The largest  problem with being a loner, really, is that they never get it right in the movies.

Loners in movies never stutter when they speak. Their voices never go hoarse from disuse. They never hesitate to use the latest trendy terms in conversation, never have difficulty understanding the words of their peers.

And by the end of the movie, of course, they're no longer loners.

But there are days when Myungsoo goes so long without speaking that his tongue completely fails him whenever he opens his mouth to say something. He stutters more often than not because he doesn't know how to start his sentences, and his voice is hoarse and low when he finally does. His throat aches as he speaks, as a result of spending so long silent.

Even when just listening to his peers’ conversations, he usually has no idea what the anyone is talking about. Words like "fleek" and “woke” are difficult to understand, as trendy terms like these are used liberally throughout conversation with no real context. The use of text lingo only confuses Myungsoo further, as he hasn't texted other people his age enough to know what they're talking about.

Myungsoo actually used to talk a lot ーit was all to himself, but at least it kept his voice in use. He’s no longer required to talk to people like he was in high school, when answering questions and participating in group projects wasn’t optional. And yet, after entering college he still felt the strong urge to speak, even if only to himself, anyway.

It's really not normal for people to go so long without speaking, Myungsoo had reflected. He adopted the practice of verbalizing all of his thoughts aloud from the privacy of his dorm room, finding it soothing and cathartic. He only ever stopped talking to himself because he did it so much that the guys in the dorm room next to his started to complain about his "phone calls." Myungsoo was terrified that one day they would figure out that he never quite paused long enough between sentences for there to be another person in the equation, so he stopped completely.

Instead, he took up the practice of listening religiously to stand-up comedy and audiobooks. Myungsoo finds that the experience of listening to the pre-recorded voices speaking is almost as soothing as speaking himself, and he can listen with earphones without seemings suspicious to the guys next door.

That's another thing about loners in movies ーthey're always obviously loners. They never feel the need to pretend not to be, or to compulsively go out of their way to pretend to have friends or to blend in.

But Myungsoo does everything he can possibly think of to conceal his loner nature, despite knowing that it must be obvious to the many social people surrounding him. He doesn’t talk to them during class, doesn’t interact with them around campus, doesn’t leave his dorm during the weekends. He knows that his efforts to hide the evidence of his own isolation are futile, only obscuring some of the many traits that differentiate him from his peers.

Yet Myungsoo still prides himself on how good he’s gotten at imitating the casual interactions and conversations of his peers. Well, he's not too good at understanding them, seeing as the kids on campus always seem to be using faddish words that Myungsoo’s never heard before. But he has definitely gotten pretty good at imitating the casual, effortless way that his peers answer each other’s questions, having studied the way that they speak to each other around campus and imagining having similar conversations.

He practices in his head sometimes, usually when he's sitting in his desk before the start of a class, filled simultaneously with dread and excitement at the thought of someone starting a conversation with him. He looks at the girls wearing their winter scarves and carefully coordinated, stylish boots and at the guys in their baggy jeans and trendy sneakers, and observes the way that they talk to each other, the way that they talk to their friends.

Because the thing that always gets Myungsoo the most about the loners in the movies: at the end of the movie when they finally have friends (assuming it isn't a horror movie, in which case the loners have already been killed off), they suddenly become completely normal.

If it were as easy as making one friend and then suddenly shedding years of awkward social interaction and being imbued with the knowledge of how to behave confidently around his peers, Myungsoo would have tried harder to make friends in high school. But as it is, he has no friends, so he watches a lot of movies.

Hence, his extremely comprehensive knowledge of exactly how inaccurate loners are in the movies.

It's not something that he's mad about, really, but he just thinks that with the millions of dollars going to production quality and background research and pyrotechnics and computer generated imagery and elaborate sets, there might be one person on the staff to suggest that it may be worthwhile to portray an accurate loner character.

But Myungsoo doesn't make movies, so he's stuck with watching pseudo-loners in fake universes using words like "turnt up" and "smh" while Myungsoo has to pause the video every now and then to consult google.

(His search history makes him look like a middle aged man trying to understand what his kids are talking about.)

Myungsoo is completely, painfully aware that he doesn't really fit in among the archetypes of loners represented in media. He’s also equally as aware that the vast majority of film and television series are not designed for people like him. While their target audiences consist of millennials the same age as Myungsoo, they cater to the experiences of his incredibly normal peers, meaning that he has difficulty relating to the narratives that they develop.

But he’s also incredibly bored, an unfortunate side-effect of his life consisting of nothing but schoolwork, photography, and caring for the campus cats, so he consumes a massive amount of media as a result of this boredom, anyway.

And in the end, Myungsoo relates his life more to movies, television series, and short films than to anything else, using his knowledge of the common tropes and themes in media to supplement the knowledge that he lacks from real experience with his peers.

Beyond what he can initially observe about his classmates from their immediate mannerisms and appearances, he can perfectly characterize each and every one based on an archetype or a character from media. The one mousy girl who sits alone in the back corner of the library, bent over her criminology book as though her every ambition depends on understanding its meaningー she is set to be a perfect Clarice Starling. And the three stylish-looking girls who huddle together at the counter of the campus coffee shop to talk about their classmates are classic Heathers material, complete with almost identical outfits and their own lingua franca of Mean Girls talk.

Myungsoo understands that the way he views the world is limited, that the characterizations of the different archetypes in media are often purely stereotypical and even inaccurate. His own understanding of how loners are misrepresented is testament to this. But his constant film-watching and series-binging gives him something interesting to do between school and his few other priorities, and he feels comfortable in the knowledge that there will always be another show or movie to keep him company when he returns to his dorm from class at the end of the day.