Rename: Raised By Wolves

^ Except that the trope doesn't make the distinction why is someone socially inept. It CAN be that he has never been raised to know them, or it can be that he does not care to learn them (a Absent-Minded Professor who is too focused on his work, for example.) or simply that they are impossible to grasp (character has autism).

edited 23rd Aug '10 11:05:37 AM by Ghilz

Yes, this trope has nothing to do with whether or not someone was badly raised. Which just adds to the confusion of the title.

Okay, then Socially Inept works.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

^^^ Upbringing isn't important, but the trope is specifically about people who don't grasp how normal human socialization works, as opposed to, for example, people who habitually say the wrong thing at the wrong time when the know better.

Social Novice might work; this is a person who is an absolute beginner when it comes to interacting with others whether they've had relevant experiences or not.

edited 23rd Aug '10 4:23:22 PM by Bailey

Socially Ignorant, Social Gracelessness, Social Fumbler.

Raised by Wolves has long been a saying for someone who acts terribly socially as though they've been raised by animals, and as a result, when it's not seriously being used straight, using it straight (as a Stock Phrase, that is), is often the punchline.

Hell, when people seriously use it straight, for people who were actually raised by wolves, most times they'll even specify "literally raised by wolves."

Seriously, this teeters well over the edge of being defendable merely due to being a preexisting term, but since it's only teetering, I'm throwing in my support for What Were You Raised By Wolves? or whatever it is.

edited 23rd Aug '10 9:39:28 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

^ Teetering, yes. This is quickly countered by editors who are routinely taking the name literally.

The old page image certainly didn't help matters, either....

edited 24th Aug '10 1:51:17 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

I agree with both Known Unknown and Stratadrake. Makes me wonder if it might not be easier to rename Wild Child to Literally Raised By Wolves, since that seems to be the form people like to use. All the suggested names seem kind of bleh, and it looks like it's going to come down to the least worst. Trying to scratch up a name without 'social' in it was rather fruitless.

It's somewhat frustrating to see a trope with an interesting, common Stock Phrase name that can't be utilised.

edited 24th Aug '10 3:11:53 PM by Daremo

Creed of the Happy Pessimist:Always expect the worst. Then, when it happens, it was only what you expected. All else is a happy surprise.

Even if you rename Wild Child, you still will need to rename this, don't count on people to see the difference between two very close names.

Really, I think I'm with Known Unknown on this.

To clarify: when we say "misuse" are we referring to examples involving characters who were raised in the wild by animals but don't fit the criteria for this trope?

I ask, because it seems like most feral children would have terrible social skills as a result of being feral children. Are we automatically counting it as a misuse every time someone says something like "He's this because he got lost as in the woods as a child and a wolf pack took care of him"? Because in that case, the troper might just be telling us how this character's social impediment came about, not mistaking the justification for the definition of the trope.

edited 24th Aug '10 6:06:56 PM by Bailey

The problem with renaming this is that Raised by Wolves is a pre-existing term that means pretty much the definition of the trope. Renaming it would just cause further confusion. If anything, I support renaming Wild Child to Literally Raised By Wolves.

^^ Bailey, trope examples should be of how the trope was used. Not what might have caused the trope to be set up. This trope is about lacking social skills, not why the character lacks them. Saying "She was lost as a child and Raised by Wolves" is a statement that, as it stands, is irrelevant to the trope.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

^^^ This trope just isn't about being raised in the wild. It is about characters who lack certain social understanding but really most of these characters are in fact nothing like people who are raised in the wild. In fact, the effect relies on them actually being humans raised in humanity. They talk fine, they wear clothes, they recognise some social conventions but just miss others. It's like a social uncanny valley for most of them.

Ninja hats.

edited 24th Aug '10 6:11:59 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

You would expect that, but this doesn't always happen in fiction. Just off the top of my head, Emily from Spacetrawler was literally raised by coyotes, but she's yet to demonstrate any difficulty operating in human society.

The Wild Child description implies there's an outright subtrope/supertrope realtionship, while the Raised by Wolves page says:

I'm just saying that it seems difficult to gauge actual name-based misuse when the descriptions imply one is a mostly a subset of the other. If that were the case, a Wild Child would be an acceptable example under Raised by Wolves as long as he wasn't particularly socially competent. Not saying this is right or wrong, just saying that's what it says.

Personally, my suspicion is that the Aspergers part of this trope may have been grafted on to the trope after the fact; otherwise it reads exactly like "does not understand normal social behavior due to lack of social experience in their upbringing; an extreme form of Fish out of Water, but from the land-dwellers point of view".

edited 24th Aug '10 6:45:49 PM by Bailey

This is Hollywood Aspergers.

Not the way we use "Hollywood X", which "Hollywood simplifies complicated concept/thing/place X to a very limited, simple concept/thing/place."

This is not that, since it isn't about simplifying Aspergers to only one particular presentation.

edited 6th Sep '10 12:28:12 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Socially Inept just makes it sound like a Jerkass, Absent-Minded Professor, or someone who is just introverted.

[quote]Not the way we use "Hollywood X", which "Hollywood simplifies complicated concept/thing/place X to a very limited, simple concept/thing/place."

This is not that, since it isn't about simplifying Aspergers to only one particular presentation. [/quote]

The trope itself is identical to the popular conception of Aspergers, though.

Maybe so, but that doesn't make the trope "Hollywood Aspergers". These characters aren't implied to have Aspergers as a rule. They're just socially clueless.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

^^ Most characters that fall under this can grow past it. They just start out here. Calling it a disease would be misleading as it's not treated like that.

edited 12th Sep '10 7:29:44 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Link to the Repair Shop on the trope page is broken.

Can we perhaps salvage the name "Raised By Wolves" for cases when a human is raised by animals? We don't have that trope yet, and the other Raised By tropes are about specific foster parents.

The crowner has stabilised. It's been at these values for over a week now.

Make the move, then. I've locked the crowner, but I'll leave the thread open.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

^^^That would be Wild Child.