Informed Loner/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character, described as a loner, is always with other characters.

• Straight: Jack, said to be a loner, is always with Tom, or Jill, or Sally, or --
• Exaggerated: Jack is always in the middle of the party.
• Justified: He's described so by other characters, and despite Infallible Babble, they're wrong.
  • He's not there voluntarily. You can tell by his awkwardness.
  • Jack calls himself a loner because he thinks it makes him cool.
• Inverted: Suzie is called gregarious and is always seen alone.
• Subverted: Jack, a loner, is always seen with other people, but the POV character only sees him for small parts of the day.
  • He's always seen with other people, who are only paying attention to other people, never to Jack.
• Double Subverted: Except that he's not alone the rest, either.
• Parodied: Jack growls out that he hates people, and want's to be as far away from socializing as possible... to his adoring fan club, Paid Harem, and a large group of assorted friends and family, who are all "ruining [his] loner image."
• Deconstructed: Characters who describe others as loners are indulging in Malicious Slander out of spitefulness.
  • Characters who call themselves loners are actually posing.
  • Jack, a loner, loses his sanity and kills anyone who dares go within 10 feet of his personal space.
• Reconstructed: Jack is a Stepford Smiler, he may look and act sociable, but on the inside he feels completely alone.
• Zig Zagged: It looks like all the talk about Jack being a loner is just hype, he's having a birthday party! Which he threw as a joke, he's dying to get out. Except it's because he's so happy lots of people showed up, but he doesn't want anyone to see him cry.
• Averted: Jack is not described as a loner.
  • Jack is seen alone.
• Enforced: "Calling him a loner makes him edgy, so we don't need to have him alone; besides, it's easier to plot when we can dump exposition in dialogue."
• Lampshaded: "For a loner, you seem to have a lot of friends."
• Exploited: Jack makes friends with the people pitying him for "being so lonely".
• Invoked: Jack spreads the rumor he's a loner to try and seem edgy and get a date.
• Defied: No one ever calls Jack a loner because they don't want to make him seem cooler than he really is.
• Discussed: "So how's the asocial lifestyle treating you?" "Great! I get invited to a ton more parties now!"
• Conversed: "So is anyone who is called a loner actually asocial?"

---

Back to Informed Loner, and please check your fan club at the door.