CAUTION!! Do not approach, talk, make sudden moves or loud noises.
The Creepy Loner Girl is a loner and a weirdo. She will invariably have No Social Skills, which, combined with her gloomy personality, will give off a creepy aura. She frequently has trouble talking to people, either being too shy to speak or devolving into uncertain stuttering. Because of this, it's common for her to have no friends. Personality-wise, she's either deadpan or overly emotional, with a poor control on her moods.
She will often have some sort of socially unsightly interest or hobby, such as the occult, horrific things, building a fantasy daydream universe in her head, Otaku culture, or something really obscure that few people even know about. If she's an Otaku, she may go the full stereotype route and be a Hikkikomori. She might very well also grow up to become a Crazy Cat Lady.
Besides these common personality traits and characteristics, the Creepy Loner Girl also has a rather specific appearance as well. She will dress in frumpy and often dark-colored clothing, and care little for her appearance. Her hair will be disheveled and usually long and dark in color as well, to contrast with her pale skin. Creepy Shadowed Undereyes are a must, as are Dull Eyes of Unhappiness. Overall, her appearance suggests sleep deprivation, which is often exactly the case. She will be frequently described as unattractive, although more often than not, she will still look cute to the audience. In fact, she may end up looking Creepy Cute.
This is an almost Always Female character trope mainly native to Japanese media. In internet circles, this archetype is sometimes known as "mojyo", which is Japanese for "unpopular girl".
Sub-Trope of Loners Are Freaks. Looks Like Cesare is the Spear Counterpart in terms of appearance, but not necessarily in personality. For characters whose shyness and social ineptitude makes them endearing instead of creepy, see Dandere. In a Four-Temperament Ensemble, she's the melancholic.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Oka Ruu, the president (and sole remaining member) of the Supernatural Phenomena Science Club in Asobi Asobase. She's an incredibly creepy-looking
girl with a Thousand-Yard Stare and a disturbingly enthusiastic interest in the occult who wears a witch hat to school, and whose idea of having fun involves bringing a doll to life through a curse and playing hide-and-seek with it. Her incredibly disquieting mannerisms and creepy mumbling don't help her case, either.
- Literature Girl in Daily Lives of High School Boys, who is tall with long dark hair. Whenever Hidenori sees her she's always alone writing in her notebook, and she has an elaborate imagined universe involving Hidenori romancing her. Hidenori is weirded out by this, and when he tries to talk to her, she runs away. Subverted in that she actually has plenty of friends at her own school, and only acts like a creepy loner when around Hidenori because she's embarrassed about her hobby and crush on him.
- Miranda Lotto from D.Gray-Man is an introverted, neurotic and friendless young woman wracked by a lifelong streak of bad luck. Being the Only Sane Woman in a town stuck in a never-ending "Groundhog Day" Loop probably doesn't help her mental health, and she tends to stay in as much as she can with her beloved grandfather clock. She also dresses in such plain, conservative outfits that she appears at least thirty years older than she actually is. She cleans up her act a little bit after becoming an Exorcist, starting to wear more relaxed outfits and Letting Her Hair Down, but her awkward and neurotic personality still stays, as do the baggy eyes.
- Gamers! (2015): Chiaki Hoshinomori is an asocial gamer who most of her classmates consider rather awkward and creepy. That is, until Amano challenges himself to befriend her. After he does, the two of them become very close friends and she demonstrates a very cute and friendly personality in his presence. So much so that it makes Karen, who has a crush on Amano, incredibly jealous. Until the two of them wind up falling out due to their different tastes. On the urging of their mutual friend Uehara (who wants Chiaki to win the love triangle, she cuts her hair into a much cuter shape and later learns that Amano is actually an online crush she's had for years, making her fall in love with him all over again. Only this time, it's far too late because Amano and Tendou have started going steady.
- Adenela, the Goddess of War in The Hero is Overpowered but Overly Cautious. She speaks in near-monotone with a small stutter, has permanent Exhausted Eye Bags, and Rista on more than one occasion calls her creepy in her internal monologue. The only time she snaps out of her usually lethargic life is when the time comes to show her hidden nature as a massive Blood Knight, such as when Crossed Thanatos invaded the spirit world or Seiya didn't want to eat her cake, the latter instance also underscoring her as a Yandere.
- In Hunter × Hunter, Palm Siberia has long disheveled black hair and mostly keeps to herself, playing with her creepy mummified mermaid. Curiously enough, when Gon agrees to take her out on a date, She Cleans Up Nicely.
- Kuroe Akaishi, the title character of Kaiju Girl Caramelise, starts off as one. Due to her Involuntary Shapeshifting that is triggered by strong emotion, she avoids interacting with people more than is necessary and wears unappealingly baggy clothes to cover up any Partial Transformation she might undergo. Her weird and creepy appearance and behavior has led to her classmates calling her "Psycho-tan". But once she starts attracting the attention of Arata Minami, who sees that she's a sweet girl underneath the awkward visage, she slowly moves out of this archetype.
- Komi Can't Communicate: Played with in the case of the titular protagonist. Komi thinks she's this trope and that people always keep their distance and murmur while ogling at her because she's weird and gloomy. In truth it's the complete opposite.
- Kuroki Tomoko, the main character of No Matter How I Look at It, It's You Guys' Fault I'm Not Popular! is an unattractive, friendless otaku with absolutely No Social Skills who stays up all night playing dating sims to compensate for her nonexistent social and love lives and daydreams about becoming popular. She gets better.
- In Rurouni Kenshin Tomoe may qualify and it's justified. Her mother died after her brother was born and therefore become a "mother" and older sister overnight. She was also raised in a war-torn time in Japan and has experienced the death of many loved ones, making expressing emotions difficult for her. Just when she starts to get the hang of it she dies.
- Minami Yamabuki in Rokudou's Bad Girls is a sinister, antisocial loan shark who always dresses in a gloomy overcoat and carries a black umbrella everywhere. Due to being anemic, she spends most of her time hanging upside down like a bat, to allow blood flow to her brain. As for her personality, she's so stingy her apartment has no electricity or running water, and she only ever eats discounted supermarket lunchboxes, despite the fact she's loaded. She's also so painfully socially awkward (when she's not extorting people, that is) that she has trouble making payments at a grocery store.
- Fuwa Hyouka, also known as "Seaweed Girl", from Shimoneta, is a high school Mad Scientist with an interest in sexual reproduction. While she's not shy in the least, her comically deadpan behavior, perpetually sleep-deprived appearance and No Sense of Personal Space still make her an utter weirdo who keeps creeping out the protagonists.
- Tae Yamada from Zombieland Saga. A willowy zombie girl wearing a ragged black dress and looking like she tumbled straight out of a gothic horror story who, rather unfittingly for her waifish appearance, acts like an actual mindless, brain-eating zombie. She's been developing somewhat of a rudimentary personality, but she's still undoubtedly the most bestial of the girls.
Fan Works
- Chloe Cerise in Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail is reimagined as a Nightmare Fetishist with a temper who loves reading on the horror and macabre, writes stories that mostly end with characters end up with a Fate Worse than Death, is fascinated with demons, peppers her speech with dark references and morbid lyrics and sometimes engages in the fantasy of her former Childhood Friend Goh dying. However, instead of the dark colors usually associated with the trope, her dress color scheme is white and blue and has the appearance of a normal girl.
- The Simpsons: Team L.A.S.H. has Comic Book Guy's daughter Webcomic Kid. She's described as having long, unkempt black hair and Exhausted Eye Bags, rarely interacts with her classmates, and cares more about the internet than real life. She's also implied to be a fan of Homestuck, a webcomic that is known for being very hard to get into; a fitting interest for a socially uncool person like her.
- In the Touhou Project fandom, the most popular depiction of Alice Margatroid is a Lonely Doll Girl and Stalker with a Crush who obsesses over Marisa Kirisame (as in building life-size dolls of Marisa and animating them so they can be together), disturbing other characters.
Films — Live-Action
- The Addams Family: While the TV series depicted Wednesday Addams as a Perky Goth Cheerful Child, the film adaptation gives her an Adaptational Personality Change that makes her into this. She's an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette with a flat affect, a Deadpan Snarker personality, and very little desire to make friends, on top of the usual creepiness that comes with being an Addams. In the sequel Addams Family Values, when she gets sent to Camp Chippewa, the only people she learns to tolerate are her fellow outcasts at the camp.
- The Breakfast Club: Allison Reynolds is an intentionally socially awkward emo girl. She rarely speaks, laughs at seemingly random times, and even makes art using the dandruff from her hair. Halfway through the detention session, the group finds out she hadn't even been assigned detention! Despite her off-putting behavior, she's really just lonely and socially inept and seeking a peer group.
- Carrie:
- Carrie White in all the assorted adaptations of the novel, as noted below under Literature.
- Rachel Lang in The Rage: Carrie 2 is a moody goth chick whose only friend Lisa kills herself near the start of the film. Her mother was institutionalized after trying to kill her out of a belief that she was possessed, her father left her a long time ago, her foster parents are white-trash ingrates who only took her in to get money from the foster system, and most of her classmates see her as a freak.
- Pauline in Excision (2012) is a deranged teenage girl living under a controlling mother who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Her dreams largely consist of extremely gory fantasies of herself and others being mutilated, which start to seep over into her personal life and alienate everybody around her. By the end, she tries to cure her Delicate and Sickly sister Grace's cystic fibrosis by giving her a back-alley lung transplant that ends with both Grace and another girl dead, to the shock and horror of her mother.
- May Canady, the eponymous Villain Protagonist of May. A 28-year-old veterinary assistant, her only "friend" is her doll Suzie, her lazy eye (only recently fixed by her optometrist) having made her a target of mockery throughout her childhood that left her unable to make friends well into adulthood. Her two romantic interests, the hipster Adam and her co-worker Polly, both see her as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, not realizing that her "quirky" qualities are actually signs of a seriously disturbed young woman until it is too late. She can be thought of as Carrie White if she didn't have telekinesis and instead grew up into a maladjusted adult; unsurprisingly, her actress Angela Bettis went on to play Carrie in the 2002 adaptation of such, and was cast in that film partly because of her performance here.
Literature
- Carrie White, the title character of Stephen King's Carrie and its film adaptations, is a socially outcast teenage girl who, thanks to being raised under her mother's brutal religious fundamentalism, has long since given up on making friends. She does a double-take when Tommy asks her to the prom, and while She Cleans Up Nicely, the Alpha Bitch Chris blames her for ruining her life and getting her banned from the prom, leading Chris to plan a cruel prank to make her once more the laughingstock of the school. It does not end well for anyone involved.
Live-Action TV
- Wednesday follows in the footsteps of the '90s Addams Family movies in making Wednesday Addams this, now as a teenager. She fits in so poorly at normal schools, in fact, that Gomez and Morticia send her to Nevermore Academy in hopes that she'll find people more like her, in no small part because her creepiness has gotten her expelled from every other high school she's gone to.
Video Games
- In Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly, Riona, a banshee, used to live in seclusion and far away from cities because she looked "significantly different" back then. When she started working as a taxi driver, people freaked out at her and canceled her, which is why she switched jobs to being a delivery person.
- Tharja from Fire Emblem: Awakening is a gloomy dark mage known for her dark hexes, jealous personality and stalkerish interest in the protagonist. Unlike typical Creepy Loner Girls, however, she is also Ms. Fanservice.
- The "Hex Maniac" is a female trainer class in Pokémon who pinned the appearance part of the trope down to a T in Pokémon X and Y and Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Naturally, the fandom quickly attributed the personality traits to her too. The fact that she uses Ghost-type Pokémon probably helps.
- Yandere Simulator: Oka Ruto, the Occult Club Leader. Shy, and insecure, Word of God calls her "creepy" and "spooky".
Visual Novels
- Touko Fukawa from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a textbook example of this trope. She's literally described as radiating "an aura of negativity", speaks with a pronounced stutter, and has never had any friends except for her pet stinkbug.note She comes off as off-putting to others due to her being very obsessive and having a persecution complex, as well as never bathing. She wears a dark sailor fuku and has long, dark hair that is extremely frizzy when not in its usual braids.
Webcomics
- Nerd & Jock: Olga the Stalker Girl is a Stalker with a Crush on Jock who looks like a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl, but it's not clear how much of a loner she actually is, since she, Tiger, Nerd, and Jock are the only named characters (other than Xarhuul, but he doesn't appear much).
Western Animation
- Amphibia: Maddie Flour, the oldest daughter of Wartwood's local baker, is a creepy frog girl around Sprig's age with an interest in black magic and other macabre things. Despite her unsettling demeanor, she turns out to be a pretty decent person who only uses her magic for good purposes.
