Characters with No Social Skills in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- In Worm crossover Echoes of Yesterday, Armsmaster feels very uncomfortable in social situations. He would rather tinker with his gadgets because, unlike people, he can understand their workings and predict their behavior.Armsmaster: You want me to try and convince her? Me?
Dragon: You are the leader of the PRT, it comes with the job.
Armsmaster: (grumbling) I don't handle people well. You remember what happened with Kid Win, I nearly drove him out of the Wards. - Child of the Storm has Maddie Pryor a.k.a. Rachel Grey in the sequel, who has very little grasp of normal behaviour, having been raised as a Living Weapon - and what grasp she does have comes mainly from a relationship with Gambit. As a result, she's quiet, withdrawn, and as emotionally vulnerable as she is psychically formidable - she's comfortable facing down gods, and the gods of gods, but she breaks down when she has a spat with Jean, after choosing a very poor time to out the fact that the other girl's boyfriend was cheating on her.
- Children of an Elder God: Shinji is meek and not good interacting with other people (especially pretty girls who are apparently taking an interest in him). He admits that in chapter 4:Shinji Ikari was not a people person. He lacked severely in people skills. This went doubly so for girls that showed signs that they liked him. With Asuka's arm entwined with his and her warm tone of voice, his mind turned to mush. "Um, well, you see..."
- A Divine (Romantic) Comedy: Being the ruler of another dimension and a depressed shut-in for the past seven years, Lucifer's abilities with socializing are notably lacking, which comes up in how awkward and nervous he gets while interacting with Camila.
- A Hero takes Homura Akemi's lack of social skills and runs with it. To the point that Dalek Sec, the resident Imperialistic Space Nazi, is considered to have the better social skills of the two of them.
- A Knight's Tale as Inquisitor presents Arturia having shades of this, as a result of throwing away any notion of being a normal being in order to properly rule her kingdom as the perfect king. While she is currently putting in the effort to become a more personal person and wants to bond with the people she's working with in this new life, she tends to come across as stiff and no-nonsense all the time without even noticing it, while others who DO notice it from an outside perspective see her attempts as both hilarious and pure cringe-inducing.
- Last Child of Krypton: Shinji is shy and quiet, but he is somewhat better at socializing than his canon counterpart because his altered backstory. So, when Asuka comes along, and she is as socially inept as her canon self, he is better prepared to deal with her mood shifts and see the real Asuka under the "leave me alone" mask. Even so he completely misses many clues hinting Asuka's feelings.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: If there's anything the Wolf can get wrong about interacting with polite society, he will. Note that this is speculated even in-universe to be deliberate, both as a "manly barbarian amidst effete civilized southerners" schtick and in order to more easily pick fights. There are a few people he doesn't show deliberate rudeness to, and even they find his presence obnoxious.
- Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower: Both Katarina and Maria are non-standard examples.
- Katarina has absolutely terrible etiquette, but she's so endlessly nice and friendly that everyone soon forgives things like her poor table manners, lack of proper title use, and habit of asking probing questions about how they're feeling. When Maria realizes she's not faking, she immediately starts teaching her manners, starting with insisting on proper titles. After she starts squiring under Maria, Katarina eventually learns to comport herself as noble society demands, though she's still as friendly as etiquette allows and clearly dislikes being forced to use proper titles.
- Maria has absolutely perfect etiquette, always using proper titles, perfect bows, and never speaking rudely even if she's reminding someone that she might have to challenge them to a duel if they keep talking. However, she has no social skills outside strict formality, to the point that she even speaks to her best friend as if she's at diplomatic luncheon. Hell, she usually speaks to her fiance, who she is wildly in love with, that way. Notably, Maria gets the same "why are you acting like that" looks at parties that Katarina does; after all, noble etiquette is supposed to be the base for how they interact with each other, not literally the only way they talk.
- Shadows over Meridian: This is the case with Tyrian. Being a Cloudcuckoolander following the teachings of a cult worshipping a being who's basically The Antichrist, he has very little clue on normal social interaction. He even pauses in the middle of his fight against Vera's team to ask them advice on how to court Rosetta.
- Superwomen of Eva 2: Lone Heir of Krypton: At the beginning Asuka is the most popular girl in her school, but in reality she is frightened of other people, so that she uses her anger as a shield to keep and drive everyone away. However she changes during her super-heroine tenure, becoming a little more sociable with a bit of Shinji's help.
- In Thousand Shinji, Shinji had no social skills whatsoever before being raised and trained by his teacher. Asuka and Rei were horrible at socializing, and their inability to talk with each other was the origin of a massive disaster that the main characters had to fix after the Time Skip.
- A Certain Droll Hivemind: Misaka-11111 is a clone who was created for the sole purpose of being brutally murdered; once the experiment was canceled, it became apparent that none of the clones had any idea how to operate in society, and barely any care to. 11111 and the rest of the Sisters are observing and trying to fit in, but their alien perspective leads them to many mistaken assumptions. Furthermore, sometimes they just flat-out decide some part of normal society is stupid, at which point any attempts to convince them to change will fail. For example: They narrate themselves, and basically everyone they meet tells them they don't need to do that. Misaka-11111 checks with her ten thousand surviving Sisters, confirms that almost everyone she knows thinks that narrating yourself is a fine way to communicate your emotional state, and refuses to change.
- Danganronpa: Yakuza Arc: Mafia Princess Natsumi has spent years as a friendless bully, leaving her with severely stunted social skills. After convincing her to change her ways, Hinata works with her to address those problems and build up better methods of interacting with others.
- Superman in Kara of Rokyn. It's several times noted by both Kal and Kara that most of his personal problems stem from his inability to open up to and empathize with someone on a personal level. Helping total strangers, he can and will do. Being honest with his non-powered friends, baring his soul to his life's love, reaching his cousin out... he cannot do.
- Having spent ten years with no one but her uncle and a living house, Mirabel from Two butterflies: gone with the wind. comes across as rather blunt when reunited with the rest of her family.
- Seventh Endmost Vision has one true example and one kind-of example. Aerith was awful at social stuff; she was a bad leader while she was in SOLDIER, mostly only doing Dirty Business, and coming off as a weird combination of passionate preacher and whipped dog to everyone around her. Nobody who reminisces about her has a high opinion of her social skills. Tifa, meanwhile, has a sort-of case; she's socially awkward at fic's start, but it's because she's still reeling from the Nibelheim Incident and trying to construct a new personality after Aerith betrayed her. She's normally more socially adept, but her unwillingness to get involved with other people's problems now makes her stilted and cold, which combines poorly with how easily violence comes to her after years in the War.
- An Unpleasant Surprise: Downplayed. Scratch wants to help Molly in her moment of need but struggles to help her since emotions aren't exactly his strong suit - so instead he makes sure someone is there who can help Molly, aka. her girlfriend Libby, before going off to help out the best way he knows how.
- Several of the characters in Brainbent to varying degrees. Karkat has a decent amount of social insight, but his Hair-Trigger Temper trips him up a lot in his interactions with others. Jade was raised in the middle of the woods by her survivalist grandfather and has very little experience with modern mainstream culture or interacting with more than one person at a time. Nepeta is a very nice girl, in an eccentric sort of way, but has difficulty keeping up with social conventions. Gamzee is also very nice for the most part, but doesn't have much sense of personal space, is prone to Innocently Insensitive moments, and curses like a sailor even when he doesn't intend to.
- The protagonist of The Bombshell, Ada, has this as a pretty big part of her character. She had a complete breakdown when her mentor/resident Alpha Bitch, Liana, chews her out for not jumping on joining an alliance, kick a girl for surprise hugging her when she was in kindergarten, and plenty more. She has some kind of autism-spectrum disorder.
- Jade Chan from Webwork still acts like a child much of the time despite spending eight years in a demon dimension slowly turning into an Oni/Jorogumo hybrid, because her teachers had more important things to focus on at the time than teach her how to talk to people and act like an adult, and realises this may present a problem to their future plans.
- In For His Own Sake, all of the Hinata Inn residents struggle with this, thanks to having spent so much time in an environment where their worst issues went unaddressed for so long. Among the standouts:
- Naru is used to letting her Hair-Trigger Temper fire off freely, and is deeply upset when Keitaro decides to break up with her and leave the Inn, calling her out for being All Take and No Give... because how dare he not cater to her every whim, the useless pervert?!
- Mokoto, like Naru, insists that everything she does is justified by the 'fact' that All Men Are Perverts and only understand violence.
- Mutsumi Thinks Like a Romance Novel and is completely hung up on the notion that Keitaro and Naru need to stay together. Her naivete also makes her a Horrible Judge of Character and Unwitting Pawn to False Friends like Kagura and Chisato.
- Kaolla Su honestly believes that the best way to 'cheer everyone up' is by dragging them into one of her games — and by game, she means unleashing an army of Mecha-Tamas upon everyone staying at the Kuromitsu Inn. She has no idea why others react poorly to this, or why the police get involved... or why the police get so upset by the nuclear reactors, mind-control helmets, and other illegal technology they discover in her room.
- Sarah's time at the Hinata Inn convinced her that all of her whims should be catered to, making her into a massively Spoiled Brat who expects to see anyone who defies her beaten up.
- Missing: Max is much more comfortable dealing with numbers, science and data than he is handling people or social situations. Reflecting back upon the napkin incident in "Chameleon", he notes that he immediately understood that he wasn't in any real danger of having his eye poked out, but misinterpreted Lila's reaction as a joke, not realizing that she was legitimately trying to convince everyone that Marinette could have seriously hurt him.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- A Diplomatic Visit: Brought up in the first chapter of the fourth story, The Diplomat's Life, in a scene at Canterlot High. According to Sunset, Adagio Dazzle apparently lost her sense of tact when she lost her Mantle as Hatred, and as the human Applejack adds, she managed to make the nurse blush by asking x-rated questions in health class.
- In Friendship is Witchcraft, Princess Luna is a parody of awkward fangirls. She's clingy and over-affectionate to ponies she's just met, and her idea of socializing is forcing others to look at her fan fiction and fan art.
- In Shadow Snark, due to self-caused isolation, the titular character has no way to gauge his normality.Shadow Snark: My desire to run out of here screaming and possibly causing over-the-top violence is barely contained.
Rainbow Dash and Rarity: ... - In Ultra Fast Pony, Princess Luna is a Nightmare Fetishist who shouts "Blooooooooood!" at everyone she meets, without even realizing that she's doing it. When pressed to say something normal, her first attempt is "I will devour your soul!" And when she finally does make some friends, she has no idea how she did it: "Wait, I don't know what I did! What did I do?!"
- The Echo Remains, But The Song Is Not The Same: Since Shikamaru was his Only Friend for the longest time, Chouji has difficulty understanding certain social conventions. For instance, when Asuma teases his new teammates Sakura and Hinata by asking whether there's any boys they like, Chouji casually answers for them, revealing that he's picked up on their respective crushes. He's very confused by their flustered reactions, not understanding why Sakura insists that information was meant to be secret; it seemed quite obvious to him...!
- Escape From The Hokage's Hat: Being constantly isolated and treated like a 'demon child' leaves Naruto unable to understand why Hinata angrily insisted that she cares about him more than he realizes.
- Linewalkers: Even by the low standards of genius shinobi, Kakashi is this. Multiple traumas and a naturally introverted and reticent personality means that, as much as he genuinely adores Naruto, he has no idea how to interact with the kid at all. The best he can do is imitate to the letter whatever advice more socially-abled shinobi give him, which only confuses the target of his brotherly affections. Luckily for Kakashi, Naruto instinctively understands the sentiment behind his actions, so he still appreciates those gestures regardless.
- Naru-Hina Chronicles: Kei's stoic composure leads her to treat social skills as useless and irrelevant.
- your move, instigator (draw your weapon and hold your tongue): Before Itachi takes over as Team 14's new jounin-sensei, Tenten warns Sakura and Kiba that he's "awkward around girls, or with people in general". This swiftly proves to be accurate, as his introduction immediately makes clear that he has no idea how to handle being placed in charge of a trio of five and six-year olds.
- Advice and Trust:
- When they open up in chapter 1, Shinji and Asuka remark that neither of them has social skills due to their childhood trauma and growing up with no friends. Asuka realizes that is the reason that Shinji never got her hints.
- When the three pilots are ordered to spend time together Asuka — and Shinji — find out that Rei is weirder and more socially unaware than previously thought: she does not understand the concept of modesty, does not know what a double entendre is, does not know anything about relationships between boys and girls... and she has never known her mother. Oh, and NERV is drugging her. Rei's social awkwardness is what leads Shinji and Asuka to suspect that NERV is up to something real bad.
- The Child of Love: While they open up during the Obon festival, Asuka and Shinji talk about how she pushes people away and Shinji runs away from them because they are two lonely kids, frightened of getting hurt by other people.
- A Crown of Stars:
- Shinji and Asuka never got any social skills, but their capability to interact with other people got even worse in the post-apocalyptic world. They were nearly completely withdrawn and insolated when Daniel met them.
- Later they use this to their advantage as they are plotting against their former boss: they remain locked into their cabin and order the ship crew to not bother them. Since the crew knows they are not sociable people, they leave them alone and never suspect anything.
- Rei's nonexistent social skills later pose a problem because she believes Asuka hates Shinji, so she refuses to help when they need her assistance or at least her non-interference. Shinji guesses that she still has a hard time understanding other people's emotions, even after Instrumentality.
- Doing It Right This Time: After returning to the past the three pilots talk about how they are so socially inept that they run away from other people (Shinji), push them away (Asuka) or don't know how to interact with other persons (Rei). However they agree to try to get better at socializing.
- Evangelion 303:
- Asuka comes across like abrasive and irritating due to poor social skills. She is not good socializing or relating to other people. In one scene she admits that she is not good at getting used to new people
. - Shinji is not much better. Due to growing up without parents and moving continuously he is not good at treating with other people or making friends, and sometimes he does not even realize when he is getting someone mad.
- Asuka comes across like abrasive and irritating due to poor social skills. She is not good socializing or relating to other people. In one scene she admits that she is not good at getting used to new people
- Ghosts of Evangelion: Adult Shinji and Asuka are functional but they still have a hard time socializing and understanding other people, and they are very dependent on each other. Shinji's self-flagellating habits and Asuka's hot temper don't help matters.
- HERZ:
- Asuka never was good with people, and her social skills get poorer after being disfigured by the MP-Evas, since she becomes angrier, more hostile and more resentful.
- Higher Learning: Neither of the three main characters — Shinji, Asuka and Rei — have any social skills whatsoever. And their new teacher Kaoru is determined to change that.
- In Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide Shinji, Asuka and Rei are awful at socializing. They had gotten a little better at interacting with others at the beginning of the War, but as their traumas piled up, their mental scars got worse. At the beginning of the story they're barely functional and they have to relearn how open up to other people.
- Once More With Feeling (Crazy-88): Due to Character Development, Shinji grows a spine and some few social skills before returning to the past. His attitude utterly befuddles his father, since Gendo expected him to be meeker and more pliable. However, Shinji keeps being bad with people. It comes up several times, such like Shinji realizing — too late — he might have given several female classmates hints he was interested in them, or blurting out to Hikari that he knows she likes Touji.
- The One I Love Is...:
- Shinji knew he was not good with people, but he thought Asuka was more sociable. However he slowly realizes he is very, very wrong: Asuka is popular but she has never dated anybody, has very few real friends and has a hard time to open up.
- Rei is lonely and asocial at the beginning. After opening up to Shinji she gets better and she even makes some friends (she eventually befriends Asuka).
- In The Second Try, Shinji and Asuka had no social skills whatsoever. Ironically, they got better at socializing after all remaining humans were gone.
- Near the end of the story, Shinji comments that he and Asuka were so bad, that despite spending the first three years of her life with only her parents for company, their daughter Aki makes more friends on her first day of school than either of her parents ever had.
- Some examples from Pokémon Reset Bloodlines:
- In Ash's group, there's Iris, who was abandoned by her birth parents as a baby and raised by a family of Dragon-type Pokémon. As a result, she doesn't quite know how to interact with humans, and can be quite blunt on how she says things. One of the biggest examples is asking Misty, without any kind of preamble or subtlety, what was her relationship with Ash, then stating that she plans to put the moves on Ash once she figures out how human courtship works, depite knowing that Misty has indeed a crush on him as well (albeit in her defense, Iris thought that, like with Dragonites, poligamy is the norm with humans).
- Red as well. He's a bit of loner and doesn't seem to like getting too close to people more than necessary, and as a result he lets Yellow handle the talking for him.
- Marina and Riko in Twilight Pretty Cure have this in varying degrees due to their friendless backgrounds. Marina does have some social insight in regards to normal people, but not with autistic people, and her Hair-Trigger Temper tends to get the better of her. Riko is a very nice girl in her own eccentric way, but she tends to be Innocently Insensitive and has trouble understanding and keeping up with social conventions, which has caused a lot of problems when she was younger. It doesn't help that she grew up in a closed-minded city that didn't want to properly understand her, so they just assumed she was a bad kid and constantly treated her as such.
- Armani at first in the Broken Bow series, so much so that he strips right in front of some of the girls in the second book.Annabeth: Are you really that dense?
Thalia: He is.
- White Sheep:
- A great deal of the comedy comes from Jaune's almost complete naivety in regards to normal interaction. Since his only human interaction growing up was with his family and his mother's minions, he doesn't understand almost any form of slang, metaphor, or simile (a comment from Ruby about not wanting to be "the bees knees" and wanting to just be "normal knees" causes him to assume people compliment each other on their knees). Jaune frequently comes off as flirting or insulting (calling Yang pretty and offering Cardin a cookie respectively) when he's just trying to have a friendly conversation.
- Turns out that most of Jaune's sisters (except for Sapphire, the eldest) are even worse. Coral's idea of a normal social interaction is to show a man a smutty book and hop into bed with him, Lavender plays up her cuteness because it lets people excuse her weird behavior, and Amber set a flock of nevermore on a boy who was making fun of her friend. Weiss dryly notes that while Jaune managed to hide at Beacon for months, his sisters barely lasted a week at a normal school.
- Penny Polendina is a Robot Girl who does a terrible job of hiding it, often uses words that sound sexual out of context (such as using the word "intercourse" for conversation), and fully expects she can make friends just by walking up to random people and asking them. And even she can tell that her father, Doctor Polendina, has no social skills whatsoever. When General Ironwood asked Doctor Polendina to provide Penny with material on how people her age interact, he gave her porn. She did watch it, but wisely deleted it after.
- Zephyros Veloi Sonic, in Sonic Boom: Beyond the Black Horizon. He's spent thirteen of his eighteen years living a solitary life in the forest, and the only person he's ever interacted with up until the beginning of the story is Dr. Eggman. The first time Sonic's approached by friendly people (namely Amy, Knuckles, and Tails), he locks up and retreats for his house; even as he adjusts to their presence, there's some things he has trouble wrapping his head around—for instance, Sonic manages to startle the bejeezus out of Knuckles twice (first by sneaking up on him, then jumping onto his doorstep via someone else's roof) without understanding how or why.
- The Mountain and the Wolf: Zigzagged with the Wolf, who does have the social skills to navigate polite society... he just rarely if ever uses them, on top of his constant antagonizing of everyone he talks to (whether he seems to intend to or not). Even the people he respects enough to address by what he thinks is their last name (Snow, Seaworth, Worm) or non-derogatory nickname (Dragonqueen, Shield-slayer) have to deal with his Innocently Insensitive remarks, Blood Knight tendencies, and the fact that he leaves when he decides he has nothing left to do there rather than ask permission to leave or even say goodbye. Then again, this is probably the most diplomatic a confirmed champion of the Chaos gods will ever be.
- When Karai tracks the Hamato Clan down at April's farmhouse in The Chronicles of Karai Getting Her Shit Together, she struggles to integrate herself with the household. Most of them don't trust her on account of having been their enemy, her Super-Hearing ends up causing her to hear things she shouldn't and she has trouble reading certain situations, having been an only child most of her life.
- Metro: The titular Metro, due to Abusive Parents, and Child Soldier training.
- In X-Men: The Early Years, Cyclops doesn't know what this "social skills" thing is that everyone harps on about but he's sure he hates it.Scott: I don't do one-night stands and I don't have time for a relationship. I almost have too much on my plate with school, community-service hours, and saving the world from evil mutants. Figuring out women takes too much time and energy. That, and most people just manage to irritate me.
- Mako Tsunami from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series is portrayed as having very bad social skills, as his obsession with the ocean and enjoyment of throwing harpoons at people earned the nickname "Freaky Fish Guy". In fact, when Mako first met Yugi and his friends, he threw a harpoon at them because he wanted them to stay and didn't know how else to get their attention.
