Character Tics / Fan Works

• Achilles' Heel: Lusamine has a habit of clicking her tongue when annoyed. The tic brings back bad memories, so she's been trying to stop.
• In The Apprentice, the Student, and the Charlatan, Nova Shine often rubs around his horn whenever he's in deep thought.
• In Broken Bow, Armani (and his alternate-universe duplicate) tends to incline his head as a gesture of acknowledgment.
• Calvin & Hobbes: The Series: Jack T. Robot will lean on anything when standing still. This apparently includes his own leg.
• Cave Story Versus I M Meen: Jack has a serious habit of vomiting, but it is more or less justified by the shit that he goes through.
• Coveralls, a fanfic of The X-Files written by an AI, gives Mulder the habit of crawling and nodding and Scully the habit of sighing.
• Cross Cases: Sam Winchester's portrayal gives him a habit of scrubbing his hand over his mouth when he's thinking, or sometimes nervous. Harry Dresden also notices other 'tics' of his, such as pressing his nail into his left palm and apparently looking away at nothing, both of which are related to him being Lucifer's vessel.
• Dear Journal: I'm Crazy: Skeeter has a habit of honking after nearly every sentence. Ultimatley Subverted, as Skeeter's constant honking was actually a result of Doug's mind warping how he sees his peers.
• Despair's Last Resort:
  • Naomi is constantly pushing her glasses up her nose.
  • The trope is actually discussed by Kumiko in Chapter 6, mentioning that these could be used to figure out the mastermind's identity. Which they do. Takara remembers Monokuma's tendency to use theater references and terminology which points her to figuring out it's Saemi.
• The Devil's in the details: Whenever a character starts ranting before they get to the point, expect Peter to remark "deflecting..."
• In Dreamlike, a Popuri/Karen oneshot, Karen has a character tic of sticking a strand of hair behind her ear.
• In An Enduring Song, a fanfiction of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Riker stares at the wall a lot.
• In the Eleutherophobia series, many ex-hosts stim to remind themselves that they're still in control of their bodies. For example, Tom clenches his right hand when he's feeling upset, and Eva fiddles with her bracelets.
• Fire Emblem Fates: Aftermath: When Lilith gets nervous, she starts playing with her hair braid.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers fanfic Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Let's see... quirking brows, widening eyes, face-palms, suddenly speaking their native languages, pulling objects out of invisible places... the author uses quite a few.
• The Frozen oneshot The Holding and the Release explores Elsa's tic of wrapping her arms around her. It's both a way of shielding others from her and a way of comforting herself, because she's too afraid to let others hug her.
• Ghosts of Evangelion: Shinji makes his infamous unclenching-and-unclenching-hand tic when he encourages himself to greet his newborn daughter.
  Shinji hesitated, then once again clenched his hand in decision. He approached Asuka. She looked up, smiled at him, then back down at the infant in her arms. Shinji followed her lead. "H-" he began. He coughed, then continued.
• Heirverse: Aizen will run a hand through his hair as a means of self-comfort, Gin later picks up the trait. He also has a tendency to touch the scars he got from walking into a lamppost, whenever he's confused or trying to work something out.
• In Jonathan Joestar, The First JoJo, Jonathan tends to scratch at the back of his neck if he's nervous or embarrassed.
• Less Bittersweet
  • Every pose the characters' sprites had in Doki Doki Literature Club!, including the ordinary ones, becomes a recognisable repeated pose for them.
  • Sayori has developed a new nervous habit of pulling at her collar. It's implied to be because she can remember hanging herself.
• In the Punch-Out!! fanfic Ma Fille, Katrina curls and flexes her fingers as an anxious tic.
• In the Motion Practice series, there's a character tic that seems to belong to the author rather than any character in particular: at least once a story, someone will roll their lips together to express (or suppress) an emotion.
• My Dream Is Yours: A Noodle Incident involving Octavia switching dreams with Dr. O during the first Dream-Transfer-itis epidemic has Octavia developing a tic that caused her to avoid spaghetti for three months. It apparently had something to do with the gallbladder and how Dr. O apparently doesn't know what one actually looks like.
• The One I Love Is...: Asuka sometimes clenches and unclenches her fist, like Shinji did. She mentions it in the "Friends and Rivals" side-story:
  I didn't really notice it, but I clenched and unclenched my fist, much like Shinji sometimes did.
• Our Own League:
  • Wonder Girl presses her fingertips together, either when she's thinking hard, or stressed and taking deep breaths.
  • Kid Flash chews gum so as to keep moving even when he has to sit still. When concentrating, however, he will chew harder and smack his lips loudly.
  • When she's startled or having Performance Anxiety, Miss Martian will shriek "Eep!" and turn invisible.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Reflecting Balance: Blitz the Shinx is often seen rubbing the yellow rings on his forelegs together when nervous.
• Sunny Breeze of Racer and the Geek has a habit of using gratuitous foreign languages.
• RWBY: Scars:
  • When Weiss is nervous, she rubs her wrists. This has to do with her Self-Harm scars. Ruby later realizes that Weiss stabbed herself after she sees Weiss rubbing her stomach in a similar way.
  • Blake has a tic of touching her cheek. This stems from her abusive ex-boyfriend Adam having once slapped her.
• The Second Try:
  • The nervous tic that Shinji displayed in the series, the clenching/relaxing of his left hand, shows up again just before the battle with the 12th angel. However, in another example of character growth, Shinji actually notices this and makes himself stop (and also mentally lampshades how "old habits are hard to break".)
  • In the sequel, his daughter has developed his same nervous tic: in episode 3, she clenches and relaxes her right hand when she gets nervous.
• Songs Uncle Sings: The uncle reflexively clenches and unclenches his fist.
• In Spotless, even though she is no longer pursuing Adrien, Marinette still tends to stutter around him.
• In Time to Disinfect, Mari has physical tics that seem to be based on her mood, clapping her hands or bouncing her shoulders when she's happy, and pulling at her collar when she's nervous.
• In Tommy Pickles: The Terrible Twos which is a fanfic of Rugrats, Dil develops a habit of walking backwards a lot.

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