An entire fucking essay on my ideas about the Spider-Norman verse I got going on
Norman's an asshole. His neighbors know it, his teachers know it, and his classmates definitely know it. Literally, everyone is aware of how much they hate this guy.
They see him walk into class with a swollen bruise or a busted lip and assume that he just said something to a guy three times his size, they don't notice the way he flinches when people make sudden hand movements around him.
They hear his father yell at him in their tiny apartment, and they go "Oh, he must've snuck out or vandalized some walls, that's why his dad's pissed." and they don't actually listen to Ambrose Osborn go on about what an absolute failure Norman is, how he's screwed up too many times now to be given the right to call himself an Osborn, how he should've been the one to die instead of his mother.
He shows off his good grades to his classmates, smirking at how angry they are, because having anyone pay attention to his intelligence for negative reasons is better than being ignored entirely.
He pushes people away before they can even have a chance of getting to know how he really is, because he doesn't want to risk the possibility of them seeing the actual Norman and deciding that he's even worse than they originally thought.
Norman's so used to people hating him that one day, when a giant dork sits next to him, adjusts his nerdy glasses, and smiles directly at him, he tries to ignore it under the assumption that he's just messing around, making fun of him somehow, because there's no way a stranger would look at the kid with eyebags sulking in the back of the classroom and decide that yes, he looks like a good friend.
Just...Norman being so used to being treated shitty that he genuinely forgets how to be nice to people!!!
