Introverts and Extroverts in Buffyverse and Stargate
There's an interesting post linked on metafandom by ivanolix about television "fixing" introverts. While I can see where the OP is coming from, generally speaking, I think there's an argument to be made that quite a few of the "introverts" on television aren't true introverts at all. Mostly because this is television, and they're not so much concerned with accurate portrayals of introverts as they are with telling a compelling story.
Look at Angel, of Buffy and Angel. Is he a true introvert? Liam certainly wasn't. He's presented as a wastrel, a prodigal who enjoyed carousing all night, getting drunk and hitting on random women. Angelus wasn't what I'd call an introvert either. You get the sense that the Fanged Four did a lot of partying in their day, with other vampires, with demons, with the Immortal, with unwilling humans.
Some fans argue that Angel is a separate person entirely from Liam and Angeleus, but I think it's fair to say that they're none of them very different. Liam and Angelus inform Angel. What Angelus had with Darla, Dru, and Spike is not so very different from what Angel has with Cordy, Wes, Gunn, and Fred.
On Buffy, Angel is portrayed much closer to the introvert type. He lives alone in a dark mansion; he spends his time reading by the fire; he shows little interest in partying at the Bronze with the teenagers; his idea of a fun date is ice skating at a completely empty rink. But how much of this is Angel as being an introvert "by nature", and how much of it is a result of 100 years of self-imposed isolation? And obviously that century on his own wasn't about being an introvert--it was guilt and fear, and his ongoing struggle to not feed on humans. And his Season 3 reading-Sartre-alone-in-the-dark characterisation cannot be divorced from the events of Season 2, either.
That said, much of his character development on Angel is about life kicking him out of his musty basement apartment, about making connections with the people he saves, feeling their humanity and feeling his own in the process. The show presents Angel isolating himself as a bad thing--Doyle argues against isolation in "City Of", and ditto the rest of the team--perhaps most strongly during the S2 "beige" arc. I can definitely see how this feeds into the television idea that introverts need "fixing", especially as Angel's loner phases are often precursors to his making morally dubious/wrong decisions.
Still, while I agree that the message of "alone time = BAD!" perpetuates this stereotyping of introverts, I'm still not sure whether it's fair to characterise Angel as naturally introverted. The OP says, "People do not choose to be introverts.", and this is very true in RL. But Angel isn't a real person who happens to be an introvert--he's a fictional character, written to have a good deal of trauma in his past, constructed to have deep-seated psychological issues that can/will be helped by his making connections to the world around him, building friendships, etc. I mean, there it is--that's the story.
...and since I find a way to bring everything back to Stargate, I wanted to point to
trobadora comment in ivanolix's post: Although I think fandom can be far worse at the fixing-the-introvert game than other media. For example, John Sheppard in SGA? He's fine on the show, but what fandom does to him horrifies me sometimes.
Take Ronon, who is probably the most isolated person on Atlantis (except Woolsey in Season 5). Is Ronon an introvert? Is he "by nature" someone who prefers to be alone, or at least away from a crowd? I'm not sure this is true. It's certainly not the whole truth. "Trinity" and "Reunion" gives us a fair idea of what Ronon was probably like before Sateda's destruction. He was very close to his squad, and as with all militaries, they probably didn't have much in the way of private alone-time. They worked hard, played hard--as a team. We know Ronon is good at boozing it up with his friends. I mean, if they were real people at a real bar, they'd be that rowdy, obnoxious bunch trying to start a brawl!
But on Atlantis, he spends all his off-hours with John and Teyla. While he cares about Rodney and Carson and Elizabeth, and would, to quote what he says to Sam, "put [his] life on the line for any of [them]", there doesn't seem to be much socialising going on there. Besides John and Teyla, the only other person he tries to reach out to is Jennifer Keller. (Which is why I feel so bad for him, while respecting Jennifer's right to choose.) There seems to be some rapport building between Ronon and Amelia Banks by the end of S5, and while it's pretty cursory, it's implied that this is a positive step in Ronon's recovery.
The question is, who is the real Ronon? The introvert who avoids making friends or socialising on Atlantis? Or the extrovert who parties hard with his buddies on Sateda? The problem is that characters grow and change, then change again, shaped by the trauma and (hopefully) healing in their lives.
For that matter, is John an introvert? I do read him as falling on the introverted side of the divide (if we're going to be binary) and we get enough scenes of him relaxing in his quarters with a book for it to be a reasonable interpretation. But it's certainly not so cut-and-dried, especially if you're working off early characterisation--very early characterisation--in which John is the one with the charm and social skills when he and Sumner first meet the Athosians. He connects with Teyla immediately, and then in "Hide and Seek" instigates a few group and team activities--telling kids ghost stories before bedtime, bonding with Teyla, getting his team to watch football with him. And since the football-watching scene is the basis for the "city-wide movie nights" fanon, well, you can thank John Sheppard, introvert extraordinaire.
Still, despite this early take on his character, I'm inclined to describe John as more of a "natural" introvert than Ronon. With Ronon, I think we're still seeing a lot of trauma--his core personality is, I think, much more sociable than what we've seen in the four years since he stopped being a Runner. I'd argue Season 5 John is more closed off than Season 1 John, but that has less to do with natural introversion and more to do with losses piling up and weighing him down. That is, I don't think Season 1 John would have experienced the same delusion in "Remnants" that Season 5 John did, because while John was out of his depth that first year, he was also busy reaching out to people, making friends. In S5, he's slowly losing his team to their respective romantic partners--admittedly, an unsubstantiated reading of canon, but it's a character arc that makes sense to me--and he's flailing on the personal front even as he's making progress on the military/political front.
(I'm not saying post-series John needs a year in Antarctica to decompress, but a nice vacation on Earth and a few hugs probably wouldn't hurt.)
If I'm sticking with the introvert vs. extrovert binary, then I'd argue:
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Look at Angel, of Buffy and Angel. Is he a true introvert? Liam certainly wasn't. He's presented as a wastrel, a prodigal who enjoyed carousing all night, getting drunk and hitting on random women. Angelus wasn't what I'd call an introvert either. You get the sense that the Fanged Four did a lot of partying in their day, with other vampires, with demons, with the Immortal, with unwilling humans.
Some fans argue that Angel is a separate person entirely from Liam and Angeleus, but I think it's fair to say that they're none of them very different. Liam and Angelus inform Angel. What Angelus had with Darla, Dru, and Spike is not so very different from what Angel has with Cordy, Wes, Gunn, and Fred.
On Buffy, Angel is portrayed much closer to the introvert type. He lives alone in a dark mansion; he spends his time reading by the fire; he shows little interest in partying at the Bronze with the teenagers; his idea of a fun date is ice skating at a completely empty rink. But how much of this is Angel as being an introvert "by nature", and how much of it is a result of 100 years of self-imposed isolation? And obviously that century on his own wasn't about being an introvert--it was guilt and fear, and his ongoing struggle to not feed on humans. And his Season 3 reading-Sartre-alone-in-the-dark characterisation cannot be divorced from the events of Season 2, either.
That said, much of his character development on Angel is about life kicking him out of his musty basement apartment, about making connections with the people he saves, feeling their humanity and feeling his own in the process. The show presents Angel isolating himself as a bad thing--Doyle argues against isolation in "City Of", and ditto the rest of the team--perhaps most strongly during the S2 "beige" arc. I can definitely see how this feeds into the television idea that introverts need "fixing", especially as Angel's loner phases are often precursors to his making morally dubious/wrong decisions.
Still, while I agree that the message of "alone time = BAD!" perpetuates this stereotyping of introverts, I'm still not sure whether it's fair to characterise Angel as naturally introverted. The OP says, "People do not choose to be introverts.", and this is very true in RL. But Angel isn't a real person who happens to be an introvert--he's a fictional character, written to have a good deal of trauma in his past, constructed to have deep-seated psychological issues that can/will be helped by his making connections to the world around him, building friendships, etc. I mean, there it is--that's the story.
...and since I find a way to bring everything back to Stargate, I wanted to point to
trobadora comment in ivanolix's post: Although I think fandom can be far worse at the fixing-the-introvert game than other media. For example, John Sheppard in SGA? He's fine on the show, but what fandom does to him horrifies me sometimes.
Take Ronon, who is probably the most isolated person on Atlantis (except Woolsey in Season 5). Is Ronon an introvert? Is he "by nature" someone who prefers to be alone, or at least away from a crowd? I'm not sure this is true. It's certainly not the whole truth. "Trinity" and "Reunion" gives us a fair idea of what Ronon was probably like before Sateda's destruction. He was very close to his squad, and as with all militaries, they probably didn't have much in the way of private alone-time. They worked hard, played hard--as a team. We know Ronon is good at boozing it up with his friends. I mean, if they were real people at a real bar, they'd be that rowdy, obnoxious bunch trying to start a brawl!
But on Atlantis, he spends all his off-hours with John and Teyla. While he cares about Rodney and Carson and Elizabeth, and would, to quote what he says to Sam, "put [his] life on the line for any of [them]", there doesn't seem to be much socialising going on there. Besides John and Teyla, the only other person he tries to reach out to is Jennifer Keller. (Which is why I feel so bad for him, while respecting Jennifer's right to choose.) There seems to be some rapport building between Ronon and Amelia Banks by the end of S5, and while it's pretty cursory, it's implied that this is a positive step in Ronon's recovery.
The question is, who is the real Ronon? The introvert who avoids making friends or socialising on Atlantis? Or the extrovert who parties hard with his buddies on Sateda? The problem is that characters grow and change, then change again, shaped by the trauma and (hopefully) healing in their lives.
For that matter, is John an introvert? I do read him as falling on the introverted side of the divide (if we're going to be binary) and we get enough scenes of him relaxing in his quarters with a book for it to be a reasonable interpretation. But it's certainly not so cut-and-dried, especially if you're working off early characterisation--very early characterisation--in which John is the one with the charm and social skills when he and Sumner first meet the Athosians. He connects with Teyla immediately, and then in "Hide and Seek" instigates a few group and team activities--telling kids ghost stories before bedtime, bonding with Teyla, getting his team to watch football with him. And since the football-watching scene is the basis for the "city-wide movie nights" fanon, well, you can thank John Sheppard, introvert extraordinaire.
Still, despite this early take on his character, I'm inclined to describe John as more of a "natural" introvert than Ronon. With Ronon, I think we're still seeing a lot of trauma--his core personality is, I think, much more sociable than what we've seen in the four years since he stopped being a Runner. I'd argue Season 5 John is more closed off than Season 1 John, but that has less to do with natural introversion and more to do with losses piling up and weighing him down. That is, I don't think Season 1 John would have experienced the same delusion in "Remnants" that Season 5 John did, because while John was out of his depth that first year, he was also busy reaching out to people, making friends. In S5, he's slowly losing his team to their respective romantic partners--admittedly, an unsubstantiated reading of canon, but it's a character arc that makes sense to me--and he's flailing on the personal front even as he's making progress on the military/political front.
(I'm not saying post-series John needs a year in Antarctica to decompress, but a nice vacation on Earth and a few hugs probably wouldn't hurt.)
If I'm sticking with the introvert vs. extrovert binary, then I'd argue:
- Rodney is the most extroverted member of Team Sheppard. I'm not saying he's got good social skills--I'm saying that he's someone who gets energy from being with other people, as opposed to someone who gets energy from being alone. He likes a crowd; in the grand tradition of sci-fi engineers, he puts on a show and performs miracles for a delighted audience. He seems to like having a girlfriend. (Not to say introverts don't have love-lives, but Rodney seems to prefer companionship.) He does his best work when he can bounce ideas off Zelenka or Sam or Jeannie.
- Teyla is somewhat extroverted. She obviously gets a lot from meditating, but she also gets a lot from being with her people. She's often isolated due to her position as leader, and as an outsider to the Atlantis expedition--she's not exactly happy about this isolation. She socialises outside her team.
- Ronon was extroverted before becoming a Runner, though he's introverted now. I suspect he was more extroverted than Teyla, just from the whole rabble-rousing vibe, but less than Rodney, because his four years on Atlantis are evidence that he doesn't want/need crowds.
- John is an introvert, and prefers to spend his off-hours alone or with one or two other people, away from crowds.
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