SquiggRat

You’ve mentioned a couple times that Franco’s social skills aren’t very good. Do you have any specific thoughts on that? I really like this idea (I’m also not great socially) so I was intrigued!

Franco spent most of his youth completely isolated, seeing as stepmother’s wanted nothing to do with him, and his father was always away for work. Since he was so alone, there was really no need to ever learn how to talk to people, and- even once he got to public school- there was a bit of a language barrier that stopped him from properly socializing with peers.

He’s very used to ridicule from anyone he interacts with (stepmothers, his father’s men, classmates, etc.) and he’s had social anxiety since he was really little as a result of that. He gets really self conscious, and scared that people will judge/talk poorly about him. He ends up just coming across really stiff, because he’s trying to present himself perfectly, but his mouth works faster than his mind does, so he either goes blank or says way too much.

Eye contact is a definite no (partially because he’s shorter than everyone, partially because his eyes are messed up, but mostly because people make him nervous) so that makes him come across as odd, also. When he was younger, he’d get sweaty, shaky, his voice would tremble, sometimes he’d get kinda nauseous, when he was flung into new social situations, because nothing good ever came out of talking to kid’s his own age; he still gets like that occasionally. He’d overanalyze all his own actions, worried sick that everyone could tell how awkward and nervous he was, so that didn’t help. All that is to say, social anxiety definitely didn’t help as a factor.

He also has zero control over his emotions, and that makes people uncomfortable. Most emotions (anger, sadness) tend to result in crying, which got him yelled at by his father, which led to more crying. Either that, or he gets far too excited. He’ll start going on and on about something he likes (he talks a lot about himself, and his own interests, leaving others little room to talk), talking over other people, interrupting them with something he thinks is relevant, and it tends to agitate people that he seemingly can’t take a hint when he’s talking far too much. This also comes back to his lack of understanding when it comes to boundaries- sharing far too much information, asking too many questions, or not really understanding personal space sometimes; not that he was ever taught personal space.

He just can’t pick up on the context of the situation, usually saying something that’s inappropriate for the current context, and he doesn’t understand why people go all quiet afterwards. He’s also bad to not be entirely sure if a joke is at his expense, or if he’s actually just one of the guys, and he’s in on the situation. Sometimes that leads to his own poorly timed joke, or him awkwardly laughing (a little too long, a little too late) and that just makes everyone stare at him- which he doesn’t like.

He tends to come across as very blunt, overly emotional, or self deprecating, and people don’t know how to respond to him because of it. He can’t take criticism about his behavior, either, taking everything to heart, because it always feels personal to him. It doesn’t help that his general understanding of everyone is very black and white, with him either really liking or really disliking someone with no in between- and that’s subject to change at the drop of a hat.

He tends to assume every situation is his fault if something goes wrong, or if somebody’s upset with him. He doesn’t truly grasp the situation, he just jumps straight to blaming himself. It makes him hard to talk to sometimes, because he’s misinterpreted the entire situation to start with. He genuinely doesn’t even understand he’s doing any of this, he doesn’t know how poor his social skills are, and that he comes across as particularly strange. It leads to him staying pretty isolated, since he doesn’t know how to maintain a a proper relationship, and a lot of awkward interactions that make his social anxiety worse, seeing as most emotional cues go right over his head; he interrupts situations himself a lot of the time, and it’s usually wrong.