Innocently Insensitive in Literature.
- Ascendance of a Bookworm: When Myne tries making a book out of thin wood slates, the project fails mostly because her mother sees any piece of wood with no obvious other purpose as firewood, resulting in Myne's materials ending up in the hearth almost the second she leaves them unattended. In addition to this, Myne's plan for the book was for it to be a written record of a story her mother once told her. Her mother's response to the information is that she can just ask if she wants to hear the story again.
- Because of the Rabbit:
- Two girls on the school bus tell Emma her hair looks like an orange and suggest that she dress as orange juice for Halloween with a straw in her hair. Emma realizes they're trying to be friendly, but she doesn't like people drawing attention to her hair.
- Some of the girls outside of Emma's class who once had Jack in their class tell Emma not to tell anything she'd prefer to keep private to him because he can't keep a secret. Jack, of course, didn't mean to hurt them by revealing their secrets, he is autistic and simply doesn't know any better.
- The Chronicles of Prydain:
- Princess Eilonwy has moments of this.
- In the third book, King Rhuddlum is a bit guilty of this, as he explains to Taran that he's hoping to eventually betroth Eilonwy to his son Rhun — not even slightly aware that Taran himself is in love with Eilonwy.
- In the second book of Crazy Rich Asians, Astrid meets Amicable Exes Charlie's wife Isabel for the first time and innocently mentions that she and Charlie recently went on a road trip together (conveniently forgetting to mention that her cousin was with them also). Isabel, who was having marital problems with Charlie (though Astrid wasn't aware of that), immediately jumped to the worst conclusion.
- Darcy And Gran Dont Like Babies: When Darcy tells her neighbour that she doesn't like the baby, the neighbour responds, "Of course you do!". This makes Darcy angry, since to her it seems as though the neighbour is just being contrary, but later Gran explains that she probably just means deep down.
- Linnet Ridgeway from Death on the Nile comes across like this. Old, run-down cottages are overlooking where her new pool will be built, so she has everyone living in them moved out and the cottages removed. She even gives money to them, enticing them to move.Linnet: It's to their own benefit.
Joanna: Yes, dear. I'm sure it is. Compulsory benefit. - Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
- Holly Hills initially mistakes Greg for Fregley, which unknowingly offends and shocks Greg.
- Stan Warren seems to be this at his worst in the books; while he only ever appears whenever Frank is humiliated by something (usually Greg's antics), the most he ever reacts to said humiliations is with some light-hearted ribbing, not realizing how his presence is increasing Frank's distress.
- When Greg was young, Uncle Charlie would nickname him after the color of his footie pajamas, unaware that Greg gets irritated by those names.
- In The Dinosaur Lords, the Gardeners, a religious sect basing their philosophy on works of one Jaume dels Flors, is prone to praising their spiritual guru whenever Karyl is present, which is painful for Karyl, as dels Flors is the man who killed him (Karyl got better).
- Discworld:
- Brainless Beauty Christine from the book Maskerade, an opera hopeful with the looks but not the musical talent, is apparently oblivious to the fact that her very presence is trampling over the ambitions of Agnes Nitt, who has the musical talent but not the looks. She also says at one point that Agnes is lucky about not having to watch what she eats.
- Lady Sybil's friend Bunty Waynsbury in Thud!. When Vimes and Sybil arrive with a retinue that includes Detritus, she finishes her welcome with a bright "And we've cleaned out one of the stables for your troll." Detritus responds, prehaps with some irony, that not everyone would think of cleaning it out.
- In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel Original Sin, Chris Cwej meets a member of a race conquered by the Earth Empire, and — being a spaceship geek — gushes about how he had a model of one of their ships and how cool they were. He's genuinely confused when the alien bitterly responds that they obviously weren't good enough.
- In Dragon Bones, it is mentioned that Ward pretends to be this as part of his Obfuscating Stupidity. For example, when his uncle asks him whether he knows what just happened (after his father's death), Ward nods and says "I get father's horse", the stupidest and most inappropriate thing he can come up with at the moment.
- Ayla in Earth's Children sometimes comes off this way when interacting with people, even bordering on (unintentional) Brutal Honesty. She never intends to be rude or hurtful, but she tends to say exactly what she thinks and feels, and due to being raised by the Clan (who Cannot Tell a Lie) and travelling around a lot, she is often ignorant of social norms and customs, which can unintentionally cause offense.
- The titular character of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine often has horribly awkward interactions with other people because she often unintentionally insults them to their face — for example, turning down a nail salon's returning customer offer because she can do her nails "at home for free, and better." When others take offense, Eleanor dismisses them as having poor social skills.
- The Fault in Our Stars:
- Lida, a fellow attendee at Hazel's cancer support group, says she admires Hazel for continuing to fight for so long, and says she wishes she had her strength. Hazel, who's only strong because she has no other choice, responds that she'd much rather have Lida's remission. To her credit, Lida apologizes, though Hazel regrets saying anything because she knows Lida was being sincere and didn't mean to come off as patronizing.
- Played with by a little girl Hazel meets at the mall. She comes up to her and rather bluntly asks about Hazel's oxygen tank and why she needs it. Her mother is horribly embarrassed and scolds her for being rude, but Hazel genuinely doesn't mind, since the kid's only curious. She explains to the girl that she needs help breathing, and even shows her how it works.
- Goblins in the Castle: In Goblins on the Prowl, Igor (who's not the best with people) accidentally offends Bwoonhiwda terribly when he makes an attempt at a joke that she takes as a shot at her speech impediment. He hurriedly explains that he's not making fun of her, just making a joke and that he wants to be her friend, and Fauna has to step in and assure Bwoonhiwda that Igor wasn't trying to offend her, he's just not good with people sometimes. Bwoonhiwda, after giving it some thought, accepts his apology but warns him not to do that again, or she'll hurt him. Severely.
- Harry Potter
- Hermione Granger comes off like this at least once a book, arguably downplayed in the movies.
- In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Dean Thomas asks Firenze if Hagrid breeds the Centaurs like cattle. He even realizes right afterward that what he said was quite inappropriate and hastily apologizes. It is lucky he did not ask this of any other centaur; Firenze merely corrects him and continues the lesson, but the other centaurs seen have flown into a violent indignant rage over far lesser insults and things which are difficult to envisage as insults.
- In The Hate U Give, the protagonist Starr is a black teenage girl who's dating a white boy, Chris. Chris is a generally nice guy, but he does occasionally put his foot in his mouth. Most notably, when he asks Starr and her friends why black parents give their children "weird" names. Their response is essentially, "...Seriously?", along with a quick lesson in what a lot of those "weird" names mean in various languages — and pointing out that plenty of white people have ridiculous names, too. Chris realizes it was a stupid thing to say and quickly apologizes.
- I Am Jazz: When Jazz was very young, she would tell her sister about how she wanted to grow up to be a beautiful lady. Jazz's sister, not realising that Jazz was trans, would giggle and call her a "funny kid".
- The Kingdom's Disdain: Due to her sheltered upbringing and headstrong nature, Princess Sareash sometimes insults others without meaning to. This actually causes friction with Cardinal in "Blood Drain".
- Last Night at the Telegraph Club: White people sometimes make assumptions about Lily due to her being of Chinese ancestry which are annoying, like questioning if she speaks English (she's a native born US citizen). They don't do it from malice though, just ignorance.
- Quentin Coldwater of The Magicians is occasionally beset with this problem, in keeping with his characterization as an oblivious Manchild. For example, at one point in the second book, he tells Julia that she didn't miss a thing by failing the entrance exam to Brakebills... when Julia had been forced to endure several painful months of depression and Sanity Slippage as a result of her failure, being visibly on the brink of a nervous breakdown by the time she met Quentin again. Also, it eventually becomes clear that she become so desperate to learn magic that she prostituted herself to Hedge Wizards and later ended up having a traumatizing encounter with a monstrous demigod who murdered her friends and raped her.
- Alpha and Omega:
- Asil makes a crude remark about Charles 'sharing' Anna. Because Asil has only known her for a few minutes, he is unaware that Anna is a gang-rape survivor.
- Charles asks Asil how torture affects an Omega werewolf — just before remembering that Asil's wife was tortured to death. (He apologizes later.)
- The Mermaid's Daughter: During a master class, the world-famous soprano Ruzena tells Kathleen, "You are going to kill yourself. You will stab yourself, throw yourself into the sea." She's referring to the many tragic roles available to sopranos. She doesn't know Kathleen's mother drowned herself in the ocean when she was a baby.
- Heather Badcock, the victim of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. She casually revealed when she was Fangirling over Marina Gregg that she broke out of a quarantine wing in a hospital against doctor's orders while she was infected with German Measles in order to see Marina on stage and get her autograph. Marina was pregnant! note Marina coldly murdered her in a furious rage when she found out.
- Monster of the Month Club: When Owl uses Rilla's e-mail to contact people with "monster" in their screen names and ask if they're a real monster, he ends up offending pretty much all of them, but doesn't seem to understand why they're insulted.
- The Moonlit Vine: Ty's cousin Izzy refers to their grandmother Isaura's Alzheimer's diagnosis as "old-timers disease". This irks Ty, as Isaura lives with her and her mother and she finds herself in a caregiver role, while Izzy is not.
- Our Wivesunder The Sea: When Miri tries to talk to her friend Carmen about Leah, she keeps bringing up stories about her ex-boyfriend Tom. Miri gets frustrated with this because she thinks the situations aren't similar enough to be comparing, but she calms down when she realizes she never let Carmen know exactly what's been going on with Leah either.
- Lightning Strike from Out of Position. He's not necessarily a Jerkass, but he has no problem sharing his opinions, no matter how annoying or upsetting they may be. He even tries to give Dev bondage gear as a Christmas present at a very public party because he believed it was something Dev wanted.
- In Persuasion, Admiral and Mrs. Croft quickly befriend Anne, and they're both kind, good-natured people. But they have no idea of the pain they're causing when they ask casually which of the Musgrove girls Captain Wentworth will marry, having no idea that he was engaged to Anne once.
- In The Plague Dogs, Ephraim meets his hunting buddies Weldyke and Furse in the bar. Wldyke initially offers him some pork, quickly changing it to chicken after Furse discretely kicks his shin under the table for making the faux pas of offering a Jewish man pork. He meant no offense, and Ephraim takes none.
- In Room, due to Jack's age, he doesn't have a complete understanding of the full extent of what his Ma constantly went through while they were prisoners in the titular Room, and will bring it up casually in conversation with people. Almost everybody understands this and try to brush it off. Although Ma, suffering from severe PTSD, snaps and loses her temper at a few points.
- In Sense and Sensibility, this is lampshaded and happens several times over.
- Sir John, who in all respects is a kind and generous man who gives Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters a home after her worthless stepson and daughter-in-law force them out of their ownnote teams up with his mother-in-law Mrs. Jennings to tease Elinor about her "beau" with the initial of F. (that information being given by likewise innocently insensitive Margaret, the youngest Dashwood sister). They routinely tease any young friend about romance in nothing but good humor and well-wishes, but in this instance, it's quite painful; Elinor really is in love with Edward Ferrars and has to constantly pretend that she's not, both because his family would never approve his marrying a girl as poor as Elinor and, worse, he's secretly engaged to another woman and she's the only one who knows it.
- Marianne, who eventually throws a tantrum at the endless teasing she herself endures from Mrs. Jennings, brushes off Elinor's explanation that the older woman means well by saying that Elinor can't possibly know how she, Marianne, is suffering. (She's properly ashamed when she learns of Elinor's situation.)
- Near the end of the book, Edward is disinherited when his secret engagement to Lucy Steele comes to light. Colonel Brandon, whose own family forcibly separated him from his sweetheart as a young man, decides to grant him the parish living on his own estate. As he's not well-acquainted with Edward, he asks Elinor to act as intermediary, not realizing that he's asking his friend to speed up the marriage of her love to another woman.
- Depending on interpretation, Sherlock Holmes. Opinion varies on whether he's genuinely socially inept or deliberately spiteful to people who aren't as smart as him. The 2009 film favours the latter explanation, but critics who stress Holmes' loneliness as a character trait favour the former.
- The BBC series Sherlock seems to use a bit of both — he once asks John whether a comment was too insensitive, but also makes fun of everyone for not understanding his deductions. We haven't seen much of the loneliness outright yet, but he sure does get upset when John's in danger. He claims to be a sociopath, as well, but the fact that he shows genuine concern for another human being pretty clearly tells that if he has a disorder, it's not as serious as he thinks. Or perhaps John is just the exception. Word of God from Moffatt is that Sherlock is a) full of crap and b) wants to be a sociopath; he thinks his intellect would be much more efficient if it wasn't for all this caring about stuff getting in the way.
- Both presentations may be correct. Individuals with exceptionally high IQs often have difficulty with proper social interactions, usually coming off as either distant, patronizing, or outright arrogant and insulting (even when it is not their intent). Psychologists think it comes from their altered viewpoint of reality. People with high IQs easily make intellectual connections and usually have a better understanding of things. But even when they know intellectually that it is due to their high IQ, they can't always grasp why no one else gets it or may be frustrated by how they need to explain "simple" things. For Sherlock, who likely has a very high IQ, he doesn't get why everyone else can't see the world the way he does. To him, he is pointing out things on the same level of obviousness as "The sky is blue" and then dealing with people who are so dense they need it spelled out to them (even though no one else would ever make those connections).
- In the first Mary Russell book, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice," Holmes touches a nerve during his Sherlock Scan of Russell, identifying that she was in an accident that killed her parents and caused her move to Yorkshire based on scar tissue, muscle weakness, and her accent. He has his eyes closed and realizes he has gone too far when he sees her face.
- Something similar happens in The Sign of the Four, in which he casually deduces that Watson's pocket-watch used to belong to his elder brother, who lived largely in poverty, took to drink, and has recently died, without thinking that this might be a sensitive subject until Watson reacts.
- In Stargirl, this is arguably the titular character's only flaw. She is genuinely a kind and friendly girl who wants to make others happy but in between being home-schooled most of her life and her Cloudcuckoolander attitude, she simply doesn't realize how the real world works.
- She sings Happy Birthday to everyone on their birthday, embarrassing them all because she never asked their permission or consider they might not like it.
- A senior girl's grandfather passes away and Stargirl isn't invited to the funeral because the family doesn't know her. Stargirl shows up anyways but the mother angrily tells her to leave.
- She makes a public Valentine's Day declaration of love to her boyfriend while both were shunned from the rest of the student body. Said boyfriend was so embarrassed he didn't talk to her for the whole day.
- Starman Jones: When Max asks one of his mentors, Chief Computerman Kelly, why he isn't in the Astrogators Guild, Kelly gets sad and comments that he had a chance once but failed and "[n]ow I know my limitations."
- The Stormlight Archive: The Parshmen are a docile Slave Race that will starve to death if not given any orders. When the Alethi find a tribe of free Parshmen with their own culture, they name them Parshendi, which means "Parshmen that can think." Neither side sees anything wrong with this; the Parshendi normally just call themselves "the listeners," anyway.
- In Squad by Mariah MacCarthy, one of the major incidents that led to Jenna and Raejean's friendship starting to fracture was when Raejean called Jenna a ditz in front of several of their peers, and Jenna poured her drink on her in response. Jenna instantly felt horrible and apologized, but in her narration, reveals Raejean makes jokes about her intelligence a lot, and it was starting to really bother her—this time just happened to be the last straw. When they talk about it at the end of the book, nearly a year later, Raejean has almost entirely forgotten the incident until Jenna reminds her. When Jenna shares how much the jokes about her being dumb were hurting her feelings, Raejean is genuinely taken aback. She explains then that she didn't think it was a big deal, and thought the jokes were funny because Jenna is so clearly not dumb and anyone who knows her can see that.
- In Super Minion, Tofu both originally plays this straight and later defies it. Having only a few weeks of social experience, he has a tendency to say unintentionally rude things, like complaining about a form being attention-getting to mutants who can't shapeshift to not look attention-getting. When he gets the chance, he enthusiastically signs up for sensitivity training so that he can learn not to hurt people's feelings. At least, not when he doesn't want to.
- Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note's Wakatake doesn't have any problems with boys, but he doesn't seem to know what not to say in front of girls. For example, saying the girl he crashed into a mailbox, or "I found girls annoying'' in her face.
- In Tomcat Blue Eyes' Diaries, Blue Eyes and White Whiskers Rusty go to visit their mutual friend, cat Green Eyes who has just had babies. Blue Eyes is always a very friendly, affectionate little tom-cat — almost a kitten himself. He says to Whiskers that Green Eyes' babies are real ugly and — the horror — even blind. Green Eyes gets angry and swats him twice with her front paws and runs away with her babies. Whiskers tries to explain to him that every mother is sorry when somebody shames her children and tells Blue Eyes that he was not prettier when he was born. Blue Eyes doesn't believe him and is sure that he was never blind.
- Tress of the Emerald Sea: As a member of an ageless, highly resilient species, Ulaam underestimates human qualms about discussing their mortality. He apologizes and reins it in after his flippant Gallows Humor in the middle of a life-or-death crisis makes Tress cry.
- Trueman Bradley: In the first book, Trueman deduces that his neighbor Mrs. Levi eats a lot of baloney, then mistakes her look of embarrassment for amazement. When she buries her face in her hands and runs out of the room, he thinks the conversation made her hungry and shouts "Enjoy your baloney!" after her. He feels horrible when he realizes what he did, although he still doesn't understand why someone would be embarrassed about eating baloney.
- Unidentified Suburban Object: Lindsey Cripp has no filter and limited social skills, and tends to anger or upset people with her comments. She's never trying to be mean though, and always feels guilty whenever she sees that she's hurt anyone.
- Universal Monsters: In book 3, after Nina gets back at her classmate Stacy McDonald with a thinly-veiled insult, Stacy whines to their teacher that Nina called her fat. Mrs. Hoving, however, completely misunderstands and thinks they were both using the slang word "phat", meaning "cool", and asks "Isn't that supposed to be cool with you kids today or something?", causing Stacy to gasp and (just as the bell rings) stomp out of the room.
- Gray Wing from Warrior Cats: Dawn of the Clans tries (poorly) to comfort Wind Runner by saying that her son Emberkit was in a better place. This, however, makes Wind Runner angry at him, yelling at him that the best place for a kit was at its mother's belly and wishing him grief, saying that he's as bad as Clear Sky and she'll throw that comment back at him. But when Turtle Tail dies, she apologizes to him.
- Clay from Wings of Fire can be this at times, especially around Peril. The other dragonets have to cover for him, and it even leads Tsunami and Glory pulling a trick on Clay to show that being this can be hurtful at times.
- In Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell has a slightly difficult relationship with his son Gregory; they love each other, but Gregory is guileless and doesn't understand his father very well. So when Cromwell makes a joking-not-joking comment that his portrait
◊ makes him look like a murderer (a persistent insecurity of his), Gregory simply says "you didn't know?" - In Zenobia July, trans girl Zenobia has just started at a new school where everyone thinks she's cis. When she reacts to the news that her classmate Elijah is trans and has been Forced Out of the Closet, her genderqueer friend Arli thinks she's transphobic and lectures her over text about the importance of educating herself so she can be a good ally. On her next school day, Zen so dreads the idea of another lecture from Arli that she eats lunch in Siberia, which is what the kids call the most deserted corner of the lunchroom. Later, Arli tells her how lucky she is that she'll never have to deal with harassment because of her gender identity, not knowing what she went through in Arizona. When Zen finally comes out to Arli, vo apologizes for how clueless vo must have sounded.
01.jpg){kind=small}
