attempts to fraternize with his comrades at first prove to be so painfully awkward that it drives him to drink.
- Petaybee: Cita, a character in the second book, was raised by members of a cult and, for months after being freed, refers to herself as "goat-dung".
- The eponymous character in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, having been raised by The Fair Folk, is an occasionally-sadistic Trickster.
- Mashiro of The Pet Girl of Sakurasou knows absolutely nothing but drawing. Thus, Chihiro-sensei assigns the Only Sane Man Sorata as her handler.
- In Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Captain Walker Hoxie spent his whole childhood being abused by civilians, explaining why he treats "feather merchants" with undisguised contempt.
- Reaper (2016): Michael, a.k.a. Hawk, does not know how to deal with people, especially girls. That's why he entered the virtual reality world Game, as one of the very first players. Hawk is his public persona, and only the other Founder Players know Michael. At least until he draws Jex and Nathan into his investigation, falls for Jex and wants her to know the real him.
- In Scavenger Alliance, Tad is the youngest of the Wallam-Crane family, pretty much royalty on his home planet of Adonis. As such, he's grown up surrounded by luxury, being pandered to by everyone he meets (he's initially attracted to Blaze because she's the only girl he's met who doesn't immediately throw herself at his feet). Between that and his emotionless, mercenary grandfather who uses Tad as a pawn for his ambitions, it's amazing Tad is even as tactful as he is, but his tendency to blurt out questions and utter inability to read a room nearly gets him thrown off a roof. But under all that is a genuinely caring, compassionate man.
- Shana from Shakugan no Shana. She was raised for combat, and her caretakers failed to see the importance of pretty much anything besides that, not even a name. This helps explain why she reacts to romance the way she does. At one point, she starts asking everyone about kissing and how babies are made, which makes for some really awkward moments...
- Sisterhood Series by Fern Michaels: Harry Wong most certainly has this problem. He is rather rude, impatient, and violent. One time, he went to his pal Jack Emery's house in the middle of the night, knocked on Jack's door, kicked it in when Jack didn't answer it fast enough, causing an alarm to blare for the whole neighborhood to hear...and then simply punched out the alarm system to make it stop.
- Spice and Wolf:
- Holo matches this trope to a glimmering "T". Despite being a wolf spirit, she's a lot savvier about the way humans live than some others of her kind. She has lived with humans several times in the past, and spent centuries watching the people of a single village. Indeed, she often understands people better than they understand themselves, and isn't above emotional manipulation when it suits her. She is carefree about certain human conventions, but not because she doesn't understand them; she just doesn't care. She also goes centuries without interacting with humans, so her social awkwardness often stems from being so out of touch with the times.
- Lawrence's social skills are quite poor as well. While he's adept at communicating with others of his trade in the process of various business deals, he doesn't have much experience with people outside of the field of economics. He's especially ignorant of the courtship process.
- Lawrence and Holo are good examples of different ways this trope can be applied. Lawrence knows a lot about contemporary society and social institutions, but isn't very savvy about human nature. Holo is the exact opposite, and both are intelligent enough to cover for each other as necessary.
- The eponymous character of Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land: Valentine Michael Smith. His naïve approach to society makes him a strange saintly figure. He's coming to it all cold: as a baby was the only survivor of the first crewed mission to Mars, and was subsequently raised by Martians.
- In Super Powereds, Vince and Chad are both severely lacking in the social department, partly due to them having Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training. Vince has spent much of his life as a vagrant and hasn't had any meaningful interaction with anyone after his adopted father's death. His father has also spent much of the time training him in hand-to-hand combat. As a result, Vince is an All-Loving Hero, who can't comprehend someone else being dishonest (except by necessity). After his father's murder at the hand of his best friend, Chad has devoted his time to training to become the best Hero ever. His power of total body and mind control allows him to train his body to be the ultimate fighting machine and to focus his mind, blocking off emotions he considers unnecessary and eschewing normal human contact. When his mother visits him at Lander, she is worried that he has zero friends. The boys he hangs out with are his sparring partners, nothing more. When Angela expresses an interest in him, all her hints go right over his head, as he takes everything at face value. As does Vince, when Chad explains to him the stated reason why Angela invited him to a club (i.e. she didn't want to invite anyone who would grope her all night long). When Vince's friends find out that both Vince and Chad both honestly believe her reason, they are speechless for a few seconds before trying to figure out how it's possible for there to be two such clueless guys. Vince doesn't understand what they mean, and Nick points out that this just underscores their point. They both get better, though, with Chad even starting to come out of his shell and trying to do more with his friends than exercise and spar.
- Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note:
- Aya zigzags this trope to the point that viewers aren't really sure if she's really lacking in social skills. Her Friendless Background is basically due to being on a "different bandwidth" of her classmates, and her inability to sustain small talk, which indicates this trope. On the other hand, she doesn't really have any problem handling the rest of Detective Team KZ...
- Kozuka is a straight example when he was younger; he had a hard time communicating with his peers, especially girls; although he seems to have improved at Present Day.
- Nanaki is still this at Present Day, but then one should expect this from a person who lived most of his life as a (non-consensual) The Shut-In.
- Tres Iqus of Trinity Blood displays this trope every now and then in his interactions with Abel. Especially in the manga, he is often heard uttering the phrases like, "Does not compute." Of course, it's questionable if this is because Abel has an extensive vocabulary or simply because he's crazy. However, Tres also fits into the "brutal honesty" classification quite snugly. Considering Tres is a robot, it is more like he is one of the wolves.
- While a decent enough liege lord, the Dragon in Uprooted appears to be a huge Jerkass when dealing with people personally. Turns out that after a century or so of near-isolation and magical workings in his tower, he's just really that bad at dealing with people.
- Reed Lazar from Vampire Academy did not socialize. In gathering he either stayed silent or said very rude things.
- In Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, Clayton Danvers was bitten and Changed into a werewolf when he was five years old. He spent two years as a Wild Child in Louisiana's bayous before being domesticated by another werewolf. He eventually relearned human customs such as "privacy" and "physical contact", but does not understand them and chooses not to observe them unless absolutely necessary. His thoughts are more wolfish than those of other werewolves, as he was Changed at five instead of fifteen. As a child, he was often assumed to be mentally handicapped since he rarely spoke and even then rarely in complete sentences.
- In Brooks' World War Z, this phenomenon becomes a lingering social problem after the Zombie Apocalypse which ravaged western society, as orphaned children who were separated from their parents (by death or worse) and who managed to survive in the wild grow up feral.
- Very common in Worm. Superpowers come from trauma, so most people who have them are messed up in some way or another. Basically every member of the Undersiders has some sort of reason that they struggle with interpersonal stuff, such as Taylor being being brutally bullied by her former best friend once they got to high school. The case that stands out the most though is Rachel Lindt AKA "Bitch" — a neglected and abused foster child who ends up gaining dog-related powers. Her upbringing is enough to result in general social incompetence, but one of her Required Secondary Powers is an implicit understanding of dog social cues, which comes at the expense of her ability to read human social cues.
- Both Meg and Charles Wallace in A Wrinkle in Time. Meg is brilliant at math but so bad at playing the game of social interactions at school that she's on the verge of failing and gets sent to the principal's office regularly. Charles Wallace was non-speaking until he was 4, when he started talking in full sentences. Most of the people in their small town still think he can't talk because he's never felt the desire to interact with them, but he has deep, adult conversations with his family even though he's a kindergartner.
- Princess Ida from Piers Anthony's Xanth series was accidentally left with the nymphs by the stork. As a result (due to the magic surrounding the nymph territory that wipes the previous day's memories away), she has absolutely no memories past her 12th birthday, at which she was rescued and raised by the (never mentioned again) Otterbees (basically sentient otters with a typically punnish name). Other than her lack of knowledge about human culture (mostly courtship and mating), she's stunningly well-adjusted.
- David of you could make a life devoted virtually all of his energy and passion to his NHL career and hence had very little time or interest in having a social life or hobbies outside of hockey. The result being that he struggles to come up with anything when he's asked about what he likes/does other than hockey and assumes that Jake having sex with him is just a "buddy" thing he does with everyone.
