I've actually been giving this subject some thought lately, because two of my favorite storytelling franchises - Doctor Who and Spider-Man - arguably revolve around two guys whose chief characteristic is their alienation from the world around them, and yet, an unholy shitload of writers - both among the fans and those officially sanctioned to establish canon for those characters - seem not to have a fucking clue how to actually write alienation.

To be fair, a lot of those writers at least manage to recognize some, if not all, of the more frequently occurring symptoms of alienation in those characters - including isolation, unpopularity, unfamiliarity with the world(s) around them, and even occasional inhumanity in their behavior toward others - but they still fail, because they fail to recognize that those symptoms are symptoms.

In other words, those symptoms are not the root causes of those characters' alienation, because even when those characters aren't alone or unloved, even when they find themselves surrounded by that which is familiar to them, and even when they behave humanely, they are still alienated.

While it's natural, and even necessary, to include some, if not all, of the aforementioned symptoms of alienation, to varying degrees, the big mistake that Russell T. Davies makes with Doctor Who, and that Joe Quesada makes with Spider-Man (although, to be fair to Davies, he's never misunderstood the Doctor to the dismaying extent that Quesada has completely misunderstood Spidey), is in mistaking the symptoms for the root cause, because it leads them to emphasize the symptoms not only to an unnecessary, but also an unnatural degree, to the point that the symptoms are almost emphasized at the expense of the root cause.

So, do you really want to know how to write a character who's alienated?

Do you want to know what it actually feels like to be alienated?

Really simple.

You can be surrounded by crowds, you can have countless people whom you love - and just as many who love you back - you can live among people and places you've known your entire life, and you can have compassion for them all, but at the same time, from your earliest childhood memories to your wisest adult years, whenever you look at anyone's face - whether they're a complete stranger, a passing acquaintance, a close friend, a family member, or Your One True Love - you always realize that you have absolutely no clue what is going on behind that person's eyes.

THAT is what it means to be alienated.

And yes, you can work on narrowing that communication gap, between you and everyone else who exists outside of your head, but that's all you can do, is work on it, because it's never going to go away, because in a very real sense, it's always going to be at least a little bit like trying to think in a foreign language.

And it's not just a matter of sorrow, for all you fucking emos out there who think of "alienation" as a trendy label that gives you permission to wallow in self-pity - it's simply an inability to understand, and if there is any "tragedy" to it, it's the fact that, past a certain point, no matter how much you know, or how much you learn, there will always be limits to what you can grasp.

And yes, alienation can be painful - as painful as anything - but it's not actually about pain.

Rather, more than anything else, it's almost ... a learning disability.

And if you're wondering about what qualifies me to speak so presumptively on this matter ... well, let's just say I'm something of a lifelong expert on this subject.

Trust me on this one.